#just super friends exchanging thoughtfulish gifts

[thebibliomancer]

Mythologi-Girls short: For the Dinosaur Who Has Everything

It was the second snow of the year in Colossopolis. First snow had come in July thanks to a weather control device built by the Flurry Fury. These things happened in this city.

But with first non-machine assisted snow came Maria Martinez, the Marvelous Mariposa’s annual secret gift exchange.

Those that ranked superheroes solely by powers might dismissively say that Mariposa’s only power was the butterfly wings growing from her back which gifted her flight. And sometimes sleep or poison powder that could be dusted from those wings, depending on era. Superhuman physiology could be startlingly inconsistent.

But Maria Martinez, the Marvelous Mariposa’s true superpower was alliteration. But also networking. She was friends with nearly the entire superhuman community. Even gruff loners with no friends who ‘work best alone’ like Nemea, grudgingly counted Mariposa as a friend.

She was the big heart of the Exemplars, the amazing, spectacular, and pick an adjective assemblage of heroes dedicated to protecting the world, Colossopolis, and the world again, for good measure. There was no mightier league of defenders on Earth than them.

Even the Mighty League of Defenders from the 40s would gladly admit that the Exemplars were, well, exemplars.

And this reputation owed to Mariposa’s efforts at building a bond between the team so they weren’t just some high profile heroes sitting at the same table. And she claimed that the secret to that was team building activities. Which included, among other things (such as an annual baseball game against another hero team), secret gift exchanges during the happy holidays.

So there came a day, like many others, where Mariposa herded everyone into the lounge where a variety of different holiday decorations signaled that this was certainly the most wonderful time of the year, as the bard said.

She did a quick headcount. There was herself, obviously.

Shieldmaiden and Jerboa sitting next to each other on a couch. Shieldmaiden had been vocally against letting the ex and sometimes current thief join the team and had kept a close eye on her while at headquarters and on missions.

The Archimage was on a mission to the space between spaces and probably wouldn’t be back until spring. Or he might arrive before he left. The space between spaces was odd like that. Filling in from the regular kind of space was Zxyqb, the alien enchanter. As in, the alien who was an enchanter, not an enchanter of aliens.

“I do that too,” he said with a triple wink. And then preceded to clarify that he meant romantically.

Out of kindness to human tongues, he went by Z or Q for short. He was the Archimage’s sometimes enemy, sometimes apprentice, and sometimes godfather. Space was also odd like that.

Z was sitting on top of the tv because ‘lol doesn’t understand human culture’ was the aesthetic he had chosen for this iteration of himself.

Founding member Al Wight, the Cobalt Champion, sat in a special reinforced end chair that could support his war machine of a body.

Last but certainly not least, not an official member of the team but still valid: Hank Higgins, Two-Fisted Science Adventurer. He had been Mariposa’s husband back in the day when it felt like they had to marry someone and it may as well be a friend. Now he was the Cobalt Champion’s boyfriend slash mechanic. And also a two-fisted science adventurer.

He had pulled a chair next to the Champion’s.

“Is this everyone?” asked Mariposa, shaking the top hat of the Mystifying Legerdemon. The hat had been an extra-dimensional storage space but after the Exemplars had freed the magical Hardaway Bunny from within, it lost its power and was now just a fairly fancy hat in the Exemplar trophy room and part time storage for slips of paper with names on them.

“There’s Clever Girl upstairs,” said Cobalt Champion. His servos hummed at the lower bound of hearing as he shrugged. “She’s not on the team but she is a house guest.”

“You know the unspoken rule for house guests. If they sleep on our couch, eat our food, and fight our home invaders, they’re close enough to team to participate in activities and chores.”

Mariposa told the HQputer to contact Clever Girl in the labs. In a nanosecond a link was formed between the vidscreen in the lounge and the one in Clever Girl’s special machine lab. On the activated lounge screen, a Compsognathus face loomed large sniffing at the corresponding screen curiously.

“Get down! Get down from there!” cried out the high-pitched synthesized voice of Clever Girl. The pink-feathered velociraptor spoke English only thanks to a device implanted in her throat. “You learned to beg at mealtime, you should be able to learn that you are not allowed on top of that!”

A floating mechanical hand, controlled by a device around Clever Girl’s wrist, picked the Compsognathus up and placed it on the floor.

