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A total dodge on the what's your position on the X-Men question, he noted. So either she was trying to play dumb and not give the internet much to chew on, or she was lower than he'd thought. Maybe just a trainee. That gave him a little hope for the world.

Either way, this next question seemed appropriate.

"Are the X-Men supposed to be secret, or are they just secret-wink-wink? Because sometimes it sounds like you guys think you are but you're like five year olds holding frogs behind your backs and telling mom it's-a-secret-I-can't-tell. So level: do you guys think you're a secret?"

Unlike other people he'd done AMAs with, Jiri ignored the requests for her to demonstrate her powers. Refusing to read those was self-defense, pure and simple. Which left him with...

"What's on the other side of mirrors? Is there a crazy reverse universe where we all have evil twins?"

And the follow up: "Are you the evil twin, or is Gawain?"

Jiri hadn't picked a public space to do this AMA in because the last member of the Mansion staff he'd interviewed had violently assaulted him with his own laptop before leaving him lying alone and injured on the floor. Anyone who said that was lying.

Jiri had chosen the dinning room because, ah, it was a new take on the school. One the internet hadn't seen yet. It was spacious. Had good woodwork. Floor-to-ceiling windows. Hogwarts tables. He was practically making them a recruitment video by shooting here. The classrooms had been boring by comparison, he didn't know why he'd ever wanted to shoot in one.

This choice had nothing to do with mild-mannered Maya Csendes being more violent than killer-of-hundreds Aura. Or the fact that he didn't think the Morris twins particularly liked him, and at least one of them had the power to trap a living soul inside of a mirror. The dinning hall was rather lacking in reflective surfaces. The tables were wood but not all that shiny, and the windows were more like spotlights at this time of day.

Complete coincidence.

Jiri set up his laptop. One of the hinges was rather well duck-taped, but it had otherwise survived its role in his attempted murder. He didn't blame the poor thing--it was just as much a victim as he was. His webcam had been getting glitchier and glitchier, but happily the very nice tech crew at Jaager Worldwide had given him one of their older models as a gift. 'Older model' at JW still meant 'much better than the one he'd had,' so it was a good thing in a round-about way.

Another good thing: while his face had been a little on the tender side, it had taken until now for the bruise to fully bloom. It hadn't been there during his other interviews, which was good. He cared what those people thought about him, and a giant purple welt on his forehead wasn't the impression he wanted to make. The Male Morris? Not so much. Let him think whatever he wanted, but every look Jiri's way would be a reminder that his teammate was clinically insane.

Maybe it would make him think twice before trying a similar stunt.

In this well lit, well trafficked room.

Lacking in mirrors.

That Jiri had picked by total coincidence.

...He just wanted to get this over with. He had another interview with a murderer coming up, and he'd like to live long enough to do it.

Jiri just about lept backwards into the room when the THWACK-AUGH sounded. THWACK-AUGH was not a sound a teenager wanted to hear, not a sound he was mentally prepared for, after escaping an interrogation session with two adults hell bent on dishing out the blame. Not just escaping, either: escaping with staff permission to do the same exact thing that had gotten them in trouble the first time. It was victory, pure and simple, lesson not learned, and he was going to get out of this room extremely fast before either Miss Taylor or the Morris clone realized it except when Alex opened the door to freedom

THWACK-AUGH

"Gah!" Jiri eloquently articulated. He cast a quick look back at the counselor and the X-Man (why was an X-Man part of the school's disciplinary committee, anyway?) before dodging out the door. And shutting it behind him, via leaning his weight back against it.

"You were totally listening, weren't you?" Jiri whispered, trying not to attract adult supervision. No apologies from this teenager, oh no. There was only one reason someone would be standing outside a closed door in an administrative hallway at the precise moment said door was thrown open, and it was not one deserving of pity.

The kid looked around the same age as he and Alex, or close enough. Latino. A little scruffy.

Louder, for the adult's benefit, he called out, "I need to unwind. Who wants to figure out where they keep the soccer balls locked up?"

Alex and random teen did, that's who. Jiri hooked an elbow through each of their arms, and started skedaddling away from the authority figures.

The mother hen response was probably the lat thing the internet expected from the giant toothy fire lizard. It was the last thing Jiri had expected, for sure. But looking back on how he'd acted with his cousins in tow... yeah, Jiri could see it.

He wanted to deny the truth in the older mutant's words about what the future might hold, but it was hard to. This deal with his roommate, the upcoming trial that had started this whole AMA thing going--that was a sign of something. Jiri had the uneasy feeling that if a human had killed a mutant in self defense like this, there wouldn't be a trial. Hell, if a human had killed a human in self defense, with that many witnesses and cameras around...

For some reason the justice system thought Alex's case was an issue, and there was something deeply unsettling in that.

He cleared his throat, and dug himself out from under those thoughts.

"Thank you for doing this, Victor. It's probably about time we wrap up," because it was getting way too hard to find real questions in the horrible 'you're so hot' puns. "Are there any last words you'd like to tell the Internet?" Or tell the Internet off. Whichever the man preferred.

Jiri could see why Mr. Jaager kept his secretary around. The tiger was an excellent straight man to... to whatever this was. Could they make this into a reality show? Like, just have cameras follow Ambrose and Madeline through a normal workday? It would have sounded boring to him an hour ago. Now, it was sounding like something he'd pay good money to see. Also, the woman was an empath? So... she could actually feel that amusement that was written all over her boss' face? That had to be like rubbing salt in the wound. Hilarious, hilarious salt.

This interview was not going where he'd expected. Or where the internet had expected. Where the internet had hoped, maybe, but not where anyone reasonable could have expected.

Jiri didn't even know what pansexual meant, but the volume of comments in the chat had just about doubled between the shirt stripping and that comment, and it was a whole new crowd. A crowd that near-instantly dug up that unnamed forum and its thread, and shared the link with each other. He had no doubt this would help the "over 2,000 comments" count.

>> "Or as a group, if you wish to do so."

It took Jiri's mind a moment to even process that one. Good God. So that's what his naivety being torn away felt like. He shoved his palm over his mouth again, desperately trying not to laugh. Finally, barely, he got himself under control enough to gasp out the next set of questions. There was a certain theme to them.

"You wake up in bed next to a hideous slug mutant who is smoking a cigarette. What do you say to him/her/it?"

"You meet Bruce Wayne at a bar. What pick up line do you use?"

"Would you agree to a charity pinup calendar photoshoot? To support orphans. And puppies."

Okay okay, no more immature questions. At least, not in that vein. Even though there were so, so many left. That well never ran dry on the internet. Jiri wondered if the man knew how steamed up he was getting.

...Even in his own head, that pun was terrible. Seriously though, people were practically chanting I'm a Little Teapot.

Also, the guy's answer about fighting his evil twin? Total cop out. Obviously an evil twin would know your weaknesses, so they'd be thinking exactly the same thing. That's why you had to think different, but then the evil twin would as well, so you had to get really creative.

Personally, now that he'd met Mirror? If Jiri saw his evil twin trying to hop out of a piece of glass, he'd try and smash it before the thing could get out.

Okay. No more lewd questions, no more lewd questions... he was having to scroll down pretty far here... There we go.

"You wake up in the body of the United States president. What do you do?" Finally, a question Jiri could relate to.

"Tell us something we don't know. Remember that we're the internet and we know everything."

"If you could have had any super power, what would you have chosen?"