Crystal sat at the kitchen table staring across the room at the phone on the wall, wondering when it would ring. She looked at her watch again and sighed. "It's a bit early in the morning, I guess I shouldn't have expected him to call so soon." She says and stands up to go back up to her room to get ready for work. She puts on a pair of jeans and a long-sleeve light blue button down shirt that she tucks into her pants and she wears her ginger hair down, while pulling back some of it with a black butterfly clip. As she gathered her things from the desk in her room she smiled at a little snow globe on her desk with a ballerina playing the violin in it. According to her mom it was the one thing her parents wanted her to keep when they adopted her when she was an infant. It was strange to be honest. Why would a woman who wanted to give up her newborn daughter also leave her a gift? Crystal's adopted mother Lillian hypothesized that perhaps she felt bad about giving her up and wanted to give a part of herself that she could keep. Her adopted father Steve thought that it might be a family heirloom of some sort that she wanted her to have. Either way, it didn't do much, it was just a decoration she liked to keep at her desk. She put a book in her bag as well as the pictures she took with Peter yesterday and walked outside to perform her errands.
She walked outside and made her way over to the white picket fence and opened the gate to walk down the sidewalk. This was all very routine for her. She sighed and decided to sing a little song to herself softly, to break the silence. "Little town, in this quiet neighborhood. Every day, like the one before. Little town, full of little people waking up to say-" As if on cue some people started coming out of their houses, cars pulling out on their way to work.
"Hey Frank!" One guy on his way to work called to his neighbor who was also pulling out.
"Hey Tom!" The neighbor said.
"Hi Cat!" A woman getting the mail said to another woman watering her lawn.
"Hi Mary!" She replies to Cat.
"Hi Crystal!" The paperboy waves to her as he rides by on his bike and she waves back. She walks around the corner onto a street that had some stores on it. She walked by a bakery and saw a man in the window with an apron.
"There goes the baker with his tray like always. The same old bagels and rolls to sell." She sings to herself as she walks inside and he smiles at her and she smiles back and he gets a bagel out for her, since this had become part of his routine as well. "Every morning just the same, since the morning that we came, to this small Westchester town." She sings softly to herself.
"Good morning Crystal." The middle-aged baker says and hands her a bagel with cream cheese and went over to the coffee machine to get her a cup.
"Good morning Jack." She says then notices him looking around. "Have you lost something again?"
"Yes, but the thing is, I can't seem to remember what it is." He says and Crystal notices a pair of glasses in the display case under the counter.
"Could those be it?" She asks and points to them. He smiles when he sees them and takes them out and puts them on.
"I believe they are. Thank you Crystal. Where are you off to this morning?" He asks.
"Just returning a book to the library before work." She says as he hands her a cup of coffee and she gives him some money.
"What's it about?" He asks.
"About two people in a forbidden romance in Italy." She says and walks towards the door.
"Sounds boring." Jack says and the two wave at each other before she leaves.
"Look there she goes that girl is strange no question." A little boy says to his parents as Crystal walks by a school and kids were being dropped off in the front.
"Dazed and distracted can't you tell." The father says to the other boy. Crystal smiled and happily played on a little hop scotch drawing on the sidewalk that some younger kids were drawing. They smiled and clapped for her as she continued walking down the sidewalk.
"Never part of any crowd." A businessman at a coffee shop says and opens his newspaper as she walks by.
"Because her head's stuck on some cloud." His partner says and does the same action.
"No denying she's a funny girl that Crystal." The waitress says and gives them both two mugs of coffee.
"Good morning how's your family?" A shop owner asks an older woman walking by.
"Good morning, how's your wife?" She asks him.
"I need six eggs for a cake." A woman tells her friend inside a grocery store.
"Don't you think that's a bit much?" Her friend asks her.
"There must be more than this ordinary life." Crystal hums softly to herself. Finally she arrived at the library and the librarian, an old man with a cane walked out from behind his desk to greet her.
"Ah, good morning Crystal." He says and takes the book she handed him. "What adventure did you go on this week?"
"I took a romantic trip to Italy." She says and looks through the shelves in her favorite section. "Do you have any new places to go?"
