[Not trying that beginning-everything-with-X again for another 50-100 chapters, so I'll get a new theme.]
Location: X-Mansion, New York
Month of October, Decade of the 80s
* * *
Wally got up to do his usual morning warm-up run, just to burn some of those calories.
He buzzed through the levels of the mansion he'd been living in for about 4 months now, checking to make sure everyone was doing all right.
His wife, Shine, was already up, reading, since she hardly got any time during the day now to study. She waved at him as he checked in that room.
Then he buzzed past the kids' doors.
There were about 12 of them at the mansion. Nine of them were from the sewers, now living up top, the Morlocks. They all looked inhuman and spoke like they'd not been educated at all...though that had been changing. But they were the same as other kids in any other measurable way...and sometimes were bickering first thing in the morning.
The older kids, Ryan Flemmings, Kevin MacTaggert, and Jubilee--he'd never heard her last name--didn't really fight, but they were slow to get up, as teens usually were.
The two boys had only been there for a couple months, but already it felt like forever.
Satisfied, Wally also noticed that the door to Warren Worthington's (or Angel's) room was open, meaning he'd probably gone for a morning fly. Those wings got cramped after all night.
Heading down, Wally found the actual permanent residents of the house, mostly eating breakfast or, in Jean's case, cooking it.
But Hank was in his lab and the Professor in his study.
"Mornin', Wally," Rogue said, as he buzzed in to grab his coffee. Jean just left it out for him now. She'd gotten used to it.
"Morning," Wally said, waving.
Boy, it was hard to believe it had been two months since all these visitors had moved in and just four since he'd arrived with Shine.
It had been ups and downs for those first two months, but they'd plateaued after that. Nothing much had happened during September and all of October up till this week, which was the last week in it.
But that was okay. Wally had had enough death-defying experiences already in this world to last him a while, he thought. Things were a little monotonous, at times, for a superhero like him, but also it was good for everyone to get a break.
Shine would say that the danger was not over yet. She could sense it, like electricity in the air.
Storm tended to agree with her, but they enjoyed the respite nonetheless.
At least things settling down for a while had helped Gambit finally get used to them, Wally thought. It might have to do with him and Rogue finally having a little chat that they wouldn't give in detail to anyone but had obviously cleared the air. Gambit had been much less on edge since then, and, while he was distant from the two DJs still, he had stopped being rude to them.
And even Scott had given up on trying to make them act like X-men and had mostly left them alone to do their thing. They hadn't been going on missions with the team much. Wally would help with the odd recovery and disaster relief here and there, but, as usual, he avoided the spotlight while off his superhero job.
Shine's teaching had been taking up all her time that she wasn't using to rest or revisit books. Or to hang with the X-men themselves.
She said the students were making excellent progress, getting it.
