"I want to play hide and seek." Rowan bounded back from the slides having successfully vanquished a whole slew of pirates. "Jude! Jude! Judicakes!"

"Uh hide an' seek. Sure." Jude glanced up from his phone to acknowledge Rowan briefly before glancing back down to see what was triggering the vibrate function. His game of candy crush was interrupted with a call overlay. She was calling. Again. "Actually, why don't you go back to the playground? Mom's calling." Jude did not ever call Ghost "mom" except in front of Rowan. The kid had needed a brother. Jude was here to provide that service.

Rowan peeked at Jude's phone pulling it down to his eye level. "Can I talk to her? Is she so, so far away?"

"No!" His game! Jude had just spent a power up and those were not easy to come by! "I mean, she's on a plane. Or, I mean, she's in LA by now if she's calling." He tried to pull the phone away and the boys both grappled with the technology for a moment while the call went to voicemail.

"Hey! No. Let go!"

"I want to talk to MOM!"

"You made me miss the call, squirt. WE can call her back in a sec."

"I am not a squirt!"

"Mon frère?"

Jude clicked a candy match and triggered a successful cascade of sugar. He felt Rowan tugging at his pocket.

"I am not a frayer! I am just a Rowan!" The little dog boy hurrumphed at the teen who was not giving him his full attention. Instead he tugged at his brother's pocket until something interesting fell out.

Jude was kind mad at her, honestly, for flying off to LA with her boyfriend. Not because it left him on part-time Rowan duty, but because... well, he couldn't put his finger on it exactly. He hadn't meant to ignore her calls. He was just trying really hard to beat that last level so he could unlock the next area.

The numbers auto-tallied to show a womp womp worthy failure. He sighed at the wasted boost and his thumb hovered over the "try again?" button.

"Rowan?"

Jude realized that the kid had gone quiet so he looked up from his phone.

Oh man. How long had he been playing? It was just a couple seconds. It couldn't be more than just a few seconds. "Rowan?"

His phone buzzed in his hand as Jude jumped to his feet. Ghost was calling.

Zinn breathed the midday air deeply, even smoggy with the car fumes and almost icy cold it was pleasantly refreshing after the hospital air. Even after working there for so long she still wasn’t used to the smell. Idly she wondered if it was because of her mutation, as she turned her phone back on, expecting at most a text from her Mom or Jac.

She was already in the line of the nearest coffee shop by the time the phone had loaded enough to buzz a notification of a missed call and subsequent voicemessage. She knew it was rude, but she listened to it in the line, and was still listening when she made first place. The barrister knew her and her post-shift order, luckily, as she was concentrating on the contents of the message. She paid and stepped to the side to await her highly caffeinated beverage. By the time the message ended she was out of the shop, coffee forgotten, on route to the park. Car accidents were brutal to little bodies, she had seen the unfortunate aftermath too many times in the emergency room.

Given the age of the elder child she assumed they would be on foot, or possibly bussing it. She had never gone for her drivers permit, but she was certain someone older had to accompany a driver that young. Post-shift-pre-coffee Zinn didn’t calculate the odds of finding two specific children wandering the streets of New York City. There was no time for that. Her eyes scanned the people she passed, most were adults, or children accompanied by adults, or teenagers accompanied by no one.

She scanned her eyes down the length of the street parallel to the park, saw no one that fit the description and slipped inside the gates. If she were to find them, it would be fate. If she were a couple of kids, where would she be? She strode along the paths, scanning, always scanning. She stopped to ask a gaggle of teen girls who were wearing far too little clothing for the weather if they had seen a boy their age and a little one? They giggled between themselves and pointed her in the right direction. She had no time for giggles, and off she strode again, towards the play equipment.

She was almost in sight of it when her eyes fell by chance on a pair of tiny shoes peeking out from behind a pillar. She slowed, and approached the pillar from the side, before peering around the edge. A little kid stood against the pillar, his hands clamped tightly over his eyes, his little black nose wiggling in excitement. She squeezed in beside him, careful not to touch him. If this was not the right kid it was important that she could confidently say she never touched him.

“Who are we hiding from?”

She whispered. For they were clearly hiding.

