Marvel, Rebirth:

IC: Lilliana

"That's alright." Her heels clicked as she easily kept up with the student. She wore a gentle smile on her lips as she looked around the familiar place.

"Actually, only a few years ago... I went off and went to college and got a degree. Well and now I'm here again."

Ic: "How many years is 'only a few' for you?" Quinn asked.

IC: Lilliana

"About.. Three. I took many tests and earned enough credits to skip some classes in college." She replied.

Ic: "So it really hasn't been that long for you," Quinn observed. "You know your way around the place, then, I imagine? Or did all the studies in college dislodge the layout of this place from your memory?" he said with a slight grin.

IC: Lilliana

She blushed a bit, laughing at his jab. "I'm afraid my memory isn't always the best since I've gotten it back but I remember this place."

IC:(Leah)

The thief was completely silent. There was no trump card for the feeling of cold steel against your neck, and no way around defeat when you were face down on concrete, held down by a vigilante while becoming increasingly nearer to being arrested by Wichita's bravest. Then again, trump cards weren't really her forte- not when she had a few aces up her sleeve. Though no one could see her face, she smiled. Next time she needed to remember to play with a rigged deck. She Leah felt a release from one side and pressure from another, and took action.

It was all fluid. The first vigilante backed up to let a cop place the handcuffs. As soon as he tried to, her hand gripped his wrist hard and she wrenched herself off of the ground, continuing the motion by twisting his arm with strength he never could've foreseen. With his own handcuffs she latched one arm- now almost completely bent -to the other. Before he could react, she had him in a vice-like headlock, reaching for his own gun and leveling it to his temple. These events happened in a matter of seconds, preventing any intervention up until that point.

Most criminals would give some kind of ultimatum, telling them to drop their weapons or get on the ground. She simply began to slowly back away from the group, reaching across her hostage's head to actually cock the gun. Her eyes were wide, but her features were blank, daring the 'heroes' to step forward.

IC:

She hadn't seen him. John breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe this is for the better... he thought. She'd been too involved talking to the other student and following him down the hallway. John hadn't really expected to see her again. Not after the not he'd left, how he'd broken things off, how he'd cut of Kristen's arm before leaving for California.

He walked slowly down the hallway. Soon he came to his old room. He pushed the door open before stepping inside. He looked around slowly. It was strange how evertime he came back to the school since he'd left over a year ago he never stayed for long. Always something happened and he left again. When he returned the first time it was Liam. Then when he came back reccently the Hand captured him. Or did Daken send them for me? John could never be sure.

John walked over to his dressor and pulled out some of his old clothes before shuffling on his weakened feet into his bathroom. He closed the door before turning to the mirror. John sucked in a breath as he stared at himself for the first time with his new eyes. They were so white... so unnatural looking. No one would ever be able to tell his emotions from his eyes again. He ran a hand through his short buzzed hair missing his long black tresses. He tugged at the black beard that covered the lower half of his face and ignored the faint scars from torture sessions.

John pulled off his wet, blood-stained and rank clothes and tossed them to the floor. He hadn't had a good shower in days, maybe weeks. He stepped into his shower and turned on the water. He sighed with relief as the warm water fell over his skin, washing away the blood and the filth. John scrubbed soap over his body until he was clean before rinsing off.

When he was done he climbed out of the shower. He pulled on his black T-shirt and the pair of jeans before pulling on a dark blue hoodie. He then pulled a pair of clean sneakers on his feet along with some black socks. John looked in the mirror feeling more normal and clean. He then grabbed an old electric razor and turned it on before pressing it to his face. He watched as tuffs of dark hair fell away and into the sink as he began to shave the beard off. I used to use my claws usually to shave... now they're gone... John thought as he finished up shaving his beard off. When he was finished his clean shaven jaw glistened in the mirror. John noticed his jawline was a bit more crooked then before, almost like a boxers.

He raised his hands to the light and stared at them. The scabs were dark and reminded John of when his claws had been cut out of him. He shivered at the memory of the terrible pain and his screams. John opened the cabinet behind his mirror and grabbed a role of gauze. He then wrapped the gauze around his hands and over his knuckles, covering up the scabs. It would take a little while longer before those wounds healed. Everything else though was slowly healing. Except my shattered bones. He was so frail now from lack of food and torture.

John looked away before turning out the light and exiting the bathroom. He grabbed a piece of paper off his dresser and scrawled a note on it with a pen.

Dear, Christine. I'm not staying. I can't its too dangerous for the other students. Daken could come looking for me. I'm going away, please don't try to find me. Take care of yourself.

-John.

