Rachel was in the Danger Room, training.

Well, she called it training. Anyone else who witnessed it would probably call it randomly beating the crap out of things with heavy amounts of power.

It was bothering her a lot more than she ever thought it would that her father and her uncle were both here and they didn't know who she was. She thought she could handle it. She thought she could deal with them not knowing who she was and dealing with that... but she was having a hard time with it. One of the drawbacks of coming backwards in another reality to protect those you loved from the future you knew.

None of your family knew you.

Wiping tears away with the back of her hand, she once more focused on the program she was running.

She hated Sentinels.

Gaia hummed quietly as she rang out the last of her undies in the sink and put them in the small basket on the counter. She drained the water before carrying the basket out to the fire escape to hang things up. There was already a line of showy undergarments and a few shirts flapping in the breeze. There was something relaxing about the domestic chore of washing her clothes. Hand washing, at least. And she had enough costume pieces for work that were made for show that they needed to be hand washed.

It didn't hurt that she knew that the teenage son of the family that owned the Indian restaurant got a cheap thrill seeing her underwear hanging from the line. Contributing to the delinquincy of a minor? Me? Never! She smirked at the thought. As long as he didn't get the bright idea to go panty raiding, she didn't care if he, or his father for that matter, took a peek. That stuff was expensive.

When she was finished hanging the landry she went back inside, tossed the basket just to one side of the window and reached for her cigarettes. Just another day. Damn, when did her life get boring?

Millie turned off the shower and stretched muscles that were sore from another "Logan Session" that had ended a half an hour ago. Ow. At least I'm not near as sore as I was by this point three weeks ago. Or even last week. That's gotta mean something. She stepped out of the shower stall and wrapped a towel around herself before stepping over to the mirror. She reached up to wipe it off with her hand.

He's tough. But fair. I think he'd be fair about training if it killed him. And at least I'm not so terrified of him I squeak whenever he looks at me anymore. Then again, it's hard to be terrified of the guy who you asked to teach you how to not get your ass handed to you. Or, at least, it's counter-productive. If that's not the same thing. She reached for her brush to start combing the tangles out of her wet hair. Getting dressed and ready was a matter of routine and she let herself go to auto-pilot while she did it, allowing her mind to wander.

Thank goodness I didn't miss the start of summer session. Even if the homework is piled as high as the ceiling. Hmn, I still need to do those lab sheets today. Somehow, the Institute had gotten back into a routine. Things had changed, that was obviously, but there was still a routine. And that helped get a sense of security back. At least, it helped her.

Millie finished getting dressed and cleaned up her mess in the bathroom before opening the door and heading down to her room to put her things up and get her books. She had plans to head to the kitchen to study. She was starving, for one, and this time of day, the breakfast rush on the kitchen would be over with and the lunch rush not happening for a few hours. Plenty of time to get a snack and finish up those lab sheets.

Lab sheets, stretch, sonnet, run, weed the flower beds, Ms. Munroe will water the plants so I don't need to worry about that, stretch again, Oh! Gotta call dad at some point today. She wrote a mental itinerary. God, at least she wasn't bored!

She got to the kitchen and dropped her bag on the table before going over to raid the fridge. A few minutes later she had a plate of apple slices, cheese, and cellery sticks with peanut butter and a glass of milk. She popped an apple into her mouth and dug out her biology book and opened it to the page she'd carefully marked with a brightly colored sticky note. Her notebook, pen, and highlighter followed and she buckled down to do some serious studying.

((open to all. Feel free to interrupt. It's just science, lol))

Some people lived for action and couldn't stand being idle or feeling like they had nothing to do. Andrew was usually this type of person, he'd joined the military after all, and his mutation was entirely physical, but after the events of the rescue and the sheer amount of power it had taken him to heal everyone, he was glad for the quiet.

He hadn't been one to go speak with the counselor. He'd had his fill of those in the military after his best friend (along with many of the others in his unit) had been killed and once he'd been discharged. He'd taken the offer then but hadn't stuck with it. Which probably made him a bit of a hypocrite pushing Kitty to see Adelaide, but he hadn't been the one in captivity being tortured for a week, and she was entirely too stubborn for his own good.

