I had been months, at least 3, since she had last visited the kind, understanding Dr. Things had been going pretty well, too, but... well... things in her life didn't often stay on smooth sailing for very long. 

Hawaii had happened and the illusion that she had needed to fully give up parts of her life style in order to get better kinda popped. Drinking was okay still in moderation, and she'd switched over to wine as it was classier for young women in the city and also infinitely easier to get a hold of.  

She felt bad, slightly, that things had kinda taken a slow, winding turn back into her old patterns and soon visiting her therapist just hadn't felt... necessary? Like, yeah, she was off of her medication again seeing as she couldn't get refills without him, and... yeah, she was technically supplementing in a few glasses of wine before bed to keep the nightmares and insomnia at by, but she was still doing better! ... Right? So what if Xavier had been busy with school, and crime fighting, and his girlfriend... She had Blue! And the cats!

...or, one cat.

Annnd, full circle, she was back at the problem that had led her back to the office of her sorta-but-not really-shrink. Clyde had... had...

Clyde was gone and she wasn't at all taking his departure like the mature, classy young woman she pretended to be sometimes. 

When she'd stumbled back home and run back into Xavier with sticks still firmly lodged in her hair he'd bestowed upon her one of the kind, yet firm lectures of his that riled up the guilt in her. Apparently vanishing into the woods without contacting anyone for seven days was frowned upon? 

Anyway, here she was, currently second guessing  everything that had led her back too and fearing hearing any kind of disappointment, while hovering in the waiting area just outside his office. 

She wouldn't have agreed that she was ready yet to come back, but even Blue seemed sick of her randomly bursting into tears around the apartment and she really couldn't argue that she was pretty bad off at this point. 

Clutching onto the worn, fuzzy stuffed mouse toy in her pocket that Clyde had so loved, she tried to calm her nerves. The Office was empty save for her and technically she was late for her appointment, but she just couldn't work up the nerve to open his door. 

A sound off down the hall caught her attention and she dove through a closet door to hide inside as someone else came in, peeking out after whoever it was had passed.

Oh, no way... was that...?

Saphirus, in flesh and all of his grumpy glory. What on earth was he doing in her shrinks office? She hadn't done anything explicitly illegal in weeks! 

He vanished into the office and as the door closed behind him she snuck out and headed over to the wall beside the door.  

Maybe just a wee bit of eavesdropping was in order? Juniper phased herself close enough into the wall to get an ear within hearing distance of the X-man and the Doctor.

"Well, that's the thing, Doc... We been talkin' the last few weeks, and... Eh... I dunno. I think I get it, I guess. I talk. You sit an listen. Ask questions, try to find silver linings and all that kinda bullshit for me. And... I think I just ain't havin it. It ain't your fault... It's just. Eh." There was a long pause... Doc didn't during the wait. He tended to keep largely quiet in these sessions, letting the experienced X-Man gather his thoughts. "It's just, you know... Guys like me. We can't have it, you know? It's like... When ever... I start to feel... Happy with life. Something terrible happens. I'm like... Eh... I'm like a bucket... You know, you told me, first session, about the buckets and the dippers, right? But you try and put... Joy. Contentment. Good shit. You put that in my bucket, but mine... got a hole right in the bottom. Life just... Drains it all away. And you sit here, tryna tell me, like, eh... Try to make me see it ain't like that, but it is. Guys like me can't be happy. When I am. Something's gonna happen. No, no don't say anything... I gotta get this out." The sound of shifting could be heard, though without eyesight, it would be unclear what exactly was going on.

"So. I'm gonna be prepared, is all. Any time I start to feel content, like things are gonna be okay. That's when I'll know, I gotta be ready for the next blow. So, eh... Thank you, for sittin and listenin, spending your time, but... I ain't got depression. I ain't paranoid, or anxious. I'm in the dumps because bad shit happened to me, and sitting here talkin to you ain't gonna stop more bad shit happening. You gotta spend your time talkin to people who need your help, and me... I gotta spend time gettin prepared to hit the next bad thing right back." The sound of shuffling, the grabbing of a coat. "I'll see myself out."

The door would open, leaving the giant cockroach to sit there for a moment, and then sigh, shuffling papers about. After a couple of beats, the sound of an intercom clicking on was heard. "Angela... If you could please call in my last appointment..."