A constant stream of crapcrapcrapcrapcrap ran through Jude's head as he ran toward the playground. "Ro?" He pooped his head into a slide and narrowly avoided getting clocked by a kid on her way through. He flitted from crawl tube window to waffle ladder in a matter of seconds. "Rowan?" A concerned parent started to shoo hum until the teen blurted out his problem. Then they changed attitude and promised to keep an eye out.

Jude ran hopefully back to his bench and looked under it despite the area being un-obscured with no place to hide. He scooped up his backpack and turned a panic circle before shooting a quick text to Ghost.

Everything OKAY. Can't talk. Playing hide&seek. Don't want to give away position.

That would buy him some time.

"Rowan?" Jude jogged one way, deliberated and then dashed in the opposite direction. Gah! Where could he be?

> “Who are we hiding from?”

"Shhh!" Rowan peeked between his fingers to address the newcomer. Didn't she know how hide and seek worked? "My brudder is playing wif me." The three year old peeked out from behind his clever hiding spot to make sure Jude was still looking and he totally was. With a giggle he hid his eyes again.

"He's mad a'cause I got his secret phone. I'm gon call my mommy." Rowan peeled his hands away from his eyes with a quick glance around the pillar before he got his prize out of his pocket to show his new friend. Rowan glowed with pleasure as he showed off a shiny X-man communication badge. It was kinda of like a branded beeper and just barely fit in his small hand. "You can look, but don't touch."

The little one shushed her, and she peered past the post to get a look at said brother. There was a teen searching in all the nearby hiding spots that might conceal a three-year old, and at a guess she would say that was him. There was no way to tell from here if he was French. He wasn’t wearing a striped shirt, nor a beret. She would have to wait and see. His search seemed somewhat erratic, but it was only a matter of time before he zig-zagged himself to their spot. Or started crying, in which case she would step in. For a teenager to cry in public they were really scared. Or hurting, a lot. It was amazing how much pain a teenager would fob off in an effort to keep looking ‘cool’. It made for a tricky job trying to rate them on the pain scale, but she was practised now, and could recognise the gritted teeth of a liar.

She looked (and didn’t touch) the secret phone. It looked remarkably like the beepers all the nurses wore at the hospital, except much nicer. She made appropriate ‘oooh-ing’ sounds as he displayed his prize. Did teenagers usually have beepers? As far as she knew neither of her brothers has one, but they both had off-brand phones. It sort of looked X-manish, like the emblem all the news articles relating to the x-men often had scrolling in the info bar. She knew that the X-men were based in the mansion, and that Ghost was based in the mansion too. It was becoming more and more plausible that she had indeed stumbled across the exact pair she was looking for with a stroke of blind luck.

“That’s a pretty cool secret phone. What’s your mommy’s name?”

Hopefully he would know. ‘Mommy’ wouldn’t clear much up for her. She drew a pair of lollipops from her pocket and unwrapped one for herself, in lieu of caffeine, sugar would have to do the job. She offered the other to the smaller of the brothers. It was a green one. The green ones were the best. Stranger-danger be damned. If he took it she would help him unwrap it. The little plastic wrapper was tricky to get off without practice. If he didn’t she would respect his training. This was, after all, textbook; a stranger offering you candy in the park, even though her intentions were nothing but pure she herself felt just a thrill of danger.

Okay. Okay. Jude stopped and pinched the bridge of his nose as he thought about it for a second. If he was a wiggly over energetic 3 and a half year old, where would he go?

The moon!

Facepalm.

A group of girls giggled nearby, distracting Jude momentarily.

Actually, Rowan was a mutant. If Jude could just focus for a minute, he might be able to let his power off the hook and find him. That was no guarantee, though. He didn't know his own personal range. Plus... well, there was no telling what Rowan's power was. Jude was too scared to actually copy it on purpose.

Still. If it was the fastest way to find him...

"My mom's names is Momya." The 'duh' was implied by his tone. "She's a good guy and traps them —Kshhhck.— with her powers." He started to make a cage shape with his hands, but it made him drop and scuff the communicator. Rowan was quick to scoop the technology up and dust it off.

Ohh and when he stood up the nice lady was offering him a candy.

"Thank you!" He reached out for the lolly.

"No, Rowan!"

Jude dropped his hand heavily on the woman's shoulder who was offering the candy and yanked her back and toward his fist.

He had no qualms against hitting a lady who was trying to kidnap his little brother.

