nextgenerationmarvel | (no subject)

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"There you go, officers," Ryan landed down in front of the Timely Bank and Trust, the two would-be bank-robbers encased in hard-to-break coils of cosmic energy. He'd been there to grab some cash for a haircut when the two dunderheads had decided to try and rob the place.

Seriously, who even robs banks in New York anymore? Between all of the various superhero groups - and they were on their third generation of heroes now, really - it was one of the stupidest things to do.

"Thank you...Lucent Lad?" The officer looked up at Ryan, raising an eyebrow.

"Stellar, actually," Ryan replied with a grin. It was designed to hold back a grimace."Lucent Lad was too...dorky." That had been the name he'd chosen for himself back when he and his brother Jacob had first moved back to New York and...no. He'd changed the codename soon thereafter. Sadly, though, some people still remembered it. "Anyway, though! Money's back in the safe. They're all checking to make sure things balance. I gotta jet but, you know. You might wanna tell these knuckleheads that robbing banks in New York is so eighteen-hundreds."

With a wave, he flew back up into the air, relishing the feel of the rushing wind against his face. When he was high enough, he turned away from midtown and headed towards his stylists' place, lost in thought.

A lot had happened in the last couple of weeks, it felt like. Remi and Alexa had given birth to their baby. The Pier had been attacked by a group of villains. He'd had some auditions that had gone really well, and others that had gone less so. (But he was doing a small thing off-Broadway, so that was nice.)

He sometimes wondered what it'd be like to settle down and start a family of his own but, realistically, he was far from ready for that. There was so much he still had to do, so much he still had to experience. So much growing he still had left to do. It worked for people like Remi and Alexa, but for people like Ryan...

Not yet.

He landed in front of his stylist's realized he still had an hour to kill before he went in.

Heh. Oops. He flew over the street and landed in front of the coffee shop that was directly opposite the salon. Coffee and a muffin couldn't hurt...

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"Doing an off-Broadway thing." Pause. "Okay, it's way off-Broadway. But at least it's not in New Jersey, amirite?" He nodded his head. "We're together." Things were going well. For now, anyway. They were both young actor/models working on their careers and their craft. Things were bound to change one day. Ryan was fully prepared for that. Still, though. "She's nice and calm and fun and sweet. And more together than my last girlfriend, who more and more I'm beginning to suspect is mentally unhinged." Which was putting it lightly, but Ryan had always hated the phrase crazy ex-girlfriend.

"What about you? Any special lady in your life?" Ryan knew that Jay had been seriously seeing someone for awhile, but he wasn't too sure on the details. It was hard trying to get his father to sit down and gossip.

"Or dinner theater in Poughkeepsie," Jay agreed with a mock-solemn nod.

"Wait. You're beginning to suspect after the break-up? My sympathies. That's gotta be rough." Though Jay thought New York was a huge city. What were the chances of running into an ex again? He blinked at the questions about his dating life.

"Kinda sorta. Except more definite. May came back in town and missed me. I missed her." She helped save the city from him rampaging. "Her dad hasn't strung my butt up on the Empire State Building, so it's all good."

"Dinner theatre. If I don't get killed by a supervillain or kidnapped by Galactus, I'm half-certain that's where I'm going to end up dying." It was, at least, the least terrible death of the three.

Or the worst.

It all depended on your point of view, really.

"I mean. She had this ex-boyfriend-slash-employer-slash-overbearing-presence and things got difficult. I knew she moved fast - man, did she move fast - but I always thought that things would calm down. Except it felt like someone was always trying to kill her, and she had to get put together again more times than Humpty Dumpty and..." Ryan shook his head. "In some ways, I'm making this sound worse than it was. In other ways, not so much." He tentatively took a couple of steps so that they could start walking. Jay was like a human wall, and the sidewalk, it was not so big.

"It was too much to handle, too much to deal with. I can see it so much more clearly now that we're broken up," he added. "I just ran into her. It was...unpleasant.

"I don't really forsee Mr. Parker stringing your bottom up on something." Pause. "Your mom could throw him up into a Badoon space station or something if he did, you know?"