He then went into his closet before pulling out the two adamantium swords the Hand had crafted for him. John strapped the sheaths on; feeling the blades touch his back as he turned and left his room. He strode down the hall until he came to Christine's room, tacking the note on her door before turning away and not looking back.

After grabbing a quick bite to eat in the cafeteria (well more like scarfing down two plates of food like an animal) John made his way outside again. He pulled up his hood as he stepped out under the dark sky and into the rain before trudging off towards the garage.

John stopped as he entered the garage. His father's bike was still waiting for him where he'd left it. John climbed onto his motorcycle and ignited the engine. He then peeled out of the garage, hurtling down away from the garage and through the gate as he drove away from the school. He already knew where he was going. He was going back to Daken.

Ic: He laughed gently and cordially as he continued. "I'll skip the general overview and Manor 101 lesson, then. I bet the details will all come back to you in detail as you settle back in. That works for me since I'd rather not stop at every attractive thing and tell you everything on the brochures we get for tours," he said.

"Most of the rooms are vacant these days -- we have a shortage of teachers, I suppose, so you should have no shortage of options. That being said, all the auditorium-style classrooms have been taken so you'll have to either fight over one or take a standard classroom. Which do you prefer?"

Ic:

"I... I do not know what to do..." Trinity said, looking away from Mikhail, "Mikhail... Tell me what I must do."

IC (Rachel Thomas)

The counsellor nodded. "Alright, so we've managed to pinpoint your goals, or at least one of them. Wealth. A life of luxury. However -and I mean no offence- nothing else you said has any bearing on what you want to do.

"Think about it, Alexander. You've listed obstacles. It's good to have a realistic worldview, but we'll get to those later. Right now, I want you to tell me what you want to do. Think about it for a few minutes, if you have to. You have a great deal of potential, so what do you enjoy doing? What skills do you feel you have, or could attain if you wanted to? Tell me about yourself. Not your mutation, and not how the world might perceive you. Yourself.

"Take your time."

IC: Ashley

"Song! We don't talk about such things in front of the children!" She put her finger to her lips.

IC:

"I don't see any children. Besides, I was a child at the time. Ten, to be exact."

...

"Why are you still calling me Song?"

IC: Ashley

"Well....to be honest I couldn't tell you switched, this multi-personality thing is pretty confusing." Ashley scratched her head.

"Oh I know! Maybe you should make some kind of sound whenever you switch!" Ashley turned her seat around to face everyone.

"Kind of like this....BEEP! Now I'm Theodore Roosevelt! Old age is like everything else. To make a success of it, you've got to start young! BEEP! I'm Ashley again!"

IC:

"One problem. Song loves to deceive people, and is very good at doing so. She would purposely not make that sound to fool you into thinking it was still me."

IC:

"For the last time, ma'am, I'm not with the Boy Scouts of America. I'm an agent with the Strategic Homeland Intervention--"

"We have more than enough Thin Mints!" the secretary shrieked at Marlon Brando Barton. The marksman and Avenger stood at the very limit of public visitation space in the new Stark Tower; one step further and the secretary could have him imprisoned by any one of Howard's old trinkets and flung through the window. Keeping that in mind, he took a deep breath and held up his hands. Maybe wearing the archery gloves wasn't such a good idea. If this lady felt threatened by a potential Boy Scout, maybe telling her that Brando was with SHIELD may not have been the best idea.

"Ma'am, I'm a federal agent," he said calmly, keeping his hands where the crazy secretary could see them. "I have a badge. I'm putting it on the counter. Don't shoot a repulsor at me."

When he flopped it down on the table, she looked at it for all of about two seconds before throwing it back at him and pressing a button on the panel by her desk; her head flicked towards the elevator soundlessly as it slid open. Goddamn harpy... he thought, slinking to the elevator and pressing the button to the top floor.

"Identification?" JARVIS asked from a similar panel in the elevator. Brando beamed at the panel, hoping someone would have eyes on the monitor and see him.

"Yo! JARVIS! It's Brando!" he introduced himself. "What up? I'm here to see Stark. Government stuff. You understand."

"About time one of you government mooks showed up at my door." A voice said from behind Brando, though it was definitely not JARVIS. The marksman's brows furrowed and he mouthed the word mook? under his breath as he stepped out of the elevator and turned. He still couldn't see whoever it was that was speaking, but after a second he sat down on one of the seats laid out in the penthouse that had once belonged to Howard and looked around.

"Mook?"

IC:

"Ashley, have I mentioned lately you're the greatest thing about my life?"