Momya had pretty much sealed the deal, and the exclamation of the older boy tied it up with a pretty ribbon. She had found them. Maya would be so relieved. It was a combination of the turning to greet the teen and the attempting to stand that did it, and her eyebrow met his fist pretty hard. Her butt hit the ground equally hard. Even sensible nurse heels weren’t made for crouching in a garden with any level of balance. She blinked at the teen, the green lolly lost in the mulch, her own red one crunched instantly into a million little sweet shards between her teeth. She swallowed them, ignoring the protests of her throat, and removed the paper stick from her mouth.

“Nice to meet you, Jude.”

What loss of dignity? There was no loss of dignity. She crossed her ankles. That the bed had been recently watered and was soaking plant nutrients into her skirt was not worth acknowledging. Neither were the spiky bits of pine chips clinging to the weave of her stockings. She touched two fingers to her eyebrow and checked them. No blood. That was good.

“Did you know your Mom is looking for you?”

For she could have easily got the teen’s name from the puppykid, and she suspected simply knowing it wouldn’t be enough to get him to forgive her for the garden lollies. If he was still suspicious she could show him the missed call. She didn’t have Maya saved in her caller ID, so the raw number should be recognisable to the teen.

After waiting a few seconds to be sure he wasn’t going to jump and pummel her into the asters she slowly stood and brushed the worst of the bark-bits off. Good lord she needed a coffee. Kids were sweet, and she liked them even when they were squirming in discomfort, or crying when she vaccinated them. She was generally caffeinated though, and there was minimal punching involved. She was pretty sure she wouldn’t get a black eye, perhaps a little bruising, but generally not too obvious against the canvas of her skin. She could concealer that.

“So, with candy out, could I interest you boys in a hot chocolate?”

The green lolly would be left to the ants. She realised her suggestion could still be taken as suspicious if they still didn’t trust her.

“You pick the place if you like.”

If they agreed once they had their hands on hot milky drinks she could text Maya the good news. She wouldn’t call her though, she had said she would be in a meeting.

He punched the lady and then scooped up Rowan in almost the same movement.

Rowan had wide eyes, tears already pooling in his wide, black eyes. His mouth was comically turned down at the corners. Jude had the passing through that toddlers were more like muppets than he'd previously realized.

The Frenchman had already taken some steps away when he heard his name. That arrested his forward movement. She knew his name. Did he just punch somebody he knew? Rowan was full on crying at this point. Jude turned to see that the woman he'd decked had found some amount of poise.

"Hey, hey. Shh." Jude let the kid slide down in his arms so that he could wipe his puppy nose against his shoulder and the teen could wrap his arms fully around his little brother instead of just hugging his legs.

"She" hiccup "Was" hiccup "Nice!"

"Not everyone who has candy is nice, Ro."

> “Did you know your Mom is looking for you?”

He turned to fully face her then. "You know Ghost?" Jude hugged Rowan tighter as he saw an X-com laying on the ground next to the villainess. Or did she have inside information?

> “So, with candy out, could I interest you boys in a hot chocolate?”

Jude's flat "No." was overshadowed with a loud "CHOCOLATE" from Rowan. The puppy boy squiggled in Jude's arms. "She's nice! She's nice! She's NICE! I KNOW IT!"

He could hardly hear the lady's concession that they could choose the location over Rowan's fighting. Fine. If he wanted to get to know her better, they could.

"Ze Mansion." Surely that would be fine, you know, so long as she wasn't a BAD GUY.

Oh dear, now the little one was really crying. And being spirited away by the French one. Aww, and thought she was nice. Well, that was one down. Even with the mom-drop the teen seemed suspicious. That was good, it would be a little worrying if he just let it slide that some random stranger was offering his little brother candy in the bushes. Really, she would have punched herself in the same situation.

“I ran a first aid class which Maya attended, knowing is a strong word, but I’ve met her, yes. She knows I work at the hospital just there, and I guess when she couldn’t get hold of you guys I was the closest to the park.”

She picked up the beeper and offered it to the teen. His hands seemed a little preoccupied trying to restrain the squirming form of his brother, who seemed quite enthused at the thought of chocolate, in any form hot or not.

