"Richard, the DNA test came back."

"And? You're looking too solemn for it to be good." He looks down at the young man sleeping in the bed. Across the room another young man sleeps in the other bed.

"Michael's yours. 99.998 percent that you're the father. But he's not Alicia's."

"No, I never would have cheated on her." He quiets as the young man moves in the bed, slipping back into a deeper sleep without really waking up.

"I know. But maybe before your marriage?"

"Possible, I did some dating before I met Alicia but I always used protection."

"Found her." Pat calls as she comes into the room. "Janice Andrews, an ar. . ."

"Archaeologist. Yes. . .we went to university together and she got into a little bit of trouble. But if Michael's from that. . .he's too old."

"He's from another dimension, time might be different over there."

"He didn't know me."

"No, but they knew James and Mary, Doc and I, Charles and Clarinda, Andrew and Alice, Professor Xavier, Eric, Raven and Irene, and Alexander smiled when he first met Matthew and Amber. Like he didn't know them but knew somebody who knew them."

"Alexander?"

"The DNA search is still running, Michael's was quicker since the medical equipment showed a match to you."

"Am I nuts or is that vehicle. . .sliding sideways but still under control?"

"I was wondering the same thing. And still trying to run them down."

If their young companions hadn't been sent back to the Tower and safety they'd have recognized the maniacal laughter coming from the vehicle. Of course the driving would have been their first clue, that's Josette in her best 'fuck this shit' driving mode.

The Shadow and Superman look at the person obviously wearing a white sheet making woo woo ghost noises as they chase people towards the police. One clearly knows who they are, he's looking up at the ceiling and obviously asking for patience. They dive into a government one person vehicle and leave after the villains are rounded up.

Doc looks as the vehicle that has to be the one the others told him about comes flying through seemingly not under it's own power. . .until it knocks down a group of objects like playing ninepins. The vehicle flips over onto its wheels and waggles cheekily at the others, the stark white of the government paint giving way to a rainbow of colors.

Doc sends a message requesting a meeting to the number on the unit. A couple hours later it pulls into the public parking garage. Michael and Alexander walk past, stopping and wondering why most everybody was there. Matt goes to take them away as music starts blaring from the vehicle.

/Gonna ride that donkey donkey down to the honky tonky, it's gonna get funky funky/ is followed by the sound of a donkey braying.

Michael stares at the vehicle in disbelief as Alexander cackles. The others are staring at them.

"Josette Kiriko Takahawa, I am going to beat your ass like a rug."

Silence from the machine in front of them as the music stops.

"No. Effing. Way." A female voice says slowly. One that is very familiar to most of the others.

"Yes, way."

The hatch in the top of the machine opens and a head appears in the opening. Josette looks at all the familiar figures in front of her, tilts her head to one side, and swears at the ceiling. Michael chuckles and Alexander is smirking when she winds down.

"I hate you."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah." Alexander waves a hand. "Whatever. What are you doing?"

"Rebuilding this thing." She ducks back inside and goes back to work. "At least I found the controls for the loudspeaker anyway." Inside the vehicle she marks those and gets back to work.

"Why?" Michael says with a sigh as Alexander smirks and counts off the seconds with his fingers.

"Because I can. And Hank annoyed me this morning. And he's got a birthday coming up."

"And nothing says love more like tormenting somebody with . . ."

"Assorted annoying songs, sound effects. . . . Whatever I can put in this thing to upload to the server for his unit. Why did they put the main control unit behind so much shit?"

"To keep people from taking them over?" Alexander asks dryly. "Get out of that thing."

A door opens on the side and Josette hops out, ignoring the steps that had slid out and down with the door opening.

"Better?"

"Much."

Clarinda, Charles, Pat, and Doc look at Josette. The first thing they see is she's tiny. If she tops five feet it's only with the help of thick soled boots and if she weighs a hundred pounds it's with giving her five pounds. She's wearing slacks and a multicolored short-sleeved shirt. The most striking thing about her though is the two streaks of white in her hair.

Josette looks around and sighs, pulling down a mouthpiece from the headset and tapping by her ear. "Dialing Hank."

"Voicemail, leave a message at the beep." a recorded male voice says.

"I'm going to hurt you. The big, bad, evil geniuses you just have to have our help tracking down? Alexander and Michael? Really?" She drawls, rolling the r. They look at each other, blink, then cackle. "Definitely going to have to annoy the shit out of him with this thing." She mutters. She taps it again. "Private channel. Anybody listening? I found the big, bad evil geniuses Hank told us about. It's Alexander and Michael. . ." She grabs the earpiece and holds it at arm length, obviously waiting for the sound of spluttering they can hear, followed by female laughter. "Don't pretend not to be listening to me then dumbass. Oh and it's also Charles and Clarinda, Doc, Pat, Mom and Dad, Mom and Dad, and some others." Josette says near the mouthpiece, the unit still in her hand.

"And Mom and Dad and Mom and Dad are dressed in costumes. . .so either it's Halloween, a costume party, or you've got superheroes for parents."

Another moan. . .one that James and Mary recognize, followed by the same female laughter and male guffaws. "Oh and Professor Xavier, Professor Xavier, Mr. Lensheer, Mr. Lensheer, Susan's grandmother, her godmother, and two people who I think are her parents are here. Who are also wearing costumes."

"And you're here Josette, but you're in a chamber like the brains and brawns books and you're also in your mother's arms in a clone body." Alexander says with a smirk. Josette looks at the baby, covers her eyes, and swears again as a beeping has Alexander grabbing his PADD and transferring the call to a screen. The others whimper as they see children lost to them.

"Yep, those are my parents." Susan sighs. Then she shoves a still whining David away from her with a foot to his ass. "Oh like Mom needs superpowers to beat your ass for being an annoying brat." Josette cackles at Susan's bland tone.

"Evil genius my ass." Alan snorts coming through. "I thought Hank was up to something."

"Yeah, we all know that's Josette's job description in the family." One of the twins across the room says with a laugh. Her fingers fly over the console in front of her. "And . . .we're done." She bats at the lock of hair that fallen in her eyes, lifting it away with telekinesis. "Calling Sam."

"Yes." The others blink around Josette, Alexander, and Michael. They all recognize the voice and not only did they immediately get through to him, they call him Sam?

"Abby Covington, we just got done clearing out all those closed landfills you had us nab as well as the landfills that were over 70 percent full, sending you the list. We'll start sorting everything and if there's anything unusual we'll let you know."

"Thank you Abby. That allows us to see what we need to do before reclaiming that land."

"Sam, Alan Covington." Alan says from a nearby console.

"Yes Alan?"

"I'm sending you locations I marked when we scanned. Not just illegal dump sites, it looks like some of them are body dump sites. Those are marked."

"Thank you Alan I'll send them to the proper authorities." Sam says in his office as he gets the message. On the screen Anna rolls her eyes, grabbing a bobby pin from the cup on the console and pins that lock of hair in place for Abby the third time she shoves it out of her face.

"Thanks."

"I don't know how you and Josette can stand long hair."

"Same way we don't know how you can stand short hair?"

"Point." Josette sniggers. Her hair is pinned at the nape of her neck and trailing down her back but a couple loose pieces are already falling around her face.

Alexander looks out the door of his and Michael's room when he can hear somebody. Doc looks at him. "Go back to sleep, it's late. I got a call from the others, they need a ride back to the Tower. I'll probably not be back until the day after tomorrow."

"Yo Michael, up and at them. The others need a ride." Alexander calls over his shoulder. "We'll be right out."

Doc shakes his head as less than five minutes later Michael comes out, hopping on one foot as he pulls a shoe on the other. He leads the way to the garage, heading for a bus but the boys pull him the other direction.

Michael snorts. "From the paint job and knowing Josette, she's got the interior as customized as the exterior." Giving a rat a tat tat on the door with his knuckles he pulls it open and walks up the stairs, the others following him. He's not surprised when lights come on immediately.

Doc makes his trilling sound.

"I take it they're not supposed to be bigger on the inside than the outside?" Alexander smirks.

"No." He looks at a number of rows of seats across from them with the drivers area way on the right as they enter the door. They're bleacher style in that they're on different levels but identical to the seats at the front of the vehicle otherwise.

A hallway on the left has doors on either side, the third one on their left reveals a bedroom with Josette sleeping. Slapping the lights on in the room Michael turns on a music player on the wall, dialing a selection, and the familiar sound of the Andrew Sisters Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy wakes Josette.

"Yeah?" She looks over at the doorway.

"We gotta head to pick up the others, they need a ride."

"Get yourselves buckled in, I'll be right out." Josette is out in a few minutes, finding Doc inputting information on the computer system. The computer comes up with three possible routes and he selects one. Josette shakes her head, turning on the engines and toggling a couple switches. A new selection is available after she reloads the computer's map unit and Doc stares at her as the vehicle starts flying once they pull out of the garage.

"How long?"

"About ninety minutes."

Doc gets on the radio and lets them know as Michael starts back down the hall.

"Josette, why do you have two staircases?" Michael's voice comes over the intercom.

"The one that only goes down is to the mechanicals. I gotta do some maintenance when we get back."

Ninety minutes later they come in for a landing, the others staring in disbelief. Doc chuckles slightly as he's waved up to where Richard is waiting. He motions for him to follow him into the caves as the others begin walking into Josette's vehicle.

The sound of trilling surrounds them as the light of Richard's flashlight trails around yellow metal. Not just raw ore but refined into pots and other items.

"Is it real?"

"Oh yes, I did the tests. I've put in the interest claim for the land. . .because it's not just gold. I removed these with just a few hand tools. And I haven't looked that far."

Doc looks at the stones with gems inside. "We'll go over everything later. Do you have more samples?"

Three bags are brought out and stowed carefully before they lift off, Josette heading down the hallway and tinkering in the mechanicals room the entire trip back. They settle in the garage area and Josette comes out with a bag of stuff that goes to another room. 'Looking' Michael sees a replicator. Continuing to look he sees rooms filled with spare parts and heads off with the others.

Josette finishes up what she'd been working on and takes a hot shower. Alexander looks at her as she comes out of her vehicle.

"I spent the day doing maintenance, I had to shower. I couldn't stand myself."

"How long were you doing maintenance?"

"Since we got home til about an hour ago. Now I know why they take these out of service a week to do maintenance, it's not hard but it's tedious. Of course I think part of it is a way to annoy the drivers since without vehicles they're stuck doing paperwork."

"And why repairs after an accident take longer than you think they should." Alexander says as they walk into a large dining room filled with various sized tables.

"Were you allowed to make all those alterations to the vehicle?" Doc asks as she sits down.

"Yes, the government is keeping it quiet but they're slowly doing away with the single person vehicles. As they get destroyed, they won't be replaced. They're planning two or more people squads now. This way they have backup. The vehicles won't be as large as mine . .." The three kids snigger as Josette calmly demolishes a large plate of food and is handed a second. "They'll be more like mobile command centers with pull-down bunks and stock of emergency supplies as needed for when they gotta be out of the office. Mine was the last one man unit new off the line. They added a few extra things since it was for me."

"Hyperactive metabolism?" Doc asks when Josette eats her second plate and Michael calmly hands her a third.

"Unfortunately, anything under 4000 calories a day and I lose weight. It was either eat everything in sight, drink those godawful meal replacement shakes, or eat the bars." Michael shudders. "We ate those for nearly a month at the orphanage to stretch meals. . ." Richard stiffens. . .orphanage. While he would rather Michael had come from the marriage to his beloved wife instead of a young woman he had briefly known he would never have wanted the boy to be in an orphanage. "When the government cut the orphanage's food budget. The government howled when some of us started getting sick and they saw the slimmer meals. They complained about the workers starving the poor orphans, the orphanage told them how somebody had slashed the food budget."

"Lemme guess, 'but I didn't know it was for foo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hood? I just thought they were wasting money.'" Josette fake sheds crocodile tears, sobbing like she was heartbroken then snorts.

"Yep. Because their precious state budget needed cutting and god forbid his pet projects get a dime taken away. The food budget was restored and he still watched the orphanage like a hawk trying to find somewhere where they were wasting money."

"Yeah wasting money feeding the children, making sure they had clothes, paying the lights, telephone, heat, and gas bills. When we started our art it helped out a little." Alexander laughs. "The roof."

"Oh god, I should probably feel sorry for him . . .now." Michael pretends to think. "Nahhhh, he was a twit who got what he deserved at the time."

"What happened?" Charles asks.

"The roof badly needed fixing, not just patching but having the entire thing torn off and replaced."

"And he whined about the cost?" Pat sighs.

"Yes, so we put up donation jars in stores around town, the local churches, and had a donation jar at our show to shame them into doing something. He huffed and puffed and said the roof couldn't possibly need replacing, even though the experts he brought in said oh yes it does. He went up on the roof to prance around like a peacock and fell right through a rotten spot. Through the attic floor which had been weakened by the leaks, and into a bathroom on the third floor. So not only did the state have to replace the roof, they had to fix the attic and the bathroom."

"Was that before or after he poked that spot in the ceiling and water started pouring on his head?"

"Afterwards, he tried saying it was a plumbing problem but there wasn't any pipes up there. Unfortunately for him, he did it in front of a plumbing expert and a camera crew from the local tv station who had been investigating why people were taking up donations to fix the roof of a state-run orphanage. It was after the roof that the government told him to knock it off, he was embarrassing them. Because the orphanage had proof of all his complaints about their 'wasting' money on necessities and the camera crew ran with it. He came off as a nitpicking little bastard stealing the poor orphans future with his greediness."

"You spent some time in an orphanage?" Doc asks since Richard is speechless.

"Alexander and I were foundlings, since the orphanage was a safe harbor nobody did anything beyond reporting us."

"Safe harbor?"

"In our dimension, many states had safe areas where people could leave babies with no questions asked, it kept them from being abandoned elsewhere and maybe not being found in time. We stayed in the orphanage until we were fourteen and started high school."

"While Josette became a ward of the state after the earthquake. California was hurting for money even then so they were more than happy to let her be Massachusetts problem." Josette is busy eating so she just nods. "Not that they did anything for me." she says after swallowing. "Your first social worker should have been fired for not doing their job." Alexander snorts.

"Well look at the local office before the new guy took over and started getting rid of the oldtimers and headcases. It wasn't until Ms. Hastings came out that we knew what a good social worker was, she got me the food benefits I was eligible for since I had a way to prepare food, she got me a phone the state paid for instead of me having to buy minutes for the prepaid phone I brought because they just had to have a way of contacting me and leaving a message at the office wasn't good enough for them..."