-Tyler

IC:

"What would you prefer me to call you? SHIELD's lapdog?" He heard the sound of calculated footsteps as a pale redhead with deep, blue eyes approached, she was dressed like she was ready for a company meeting with every fat shareholder imaginable.

"Tasha Stark, CEO of Stark Industries." she announced with the emotion of your computer's default voice. She handed him a card.

"What brings you to my tower Mr. Barton?"

IC: Ashley

"My solution is this..." She proceeded to unbuckle herself and pounce at Dallas, giving him a glomp...and consequently leaving the Blackbird solely on autopilot.

IC:

The Stark family had been mistreating SHIELD and its operatives for three generations; Brando Barton refused to let himself be the first person who took it personally, so he smiled and spun the card around his fingers before flicking it back at Tasha. If she hadn't caught it, the point would have hit her directly in the center of her left eye. Bullseye.

"I've come for you," he told her, not liking the way she looked at him at all. Howard was much less insolent. "Duty calls, Stark."

IC:

"Ashley, you know I love you, too, but you're flying a plane. Or...rather...you're not flying it."

-Tyler

IC:

I looked up to see that Ashley had indeed abandoned the controls. "If we have to bail because you let the plane crash, Firefox better hope he can fly."

IC:

Tasha took on a look of mild surprise as she tossed the card away. "I had this tower rebuilt exactly as it was before...plus a few improvements here and there. If you want to move the Avengers back here then please do so."

Tasha and Brando shared a silient, awkward moment for a good while.

"Oh...I see...you want me." Tasha suddenly looked uncomfortable. "My father and brother were the super-geniuses, only thing I got from my father's side was a knack for business. I'm not going to fly around in a suit with the rest of you all if that's what you're asking."

IC: Ashley

"Oh right!" Ashley leaped back into the pilots seat, which had begun to beep incessantly. Ashley started pushing buttons until it stopped.

Autopilot disengaged! A friendly female voice said.

IC:

Brando grinned. "Look at me, Miss Stark," he replied, leaning back. "Do I look like an engineer to you? Or a super-soldier? No. I don't have any fancy initials or titles after my name. I'm a Wild West boy who knows how to aim things, pull a trigger, and kill something from near a mile away before they even know there's eyes on them. I'm the best in the world at it. You Starks are the best at a few things, too. Nobody's asking you to suit up, but we both know you have talents. Talents we need."

"My brother--"

"Is dead. So is your father. So are a lot of their friends. That's the kinda world we live in now - it has a lot of death, most of the death doesn't have a lot of meaning, and the survivors more often than not get very little return on our investment. But occasionally the stars align and we end up breaking the bank. Your brother and your father didn't get that chance, or believe me, we'd be asking them. Besides...from the looks of things, you got quite a bit of your mother's side, too. Even if there's more Romanov than Stark in your blood, SHIELD is still gladly asking for your assistance. If you still refuse, we could always drop the politely part."

-Tyler

IC: Tasha

"Ah...you know who my real mother is. I suppose it's obvious I didn't get these looks from Pepper." Tasha pulled her hair back.

"What makes you think I'm ready to just drop my duties as CEO and play superhero?"

"You loved your brother. We know what happened to him. We have the resources to make sure it never happens again, and with you we only double them. We can give you his killer's head on a silver platter...or you can take it yourself and put it there."

"What are we standing around here for? Let's go."

IC: Lilliana

"A normal classroom will be just fine." She replied coolly. "It's my first day as a teacher and I'd rather not start some silly argument over a classroom."

IC:

"Um, Ashley? Where exactly are we going?"

IC: Katherine "Kitty" Pryde

"I don't recall the school ever having auditorium-style classrooms St. Stark, unless they were built overnight when I was asleep." Kitty had been silent so far, but when Quinn slipped up on the layout of the school itself she felt she needed to correct the mistake.

IC: Ashley

"I think we're flying in a circle."

IC:

"And why are we doing that? Don't tell me that you don't know how to land."

IC:

"Mr. Jameson, a Ms. Khan is here to see you."

The voice of his assistant snapped the president out of his revierie, his eyes repositioning instantly on the door. He was almost tempted to send his visitor away; He knew of her reputation, and frankly, scheduled or no, he wasn't in the mood to deal with anyone, let alone a businesswoman. But necessity overruled desire, as it always must.

Massaging his temples lightly, he raised his voice enough to be heard.

"Send her in."

*************************

"You two are ***holes, you know that?"