”Ze Mansion”

Even better, she could text Maya that they were safely home. Or, in a safe place at least, did they live at the Mansion? Did that mean they were definitely mutants? Or perhaps the family of mutants were welcome too. She plucked a stray piece of tanbark from her ankle and nodded.

“Mansion’s good by me, I think there’s been some traffic accidents between here and there. Do you prefer the bus? Or to walk?”

She didn’t have a car and couldn’t drive, and even if she did and could, she suspected the teen would decline a lift. Smart kid. Carrying a puppykid the whole way to the mansion seemed exhausting, but if he preferred it to catching a bus which would almost certainly be delayed that was fine too. She left the decision making up to him. She didn’t want to get punched again.

Her eyebrow throbbed it’s agreement.

"We dood the bus." Rowan wiped at his eyes even as more tears were pooling. Sometimes once he got going it was hard to stop. "Judy's not 'llowed to drive since he tooked Sam's car."

Jude shifted Rowan's weight around more to stop the child from talking than actual need. He always forgot Ghost had a name other than Ghost. It was extra weird that after all these years now she'd decided to use it. And Jude supposed that the lady, who had yet to introduce herself, wasn't a vampire if she agreed to go to the church, as it were. He accepted the communicator with no small amount of kiddo juggling. He hadn't realized his was missing until she'd offered it up.

"Thank you for your help," the sarcasm was real, "but I think I can handle it from here."

"You hurted her!" Rowan reminded the teen, tugging on Jude's shirt lapels even though his tee shirt didn't have any lapels. That resulted in a sort of "gak!" sound when his shirt collar twisted up around the teen's adam's apple. "You don't hurted nice people. Say sorry or I'm telling."

Jude wriggled his com back into his pocket and then worked to untwist his collar from Rowan's hands. He didn't like that the kid was right.

"Are you... okay?" He frowned at the lady giving her a proper look now that they'd established that she wasn't trying to poison or kidnap anyone. Now that she was standing, he was noticing that he was actually a hair taller than she was.

"Look, there's a healer at the Mansion if he won't make sure you're okay I guess I will." A rousing recommendation that earned the teen a watery-eyed hug from the three year old and then a little smack on the chest.

"But you didn't say sorry."

"Er." The Frenchman let Rowan slide down to stand on his own two feet. He collected Rowan's hand and tugged them in the right direction. "Come on. So long as nobody's dying we can afford to wait for the bus."

Rowan offered up his small hand to the lady. "I'm Rowan. Is your name Doc McStuffins? You have very healfy looking hair."

She couldn’t drive either, so she had no judgements to pass on Jude for not being able to, although that sounded like the beginning of an interesting story. Perhaps another time, when the teen wasn’t already annoyed with her. Rowan seemed quite the handful, and Zinnia could see why Maya wanted to check up on the pair when she hadn’t been able to get Jude on the phone. The youngling was a bundle of energy even when restrained, and having his running free was a tiring thought. The teen was particularly sassy, though, and she felt just a little tempted to take him down a notch. She had to remind herself that this was not her brother, not her responsibility and that he had already punched her in the face, she probably didn’t want to antagonise him.

“Yeah, I’m alright, a bit of a bruise, but I’ll be fine. How’s your hand?”

Because punching straight onto bone, with just a thin padding of eyebrow flesh, couldn’t have been comfortable for him either. She wouldn’t mind meeting a mutant healer, though, a mutation which seemed like it would be in high demand. Not surprising that the mansion had adopted him. Lots of useful people seemed to turn up at the mansion from what she could tell.

Rowan seemed less than satisfied with the not-quite apology, but Zinnia was prepared to let it go. There was no point trying to get blood out of a stone, or an apology out of an unapologetic teenager. She agreed with the bus sentiment. Cabs were alright for short trips here and there, but if they already knew that there would be delays it was signing on for an exorbitant fare.

“My name is Zinnia, and I’m a nurse, but you can call me McStuffins if you like.”

She was vaguely aware of the show he was referring to, but she didn’t know it well. She touched her hair self-consciously. Healthy wasn’t really a word that jumped first to her mind in describing her hair, she had to wrangle it into a ponytail if she didn’t straighten it, and god forbid she leave it alone for a few days. She had fallen for that trap once, and let her hair do its own thing. The tangle had taken hours and a special trip to her Mom’s just to tease it out. It was nice to have someone mention it honestly.

