Juniper was new to the gift giving game. Her parents had never been the type to give gifts just for the fun of it. Her mom gifted her old clothes, hair cut, "a roof over your head" and books about plants. She'd never had a birthday, like an honest to goodness birthday with balloons and cake, and wrapped presents. 

That had all been packed away with the likes of "frivolous consumerism", right up there with Valentines day, Christmas, Easter, and virtually all recognized celebrations that involved giving, gifting, or buying. The first time she could remember having turkey was a week after thanksgiving, and Bambi's house, and i had been cold and well past expired. She'd stuffed her face and was sick for four days after, but it had been worth it.

You can imagine the stress put on her now, in modern times, while she was fiddling with a package to give to Xavier for his birthday, and she was LATE. That was bad, right? A late gift meant you didn't care, right? It wasn't her fault the shipping had taken three extra days longer than she had been expecting!

Still, anxiety aside, she slapped a store bought bow on his present box, which she had decorated in colored themed paper to match his hero suit, and picked it up.

... Now or never, right? 

She headed for their shared wall, fiddling with curling ribbon she didn't know what to do with, and paused to re-think his gift one more time.

It was an original, rare,  'Nude Jude!' Action figure. It... wasn't actually marketed like that by the company, but the online seller had called it that and now it was stuck in her head. The little doll was still in his box, and still had his clothes. According to the seller that was rare, since he was one of the only models with swappable outfits and everyone apparently had a heck of a time keeping clothes on him. She'd been blasted by facts about how, due to his ability to be nude, the company that made had implemented permanently attached undergarments on all future models, as well as the other X's.

It was a very interesting fact.

And now she was gonna give it to Xavier, and hope it was a good gift! 

Tucking the box behind her back, she knocked on the wall and waited for a response while rocking in the balls of her feet. 

The knock came when he'd just gotten finished tidying up his living area. He was the sort to keep things fairly clean, even though he was a young man, living alone, with little to no consequences for being a slob. It just didn't sit right with him for his room to be anything short of immaculate.

He'd just finished dusting his action figures when a knock came from the wall. A smiled grew on his face as he called out. "Come on in!" Juni had gotten a lot better with the whole barging in without asking thing! She would pop in to see him wearing his frilly cleaning apron, tucking away his duster as he adjusted his modified Lodestone action figure, next to his CS master class battle damaged action figure with golem, and his Tuxedo Shin. Of course, that was below the Shining Knight Maya, which was next to the sheild man Cafas, and Snowdancer Aiden. That one was rare.

You see, people who had short stints on the team, or never got past trainee, were only made in limited edition productions, and thus, they were very hard to find. Snowdancer Aiden was one of his prized possessions for that reason.

"Hey Juni!" He turned toward her as he started to untie his apron. He was wearing clothes underneath, of course. Why wouldn't he be? He hadn't seen her since Elke had kidnapped him for a strange rite of passage. He was an adult now, after all. Apparently.

"What's up?" Was she holding something behind her back?

She poked her head through first to make sure it was safe. Yup! Just cleaning. No Devil insight.

"Hi!"

She stepped fully through, arms still behind her back, and glanced around. She liked to consider herself a clean person, but Xavier was clean to a whole different level. Like, spotless! It was crazy!

"I just heard you come back and wanted to see how your birthday thing went." That was a normal question, right? "And I got you something! I'm sorry it's late. It took longer than they said it would in the mail, or I would have left it on your couch while you were gone."

He noticed she was hiding something and purposefully shifted away to make sure he couldn't see it yet.

"Wanna take a guess at what it is?"

He smiled brightly as she asked about his birthday! "It was great! I ran for 24 hours straight, and then got to wrestle Elke's brother!" It might not sound like fun for anyone else, but he'd had a ball! Aside from being sore the next day, and nearly dying a couple of times.

Still, he was a man, now, and he could fly. Well, potentially, he could fly. Like, the theory was pretty solid. Also, he was getting a gift! "Oh! Neat! What'd you get me? Is it another... far wars Rego set?" She'd been giving him those... He wasn't exactly a Farwars fan, but he had made all of them because Juniper was his friend, and he liked that she got him gifts. It made her happy, so it made him happy, even if he wasn't a huge fan.

He absolutely tried to peek around her to see what it was. He was terrible at guessing games! "Or maybe a new set of boxing gloves? Oh! A pie? Did you try making another pie?" Maybe it would be edible this time! Oh, who was he kidding, he'd eat it either way.

