Did he smirk a little bit in self satisfaction when she was thrown off by him pointing out her solid parts? You bet!

She called him out for paranoia, and he simply scoffed. "You wanna take the front door and stairs, be my guest, but I hope you like the Alone at Home movies. Yeah, it was like that. The stuff he'd seen Elke cook up in his time... She should have gone into physics or something. "I know I'm not a fan."

He watched her try and figure out how she was going to get up to the roof, listening to her power explanation for a second before sighing. "Alright, grab on then... Hold tight. Don't want you falling off." He looked at her for a moment and then waved her forward impatiently. "C'mon, c'mon, lets get this over with." He had enough force stored to get them up to the roof easy. One jump was all that it would take, and they wouldn't have to climb. With his power, they could even land on the roof silently as well.

When she finally grabbed him, he would jump immediately, launching them into the air and neatly toward the roof... at least, if everything went according to plan.

Juniper blinked at him and tilted her head a bit. "Alone at home? I've never watched them before." There was something vague in the back of her mind about it, but it was foggy and she couldn't remember.

So... she just had to grab on? Like, hold on the same way she did to Xavier?

Was this going to become a weird thing people always did with her? She wasn't sure she liked the notion. Was she a backpack now?

"uh... sure, I guess." Could this guy fly? She didn't know much about him other than a few random headlines she had seen a few times and the fact that he always looked pretty good in spandex. That was about it.

Reaching out, she decided to just straight up fuse her own hand into his arm and leave the rest of herself phased since he had warned about her falling off. Or dropping her. Whatever. "Locked and loaded. You couldn't shake me off now if you tried."

Oh, crap.. was that boasting again? "Er... please don't try. I rather like my hand attached to my body."

And then he jumped, and honestly, she probably should have been used to traveling this way by now but it kinda caught her off guard? Like, it wasn't the same way Xavier bounced around. So in a panic, she maaaaay have accidentally phased the both of them and curled up to cling to his arm... not unlike a koala, in fact.

This time, at least, she managed not to shriek obscenities as they shot up into the sky at an accelerated rate like a firework.

"Aw crap, sorry! My bad! I can... um.. keep us phased as we land?!" Who was panicking? She wasn't. Totally calm. Absolutely rock solid. No spine straightening terror here.

... Wow, skyscrapers certainly looked different from up top didn't they?

Ah, so she clearly wasn't a woman of culture. Damn shame. 10 year olds using slapstick style antics to crush burglars were his jam. It was sorta like what he did, but the criminals were worse, and he just used a crow bar. He stared at her blankly as she hesistated to grab on, but then put her whole ass hand in him.

"Well... that's a first. Huh. Yup. Dunno if I like that. Better get this over with." WHOOOOSH! They were suddenly very, very high in the air. Woah. He understood what was happening as it transpired, given the knowledge his extra sense brought to him. She'd made them much lighter, but he'd still used the same amount of force to launch them. Logic only followed that they would rocket high into the sky.

A slight smile curled the sides of his mouth as he looked down. Damn... that was useful.

She went into a mental scramble, and he looked at her with an almost bored expression. "No worries. Make us solid. We'll land fine." He would then move to pick her up in order to make it so she didn't accidentally hit the ground first. With a moment of focus, he redirected them so they would land on the right roof. From there, he just.... let them plummet.

When they landed, he would reach out his right foot, and easily soak up all of the kinetic energy from the fall, leaving them totally unharmed.

"See? No worries. Let's get inside."

His arm was tingling now... that was great; having a good store of energy would prepare him well for what ever his daughter did when they found her. He headed toward the door to the roof.

Every part of her on the inside was screaming that he was a lunatic. Thankfully, at least one part was able to remind her that he was an older, experienced mutant and if he wasn't worried she probably didn't need to be either.

... The remainder didn't help lessen the horror of freefalling from the height they were at, but, hey! It was something at least right?!

She turned him solid but remained phased herself. Just clinging. Yep. This was her life now. Day by day she lost a little more respect for herself. She really needed to move back out to the country at some point where the only thing you typically had to deal with was a loose bull once in a while and lots of racists.

There was nothing physically there for him to grab or secure. She was a spirit tagging along for a ride she didn't wanna be on anymore. The stairs would have been much nicer to her @#$%inf heart!