“Thank you, I like your ears.”

It was true, the little flop to them was endearing, and the colour suited him. She took the little, slightly sticky offered hand and walked with the pair to the bus stop. It wasn’t that far really, the mansion must have set up some sort of deal with the bus company to get a special route which hit all the important places, as well as getting out to the mansion as well.

“Did you have a stuffie that needs an operation?”

Her sewing skills were relatively passable. Definitely enough to reattach a limb or eye, or fix some of the other little maladies that happen to well-loved fluffy friends. She couldn’t heal bald patches, or make whole new body parts, but most other things she could take a crack at. The bus stop was covered, which was good, as a light rain was starting to fall. She was glad for her jacket. The traffic crawled past at a steady pace, and she made sure to keep hold of Rowan’s hand. With her other she slid her phone out and sent a quick text to the number she had missed earlier.

>>Found boys in park. Headed back to the Mansion with them now. Hope your meeting goes well. Z.<<

She turned her attention back to her companions.

“So, do you guys live at the Mansion? Or just have school there?”

She hadn’t attended the school as a child, having an invisible mutation made it easy enough to get through school unchallenged, and changing schools would have been more disrupting once her mutation was discovered than leaving her. She was glad that the school existed though, to help visible mutants, or mutants who had an uncontrollable or dangerous powers, to teach them the control they needed to manage their powers, as well as succeed academically.

How was his hand? Automatic man response engaged. "It's fine." It hurt and he'd probably split skin if it wasn't bleeding, but Jude didn't dare draw attention to it by checking it out. It was fine. He wasn't going to croak from scraped knuckles. "Gotta say you, uh, took getting hit really well."

The Frenchman snorted at Rowan's assessment of the lady's hair. Well, sure, she looked presentable and everything, but that was such a specific statement.

"You been watching shampoo commercials?"

Had she asked about his hand because she was a nurse? Hmm.

"It was a Ad. It telled me that womans like to have the prettiest, healfy hair." Rowan pumped his arms excitedly as they walked, the result being that those who were holding his hands had their arms slung around in time with his anecdote.

> “Thank you, I like your ears.”

Rowan fairly glowed with pleasure. "Thank you! My mommy gave them to me!"

Jude snorted again and steered their cadre to the bus stop.

> “Did you have a stuffie that needs an operation?”

"Are you allowed to do bear surgery?" Rowan assessed the nurse with a critical eye. "I don't think you're certified." Jude offered the kid a low five on the sly, but with no hands to spare Rowan simply put his face into Jude's bloodied free hand instead. That transferred a fair amount of blood onto his kid brother's cheek making him look like an incredibly happy accident victim.

"Face five!"

"Gah!" The Frenchman had to let go of the boy and sling his pack around to find a tissue. The tissue was sacrificed on the alter of making the Mansion residents not murder him. He spared a glance for his knuckles and dug around one handed for something to help there, but with one hand it was slow going. Jude swallowed compulsively as the woman sent a text, no doubt to Ghost.

> “So, do you guys live at the Mansion? Or just have school there?”

The teen cleaned the kid's face as he spoke. "Jude lives at the school and now I live at the school too! My mommy is there and her Cafas is there and sometimes we come out and battle robots and stuff."

"Hey." Jude nudged Rowan and went back to digging. "No fibbing."

Chagrined, Rowan amended his story. "We live at the school and go to learning centers. But only my brother and my mommy and my Sam and my Cafas are on the X-man team. I'm going to be one too when I am oooooooold."

The bus arrived. Jude had to deal with a wad of tissues and juggle their bus passes, but he did a fair job. "Pick a seat."

"I want Ms. McStuffins to sit next to me."

"Mmm. Maybe next time. I wanna sit next to you."

"Aww." Was all the fuss he made about it. Sure, Mc- uh, Zinnia was nice and all, but she still had time to show evil colors before they got home.

"So, what's it like being a nurse?" Nurses couldn't be evil, though, right? Because that was like the most thankless job ever. "You're not like an evil vampire nurse only on the job to nick bags of blood, right?" There were plenty of other mutant reasons someone might want to be a nurse. So. Yeah. Jude decided she could be an evil nurse.