A voice commented from a short distance behind Erin and Siegfried, the speaker previously undetected. The voice seemed oddly familiar, but when they turned arpund, the true impossibility confronted them. The ghost gave a dry smile, though truthfully calling it a smile was a bit of an exaggeration. It was more a quirk of the mouth, a slight tugging at the edges of his mouth. The specter, armored in red, white and blue, paused a yard or so away, regarding them calmly across the ruined street.

"Really, a guy comes back from the dead, and you can't even be bothered to cart your sorry behinds to where he is."

James Rogers crossed his arms in disapproval, raising an eyebrow at the friends he hadn't seen in twelve months, the friends who, up until this moment, were unaware that he was still alive. He looked calm, but truthfully, he was on edge; The last person he'd revealed himself to hit him. Hard.

And both Erin and Siegfried hit harder than Alyssa.

***********************

"Well, looks like we're having the best of days, aren't we?" Alistair commented, in what normally would have been a dry, sarcastic tone. In this moment, however, all he could manage was a weak shadow of it, one laced with concern.

"You alright?"

***********************

"Yeah, that kinda would be an excessive amount of green." Tera commented, settling back into her position, unaware of the danger she had narrowly avoided.

"But hey, with your obsession with the color, one never knows."

IC: Aella

"How am I obsessed? I didn't choose my eye color, or my highlights, or this green shirt for that matter!" I stated defensively.

"It has nothing to do with the fact that green is the most awesome, beautiful color in the whole world."

Ic: Quinn tilted his head back to chirp in Kitty's general direction. "There's the science classrooms, Kitty."

He gestured at a door marked 'A-12', then cordially opened it and stepped inside. The hinge wasn't springy, so the door remained open as Quinn skipped to the windows and opened the blinds. "This one's not being used. I pass by it every day and nothing ever changes in it, but I suppose it's all yours now."

IC:

"We need to get out of the house!" Daken Akihiro exclaimed to his team the following morning, when he put his hands on the back of the leather couch opposite pool table and vaulted over it into Nate's lap. Nate and Angela had already woken up and gotten ready - well, at least, Nate had. Akihiro wasn't quite sure if Angela had even budged from the pinball machine last night. The empty bowl where snacks had once been said that she had to have, at least once, but her position was slouched not a degree further to the right than it had been when Daken and Asa had left the other half of the team last night.

"If you're sick of me beating your pinball scores, just say so," she snarked. "There's no shame in losing. Not much, anyway."

Daken smirked and picked up the marksman's magazine, flipping through the pages and making his way back to the one that was most recently creased. "And tell me, Nate, how is your community flowerbed initiative going for you?" he asked, all smiles, as he rolled up the magazine one-handedly and tapped Hawkins' cheek with it. When he chucked it away, the sound stirred Asa, who took her sweet time getting dressed and made up. Wordlessly, without so much as a wave, she walked over to the occupied couch and fell back against Daken, kicking up her legs. Nate, now supporting the weight of two people, made a strained "MMPHF" sound under his breath. Angela laughed.

"We have a new team member. She just doesn't know it yet," Daken told the team, fixing a damp tangle of Ripple's crimson hair with his teeth. "The man who signs our paychecks set up a burglary in the heartland. Went south, just like he planned. She'll be ripe for the pickup."

"How far in the heartland?"

"Kansas."

A hush fell over the group. "What's the matter: scared of some cornstalks?"

-Tyler

IC: "I'm just looking forward to buying some plants from the farmers out there for my 'community garden initiative,'" A muffled voice said.

IC: Lilliana

"It's perfect." She said with a smile as she walked in. She walked around the room, inspecting the room thoroughly.

"Yes yes... I'll put some bookshelves here.." She nodded with satisfaction as she gazed at one of the bare walls.

OOC: Been trying to work out a reaction to recent events for my favorite russian. Alas, it seems I have.

IC (Yuri Aleksandrov)

Yuri sighed, staring down at his desk. He was back in New York, back with SHIELD. Technically, he wasn’t supposed to be drinking during office hours, but then, technically, he didn’t really possess the ability to care about what the regulations said. He wasn’t exactly well-liked here, he could tell. The fact he’d had more than enough free time on his hands to tour the nation visiting old MACE comrades was a rather large hint. Whatever pity-assignments SHIELD felt fit to toss him were insultingly easy. He was supposed to be a tactical adviser, supposed to, at least, command some respect. He’d crushed the Brotherhood when everyone else had let them run roughshod over the nation. He’d turned Genosha into so much smoking rubble while everyone else twiddled their thumbs and mouthed excuses.