"In your favorite section, I'm afraid not." The man says and goes back to his desk. "But you're welcome to take any of the old ones that you've read. No one hardly ever comes here since arcades, malls, and boom boxes are all the rage now so it's not like I have any holds on any of them." He chuckles and Crystal takes her favorite book and he takes her over to the desk to stamp it for her.
"You know I've always wanted to see the world." She tells him.
"I thought you wanted to be a doctor?" He asks. She smiles.
"I do, helping people brings me such joy! But I'd also like to do some traveling at some point too." She says and he hands her the book. "And your library makes this small corner of the world feel big." He chuckles and the two wave goodbye and she walks out the door.
"Bon Voyage!" He calls to her and she laughs as the door shuts behind her and she quickly walks down the steps.
"Look there she goes that girl is so peculiar." A man at a convenience stand asks the man running it.
"I wonder if she's feeling well." He replies and they both watch her walk by, reading the book as she walks.
"With a dreamy far off look." A passerby notes.
"And her nose stuck in a book." Another says.
"What a puzzle to the rest of us is Crystal." They say.
"Ohhh isn't this amazing." Crystal sings as she turns to walk into the park. "It's my favorite part because, you'll see. Here's where she meets her Prince Charming, but she won't discover that it's him, 'til chapter three!" She grins like an idiot and continues on her path across town through the park, glancing at the spot where she and Peter laid in the grass together the other day and smiled.
"Now it's no wonder that in high school that she was so popular, from what I've heard from her mother." A woman in a hair salon, her hair in curlers under the drying hood tells two young ladies in their twenties next to her. "Her looks have got no parallel."
"But behind that fair facade. I'm afraid she's rather odd." The two girls look at each other and then back to the older woman, who is most likely their mother.
"She's nothing like the rest of us." One of the girls says.
"Yes different from the rest of us." The other chimes in.
"Very different from the rest of us is Crystal!" Everyone in the salon sings.
"Is she one of those mutant people?" One of the girls asks her mother.
"No Isabelle she's not." Her mother says. "At least as far as her parents know. They did have some suspicions when they adopted her since most children put up for adoption are mutants. But she's never had any strange abilities or weird changes in her appearance. From what they've heard from a woman that lived in the neighborhood they moved here from, apparently if she was a mutant she would have been displaying the mutation by now."
"So she's just a weird girl?" The girl asks her mother.
"I guess so." She says and turns back to her magazine. Meanwhile, an Asian girl with a yellow jacket and two high ponytails blew a pink bubblegum bubble, had overheard the conversation. The bubble popped and she looked out the window and watched the girl skillfully maneuver her way through between people as she crossed the street.
"Hmmm..." She squints her eyes at her and regards Crystal curiously.
A group of young mutant kids screamed and ran away from a biker guy that was bullying them. All they wanted to do was have fun in town on a day off from school, but unfortunately not everyone in town was so accepting of them. "Wow Johnny, those little freaks don't stand a chance against you!" A skinny blonde guy complimented him.
"You're right Andy." He says and puts his shades back on and fixes up his leather jacket a bit. "Ever since that freak school got started up again in that big mansion, this place has been crawling with those freaks. And my boys and I don't like that one bit." He says then notices Crystal across the street and lowers his sunglasses and bites his lip. "There she is Andy." He says and points to her.
"Who? The new girl, Crystal?" He asks.
"Yeah, her. The lucky girl that's going to be mine." He says.
"You sure you want her?" Andy asks. "She seems so sweet and nice, wide-eyed, and cute and well-read, and you're..." Johnny glares at him and Andy tugs at his shirt collar and sweats a bit.
"Fearless and tough." He says quickly and Johnny smiles and resumes gawking at Crystal.
"Well the most important thing is that she's hot. She's the hottest girl in town, so by default she's the best." Johnny says then slings an arm around Andy's shoulder. "Right from the moment when I met her, saw her. I said she's gorgeous and I fell. Because in town there's only she, who is beautiful as me. So I'm making plans to make Crystal my girl." He says and starts making his way over to her.
"Look there he goes, isn't he dreamy? The biker Johnny! Oh he's so cute!" The girls from the salon swoon as they walk down the street together. "Be still my heart, I'm hardly breathing, he's such a tall, dark, strong and handsome brute!" Johnny stops and looks in a reflection in a shop window, fixes his dark, slicked back, jelled hair and smiles at his reflection before continuing to try to catch up to Crystal. But since they're in a busier part of town, there's a lot of people moving about and he can't seem to make his way through to get to her.