She took getting hit pretty well? She touched her eyebrow delicately. Someone else had told her that once, and she’d dumped his rear in the gutter just as soon as she could. Still, the instinct to not react, to take the hit with a blank look in her face and cry about it in the bathrooms at work later was a strong carry over from that particular mistake of a partner. That was too much to lay out on a kid though, even a kid trying so hard to be a man, so she simply dipped her head in agreement.

“I don’t think you’re certified.”

Oh-ho, was that so little man? She quirked an eyebrow, then immediately wished she hadn’t. The cool air was soothing, but still, moving it around was not the smartest thing ever. She watched in silence as the little pup rubbed his face in his brother’s blood. Ew. The potential for germs, not the blood. The Frenchie seemed to agree and fumbled about to get the worst of the blood off his brother’s face, no easy task with his hand still bleeding. She had bandaids, but she let him rummage for a bit so not to offend his teenage pride.

Battling robots sounded impressive, she wondered if they had had a run in with the Police bots too, or if this was a game that the adults played with him. The name Cafas sounded familiar to her, the repetition of it confirmed it in her mind, this was no common name. Hadn’t she met him at the speed dating debacle? Still the Cafas ownership seemed up for debate, and he had mentioned something about being tricked into it by a Maya. The same Maya, as in their mother the Ghost? And was this Sam perhaps the same Sam who wouldn’t let Jude drive his car? And they were all X-men? Small world.

Jude shuffled his handfuls and managed to tap them on to the bus. Zinn focussed her effort keeping hold of Rowan as they entered the bus and presented her own pass dutifully on her turn. They were on the bus safely now, so she relaxed her grip on him so he could choose a seat. It was clearly not peak hour, and there were several options, including a couple where there were two open seats in a row. She indicated one with her non-puppy hand.

“How about I sit in front of you instead?”

She took the seat and dipped her hand into her bag and fished out a bandaid and offered it silently to Jude as she thought about her job and what it was about it that she liked about it. The vampire comment earned a chuckle. Not an evil I vant to suck your blood chuckle, just a standard one.

“Nope, not a vampire. Nursing is… messy. But it’s a great job and I love doing it. Knowing that because of what you do someone who might otherwise be permanently damaged, or even die, can recover properly and go back to their families… I guess I always wanted to be a nurse really, or an ambulance officer."

Similar, but not exactly the same.

“I’m not evil either, to my knowledge… But I do always return my library books late.”

She glanced ahead, despite the traffic the bus seemed to be making ok time. Rowan had already indicated Jude might be an X-man, but she wasn’t certain. Nor was she fully sure what the X-men actually did, except push for mutant rights and turn up at some of the bigger altercations in the city.

“So are you guys both going to be X-men?” (the ‘when you grow up’ was silent) “Do you have to be an X-man if you go to school there?”

If that was the case they surely would have an army by now, the hundreds of students who must have passed through that place… Perhaps they just kept the details of students on file, and called them up when there was a situation that called for their particular mutation. Would she be on their file now? Because she visited and mentioned her mutation to Maya? Did they have mutation scanners at the gate that would take the details down and file them all away somewhere?

She realised she was being ridiculous. Or was she? She really needed a coffee.

"Sanks."

Jude shuffled their things around until he could accept the adhesive bandage. He had to ask for Rowan's help to get it open, which the younger boy loved.

For all his earlier assumptions, Jude realized now just from her nursing comments that Zinnia was likely a better person than he was. He'd done good things with and for the X-men, but he'd proooobably done equal amounts of stupid and selfish things. Purposefully.

"I have a lot of respect for you guys in the medical field. Being a hero is messy too, but it's the kind of messy that I think makes more mess for you guys and construction crews than anything else." He flexed his hand to make sure the adhesive wouldn't tug his skin or little hairs. His hand was still a bit of a mess, but there was no helping it until they got home to the Mansion.

Jude snorted again. "Don't tell my Ghost about ze books. She won't look at you the same again. She battles the inconsistent returns of the Mansion students daily."

"I like books." Rowan chimed in. "I like the ones with LOTS of words."

> “So are you guys both going to be X-men?”

"Yes! I WILL TRAP ALL THE BAD GUYS!" Was Rowan's answer. Jude shrugged through the verbal assault.