"And that phone was a piece of crap. Your two year contract was up before you graduated, you could have gotten a better one."

"Anything else I'd have had a huge bill after I graduated. The bill on the other phone when that one went up was three times as much."

"And did three times as much as your old phone did?" Alexander says dryly. Snickers from the others.

"Well hell, you already knew I was cheap. She also told us about the fund that would pay for my dental and vision since the state had got rid of that in their medical coverage so I could stop putting it on my scholarship loan. And reimbursed me *most* of what I'd already spent on them."

"You wear glasses?" Doc asks. making a mental note about getting her into the medical unit.

"Used to, my first trip off-dimension I had my eyes fixed."

Doc pats Richard on the shoulder where he's standing by a window.

"The permanent paperwork for the claim has been filed, for ten thousand acres in all directions with the option for another five thousand since we haven't had a chance to see how far the caverns extend, water rights, and mineral rights." Richard nods then turns his attention back to the window. Following his gaze he can see Michael, Alexander, and Josette outside washing her vehicle. The colors seem to pop in the fading sunlight as they go inside the vehicle and bring it back in the garage.

"I would rather he have been Alicia's but. . ."

"You'd have moved heaven and earth when you found out and taken Alexander once you saw how close they are. I'd have done the same for Josette." Doc chuckles as Pat comes through with Josette and a couple changes of clothes poking out of a bag a few minutes later, Michael and Alexander sniggering as they follow them. She's rolling her eyes since they're looking all serious when someone's looking then making faces and making 'shame, shame' finger motions when everybody pretends they're not looking.

"Yes, your room in your vehicle is nice. . .but there is no reason for you to sleep in it when there is plenty of room here."

Doc chuckles and walks away. "I need to start an identity and card for Josette."

The next morning Josette settles on a padded bench in the medical unit as Doc strokes her hair until what he'd given her to drink takes effect and she falls asleep. A mask is pressed over her mouth and nose as lights start playing around her. Results start coming up and he nods at some, frowns at others, and sighs.

Josette looks at the card with her name that Doc had given her. She knows what it is, a combination ID and bank card. Shrugging she scans it at one of the terminals to activate it in the Tower before they walk outside.

/Did the others give you cards too?/

/Yeah, plus the ones Sam gave us. We're good on money for years, even with getting in supplies. And the way you shop for books./

Josette blows him a mental raspberry as they walk to the bus stop, Josette making a hmmming sound when they pass a recycling drop off site.

/Yes, it's like Granda's world. We've already been out a couple of times to make a little money for necessities./

/Donations?/

/Got a list started./

/Okay, who the fuck is Richard?/ Alexander asks.

/My father? And very high in the government along with the others?/ Alexander rolls his eyes mentally. /Beyond that. And can I say it's weird for one of us to finally meet a parent?/

/Two words, Mike and Ike./ Josette says.

Michael gives her a 'WTF' look mentally as they get on a bus. /The candy?/

/The Avenger? Oh come on, am I the only person who read the books?/ Josette brings her PADD up and gets on Atlantis's server, dl'ing the package she sends to Michael's PADD. /I'll read them later. So who's Kent?/

/Bwah ha ha ha. . .Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows./ Josette says in a spooky voice. Michael mentally facepalms. /Thought he was supposed to be Lamont Cranston?/

/Cranston is his most used identity, he uses the identity of the real Lamont Cranston who is overseas most of the time under his orders. And even if he's in New York as an alibi in some fics./ They get off the bus and walk to the museum that's offering free admission that day for their cards.

Michael and Alexander spend most of the evening reading, Michael shaking his head. No wonder Richard looks so distant some of the time. Josette flips through the channels on the entertainment system, finally settling on the bed with music playing.

Josette sighs mentally, ignoring the others laughter as she picks up a pencil and starts taking tests under the amused look of the younger Professor Xavier. The tests take most of the morning with Josette and the boys heading off after lunch.

"Well, I can't say anything about being evil, but Josette is definitely a genius." Charles says when he comes into the room where the others are waiting. He hands around copies of the tests and results, Doc trilling when they come to him.

"Where are they?"

"Out at the recycling drop-off centers working then going to the stores. I know we've all told the boys that we'll pay for whatever they want but. . .and Josette seems to be the same way."

"Too long having to depend on themselves while they were in the system. Because while the state might claim they will take care of you it's not always the case. What the boys said about the orphanage and Josette said about her medical coverage is all too common." Cole Wilson says, he'd been called in by Richard to help him with a vehicle. Since Cole had been an orphan until being taken in, he's all too familiar with the system. And it hasn't improved over the years.

A beeping has Richard turning to the computer, finding Josette, Alexander, and Michael coming into the building. They're loaded down with bags and heading to the room they'd set up for Josette. Pat excuses herself and goes to join them to see if she needs to take Josette shopping for more clothes.

"Okay, vaccines?"

"I've been replicating them, none of them have any of the major vaccines I'd recommend. I'll have enough for everybody in a few days."

"Josette." Pat shakes her head as she looks over the bags of clothes, good and while some are obviously meant for dressing up. . .

"Uht oh." Alexander drawls. "Here you go again."

"Hush wretch."

"I take it this happened before?" Pat laughs.

"Yes, you wanted to give Josette a wardrobe of good clothes, Josette said she didn't have the room in her closet. So we cleaned out the room next to hers for you."

Pat laughs despite herself. Josette grumbles. "You needed them when you started making a name for yourself."

"Name for yourself?"

"We're artists, I work with wood, Michael metal, and Josette textiles. She's also an author."

"The interviews are just as bad as the ones we had to do before the shows but the book tours are fun, Madison gives me free time to see the sights and makes sure I can attend stuff like comic-con and other events."

The next day a flyer lands in the yard; Susan, David, the twins, and Alan getting out.

"Get everything done?" Josette looks over from where she's got her vehicle out brushing something over the windshield of her vehicle.

"Yes, Sam wanted a couple meetings before we could get loose. What are you doing?"

"This is the same stuff that was in the wipes used on headlights. It will keep the screen clear, I already got the lights and camera lenses."

"So how did you all meet?" Pat asks when Josette has come off her vehicle.

"Our first day of classes at the boarding high school we attended. Well, officially the four boys had met the day before when the new students arrived at the school, same with the girls. Josette and twins had the dorm monitor duties for the girls, me, Alexander, and Michael had the job for the boys. All eight of us had three classes together and were assigned group papers, we got to know each other and . . ." David shrugs.

"I'd been sitting at my usual table talking to the twins when Alan came in for breakfast from the other direction. . ."

"We asked if boys could sit at girls tables and Josette asked if that was our brother. We waved him over."

"I met Alexander briefly after lunch that first day, he'd been called in to fix a dent a spoiled bitch had put in a door. By the end of the week we were eating all our meals together, not only did the eight of us have three classes together we had more classes where some of us were together."

"Government." Michael moans. "You were the only one who didn't run from the class that first day."

Josette snorts. "I had Professor Ziegler as a tutor for nearly two years since the school in Killingmesoftly was so bad. I was used to him."

"We had three books yeah thick." Alan holds out his hands. "Each. Plus a pile of handouts yeah thick. . ." the second yeah thick is a lot bigger than the first. "Everybody swore they'd never take another class with him when they signed up for the next year of classes. But they did."

Susan snickers. "I wonder how many students whined about his class being hard to the university those years he was guest teaching?"

"Probably at least one a class." Josette snorts. "Then when the university talked to him they have eggs on their faces when they find out he's using the syllabus from the usual teacher, then to make things worse he shows off our syllabus and asks if a teenager can do that. . ."

"Why are they whining?" Susan's mother snorts.

"Exactly. Especially since he's teaching Grad school classes."

"By that time they should be able to pull their big boy pants on and actually do the damn work." her father snorts.

"You're not triplets." Doc says, looking from Alan to the twins.

Alan laughs. "No, I'm two years older than the girls. My birthday came after the cutoff to start school so I had to start the next year." Alice sighs and nods. "And Albatross's school didn't have the classes needed to get into our high school right away, the school sent me the books to study and the twins studied after their classes with me so we could all get in the next year."

"Is this . . .Robin's soup?" Alice asks, looking at the large kettle simmering on the stove.

"It can't be. . . but it smells like it." Andrew says, coming over and waving his hand over the kettle to get the smells. Neither of them is getting too close in case it's something else. While nothing harmful should be able to pass the Tower's wards. . .

"Awww, Josette made our favorite soup." Alan says, coming in and taking a deep sniff. Grabbing a spoon he takes a sip. "About ten more minutes."

"Favorite soup?"

"Our junior year Josette fell and hit her head." The doctors in the room stiffen. "She wasn't concussed but something in her screwy head twisted. . ." Josette absently flips him off as she comes through. "Yeah, for some damn reason I could not stand the smell of meat anymore. It turned my stomach. The school started adding more vegetarian main dishes and I ate the stuff they offer in stores. . ."

"Those are foul. . ." Richard rumbles. The others nod.

"But I was losing weight because while most people could easily live a vegetarian lifestyle, with my hyperactive metabolism I wasn't getting enough protein." Richard and Doc nod. "So Alan and the twins contacted Mom and they brought me out a jar of the soup and the recipe."

"Do you know the rules?"

"If you double the recipe, you only use half again the spices and you always put it up in pickle jars. It was a few months but whatever kinked untwisted, one morning I woke up wanting a big hamburger with all the trimmings." She tastes the soup and puts the kettle on warm. It won't go bad sitting there on the heat for a while.

"One so thick you have to hold it with both hands to eat."

"Yeah, that's the kind we have at the burger place now. Once you have a good burger, fast food doesn't compare anymore."

"Report."

"Found them Chief, they're at the park volunteering for the beautification project they got running today. Josette's planting flowers not six feet from me, while the boys are laying sod." A picture from a buttonhole camera appears on the screen and they can see Josette on her knees planting flowers, the picture moves and they see Alexander laying sod with somebody, Michael coming up with a wheelbarrow filled with more.

/Josette?/ Alexander asks, not looking that direction.

/One of Kent's people letting the others know where we are./

/Ahhh, okay then./

Doc. Richard, and James set up a base camp after they've been given deed to the land several weeks later. Josette brings out the last of the supplies and hands over a scroll of paper. "I did a sonar scan of the caverns, I thought it would save you some time."

"Thank you Josette." Richard lays out the paper, Doc and James look over his shoulder as she heads back to her vehicle. The others turn to look as it starts backing in and a shimmering field springs up to block the opening of the cavern. She has a radio and they listen to the emergency weather forecast. She ducks inside and emerges a few minutes later. "Told the others I won't be back until the storm is over."

Richard looks into the vehicle a couple hours later, finding Josette sitting in the command seat eating. She looks over at him.

"Can I check the weather forecast?"

"Sure, go ahead." She gets up and heads into the back to take care of her meal debris as Richard settles in the other seat, shaking his head as he listens to the updated forecast then heads back to the others.

Doc looks at him. "At least two, possibly three days at the earliest."

"Which is how long we would have been here anyway." he looks out at the darkening sky through the shimmering field. It's letting in air, he can feel the slight breeze.

Several hours later they return from exploring the tunnels to find Josette stirring a pot over the cook stove.

"Good, this won't go bad from sitting on the heat for a few hours but it's ready now." She dishes out bowls of the chowder. Richard sniffs appreciatively.

"We have a cooking school on Haven, the teachers come out for ten year shifts and offer ten week blocks of cooking, it's not something like the the Culinary Institure but it works for us. Since everybody cooks on Haven and the other planets, the classes are always well attended."

"Josette?" Clarinda asks slowly as Josette waves a hand and bags and boxes appear. She, Michael, and Alexander had been off picking up school books and other supplies for their classes. The boys grab some of it and starts putting theirs away in the room set up for their schooling as Josette does the same.

"It's called putting stuff in subspace, creating subspace pockets that can hold everything you need. Means nobody has to carry the bags. Especially times like this when we have so much stuff." She opens boxes of pens, pencils, erasers, and other stuff that go in small baskets on the shelves, with more supplies going in the storage area at the bottom of the unit.

"Is that your mutation?" From the tests they know all three of them are off the scale Omega level mutants and they already know Abby is a telekinetic. They can only assume the others are as well.

Josette shakes her head. "No, it's something I picked up years ago."

Josette grins as she comes into the room. "Give me a picture of what needs moved." Looking at her Charles brings up the section on the screen. "Those seven rooms? Everything in them?"

"Yes?" Doc asks. Nearly everybody squeaks when stuff starts disappearing, leaving seven empty rooms. Doc makes his trilling sound.

"Give me a location of where you want it." A picture comes up and Josette starts delivering boxes.

Michael is shoved behind his. . .his father as stuff starts appearing. "Relax, that's Josette delivering stuff." /Yo! Quit scaring the natives./

At the tower Professor Xavier blinks at the mental contact.

/Good, you're there. Gimme a location, there's more coming./ Josette says back at him. /Keep it quiet, Professor Xavier can hear us./ The mental contact seems to vanish.

"You are a telepath?

"No, Anna is but we've had a telepathic link for years." Josette takes the PADD with the list from James and begins to call out items out loud and mentally, getting a mental picture of where to put it as the screen in front of them shows Michael pointing at areas and boxes appearing. What makes it more startling is Josette's facing away from the screen.

"You're always in constant mental contact? Even without Anna?"

"Yeah."

Susan's mother slaps her hands together. "The other night, I was coming to tell you it was time to stop working. Alexander was handing items your direction and you didn't even look. Just took them from his hand." On the screen Michael nods. "If we're around people who know us we're liable to speak out loud as well as mentally, especially if we're passing along messages."

"What did you do?"

"Put everything in subspace pockets, it makes it easier when we have a lot of bags. Clarinda knows, she saw me bring out all our school stuff out a couple days ago."

"Josette, this is my mother. . .your great-grandmother." Josette blinks as she walks through.

"Wait for it." Alexander says with a grin as Michael starts counting off the seconds.

"YES! I finally know where the hell I inherited the short genes in the family." Comes from the next room as Michael folds down his pinky. They collapse against each other, cackling. Meanwhile Clark's mother is giggling as she looks up at her son. The sound of the door opening.