She noticed the active vidscreen and the Exemplars staring at her on the screen.

“Naughty Thing!” she shrieked at the off-screen Compsognathus. “This is what happens when you sit on control panels! You activate vidscreens and lasers with your butt!”

“Actually, we called you, Clever Girl,” said Mariposa.

“Oh, hello allies of Cobalt Champion. Very busy currently. No time to help fight colorful rival tribe in human streets. Very busy.”

Clever Girl had learned that explaining exactly what she was busy with would be met with bafflement from anyone but the most science inclined. She had started imitating excuses she heard from others but after a few parroted excuses like ‘I have to wash my hair’, ‘lady troubles,’ and ‘I have been framed for murder by my dark reflection’, Clever Girl had decided that it was safer to just stick with ‘very busy.’ Which she repeated to emphasize the level of business.

Only two ‘very busy’s was fairly promising.

“If you’re only very busy very busy, would you like to join us for the first half of the secret gift exchange?”

Clever Girl tilted her head in confusion so Mariposa explained the concept. And then explained it again. And then had Cobalt Champion explain it. And then forbade Jerboa from explaining it.

Mariposa wouldn’t have thought it would require so much explanation. But Clever Girl was a velociraptor from a lost world who was made super-intelligent by a glowing meteor.  You just couldn’t assume the same life experiences.

In the end, Clever Girl agreed that it would be faster to just experience it in person.

Clever Girl doubtfully hovered her helper hand over the hat in Mariposa’s hands. It delicately hovered lower and plucked a scrap of paper from within.

“And what do I do with this now? Do I eat it?” the velociraptor questioned. “Ha ha, that was a joke. I do not eat random items anymore. But first question was serious. What do I do with this now?”

“You read the name inside and keep it a secret.”

“Oh, it has writing inside. … I have read the name. Now what?”

“Now you have until the end of the month to get the person written inside a gift.”

“In this context, what is a gift?”

“Its… like, a present. No, that’s a synonym!” Mariposa chastised herself.

“I should obtain a… synonym?” The voice synthesizer was sophisticated enough to convey the skepticism.

“Okay. A gift is a nice thing you give someone. Something that you think they’ll like or something you think they need. You either make it or buy it but…”

“Yes, I have no money,” Clever Girl confirmed. “But I am good at making things. I can make something for the name written on this paper. Yes. Much to plan, much to do. Very busy. Very busy. Very busy. Very busy-”

And the very busy’s trailed off as Clever Girl walked out of the lounge, pondering and planning.

“Okay so apparently we have a dinosaur living in the tower, that’s cool,” Jerboa said. “Thirteen-year old me would be thrilled. But hey: I have experience with mad scientists from heisting and such and it is usually a red flag when they get that absorbed into a new project. Should we have… clarified like a size limit or a…. megaton limit?”

“Why do you hate fun?” asked Zxyqb, dismissively.

“How dare you.”

“Alright, alright,” soothed Mariposa. “Try not to piss off someone that might end up getting you a gift. And also: I shouldn’t have to say this but no spite gifts.”

She passed the top hat around the room and everyone selected a scrap of paper. The hat was passed back around to Mariposa and she took the last one.

She unfolded it, read it, and frowned.

Clever Girl.

This was going to be difficult.

“What do you get the dinosaur that has everything?” Mariposa mused.

“A storage unit?” suggested the Cobalt Champion.

The two heroes were on the moon, fighting a rabbit-person with a hammer. At some point, probably right before the end, it would all start to make sense, but now the two heroes were just going with the flow.

The Archimage had indeed returned before he left but had only had time to shout “MOOOOOOON!” before vanishing.

This morning, Mariposa and Cobalt Champion retroactively remembered that happening three weeks ago. Nonetheless, they flew to the moon to check it out. Given that the Moon was fairly big, it was astonishing that they ran into something the first place they looked but that’s the life of a superhero.

The Champion blocked a hammer blow that pushed him back, furrowing the ground. His retaliatory blow sent the rabbit-person soaring into the sky. Less impressive than it sounded due to the lower gravity.

“Why are we fighting rabbit people on the Moon?” the Champion wondered. “What happened to fighting bank robbers with gimmicks?”