Both of them were so busy with their classes and taking care of the kids that they hadn't spent much time together, a problem he felt needed to be rectified. At first he'd though of finding her and making her come to lunch with him since he knew she hadn't been eating, but that would make it easier for her to beg off, so he rooted around in the kitchen for some kind of basket, finally finding one on the top shelf of the pantry. He filled it with easily-portable food, sandwiches and fruit along with a couple bottles of water and soda, and then he went searching for the elusive Katherine Pryde.

Andrew finally found her in the garage, which wasn't really a surprise, and it was that much closer to the outdoors which meant it'd be easier to drag her out. He leaned up against the doorway and watched her working on her bike, something he swore she did sometimes even if the machine didn't need it, and there was a smudge of engine grease on the side of her nose that he found terribly endearing.

"That must be the cleanest bike in all of Westchester," he finally said, walking over to her.

[OPEN]

John was bored.

He flicked open his lighter then snapped it shut, cocking an eyebrow at a passing student. "What are you looking at? Beat it." The growl was enough to send the student running for the hills, like the scared puppy dog he was.

John let out a frustrated breath, sinking into the couch in the hopes it might swallow him whole. The mansion was... dull, but he supposed that was the way that people wanted things given the crazy ass excitement that had been happening as of late.

Yay for being traumatised. Not that John was ever going to admit to such trauma, God forbid.

The firestarter's eyes shut briefly before he was snapped out of it by a haunting memory - one that included his father's raised voice followed shortly by a rather specific pain across the back of his head - and he simply sat up, focusing on the lighter.

He was alone, Bobby had been avoiding him ever since he'd found out about him and Remy. Apparently there was no problem, what a load of bullshit, Bobby couldn't lie, no matter how hard he tried. Whatever, John had tried to broach the subject only to get frozen out, he was quite content to let Bobby stew in problems of his own making.

John went right back to playing with his lighter.

"Oh Gott..."
Kurt took a deep breath and gazed at his companion, wondering which way it would choose - and if he had the strength left to change its mind if it decided to go towards the small accumulation of houses, only about a mile away from the two of them.
Which it did, of course. Because things couldn’t possibly be easy for once.
( Dinosaur on the loose. )

The car was a literally a piece of crap, but he was in heaven.

It was a 1976 442 that was rusted over, had no working lights, and had a questionable odour, but the engine ran well, so who was he to complain?  It would make a good summer project for himself, and anyone else, if they so chose.  That being said, he was almost guaranteed to just work on it himself, but he'd promised Ada he'd try to find himself a hobby, something to occupy his time.

This would work.

He had just finished looking the car over, detailing in his head all the things he needed to do, when something caught his eye.  A woman, he'd never seen before, opening the door to what he believed to be Matty's car.

"Hey!," he called out, heading towards the car. "What are you doing? That's not your car."

Ororo was worried. She knew that everyone was still reeling from the kidnappings, and things were slowly (painfully slowly) starting to get back on an even keel. At least, people were trying to pretend that things were going back to normal. Which might or might not be a bad thing. Someone would have to ask Adalaide, but Ororo tended to see it as good because the familiar routine couldn't be bad.

But some were handling it worse than others. Ororo hadn't seen Hank in days. Certainly, there were times when they didn't see much of one another besides passing in the hall or the kitchen, but not seeing him for days on end told her that he was cloistering himself. A sensible, logical part of her kept telling her that she needed to just let him handle what he was going through on his own, and that part had won out until now. Now it was the concerned friend who was going to check on him. And maybe she should have let the concerned friend win sooner.

Ororo approached Hank's door and knocked. "Hank?"

Kitty was at the firing range.

The physical damage from the kidnapping had long been taken care of by Andrew. However, it was the mental and emotional damage that was harder to heal.

The nightmares were the worst and she had taken to doing her best to stay up all night so as not to fall asleep. When she couldn't do that, she found other places to nap that wasn't around people. She didn't want to bother Tamsin or Andrew with the nightmares and the reactions she had upon awakening. Add to it that she knew that Tamsin would be picking up on her emotions each time, and you had a cat that was acting like a kitten.

She was sure that the other victims had probably had worse done to them. She didn't know for sure because it wasn't like any of them had decided to all get together and talk about what had happened. Someone else would probably have to broach that subject because she sure wasn't.

The biggest change that could be noticed in Kitty was that since the rescue, she hadn't so much as left the grounds of the institute. She hadn't been doing her usual things like riding her bike or going skydiving.

But she was spending an awfully lot of extra time at the firing range.