Oh @#%$, she should not have eavesdropped on that. Nope. That had been entirely too personal, too raw, and too... familiar... for her to be at all comfortable with having that information rattling around inside her head.

Juniper pulled her head and shoulders back out from the wall when the older man announced his exit, and in a panic went running off down the hallway away from the Doc's office before she could get caught. Angela looked up, startled by her passing, and pressed the com button back to respond. "Oh, um... well she just went sprinting right past me, Sir, so..."

out on the sidewalk she slowed to a walk and pulled her hood up, stuffing her hands in her pockets and in general frowning at the world before her.

...Was... was his life really that bad? The way he talked about himself, how his day to day was, sounded so much like how she felt about herself on the inside. Like really, true happiness was something just out of reach and she was just hopping through life day to day waiting for the next inevitable bad thing to happen.

Her fingers smoothed across the fuzzy felt toy in her pocket.

She didn't feel like she was really smart enough to have any deep thoughts or insights on life. Things just sucked, or they didn't There was definitely a weird grey, middle area where things didn't suck as much and she could manage, but... it still wasn't great.

She found her thoughts wandering back to what she knew about the guy and again wondered what exactly in his life had gone so wrong to set him up like that.

Ah, well, whatever the case she needed to get the heck out of dodge before he spotted her and she'd have to awkwardly confront the other feelings she had for him and his demon spawn daughter.

The warbling, slightly grating sounds of a scifi time-traveling box suddenly sprang up, and the familiar ringtone theme of Dr. Whom cut the air. She squinted at the number and cringed.

Ah... Her therapist. Awwwwkward.

F#@$. He needed coffee. Why was his heart beating so heavily? It wasn't like he'd yelled at the guy. He'd just needed to get out of there. He'd left early, so... Maybe he could call Colin and let him know he didn't need to watch JR all day after all. He cursed under his breath, rubbing his sleepy eyes as he hobbled down the street.

He wasn't in uniform today; he was still wearing his long coat, and a careful glance would show a crowbar peaking out of its lining. He kept his head down as he trucked down the street, organizing his thoughts for a second before pausing to look up at where he was.

There was a strangely familiar sound nearby... Right, from that show. He looked right to his side and saw a familiar young woman staring down at her phone with a cringe. Slightly bloodshot eyes blinked a few times as he weighed the option of just... breezing on by. Against his better judgment, he found himself speaking before he could stop himself. "Eh... Juniper, right?"

It had been a while since he'd seen her in any capacity past on a security camera or in passing. He knew she was a friend of his daughter's... boyfriend. He clearly remembered breaking her fake ID, getting into a sassing match with her, and having to move a couch back into Sam's secret room. And then there was the search for his daughter, where she'd stormed off after the house collapsed.

"The, eh... Clone wash out alright?"

She was too much of a coward to cancel the call on the doc, so she just silenced the call and stared at it as it continued to vibrate in her hand. It didn't go unnoticed that she had an unread text from X, as well as a few missed calls from other concerned, eh... friends?

Saph's voice popping up out of virtually nowhere in her distracted state caused her to physically flinch, and her phone dove back into her pocket so quickly it might have looked like she had been caught doing something illegal. Juniper whirled around with wide eyes to look at the adult who she had been actively avoiding, and she immediately shrank a little as the guilt from before had a bit of a resurgence.

"Oh... uh. Yeah."

He dropped probably one of the most insensitive comments she had probably ever heard, and part of her wondered if the reason he had such a shitty life was that he was a huge sh*t head.

Her expression fell flat and she relaxed a little, squeezing the cat toy for comfort.

"Er, no. I didn't even @#$#in bother trying. Isn't that like, a biohazard or something?" She tried to recall back to one retail job she had briefly worked that had tried to convince her that she would need to occasionally encounter and clean up various biohazards while making below minimum wage. Man, she'd bounced from that job so fast.

Standing there awkwardly, shoulders hunched in her large hoodie with the hood up, she turned to face him a bit more and struggled to think of what to say. Like... should she try to be nice since his life was apparently a turd trough anyway?

"...I... didn't know you were seeing my therapist."