"DUNCAN! Message from Hank. Damien says quit ignoring his damn phone calls. He don't care how annoying your new assignment is, you lost the damn coin toss fair and square. Now pull your big boy pants on, get your ass over there, and do the damn job. Because he said so." Pat's cackling because she knows both people. "And no, you can't quit. He won't fire you either. . .because he's tired of your mother bitching about getting you out of the house that's why. It's good pay for you an apartment of your own."

"I'm a fucking billionaire, I own the damn company, and I own the fucking house, thank you very much. My mother can kiss my lily white ass and so can my idiot brother." A voice yells as a motor starts up.

Josette comes back into the room, shaking her head. "Herding cats."

"Oh yes, some days it most certainly is." Pat chuckles. "What assignment is he ducking?"

"Taking a celebritwit shopping. She needs a new wardrobe to be seen in. Because she's going to be out of the spotlight for the next four years while she's in university. She'll have to have photogs following her around everywhere she goes, who cares what the university wants. What do you mean the others studies are more important than her ego? Don't they know who she is?"

"Yep, definitely an assignment to duck." Alexander snorts.

Duncan storms into the room and grabs Damien by the collar, jerking him to his feet and dragging him out. He drags him into the lobby of the business where a picture of him is hanging.

"What the fuck does this say?"

"You're a menace who needs to be. . ." A swat on his ass makes him quit screwing around "Duncan Lexington MacNair. . .Owner of the company?" He whimpers. He's never seen his brother wearing a suit, but it's definitely him. "Oh shit." How the hell had he missed this before now?

"Yeah. . .Oh shit. Not only do I own this company and this building plus a few dozen more around town, I own the house. . .and a half-dozen more in the city. Dad asked me to come home because he knew he was dying. He thought Mom would grow the fuck up, but she hasn't."

"But you're taking only a couple classes a semester." He says.

"Yeah, for my doctorate. . .and it's not the first one I've gotten."

"Sit your whiny ass down and shut the fuck up." Duncan says a couple hours later, glaring at his mother. "You're going to learn some facts of life. You want me out of this house. . . Fine. I can easily sell it for five times what I paid for it. I can live in one of my other houses. You'll have to find an apartment though."

"You don't own this house." she bleats.

"The hell I don't. I brought this house for you and Dad. Or didn't you ever wonder where the money came from? Nothing came out of your accounts yet there wasn't a mortgage?" He brings out the deed and taxes, Beatrice whimpering when she sees her son's name on everything.

"How could you afford this house, you're only taking two classes a semester." she bleats.

"For my doc tor ate." He says slowly. "It's not the first one I've gotten. I'm a fucking billionaire Mom."

"But you're a glorified taxi driver." She bleats.

"I own the company Mom. I have a list of high profile clients that I drive."

"Did you hear the latest?" A woman says a couple weeks later as she sits down in the back room of a tea house.

"No, what?"

"You know how Beatrice has been complaining about that younger boy of hers, wanting him out out her house? The house isn't hers at all, it's his."

"Really?" her companion purrs. "Yeah, he came home from work one day and laid down the law on her. She's distraught, he told her if she doesn't want him living here he can easily sell the house. . .of course she'd have to find an apartment of her own. He can easily move back into one of his other houses."

"I thought the father had left the house to her?" One of their friends asks from the next table.

"Nope, the son brought it for his parents to live in but it's his. And get this. . .while he is taking college classes in his spare time it's for his doctorate. And it's not his first one. He owns the company that he works for, the brother is ducking his head and keeping quiet since he's been listening to his mother and giving his brother shit assignments. Then complaining he's tired of his mother bitching about getting him out of the house, he can use the money from the assignments as a down payment for an apartment."

"What a damn fool, didn't she see his name on the fucking taxes and bills?" Somebody else asks from another table.

"Ohhh, you know Beatrice. She'd never lower herself to pay the bills. So now she's having to pick up more hours to pay her own bills. And pay rent. She tried suing and had her ass handed to her by the court, they told her her son didn't have to take care of her. . .not the way she'd been badmouthing him."

"Serves the stupid bitch right, she thought the sun rose and set on that other boy."

Mara chuckles as Clark pulls aside the headphones Josette's wearing.

"A history lecture?"

"From the Smithsonian, Granda's got a school membership for his school and I got hooked on downloading the lectures and listening to them whenever I was waiting." She turns it off and pops the headphones in subspace.

"Huh, the local magical area." She says a few minutes later.

"We weren't sure if you were aware of magic or not." Mara says in relief. Josette conjures a mage light then cancels the spell.

"I came into it late."

"Miss, can you please bring down your shields?" A man who reminds her sooo much of Ollivander says when Josette walks into a wand store. She brings down one, gets a look, then brings down another. He's still waiting and she lets out her godhood.

"Come. . ." She says quietly and waves a hand, fifteen boxes flying off the shelves to land on the counter. Waving a hand the boxes fly open and she tries each wand, nodding at each one that will be good for an aspect of magic then getting wand care supplies and holsters.

She finds Doc and Mara waiting by a fountain, what she recognizes as everlight bottomless bags on their arms.

"Did you get a wand?"

"Oh yes, along with wand care supplies and a holster to put it in." Mara is instantly suspicious of the look in Josette's eyes but lets it go as they walk into the first of five bookstores.

Josette pops the bag in subspace when they exit the store.

"That *]is convenient."

The next stop is a cauldron store and she shakes her head, this is getting more and more like Harry Potter every stop. A set is popped in subspace and they visit the apothecary next, getting boxes of supplies.

"If we come across an old guy in blinding robes, a long beard, and rambling about the greater good I am going to do something very naughty." Josette says. Doc and Mara look at her. "You didn't have Harry Potter here?" They shake their heads. "I'll have the others replicate the books and movies.

A few hours later when they return home Josette hands over the box. "A set of books about a boy who attends a magical school in Scotland for seven years. Each book is a year at the school, the movies are adaptions of the books." She sees copies being made for everybody at the replicator.

"Dumbledore needed to have been beaten to death." Mara says a couple days later at brunch.

"Josette made a damn good attempt at it the time she got yanked to a dimension where it was real." Alexander snorts.

"Please, like I'd get my hands dirty on him." Josette rolls her eyes. "I was hunting the old fool like Elmer Fudd chases Bugs Bunny. He was running from me because I kinda sorta told him he was next after I blew off the tiny, inbred dick of the old lech he tried marrying me off to with a .38 when he tried laying a hand on me. . .for the greater good of course." Richard and Kent nod in satisfaction.

"The non-magical government wasn't very happy to hear what was going on and took over the school. The first generation students were only there as breeding stock to give the old families fresh blood when they have too many squibs. I ended up destroying the ministry, bringing it down around everybody's ears and roasting marshmallows over the flames." Mara chuckles as Pat and Clarinda nod in satisfaction.

"Richard." Doc calls as he staggers in with Michael in his arms. Across the room in an instant, he takes him from his arms as James comes in with a gurney.

"What happened?" Doc asks as they move into the medical unit. He's busy setting up medical equipment. He already knows Michael's blood type and dials up a bag of blood from the replicator. Setting it up it soon starts dripping into his arm as an oxygen mask goes over his mouth and nose.

"We were broadsided, hard enough for the roll cage to crumple. . .but it didn't. I was fighting to get the car under control when I realized Michael was holding it together. I didn't realize he'd been injured until I brought the car under control and the people who hit us had been . . .dealt with."

"Any idea why?"

"The others are investigating. I left the others to handle them when I realized he was hurt more than I could treat with the supplies I had on hand."

"And if it is an attack on you. . .they might be waiting at a hospital."

"And even if they were not, I would be questioned bringing him in directly without waiting for an ambulance or even a police car."

"A couple broken ribs, looks like the impact was along that side. Punctured lung, internal bleeding. We'll need to keep an eye on the internal organs if they've been affected." They move him into the operating theater.

Cole Wilson raps a hand on the side of the car. "It's like the frame and roll cage joined together to form something new."

Josette comes into the garage, rapping knuckles on the car and nodding at the familiar sound. "I call it Mikum to annoy him, it's something Michael can make. Once he's up and running he can change it back if you want. You'll need to do some work either way."

"You knew he was injured?" Richard asks from the door.

"We've been in each other's heads for years. We all sent our energy to him to keep the two of you safe during the accident, keep him upright until you were safe, and to damp down the pain once the adrenaline wore off."

"The others?"

"Alexander's . . .asleep in his room, recovering." Josette says, tilting her head and seeing Doc hurry off to check on him. "The others are on Atlantis."

"And yourself?"

"Myeh." Josette waves a hand. "A few hours sleep, a half-dozen energy bars. . ." 'A good soaking of solar energy' she thinks as she heads to her room.

"Medical unit." Richard orders.

"Are they okay?" Pat asks a few hours later. She's peering in Josette's room where she's stretched out on her bed looking so incredibly pale.

"I've called the ship, receiving scans. Like Josette and Alexander, their energy levels have dropped dramatically. . .like they've all ran a marathon. And as with any physical exertion sleep and food is the best cure."

The next morning Josette blinks at the clock, the sun is higher in the sky then when she normally wakes and she shakes her head as she gets up, getting a hot shower before dressing. Looking at the growing pile in her hamper she grabs her towels and strips her bed before going down to the laundry area and sorting laundry.

"Shouldn't you still be in bed?" Pat asks as she hurries into the laundry. She'd gone to Josette's room to check on her only to find her gone. The missing hamper had told her where to look.

"Being up and about is the best cure for what we did yesterday. We didn't do anything physical, just gave him energy."

"Your bodies say different, Clark says your scans would indicate you ran a marathon yesterday."

"Certainly felt like it this morning." Alexander snorts. He comes in with an overflowing hamper but he's got his and Michael's clothes. "I feel like the morning after we got back from New York our sophomore year. And we didn't go to work after breakfast then." The stain treaters get slid back and forth between them as they check their clothes before throwing them in the machines. The sheets and towels go in another machine.

"I needed the money, I got my scholarship loan statement that afternoon, even just four semesters into school I was nearly forty thousand dollars in debt."

"For Christ's sake why?" Pat asks.

"Room and board was 1200 a month since I had a dorm monitor room, the state paid 300 a month. Tuition was five thousand a semester. We went year-round, that was twenty thousand just there. Books and other supplies. That was before I found out about the fund that paid my dental and vision, I'd been putting them on that. It was the next semester that the new social worker arrived. I'd been buying cat stuff on the card and food for the galley kitchen in my room, the semester before that I had to buy a new laptop, hard drives, and computer programs for school when my old one went up. Clothes and other necessities. It adds up. Once I was signed up for that fund for my dental and glasses and started getting the food benefits I should have been getting since I had a way to prepare food it helped. I got about 80 percent back that I'd been putting on the card, that was a good chunk of change that came off the card."

Josette tosses the last of the clothes in the machines and starts them running.

"Our shows paid for our schooling, otherwise we'd have been in the same boat."

"I'd have said one of the nights the damn fire alarm went off. Going to bed at a normal hour, being woke up out of a sound sleep, then trying to catch naps in the auditorium had to be worse than a short sleep. And if that asswipe had set off the fire alarm that week, I'd have beaten him."

"You'd have had to get in line." He snorts.

"Fire alarm?" Richard asks from the doorway. Between Josette and Alexander the story is told. He shakes his head while Pat snickers at Anna forgetting her shoes all the time. Alice, who's nearly at the door, looks up at the ceiling and sighs. She can't say anything, Anna got her attitude straight from her. Thank god Abby and Alan take more after Andrew.

"The only time I actually saw you sleep then was that night you came back from the emergency room.

"Well yeah, I was drugged out of my damn head. Abby had to help me out of bed and carry Samhein."

"What happened?" Alice asks, coming into the room. The story is told. "What a miserable woman."

"Like I said before, headcases and bitches. It was only when Ms. Hastings brought her clients to the school to go from day to boarding students, found out the state doesn't pay everything, found out how much the girls would have to pay when they left school, and started kicking over anthills that we got a real social worker at the school. And started getting the benefits that we should have been getting."

"You said you'd been in New York?" Pat asks as Josette checks her laundry and puts it in the hamper to hang outside.

"Our sophomore year we had . .."

"Cheerleader Barbie as our social studies teacher. She had a chipper little voice and a habit of insulting the students with backhanded compliments in her little girl voice. The students and teachers hated her." Alexander rolls his eyes. "Yes, I know the teachers are supposed to be above that but everybody loathed the little fool."

"'Not everybody can afford a hotel room in New York so we're going to be taking the bus into the city every day. Monday we're going to go to the Museum of Natural History, I'm sure most of you only know it from the movie, but it is a real museum'." Josette says in a chipper voice. "Dumb bitch called me a liar when I asked what the students who worked at the school was supposed to do about their jobs? Nobody worked at the school. She flounced off to whine to Daddy . .err Principal Madison who told her that yes, there are students who have jobs at the school. Well, you'll just have to quit your jobs. I opened up my inner bitch and went off on her. She went off whining again and sulked because Principal Madison told her off about trying to tell the students they'd have to quit their jobs because she said so and hiring two busses without his permission but he had to pay for them. . .not her. She also didn't give a shit that she was inconveniencing the other teachers with nearly a hundred students being gone for the week from four in the morning to nine at night." The others moan and shake their heads. "Especially considering she only told everybody the week before we were leaving so they had to scramble to redo lesson plans for that week."

"Christ." Alice sighs.

"Yeah, so here we are at four in the morning getting on busses to drive to New York. Somebody asked if there was food in the back of the bus and she was 'didn't you eat breakfast before we left? Umm no lady, it's four in the fucking morning. The dining hall isn't open yet. Well, how do they handle breakfast on the senior trips? They make breakfast sandwiches and other stuff over the school year and freeze it, bringing it out a couple days before everybody leaves and putting it on the bus'." Josette snorts.

"Anyway Josette asked her about dinner, 'we're going to be back at nine, can't they hold the dining hall open an hour late?' No, the workers want to go home, they're already working short-handed this week with so many students gone. She went off to cry to Principal Madison who told her to suck it up and she'd have to feed us dinner as well as lunch."

"Let me guess, she hadn't thought about *that either?" The older Professor Xavier sighs as he comes into the room. A table lowers and he starts sorting his laundry, some going into the other room to be dry-cleaned.

"Yep. Principal Madison went off on her, telling her that she should have made sure that the places we were going had cafeterias so we could eat lunch."

