The Soulmate Initiative: Book 3: Next Generation

3. A new home p1

The only thing other than the five buildings, taking up most of the rest of the grass, is the swimming pool, placed between the garage and other building on the left, instead of behind the mansion. The swimming pool is bigger than previously, with a hottub at one end, both ends sheltered. Between the pool and the forest, there's an outdoor kitchen for barbecues, plus seating, and between the pool and the path are some deck chairs.

This is nice.

Unfortunately, due to the extra buildings and increased sizes of the rebuilt buildings, the only decent patch of grass left over is between the mansion and garage, but it's on a few metres of space. Enough for a jungle gym for the kids, but that's about it.

That's a real shame.

I see Ash, Stacey and Suzie sitting on some of the deck chairs, waiting for everyone else to turn up. So I drive us to the garage, all five doors opening up as I close in. I pull into an empty space and we clamber out, leaving everything inside the car. The inside of the garage has 8 spaces, though the two on the far right don't go as far back, an elevator and a ladder into the ceiling, behind the back space. Since they're shorter, they're more suitable for motorbikes, the front of two spaces currently holding the two motorbikes we have. The room itself, has a concrete floor, light grey walls and ceiling. Prisha and I look at each other, without having to agree outloud, we get into the elevator to explore the garage. The other two levels look exactly the same as the lowest, apart from the opening roof on the top floor. The top floor is completely empty, enough room for the quinjet, while the middle floor is sort of split in two. The closest half of the room to the elevator and ladder, is filled with black shelving, filled with equipment for fixing the quinjet, cars and motorbikes. While the other side of the room has 10 silver lockers, some black benches and walls lined with transparent cases, some weapons already placed inside them. I speak out loud "Definately not allowing the kids in here. I'd better make sure Ash thought of that." As we step out of the elevator, Anna, Warren and Nian sprint inside to check upstairs out. We head out of the garage and I call out to Ash "What's the security on the garage?" She smiles at me "Only us adults have access. I didn't put all the access on the buildings just yet, so that we could all walk around freely until we've all toured." I nod "Okay, good." She sends me another smile "Check out the guest house, then once everyone's ready, we'll do the other buildings together." Prisha and I head over the the guest house, the door already unlocked. The downstairs is one room for the kitchen and lounge as before, though there is a black door that we find out is a full, completely white bathroom, other than black floor tiles. The main room down here has black wooden flooring, the walls and ceiling are white, the kitchen and cabinets and all the furniture are black wooden or black leather, with white decorations and detailing. We head up the black wooden staircase, the same theme heading up to the top floor, with four black wooden doors. One door is to a bathroom identical to the one downstairs, while the other three rooms are bedrooms, all identical with black carpets, bedframes, wardrobes, bedside units, dressers and curtains, while everything else is white. Prisha mentions "Different than before." "Yeah, I liked it more before, but I'm not living in here anyway. And I guess Ash didn't feel like assigning rooms to guests this time, since there's no names on doors and no personalisation to the rooms." "We never had many guests anyway, Jess stayed a while, but anyone can still stay, they just have to adjust it while they stay here." "Yeah, I don't think Rhodes will be staying here anyway, when she visits she'll definitely stay with the Asgardians now, since she's met her soulmate." "True."