Now angels are falling out of the sky. The old Russian wasn’t a fool, he knew what was coming. SHIELD was going to be on the ropes from here on out. Those blue men would become the heroes of the day, SHIELD would slowly fade and whatever legacy of MACE that remained would be….well. What about all of my men hm? He took a sip from his shotglass. What about my boys? My girls? They died for these people. They want up against a terrorist who could take a rocket to the face for these ingrates. How did they repay them-repay all of us? We’re war criminals. We’re an embarrassing old relative that just doesn’t have the common courtesy to die. He took another sip of his drink. We bled for them. Then they stabbed us in the back. Threw us to the dogs. For a moment, Yuri remembered his commandos, his faithful friends from his mercenary days. They’d bled for each other for over two decades, they’d been the one constant in each other’s lives. And where are they now? Gone. All gone.

All of this begged one very important question. What the **** am I doing here? He’d been lucky to avoid arrest, when the president had gone off on his crusade. That seemed to be what this country did. It made heroes then threw them away. The news had been full of praise for him after Genosha had burned. Now his men could be spat upon by any fool with an audience to pander too. He sighed. Nothing for it I guess.

The old general reached for the bottle again.

IC:

"I don't think my flying this would be a good idea," Morrison said, shaking his head. "I'm only good with planes when I can crash them into harboured ships."

***

"I don't care what you think, James, I've been waiting here to get a response from somebody for thirty minutes only to be told that I have to go somewhere...all after a giant robot blew up the coffee shop where I was working, and now I have to tell the people who hired me - and basically adopted me as family - what happened. I ain't moving."

IC:

Done sayin' I'm done playin'

IC (Remus)

Remus noted the shift in the winds, it was slight, ever so slight, but to one who had felt the winds of thousands of years it was still notable. She turned her gaze to the area where her erstwhile ally, Lord, was trying to play therapist. The wolf chuffed softly, casting a nervous glance at the surrounding area. He was endearing, in a vague sort of way, she supposed but that most certainly didn't make up for the fact she'd been working overtime trying to sniff out any assassins. This was New York after all, the place attracted trouble like HYDRA attracted psychopaths. She raised her snout into the air, trying to discern any threatening scents.

Something told her this was going to be one of those centuries.

IC: Shiloh

Shiloh sighed, sitting down on the patch of grass next to Dominik.

"I'd be lying if I said Nate leaving doesn't bother me." Her fingers started to play with the grass, combing through it and pulling at random stalks. She wanted to say more, but she wasn't sure how, or what to even say. She wasn't very good at this sort of thing. She prefered not to have the center of attention in anything.

IC:

"It's his life. The point of what we're trying to do here is let mutants live their own lives, seek protection when they need it and make a decent mark on the world when they don't," Dominik reminded Shiloh as a gentle devil's advocate before following with a quieter: "Why does it bother you?"

"Because that's one more friend I'll probably never see again." Shiloh eventually said, then she added even quieter. "There aren't a lot of people that I'm...open to."

"I know, Shiloh. We've all lost people. Sometimes, we don't get them back. Sometimes, though..." The world grew quiet and he wrapped a comforting arm around her shoulders; after a second she looked down, hiding her smile behind a ring of rhinestones, and wrapped her arms around him too. When he spoke next, his mind wasn't just on Nate, but on Abraham, and Chicago, and even on Pietro. "Have you been watching the news? They're talking about us. Me. They're saying that the Brotherhood has forgotten I have fangs? How? Every time that camera turns on in front of me, Abraham's name fills my mouth, and I have to bite down on my tongue to keep from screaming it. How do I forget I have fangs when they're tearing my mouth apart?" The way he said it, slumped in the shade with no way to know whether it was Shiloh in his arms or he in Shiloh's, quiet and sad, the question might not have been rhetorical.

"It's a long road home, sister. It's dark and it winds and there's pitfalls everywhere. Some people would rather not see us ever make it off. We're always going to lose people. Some people give up at the start; some poop out at the finish line. But where the road ends, I think there's something there. Something bright and beautiful, something we all can share. Whatever it is, everything we've started here, all the people we've lost and all the people we've yet to lose...I like to think they'll all have been worth it. And you'll never lose anyone again, and neither will your kids, or their kids, or their kids after them. They're why we're doing this. I may never see home, Shiloh, but you will. I promise. And I won't let anything stop you."

-Tyler

IC:

"So you don't know how to fly a plane either? What kind of deity are you?"

IC:

"I'm a spirit, not a deity, and you are very, very annoying. Besides - deities generally aren't omniscient." Morrison rolled his eyes - he was quite fed up with this insufferable child. "Although, I didn't really say I couldn't fly it. It takes quite a bit of skill to ensure you hit a vulnerable point on a ship with a plane. I just can't land, really."