"There must be more than this ordinary life!" She sings.
"Just watch, one day that girl's going to be my wife!" He proclaims.
"Look there she goes that girl is strange but special!" Everyone on the street sings. "A most peculiar young girl. It's a pity and a sin, she doesn't quite fit in. Because she really is a funny girl. A beauty but a funny girl. She really is a funny girl, that Crystal!"
"That was great little bro!" A man in a full body red and black leather suit with two katanas on his back fist pumps a pre-teen mutant boy who was mind controlling people to sing as Crystal passed them on her way to work. "I've always wanted to do a musical! You've got a fun little mutation there."
"Thanks!" He says. "You put those ear-plugs in the girl's ears so she couldn't hear them singing about her right?"
"Of course! Did it right after she left the library. I'll take 'em out before she gets to work." The man in the suit says. "Then I'm back to the future to start working on my second movie!"
"You're making a movie?" The little boy asks in wonder.
"Yep!" He says.
"Is this a movie too?" He asks.
"Oh I wish! See, this is something called a fan-fiction, which is a story that fans can write about books, TV shows and movies that they like. It's super popular among nerds where I'm from." He explains to the little boy. "Yes. And since the Author is a bit of a fan of my movie, she decided to put me in here for laughs, and also because breaking the fourth wall is kind of my thing. And right now she's typing that my main job in this story is to say that this past musical scene is a parody of the song Belle from Beauty and the Beast from the Disney company. She's making it clear that she does not own the song, she just wanted to use it in this story for some character development for her OC and Beauty and the Beast is one of her favorite movies and she came up with genius idea to do an 80's X-men rendition of it!"
"So this whole fan-fiction is a movie parody?" The little boy asks.
"No. She's just going to take a few songs from the movie and throw them in different parts, probably not until later in the story." The guy says. "But after writing this she is considering doing a Beauty and the Beast style fan-fiction for a certain blue mutant that like me, has a taste in red leather."
"Kurt?" The little boy asks.
"Hey don't give it away or get anyone excited! She might not even do it, it's more of an idea that she got that's she's wondering if she could write a good story about!" The man says. "And she's also now typing that I'm kind of taking up a lot of time in her story and she wants to get the focus back on Crystal so I should probably get going. See you in the future guys!" He says and runs off to take the ear plugs out of Crystal's ears.
"Who was that guy?" One of the boy's friends asks.
"I don't know." He says. "He told me his name was Wade though."
Crystal walked into the building and made her way up to one of the middle floors to her bosses office. "Hey Crystal!" He says as she walks in the door after his secretary let her in. "You've got those pictures for me?"
"Yes I do Mr. Staurt" She says happily with a smile and pulls them out of her bag and hands them to her boss. He regards them and looks shocked. "Wow! Crystal these are incredible shots how did you get these?" He asks and Crystal blushes.
"It's a secret." She says, deciding that telling him about Peter helping her out might not be the best idea.
"Well I certainly underestimated you young lady." He says and pulls out a paper from one of his file drawers and hands it to her. "Here's a new assignment. I was going to give it to someone else but now I think you can definitely handle this." She reads the paper and arches an eyebrow.
"You want me to take pictures of mutants?" She asks.
"Yeah." Her boss says and smiles. "According to the main office in New York, people want more diversity in the magazine and since there's a mutant school in this town they've asked us to take a few pics of the teenagers in town, having fun and enjoying themselves for a piece they're doing. You think you can handle that?"
"I definitely can Mr. Staurt." She says happily and he smiles.
"Great! I'll need those pictures within two weeks." He says and then looks through the ones on the table. "Hey what's this?" He asks and picks up one. Crystal blushed when she looked and saw it was the picture of her and Peter.
"Oh that's just me and my friend." She says and takes the picture back from him. She looks at it and smiles a bit, remembering how much fun they had together the other day.
"Alright, well since you did such a great job with these photos I think you deserve the rest of the day off!" He says and Crystal's face lights up. She could read all day! Or maybe have some more fun with Peter if he ever calls.
"Are you serious?" She asks him and he nods.
"Dead serious. Go enjoy this beautiful day." He says and Crystal smiles at him. "Thank you so much Mr. Staurt!"