Millie gnawed her lower lip as she approached the door to Logan's office. In theory, she'd done all this second guessing herself stuff in her room and out in the gardens before actually getting the courage to come up here. She knew that Logan was a pretty cool guy, and she wasn't completely frightened by him anymore, but he was still more than a little daunting.

Right. The worst he can say is no, or that he's too busy, which he very well could be and that would make sense. But, he's also the go to guy for training around here, and dammit, Mill, you need it. You know you need it. At least if he does veto the idea, he might be able to tell you who would have the time.

...and inclination.

She got to his door and didn't hesitate. If she did she'd lose her nerve. This wasn't like with Ada, where she could hem and haw outside the door. If she didn't just do it, she knew she'd turn right back around. She knocked on the door and waited for a response.

Jamie poked his head into the rec room and grinned. There it was, in all its big screen glory, the TV of his dreams, complete with a few of the most popular gaming platforms. And for once no one was using it.

He ran and jumped over the back of the couch and landed on the cushions with a bit of a bounce. Jamie started going through the games spread out on the table and grinned as he saw one of his favorites from home. "Yes!"

It was a matter of seconds before he had the machine up and running. Once that was done he sat himself down and started fighting his way through the levels of the shooting game, with all the yelling and whooping and hollering he could muster.

Playing the game on a TV screen this big was so awesome! "Gotcha! Oh, yeah! You're goin' down, alien scum! Take that!"

Jamie was in ten year old heaven. So what if he had math homework waiting for him?

Terry was not the sort of woman you would expect to be a baker. The daughter of a former X-Men/Interpol agent who was raised by a criminal? Not exactly the susie homemaker type but Terry had always loved to bake. Which was why she was standing in the kitchen in the middle of the night baking cooking.

Maeve had gone to sleep on Tamsin's shoulder hours ago and was sleeping rather soundly in her crib. She slid the tray of cookies into the stove and slid up onto the counter to wait. As she waited, she hummed softly to herself.

She was glad that things were slowly inching themselves back to some resemblance of normal. Terry had been through enough to know that a lot of the kids would never fully be back to normal but school and dances and romantic drama, that was the life the kids deserved.

Sighing softly, she leaned forward and opened the refridgerator, snagging a sode. It would be a long wait but she didn't mind.

[Thread OPEN to ALL]

After having been formally introduced to the teacher body as it were, Evelyn had been shown to a room that would be hers and she had then made arrangements for her belongings to be delivered.

There was definitely a distinct feeling in the air, one that Evelyn was all too familiar with given that she dealt with war torn countries and traumatised citizens a lot of the time.

Post traumatic stress, it hung around the mansion like a suffocating cloud of smog. More obvious in some and less in others, but nonetheless traumatic and damaging. Not that it was really her place to be commenting, even if she found herself wanting to.

She was currently keeping herself to herself, allowing the mansion time to adjust to her presence as well as getting to know her inside the classes and outside of it.

Callused tips of her fingers pushed back a few stray strands of dark hair as she sought through drawers in the kitchen for a spoon with which to stir her tea with, pausing only briefly when her fingers closed around a knife and she instantly processed it as a weapon. Evelyn could kill anyone with that knife and do so within seconds, that was how good her powers actually were.

She blinked herself out of that automatic state and placed it back into the tray, sliding her fingertips across to close around the spoon instead.

Who: John & Gambit.
What: Avoiding Bobby, a drunk John crashes in Gambit's room.
When: Late night through to the next morning
Rating: Nc-17
Status: Complete & Closed
Warnings: Uh, adult content in the form of sexuality. And it's long (8555 words).


John was drunk.

He had swallowed three quarters of the bar's alcohol after all, varying his tastes from the lighter easier to handle alcoholic beverages to the stronger more intense ones, the sort of alcohol that knocked you on your ass.

It was a miracle he was still upright.

Yay for having a high tolerance to alcohol, something he'd either inherited from his father or it was another quirk of having the power that he did, John didn't care. How he'd managed to slip back into the mansion without waking everybody was... an act of some unknown force, clearly somebody was watching out for him on this particular night.

He stumbled after a moment and slumped against the nearby wall, snorting quietly to himself. Whoops, he'd totally forgotten that there was a step there, his bad. The firestarter tipped his head back and pulled his lower lip into his mouth before he did his best to compose himself, knowing he needed to make it to his room without falling over, again.

John's hair was in slight disarray and his jacket was a little out of sorts given that one side had slipped lower than the other and there might have been blood on his collar, he may or may not have gotten into a fight.

