After The Fall

As soon as she'd gotten her copy of the CD, Paige had gone down to one of the common rooms. First play deserved big speakers, not her earbuds. She plopped it in, checked the sound level and then moved a chair for the inevitable dancing.

In fact, it was only a few seconds into the first track and she was bouncing around to the beat.

Summer vacation was amazing. Given the fact that technically, she could get zapped back to her own world at any second, the truly responsible thing to do would have probably been summer school... but screw that. Another real summer was worth a whole lot more than another few weeks of class.

It was a pretty warm day, so she tossed on her bathing suit, grabbed a towel and a book, and headed down to the lake, tossing a ball in the air as Max bounced along beside her, not doing such a good job of containing his excitement at the idea of the ball being thrown. As they approached the lake, she stopped suddenly, bending down to scratch the dog, waiting until he was really worked up to straighten up again and command, "Sit."

After a brief pause, he did as told, tail still wagging as he watched the ball in her hand. Grinning, she threw the ball back up toward the house, laughing as he immediately launched himself in that direction. Throwing the towel over her shoulder, she continued down to the beach, glancing behind her to make sure Max was still on track to find the ball.

Jay was hoping that they'd find Kevin somewhere out on the grounds at this time of day, it made the odds of finding him not with his twin a bit better, and much as he wanted to tell the guy to go fuck himself that probably wasn't the best course of action. Not just yet, anyway.

"Let's try over there," he suggested, pointing to where he knew there was a bench in the shade of a few trees with a view over the mansion and gardens to one side and the long expanse of lawn leading down to the lake on the other. It was where he'd met Kevin in the first place, and it seemed to be someplace he liked going to sketch.

Jimmy didn't brood much. He kept himself far too busy for that because what was the point of brooding? It didn't fix anything. But he was brooding. No two ways about it. And when he brooded he pulled out the exploding games. Games where you got to destroy everything in sight. Games that had cheat codes that let you do even more damage. Games where the whole point was to get angry. And he was playing in his room. Because there was just no reason to subject anyone else to it.

Jay sat perched atop a large boulder at the edge of the leg, shirt off in the sun and feet bare against the warm stone.

"Ain't no one else around," he pointed out to Kevin, smiling. "You could lose some layers if you want?"

Jay's wings had ruffled up slightly with his nerves, and he took a moment to spread them wide, careful of the confined space in the hallway, then settle them smoothly against his back again.

"One amazingly inspirational model reportin' for duty," he called as he knocked on Kevin's door.

Guitar slung upside down over his back, Jay wandered down the hall to Jimmy's room and rapped at it once before opening it and sticking his head in.

"Hey, mind some company?" he asked, smiling even as he came the rest of the way in.

Jay glided towards the ground in a lazy spiral, wings spread wide to catch the weak sun. It was cold out, and a thin layer of snow covered the brown grass of the lawn, but the clouds were thin and the sun was shining and he'd needed to be in the air. He'd been flying for almost two hours now, though, and when he was close enough to the ground he let his feet drop in time with a heavy back beat of his wings that blew snow up around him and left the ground clear where his feet settled back to earth.

He spread his wings wide, feathers ruffling, then drew them in against his back and turned to smile at the man he miiiiight have intentionally landed near. He wasn't above a bit of showing off, after all. "Hey." He grinned at him.

Sam closed the door behind him and almost threw his keys on a nearby table. He'd spent maybe just a little too much time out of the communal lifestyle. Shoving them back in his jacket pocket, he crossed over to the main stairs, scrubbing a furry head as it came to greet him at the landing.

He wasn't expecting a homecoming. He didn't want one, and if he were being honest, he fully expected Jay to find him and take a swing at him. Prior to or following a string of words Momma'd have had his hide for if'n she'd heard.

He hadn't meant to hurt him, but he'd needed the alone time. Set his head on straight some, and get a few things out of his system. He knew he really ought to have called/messaged/something. But he had never been able to talk to him. And Jay wouldn't have been interested in talking anyway.

Opening the door to their room, he took in the mess and sighed. Jay was in a fine mood indeed. Dropping his bag on his bed, he tossed his keys on the desk and slipped out of his jacket to begin unpacking. Nothing like the present after all.

Jay spiraled lower, circling on a thermal as a familiar flash of red on the roof caught his attention. When he was low enough he back-winged, and let his feet settle on the roof tiles, slipping for a moment on the sloped surface before he caught his balance and drew his wings against his back.

"Hey, how's it goin'?" he asked, tucking his hands into his pockets as he made his way over to his alt.

She'd been working out in the Danger Room, pre-studying studying, and being productive all day. She needed a break -- something fun that didn't require her to use her brain.

She flopped on to the couch in the common room and looked over at Jay. "Any inclination to play a video game or two?" she asked.

Jay scrubbed a hand across his face as he shoved the door to his and Sam's room open and headed for his dresser. Jimmy was dosed up on the strongest medicine for his symptoms Bobby had been able to find, and he'd been sleeping relatively peacefully, so he'd decided it was time for a trip back for a shower and a change of clothes.

He was exhausted and it showed, even with his healing factor back in action. His wings drooped and his feathers were dull and in disarray. It wasn't even that he wasn't sleeping - he slept off and on through the night and napped occasionally during the day when Jimmy was sleeping - he was just so damn worried all the time. Jimmy'd been sick for so long and he wasn't really getting worse any more, thank God, but he wasn't getting better either. And his field was fluctuating so wildly that there was no telling if his powers would blink out a foot from the bed or a foot from the door. Jay had been caught off guard more than a few times and nearly face planted when his wings just disappeared unexpectedly.