"She thought she'd be getting an all expenses paid vacation in New York, she didn't realize she'd have to pay for our lunches, dinners, and admission to the attractions she dropped us off at then went off to do her own thing. Like I said, Monday was the museum of Natural History, Tuesday was the Empire State Building." Sniggers from the others. "Anyway Wednesday was the United Nations, then a few hours for ourselves until we were supposed to meet for dinner. We were at the cafe. . .but she never showed up or told the restaurant to expect us for dinner. They called the police to report teenagers loitering. The police came expecting gang members only to find us." Charles sighs. "So we got to ride to the station in Paddy wagons since they were the only things big enough to take us in one trip. Patrolmen went to where we said the busses were parked and found them but couldn't find a school with our name in New York. I told a sneering detective that we were from outside Boston which was in Massachusetts and gave the school's phone number. The head of the crime lab called the school and Professor Druid flew out, picking us up from the police station."

"Did your teacher ever show up?"

"Yes, the next morning in Times Square drunk out of her mind. So drunk they had to take her to the hospital before they took her to the police station. The drivers for the busses were nowhere to be found, the news that a teacher had stranded a group of students in New York had made the news and volunteers from another bus company drove the busses back to the school with a van following us to take the drivers back."

"God, that would be a long drive." Alice sighs. "Understandably the rest of the trip was canceled, we got home around two in the morning and had breakfast at seven. I just kicked off my shoes and slept in my clothes on top of the covers. After breakfast I headed to the school laundry to start two days of sheets and towels for the girls, the next day I did two days of the boys sheets and towels. It wasn't quite my full twenty hour week but it was more than I'd been expecting that week."

"That would have been a lot of work."

"About six hours each day. It was a taste of what was to come later our first semester of university when I had to do two days of laundry when we were off nights for the morning show interviews. Though that time we flew."

"And the rest of us helped you with the folding machine so you weren't putting in a sheet or towel, picking it up at the other end to put in a pile, then going back to the front of the machine to put in another piece, then making sets. By then you had two full floors of sheets and towels."

"Worse when more students started sharing rooms. My senior year my hours went up to six hours a night four nights a week and an eight hour shift in the front room Sundays. After I graduated the nights I was doing two floors of sheets and towels a night I was working a good eight hours."

"When the second set of boys and girls dorms were built, Principal Madison was able to hire the job out to a commercial laundry in Boston. When we were up to four sets of dorms, they'd outgrown the eight commercial washers in the back room and the laundry started picking up the laundry."

Josette hangs hers and the boys clothes outside, sucking up solar energy the whole time.

"Do you always hang your laundry out?"

"Yep, as long as the weather is nice until it starts freezing instead of drying on the line. Everything but sheets and towels, those we dry year-round because we have a folding machine we use that gets them neater than we could by hand."

"Was she fired?"

"Oh yes, especially considering she wasn't teaching from the book. We told the school that and our midterms the next week didn't count towards our grades. The teachers took turns teaching the class and setting up tutoring sessions. The students worked our asses off for the last two months of the semester to bring up our grades. The winter semester we had a new teacher. She lasted three, four years?" Alexander looks at Josette.

"Not quite four. Amanda was hired after our first semester of online classes. Ms. Markham was a retired university teacher Professor Eppes knew. She'd been at loose ends and agreed to cover the classes because she missed teaching. After she left the school she went back to the field."

"Wanted to go out with her boots on?" Professor Xavier chuckles.

"Yep, she'd tried retiring and it didn't agree with her. Cheerleader Barbie tried finding another job and sued the school because Principal Madison was telling other schools horror stories about her. She got her ass handed to her in the courtroom because everything she said was a lie and he had the proof of her stupidity. The judge suggested she seek counseling but those type never do." Sighs and nods from the others.

"So, let me get this out first. Sorry about passing along that message from your brother. Hank called me whining." Josette says as she gets in the vehicle.

"You're not the first customer the idiot has used that way, not even the first time the little crybaby went whining to our government contact to pass along a message." Duncan smirks. "But it was definitely the last time. Now, where to?"

"I've got a list a mile long, that's why you're ours for the next week and we've got the big truck." She passes them along and he shakes his head. "Oh yes, definitely a week's worth of stops. Thank you for arranging them geographically."

"I always hated having to go from one side of town to another then back instead of doing everything you needed on that end, then going to the other place. Or stopping there first, then doing everything else. Sometimes you can't help it but if you plan ahead you can usually arrange things. Bad enough a couple days you're going to be driving nearly three hours one way."

Michael leans against the door frame, eyes on a chair across the room. Unfortunately, his strength begins to lag before he can reach it, starting to tilt until a hand slides under his arm.

"You should still be in bed." Richard says.

Michael blinks up at him. "I had to get out of my room. . ."

"Walls beginning to close in on you?" He helps him across the room to the chair, checking his pulse and the bandages.

Alexander comes in with a few bags. "Figured you'd wanting to be out by now." He hands him one. Michael smiles as he sees sketch pads and pencils. Another bag is heavier and goes next to the chair. Richard sees it's full of metal cubes. "Don't try too much too soon."

"Where's Josette?"

"Getting in major supplies with Duncan."

"Mikum?" Michael looks over his shoulder at Josette. Who just smirks.

"Then come up with a name for it already." Richard and Doc chuckle. The 'dumbass' had been unspoken but clearly heard by everybody.

"Oh, you're like Josette." Alexander says walking through. He'd been working on schoolwork and needed a break, some fresh air, and food. He dials up a selection at the food replicator. He's two bites in before the others react.

"Josette can. . ."

"Touch a book and instantly download everything into her mind? Yeah, she generally does it for textbooks. She prefers to read fiction." Alexander grabs his PADD and hunts through files, putting them up on the screen.

"That's Josette dl'ing books for her next semester of classes." Doc sighs silently as he sees a familiar gesture, Josette sliding two fingers over a stack of books. His mother nods. "Josette prefers to let the books settle over time, she's said it's like a rip current, but words instead of water." He eats a few more bites.

"This is Josette actually reading a book, grabbing the words as they rush past. Doc. . .our Doc hates when Josette does it." he eats more food at the clip runs.

"I can see why." Josette's white as a sheet and shaking like a leaf.

"This is one of Josette's favorite party tricks. Somebody who hasn't seen what Josette's mutation is will name a book and page, and Josette will read her mental version." Alexander finishes his meal then smirks and shows one final video, showing Josette moving things around in her mental libraries. This is also the time Josette had told them that she could read e-books on the computer so she now had a second level of libraries filled with e-books, cds and DVDS, making everybody blink.

"Does Josette know everything in the books?"

"Yes, but there's a difference between knowing everything and knowing everything." Nods from everybody around him. "That's why she still takes the classes. But it meant Principal Madison didn't have to worry about her grades when he offered her a work-study position at the school. Josette was working in the laundry from her second semester into her second year of university since nobody applied for the job. We had four 24 room per floor five floor dorms when he turned the job over to a commercial laundry in Boston since the school was building two more dorms the next year. That morphed into four 24 room dorms and the laundry going to Boston since they outgrew the machines at the school. Josette moved from the laundry to the library permanently when she got her library science bachelors."

"Yours was separate? They're a five year masters here."

"Yeah, they've been that way every other dimension we've visited. But from looking at the books, our masters were harder." Alexander shrugs.

"For god's sake, why? She was working since fourteen?" Clarinda holds the baby version of Josette.

"Thirteen. In our world she got into school early since she was already reading and writing at a first grade level and skipped kindergarten. As for why? Necessity. The state didn't cover the entire cost of keeping Josette in school and she put half of her pay towards paying down her scholarship loan."

"Why didn't I pay for her schooling?" Doc asks.

"We didn't meet you until our first semester of university. In our world Charles died around the same time Clarinda found out she was pregnant and she left to protect the baby, creating a cover identity. We suspect she meant to come back when Josette was older, but when she was ten they were caught in an earthquake in Pasadena, Clarinda was left in a persistent vegetative state. In every other world we've traveled to where Josette was born. . .she was the one who was in the vegetative state until the age of twelve when she died of complications from pneumonia."

"And in your world I died when Josette was twelve." Alexander nods. "How did you find out Doc was Josette's grandfather?"

"Logan." Alexander looks at Professor Xavier. "You arrived at the school our freshman year, you wanted to close the school because you didn't agree how the school was run. Principal Madison treated the students as students first and mutants second. They might work with a teacher or older student who had the same type of gift or received training if they had a dangerous gift, but he took in a lot of students who just had physical mutations. While Josette's gift was rather unusual, it didn't have any use in a combat situation so Josette would have to go to a normal school. . . of course that was before everything else happened."

"What happened?" Alexander sniggers.

"You tried to get the school shut down, Principal Madison told you no. You went to the government, the government told you no. Josette was already the queen bee of the girls dorm because she'd been the junior dorm monitor under Professor Druid for a couple years. When we started high school Professor Druid moved out of the room next to Josette back to her apartment and the twins moved in. Since Alan was their brother and taking classes they were given the position of dorm monitors since the room had an outside door he could use to enter the girls room."

"No boys in the girls dorm?"

"Only if they were siblings and they had to be escorted by a dorm monitor. Alan was the only brother so it was okay. You set Logan on Josette to try to scare her away, not that that worked." Alexander sniggers. "The first round went to Josette, he tried her in science class and she let him run into a wall, tripped him when he tried again, then mixed up chemicals that she poured him that made him smell like an open sewer . . ." Sniggering from somebody behind them. "Professor Druid held her nose, dismissed the class, and gave her an A for the day. Abby grabbed her bags as us boys walked her off, her arms in the air. Professor Druid rolled her eyes and told us she didn't need victory music." More sniggering. "You were not happy, even more so when Principal Madison made you pay for the damages to the classroom." Somebody cackles at that.

"That lasted about a week before Susan had a vision showing you were going to demand Josette fix it. Josette came up with the antidote she gave the twins to give them . ..but she also came up with a gas canister of something else. She and David got up on the roof of the administration building and with a homemade potato gun she pumped up with a valve and lever they delivered it. A couple minutes later the twins arrived with the antidote as David opened the tesseract back to the library and Alan put the PVC components, boots, and other stuff in subspace as they returned to the table where the rest of us were working on a paper for class. The twins and Principal Madison arrived a few minutes later. Logan didn't smell like a sewer anymore. . .but he was purple and now smelled of eau de skunk."

Clarinda leans against the wall cackling.

"You said a scholarship loan?"

"It's something the school and a local bank worked out together. The government paid first 75 then 90 percent of the tuition, while the state paid what they would for a student in a day school. The remaining tuition, room and board, and supplies were put on the loan, in addition students got a debit card associated with the account for other needs and got 20 dollars a week allowance when school was in session. Wards of the state were automatically enrolled in the scholarship loan, At the same time many students like Josette opened a savings account there. Josette used the debit card for groceries and other necessities since she had a galley kitchen in her dorm monitor room. Our sophomore year the new social worker we told you about brought her clients to the school because they'd been kicked out of their foster home for being lesbians, found out that the state didn't cover everything and started kicking over anthills."

"What happens when you finish school?"

"You have twenty years to pay it off without interest, anything left over you pay ten percent interest monthly until it's paid off. . .if you graduate. If you're expelled like a lot of the wards of the state who were brought in because this was their last chance, they'd been expelled from other schools for drugs or other bad stuff. If they were expelled. . .usually because they were caught with drugs, the state had 90 days to pay for their scholarship loan or it went to collections. The old social worker usually tried to find somebody else not following the rules to keep her students from being expelled."

"Didn't work?"

"Nope, and it didn't stop the state from sending students to the school who didn't want to be there. Then whining when they did the same shit that got them expelled from their other schools and they had to pay their bills. The only damn time they paid for the wards of the states. Josette's room and board was 1200 a month because she had a dorm monitor room, the state paid 300 dollars a month."

"Christ."

"Yeah, leaving everything to the kid when they turned 18 or graduated in Josette's case."

"Any scholarship loans go bad?"

"Only the same foster parents, they'd been stealing the girls allowances since they didn't know they were getting them and had taken the cards and brought all sorts of stuff. When Jackie took the girls to the bank to have their scholarship loans modified for room and board as well as tuition they said they'd be getting the allowances a day earlier, they didn't know they were getting an allowance. They called up their accounts and saw all those purchases, the girls had only used their loans for their school supplies and that was billed by the school to the loan. So those two were closed out and two new ones opened with what the girls had paid for going on the new accounts and the bank sued the foster parents to get the money back. After we graduated the school created a fund to pay two scholarship loans off completely every year, even if the students were going on to university. In turn those students donated to the fund to help future students. The school had a couple tables at the flea market in town, a percentage of sales went into the fund, and Josette, Michael, and I gave money to the fund from our shows. And when the school started selling Josette's art, half went to the fund. In addition to paying off two scholarships a year, if you were in hardship you could petition to have your loan frozen for up to five years or forgiven entirely."

"Did many students have the loans?"

"Josette said that Professor Druid said a good 75 percent of the school had the loans our senior year, that was before the school got notice on the news and more students started arriving."

"Was that the end of me trying to get Josette to leave the school?"

Alexander just chuckles. "Nope. The Professor still was trying to scare Josette away. Susan had a vision that Logan would try something and we had all these nice building supplies since the school was building a new gym. And you learn a lot of stuff in books, including how to build a trebuchet." Alexander gives everybody his most innocent look. "Alan brought out everything for Michael and I to work on. I don't know how Professor Druid found out what was going on, but somehow she was by the girl's dorm with a science class. He came up behind the dorm, stepped in a loop of rope and went flying over 200 yards. . .Of course we didn't know why he went flying through the air cursing a blue streak. Professor Druid pretended not to see the bag of garbage that had been the counterweight flying over her head into the dumpster or the trebuchet being torn apart and everything going back to the gym. He came limping back to the dorm and Professor Druid got in his face about using that kind of language around impressionable young minds." He smirks as he remembers what happened next.

"There's a story there." Clarinda says. She knows that look has something to do with Josette.

"Yes, it involves a 'borrowed' electromagnet, Logan stuck 200 feet over the ground cursing a blue streak, and your daughter with a notebook asking him to repeat what he just said so she made sure she had wrote it down right." Clarinda facepalms while Charles laughs. "He gave up then and were lowering him. He was about eight feet over the ground when the power went out, we headed off because with the power out the school was on lockdown. The dorm monitors had to make sure all the students were accounted for and brought them to and from meals."