By the time they landed, she wasn't even able to marvel over how they had landed with such ease and not become people shaped splats on the concrete. She was shaking like an overly excited chihuahua up until the point she dislodged herself from him and took a nice big step away. She took a moment to collect herself so she didn't just spend the whole time giving him terrified side-eye, and then followed after.

The door that would lead down to the fifth floor seemed innocuous enough from the outside. There wasn't any obvious tampering, either. Just a doormat on the ground and a shiny metal doorknob.

... that was rigged to a high voltage car battery on the other side.

They landed safely, and the girl seemed to be on the edge of a nervous breakdown by the end of it. He shook his head and chuckled at her. "Kid, that was the least scary part of what's about to happen tonight." He turned toward the door, and reached for the handle, pausing for a moment. It was clean. Everything else was dirty, but this had been polished pretty well... To make a solid contact, no dirt or grime in the way.

The old shocker handle trick. She'd been here a while if she'd had time to set that up. He remembered the first time she'd gotten him with it. Her 5th escape attempt. Jumped out a window while he was out.

He sighed, and looked about for a moment before pulling out a long prybar and placing it against the door jam, forcing it open and breaking the handle mechanism in the process. With a little work, the door opened. It was louder than he would have hoped, but the battery just inside the door was affirming enough that he'd made the right choice not to touch it. "Knew it. Don't touch any door handles... Who knows how many traps she's put up..."

He paused, and reached down to the doormat, lifting it to see if it was trapped as well. Either way, he would carefully step around, and into the stairwell, waving his foolish companion in behind him. "Stay close, and stay phased... You never know what she's rigged up, here."

Juniper wanted to argue that point. "I dunno man, I can handle a lot of $#&@ usually, but plummeting from that high up is not one of them."

She proceeded to stand there like an idiot while he forced the door open for some reason since she had no idea what he'd been through with the brat before. "I... um.. coulda hopped in there and opened it for you? I can do some things and stuff."

Once she was able to see why he'd pried the door open instead of using the doorknob, she had to pause and reevaluate the whole situation. The child had set up the equivalent of an electric fence? Where had she even gotten a car battery? Why boobytrap the roof door?? WTF?!!?

The doormat... was just a doormat. There was a poorly drawn picture of a willy under it though as if someone had set it up knowing someone was gonna go snooping at some point.

By the time Juniper spotted the drawing she'd decided she'd thoroughly had just about enough. What was wrong with the kids in the city? Stabbing people and rigging doors with electricity? Also, there was a blond one running around who was a kid, but actually like 40 and totally a monster?

Her expression flattened and she breathed in deeply, and out slowly. "Right. Whatever. This is all weird and I'm totally over it."

She marched on past him, through him even, making sure to keep anything he could try and grab out of his reach. There was a stairwell just inside the doorway that led down and had a few angles before it got to the floor below. She leaped right over the edge to cut the stairs, snagged part of the wall on her way down, and swung herself back over onto the floor just inside the fifth-floor stairwell.

She wasn't sure what she was supposed to look for when it came to if a door was rigged or not... so she just put a hand on it. phased the whole thing, and shoved it out of the frame. The slab of wood toppled over and the hinges were left still stuck in the doorframe.

"...Woah.. this place is a mess." Walls had been knocked out or had crumbled from age. It was trashed, with graffiti everywhere. There was a couch in one corner and rugs and tarps scattered all over the floor.

What she didn't see was various tripwires scattered around, or that there seemed to be plenty of places to hide amidst the trash and various cardboard boxes.

"... is there really a kid living in this?"

She had no clue there was a very sharp, very dealy arrow speedily heading her way with near-perfect aim for her neck.

Saphirus waved off her response, He was used to it. He had fallen from heights that could kill a man on an almost daily basis for over a decade at this point. He looked back as she offered to step through the door. "Nah... Don't want you goin in blind. Never know what's in there. Gotta take it one step at a time."

He shook his head and tossed the doormat aside when he saw the drawing. True to form. He looked up from the drawing to the younger woman just deciding out of nowhere that she was done with this, and pushing THROUGH him to head down the stairs. "Son of a, wait, damnit." He hobbled after her, pausing to step over a trip wire on the stairs, and rounding the corner as the door fell. Woah... She could do that?

