---

---

"Hmm, that's been a few days now." Ed frowns, finishing making his sandwich. "I hope she is okay. Do you think we should be concerned?" He asked the group at large.

Ed thought about where the others might be, and it was likely they were outside at this point. "We can head outside next I think. It is nice we got a big group already." Ed was still frowning looking concerned about why Mary would not be around after so long. It wasn't normal. He hoped that if there was an issue she wouldn't be afraid to ask for help.

---

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Bethany watched as Runa was having a bit of a hard time trying to see how the can opened which was kind of entertaining to see as Runa started to bang the can a bit and shake it. She knew that it was going to agitate the liquid inside, and it would probably explode if Runa did try to open it. "You might want to open that over the sink and tilt it downwards it'll explode if you try and open it now." Bethany warned Runa.

"Also if you are looking for the others I believe some of them have gone down to the Danger Room to play a game of Clue." Bethany told Edus if that was where he was looking for the others as she thought about where Mary was and if they should be concerned with her disappearances lately. "Maybe but there isn't anyway for us to try and find her, unless we get like Guin to use Cerebro to try and find her or something like that. That or we could try and call her cell and see if she picks up to." Bethany told Edus.

---

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Carolina followed behind Avery up to the attic, she looked around the room it was pretty dusty as she looked over her shoulder at Avery and giggled slightly and smiled at them. "I wouldn't be surprised if we find a small baby sized wheelchair somewhere in here or a baby sized suit, tie and dress shoes." She said with a little laugh as she explored around the room.

The room smelled pretty old and musty as she looked around the room seeing all of the old and unused furniture in the room. "So how have you been adjusting to your new body?" She decided to ask, knowing that it was probably a very hard and sudden drastic change for them to deal with as she leaned herself up against a nearby wall while looking over at Avery.

---

---

Perry couldn't quite hold in her excitement as she let out a low squeal while Mira set up the game. She absolutely loved Sherlock Holmes. Even as a child she would gravitate towards mysteries. Nancy Drew. The Hardy Boys. Even Goosebumps to an extent, though that was more horror. To be able to set foot in the world of Holmes, even in a game, well that was the dream.

Sure enough, Mira set it up and Perry followed through the door, setting foot in the London of the past. She quickly checked the map and suspects provided. Very much still Clue (or Cluedo being in England and all). She sort of hoped she was the murderer. Enough to get the blood pumping trying to hide your own crimes. Plus, very rarely, did the villain get away. And people loved a villain.

"I say, splendid dahling. The bee's knees! And a what for and all that jazz!" She had no idea what she was saying but damn if it wasn't fun to say.

---

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”Strange message? What strange message?” They were both being oddly cryptic. Antoinette didn’t think they needed to be since Annie and her team were the current X-Men, and had done fairly well with everything thrown at them. All things considered.

”Should we get everyone gathered and you can tell us what the message is?” Antoinette pressed. She wasn’t sure what the others were up to, but they were never too hard to find.

---

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Jaclyn smiled at Perry and Max's antics. People getting into a game like that made it all the more fun. Their rivalry was sure to play out interestingly once "the game was afoot". She was glad they'd settled on Sherlock Holmes. For one thing, she wasn't into the beach scene. For another, Holmes was an easy setting to fall into. The Hound of the Baskervilles leapt first to her mind and her imagination blended the image of a mansion with misted grounds.

Clearly Perry was excited for this setting too, given the low squeal Jaclyn heard from her.

Jaclyn accepted the electronic pad from Mira, smiling with excited contentment at the locations and bearing a little grin at the inclusion of Sherlock and Moriarty. Imagine if Sherlock were the killer!

All that was left was to step inside the Danger Room proper, onto the streets of "jolly old London" and the White Chapel Murderer -- fortunately not literally in that latter case.