"Josette said Logan came to her room a couple nights later waving a white flag. He recognized your picture Clarinda, recognized the family scent, and Samhein was just the cherry on the sundae for recognizing her as a Savage. He asked why the family had sent you to school and Josette said that she didn't have any family. That's when he told her that while her Dad had died before she was born, she had family. He called Doc that he'd found a grandkid but Doc and the others were busy for a few years and it was only after we'd graduated and were in our first semester of university that everybody was on the same page. Josette had been up for a full scholarship through your fund. . .?" Doc nods. "But one of the members of the board didn't like Josette's Japanese last name and denied the scholarship, he was removed from the board but sued and the denial stayed while he appealed the removal." Sighs from the others. "You didn't know anything about this until we had gone to New York to be interviewed on the morning shows for the shit that was going on at the university."

"Shit going on at the university?"

"A hacker that was sending letters to the students, supposedly from the school. Josette got a letter saying she was on academic probation for failing three tests in a class she never signed up for. . .Alan got a letter saying he was losing his football scholarship for failing a drug test. . .the school didn't have a football team. Anna got a letter saying that she was being asked to leave the dorm for noise violations. . .Abby teased her that she told her she snored when she ate chili." Laughter. "We also got letters saying if we got letters from the school we thought were in error, we should bring them to the office. Obviously an attempt to cover their ass, they'd sent an e-mail out with the same wording the week before. .. but the letter was dated a week later."

"Obviously trying to claim they'd sent out the notice in a timely manner." The Shadow says. "Unfortunately they didn't check the date."

"Even if they did, the postmark would have shown it mailed out later and they couldn't have claimed it took them a week to arrive. Not if the e-mails had an earlier date?"

"Exactly, we started getting other letters. Abby was in trouble for nudity in her dorm room. . .Michael and I got letters saying we were wasting the time of the teachers and other students, we would never amount to anything and should find a new major."

"What was your major?"

"Art history. . .and we were already award winning artists and multi-millionaires from our shows since before we started high school. In fact our art paid for high school and university. Another student got a letter similar to ours and went to the police. . .something the school hadn't done yet because they were trying to keep things under wraps as they investigated. Or so they claimed when the news media started descending on the school."

"Instead of sticking their heads in the sand and hoping this all goes away?"

"Exactly. Somebody on the crews recognized us and tracked us down to the school. We agreed to an interview and thought it had all blown over, until we went back to school the next week. Josette had a note saying she couldn't take her finals because she was behind in her student loan payments."

"Don't student loan payments start six months after you leave school? Not while you're in school." Somebody asks dryly.

"And none of us had a student loan, Josette, the twins, and Alan's scholarship loans rolled over since we'd pre-applied to university. The school didn't know Josette was only seventeen, too young to have a student loan even with a cosigner. The president of the school ordered the financial aid guy to go looking for a student loan in Josette's name and released the hold on Josette's classes so she could take her finals. Diane Sawyer was still at the school after our interview and got us spots on the morning news shows a couple days later. That's when Principal Madison told her about the school being taken off the list for scholarships because he'd dared complain about Josette not getting the scholarship. Once you found out about that you removed the entire board and came out to the school. A little backstory, we had a little getaway in the . . ." he mumbles.

"The Bermuda Triangle?" James asks dryly.

"Forgot you had ears like a bat. Yes, anyway we were out in the canoes and David saw what he thought was a plane in the water. . ." Doc, the Shadow, and the Avenger stiffen. "We had a rebreather and a underwater camera so Josette dove down to take pictures. It was too deep to explore, the only thing we could do was put a buoy out and mark it on the maps of the area we'd been making. We found a nearby island and canoe'd over, we thought Josette was nuts when she swore she found a rock with writing on it." Doc sighs and Pat chuckles. "We all ended up finding rocks with what could have been writing and took pictures of them. When we got back to the school Josette got on the internet, found what she thought was the language and asked for some books through ILL. The author was William Harper Littlejohn. Principal Madison recognized the name, asked if he was the author of the books. . .Josette told you two about the rocks. Johnny asked if we still had them, Josette had the pictures and what she thought was the translations on a hard drive in her room. You saw Clarinda's picture, remembered Logan's phone call about a possible grandchild, saw Samhein and the others on Josette's bed, and bing bang boom it all fell in place. You started trying to get back in touch with Logan to find out if it was Josette he'd been talking about, they got in touch while we were in New York for the morning show interviews. And the university had a meltdown over that."

"What happened?"

"We'd been asked to leave the school because talking out against the school was disruptive." Snorts of disgust from most of the people listening. " We were able to take our finals and David's godmother Allison Blake had already told us we were going on GD's rolls so we could continue our schooling, they also paid off Josette, the twins, and Alan's scholarship loans. The school continued to go downhill, the hacker altered the grades on the finals and the school board was in deny, deny, deny mode. The students who lived on the campus protested their grades and the board sicced the campus police on them, then on the news crews that was taping everything."

"Oh good lord."

"Yeah, that was the beginning of the end. . ." Alexander's voice trails off as Josette comes behind the others, a man meekly following her along like a dog on leash since she's got hold of his ear. Doc follows his gaze and blinks, the Avenger and Shadow laugh. "Dumbass tried grabbing me a couple blocks away, thought his puny knife would scare me."

"Hey Josette, your great-grandma can do the same thing with books."

"Really?" Josette says, letting the others take the now whimpering bad guy. God, what a wuss scared of the 'now this is a knife' knife Josette had pulled out. Well maybe saying she could shave his balls with the knife but her hand might slip because she was allergic to his aftershave might have been a little much.

"Yes, it is a family gift but only through the female side. And not every female inherits it."

"Josette. . ." Doc says dryly from the door. She looks that way, seeing Richard and Kent grinning and giving her a thumbs up behind Doc's back then giving her a chiding look when he looks their way.

"Ut oh, that's the 'you've been a bad, bad girl' look. Watcha do?" Alexander asks.

"Did my 'now this is a knife' Crocodile Dundee impression then told him I could shave his balls with it, but it might slip if I sneezed since I was allergic to his aftershave."

"He's not wearing aftershave." Doc says dryly while Pat and Clarinda snicker.

"And the knife was rubber." She brings it out of subspace, lobbing it at Doc. He chuckles despite himself when he examines it. He hands it back and she puts it back in subspace. "That's one of my favorite scaring tools, that and a widdle girl frantically waving a gun around sends them running." Alexander sniggers.

"Josette can shoot, she. . ." he looks at Clarinda. "Do you have fighting skills, gun skills, bomb . .. stuff like that?" She nods slowly.

"I didn't know it at the time but when my mutation activated during the earthquake I absorbed your mutation as well as the memories of the cover identity you created. I just thought I'd picked up your fighting skills since you were a mixed martial artist and practiced nearly every day. But while the memories faded the fighting skills never did. Nobody thought anything of it until I started training under some friends and I knew stuff. It wasn't until my third trip out of our dimension where I met another you with the same skills that I realized I'd absorbed her mutation."

"You have a general absorption mutation?" Professor Xavier asks.

"Yes, knowledge is my strongest area. After the earthquake and Mom didn't wake up, I was terrified that I'd killed her."

"I wouldn't have blamed you."

"Mom Clarinda said the same thing. And I know that now, after Doc came to tell me he was my grandfather Mom's spirit appeared to David, Doc, Pat, and Principal Madison asking them to tell me what really happened, it wasn't what I'd done that put her in that vegetative state, it was a ray. . ."

"Shit." Clarinda says as the Shadow nods. "Anyway, when I got to the school I was very withdrawn and terrified that I'd accidentally hurt somebody touching them. It was after Mom died when an accident happened and Principal Madison was electrocuted. . .he has an mutation where he can absorb and release electricity but he's not immune to it."

"A big enough jolt would stop his heart."

"And it did, I ended up absorbing the school doctor's memories of how to run the defibrillator to start his heart again since he'd been knocked unconscious in the same blast. He recovered with nothing more than a new haircut because of five stitches in his head and a helluva headache. Principal Madison recovered and had a pacemaker implanted to jolt his heart if it stopped again, and I realized I could touch people without hurting them."

"Oh Josette. . ." Pat and Clarinda sigh.

"I met the others the next year and life was never the same." She looks at Alexander. "Sometimes I wonder if it's worth it. . ." He sniggers and blows a raspberry against her hair. "Did you get your supplies?"

"Yeah, I was on my way back when I got attacked." She brings the boxes out of subspace when they're in the area they took over for their art and starts emptying them, everybody's eyes blinking as stuff that is ten times larger than the box itself starts shooting out of them.

Alexander chuckles. "They're from the third dimension Josette went to, this time we were brought along with her. They literally can hold tons of material, this way shipping could consist of a single person with a box going somewhere and delivering it instead of semis on the roads."

"Wait a second. . ." Charles looks at the boxes. "Didn't you say Alan . . .”

"Yep, putting stuff in subspace is something I picked up since we've been in each other's back pockets for years. It started while Alan was in Eureka working three day shifts on his residency at GD." Smiles from the doctors in the family. "We generally did our major shopping every other month, filling a good twenty to thirty carts at a store. . .and going to about five stores. Alan would put all our purchases in subspace out in the parking lots, the one day we went shopping when he wasn't with us we filled all our vehicles and barely had enough room for us for the drive home."

"And it took hours of carrying everything inside, even with filling laundry carts."

"And then you had to put everything away?" Pat asks.

"Yep. After that we started going out when Alan was home instead of a certain day and we began to realize Josette had somehow picked up the same thing. So between the two of them we could get in supplies and still have room in the vehicles for us."

"How can you keep track of what you have in subspace?"

"We can see it, it's like it's floating around us." Professor Xavier makes a hmming sound. Josette concentrates a second and touches Professor Xavier's arm and he nods, he can see items hovering around her now. "The 'wall' of items for any other word?"

"Supplies we keep in subspace permanently." She starts ticking them off, the others blinking.

"Can you access something he's put in subspace?"

"Oh yes, and he can bring out something I've put in subspace. It's convenient for times like now when we're in two different places, he could 'toss' it towards me and I'd bring it out, I'd toss towards him and he'd bring it out."

"You were saying the federal government paid first 75 then 90 percent of the tuition?"

"Yeah, the school had six mandatory classes while we were in school and if your grades were good enough, you could take up to two electives. Like the work-study programs you had to prove you could keep your grades up to be allowed to take them. And like the work-study program, you could only start as a sophomore. Josette is the only student who has not only took all eight classes from her first semester and worked at the same time. After we graduated the school added more classes, it was eight mandatory classes and up to four electives. The school had also put up a new building for a fine arts curriculum at the same time."

"I started early because the student who was doing the sheets and towels was graduating that semester. This way I could learn the ropes from him."

"Tuition was 5000 a semester when we were in school, it went up to 7500 a semester even with the government paying 90 percent. And the room and board went up too since the new dorm rooms were bigger."

"Was there something wrong with the old dorms?"

"No, the school was just going to be outgrowing them. In fact, the school sold the old girls dorm to us since it had been Josette's home since she arrived at the school. We've added onto it over the years and turned it into a home. The next year when the new boys dorm was built we took over the old boys dorm, incorporating it into the girls dorm to double our space. We also added more buildings like the old school library, mine and Michael's studio, and a building from Eureka before we started adding onto the building itself."

"The dorm rooms went from 900 a month to 1200 but they were larger and ADA compliant. Those students who moved over from the old dorm paid the old rate but new students paid the full price. A couple years later they were going from one student a room to dual occupancy as more and more students started attending. The school added a textiles curriculum and went up to ten mandatory classes and up to eight electives."

"In one day?"

"Classes were two or four hour blocks, they had three or four classes a day plus nights and weekends. Nights and weekends were mostly four hour classes."

"Just like universities."

Josette nods and sticks her head in a box, Alexander sighing and grabbing her belt to keep from falling in. "We had groups of university representatives coming to talk to the students. . .and us. They were very happy our students boarded, took our classes the way we did, and we brought our own books. It made moving from high school to university life pretty seamless."

"No students acting up being away from Mom and Dad the first time."

"Yep, they also arranged for jobs and places to live for those students who couldn't go home for the summer between high school and university. Over the years the school added second buildings for the textiles and fine arts stuff, built a building for the computer classes and labs. . .it had been the third floor of the library. Built a new five floor library at the same time. Added buildings for candlemaking, soapmaking, and a chocolatier. Built more dorms and dining halls. Added onto the existing dorms and dining halls rather than building more. . ."

"Moved the school lock, stock, and barrel to a new planet after Josette took up supplies." Alexander says absently.

Recyclable paper starts appearing in bales across the room as Josette opens another box, a couple neat rows forming. The final box is full of worn out sheets, towels, and washcloths. Boxes of more form rows across another wall. The others look at Josette.

"They were practically giving the old stuff away. And I sent more to the ship."

"They don't really have a use for it." Alexander says, his lips twitching. "We do. . .even if it just ended up going in the replicator to be turned into raw material for more stuff."

"Yep." Josette waves a hand and a number of bags and boxes appear in a corner of her room.

"You said that was the beginning of the end for the university?"

"Yes, the prosecutor declined to press charges and it was soon revealed that the people in charge of the university had been lining their own pockets for years. The university was taken over and everybody's grades adjusted back to what they they really earned. We were just starting out even if Josette was making plans on finishing her degree in a little over a year by taking classes and doing her work experience summers but I gotta feel sorry for those students who were looking to be graduating the next semester. When we signed up for GD's system Michael and I chose the same school and the twins did the same but everybody else signed up for not only different schools most of us signed up for dual degrees."

Josette mentally nudges everybody the next day, showing them a picture. Nods from the others and they gather in the vehicle early in the morning, heading off. They land in the parking lot and get in line, paying their admission at the amusement park and heading different directions.

Doc looks at the three of them when they arrive home late that night.

"An amusement park was giving part of the entrance fee to charity."

"I saw that on the news." Alice says. "With your vehicle you'd be there in less than an hour."

"Yep, so we spent the day riding every ride, stuffing our faces, buying stuff, and winning more stuff at the games with the others."

"In other words acting like kids and enjoying yourselves." The younger Professor Xavier chuckles as he comes through the room. "You're all too young to be adults all the time."

Josette's lips twitch in a 'I know something you don't know' smile as Alexander nudges Michael.

"You say you've been to Albatross?"

"Yeah, when you realized that Michael, Alexander, Susan, and I stayed at the school over Christmas our freshman year because we didn't have families you insisted the girls and Alan bring us home. David split his breaks between the farmhouse and Eureka."

"You spent your summers with us?"