Effective. Also, Stupid.

"Jesus, don't go in there alone!" The room wasa death trap. He spotted six total concealment hiding spots, ten trip wires and an actual bear trap. He was tense and alert by the time she moved into the middle of the room. He felt the arrow more than he saw it, lifting a finger in an instant to redirect it into the wall in front of them.

"Moose! You come out here!" He'd felt where the arrow came from, so he was already walking that way, neatly avoiding the trip wires as he closed distance. It could always be a clone, so he kept his senses open and aware.

About halfway to where he was going, while the man was carefully picking his way through carefully, a clone popped out of a box with a bow in her hand and a very cheaply made feather crown on her head. "You'll never take us alive!"

And then she reached over and yanked on a string that led up to the ceiling and an honest to goodness grenade bouquet fell down from a hole in the ceiling.

... right in front of Juniper's face.

"WHATTHE@#$%"

Okay, maybe she should have taken his warning a little more seriously...

In a panic, she phased the whole goddamn stretch of the floor and dropped herself, Saph, The clone who'd popped out of the box, and another clone who had still been hiding straight through to the next floor below. And then, for good measure, she did it again until they were on the 3rd floor and a had a decent amount of space between them and the explosion- which rattled the whole building- because she knew how grenades words and wasn't going to try and deal with that @#$%.

"...The actual @#$%... where does a toddler get explosives like that!"

She pulled herself out of the pile of trash she had landed in since she hadn't discriminated and everything had come down with them.

A very surprised Elke was standing there with a cake pop still in her mouth, surveying the suddenly full-floor with the 3rd clone at her side. And then she looked up at the ceiling and squinted at it, since it was still there and appeared to be in once piece still.


"... The hell kinda witchcraft is this?"

The clones freaked out.

"Wiiitch! WIIITCH! BURN HER!"

Saph knew it was a clone the second she jumped out of cover and cried out. Great, so she was this well prepared for an approach from above... This was more advanced than she'd been when she was just a kid. That meant she was even more dangerous, now. Great. We was getting too old for this.

Definitely too old for the FREAKING GRENADE BOUQUET that dropped from the ceiling. "Son of a-" He moved to dive over the grenades and time an absorbtion field to soak up all of the force, but was beat to the punch when the floor wasn't there when he tried to jump. He landed on the fourth floor neatly on his right foot, looking at Juniper as she caught her balance and the two clones just plopped onto the floor in piles. They then repeated the process for good measure.

Juniper was powerful. Insanely powerful. He felt what she was doing. Had... He met mutants at this level in the past? Abyss, perhaps. He landed neatly on the third floor as well, just as the clones landed in piles once more, and Juniper landed in trash.

He ignored the loud booming and the building shaking, however, as he'd noticed right away that his daughter was here. He knew it was her... He could tell her apart from her obviously less composed clones.

He was upon her in a flash, digging up the floor at his feet he boosted forward so quickly. Rather than attack the little girl, however, he found himself wrapping her tightly in an embrace. "Moose, oh goddamit, I was so worried about you!"

The cake pop flew out of her mouth as she was sorta tackled and then hugged really @#$%in' tightly, and if the air had still been in her lungs she might have called the guy a pedo really loudly. But, alas, she just kinda wheezed for a second while her clones ran around in a panic looking for weapons they could use against Juniper. Who was still digging herself out of the trash, currently?

"UUfh, my... ribs... dude..." The child slapped at one of his stupidly broad shoulders to try and get him to let go since her other arm was trapped in the hug. "Can'tbreath!"

... Was this how she was going to die? Suffocated by a tool? How tragic!

Once she was finally able to breathe again she focused on getting her clones to shut the hell up first, and then squinted angrily up at the intruder. Intruders. Though, she'd never seen the short blonde before who was dusting herself off and walking over to stand off to the side of them.

"What the hell do you want, geezer. I already said I'm not going back to that pansy-ass school."

Juniper dusted her hair off and went over to join them. Now that there wasn't an imminent explosion to worry about she could focus on the kid she had come here to find.

... She really was just a kid, wasn't she? Her mental image of the girl had been a lot more nefarious, honestly. This girl looked like a brat, but was so short and still had chubby cheeks that it was actually hard to picture her as the one who had stabbed Xavier in the back.