He stared at her blankly as she reacted to his sudden appearance. Jumpy. He gave a short nod as she responded. When she spoke to the subject of the clone goo he maintained his deadpan expression. Normally, he would have smiled a bit. He didn't really feel like smiling. He hadn't had his coffee yet.

"I try not to think about it. Gotta clean it up all the time. Damn things only last a day. You try gettin her to stop makin them though." He looked across the street for a moment, always maintaining a certain level of alertness. By the time he looked back, he paused. He knew the look of someone trying to find something to say. She was painted with it. He opened his mouth to tell her not to bother, he was going to be on his way, but she spoke first.

His eyes narrowed. "What."

The Super Hero's jaw set as she stared at her for a second, turned to look at the ground, and then quickly back up. "How, eh... How do you. You saw me walk in." What... the #@$%. What was her deal? Why would she ask about that crap? That was deeply personal. Wait, she'd said...

"...Your therapist?"

The level of cringe on her face doubled as he further explained. "I really hope you guys pay the Janitor around the school, like, a lot.

His whole ass demeanor shifted from what she'd said and it took a moment for her to realize that she'd actually said that out loud. Like... casually. She shifted on her feet like she wanted to sprint away, because she did, and glanced around awkwardly without really looking at anything.

"Er, I mean.. yeah? I've seen him a few times for... um... teenager stuff."

Her whole face wet blank with barely concealed panic. "I was gonna go see him today but other stuff came up. Saw you go in and peaced out."

Her phone started ringing again in her hand, so she silenced it and shoved it away in her other pocket. A glance at the number had shown her it was the Doc calling again.

"aaanyway... I've got to go to, uh.. work. Yeah! Gonna be late if I don't hurry, haha. You have fun with all of that... clone goo."

"I mean, yeah, but we usually just have another clone clean it up. She's pretty good about making them stand in a trash can or the shower or something..." Why was he telling her this? It wasn't even close to important, and... well, SHE wasn't important. Not to him.

And here was, asking him about... their? Therapist. "Scared you away? Don't not go on my account. I was there on... Cop business, anyway." He looked down to the ground when he said it. He glanced to the phone in her hand as it buzzed again. He took note. He wasn't sure why. It was the investigator in him, or something. He did that @#$t all of the time, and here he was doing it again.

Nothing the investigate here, just a kid with depression, who couldn't mind her own business. "Yeah, you have fun with that too-" The world suddenly felt... strange. Like... it was all a million miles away for just a flash. There was a sound... like... shattering glass, if it were deeper, and everywhere. The world around them went dark for a flickering moment, before they were there again, standing on the street... well... ten or so feet of it. Past that they were surrounded by dense jungle.

He stared out, looking past the immediate scenery to a large, active volcano in the distance, and then around to the chunk of street that had followed him here.

Or rather... Them. She was here. The girl. They were... somewhere else? "Uh... Stretch, here, but... any idea what is goin on here?"

Psh, yeah... frightened her all the way away alright. She didn't normally willfully spend time around crotchety old men when she had other options to explore. She spun around on a heel, intent to march off away from him, when.... things went a bit wonky.

She knew it wasn't the 2 glasses of wine she'd had that morning because being drunk, even at the worst of times, didn't have her hallucinating environment changes. And she hadn't even done any of that other stuff in, like, ... months!

"Uh...."

He asked her if she knew what had happened and she immediately put her hands up in the air. "I had nothing to do with this."

Some kind of creature screeched off in the distances and the ground rumbled with a few far away thumps. She glanced up at the HUGE trees and balked at the MASSIVE web above them that stretched from tree to tree.

"JeSUS!"

She wasn't, like, super worried because not much could actually hurt her.

"Woah! Is that a Volcano!?" She took four big steps away from him and--

SKRAWW!

A large creature promptly swooped down through a gap in the trees and snatched her up in large talons, before taking off into the sky.

"Holy @#$% it's a terrordactyle!"

Okay, so, this was fine. They'd been... teleported somewhere? He believed her what she said she didn't do it. He knew her powers. High level phasing. This... This had been a different mutant. Who, though? Were they here? How far away had they been taken?

He looked about quickly, trying to glean any details. No one had come with them, which was odd. There weren't very many mutants who could just... send other people away without also going themselves. It didn't make a whole lot of sense. "Yeah, okay, just... stay calm. We'll- We'll figure this out." He paused as he noted the spider webs in the trees above. Dang... Had they been sent clear to australia? Maybe somewhere down south? Or... Looking at the trees, the rainforests. The power level of the mutant that had done this... insane.