"Oh no, the school went year-round, breaks were two or three weeks for Christmas, and a week between the other two semesters. Once we were out of school we started splitting the Christmas holiday between all the families. . .and the islands. Everybody was ready to sit in the sun for a few hours for a few days. Especially after winters got so bad."

"Two or three weeks?"

"Depended on what day of the week the holiday fell on. If Christmas and New Year fell on a Sunday through Wednesday we got three weeks off so we didn't come back, then have classes interrupted. If it fell during the rest of the week we had two weeks off. The only problem is if we had three weeks off we had to shorten the other two semesters by a week to have the school start the new school year the same day. Several years after we graduated the school decided to make the winter break three weeks no matter what day the holiday was, the school closed the second week of December after finals and reopened the second week of January."

"Did anybody ever take you to. . ."

"Agatha and the Albatross nest? Oh yes, the first Christmas after I started taking knitting and sewing classes. You were more than happy to clear out the attic, everybody kept giving you stuff and you didn't have the time or temperament to sit down and do that sort of annoying, fiddling crap." Andrew sniggers as Alice nods vigorously. "And the fine arts school I was taking classes at was Assyrian."

"Suzie."

"Yep, she was talking to her Mom about a student she had, meanwhile Agatha was talking about a young seamstress the town had taken in and one day when I was taking my tests in Eureka and talking about all the stuff everybody was sending back with Alan the penny dropped and Suzie nearly died laughing when she realized I was the same Josette Agatha had been talking about. Teachers from Assyrian and eventually a textiles school in Scotland came out to the school to talk to the students and teachers, they both ended up moving with us, Assyrian before the school came up, Edinborough just before winter along with Hank and the other woodworkers from Albatross. Agatha had her home and the store copied, Sue Dixon from Boston had her store copied and built a new house, her niece took over the original store while Marilyn took over the Albatross Nest. Several years after we moved Albatross picked up lock, stock, and barrel and moved to where we were."

"The whole town?" Charles asks. Richard blinks while Doc trills.

"Things were getting bad with all the shit in the air and the post office in it's infinite wisdom had decided to close Albatross's post office along with a lot of others."

Andrew shakes his head. "That would have been a mess."

"Yes, they bleated about how they hadn't realized they'd inconvenience so many people. Those with rural delivery wasn't affected but those people who had mailboxes got their mail once a week when somebody picked it up from a delivery center and sorted it."

"Weren't they supposed to be closing branches in big cities where you have other options? Not the only post office for that town?"

"Yeah, they couldn't explain that. I could see a UPS store or mailboxes etc place going in eventually to take over the need. We had a mailboxes store by the school because somebody complained the school must put such a stress on the post office."

"And you didn't use the post office?"

"Only when a student was in town and ran in to get something. We got our mail, stamps, and other supplies directly from the sorting center, they even held it for the school during foul weather. That's when the new college, mall, a branch of the bank that handled the scholarship loans, and mailboxes store went up around our school."

"The complainers ended up shooting themselves in the foot?"

"Yep, they tried everything legally to stop us. . .they'd hoped we'd pack our tents and slink away. They came across as whiny bullies and a five story movie theater and warehouse store along with a dollar store ended up being built in the area within the next few years. They told the city police not to patrol out there and was told their jurisdiction ended at the city limits. They tried the same shit with the state police and got told to shove it up their asses." Sniggers from the others. "The bus company made a special route out there for the college and mall and the city council whined about how they were losing tax base until people told them to shut the fuck up, they weren't losing tax revenue because none of the businesses in town were moving out there. They'd been wanting a warehouse store for years but kept new businesses from moving in because they wanted to keep the town quaint."

"Can't have it both ways."

"Exactly."

Andrew looks at them. "The twins and Alan had scholarship loans?"

"Yes, with only you working full-time, Alice picking up hours at the Albatross Nest to help out, and Adam and Aaron at home still money was tight. You couldn't afford to pay for their schooling and while they could have continued at Albatross, the school was one of the best in the country and it was easier to qualify for scholarships so they could attend university. The teachers did their best but nobody in Albatross got scholarships, not even sports scholarships. They started working at the school when they graduated because Albatross's school still was under a hiring freeze when they moved." Andrew and Alice nod. "Did the other boys attend your school?"

"Yes, Adam got a degree in electrical engineering and stayed by the university for work and to get a masters but Aaron moved home after he finished university, working in the next town over and taking classes for his masters. While a kid moving back home after university might have been seen as a bad thing anywhere else in Albatross tongues would have wagged if one of the kids hadn't moved back home to take care of the old folks." Andrew and Alice sigh but nod.

"Not that the old folks couldn't have whupped the kids asses without breaking a sweat." Josette smirks. Andrew nods as Alice preens in satisfaction.

"Did anything ever become of what you thought might be a plane?" Doc asks, trying for innocent but since all three of them know him so they just chuckle.

"Yeah, the first time you were on the island you were looking at the charts we'd drawn and asked if we had found anything unusual while we were exploring the water around the island. David told you about the plane we thought we'd found and our first semester of taking classes on the computer you and the others came out to the island with supplies to put up huts, diving gear, and . . ." Josette waves a hand "Whatnot. You kept everything quiet since we were in and out of the island thanks a bad storm that was blowing through Massachusetts and the school was on lockdown until the power was restored. It was only when it was going to be dangerous that you had us stay away, we were going to be away for a few days anyway, it was our first testing week and with the time difference we'd be eating in Eureka and coming home to go right to bed. You excavated whatever was dangerous in the wreck and set up trust accounts at the bank for the eight of us with the proceeds of the other stuff." Doc nods in satisfaction.

"How did the others pay for their schooling?"

"Sanders Construction paid for David's. our art paid for ours, while Susan played the ponies for hers."

"Susan played the ponies for hers." Professor Xavier, the younger one, says slowly. Raven has a fist shoved in her mouth to keep from cackling.

"Susan's a precog, she used her gifts to place bets that won big. She'd go out during the breaks for a day or two and make enough money to pay for the next semester and put a little money in her savings account. After GD started paying for our schooling, she went out to Vegas once a year or so and the money went into her bank account. When she started her masters she put money in a CD to buy into the law firm, Josette started going out with her since she's got a gift for which slot machines will be hitting. And hitting big. The girls usually went out once a year to play in the casino, stay at the hotel. . .Josette always won enough they handed her envelopes of comps once or twice a trip. . .see a show if there was anything interesting, and get in some shopping When the shopping center added a branch of a national bank in the area, they deposited at least one check while they were there."

"How much did you owe on your scholarship loan when GD paid it off?" Doc asks later that night.

"A little over a hundred thousand dollars, even with putting half my check on it along with the other money." Josette says quietly. "Tuition, room and board, books. . .it all added up. But the others were in the same boat and didn't have money going on theirs regularly."

"Yes, and I told you that Michael and I could pay for your schooling." Alexander says dryly as he walks past them. "So did Susan." Doc looks at him. "It was after Principal Madison had to tell Josette she hadn't got the scholarship from your fund. . .of course back then we didn't know why Josette hadn't got it. Josette had been told that her loan would roll over and she was making plans to tighten her belt when I told her that Michael and I were already millionaires from our shows, we could pay for all our schooling and make the money back at our next show."

"Half your check?"

"The other half was going into my savings account." He nods in satisfaction. "Tightening my belt meant I'd be putting less in my savings and more on my scholarship loan. . .thankfully that didn't have to happen. I was able to pick up extra hours after I graduated working both at the laundry and covering the library the weeks that the teachers were busy grading midterms and finals. The library was on shorter hours that week but before I started working there the school had a helluva time finding somebody to cover it."

"Yes, Principal Madison was not happy to see you'd worked nearly eighty hours those weeks before the commercial laundry started taking it over. Bad enough that you put in nearly as many hours after the school fire."

"Eighty hours?" Doc moans.

"A full eight hours during the day covering the library. . .which was fucking dead with nobody there. It felt like I was the last person on Earth, even listening to the radio didn't help because they weren't there. But if I tapped into the cameras I could see students streaming out of the school to go home for break. Then I had my regular hours at the laundry that night, washing the sheets and towels the students tossed down before they left. And twice a semester students would toss down their blankets to be washed, that helped with the hours. And. . ." Josette says, looking at Doc. "The first week of the semester there wouldn't be any laundry for me to wash. So that extra money helped towards the two weeks I wouldn't be working."

He nods in satisfaction. "Fire?"

The story is quickly told and everybody moans at Josette staying up to wash laundry for the two affected teachers as the others moved the boys out of their dorm monitor rooms so the teachers could move in. Everybody moans again as they realize just how much laundry there would have been when the others were able to get in their apartments and start bringing stuff out to wash, nodding in satisfaction when they heard the others helped Josette out.

"That was one of the times the school saw how many hours Josette had worked and cut checks for the same hours for the rest of us."

"Yeah, that night, when we were making sets of bedding or towels, when we were filling bags for the new students, when we were in the library Sundays helping Josette get the new purchases ready to go into the system, and finally when we were taking the receipts for the students classes for the following semester and putting together bags of their books so all they had to do is get their other supplies, get in line, and be handed their books. It kept the line from getting too long."

"Yeah, especially before the class sizes started getting so big." Michael says as he walks past. "That was one of the jobs the school hired temp workers for, that. . .making up sets of sheets and towels, and putting together sets of books and supplies for the incoming class."

"The school wouldn't let new students select their classes, they all had the same classes. . .just different times." Josette says at the elder Professor Xavier's look. "The new students would go to the bookstore as part of the orientation, pick up personal supplies, and check out. In the beginning the students would be given the bags and boxes and carry them to the dorm, but as the class sizes got so big and they started getting assigned rooms instead of selecting their own the boxes and bags would be waiting for them in their new rooms along with their luggage. It kept orientation moving smoothly." Everybody nods in satisfaction.

"Other money?"

"Okay, this goes back to our first semester of high school. . .I'd got a letter from my caseworker saying I needed a way to contact them, leaving a message at the school office wasn't good enough. Not that I ever heard from them except the yearly reminders saying I was still a ward of the state. So I got a cheap tracfone and paid for the minutes on my scholarship loan. Fast forward to the winter semester of our sophomore year. . ." the horrible story is quickly glossed over but the others hiss. "Anyway Ms. Hastings. . .though her last name was Thompson back then soon took the job of being the school's social worker and actually started helping the students. I was reimbursed for most of the money I'd had to lay out for my glasses and dentist appointments, I was able to get a. . ."

"cheap ass piece of shit." Alexander snorts.

"Phone with the state paying the bill for either two years or until I graduated. The others hated that phone. . ."

"Yes, you could have got one so much better." Michael snorts this time.

"And I'd have been stuck with a huge phone bill after I graduated. I had that phone nearly four years."

"And we were glad when it went up while Bruce was using it." Alexander snorts. "Susan danced because it was finally gone."

"Get the idea they really hated that phone?" Josette asks dryly to the snickering around her. "I got a good-sized settlement from the state over their former social worker's stupidity and I paid off the rest what I'd put on the card for my glasses and dental, put on the scholarship loan what I'd have put on it if I'd been able to work those two weeks, and put the rest in my savings account."

"And that new phone Bruce brought you was so much better." Michael says dryly.

"And my bill was three times bigger than it was before."

"Yes, and the phone did three times as much." The others snicker at the bantering of the three of them. It's light-hearted stuff that shows how deep their attachment is.

"What about your social security benefits after my death?" Clarinda asks.

Josette sighs. "Something else my first social worker never bothered to do for me, along with telling me about the fund to cover my dental and glasses and tell me I was eligible for food benefits since I had a way to prepare food. The government had made it so college kids couldn't get the food benefits but I was eligible as long as I was a ward of the state. Dr. Blake realized I should have been getting it our first semester of university and started the process, I got a lump sum of back benefits and got monthly deposits until I turned eighteen."

"By then you were actually able to do something for yourself." Michael chuckles. The others look at them. "When my social worker opened the scholarship loan, she opened a savings account. Since I was still seventeen, I couldn't open a checking account or roll the lump sum deposit into a CD until I turned eighteen. When that happened I opened a checking account too and the school was able to start direct depositing my checks. Yes, Doc and Pat would have been more than willing to put their names on the accounts but I'm a stubborn little shit and waited until I could do it on my own." She says at the opening mouths.

"Yes, and you come by it honestly." Pat says, looking at her son and daughter-in-law.

Michael looks at her. "Did Dr. Blake ever repay you the money you were putting on your scholarship loan from your checks?"

"Yes, with the amount of interest I'd have got if it had went into my savings account from the beginning." Josette sighs. "She told me quite bluntly that I am a GD employee and GD paid for all the schooling, that I should consider it tuition reimbursement. . .but for my high school education and not an advanced degree." The others chuckle. "I told her she'd already paid for my schooling, she just waved her hand in a 'details' motion and told me the money was already in my account."

"She's used to dealing with stubborn thanks to Dr. Stark, Sheriff Carter, and David." Alexander snorts.

"Did the rest of you ever make the presidents list?" The younger Professor Xavier asks. He knows with Josette's gifts she would have made it easily.

"Oh yes, usually it was one or two of us but a couple of times we all made them. And gods, those damn luncheons were miserable." The others who've had to live through them snigger. "Josette would complain about artfully decorated plates that would be a meal for anybody else, we had to put up with college kids who couldn't understand why anybody would work hard enough to get a perfect grade in one class, let alone all of them." Michael leans back in the couch and chuckles.

"We had to listen to the president give a speech calling us the best students, knowing that he'd be giving that same speech to one of the sports teams later that night." Matthew nods vigorously. "You never saw an athlete at one of the luncheons."

"Still say the damn things were punishment for us brains showing up their precious sports teams." Josette grumbles.

"I thought they were exaggerating until I had to go to my first one." Alexander moans. "Gods, I thought business meetings were awful." Everybody who's had to attend one snickers.

"Did Allison or Nathan ever talk to you about a system . . .?" Mary asks.

"Teacher? Yep. I got tapped to test a new, improved version out. And since I'm sure the brats will gleefully tell on me, I went to town on that system. . .between that and the school computer I was able to get in fifty classes in a semester for about fifteen bachelors and four masters."

"More than once." Michael says dryly behind her as Doc moans. Even Mara is blinking but Pat has her hand covering her face and is just laughing.

"David annoyed his godmother by finishing one degree and not signing up for another one so she put him on it too. He could get in about a year's worth of classes in a semester. When he wasn't annoying her by only getting in two or three a semester." James nods. "Everybody was teasing me that I could probably get in a degree a semester, I told them it would have to be a low paper degree, they told me not to try it anyway."