"You're welcome Crystal." He calls to her as she leaves the office. She can't help but smile as she makes her way out of the building and into town on this bright sunny day. She squeals excitedly and runs back towards her house, wondering if Peter's called. By the time she gets back to her house she notices a motorcycle in front of it. Before she has time to question why it's there, a tall, strong man steps right in front of her, making her press up against the white picket fence to try to stay away from the stranger.
"Hello there beautiful." The man says.
"Uh, hi." Crystal says and moves her hand to unlock the gate, but does so in a way that he can't see it. "Can I help you with something?"
"No but uh, I think I can help you." He says and flashes her a smirk as he takes the lit cigarette out of his mouth and puffs it in her face, hoping for it to be a turn on but instead it just makes her cough and want to get away from him.
"With what exactly?" She asks, her hand on the gate, ready to open it. Then she realized something. "Wait a minute...I know you." She smiles a bit and he grins too.
"You do now?" He asks and swipes his finger under her chin. "Then go on hot stuff, tell me about myself."
"You're Johnny. The leader of that little biker gang in town that terrorizes mutants." She says.
"I see my reputation precedes me." He says and presses her into the gate more. "So listen, I'm going to make this quick. I think you're hot, and I want to take you for a ride on my bike around town. What would you say to that?"
"No thanks." She says and quickly slips inside the gate and slams it, locking it and walking up the front walkway of her house.
"You'll change your mind soon baby just wait." He says and gets back on his bike and drives off. She scoffed.
"Could you imagine? Me, the girlfriend of that boorish, brainless..." She says then for some reason breaks off into song again. "Crystal Johnny's girl. Oh can you see it? Johnny's girl? His little doll." She groaned. "No sir, not me, I guarantee it. There must be more than this ordinary life!" She sings and runs inside her house, and then out the back door and over the fence to a big wide open field. "I want adventure in the great wide somewhere! I want it more than I can tell...And for once it might be grand...to have someone understand. I want so much more than they've got planned." She came to her senses and turned to see some kids run off down the street. She smiled and went back over the fence and into her house. (That song was also from Beauty and the Beast I do not take credit for it.)
Peter had been staring at the phone all day. Everyone was a bit concerned. He'd never not moved this much for as long as anyone can remember. Of course occasionally to get his thoughts in order he would zip around to look out the window to try to get his thoughts in order but the whole day he hadn't left the room. He sat back down on the couch. He looked at the number in his hand and wondered what to do. "What if she's not home." He says to himself then taps his foot a bit and continues to look at the number and back at the phone. Finally he sighs and gets the courage to start dialing the number.
The phone rang inside the house and Crystal went to go answer it. "Hello?" She asks. Peter let out a sigh of relief that she was there instead of one of her parents.
"Hey Crystal it's Peter." He says. Crystal smiles and plays with the phone wire and bites her lip.
"Hey Peter! I was wondering when you were going to call me." She says and Peter's face lit up. She was waiting for him to call! "You'd think the fastest guy in the world would be quick to pick up the phone and give someone a call." She hopes that didn't come across as mean but thankfully he laughed.
"Yeah well this is one of those rare moments when I slow down I guess." He says and blushes. "So, you still want to hang out sometime?" He asks.
"Yeah I'd love to!" She says then looks at the assignment she got from work on the kitchen table. "Actually I was wondering if I could take some pictures of you for the magazine I'm working at. They're doing a piece on mutants and they wanted me to get some pictures of them."
"Sure I'd love to be on the cover of a magazine. Does it have to be anything specific?" He asks.
"Not really. They just want shots of some teens having fun, and maybe a few action shots could show more of you guys's heroic side." Crystal says.
"Sounds great! Are you free tomorrow?" He asks.
"Well I'm supposed to be taking pictures tomorrow, and considering I'm taking them of you I guess I can see you tomorrow." She says.
"Alright. I'll pick you up at your house tomorrow morning at 9:00." He says and smiles.
"See you then, Maximoff." She says and hangs up the phone, she bites her lip but she can't help but smile at the prospect of seeing him again tomorrow. Peter hung up and leaned back on the couch and stared at the ceiling of the x-men rec room, grinning like an idiot.
"I can't believe this is actually happening." He says to himself and chuckles, shaking his head.