Like... Abyss levels of strong. "Yes, it's a volcano, calm down. We must have been teleported somehow, but like I said, we'll figure this ou-"

SKRAWWW! What the @#$^!

A giant lizard bird scooped Juniper up in its claws and lifted off. She... called it a... terrordactyle? Nope, not important. She was in danger.

He forced his dropped jaw to close as he fished out his crowbar. Normally, he'd have a bunch of energy stored up just in case, but he'd just been talking to a shrink for christ sake! He wasn't prepared for this. He hobbled quickly toward where the creature was lifting her off toward, and smacked himself a couple of times in rapid succession before flinging it at the monster's back with all of its might. He had to stop it before it got too high up.

Distracted by the fact that a giant...bird... lizard thing? had just swooped out of the sky and grabbed her, she didn't even think to phase herself out of its grip until they were already up in the sky. Its claws were just HUGE and from the glimpses, she could see of its head it had a lot of sharp teeth in its beaky thing. It was cool and horrifying all wrapped up in the same package, but mostly horrifying.

After a glance back down she decided to nope the heck out of there and phased herself out of its claws. The creature gave a startled squawk at her sudden departure and its fleshy wings flapped aggressively as it attempted to change course and go after her again.

Right about then a crowbar came flying out of nowhere and smacked it firmly in the face. It started careening to the ground just a bit behind her. Juniper hit the ground on light feet with 90% of her own weight gone and scurried out of the way as the huge creature came crashing to the ground a moment later.

"Holy-- That... that's like a dinosaur, right?" She paused, blinking. "Ah, @#%& even if I took pictures of this my parents would never believe me." She turned as Saph came hobbling over and pointed at the prone hopefully dead, creature.

"Aren't those things supposed to be dead?"

She got out alone. I mean, of course she did, she was incredibly powerful. How could a dinosaur keep any sort of grasp on her? Then again, how could a dinosaur even exist right here and now? As a stroke of luck the giant flying creature looked back and got a crowbar to the face for its troubles. As the tool fell he tracked it, and steered it back to his hand.

He hustled over to her, staring at the broken beast with a mixture of amazement and alert caution on his face as she asked questions. "Looks like it..." He glanced up to her as she pointed and shrugged. "It's dead now... But yeah, they're extinct. Supposed to be, at least." He froze as he heard the sound of a branch snapping in the distance.

"We, eh... We gotta get out of this clearing, I think. Maybe find some shelter while we find out what's goin on..." He immediately got to whaling on himself with the crowbar as he started hobbling toward the treeline away from the sound of the branch cracking, his eyes widening as he felt something drawing near.

A hissed whisper escaped his mouth. "Hide!" He reached for any solid part of her he could sense and tried to pull her into a nearby bush as loud thudding footsteps could be heard approaching.

Something smelled dead Terrordactyle.

Warning aside, she couldn't help but stare at him as he literally beat himself up with his weapon. "...Why... are you doing that? Why only one side?" @#$%, man. Maybe he needed some therapy more than he thought he did.

His reaching out for her earned a raised brow and a skeptical look. She didn't trust him for squat and they were in a very unfamiliar environment. He was lucky she was forced to need to keep her feet whole so as to not fall into the ground. There was absolutely no way in hell she was going to climb into a bush with him.

Something roared, deep and wild, from the trees behind her and her spine went ramrod straight as a primal sort of fear spiked through her. She turned to see the rough, bloodstained snout of a huge beast part the foliage and a fricken T-rex lumbered in. It's large, clawed feet destroyed the underbrush underneath as it zeroed in on the corpse of the dead pterodactyl.

Juniper panicked and her mind went blank, so she did the first thing she could think to do. She reached out and clamped onto the rough bark of one giant tree next to her, phased the whole damn thing, and pushed it over in the direction of the large reptile.

As soon as it as out of her hands the big tree gave an earth rumbling groan, started to tilt and fall, and the beast scrambled to get out of the way juuuust a bit too slow.

One squashed t-rex later ended with Juniper standing there, scratching the back of her neck sheepishly, wondering when she'd lost her shoes in the chaos. Why was that becoming a habit?