"And dumbass here said that going for only one degree at a time was 'ewwww, wrongidy wrong wrong wrong'." Alexander snorts as he walks past. "And before you ask, yes Josette is in that pilot program that lets you get in three Ph.D classes at once. . .even if you were old when you started it." he teases her.

"Yes, and no matter how much I complained everybody just laughed at me when I said that 31 was old to be starting a Ph.D."

"Yeah, well those people are getting a doctorate for their job, not just because it was there." Michael snorts.

Richard looks in the room to see Michael with his eyes closed and the metal in front of him moving as if its alive.

"Eric?" the younger professor Xavier asks.

"I could not do that with the metal he's working with." The younger Magneto says. He looks at the older one who shakes his head.

They turn to see Alexander in a similar position, but instead of metal he's got blocks of wood in front of him.

Drawings are pinned up on a section of corkboard, Doc and James nodding at the furniture plans they can see.

They look over to the last section of the room, finding lines strung up from one end to the other. They're full of drying sheets and towels. . .but what sheets and towels. Various colors and they can see the original color where thick rubber bands were on the sheets. Some have been dyed one solid color and are being overdyed after the rubber bands are placed on them.

A pile of towels and washcloths too worn to be used is nearby, being shredded by a machine and mixed with paper before going in big bins. Josette's adding water to the bins.

"Rag paper, the cotton will give it more strength than traditional paper." Doc says.

Josette nods. "I'll add colors when I make handmade paper. It always flew off the tables at the shows, the raree factor of it being handmade. I've already got bins of regular paper soaking."

"I'd wondered why you were grabbing bales of recyclable paper."

"Oh my god. . ."

Josette looks that direction. "Yeah, I paint the sheets with fabric paint or diluted dye as well as tie-dye them."

"I think they're talking about the top for your latest quilt." Susan snorts from the corner of the room. Her parents, Raven, and Destiny head over that way. The younger Professor Xavier looks at her.

"Playing the ponies?"

"Not gambling if you know who's going to win." Susan says smugly. Raven and Irene cackle.

"Are Alexander and Michael in trance?"

"If they are it's not voluntary, they tend to get in their heads when they're working on their art." Josette says, looking over at them. "I tend to get the same way our testing weeks when I had envelopes of tests in front of me, I'd start answering questions and the only thing that would stop me was reaching for the next test only to find there wasn't any or the buzzer signaling the end of the testing period. It was more noticeable when GD still printed out the tests for us."

Josette shakes her head as she looks at the darkening sky and heads towards the cave she'd remembered seeing, the others following her. The cave takes a sudden jag sideways that will shelter them from the worst of it. She's silently measuring the area when the others catch up with her.

"We'll have to be here a while, it will be rough going but . . ." Josette waves a hand, bringing out an emergency shelter from GD. She opens the shelter and they all go inside. Bringing out the brazier, Josette lights a piece of wood, the heat slowly filling the shelter. Josette takes off her backpack, leaning against it as she unlaces her boots. Pulling them off she pulls off her socks and puts them over a line, checking her feet and putting on dry socks. The others are doing the same after they stop looking around.

"Toilet?"

"Behind that curtain, it's a composting toilet. Crank the handle twice. There's a vent for ventilation."

"How are we keeping the heat in?"

"A chemical that's sprayed on the canvas, acts as a barrier to keep the heat in. It's supposed to be good to twenty below zero, we used it once during a winter storm when we brought out the shelter in the cargo hold of a plane. We had to add a second smaller piece of wood though."

Doc looks through the supplies as Josette puts a grate over the brazier and starts a large pot of stew. Indian fry bread completes the meal. A couple hours later they turn off all but one lantern and dome the brazier before settling down to sleep. In the gloom Doc warms the air with his heat vision to keep the others warm. Josette pushes the sleeping bag away from her shoulder and he reaches over to pull it back up over her.

The next morning Josette wakes up to the sound of the emergency radio and the smell of powdered eggs being cooked. She wrinkles her nose and Doc chuckles. "Don't like the smell of powdered eggs?"

"The school got pallets of real eggs every two months but they also got the powdered stuff. They were supposed to use the powdered eggs to make the real eggs last but didn't use enough so we had about a week of powdered eggs until the new order arrived. And they don't taste that good baked. They made a lot of casseroles to try to cover it up but those of us with enhanced taste can pick it out."

"Powdered eggs last nearly forever though for emergencies."

"Yes, especially in subspace."

Josette finds a hole in an out of the way cavern and looks down, smiling and pulling a climbing rope out of her gear, setting it up and sliding down. Slipping on a headlight she looks around the predawn gloom.

"Holy . . ."

"Josette?" Doc asks. He follows the sound of her voice. He scowls at the rope going down and flies down, finding her looking around.

"Heavens above. . ."

They look at the buildings. "I've heard legends of hidden areas in the middle of the Earth. But . . ."

"Nothing like this." Doc looks around. "Josette. . . don't go too far. We don't know if. . ."

"How can plants grow. . .they're not getting light from up above." She says, looking at the plants. Doc keeps a careful eye on her as he goes to the opening to talk to the others. Listening she can hear water and looks that direction, wandering over to a waterfall. Bringing out video spheres, she sets them off recording everything.

Josette is looking in a building when the others find her. She'd already taken samples of all the plants around them and seeds from the various containers on one wall.

"This can't be. . ." Richard looks around him.

"A growing building with irrigation and those are early mirrors to focus light but I can't see where they got the light from." The others look at her. "I have a botany doctorate."

"Why do the buildings have roofs? I doubt it rains. . ."

"Probably to keep in the heat." Josette says absently. "This looks like a loom for weaving."

"Is the opening in the land we own?" Richard asks quietly.

"Yes."

"We won't get Josette out of here easily."

Doc chuckles, pulling her to the rope and looking at her until she sighs and starts climbing. She stops and points . .. The others stare in the direction she's pointing as they see light start to appear. "I guess they do get sunlight down here." She looks down and Doc just points up, she sighs and continues climbing. The others cough and turn aside to hide smiles.

A few days later Josette looks up at the mental incoming and snags the thick package Alan tossed her direction from Atlantis. Opening the box she nods in satisfaction and passes along part of it to Doc.

"Copies of pictures and video from the cameras I had on me when we were there." Doc looks at her and Josette waves a hand, bringing out a number of globes. "They're all set to take pictures or video automatically when I release them."

"Oh my . . ." The picture of the waterfall. . .water droplets caught in the air is passed around.

"That explains how the plants have survived without any sign of human interaction. Though there was some at one time."

"Yes, looking at this I can see where water being diverted from the waterfall would have been sent to the building but it was blocked up again."

Richard nods, he can see the same thing.

/Atlantis say anything about the seeds?/

/She's seeing if they're viable now. You might have to make another trip down./ Susan says.

/Oh god, the horror./ David chuckles.

"Are these glass jars on the shelves?"

"Yes, and they had seeds in them, probably from crops they'd grown outside for the indoor growing area."

"If they could grow outdoors, we don't know what the climate was like." Nods from the others. "We'll have to spend some more time there to answer the questions."

Doc pulls Josette towards him, seeing the odd suit she's wearing. She calmly gives him a thumbs up, correcting her move away from the wall with one hand.

"Yeah Doc?" Josette says over the radio in his ear.

"How much air do you have?" He's seen the small bottles on her back.

"Twelve hours for each tank and I have extra I can switch out." 'And they're rebreathers, it might get a little stale but I could manage eighteen hours on a tank' she thinks quietly. Then 'I gotta work on the oxygen creating system again'. Pushing off with one foot she somersaults into position, holding on with one hand and starting to work. After a few stumbles by the others, Josette stops a rotation when somebody pulls too hard and loses their grip and gets a thanks, they get to work.

Josette sighs and slides into the spot that's too small for the others in their suits, taking the toolkit handed to her and listening to Doc's quiet instructions.

She's working on a panel when a hand comes down next to her. Nodding at his look she finishes what she's doing quickly but making sure she's not making any errors and joins the others in the airlock. It takes three cycles to get everybody in and Josette pulls off her hood when the others unsuit. Turning off the tanks she checks the level and pulls off the suit, she'll clean it and refill the tanks on Atlantis. Chucking it in subspace she heads for her room when the ship returns to the Tower. Doc's hand catches her belt and pulls her their direction.

"I stink. I want a hot bath, a ten course meal. . .or two, a nap, and then I gotta finish a paper for class."

"It's not due for two more weeks." the younger Professor Xavier chuckles. He should know, he'd assigned it to her.

"Yeah, and? Sooner I get it done, the sooner I can get somebody to look it over and see if I need to make any changes before I turn it in." He nods. He can't fault that argument.

Josette flies off to Atlantis, bringing out her skinsuit and cleaning it before putting it up while the tanks of air are refilled. She's unaware of a conversation going on back at the tower.

"I don't know." James says slowly. Doc and the others look at him. "The spacesuit that Josette was wearing is nothing like ours and she was very comfortable working in a weightless environment. Like she's done it before and . . ."

"As with anything you've done long enough, you automatically fall right back into it even after being away from it for a length of time."

"She went right to work on the panels without any problems. I know all of us was keeping an eye on her."

"She saved us hours of work, she was small enough to slide into that space. We'd have had to tear that whole array apart."

Kent looks behind him at the gunshots, finding Josette crouching with a gun in either hand. Her eyes are tracking and she takes careful shots as he nods. Back at the tower Josette cleans her weapons and reloads clips, putting everything in subspace when she's done.

"Can you shoot? Beyond . . ."

"using Mom's skills? Oh yes, Principal Madison had me working with security at the school before he'd let me keep Mom's old gun in my room. Like with our gifts. . ." she looks at her great-grandmother.

"There's a difference between knowing and knowing."

"Oh yes, Mom's gift might give me an advantage but I trained long and hard on a shooting range, especially after Doc and the others found me. They made damn sure I could shoot before they gave me more weapons."

Professor Xavier's eyes darken as he starts searching telepathically. "Josette, Michael's, and Alexander's belongings are all in their rooms. Josette's vehicle. . .is pulling into the garage now." Pat and Clarinda sigh in relief.

/Josette?/

In her vehicle Josette's head lifts up. /Professor?/

/Dear, nobody meant to hurt any of you./

/Huh?/ Josette turns a confused look at the ceiling of her vehicle. /Meant to hurt us? We've been gone all day. There was a fire at the MacNair building last night, Alexander, Michael, and I volunteered to take care of the furniture that can be salvaged, stripping them to get rid of the smoke, repainting, and sealing them again. I just came back from picking up the last batch of tables and chairs./

/It's a long story Josette, and not mine to tell./ In the room Professor Xavier's eyes open. "They've been gone all day volunteering at the MacNair building, there was a fire there and they've offered to take the furniture that can be cleaned to strip and repaint to get rid of the smoke smell." Josette walks out of the vehicle and waves a hand, in an empty room next to the the boys workroom furniture starts appearing. Sprayers and other supplies start appearing in the room itself and Josette looks behind her as a vehicle arrives and Alexander and Michael hop out, thanking Duncan for the ride.

They walk inside, blinking as they're grabbed in hugs, even Richard holds Michael.

"Huh?"

"It's a long story and one you three don't need to know." Doc says quietly. "Now, Charles was saying you volunteered to help out at the MacNair building?"

"Duncan?" Pat asks, frowning.

"Yeah, he called us this morning since he's driven us to pick up woodworking supplies before. Asked if we made furniture and when we said yes, asked if we knew anything about cleaning furniture. Not the first time the three of us have spent a few days cleaning furniture. We did it several times while the school was closed down. The upholstered stuff somebody else is taking to work on since it will probably need major work."

"What was your first clue that this might have been an illusion?" Doc asks after the kids have been sent to bed.

"Looking back it should have been obvious. Why would Charles and Clarinda be getting their daughter back? She's right here." Richard gestures to the chamber holding Josette's body and points to the baby monitor next to them. Charles and Clarinda slowly nod.

"What was the final clue was finding Michael as a evil mastermind who hated me because I let him grow up in an orphanage while my wife and daughter lived with me. Michael as we know him would not exist if I hadn't become the Avenger because I wouldn't have been in a position to be with his mother. Either he'd never have born or he'd be mine and Alicia's son."

"Even if for some strange reason you had a child out of wedlock, you and Alicia would never have let him go to an orphanage."

"Alicia would have immediately taken him in if his mother couldn't raise him."

The next morning Doc watches as the three of them put on sprayers filled with something they'd mixed up the night before and start spraying tables and chairs, covering every inch of exposed wood. It turns into a thick foam that's pink in color.

"It will turn white when it's finished taking up the sealer and paint." David says behind him. "This way they know everything is covered without a lot of sanding. This is meant for stuff that's sturdy, the antiques or delicate stuff will get a different formula used on them." He's drug off by Mary.

"Cleans the crap off but protects the finish and patina." Josette says as she straightens up from spraying the underside of a table and it's legs.

"The other stuff?"

"Use foam brushes since we've got to take out drawers." Alexander says as he starts working on another chair. They tip everything up to get the bottom of the feet too.

The next day Josette splits off a half-dozen duplicates to start scraping off the now white foam while the boys work on more tables and chairs.

"Are we painting them the same color?" Alexander asks, straightening up from getting chair legs.

"No, they're using this as an opportunity to redecorate. They're going from an offwhite to a nice cream."

"The walls?"

"A nice light blue." She brings up pictures of the planned work and the boys nod.

"Okay, now did I hear right that this was deliberate?" Michael asks.

"Yeah, some dumbass didn't like the idea of a tea shop in his spot. . .He'd already tried having them removed legally and the owners of the building told him to go away. He wanted the building for a nightclub. So now he's whining in jail. He can't believe they'd arrest him for that, they should be arresting the owners of the building for not doing what he wanted."

"Moron."

"Yep. He's in protective custody to keep from being beaten to death for his stupidity. By his parents if nobody else."

Alexander joins Josette at the first cleaned table. "I don't smell anything."

"Neither do I. And I've got a better nose than you do. A light sanding, base coat then new sealer?"

"Yep. Do we have the paint and sealer?"

"Duncan's delivering it tomorrow, dumbass is paying for everything. He's whining about *hat too."

"Whiner will hate prison even more, can't have a nightclub there."

"Damn thing would probably have folded within a few months anyway."

"Yep. Figured Daddy's money will get him everything he wants."