"I could put you in touch with May's mom if that would help any?" Jay's family did have a small shelf dedicated to Mary Jane Watson's movies. Thus it had been hard to not be star-struck meeting both of May's parents.

He frowned thoughtfully as he followed Ryan. It was like a dam breaking when he moved. "My sympathies, man. Sounds rough."

He hooked his thumbs inside his backpack straps. The urge to ruffle was still strong. He hoped to not Hulk out or Ryan would look like a dandelion. "He and Mom get along well. Humor and all, but most smart people know not to mess with her or her family."

Either via brute force or application of the law, Jennifer Walters was a force to be reckoned with.

"I'll reach out to you when it comes to that," Ryan nodded. "I appreciate the offer, Jay-Jay." It was nice to know that not everyone in his social circle was going to turn into a crazy person today.

Especially since this one could literally hulk out.

Ryan ducked this way and that as the crowd sped up around them. "She changed her eye color for Jacob, Jay-Jay. Jacob. She's never met him," he said. "Thieves Guild girl. Hellfire Club girl. People obviously weren't feeling it, you know? In retrospect? I get it."

Ryan's hair suddenly started sparkling. It was a shield. He knew that look in Jay's eyes. As children, it had led to many a noogie.

"Well, you know. She's an all-around bad-ass. In a business suit or a spandex outfit."

"Hey, it's what Fantastic Family is for, right?" Jay figured if you couldn't count on your weird cosmically- or gamma-irradiated family, who could you? While Ryan ducked and weaved around people, the tall teen just kept moving forward. If anyone bounced off of him, they would find he'd gotten back to strength training.

"Wait. Changed her eye color for someone she never met? Rockybritches is cool and all, but damn." Jay shook his head. He wouldn't understand that kind of extreme need to please.

He squinted at the sparkle-dome. Foiled again! "I'm sure she reminded herself of that while she changed my stinky diapers as a baby."

“You know how every family has one member who possesses the uncanny ability to attract the crazies?” Ryan asked. “Last generation, it was Aunt Sue.” Because Namor, man. Just. Namor. “I feel as though I’m the one that got it this generation,” he said. Clearly, this issue didn’t need to be a genetic thing. You just had to consider yourselves family.

“We were broken up and she did that,” Ryan said. “Broken. Up. If we were, I don’t know, engaged or whatever, then maybe. Maybe. But doing it just while she was recuperating? It’s not as though we were offering her a place on the Imaginauts.”

He quietly considered the image of She-Hulk changing a baby-Hulk’s diapers and wrinkled his nose. “Dude. I love ya, but there are some images I do not need.”

"Well, it ain't me." That Gina person not withstanding. Though Jay somehow got a lot of female attention. He wasn't sure how. No aliens had come to the Avengers Mansion to make him a husband, so he could pretty well ignore anything but May's attention.

He scratched the side of his nose as his eyes widened. "Investing in Static Guard? Because it sounds clingier than my Christmas sweater in the dryer."

He chuckled. "You walked that trail on your own. I already lived it. And get reminded about it all the time."

"I mean, unless Jacob or Mary somehow end up with worse luck than me..." Ryan said.

"I'd invest in Static Guard, but I don't think that would help. You realize she expected me to be her hero? After we had broken up? I'm not sure how that works either. And why a mutant woman who has superpowers of her own needs a hero, I don't even get." It genuinely did confuse him. He had been raised around strong women - both superpowered like his Aunt Sue, and those who were differently-abled, like his mother. Women like Alisa, he was starting to realize, were a creature he simply didn't understand.

"Mothers like to do that," Ryan nodded. "Mine does that to me." Less so to Jacob since he rocked-out.

Jay considered the other two. "Nope. It's you."

He grinned a little before listening to Ryan's problems. "Well, you are a hero, bro. But you don't need to be someone's personal hero. Especially if they're holding you up to a romantic ideal that's... so not what I'm used to being the son of a feminist icon. May's one of my heroes, but I don't expect her to go saving my butt all the time."

He tilted his head. He spoke with sympathy for a fellow super-son's embarrassed plight. "Yeah, but your mom can be sneaky about it. Just drop it in at the right moment. A person can laugh along with it until we realize what she said. Then we laugh harder."