Jaclyn only half registered what Perry was saying, as she took in the surroundings in tandem with consulting her screen again. If not for it reminding her this was VR, it could be mistaken for time -and universe- travel. That had yet to get old for Jaclyn, and a fleeting thought was given to if it typically did for X-Men, or if the impressiveness of the Danger Room's technology never completely waned.

Now, where to begin?

---

---

Guin had to resist the urge to roll her eyes and explain to Jean how her own powers worked - that even if Mary wasn't letting her in, she could just skim through the surface thoughts of others present, looking for glimpses of Mary. Maybe Guin wasn't giving Jean enough credit, but she felt like crawling out of her skin, and interacting with Scott and Jean wasn't helping things at all. Especially because they were being vague as shit and overly dramatic about everything, like they were right ahout to walk onto the set of a soap opera.

"Can we just skip the drama and get to it?" Guin asked, crossing her arms. She didn't see why they needed to fuss over all of this, or why they were being so weird about whatever message this was. If they could just go ahead and explain what they knew, they'd be closer to get to the bottom of this situation anyways - and closer to the two former X-Men leaving the mansion.

---

Runa couldn't help but smile slightly at Lance's trick - he was a quiet soul, just like her. He didn't make grand sweeping gestures or displays of affection. He showed his care in little ways, tiny little things that were for Runa and Runa alone. She looked in his direction for a moment, hoping that he would see her thanks in the glance, before lifting the can to her lips and taking a sip - soda was strange, a symphony of syrups and bubbles, a sensation that wasn't quite like any other. She couldn't drink too much of it without feeling ill, but she did enjoy it.

"Oh, it will explode?" Runa tilted her head, confused. Nothing explosive had happened when Lance subtly cracked it open for her. "Is that normal for your drinks?"

The conversation then drifted to a member of the X-Men who hadn't been around for a few days, but Runa wasn't concerned. A few days was such a short period of time, she hardly noticed its passing.

---

---

Avery flushed pink at Carolina's question - it was one that most people in their life had been tiptoeing around, leaving them without any practice answering it. Truthfully, the experience of having a completely new body was odd... If anything, it made Avery feel less connected to their physical form, to their flesh. They felt these days more like a spirit inhabiting a puppet, a soul hidden behind skin and bone and hair and blood. There were moments where they wished that they didn't have a body at all, that they weren't burdened with one.

And of course, when they looked in the mirror, they startled sometimes, not used to the reflection looking back at them.

But the strange thing was, Avery didn't want to return to their old form. This was new and strange but at the same time, it felt right - more so than their flesh had felt before. It was a chance to really determine who they were, to start fresh, to discover who they wanted to be. They weren't the nervous boy from New York that they'd been. Not anymore.

"It's...weird," Avery admitted. "I don't always recognize myself. Sometimes when I see my reflection, I'm a stranger. But... I'm still me, on the inside - I'd be the same person no matter what my body was... Is it... is it weird for you?"

---

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---

Max figured he probably should've been more descriptive in his speech. Having misunderstood what the others were saying, while he definitely didn't mind the atmosphere of 1800's London, he'd more meant he wished for the game to be like Sherlock Holmes. Piecing evidence together and jotting what they thought down in a notepad without the aid of a list of possible items or suspects. But he wasn't going to argue about having a handicap like this, so he took the pad from Mira and watched as one by one everyone began to enter the game proper.

He'd stepped inside, and the world around him had shifted. He could practically hear the sound of rain pitter pattering outside, softened by the windows and walls of the building as it collided with the pavements of Baker Street. London was always so dreary, more so when there was a murder afoot. After all, every good murder mystery happens during or just before a storm. Max looked at his data pad, and started to glance around from where he stood. Before him was Hyde Park. A lovely little thing with fall leaves fallen down onto the ground and a center fountain for people to converse by. To his right, or the fountains left, seemed to be some form of in home museum, the view of bones barely peeking through the angle of the opening from where he stood, and to its exact opposite was a disheveled room with books and pages strewn here and there, some even on the floor. No doubt the room of the famous detective himself, Holmes. ”Right then. I believe this atmosphere is perfectly adequate for our endeavors tonight. Should a concerning crack of thunder followed by an all too illuminating flash of lighting occur, then I believe we'll be that much closer to an answer…or that much closer to death ourselves.”