The other guy looked a whole lot worse.

( Not So Quiet )


( The Best Hangover Cure )

Millie had talked herself in and out of going to see the councilor several times. Even now as she raised a hand to knock on the mostly open door, she hesitated.

It wasn't that she thought that there was anything inherently wrong with going to talk to someone about what had happened. It was just that she really didn't want to relive it. It was bad enough that the nightmares were so vivid that sometimes she woke up feeling like he'd been standing over her and breathing in her face. Did she really have to add insult to injury, so to speak, by breaking down in front of a total stranger?

But she knew it needed to be done. That just didn't make her like it any better.

Finally, she took a deep breath and knocked lightly on the door. Here went nothing.

Tamsin knew it wasn't the most responsible thing on the planet for her to be getting a student drunk -- and she had a feeling John was going to need it as opposed to just a single drink -- but she'd never done things the easy way or the right way, so like she was really going to start now?

She had left notes and/or voicemails for Kitty, Terry, Julian, and a couple other people, though, so she at least couldn't be accused of not telling people where she'd gone. She didn't have a backup, but she'd have John if anything went wrong. And never mind what people had said about him, she knew there was more to him than just disgruntled badassery. If anything happened, he'd back her up. Of course, then he'd heckle her mercilessly all the way back to the Institute for needing his help in the first place, but hey. That was John for you.

She got there first and took up a spot against the bar, leaning against it as she looked around at the crowd and waited.

Who: John & Bobby.
What: Bobby catches John redhanded
When: Afternoon/Early Evening
Rating: PG
Status: Complete & Closed

John had been serious when he'd talked to the Cajun, about leaving and getting out of this place. The more he spoke to people the more real his conviction became, finally overcoming the fear of the unknown by emptying his drawers of what meagre possessions he had and filling a tatty old rucksack (the same one he'd had the day his parents had offloaded him on the school) with them.

Fuck it, he'd figure something out.

He blew out a breath as he shoved a couple more t-shirts into the bag before doing the same with the scarce amount of money he did have, it wasn'talot, but better some money than no money.

Kids had run away before, he wouldn't be the first.

John pulled on a warmer top and shoved his lighter into his pocket before he turned on his heel and went through a couple more drawers as he wanted to be made sure he had everything that belonged to him.

It was hard rummaging with wounded fingers, but that didn't stop John from doing his damndest, slinging whatever he hadn't picked up into the rucksack. It had fitted everything before and it would again.

( Don't Do This )

It had been several days since Matty and Gaia had gone out. The bar fight had been cathartic for her, giving her a chance to rid herself of the tension in her body. She hadn't seen much of Logan, however, but not due to avoidance on either person's end. It wasn't exactly as though she had sought him out, either. Perhaps he had been giving her somespace, letting her deal with her issues without feeling pressured.

Either way, Matty had decided she had waited long enough. He wasn't there when she walked into his room, but she hadn't expected him to be. She got comfortable on his bed, guitar in hand, and began playing some soft, nameless tune. She hummed quietly underneath her breath, slowly beginning to sing without words. There was an almost mournful note to her voice, but she wasn't crying.

Who: Amara and OPEN
What: hanging outside avoiding the craziness inside
When: early afternoon saturday
Rating: TBD
Status: Incomplete

Amara leaned on the back wall outside the institute. She had been one of the people who had stayed behind during the mess of rescue mission and was therefore unscathed and unsure of what she could do. As soon as everyone came rushing in off the jet to the medical ward she was instructed to give them all some room. Amara felt a bit uselsess and wished that there was something she could do that could help them.

Sighing she leaned back against the wall with her lacuna coil cd blaring and began to conjure fire in her hand and then put it out again as quickly as it had come. On, off. On, off. Over and over to pass the time.

Okay so he lied.

He'd told her he'd be there first thing in the morning, but Bobby had woken up, and he'd been distracted with Ro and finally, almost two days after he said he would, there he was, at her office door.

It was wide open, like she'd said it would be.  For some reason, this made him happy -- he'd always liked open door policies, both literally and figuratively. After all, how were people supposed to know what was expected of them if no one ever told them?

Even though it was open though, he still knocked slightly at the frame and grinned over at her.  She was busy doing something, and he almost felt bad for interrupting her. Almost.

"So where are these cookies," he asked cheekily. "I believe I was promised cookies."