"Yeah. Of course it is," Ryan said. "Maybe this will be my last crazy, though." He chuckled. "I don't even know how I could be someone's personal hero. I'm still trying to figure out my own life." Hell, he wasn't ready for adulthood yet. Ryan shrugged. Again. "Dude. My mom's blind. Not Daredevil blind - the original, not the cute young thing we've suddenly got running around - but blind. And she can fend for herself just fine." And this was while being married to Ryan's rock of a father, and having gotten involved in some of the scrapes that the Fantastic Family tended to find themselves in.

"People don't expect Mom to have a sense of humour. Quiet, romantic, artsy type? It usually takes people a few seconds to get the joke bomb."

"Don't know either. Though I get more of the big, bad monster stuff." His conversational tone didn't change at all. It was just a fact in his mind. He had rampaged through New York. Not like he could live that destruction down.

"I didn't say she wasn't. Being able to see has nothing to do with being able to tell a joke or humorous story. Every one has a sense of humor," Jay observed. He came from a place it was a little of a necessity to survive. "Your mom just has an artistic sense of where to drop it."

"One rampage and suddenly you're labeled society's greatest threat," Ryan shook his head. "If only they knew you, Jay-Jay." He gently nudged his "cousin" with his shoulder. The move, obviously, had no effect on Jay, given how slight Ryan was in comparison to him.

"You know. This talk about moms and stuff...we should have a Fantastic Family get-together. Get all the branches involved before school starts up again. We've never really been the summer barbecue type of family, I know, but..." sometimes family was nice. "Remi and Alexa have had a baby, you're starting college, Franklin's teaching the X-Men. It feels as though we all oughta catch up with each other over hot dogs and raspberry beer."

"One naked photo scandal and one rampage, I'm this generation's downfall of civilization bad boy," he deadpanned. He glanced down at Ryan bounce off of him. He faked a staggered step a second or two later than he should have. "Oof. Thanks, man."

He adjusted his backpack to make the straps sit more easily. "I can see Captain Fishlips being all excited until he sees me anywhere near his fish food. But yeah, a party might be nice. We could even set up an old folks spot so they can watch their kids play with fire."

He chuckled.

"Give it time," Ryan said drily. "I'm certain my ex will do something that'll make everything forget about your little scandals." He knew Alisa well enough to know that sooner or later, he was going to come entirely undone. This, kids, is why you don't pick up a woman in a bar.

"You do, of course, realize that the person mostly playing with fire will be Uncle Johnny."

"I'm young. I still have more embarrassment and mayhem to go." He shrugged. "But where did you meet this ex? So I never go there. May will kill me if I get a cling-on."

Jay shook his head. "As long as he doesn't burn the hot dogs again, he can join in the reindeer games."

"God, I don't know. Some bar somewhere in the city." Ryan honestly didn't remember. The place had been nearby, he'd needed a drink after having unwittingly stood up his date for the night.

Alisa had been a thing that had just happened. A one-night stand that had led to something more.

More than Ryan had bargained for, certainly.

He thanked whatever gods were paying attention to his little corner of the universe for Mellie.

"Funny how it only started out with four," Ryan said, offhandedly. "Now there's an entire family of us."

"Well, if it was a bar, I'm pretty safe. I don't plan on drinking. I get uninhibited enough as it is." Jay felt lucky he got a sane Spider-Girl instead of... well, just about anyone else.

He reached over and patted Ryan's shoulder. "That's what families do. They get bigger. We just happen to have one of the best extended ones."

"Enough about me, though," Ryan said. "I know you've got those big, strong shoulders that can handle most problems laid upon them, but I'm done venting." He let the sparkle-shield fall so that Jay was free to noogie him if he so wished. "Let's talk about you, buddy. I don't get to see you enough." Truth be told, he didn't get to see most of his friends and family enough these days.

That needed to change.

It was oh so tempting to ruffle that freshly styled hair. But Jay was human, so he could resist such things at the moment. He blinked at Ryan.

"Uh, me? I'm not all that interesting." He hadn't really gone out much since rampaging. Though he was eating regularly now and working out regularly again.

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