"so... Um... I take it we're really not in New York anymore..."

She was staring at him. He knew the look. "Sounds like a whole lotta not your business.." Man, he was in a foul mood. It was that feeling of saying something, and immediately wondering why you were being so rude. Maybe it was the talk he'd just had to have. Maybe it was her intrusiveness in asking about it. "Makes me stronger, gettin hit." He would mumble before reacting to the presence of the large incoming creature.

He wasn't successful pulling her into the bushes, and wasn't the type to hide while someone else was out in the open, so he stopped short of the bush and readied his crowbar. That was when, no bullsh$%, the girl sorta just... leaned a tree down onto it. He stared in a shocked manner as he watched her effortlessly make a tree stop having any mass or attachment to the material world, and then uprooted it, and aimed it at a giant dinosaur.

The damned thing didn't even stand a chance as the heavy plant squished its head. "... Uh... Maybe... More like we ain't here in 2020..." He turned to look at the chunk of street they'd left behind. Had they moved at all? Or were they...

IN DINOSAUR TIMES(Times, times, times). Roll opening credits.

* * *

It had been a week. A whole week. Saphirus sat in a lean to made from branches and leaves and animal parts. Next to him was a dead, foot long scorpion. Before him was a stick with his shoelaces tied to a bow that the girl had down him how to make. He pulled back and forth on the contraption to try and get a coal started for a fire... It had rained yesterday, and by a bad stroke of luck, the makeshift roof had given in and the fire had been doused.

He'd been trying for an hour now. His stomach growled as he looked up at the sound of movement in the distant forest. Far off... He sat back and scratched his beard, taking a bit of a breather from the energy draining activity. There were still no clues as to how they would get back. After a break, he leaned forward again and started on the bow again, trying to start up an ember.

You know, save for being stuck with him the whole week, Juniper was actually doing remarkably well for the circumstances they were both stuck in. She was used to this, uh... maybe except for the giant bloodthirsty predators all over. Heck, she'd just literally spent a week out in a forest on her own only a few days before this. In fact, the thing she was worried about the most was that she was probably, most definitely fired if she ever made it back to modern times. She didn't think Cora would be quite so understanding on a second random weeklong absence. Crazy time traveling or not.

Still, it hadn't been all sunshine and roses for her. Saph, for all of his physical prowess and bite, sucked at surviving off of the land in unfamiliar territory. She couldn't fully blame him since it wasn't the kind of thing most normal folk ever learned... but her dad had certainly not been normal by any means.

She'd hopped right into fashioning a basic camp the day they had landed in the forest. She'd used the patch of road left behind as a good place for their base since it would lift them up a little off of the ground and water would run off of it instead of pooling. Sticks big enough to build a few walls and a roof weren't hard to find considering the size of everything, and it was ungodly humid so the cold wasn't a big issue.

They had survived off of t-rex and pterodactyl the first few days until the smell of rotting meat had started to attract too many scavengers and she'd been forced to drag the bodies away from camp. It didn't stop big bigger than her from wandering in to investigate their fires and the smell of cooking meat, but it was whatever.

She wasn't at all happy that she had to stay with him. Like... the same camp. But he'd gruffly suggested it and she couldn't think of a good enough reason to argue. He was the physical strength and brains, she was the OP personal defensive system. They had to take turns keeping a lookout at different times unless they both wanted to die.

Water was easy to come by seeing as a few big leaves and the humidity kept a steady supply up every morning. They both hunted in different ways for meat, though she was still a bit of a sissy when it came to having to kill things when not in mortal danger.

This particular day found her trudging back to camp with a bundle of dry wood under one arm and dragging a nightmarishly large rodent creature behind her by the tail. It was better than a scorpion, anyway.

Without a word, she dropped the rodent just outside of their shelter, put the wood by the firepit, and set about picking up the bow with the string from her destroyed hoodie and getting it going again. It was easier for her seeing as she was well used to starting fires this way.

They hadn't really talked a whole lot. She slipped right back into quiet survival mode, and he did whatever it was he needed to do. It was a little awkward, but eh, she didn't mind.

Once she got an ember going and added a few pieces of dry wood to it, she turned back to work herself up to cut the big rat up. It was her least favorite part of camping.