son_of_discord:

Xavier's 3am--


Joey has no idea what he was dreaming about or why; the only thing apparent to him right now is the pain in the sockets where his eyes should be. It feels as though his brain is trying to force its way out of his skull through both holes at once and he has to bite his pillow to keep from screaming.

The pillow doesn't help and he can taste the blood on his tongue as the pain intensifies. He falls off the bed, hitting the hard floor and immediate reaches out trying to orient himself in the direction of his bathroom.

Just 180 degrees behind me, right? Just gotta get there....

The pain in his head intensifies as he crawls across the floor to the bathroom, pulling himself up by the door knob. His hands fumble in the dark, looking for the damned light-switch that should have been near the wall. He finally finds it and stumbles in the direction of the bathroom sink and the mirror, tearing off the cotton patches over his eyes. Later, he'll say he had no clue why he did this; if what happened next hadn't happened, he doesn't know what it would have accomplished.

But he didn't expect what came next.

The bathroom light nearly blinds him Joey throws a hand over his eyes to shield it out. The lights were never that bright, were they? Not even when the bulbs got changed. Why were they so bright now? 

Wait a minute.

Joey puts his arm down and looks in the mirror. He sees his reflection staring back at him. With his eyes.

"My eyes...grew back?" he asks his reflection stupidly.

So focused on his reflect is he that Joey doesn't notice the shadow that vanishes from beside his bed, fading away into the dark.

whosperfectnow:

Since Summers still didn't want Christina doing anything combat-oriented but couldn't put her on desk duty either (not to mention still couldn't pin the unusual disappearance...and later discovery of the remains of his car on her) he put her in the only other place he figured he could keep her out of trouble: Cerebro duty. For the last week she'd been spending her days up with Jenny Elston and she still wasn't quite sure what Elston did, powers-wise.  She was a telepath to be sure, but when asked about anything else, she'd clam up, shrug her shoulders, and say she didn't have the greatest social skills so Professor Xavier figured she was best off monitoring Cerebro--but she was glad for the company.  Cerebro was, most of the time, boring.

"So your latest power acquisition is omnilingualism, huh?"  The girls had taken to playing poker during some of the really quiet moments.  Jenny kept winning and looked up at Tina over her cards as she awaited an answer.

"Yeah.  My boyfriend loves it because I can talk dirty to him in a ton of languages now."

"I'm surprised you haven't picked up some weird armor plating, dating a Rhodes.  They're kinda close with the Starks."

"I do diamond armor.  And I only pick up other mutant powers.  Not technological genius.  And how do you know anything about the Rhodes and Starks?" 

Jenny just smiled.  "Same way I just beat you.  Again."  She tapped her temple.  "Are you sure you're a telepath?  You don't seem to do a lot of mind-reading."

"Spent way too much time in my childhood doing it.  Dammit, you did win again."  Tina started to gather up the cards when the Cerebro alert went off, loudly. The two girls rushed to look at the console.

"Oh shit, that can't be right."  Jenny's eyes widened.  "Yesterday, there were five low-level mutant signatures there.  Now..."

Tina tapped the glass.

"Now it looks like a power bomb went off."  The two girls looked at each other.  Last time this had happened, it was Fargo.  Tina started out of the room.   "I'll get Summers."

***

Ten minutes later, Tina was banging on Summers' office door.

redheadspy:

Natasha sat down on the couch and opened the sealed manila envelope the courier had just delivered. She knew what it was, it was an updated copy of her will, but she wanted to check it over for errors. Jen had been great about doing this on such short notice, but Natasha didn't have too much longer before the baby would come.

It wasn't that Natasha thought that something would happen to her during childbirth, but she was going to be prepared. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. She lived her life by that thought. It had helped keep her alive this long.

Natasha read the document, noting all the assets that were listed and who they were slated to go to just in case something did happen to her. Sure she was married to one of the richest men on the planet, but Natasha had a considerate amount of wealth in her own right. There was money in numerous bank accounts across the world in her different aliases. Collecting all of that information and remembering what was where and under what name had been a chore and a half, but it had given her something to keep her occupied while Tony worked. In the end she got it all organized and had drafted up a new will.

The kids of course would get the lion's share of her estate. It would be divided evenly between Misha, Anya, Eliza, James and the baby. There was even a small part set aside for Stevie, her step-daughter, if the girl remained in this dimension. Tony of course would get her physical assets to do with what he saw fit. She still had a few safe houses in the US and a few in other countries. She hadn't sold all of them when she sold the majority of them last year for Tony's birthday present. There were also a few cars and her personal items.

She continued to look for any errors as she read the document.