"You don't have to be an X. A lot of ze kids aim for it, sough. Ghost made me requirements and running with ze team fit a lot of them so I figured why not for now? I'm only a junior, so I don't ever go alone like the rest of them might."

Jude reminded Rowan that there were other passengers on the bus and that set the boy to pouting. Which was, by comparison, blissfully quiet.

Bloodknuckles somewhat stemmed Zinn zipped her bag and settled it on her lap and dipped her head at the assessment of the type of help provided by the X-men. She hadn’t had any patients whose cause of injury was directly linked to an Xman, at least none that told her so, but she knew others in her department had. Mutant- caused injuries were tricky to treat, as they often broke the rules of standard injuries, and needed innovation to treat on the fly. She couldn’t speak as to the difficulties faced by the construction people.

She felt just a tiny twinge of guilt once she knew that Maya was a book-herder. She bought most of her textbooks now, after one too many run-ins with scary librarians. She still had a coffee-stained tome at home which she had lied about being lost to avoid the frowns of the librarian she had borrowed it from. Puppykid liked books with lots of words.

“I like the pictures.”

The gruesomer the better, nothing quite like a blown up image of a tumour removal to get you excited to study.

Bad guys beware! A few fellow travellers glanced their way, with a mix of amusement or exasperation on their faces. This was New York, people yelling on the bus was nothing new. At least this was a little kid, not an angry drunk. Still his brother shushed him, and sulkypup set to swinging his feet instead, no doubt pondering the dozens of bad-guys he could catch on the bus.

“I guess kids will always want to be the coolest thing around.”

For suburbia kids it would be firefighters, kids in LA would want to be pop hits or movie stars and for kids who lived amidst a group of costumed heroes, well it was easy to see the appeal. She didn’t completely understand the reference to the requirements, but perhaps he didn’t want to say ‘rules’, typical teenager mentality, call it something different and it loses its power.

“That sounds like they’ve got quite the career progression organised. How young do they start you guys?” She cast her eyes over their little companion, who had been maintaining quite the pout. “Are you a mini X?”

She imagined with proper time to hone one’s skills, they could train the little ones up to be extremely efficient.

“What are your mutations?”

She asked the question to them both, although she was pretty sure Jude had mentioned some form of healing ability. She guessed it wasn’t self-centred, seeing as how the borrowed fabric dressing had a spreading patch of darkness on it.

The bus rumbled on towards their destination, the worst of the car crashes carted off to her workmates at the hospital and out of their way. It was almost back on schedule.

> “I like the pictures.”

"No! I like the pictures!" The words he was fond of were now entirely abandoned in favor of the far superior picture fan club. Now that Zinnia had passed Rowan's test, they were both really cool kids who liked pictures. He hadn't at all been trying to impress her with his big brain and how he knew all his letters. Nope. Rowan swung his legs freely, wholly unable to reach the bus floor from his seat.

Jude watched Zinnia pick through her thoughts. Yeah. He supposed the X-men were pretty cool from a mundane person's point of view, but Miss Nurse Zinnia was no plain Jane on the street.

"You can start doing lame stuff like community service as young as 10. I know I did." Jude refrained from rolling his eyes, but it was an effort. "Kids don't see action until 16 and I guess it's kinda like an apprenticeship without a direct mentor until you prove you won't murder yourself and others."

> “Are you a mini X?”

"Yeah, but I'm only 3 and a HALF so not yet."

"Right. Not until you get training, powers, and you have to be 10."

"Am I 10 yesterday?"

"Tomorrow?" Jude translated and corrected at the same time. "No, buddy. You won't be 10 for a looooong time." That got a mouth open and poised for comment, but Zinnia was all for the rescue.

> “What are your mutations?”

"I'm a puppy! Arf, arf!"

Jude cringed only slightly at that and ignored the panting, tongue waggling that followed. He would regret that when he was older, no doubt.

"Nah. I'd rather not say until I know what your power is." Jude leaned back in his seat, more than a little smug because he already knew Zinnia was a mutant. He'd opened that part of his power up when looking for Rowan and it was half the reason he'd been so scared, scared enough to jump straight to punch and run.

"Oh! Oh! I know! Jude's a co-mrkphermat." The teen covered Rowan's lips just in time to cut him off. Phew! That was close.

"You're making it real hard to be suave, kid."

"Mphf mauve?"