Zinnia could barely hold the bouquet in one hand, the bundled stems threatening to escape her clutches. She walked carefully, dodging people on the street with the practiced ease of a New Yorker. She even managed to text with her free hand. She’d tried Ghost and Jude, and was yet to hear back from either of them. She was pretty sure her pink haired acquaintance had ties to the mansion as well. Unless he had just been in a movie where he was an X-man. It was difficult to be sure.

## ‘R U @ mansion?’ ## ‘Can U buzz me in plz? Suprizing some1.’

If there was still no reply she would have to blow her surprise visit and text Jac to let her in. But she was feeling selfish and wanted to see the true look of surprise on her face when she glimpsed Zinnia and the bouquet she had chosen. The florist had helped her to choose, but she had some pretty strong requirements. Not too girly foo-foo. A specific colour pallet. When she saw the spiked flowers she knew it was meant to be. This was precisely the bunch of flowers you would give a giant mantis shrimp you were wooing.

The bus ride was blissfully short and she arrived at the Mansion without fuss. She needed a vase though, to save her poor stretched finger muscles. For that she would need the kitchen. At least she knew where that was. Perhaps she would see Rowan in the yard and he would let her in if no one else would. Although giving that much control to a just grown out of toddler was certainly unwise.

## ‘Is here’

Of course there was no guarantee he would have kept her contact in his phone. The messages might seem somewhat cryptic coming from un-caller ID’d number.

Cafas stared in confusion at his phone for a while. He didn't recognise the number that was texting him, but they certainly seemed to know him. At the very least, if it was a wrong number, it was a really lucky one. So long as they meant Xavier's mansion. Maybe someone had given out his number? Who on earth would do that? It was kind of rude.

The X-man strolled his way to the Mansion gates. The gravel drive kicked up dust in the dry sun, leaving a light coat on his boots. He brushed off his jeans having made to it the gate before any further texts arrived. The pink haired mutant leaned against the inside of the perimeter wall, phone held suspiciously in hand. He was rather hoping for some light to be shed on who was texting him, but it never arrived. Instead, all he got was a poorly spelled notice of arrival.

Okay then...

So he was looking for someone that was trying to surprise someone? What did that even look like? If they'd been trying to ambush someone, he'd have picked them in an instant, but this seemed more social. For one thing, ambushing people in the X-men's HQ was just a bad plan. Few people were crazy enough to pull a stunt like that.

Oh, probably the flowers...

Cafas waved, unsure, out the wrought iron pedestrian gate. A couple camera flashes, a couple of waves back. Seriously, people needed better hobbies. The X-man adjusted his button down, suddenly conscious of the scrutiny he was under. He'd almost forgotten how often people could be found at their gates, he'd been travelling with Maya for so long. "Uh, hey. Sorry, have we met?" Cafas eyed the bouquet somewhat dubiously.

Just celebrity paranoia... Probably.

She wasn’t the only person waiting outside the gates and she guessed she shouldn’t have been surprised. It was a nice day. Good for being paparazzi or a stalker. She had previously wondered what sort of things Jac needed to be security against at a school, but being jostled about by people with oversized cameras and little hand-held voice recorders documenting the comings and goings of anyone they could glimpse on the mansion’s massive lawns. It was just a tad creepy.

The pink-haired actor-mutant surveyed her and her flowers with a look that was borderline unimpressed. Were the flowers too much? Too bright? Like he could talk with hair as radiant as his.

“Hey, yeah once at the…”

Suddenly saying ‘speed dating night’ in front of all the voice recorders and staring eavesdroppers didn’t seem quite right.

“Bar.” She finished lamely.

There were a few mumbled notes into recorders and a camera flashed next to her face, momentarily blinding her. She felt suddenly caught out and like she needed to explain herself. She knew how brutal the press could be and the thought of little Ro seeing hisCafas demonised on TV next to herself was more than she could bear.

“I’ve come to surprise Chief. We’re dating.”

It was such an awkward phrase and she kicked herself for not just waiting for Jac at the bus stop, or at home. It had seemed like such a cute idea when she walked past the florist that she just couldn’t help herself. Now she felt a bit like a bumbler with her foot lodged firmly in her own mouth.

“Could I come in?”

She’d been in before, but Jude had been particularly careful about protecting the keypad when he beeped them in. Plus she wouldn’t be all that surprised if the sprinkler systems had ID-ing properties like super-upgraded METAbots. The thought was just a tiny bit chilling. She didn’t like METAbots.