"Nope!" He tried to peek so she moved it away, eventually bringing it out from behind her back but holding it off to the side as if he couldn't easily reach out and grab it.

"Not boxing gloves, either!"

Juniper cringed at the reminder about the pie. He'd been nice and had attempted to eat it anyway, but she'd spirited it away after more than a few bites. His girlfriend had hunted her down at the school later and tried to kick her butt for 'poisoning him'.

... She wasn't gonna attempt one again.

After his last wrong guess, she handed it out to him and plopped it in his hands. She hoped he liked the themed wrapping paper, and definitly hoped he liked the toy. She... wasn't well versed on which ones were special and was more than a little suspicious that she had gotten conned.

Once he had the box she waited in 100 proof, absolute anxiety for him to open it.

He was just starting to have fun with keep away, when she shot down his guesses, and plopped something into his hands.

A package. In wrapping paper. Hero themed wrapping paper. He lit up, taking it in his hands and looking at it for a moment. "Wow... Juni, where'd you get this paper? He walked over to his table, and set it down, carefully, slowly peeling the tape so that it didn't tear the paper.

Slowly, he lifted up the folds of the paper, revealing the contents within.

His eyes sparkled with the light of joy as he stared down upon none other than a limited edition Trainee Jude action figure, dubbed 'Nude Jude' because, well, he was undressable, and people liked to undress him.

He still had his clothes. "He still has his clothes... Juni, he still has all of his clothes! Where did you get this? These are so hard to find!" He looked up at her, the biggest smile plastered on his face.

"There's a website where you can go and have your own wrapping paper printed! I just uploaded a picture of your suit and BAM! Xavier themed paper. I have a butt load of it leftover if you want it."

She watched him unwrap his gift, filled to the brim with excitement and anxiety, and just about died at the expression of sheer joy he shot her way.

Success! That online seller wasn't bamboozling her after all!

"I found it online, from a super shady feeling guy that I was sure was going to screw me over, but he didn't! Yay!" She threw her arms up in the air to help him celebrate.

"I had to stalk one of your nerd websites to figure out which one to buy, though. Some of them are super expensive, why is that?"

$15,000 on a doll was like... a lot. A lot a lot. So much dough!

Okay first off, it's not a doll, its an ACTION FIGURE WITH KUNG FU GRIP!

She didn't say that out loud, though, and it was at the end of the post, so why would we ever address it at the start? BECAUSE IT'S IMPORTANT, MOUSE!

Ahem. The paper was him themed. That was the most amazing thing anyone had ever made for him. And she did it to wrap something for him. He could kiss her. He wouldn't because they were friends, and nothing more, but he was certainly going to hug her!

"It's the find of the century, Juni!" He swept her up in a big ol' bear hug, and set her dowm, jumping in placed a bit as he turned to take a closer look at his new action figure.

"Wow... It really is the real deal... I'm not even going to take it out of the box! It's mint!" He lifted it carefully, and walked over to his shelf, smiling widely as he shifted some things around, and placed Jude in place next to Snowdancer Aiden.

He then took a step back, hands on his hips, and a content smile on his face.

"Thank you... It looks amazing!"

She watched as he inspected the DOLL a bit more, and saw the hug coming in time to mentally prepare herself for being picked up and swung around like a DOLL herself.

"Haha! Your welcome! Putmedownyou'regonnasquishme"

It was adorable watching him putter about getting it ready and all, finding the perfect spot on his DOLL shelf, and looking so proud after he was done. She didn't understand a lick of it, but could appreciate it all the same. It's what she had fallen into doing with people, kinda!

"I don't know what mint means." She scratched a cheek, but left it at that. "Anyway! I'll let you get back to cleaning. I just wanted to give your gift to you!"

She turned with a wave, stepped back up barefoot into his couch and tried to walk back through the wall.

Keyword: Tried.

"Ouch!"

Juniper stbled back, windmilling her arms to not fall over, and then rubbed her sore nose and stared at the wall in confusion.

... She could had sworn she had just-

She tried again, snacked into the wall one more time, and hopped back onto the ground to stare at the wall in confusion.

"Well that's weird. Huh. Whatever, guess I'll use the door."

OH YEAH, IS THAT WHAT THIS IS GONNA BE, IT'S GONNA BE AN ARGUMENT, THEN?! OKAY, OKAY, I SEE HOW IT IS. well BRING IT ON, THEN!

"Oh, sorry, heh! Excited!"