Mariposa dodged another one of the rabbit-people, juking to the side and sticking out her leg so the over-enthusiastic moon lapine sprawled into the dust. “The economy?” she opined.

The Champion laughed, a harsh staticy sound. Another moon rabbit took a swing at him so the conversation lulled for a bit.

“I guess you got Clever Girl for the gift exchange,” he eventually said.

“She is hard to shop for!” Mariposa wished she could fly. This fight would be easier with some mobility. But physics are physics and they were on the no-air part of the Moon. “She likes building death machines, likes eating meat, and likes her pet Things. But outside of that…”

“She’s only known about human civilization for half a year,” the Champion said. A hammer hit him in the head and he paused to throw the offender. “It was very overwhelming for her. Discovering a whole world outside her valley. I tried to ease her into some movies but…”

Mariposa spotted a glowing whatsits half-buried in the Lunar dust. It was clearly some magical nonsense so she dove for it. Once she lay her hands on it, she felt a tingle pass from it through her gloves and then the rabbit-people were gone.

Well. Hopefully this made sense at some point, Mariposa mused.

“Wait. You didn’t start her off with Jurassic Park, did you?”

“It was Hank’s idea,” the Champion said, defensively.

“Don’t pass off the blame,” she chided. She patted some dust from her spacesuit. “How’d that go?”

“She went off and sulked somewhere after seeing the velociraptors.”

Mariposa wondered if seeing unfeathered giant shrink-wrapped versions of herself had hit the uncanny valley hard. “So she’s probably not going to be keen on movies. And we probably shouldn’t let her learn about society from media anyway. I wonder if I can just get… pet sweaters for her two compies.”

The Cobalt Champion held out an all-purpose radiation/magic/etc blocking containment unit for Mariposa to drop the glowing whatsit into it. “Well, they’ll like the gift even if she doesn’t. In that they love tearing at fabric.”

“I had wondered what happened to the curtains.”

A week later, moon nearly forgotten (Z had explained it but Mariposa hadn’t understood the explanation and had eventually stopped asking follow-up questions), Mariposa was stopping an eerily luminous legion of little dolls from robbing a bank.

It was that kind of whiplash - going from fighting aliens from an alternate dystopic moon one week to stopping a semi-automated doll heist - that kept life fresh. Some superheroes complained about how repetitive the life got, fighting the same villains month to month. Mariposa did not have that problem.

The doll heist ended as these things must inevitably. With a woman in a turquoise dress in handcuffs.

After a brief fight scene - page or two tops, if that's how you’d measure it - where Mariposa had to dodge the surprisingly agile dolls and their tiny knives, she pulled down a hanging advertising banner and used it to round up the dolls.

They would cut through that eventually so she took the bundled dolls and locked them in a filing cabinet.

Dolls restrained and bystanders not in danger of receiving tiny stab wounds, Mariposa found the Turquoise Fairy watching nearby.

She immediately offered her wrists when she saw Mariposa approaching.

“Coming quietly, Turquoise Fairy?” asked Mariposa, locking the handcuffs around the offered wrists.

“I do not agree to that name,” said Abella Guignol. “I don’t know why the press dubbed me that but I don’t agree to it.”

“You always wear a turquoise dress and you bring dolls to life like that movie,” Mariposa said.

“I wish! There are cell phones from 90s smarter than these semi-automated idiots!”

“What were you doing here today? I didn’t think robbing banks was your MO.”

“MO-st certainly not!” Abella scoffed. “I’m above scrabbling for money like the colorful idiots you fight. I’m an artisan!”

“Who sends dolls to attack superheroes.” She picked Abella up and flew her to the bank.

“It's the best way to stress-test them.” She shrugged and booted the filing cabinet open. She snapped and the dolls obediently climbed out one at a time and stood in a line. “Tsk. You broke Denver’s head.”

“Consider her stress tested. So what were you doing here today?” Mariposa repeated.

“Well, I’ve been working on their object recognition. I showed them various coinage and then sent them out to gather coins. From fountains and the street. Wherever.”

“... So you had them scrabbling for money?”

“No I- When you put enough layers- it's different when its an experiment, clearly!”

“And you, Abella Guignol, alias Turquoise Fairy, programmed or taught or whatever your little wooden robots to prioritize efficiency.”