Intellectually he was pretty damned sure Bobby was right and it couldn't possibly be Legacy, but that didn't do a damned thing for the nagging voice in the back of his mind that kept whispering that this was how it had started. Just a cold, or the flu. No big deal...and then they'd started dying.

He stood in front of his dresser, one hand on the top of it, and just stared blankly into his top drawer, wings trailing slightly on the floor as he tried to muster the energy to collect his things and head to the shower.

Jay was singing under his breath as he headed down the hall to Jimmy's room, a complicated tune he'd heard on the radio the other day, and carrying a steaming mug of tea. He hadn't seen Jimmy yet today, and since he'd had a little bit of a sniffle yesterday he figured the tea might be appreciated. At Jimmy's door he cradled the mug carefully in one hand so the other was free to knock.

"Hey lazybones," he called quietly through the door. "You movin' yet?"

Jimmy and Jay had decided to brave the town to get a video game that had just come out, stopping for lunch too.

"Think we should just get it to go?" Jimmy asked. "I mean. It's not bad. But maybe we should try to spend as little time here as possible."

They'd gone out for food at the local diner, only to return to a gate blocked by a small crowd of cultists. They were all holding candles and murmuring responses to someone who seemed to be leading them in prayer.

Paige rolled the car to a stop down the lane and glanced at Jay.

"You have got to be kidding me. How do we get in now?"

Jay caught a thermal and let it carry him up, wings spread wide but unmoving other than the flutter of the wind in his feathers as he let the air currents do the work for him. He loved everything about flying, but sometimes he thought he loved this best; the feeling of simply hanging suspended effortlessly above the world, looking down on it all as if it were a child's toy. Small, yet still perfect in every detail. He let rising air carry him up and up and up, and watched the mansion and grounds grow smaller and smaller, then snapped his wings shut and dove, closing his eyes for just a moment to revel in the buffeting of the wind, the brief feeling of vertigo as he dropped like a rock, then opening them to watch the ground rush up at him. He waited until the last possible moment, then snapped his wings open again, laughing as he was jerked up and back before dropping the last few feet to the ground.

It wasn't graceful, but it was fun.

It had been a long week, but he was starting to clock better, and that was all that mattered. They needed to make a few more adjustments on the car before she'd be ready for a real race, but she was doing great in tests. It had been a long time since Sam had felt particularly proud about anything. But building this beauty from the frame up and seeing her lap professionally crafted cars made his heart warm. They still had a lot to learn, but Sam figured at some point, you just had to jump in and learn on the job. There really was nothing quite like being tossed out of a metaphorical airlock and figuring out how to land without dying. And well, it wasn't like dying was much of an obstacle these days. Team of resident healers aside.

He rubbed her down, taking his time and letting his mind go through the numbers. "Soon, sweetheart," he murmured, stepping back to look her over. "We'll have our day real soon. Y' jus' keep flyin'."

Sweats were cool and all, but they needed more clothes, and a few toiletries. Still not quite comfortable using the thing they had been given, Alex and Sean had gone wandering for a guy they could talk to about those sorts of things. Which was how they had ended up in the backseat of a convertible, speeding toward the local township with two of Paige's brothers.

"So, you're a mechanic?" Sean asked the brother behind the wheel.

"Mechanic, car restoration, racer," he replied in the same accent as Paige's, which was actually really comforting.

"Groovy."

Sam laughed, shaking his head. "Sorry," he apologized after a moment. "Still ain't used t' that."

"It's okay," Sean replied. "You all talk funny too." He smiled at the bit of a grin he could see in the rearview mirror. "What do you do?" he asked, leaning forward to better see the younger brother.

In its defense, the movie's special effects had been pretty amazing. Everything else? Positively hilarious. It was hard to tell how 'accurate' the supposedly historical aspects were, given the world was so different from any of the mansion residents' home realities, but there was no doubt whatsoever that the film-makers - along with folklore, mythology, and the general public - had absolutely no idea what any of the mutant 'stars' of the film had been like at all. At least, not unless the Wolverine in this world really had born a striking resemblance to an actual wolverine and Cyclops had had one large, glowing red eye in the middle of his forehead.

It was probably just as well Warren had managed to finagle a private screening at the mansion, as a large number of the residence might have had difficulty sitting through the movie in a public theater without mocking, and laughing, out loud. As it was, they had an almost full-size screen set up in the dining hall, complete with theater style seating provided courtesy of Billy's powers, not to mention vast amounts of fresh popcorn, a table stacked with assorted standard movie theater candies, and tubs of soda near the back of the room. And a good portion of the popcorn might possibly have ended up launched at the screen at various points during the movie.

(OOC: feel free to start threads before, during or after the screening)

Jay shifted his shoulders to settle his wings a bit better in their harness and resisted the urge to grumble about having to wear the damned thing around the house in the first place. It was a pain in the ass, but there wasn't any point bitching about it. Especially when he had much bigger things to worry about than a bunch of folks traipsing about the place setting up equipment and assessing lighting...like passing his dang finals. It was definitely time for a break, though, and he'd left his books and notes scattered across his desk and come down for lunch. Jimmy should be showing up to join him any second, so he'd grabbed two bowls and ladled them full of the soup someone had left simmering in a huge pot on the back of the stove and was in the process of tearing a couple hunks of bread off of a still-warm loaf he'd found. Dang but he loved living in a house full of folks who actually cooked real food. It was almost as good as being home.