The shopping trip ended with a bit more excitement than anyone anticipated.
The kids got into some trouble playing in the water fountain (the Morlocks didn't really understand that it was for decoration), and people were scared of them, also.
The mall security came.
Everyone was going to just jet, but Shine made them stay, and she said if they ran, they'd only look like they were causing trouble on purpose.
She spent easily 20 minutes explaining to the very irritated and wary security that the kids didn't mean any harm.
At first the others were sure they'd be arrested anyway, but Shine began telling the guards about the Morlocks' lives, and how little they got to go out and had fun, and about working with the mutants, and the conditions they lived under.
Whether the guards were...open minded people or not, they didn't want the entire mall to see them dismiss this sob-story, so they let them off with a warning not to do it again and be more respectful.
Shine then got swarmed by people who recognized her--and some who didn't like her.
Rogue insisted they go then. And she agreed.
But in the middle of this, Leech got nervous, and his power kind of went out of control, hence he affected both Storm and Mystique by accident, as well as Jubilee, but you'd never see it with her.
Storm was fine other than she couldn't fly for a brief time, but Mystique turned into her blue form and gave people quite a turn.
Not as much of one if they hadn't already seen green-scaled kids, to be fair, but...
Shine hastened them out of there and used a portal after that.
On top of her conversation with Shine, that experience put Mystique in a rather dark mood.
Only appeased slightly by Shine giving her something she'd gotten her while they were out, saying she saw her look at it earlier and didn't really know what she liked so...
Mystique wasn't a huge gift person, unless it was a part of a...relationship of a certain sort, but she didn't flat out refuse. She wasn't willing to be that harsh.
Rogue still felt a bit bad about her but didn't have the nerve to talk to her about it, at least not yet.
* * *
A couple days passed, and Thanksgiving was right around the corner.
Cindy felt better, and while she was still going to be in the hospital for a while, it was a relief that she was suffering less.
Things went mostly back to normal...whatever that was.
Not quite normal, though...
Storm and Logan kept avoiding eye contact at weird moments, and Storm was puzzled by what was making it so awkward...being rather clueless.
Logan was less puzzled but determined to suppress that knowledge for all it was worth. He was not going there. Not with Storm.
But it didn't go unnoticed by the others.
Jean only could tell they were embarrassed, and the reason puzzled her.
Wally and Shine, however, had a pretty good idea of why.
"I'm strongly tempted to just say something about it," Shine admitted. "It's driving me crazy to watch this."
"Yeah, I bet that's how Sheyera felt about watching us," Wally said.