If he agreed she would slip through the gates with as little fuss as possible and follow his lead as far away from the paps as possible. Or stand awkwardly out of the way if he for some reason wanted to interact with them. If he denied her access it was back to plan B)us stop.

The... Bar?

Not like he'd remember many trips to those with much clarity, but he was pretty sure that with one notable exception, he hadn't given his number to any girls at bars. Hell, he hadn't been to one since he'd started dating said exception. There was that EMT, but Cafas knew her face. Plus, that had been Maya's doing.

No, there was that pause before bar that implied embarrassing. Embarrassing meant... "Oh, yeah, that bar, right. Zinnia right? We're BookFace friends. We were going to do that movie night, that's right." Cafas swung the gate open to allow the woman in. She'd been in his phone previously. In one of them, anyway. Those things broke so easily in a fight.

"You went away right after we exchanged numbers, yeah, yeah sorry. A lot of faces in my line of work." Cafas waved for her to follow as the gate clinked shut. Several of the assembled group looked disappointed that he'd remembered to close it. Their hopes were poorly founded if they expected the celebrity not to be paranoid about paparazzi.

Like they'd have made it ten feet anyway. Taking photos in a school.

"So, who's Chief? Unless you mean Sam? The X-men's leader?" Maybe someone would call him chief. He'd possibly call himself that to impress a girl. Zinnia hadn't struck him as the type to fall for his brand of... Charms. That was totally the wrong word for it, but Cafas wanted to be nice.

Oh thank goodness, he did remember her. She ducked inside the gate and fell in beside him, the bouquet shuffled between her hands as she stowed her phone away. She didn’t blame him for not immediately recognising her- they had only met briefly, in a relatively dim place. And she didn’t have any massive posters of her head about the city.

"So, who's Chief? Unless you mean Sam? The X-men's leader?"

She felt a tiny twinge of recognition…she was pretty sure Rowan had mentioned Jude stealing a Sam’s car… if it was the same Sam, and that was the leader of the x-men no wonder he was on graffiti-scrubbing duty instead of being a ‘real’ X-man. She felt the distinct urge to chuckle, but she managed to subdue it into a little snort.

“No, Jac. Big, rainbow-prawny type. You’d know her if you saw her. She works security here sometimes.”

Where precisely she was unsure. It was a big place. When she’d seen the gathered group at the gate she had though she might’ve run into her girlfriend there, but no luck.

“I’m going to take these to the kitchen and find a vase, feel like a coffee and some company? Alternatively Rowan clued me in to where the good hot chocolate is- the one with mini-mallows.”

She was reasonably confident she could find her way to the kitchen again. Besides if she got lost she could just follow some hungry-looking kid.

The snort was interesting. Maybe Zinnia knew more about Sam's reputation than he'd thought she would. It was hardly surprising he supposed, the guy must of tried it on with a woman in every person's friend circle in his years of womanising. Being the leader of the X-men made him pretty recognisable too.

"Oh yeah, yeah I've seen her. You guys are dating? No more speed dating for you then. Can't imagine you miss it, once was more than enough for me." Cafas laughed as they crossed the drive towards the stairs. So that's who the imposing prawn was. He figured she'd been there for security, having assessed her outfit, but he'd never really had the opportunity to speak to her. When the Mansion was bringing on extra security help, the X-men were usually running on two hour naps putting out fires all over the city.

"Yeah I'll come wi- Wait you know Rowan?" Cafas stopped dead and snapped around to face Zinnia, brain working hard to figure out... "Wait wait... You're not...Because I think you're down as a nurse on Facebook... This might be a little racist, sorry, but you're not the woman he calls Doc McStuffins are you?" Because Rowan did like to say how he'd met Doc McStuffins once. Actually, what he liked to say was the Jude had hit her. Cafas had been meaning to ask Jude about that. The way Rowan told it did not make Jude sound like a good guy at all. Apparently he'd broken his hand and Doc McStuffins had made it better, and given him coffee that didn't taste like the coffee Cafas gave him. Her coffee was yummy.

That seemed like an exaggeration. One never could tell with mutants, but he was fairly certain Rowan was just missing something. Like DocProf.

"Oh yeah, yeah I've seen her. You guys are dating? No more speed dating for you then. Can't imagine you miss it, once was more than enough for me."

No more speed dating indeed, she was glad for it. There were just too many men there that reminded her of one ex or another. She lived in fear while there that someone at one of the tables would be her actual ex. But that, thank heavens, had not come to pass.

“Not even a tiny bit.” She agreed.

You needed more than a minute between buzzers to actually get to know someone and whether they would be a good match for you. You needed hours making costumes and watching movies and then a big ol’ absence to really be sure what you wanted.