The next couple of weeks pass with Josette delivering the cleaned tables and chairs as they're finished, putting them in containers by the building since the building is being worked on. They're paid for their work by the court and it goes in their bank accounts as the new semester starts and they turn their attention to their classes.

Josette cackles when she gets out of the vehicle after delivering the last batch of furniture back to MacNair building.

"What did dumbass do now?" Michael asks.

"But why did you have to work on the furniture. Can't you just leave it sit outside for a few days?"

"Noooo, that's what happened on that one tv show after they had a kitchen fire. They left the furniture sitting in containers, then had to clean everything because the smoke clung to the finish."

"Yeah, and we all know how fabric can keep the smell of smoke." Alexander snorts as he walks through.

"Yeah, so he's pouting about having to spend more money. They had insurance, why does he have to pay for everything? He shouldn't have to pay for anything."

"Did the crime, gotta do the time."

"Yeah, so they put one of the overstuffed chairs in his cell, he's whining about how it smells."

"That's why they call it smoke damage." Pat says dryly as she walks through.

"Yep, I went to a expo and a woman sprayed perfume everywhere in a room because she was a spoiled bitch. they went in with hazmat suits to scrub the walls. They'd tried opening the door to air it out but people complained and somebody went into anaphylactic shock." the others shake their heads.

"Kids, I know you've been working on your classes, how about you take the weekend off."

"Atlantis, you've been listening?" Josette asks, looking over at where the others have been quietly talking.

"Of course, that is why you turned on your box." A female voice chuckles. "We're heading off right now. It should be fifteen minutes."

The box on Josette's belt beeps twelve minutes later. "We're coming up near you now." Josette looks out the window and smiles, the others clustering around her.

"Oh my . . . "

Josette chuckles. Seeing Atlantis or one of the others from the outside is always exciting. They hover over the ship and a light comes down on top of them.

There's barely a jolt as they're taken into a tractor beam.

"When you said your ship was named Atlantis. . ."

"You were expecting a boat ship. . .not a space ship."

"Yes, I knew it had to be good sized to get supplies but ..."

"Your mind kept skipping over the 'moving to another planet' part."

The door is opened once they're in a room and the ship is floating in the water again, everybody getting out and following Josette, Alexander, and Michael out of the room. They walk down hallways to a familiar room. They've seen it when the others were talking to them on the computer.

"Josette, I'm putting the shields up, we're expecting a storm." A holographic image comes into view.

"If the wave action gets too bad, go underwater. Do we have everything off the piers? Oh everybody, this is Atlantis."

"Yes, the others are double-checking windows and doors now." The transporter across the room hums to life and the door opens, Alan coming out. A light shimmering into view that creates an opening has James and Doc jumping in front of the others. Josette waves a hand. "It's just David, he creates tesseracts that allow us to travel from place to place." True to her words David walks through the opening a couple seconds later. "Couldn't use the transporter?"

"Exploring a new area and hadn't found them yet."

"And why were you exploring a new area?" Atlantis asks in her mother voice that has most of the room chuckling.

"I thought I saw a window that was open but I couldn't figure out why it wouldn't have been found before now, it just turned out to be the glass."

"You found the old manufacturing area then, yes the glass does have that effect." Atlantis brings up a hologram and David nods at the picture, turning the image and retracing the route he'd taken. He makes a note of the transporters on his PADD.

"Josette, what are you doing with all the vat meat?"

"I'm going to get the large smokers up and running. That, the drying rooms, and stasis will take care of everything."

"Growing area."

"Yep, I'm going to need to restock the spices when I'm done."

"Manufacturing area?"

"Used before the replicators became common, and in cases when they couldn't handle that big a volume. They also handled the recycling."

"And I've been taking care of the paper ends the hard way Why?" Josette asks, her hands on her hips.

"Because it keeps you out of trouble and if you really didn't want to do them you'd pop the lot in subspace and drop them in the replicator like filling a straw dispenser." Atlantis says. David sniggers.

"So that's how you were able to get to the Bermuda Triangle?" James asks.

"Yes, and why you let me go across the country after I'd just recovered from being so sick. I think it's the only reason you let me go no matter how much old lady Quandy said I had to be there. After the first trip out to the Covington farm I was opening tesseracts once our final grades had been posted. That saved gas and time driving from Tennessee to Massachusetts."

Josette heads off to the botany section as the others are talking, not surprised when she's got at least one person following her. Grabbing a basket, gloves, and scissors from a supply room nearby she starts cutting vegetables to go on the grills, filling the basket and looking over to see Kent and Richard looking around the large area.

"Fruit trees and berry bushes are down the hall along with the potatoes and mushrooms, grains and corn are on the other side." David says as he comes in and takes the basket, handing Josette another one. She starts on the herbs and peppers they'll need for the rubs and marinades, checking the list of what she plans to make and what is running low.

"Is this all your food?"

"No, we have food replicators and vat raised meat made from soybeans, but there's nothing better than fresh fruit and vegetables."

"And for everything we eat fresh, we dry, can, or otherwise save for later twice as much." Susan looks at the list and heads to another section. Her mother splits off from the group, finding her picking eggplants.

"Do you grow all your food here?"

"Oh no, we only grow in the ships when we're traveling or if Josette's growing something special. We have our harvests on Haven, we have growing buildings for planting over the winter, and we have our own growing area in our home."

Baskets are brought out and the others start walking down the line of green beans, filling over ten baskets by the time they're done.

"A good harvest."

"And in a few months we'll have a second harvest." Anna says as the last basket goes in the stasis unit. The others blink and David gives a quick overview of the system.

"Tomatoes?"

"Yep, I got the drying tables set up. That, the canned dishes, the sauces, and everything we pop in stasis for sandwiches will take care of them."

Three tones has the kids looking up from filling the drying tables. "The forecast is getting worse, I'm heading under water." Josette brings up the view from one of the cameras to a viewscreen, watching them sink under the water until it's too dark to see anything.

"That's something."

"So's the view of space on the viewscreens or the windows when Atlantis clears the shields for us. You don't see all the stars from Earth mostly. Even before all that shit was kicked up in the atmosphere."

"Lights and the pollution in the air."

Josette looks over from putting the last of the brine containers in the walk-in refrigerator.

"Got the casings for the sausage." Alan says. "You ready for them?"

"Yeah, I got the recipes on the board."

"Rub?"

"Already done."

They dice pails of peppers, onions, and mince spices, cutting up chunks of meat for several dozen sausage recipes. The large industrial mixer and grinder is brought out, the sausage attachment going on the end and the casings that had been soaking put on the end as they bring out trays of prepared meat from the freezer as needed.

"Anybody want to head back?" Josette asks over her shoulder as David comes into the room a couple days later.

"Nope. They're either talking to the others, including Atlantis, staring at the various rooms, or going over everything Atlantis has on file. They'd already planned on being gone for nearly a week, the weather coming in would have delayed everything anyway." He starts putting the new sausages on the rods that will go in the drying rooms.

Over the next few days everything is put away, Josette nodding in satisfaction at everything in the smokers, the drying rooms, or in stasis. The others had looked at some of the ribs and shook their heads.

"Vat raised we can make them as big as we want and since they're soybean based we can put the bones in the compost bin after we've used them for stock or in the case of ham bones, in beans." Both mothers nod in satisfaction.

"Do you eat real meat also?"

"Yes, we have a selection of it in stasis and we mark the real meat with red for the vegetarians. I'd say a good 95 percent of what we eat is the veggie meat."

The foul weather passes and Atlantis begins surfacing. Doors and windows begin opening and the others start the experiments they'd planned.

"Open channel to Josette."

"Yo."

"Josette, first I hate you for the birthday present." Laughter and the sound of Josette cooing. "Second, have you been keeping an eye on the sky around us?"

"Yes," an older female voice says.

"Oh good, you're on your ship. We've been keeping an eye on a meteor. . ."

"I've seen it as well and have already made plans for harvesting it before it got too near."

Josette grabs her PADD and starts checking. "We need to harvest asteroids again."

"Yes, we're not in the danger zone but we've dipped into the low section. When I took care of the closed dumps it went all into energy crystals."

"Thank you Josette, Lady . . ."

"I'm Atlantis."

"Thank you Lady Atlantis."

"Why'd he ask the ship her name if . . .?" Susan's mother leans towards Alan.

"Josette's bonded to thirteen ships."

"Bonded?"

"Fancy word for of all the people that had been in the program, Josette and Atlantis clicked. We were on Haven for a while when Atlantis told us of the others. They've all been in contact just like the eight of us are in each other's heads and wanted to meet Josette, they came to Haven and everybody 'clicked' with Josette just like Atlantis did."

"We're going with you." James, Charles, and Doc says.

"It's going to be a long time, I'll be gone an hour by the outside world with time dilation but it will be years on Atlantis. It won't seem that long for us but. . . I'm used to being under time dilation, so are the others." The others nod.

"Just under five years." Atlantis says as Josette looks over the list of what they're picking up. She adds a few items. "Most of the asteroids will have that anyway."

"If not we'll go harvest a few wandering planets. I added in extra time if needed."

The others settle on the ship they'd brought out as Atlantis begins to lift off.

"The water didn't even ripple."

In Atlantis the three men are looking at the viewscreen showing the outside and Josette laying in the chamber the control chair had become. They're in space when the cover retracts and Josette sits up. Going to the food replicator she dials up a sandwich eighteen inches long and nearly as thick as her mouth with fillings.

"Josette. . .ahhh, you started everything running while we were lifting off."

Josette swallows. "By the time we get there telemetry will tell us what the meteor is composed of. Are you taping everything?"

"Yes." A viewscreen comes on and the three men look at the stars around them, very familiar from their own trips offplanet.

"Josette, how much time have you spent under time dilation?"

"Easily a few millennia?" Josette quickly counts off the worlds she's had to harvest. "Longer. Harvesting lost planets usually takes at least two to three hundred years, if they're going full-tilt at least five hundred years with all thirteen ships, plus the other two."

"Other two?"

Atlantis puts up a picture.

"Add in the time I spend harvesting planets that are a danger to ships, time in the other dimensions. . .it adds up."

Five hours later Josette is looking over the report of what the meteor is made of, probes being sent off to start breaking it down.

"How long is this going to take?"

"Oh. . .months." Josette says absently. "Four at least even with the probes continually breaking things down. This is a good sized meteor, if it wasn't moving and in an asteroid belt I can see people settling on it under a dome." James and Doc both look at the meteor and nod.

"Do you have star maps?"

"Several. . .the ships are continually updating them as we travel." They take the transporter to the cartography section. "These are the star maps on our trips between Earth and Haven. . .these are my trips to harvest after we settled on Haven."

"Is it the same?"

"It is."

"What are we. . .Ohhhhh." Charles settles back in his chair as the sky lights up.

"Natural pyrotechnics. Every day is the fourth of July." Josette is laying on the pier on a blanket looking up at the sky. "It's never the same twice."

"Are we here. . ."

"They have a very potent explosive naturally occurring in the volcanoes. . .it's inert unless it's mixed with a couple other items.. ." She points up at the sky. "Case in point. I'm here to stock up on it again."

Josette slips a rebreather mask on after checking her clothes and walking down into the volcano.

"This isn't sulphur." Doc says, following her into the volcano.

"No, I have to check the stores on that too. With so many volcanoes on this world it's not that difficult to harvest it."

Josette sets the machinery humming, looking over her shoulder at James. "Machinery to make soy milk. Both for drinking and making cheese."

"Do all of you work at the school?"

"Most of us, the twins are teachers while Josette is the head librarian."

Josette walks through and snorts at Alan. "I'm the only school librarian, thank you very much."

"Still makes you the head librarian. And the head librarian in Town."

"Alan works at the school's health center as well as the medical center in Town."

"Susan works at the law office in Town . . ."

Mary looks at David. "You're capitalizing Town." He laughs. "We all called it that anyway, it's officially First Town but it will be centuries before we need to call it that."

Josette snorts. "Haven doesn't have a monopoly for weird names, the town our school was a couple miles outside on Earth was called Killingmesoftly, another few miles past our school was another town called Kickinthepants."

The others chuckle and nod.

"Michael and Alexander have their shows and the special orders, same with Josette. David officially worked for Sanders, handling the construction at the school so James or Josh didn't have to travel across country. Now he's in charge of construction on Haven."

"A binary white sun system."

"Are we sure this is it?"

"Yes, we've received a reply to the passcode from the probe." They knew the others had said that Earth was in an ice age and seen pictures on Atlantis but seeing the real thing in the screens in front of them had been different.

"Sixteen planets, it looks like they've all been terraformed." Mary says an hour later as the probes they'd sent out start sending back information.

"Ahhh, with two suns the goldilocks zone is bigger so that all could support life?"

"Yes, but even so the last six planets would be winter planets." James says. "Night is six months in the arctic circle, it must be nearly the same on the last planet."

"Good Lord. . ." A picture is brought up on the screen when they're nearing the first planet.

"How big is that building?"

"Nearly two hundred stories using standard measurements. And it would easily take up an entire city block."

"Holy." Matthew looks at the screen in front of him, switching it to the main screen.

"Is that a satellite or a spaceship?"

"I'd say it's big enough to be both."

They're approaching the sixth planet when they get a hail from Atlantis, following her directions until they approach the ships that move together for a solid landing area for them.

Atlantis's AI hologram greets them when they walk out, the others appearing around them to be introduced.

"How far are we from the children?"

"Not even the same continent but we'll get you there." Atlantis chuckles. She gives them a set of coordinates and they head off.

"This is a school?"

"Josette." A voice sighs. The others stop looking around the school and look at the man who'd just come up to them. "This way."

"You don't seem surprised?"

"Assorted family and friends, All of you looking around in disbelief? Josette went dimension hopping again." Clarinda chuckles despite herself, that's a 'here we go again' sigh of a parent. The kids had all talked about Principal Madison, there's no doubt that this is him.

Pat squeaks despite herself.

"That's a dorm?" It's a castle.

"It's been added to over the years." The man who had indeed introduced himself as Principal Madison opens two glass doors, the others nodding at the obvious lobby of a dorm with mailboxes in one wall. There's cubbyholes across from them filled with boots and shoes, with jackets hanging over them and a line hung up. The pocket doors in the other wall open into two living rooms but beyond them they can see more signs of the initial dorm. There's a number of doors in the hallway spaced at intervals that is probably a bathroom between two rooms. Walking to a panel on a wall he pushes a button.

"Anybody home?"