The rest of her will to exact some kind Vengence died off and she stood off to the side awkwardly, with her back to a support beam. Now she just felt like an idiot for hunting down a little girl.

It was also suddenly very obvious that this man and this girl were family. Maybe not related, but a family none the less. She watched him squeeze her in a tight hug and had to look away because it brought up bitterness at the fact that she had never been hugged like that before.

This was neither the time nor the place.

Juniper turned her attention to warily eyeballing the three clones who had all grouped together and were still pointing various makeshift weapons at her. One of them was holding a piece of broken wood like a steak.

... She wasn't a @#$%ing vampire.

"Like I'm giving you a choice. You're my Daughter, damnit, even if you don't know it yet." He had her now. He sure as heck wasn't letting go. "Huff!" He lifted her over his shoulder, and turned toward Juniper and the clones.

"Alright, you two, settle down and I'll get you Ice Cream on the way home." He spoke to the clones, who were losing their minds right about now. As he did he reached out and plucked out a switchblade from her sock, a fold out from her pocket, and a gerber from her waist, tossing them to the side. He tilted his head as he noticed another thing in a hidden pocket. Quickly he fished out a rusty corkscrew and shook his head, tossing it away as well.

"I got a lot of paperwork to do to keep you from going to jail for the rest of your life, Moose. Gotta start it as soon as I have you on house arrest."

He looked to Juniper, who seemed to have lost the will the fight. "See? Just a kid. Can you get us out of here safely?" He had much more respect for her powers at this point than he had before, clearly. No need to burst through any walls if she could just let them walk through. "Dunno if this house can take much more..."

"What? Hey! Put me down! This is literal kidnapping!" Elke wiggled as much as she could in protest. "No! I worked hard for those! Give em back!!" Goodbye, carefully scavenged weaponry. You will be missed.

The third clone looked offended that she had been left out of the ice cream offer and waved her hands around silently with her jaw dropped open.

"I refuse! Give me liberty or give me death! You can't put a corpse under house arrest!"

Juni was.... not prepared for this. Not the bombs. Not the clones. Not the wild mouth the little girl had on her. She shot Saph a wild-eyed stare for a moment as his daughter demanded death before imprisonment and suddenly had infinite amounts of respect for him. He'd had to raise her twice now, huh? It sounded like absolute torture.

"Yeah, I can get us out no problem. Just gimme something to hold onto and I can phase us all through the-"

The little girl he was carrying suddenly starting making grunting and groaning noised and was holding onto her head and stomach simultaneously.

"Uugh... Mr. Stark... I don't feel so good."

It was a slow, strange process to watch, but gradually Elke started growing. Shifting? She was awake for the whole thing too and made just about every sound of pain a human was capable of, as well as a slew of very colorful obscenities. Child-sized clothes ripped as her body grew, her hair grew, head grew. Various things filled out. She wasn't a scrawny, short child anymore by the time it was done.

A decently tall, muscular woman was all that remained, shaking off the remnants of the painful shift. She was sweaty, panting, and red-faced, and looking at her hands like she hadn't seen them in a few years.

"...I hope to never see that happen ever again for the rest of my life. Oh @#$% the sounds." She'd thought listening to someone burn to death would be the worst thing to be stuck in her head forever, but... bones cracking and creaking while their owner shrieked like a banshee? Nope. Nopenopenope. Never again if she could help it. Those poor people who had been de-aged.... Jesus.

Elke looked up to Saph as her breathing calmed down a bit and suddenly grinned the biggest, widest grin she could muster.

"Dad... i'm back!"

...Another thought hit Juniper right then and she blinked.

...Huh.

The kid was a grown-up now, right? That sounded like fair game to her.

Juni marched forward determinedly, lifted an arm like she was gonna punch Elke- because she totally was, and did just that. She punched her. Right in the mouth. Elke had seen it coming and even if she was tired she'd turned to respond with a block and a punch of her own right away, but... her first went right through Juniper's head and Juni's fist went right through her block and into her face.

"That... was for my best friend!" Juniper turned immediately, hurried a few steps away, and crouched down to weep quietly over her poor fist. Holy @#$% that had hurt! Elke's face was super goddamn hard!