"Yeah I'll come wi- Wait you know Rowan?”

The wheels were madly turning, she could tell. She wondered if she said she knew Maya and Jude whether his head would pop right off. Aww. Rowan remembered her. She grinned at the character he had given her. It was one of the nicer names people had called her, and from such a small one it could hardly be called racism. When it was a 50year old man on the other hand… she pushed that thought away.

“I imagine I am, although I haven’t actually sewed up any stuffed animals in a while. Mostly just stuffed vests.”

He had stopped to stare at her while he processed that she might be known to his step-puppy and she took over leading the way towards the kitchen. If she could remember where it was. At the very least it had to be inside, so she started there.

“We met at the park one time when Maya couldn’t find them. So I accompanied them back here and we had hot chocolate. Well, Jude and I had coffee, and the floor had a lot of hot chocolate really. But I think some maybe made its way actually into Rowan’s mouth instead of all over his face.”

She grinned. Mess was just synonymous with kids.

“How are they, by the way?”

All three of them, she hadn’t seen them since before she left for placement, and she imagined Rowan had grown a fair bit since then. She led them confidently down the wrong hallway for some time before she finally looked around and realised she didn’t know where she was.

“Er, I’m lost.”

This place was just so big, and it felt like the floorplan changed depending who was traversing it. Weird.

Apparently "random nurse he'd met once speed dating" Zinnia didn't think it was even slightly odd that she might know his girlfriend's sons. That seemed like a stranger coincidence to Cafas, but then, apparently she was dating someone who was working at the Mansion. Who knew how long that had been doing on for?

Maya had done a first aid course too, hadn't she? There was every possibility this was the same nurse. For a city with a population approaching ten million, it sure seemed to be a small city. Then again, when you could go months without seeing someone you lived in the same city as, maybe not.

Cafas had kind of drifted off following Zinnia. By the time she forced him to focus with a question, they were several turns the wrong direction. Good thing he hadn't let her wander off by herself. That was a good way to get yourself in trouble at the Mansion. Seriously, some of their security features couldn't be safe...

>>“Er, I’m lost.”

"Yeah you are, It's back this way." The metal manipulator turned and started to retrace their steps. "Ro's good. Honestly he's pretty sheltered here. Jude... Well I don't know the last time he deigned to speak to me." Cafas got the distinct impression Jude didn't approve of his relationship with Maya. That didn't seem to be going away with time either.

"So what happened with the park? Rowan's story seems a little... Exaggerated."

The pink haired mutant-come-filmstar-come-step-dad-figure took over the directions and guided them back towards the kitchen and caffeinated beverages. Some part of her wanted to try and curb her caffeine addiction. The other, larger, coffee-flavoured part needed to be satisfied.

“That’s good that Ro’s well, he seems like a handful, but a good kid. Jude seems like… a teenager. But a good one.”

She shrugged. Puzzle-families were always tricky to negotiate. If not speaking was the worst that was going on they would be fine.

He asked about the park and she touched her eyebrow reflexively. The wound had long since disappeared under Jude’s borrowed mutation’s touch, but the wince was deeply ingrained.

“Umm, well I offered him a lollypop and Jude punched me in the face. I did not offer Jude a lollypop.”

In fairness, she had been giving off some pretty massive stranger-danger vibes, and you could never be too careful. Not that punching an unknown mutant was exactly careful behaviour. Knowingly punching a mutant, without knowing their ability, well that was just plain ballsy.

“I don’t think he copied my ability, but when we got back here he borrowed a healer’s and fixed me back up, no harm done.”

Except for the tanbark in her stockings which had left a persistent ankle-itch. Not that she was still sore about it or anything. Those were good stockings.

“Maya left me a message to see if I could find them ‘cause there had been a bunch of accidents and she couldn’t get hold of Jude and I think she was going into a meeting or something.”

So her reason for lollypop offering was solid, even if her technique left something to be desired.

"No offence, I can see why Jude hit you." Cafas wouldn't have. At least, he wouldn't have opened with that. Jude was young and temperamental though. He could be forgiven for leading with a punch, asking questions after. Especially in cases of strange woman offering lollipops to his little brother in a park. "Still, not the greatest reward for helping a worried mother. This was around November right? Yeah, we were in L.A. for a meeting with my ex-publicist."

Doesn't sound half pretentious does it?

There, they were on the right track. You could tell by the increased population of students. The kitchen was pretty much the hub of the Mansion. If you needed to find someone, waiting in the kitchen was the surefire way to find them. Everyone needed to eat, teenagers doubly so. Some of them never seemed to stop. Not that Cafas could talk, his caloric intake was pretty intense. Especially with trying to combat the effect of daily ghosting. Needed to build muscle as fast as he was losing it.

