9 Research

Carson was waiting for Ivy when she exited the classroom still munching on her candy bar. She held up a finger indicating for him to wait while she finished chewing.

"I wanted to talk to you about costume ideas. My friend Lydia and her date are going as Catman and Sparrow so that one's out but I'm game for anything else."

"What about Eagle-Eye and Brown Recluse?" he suggested. A fairly popular movie involving those two had come out recently.

Ivy thought about it. The costumes couldn't be too hard to put together. "Works for me. Do you want me to make your costume or would you rather do it yourself?"

His eyes widened. 'It would be so weird if a girl made my costume for me! She would have to know my measurements…no, too weird. Nope, nope nope.'

"Don't worry about it, I can make my own," he said, trying to seem nonchalant by leaning against the wall in a typical 'cool guy' pose.

Ivy had to hold back a laugh. "Cool. My costume probably won't turn out that great anyway. I've never made anything like this in my life."

Carson gave her a reassuring smile. "I'm sure it'll look better than you think. Most people are probably just going to wear superhero t-shirts and capes."

That was actually a fair point. Lydia was artistic. If whatever Ivy came up with didn't suit her aesthetic sensibilities she would most likely change it on her friend's behalf.

"You're probably right. My next class is upstairs so I'll see you tomorrow!"

He waved her off and once again Ivy was so lost in thought about her newfound ability that she was able to largely drown out the inner chaos of the hallway. She hardly paid attention to what the stats teacher was saying; figuring she could raid someone else's thoughts later to get the gist of it.

Given the circumstances under which she tested her power…it wasn't completely unreasonable to say that she just got lucky. The answers may have been in the backs of her teammates' minds the entire time.

She needed a more concrete test…something that the other party absolutely wouldn't think of on their own. Her lips curled up into an evil grin. She knew exactly what to test.

Ivy was so excited once the bell rang that she practically sprinted to the bus, itching to get home and conduct her experiment on her unsuspecting victim. The bus moved too slowly! It seemed like forever before she reached her stop and even then she beat her brother home by a good twenty minutes because the middle school was further away from their house.

When she heard him coming up the driveway she bounced in her seat in anticipation.

'I'm so hungry I could eat an entire basketball full of food. How would the food get inside the basketball though…if it was cut in half, they stuffed both halves, then somehow fused it back together it could be like stuffing an Easter egg completely full of jellybeans! Mmm jellybeans…'

Ivy projected her desired thought at her brother as hard as she could. When he opened the front door he was so focused on his task that he didn't even say hi to anyone.

Ethan got out a butter knife, opened the pantry, and rummaged in the fridge until he found what he needed. His mind was completely blank for once as he made his snack. He didn't come back to himself until he made a disgusted face and spat his creation out after taking a bite.

"Ugh! What the?!"

He flung the pickle smothered in peanut butter and rainbow sprinkles into the trash can and Ivy laughed gleefully. It worked!

Poor, confused Ethan had no idea what just happened. 'I must be out of my mind! I don't even like pickles! Why would I put peanut butter on one, let alone sprinkles?! The hunger must have gotten to me.'

Feeling magnanimous after using him, Ivy tossed him a package of fruit snacks that he liked. "Here. To get the taste out of your mouth."

He looked up at her gratefully though confusion still clouded his gaze. "Thanks…" he muttered before his confused thoughts continued cycling through his head.

Hmm…was this a side effect of what she did? Earlier the students seemed fine. It must be because it was subtle enough that they figured Ivy's thoughts came from their own minds.

Coming up with the right answer when you were striving to remember it wasn't suspicious. Doing something completely out of character was.

Ivy hadn't exactly controlled Ethan's mind. What she projected at him was the idea 'I should go eat a pickle covered in peanut butter and sprinkles.'

She hadn't compelled him as much as she made him think it was his own idea. But since it obviously wasn't he ended up confused…Intriguing.

As she munched on a pickle of her own—sans peanut butter—she mulled it all over. Now that she knew of this ability, was there really any use for it outside of review games?

She lived a simple life. Her ambitions were small and achievable within her own means. This newfound splinter ability seemed…wrong. Sinister.

Ivy has used it harmlessly enough to her own advantage earlier and the second time to pull a prank but this could seriously mess with people. She wasn't into that sort of thing.

All Ivy really wanted out of life was to keep her head down and not be found out. If she abused thought projection her cover was a lot more likely to be blown.

From what little she knew of Doctor Y, he was a morally gray character that a lot of other superheroes didn't like to work with because of the way he did things. She had this extra ability of his, found out completely by chance. What if she had any others?

She definitely didn't have his radius for mind reading…and she was grateful for it. How horrible would it be if she had to learn to tune out the thoughts of people within hundreds of miles? She would go insane! No wonder Doctor Y was a bit off.

Ivy bit her lip, torn. Part of her wanted to explore the extent of this newfound ability for the sake of her own curiosity. The other part wanted nothing to do with this because she was enough of a freak already and still had Adrian to worry about.

In the end she compromised. Rather than conducting more tests, she wanted to read up everything she could about Doctor Y.

Ethan had an impressive amount of Y-Men comics but they still barely scratched the surface. She went online to reserve all of the Y-Men books she could from her school's library before asking her mom to borrow the car so she could go to the public library and browse their selection as well.

Thankfully, they had some more that weren't available at home or school. It would be a good starting point at least.

Ignoring the beckoning call of her homework and several incoming texts from (presumably) Lydia, Ivy dove into the world of comic books searching for answers. Unfortunately, there were a lot of Y-Men.

Doctor Y may have been the leader of the superhero team but due to the nature of his powers he tended to do things in the background while his cronies took care of business on the front lines for him. Which meant that even though he was featured in every issue of the comic there wasn't as much content about him as the other characters.

It seemed like he mostly used his powers to spy on the antagonists of the series so the more physically imposing heroes could act. He had an EEG-looking machine that allowed him to amplify his range when the electrodes were stuck to his head.

That wasn't helpful. Ivy was no engineer. She couldn't even build a bookshelf with the instructions right in front of her. Besides, expanding her range was the last thing she wanted to do.

Drumming her fingers on the desk, she turned the next page of the volume she was on. Still nothing useful on Doctor Y…there had to be SOMETHING in these comics she could actually use! But what? And when she found it, what would she actually do with it?

She had no enemies. No plans for world domination or domination of anything. Her powers had been a lifelong inconvenience so she justified occasionally misusing them to make things easier for her.

Ivy wasn't a superhero by any means—just a kid who wanted a normal life. What was the point of looking for answers in a comic book, anyway? She pushed the book off the desk in annoyance.