We head out to the others and wait. Once everyone is ready to continue touring, Ash gets up "Alright, so as you can see, we got some extra buildings. Let's walk." We follow her down the path, she stops when she gets to the crossroads, the path going off to the three buildings. She points up at the tower "This tower has a camera and scanner at the top, to let us know whenever something comes close by air, and we have cameras at the gate so we know if anything's coming by road. Oh, and at the top of the tower, there's a bell, which will go off if anything gets close, we chose to go for an actual bell so it doesn't scare the kids, so we know it's not a call or alarm within the mansion, and also so that to the public, this doesn't scream 'Avengers live here'. Up the tower are the new and improved Iron Legion, along with a suit for me for emergencies, plus one for Rhodes. In the garage you would have seen the armoury, I know we're keeping stuff at the tower, at HQ, but we might need stuff here too. I've got a few changes I'm going to make to the Avengers Tower anyway, to make it more Headquarters than storage and meetings. I'm also going to give access to all our allies, incase they need somewhere to stay when visiting New York, if they aren't from here. Also, I'm re-doing the bottom few levels for Pep, since she's CEO of Stark Industries, so she can have a proper office and not have to work from home, especially since I'm not going to be helping anymore either. We've talked and once Maria is older, if it's something she's up for, we'll make her CEO, otherwise Pep's son, though only 12 right now, is showing great potential." She then turns left and starts to walk towards the new two storey building. She stops right at the front door and turns to us "Okay, so school-de-Stark." She looks up at the sign saying just that, above the door. Some of us laugh and she grins "Thought maybe some classrooms might be better than teaching off the living room floor or round the dinning table. There's only one level to the school, the top level, which I'm not going to bother showing you, it's mine and Gina's lab." She turns to the door once again and opens it, we follow her inside, revealing a corridor with a white ceiling, black hard flooring, white doors and walls that are painted with swirly stripes in patterns in red, yellow, pink, green, purple, orange and blue.

Oh wow! I love this, the kids are gonna love it too!

All of the team look surprised and happy, so clearly Ash and Gina hadn't allowed any of us to work on this building, just the others. After lots of compliments and hugs  we finally start checking out the rooms, there being three doors on each side and one at the end, that Ash says is a staircase to the lab "The door is only accessible for Gina and I, though the kids will be allowed up there for science classes, but we'll be watching them at all times." She points to the two furthest doors on the left "Those are toilets, not necessarily a girl one and a boy one, but just two separate toilets, they're just white with black floors, nothing special." She walks up to the only other door on the left and opens it, letting us all inside "The canteen." Along one wall is a black kitchen set, with a black serving island, then the rest of the room is made up of a large black table surrounded by 10 chairs; a red, yellow, pink, light green, dark green, light purple, dark purple, orange, light blue and a dark blue. The floor and ceiling are both white, the walls are white covered in various sized dots of the same colours from the corridor. Warren laughs "This is perfect!" "Glad you like it. Oh, before I forget to mention, we don't have anything in the school for sport, they'll be doing that outside or in our training room." Nian asks the question I've been thinking about the whole time "Where are they supposed to do that outside? There's barely any field left." Ash smirks "I'll show you that later."

Next we head across the corridor, to the first of three doors, inside is a white ceiling, the walls are vertical stripes of light blue and silver, with dark blue carpet "No shoe rule in the classrooms. I'm getting a shoe rack for the corridor, there are a couple of bits around and about that are missing, only little bits though. Anyway, classroom one..." There's a large screen taking up most of a wall, light grey desk off to one side with a computer on it. There are light grey cabinets and shelves around the outside of the room, in the centre are four light grey desks and a gliterry silver chair at each. The next classroom has a white ceiling, black carpet, red and gold vertical stripes on the walls. There's again a large screen on one wall, plus a black desk with a computer beside it, the rest of the room holds six black desks with a computer on each of them, glittery gold chairs at each "Not just for technology class, as long as I'm not teaching a class in here at the time, other subjects can use the room, or someone can even just use a spare computer if not in a class." She shrugs with a smile. The last classroom is definitely for the young children, the ceiling white, black wipeable flooring, the walls vertical stripes of light purple, dark purple and black. The outside of the room has loads of white cabinets filled with baskets of various purples and greys. A corner of the room has a white bookcase, a dark purple blanket laid out, covered with beanbags and cushions of various purples and greys. The rest of the room, in the middle, holds a large white circular table that is only two feet high, it's surrounded by more of the cushions. Stacey pulls Ash into a tight hug "You've done such a good job, we're also so proud of you."