I probably can't sustain the decreasing corporeality like Maya... That might be something to look out for.

"So, you're a mutant? Don't think we got to that in our ninety seconds." She had said Jude didn't copy her. That meant she was a mutant. Jude didn't copy humans. It seemed almost like a requirement when meeting new mutants to discuss mutations. Some people didn't like it. Cafas could see why, it wasn't exactly comfortable. Oh hey, you were a criminal because of your DNA a few short years ago? Cool, what flavour of criminal? Still, it seemed like they all did it.

"No offence, I can see why Jude hit you." She snorted. No offence was taken, she’d seen it too at the time. But it had got the job done, and both kids made it back to the mansion without giving their mother a stress ulcer. They probably could have done it themselves, but then where would the acquaintances be made?

“Ex-publicist?” Hopefully not through anything too drastic. If his preferred clientele were mutants it was never off the cards. It was hard not to paint mutants with the brush of a few – that was a quick way to the registration act of the past. Cafas seemed curious about her mutation status. Or perhaps he was being polite. It seemed he would have far more day-to-day contact with those with an active X-gene than she would. Case in point – the kids of assorted ages and visible mutation level milling about towards the promise of food. She was curious too, so much potential for data collection in a place like this. She would need some pretty high approval for that though. At very least the headmaster, perhaps even the leader of the X-men, this ‘Sam’ people kept mentioning.

“Yeah, I breathe non-normal air. Carbon dioxide, stuff like that.”

She shrugged. It was a weird power to summarise into a simple sentence. She suspected ‘air stuff’ was already taken in his mind by a certain someone else. She wondered what might happen were she breathe in his girlfriend. It was an intriguing thought, but a little scary.

“And you’re… bulletproof?”

She was certain she had seen that on the news.

"He was being rude to Maya." So yes, ex-publicist. Nice to talent, rude to everyone else. The was the sleazy Hollywood way. Cafas had thought Alfie was different. He'd been proven wrong. Plus he wasn't much good at his job. Hell, his new publicist had actually managed to make Cafas and Maya's relationship more publicly accepted even with the backlash from Alfie and co.

They should change their name to that. Way better name.

They crossed into the kitchen weaving between milling teenagers, discussing mutations as they did so. Cafas was more interested in Zinnia's mutation than her shrug suggested she'd been expecting. Breathing carbon dioxide was usually reserved for the out breath. If she could breathe it in, then what did she exhale? His mind went immediately to photosynthesis. (and then quickly to the mitochondria: The powerhouse of the cell!)

>>“And you’re… bulletproof?”

Cafas pulled open a cupboard and looked for a vase. He wasn't sure where to find one, actually. Well, he knew of plenty, but they were typically in use. "That's more of a side effect. I control metal. Everything from moving it to playing with its properties, like melting point and stuff. The more I use it, the more is seem to be able to do." He supposed it was much like any other mental function. The more maths he studied and used, the more complex stuff he could comprehend. Same thing.

Well, sort of.

"So," He began, pulling open yet another cupboard and frowning into the shadowy corners, "What exactly do you exhale? Can't be C-O-2, metabolising requires a chemical change." A rather tall mug, but no dice on the vase. The mug did kick that coffee addicted part of his brain into craving mode though. "Unless your mutation changes that too." Which was totally plausible.

Rudeness to a significant other was definitely a reason to let someone go if you had that kind of power. Her skin crawled every time someone made a nasty comment about her girlfriend’s appearance. Despite the ‘thick skin’ Jack had spent years building up Zinnia hurt on her behalf. Mean people were mean. And you can’t just fire people willy-nilly on the street.

Pinkie rifled through the cupboards and dark recesses of the kitchen, seeking a vase to hold her beauties. She made her way to the ‘mallows Rowan had shown her, setting the flowers delicately on the bench next to the kettle, which she flicked on.

“Oh, that’s cool.” He would be a handy man to have around if you dinged your car. Or you know, worked in a profession where people shooting at you was a semi-regular occurrence. She could only imagine him verses one of the new Metabots... Or had she seen that on the news?

“It depends… usually oxygen, sometimes carbon monoxide, I can switch the other way too to be ‘normal’, but it’s no more efficient than my default. Makes for some bewildered scientists that’s for sure.”