“I wouldn’t personally term them robots. Seems reductive.”

Mariposa sighed. “So you taught them to prioritize efficiency so they went for a bank to hit whatever small change goal you set for them all in one go.”

Abella also sighed, but with much less frustration. “The dears do try so hard to meet my standards.”

“And since you were nearby, I can only guess you saw that the ‘experiment’ had gone off the rails but decided to watch instead of course correct.”

“If I hold their hands-”

“Their tiny, creepy hands,” said one of the bank tellers, coming out of hiding.

Abella narrowed her eyes but continued on. “If I hold their hands, they’ll never learn.”

“What am I going to do with you, Abella?” Mariposa shook her head.

“Historically? Take me to a cell for a couple hours until I can be deported back to the realm of magic.”

“So this is what monotony feels like,” she mused.

“Well, I for one enjoy our talks,” Abella deadpanned. “I do of course feel....”

“Sorry?”

“Well, more embarrassed. Is there anything I can do to make up for it?”

“I’ve been trying to think of a gift for a friend and she’s a hard shop. I don’t suppose you know Clever Girl?”

“Is she the purple one?”

“Pink.”

“Then I don’t think so.”

“She’s a dinosaur.”

“Maybe a damsel?”

“I think that’s dragons.

“Oh. Well. I always say that you can’t go wrong with a nice doll?” Because of course Abella would say that.

“I don’t know that she’s particularly into dolls but… You wouldn’t happen to do commissions would you?”

“Hm, well I don’t typically but for a good acquaintance like you who I’ve inconvenienced, I could make an exception. Do you need it soon?”

“By the end of the month. Probably not enough time for you-.”

“Oh, I could make a quality doll in a week. Not to brag but I’m a peerless craftswoman,” she bragged.

“Oh!”

“But gathering the materials would take some time. I’d need the first moonbeam of spring and I’m fresh out. And wood from a blood-blooming tree.”

“Okay. But what if you made a not-magical doll not made out of murder tree?”

Abella cocked her head and looked at Mariposa like she had suddenly started gibbering. “What would be the point of that?”

Mariposa was flying patrol over Colossopolis, on the lookout for ne'er-do-wells or a nice bagel, when a shadow suddenly crossed overhead.

The butterfly-winged hero reflexively dodged the taloned divebomb that crossed where her flight path had been.

There was another blue blur towards her so Mariposa looped to dodge. She ended the loop with a midair axe kick that nearly missed the winged woman who reared back flustered to avoid the attack.

Harpy of the Mythologi-Girls paused, her strong brown and tan wings keeping her stationary for a moment. Her expression changing from fluster to determination.

Mariposa could barely get out a “Giving up after two tries?” before Harpy’s uniform again blurred into a blue streak and Mariposa had to dodge another rake of her taloned feet.

It had become their thing, testing their respective airborne agility against the other. A creature of the air her whole life, Ciel- Harpy, was the superior six out of ten times. But the other four, Mariposa managed to surprise her and earn a look of awe.

And that was the second greatest reward.

After Ciel was satisfied with the back and forth, she flew down to land on a rooftop and gestured Mariposa down. No sooner had Mariposa’s boots crunched gravel, Ciel engulfed her in wings and planted a kiss on her.

And that was the greatest.

“Next time, you surprise me,” Ciel demanded.

They sat down on the roof ledge. Ciel put one wing around Maria like a blanket and nuzzled her head into Maria’s shoulder.

“You’re cuddly today,” Mariposa noted. “We usually mess around in the air for longer before you want to snuggle up.”

“Haven’t seen you around much lately.” It may have been a reproachful statement. It was hard to tell with Ciel. She was a soft-spoken woman of subtle expressions and long stares at the horizon.

“Sorry, busy month. Had to go to the moon to prevent… still not sure, actually. And then there was some other stuff. It’s always something or other.”

“We’ve been investigating a weird orange present stealing goblin,” confided Ciel. Where we meant the Mythologi-Girls team. “It turned out to be Ginger. Someone had shown her the Grinch. So she got Ideas.”

Ginger being the Teumessian Fox of legend. Early in her career that might have weirded out Mariposa but she was dating a harpy these days so weird was the new normal.

“How’s she working out?”