There it was, sitting there on his shelf, a new capstone to his ACTION FU@#ING FIGURE collection. "Mint? Oh, Mint means it's in perfect condition, usually unopened. Thanks again Juni, you're the best... Wait... how much did this-"

She bumped into the wall. He stared at her funny. "Um... Is everything okay? Power on the fritz?" He turned away from the shelf and walked over to her, his face shifted into a concerned expression.

"What's going on?" He gave himself an experimental jolt with his powers, seeing if he still hovered in the air like he'd been practicing.

"Hmm?" She stopped and half-turned back. "Oh, uh, I dunno. Had that happen earlier, but thought it was a fluke and-"

She froze because Xavier was hovering off the @#$%ing ground like a witch! "Holy @#$% you're floating! When did that happen?!"

She scooted closer and crouched, waving a hand over him real quick. Yep! Just like a witch!

"Cool! That from all your fancy training you're doing at the school?"

He did, indeed, lift off of the ground. Crossing his arms as he hovered there, he frowned and looked over to Juniper. Was there one of those power canceling people in her apartment or something? Why wasn't her power working? She asked about his power? "Oh, this? It just sorta happened, actually! I figured out if I touch things I can fly to them! I spent a whole day touching everything in here!" He smiled widely, but then floated down to the ground.

"Can you still use your powers away from the wall?" He opted to fly over to the wall real quick to see if his powers deactivated. Nope.

"Huh... It's just you, then... Are you feeling okay?" He flew on up, as if it were second nature already, and held a hand up toward her forehead to feel if she had a fever. "I wonder if it's like dragon man... he lost his powers for a while and had to do a soul journey to recover them. It was his best redemption arc... before they killed him off. Oh, it's okay, he got better. Now he's a zombie dragon."

"Oh, neat."

She didn't wanna think about how much of a pain trying to touch everything in his apartment would be.

At his question, she paused and looked at one of her hands, deciding to try and phase it through the floor. She succeeded, up to the wrist, buuuuuut.... it didn't wanna come back out.

Juniper didn't want to let on how stressful it was to have your hand stuck in a floor and seemingly not being able to control her power.

"UH..." She tugged. Hand stayed. Xavier put a large hand on her forehead which was cold, like normal. Juniper didn't put off a lot of heat being so small and all.

"I dunno? I don't feel sick. I feel fine. I just can't get it to trigger."

It was normally easy. Second nature even. She just had to think about what she wanted to phase, put a bit of effort in, and wala! Done!

She blinked at Xavier and renewed her efforts of trying to hand her hand out. Kinda actually hurt her wrist. "I don't wanna be a zombie! Redemption arcs sound like a real drag!" She yanked again and her power kicked back in, sending her rolling back.

She recovered by keeping the roll doing and ending up back on her feet.

"I'm free!" And she still had a hand!

"...Maybe I am coming down with something. That'd be weird, though, I've never really been sick."

Well, she felt a little cold, but she always felt a little cold. Like a little hamster. Still, if it was normal for her, it meant she wasn't running a fever.

"Well... Maybe you should get a checkup just in case?"

She stuck her hand into the floor. Oh, there we go! Wait, it was stuck. His eyes widened as she tugged, and he floated around her fretting.

Xavier watched her little episode with the stuck hand with his brow furrowed in worry as she tugged and tugged. Oh jees, would he need to break the floorboards to get her out? Still, she was fuzed with it, right? How did someone get unfused with something?

She got it free just as quickly as it had become stuck, and sighed, hanging his head. "Juni, you really gotta be careful if your power is acting up... Have you eaten? I dunno... That's really concerning..."

He probably knew her well enough to catch the subtle shift in body language as she went from relaxed and slightly unnerved, too anxious and defensive. The glance she shot him with filled with all sorts of raccoon-caught-in-trashcan vibes.

"I did eat!" Blue had totally left her some food and she didn't know what it was called, but she'd still eaten it!

She tried to wave his concern away with the hand that had been stuck on her floor. "I'm fiiine. I'm sure of it. Totally positive. It's probably just like... some weird hiccup. I have been pretty distracted lately, too."

Oh, she was rambling.

"I'm sure nothing's wrong!"

Stepping back up onto his couch, she tried again to put her arm through the wall and shot him a dazzling smile when she succeeded.

"See? All better. Gotta go now! Bye!"

She hopped on through before he could stop her.

...

On the other side of the wall, she paused, letting the smile drop as she flexed her hand.

...She was fine.


... right?