She was lucky not to have been scooped up into some kind of medical experiment. Lucky that she ‘passed’ enough to escape the camps she knew had taken so many mutant lives. The kettle clicked to complete and she poked her head out of the walk-in pantry (who paid for all this stuff? Taxes? Rich benefactors? Cheat codes to life?).

“Coffee or cocoa?”

It was a ‘would you like either’, rather than an ‘either/or’ question. But it had been a few hours since her last hot caffeinated fix, so she was having a combo. Plus: ‘mallows!

“Have you lived here long?”

Here the mansion, here the country, his accent was faint, but distinctly un-american… She felt he might have told her that at the speed-dating rink, but her memory was hazy, almost as if it was a thread of history she didn’t have data to check.

She filled her mug with hot coffee goodness and a splash of milk. Mallows, of course, and a spoon of the cocoa powder. The mansion had good stuff, considering it was a school.

Baffled more than scientists. Cafas had no idea how that worked. Then again, his girlfriend turned into a cloud, so what the hell did he know? Mutations were weird, and the more information he got about them the less sense they seemed to make. Maybe it was like midichlorians? He just needed to not ever think about it and it would all sort itself out around him

It'll turn out to be absurdly complicated anyway, and I'll never wrap my head around it.

"Cof.." No, no... No. Cafas pushed his craving aside, his brain already feeling tired for the lack of caffeine. The cocoa didn't fit his macros though. Cafas sighed. "Actually, I'm good. Do they have some tea in there maybe?" He smiled politely and slid the giant mug her way. Tea was not coffee. Coffee was coffee. Still, if he believed hard enough right? She'd promised one hundred.

>>“Have you lived here long?”

Cafas gave Zin a questioning look, but she missed it. Well, if that wasn't the most vague question in the world. Cafas turned to a new cupboard for a vase. "The Mansion? Moved in in Oh nine, lived here for a few years, but I moved out a couple years ago. Got my own place. Still spend most of my time here though. It feels more like home than my apartment, but most of my family is here, so I suppose it would." The training facilities were amazing too. He could do a lot more than at his gym. The gym had more people around though. He'd miss the little crew that tended to be there at the same time as him.

"Aha!" Cafas pulled out a vase from the back of a dusty cupboard. It was... Adequate in size? Maybe? They were big flowers after all. He set it on the bench and flashed a faux-smug smile. "X-men to the rescue once again. No need for applause."

Her coffee-cocoa concoction was already steaming in her mug when he gave a polite cough (so polite it didn’t actually sound like a real cough anymore) and requested tea instead. The urge to roll her eyes and say ‘yes Dad’ was deep, seated in being the child of a Brit in the US of A. Still, she had spied a collection of bags and loose leaves and even a tea-pot (though it was themed after a police box).

“Herbal, black or green?” or some hellish combo of the lot. She wasn’t against tea, per se, but she preferred hers icy and full of sugar- or better still, coffee. He made his selection and she set to work boiling more water to fill the pot. The idea that some houses didn’t have kettles at all was odd to her, another throwback to her British heritage. Something something about microwaved tea and barbarians…

So he didn’t live at the mansion, rather was just visiting loved ones. Somewhat like herself. Could an empty house ever really feel like a home? She doubted it. Minimum requirement was a fluffy family member, even for the cold-heartedest of realmen. It was a documented fact that as people got old and stopped seeing and touching others their health declined. It was one of the reasons her nursing home had a resident tabby or two. Good for the oldies, good for the cats. She was sure at least one of them was a stray, it seemed to come and go as it pleased, let itself in and out somehow and just generally behave a little… odd. It was cute though.

"X-men to the rescue once again. No need for applause."

She quelled the urge to clap.

“Oh, huzzah! My tax dollars paying off at last!”

Were they tax funded? She had always assumed that the government had to be subsidising them somehow. It was only fair seeing as they kept dozens of otherwise high-risk youths off the street. Even higher risk when they had abilities like those she had seen out and about.

“Tha-ank you.” She filled the vase with cool water from the tap and the teapot with hot water from the kettle. Tea and stems met their respective waters and were shimmied into place. The leaves of the bunch of flowers hung almost completely over the vase, which made it look like they were floating above the benchtop. Suitably magical.

Beverages poured and flowers hydrated she settled in to one of the higher chairs to sip the dark beverage. Sweet, sweet caffeine. Despite the heat of the mug she curled her hands around it and puffed a sigh of contentment.

“So, when you’re not punching bad guys or lifting cars with your mind or whatever, what do you do for fun?”

There had been talk of movie watching, but that had never got off the ground. Movies without popcorn weren’t really movies at all… and somehow she doubted he ate popcorn. Something about the rippling abs the billboards liked to splash around.