Elke, to her credit, took the punch with grace and then started laughing. It hadn't been a very good one, hadn't even really hurt a whole lot. She was more mystified that her own attack had been shrugged off so friggen easy by the witch and her weird-ass power. "@#$%&, you really need to work on your form. That was weak as s*it."

Her clones didn't take the attack as well as she had and ran screaming at Juniper, tried to tackler her- which just ended with the three of them flying through her phased form and all landing in a pile after smacking into the support beam.

The building started shaking again and... then.. just didn't stop shaking.

"Ah @#$%." Elke supplied, helpfully. The building was coming down.

"I'm your dad, I couldn't kidnap you if I tried!" He very much believed her that she worked hard for her sharp things collection. It was simply a tragedy that he was throwing all of them away. Damn shame.

"Oh, come on, you don't actually want to die. You have too much troublemaking to get done." He looked to Juniper, who had that look in her eyes, and shook his head.

"I told you so." He didn't figure he had to explain that statement. He started to move to get them to a position in which Juniper could work her magic when suddenly Elke started behaving strangely. Was this a ploy?

She'd played dead before... This was different, though. There was a pop as something in her snapped out and into place as it grew, and he set her down immediately, his eyes wide as he jumped back.

A new ability?! No... this was... Right. This had happened to him, hadn't it? He'd forgotten about it, as the pain had made him pass out. Quickly, he pulled off his trench coat, draping it over her tattered clothed form. "Welcome back, Moose." It was then that Juniper got... bold. She went for a punch, and...

She hit. Saph winced a bit, and then grinned a bit. He'd been wincing for Juniper's poor hand, apparently. The girl couldn't punch, and Elke took it well. She'd clearly grown up.

Her clones had not. Saph tried to step in to stop them a moment too late, and they smacked into the support beam in an almost too uncanny moment. With a sigh, he turned to the others, and then nodded to Juniper as she scooped up Moose and launched himself though the window. He knew the phasing mutant had it handled, after all. Better to save his likely disoriented daughter first.

She was fine... Everything was fine.

She most definitely had not just maybe broken her hand on someone's face. Totally. It... just hurt. Maybe she'd popped all her knuckles at once? Sure! Totally viable. She was also definitely not crying. Nope. Tears of anger if anything. Yeah...

"Stupid super-strong mutant bodies... stupid city having a ridiculous number of jacked people... stupid smug stabby brat..."

Three clones, who were still stuck as children, suddenly came sailing right through her and definitely caught her by surprise. There was a laughable moment where all three smacked into one of the crumbling support beams in a pile. She might have laughed at the absurdity of it had the whole beam started shaking violently, and then the ceiling... and then the floor.

...uh-oh.

Panicked, she turned to the only adult present for the guidance of some sort. What were they supposed to do?!

The @#$%er just NODDED at her, scooped up HIS DAUGHTER, and @#$%ING jumped out a window!

"HEY." She stared at the window they had escaped out of for a moment with her jaw practically on the floor, before turning to look at the three kids picking themselves off the floor. HE ABANDONED HIS OTHER DAUGHTERS!?

"THE FU-"

The aged, decrepit structure gave out while she and the clones were very much still inside. FIve stories basically collapsed into each other so neatly that a demolition expert would shed a tear. There were a few random explosions from other traps Elke had set up going off in all the destruction, but other than that and the huge plume of dust that filled the street from the collapse, nothing else in the surrounding area was harmed.

As the dust started to settle and the street drew active with citizens coming closer to see what had happened, gradually four figured started climbing out of the collapse zone. Juniper had gotten ahold of the three clones before the building fell on them. It had taken fusing a part of herself into the support beam so that she could phase the clones and herself and save everyone from dying due to being squished under slabs of cement and metal.

She had one clone tucked under an arm, fully phased, and was holding the hand of one other, who was holding the hand of the last one. All four of them gradually picked their way out of the mess and onto the street, where she dropped the one she was carrying and let go of the two others.

Juniper was pissed beyond words, for multiple reasons. When the clones suddenly turned on her and started babbling and crying incoherently about how amazing she was, it only added fule to the fire of her ire.

Some @#$%in responsible adult he'd turned out to be! She eyed the growing crowd and decided to keep her mouth shut, though... she didn't want any attention for trying to lay into an X-man for questionable decisions.