“She’s fun,” said Ciel. Not answering the question, not really. “You’re preoccupied. I can practically hear your brain ticking away. Tick tick.” She tapped Mariposa on the forehead with each tick.

Ciel was perceptive, for all that she seemed absentminded.

“A little preoccupied. I’ve been trying to think of a present to get Clever Girl for the Exemplar gift exchange. No luck all month.”

“Clever Girl? That pink proto-bird? I don’t know much about her.”

So Mariposa explained Clever Girl in brief. How a velociraptor had been exposed to a glowing space rock, became super-intelligent, was alienated from her kind by her intelligence, tried to capture Cobalt Champion a couple of times to reverse engineer him, how she ended up in Colossopolis after chasing the Champion, had a breakdown at discovering intelligent non-dinosaurian life, and had ended up living with the Exemplars.

After she recapped all of that, Mariposa was surprised to find Ciel crying.

“You okay?” she asked, pulling out a handkerchief.

“Yes. Sorry. Yes. I didn’t think I’d ever empathize so much with a proto-bird. When I appeared in this modern world, I had no direction, no family, no friends. I was a monster of the gods with no task and no gods. I was lucky to be found by M.A.G.I. I was lucky to help found the Mythologi-Girls. It sounds like Clever Girl had a similar situation. She’s lucky to have you and the Exemplars.”

She leaned harder against Maria who put an arm around her. They sat together, warm despite the winter wind.

“Okay,” Ciel eventually said. “Buy me a sandwich?”

After a month of trips to the moon, struggles against supervillains, one rather polite alien invasion, one rather less polite one, and a living statue that broke into Exemplar Tower for some reason, it was finally the day to exchange gifts.

Provided the emergency alert didn’t go off, calling the Exemplars into action. But it hadn’t so far.

“Okay, I’ll go first,” Jerboa announced, disappointing Mariposa and her magical hat full of numbered slips.

Jerboa stood up and shoved a small wrapped box at Shieldmaiden. “Surprise, I’m your secret admirer!”

“Gift giver,” said Mariposa.

“Potato, potahto,” Jerboa said, flapping a hand dismissively.

Shieldmaiden took the box and shook it cautiously. “If this explodes…”

“Why, I would never!” Jerboa said, jumping behind the couch.

Shieldmaiden sighed but nevertheless ripped the wrapping off and opened the box. Inside was a very fancy comb. Shieldmaiden raised an eyebrow. “Well. Thank you? I sure hope you didn’t steal this.”

“I would seldom ever!” Jerboa protested. “For your information, I sold my thieves tools to buy that!”

“Well, unqualified thank you then. I will be sure to use it once my hair grows back.” She took off her hat and as said, her head had been shaved.

“Gasp! I sold my thieves tools to buy you a comb but you shaved your head to buy me a primo thieving tip? How gift of the magi of us!”

“No I- wait, how did you know that I drew your name?”

“Oh, I rigged the drawing so we’d get each other.”

“So next year Jerboa isn’t allowed to touch the hat,” Mariposa announced.

“That just means I’ll have to think of a way to rig it without touching it. Challenge accepted.”

“I shaved my hair to donate to one of those kid wig charities,” Shieldmaiden said. “I got you this.” She handed Jerboa an envelope.

The ex and sometimes current thief opened the envelope. “A gift certificate?”

“Its like money. You can buy your own primo thing.”

Jerboa moped.

Zxyqb floated off of the television. “Then I shall go next, shall I?”

Mariposa dumped out the hat. It’s time would come another day.

The alien enchanter extended thumb and forefinger on each hand and held them in a rectangle. He drew the hands away from each other to make a larger and then larger rectangle until a large box appeared in the shape.

Zxyqb pushed the floating box towards Mariposa. “For you, beautiful chairwoman, a token of my esteem.”

Mariposa opened the box. There was an alien skull inside with razor sharp teeth and an elongated cranium. “Is this real?”

“Of course. Only the worst space knave would attempt to pass off a fake. It’s a great challenge to beat one of these beasts in close combat and preserving the skull is no mean feat either. By possessing this, the galactic community will know that you’re the kind of person who could manage such a task, or has the respect of someone who could, … or bought it at a souvenir stand.”

“Okay. Thank you. What am I supposed to do with it though?”

“Paperweight?” Zxyqb suggested.

Mariposa put the skull down. “Okay, so who wants to go next?”

Hank Higgins, Two-Fisted Science Adventurer raised one of his two fists. “I drew Z’s name so I’ll go.” He pulled out an envelope with a gift certificate. “Sorry, I didn’t know what to get you. You drink music to get intoxicated and have six eyes. Your ways and biology are literally alien to me.”

“That is true. The way my liver functions doesn’t correspond to any of the physical laws of this planet. But thank you. I shall take this money and spend it on a hat. Love a nice hat. Did you know Earth is known as the planet of hats to the greater universe? Have a devil of a time cracking lightspeed but your hat technology is light years ahead of most planet’s.”

“I……. did not know that.”

“And that knowledge is my gift to you.” Zxyqb tipped an imaginary hat. “Who next then?”

“Since it seems we’re doing some sort of chain, I’ll go next,” said the Cobalt Champion. He pulled out a small box and passed it over to Hank Higgins.

Hank opened it up. “A reservation card?”

“Since I was lucky enough to draw your name-.”

Jerboa snorted.

“-Or because someone rigged it.” A synthesized sigh. “I scheduled us a fancy dinner date night. You always do say we should go out more.”

“I do. But you can’t eat. So until the date, I’ll spend every moment in my lab writing a sense simulation program so that we can both enjoy our night out,” Hank Higgins said, putting an arm around Champion. “Even if was sinisterly arranged by a former master thief.”

“Pfft, ‘former,’” Jerboa said.

Nobody stepped up to volunteer. “Who drew the Champion’s name?” asked Mariposa. She ran through the names that had already gone. “Clever Girl?”

The labcoated velociraptor looked up from a small computer she had been working on. “Oh. Apologies. I had been watching, of course but when I got what I feel was the gist of it, I decided to multitask. I have been listening. It is now time to present my gift or present to Al, yes?”

Clever Girl stood up and gestured at a massive and lumpy wrapped object bigger than a person. “Please, unwrap it.”

The Cobalt Champion tore the wrapping loose, revealing… a big piece of technology, vaguely weaponlike.

“I built you a proton cannon!” Clever Girl explained.

“You sure did.”

“Why not try it on?” she suggested.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea to do inside… city limits.”

Clever Girl moped.

Mariposa reached behind her chair and pulled out a box. “By process of elimination that leaves my gift for you, Clever Girl.”

The dinosaur turned toward her.

“I kept asking myself ‘what do you get the dinosaur that has everything?’ and, well, open it up.”

Clever Girl tore open the box and pulled out a bomber jacket with an Exemplar E logo on the shoulder. The jacket had been heavily tailored to fit the velociraptor.

“And what is this?” she asked.

“The Exemplars used to have team jackets. Back in the 90s. And there were still a few spares in storage so I had one altered for you.”

“I see.”

“I hope you like it.”

“If she doesn’t want it-” Jerboa started before Shieldmaiden elbowed her.

“The reason we wore these jackets was that the 90s were a very chaotic time for the Exemplars. Weird changes in powers, personal drama, clones, things that seemed important at the time but didn’t really go anywhere. And in a small way, we wanted a symbol of stability, that we belonged somewhere and that people had our back. I kept asking myself what to get you because you have all the science stuff you could want, a nice lab, and two… pets? But someone reminded me that only very recently your whole world changed. So I just wanted to give you a token to remind you that the Exemplars are here for you. We have your back.”

Clever Girl stared at the jacket. “I am really quite moved! Thank you, Maria Martinez. I shall try it on.” Her floating mechanical helper hands helped her into it. “I appreciate your token. It may be outside the rules of this gift exchange but I got you a token of my own to thank you for my residence here.”

The helper hands dropped a box in front of Mariposa. She opened it up and pulled out a weapon looking red-colored pod-shaped machine.

“This is the prototype I built to test of concept the proton cannon for Al.”

“So, a kind of proto cannon?”

“Try it out?”

“Not inside!”

The emergency alert went off. Shieldmaiden ran over to a console. “A spaceship has just landed in the park. They are… demanding we turn over all of our snow?”

Mariposa stood and pointed. “This looks like a job for… THE EXEMPLARS!”

“Maybe bring the proton cannons?” suggested Clever Girl. “Also safety goggles. And some mild radiation shielding.”