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Mira looked at the others as they all entered the room and they'd see all of the setup and the setting. The screens they were holding lit up as cards of sorts were shuffled around a bit before three cards disappeared into an envelope image on the screen, clearly representing the who where and with what weapon for the murder. "Considering it sounded like we wanted to go a bit more on the way of exploration aside from just having the cards and finding the clues that way. So each person will have a set of the cards, which will all be marked off. Since we want there to be a chance that the murderer wins as essentially the murderer, they'll win after what, getting say two other people knocked out? Basically they fail at the accusation part thing. You can't share your clues unless someone makes the suggestion, like in classic clue, in a specific area, but you don't always have to, you can see about exploring, trying to get some clues and possible ideas that way. The killer can try to throw people off the trail of everything and potentially add things to different areas as clues. So kind of like Clue, but with more murder mystery or whatever, just since I based most of the program off Clue, there still are the other underlying bases for it since this got thrown together quickly. I prefer the idea of just going on with the murder mystery piece sort of thing."

Yeah, this was definitely going to be interesting to say the least. She loved Clue for the most part, but this added more complexity to the game and all. She glanced at her screen to see what popped up on it, before she started heading off towards the Hyde Park area. Figuring it would be a good place to start, at least in her mind.

---

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"I don't know about concerned. I mean I kind of took off for sometimes several days to even a few weeks at a time a while ago and it wasn't a bad thing. Though I will say hanging around with Thor does get a little grating at times... No offense on that one Klara." Lance pointed out, before adding the sort of apology towards Klara when he had thought that fully through.

"It's alright, I know that for others it can be like that," was the response he got from her.

He had disappeared not telling anyone where it was that he had gone off too way back when. But that was when he had teamed up with Thor to attempt to find where Runa and Klara were. Hence why he had ended up traveling to Asgard a few times throughout that whole endeavor. Then he looked over towards Runa when she asked about the soda can exploding. "That's caused by shaking the can too much. The carbonation, or the thing that makes it fizz and bubble like that, before the can gets opened it can build up a bunch of pressure. Which can cause the can to kind of explode. But not in the way you might think. Causes more of a volcanic eruption when opening up the can and the soda kind of shoots out of it. That sort of thing..."

"Well if you're concerned could also potentially do a tracking spell with magic or something like that maybe? I sometimes forget that time for Midgardians is different then for us," Klara suggested.

---

Annie and Guin
"Well, the letter that wound up on Gambit and Rogue's doorsteps wasn't exactly signed, but they're pretty sure it was her hand writing. It's a call for help, give me a minute to see if I can find it, Rogue sent a picture of it to us, hence why we headed this way." Cyclops explained, flipping through phone messages.

"Might want to also message them and say she's not here, which is not a good sign." Jean added, looking at the other two.

"Going to, but first, here it is," he continued before pulling up a picture and holding out the phone so Annie, Guin and Pietro could read it. The handwriting wasn't the greatest, pretty obvious that whoever had written it had done so in a really really big hurry. As if they didn't have time at all to get any more words or to talk specifics or anything like that. The paper in the image also appeared fairly crumpled and wrinkled.



"They found it tossed on their doorstep in an envelope. So they don't know what it could possibly mean or anything. Perhaps you all might, you are around Marygold more often then we are so perhaps you have a few ideas. There is one that has crossed my mind that I would prefer not to think about and hope that I am wrong. Because then we would have an incredibly big problem that would be a huge catastrophic thing." Guin would easily be able to tell what it was she likely was talking about with that statement. Annie on the other hand would be a bit clueless as to what Jean's thoughts on the subject were at the moment.

---

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Bethany was about to answer Runa's question about a can exploding when it was shaken to much, but Lance had managed to beat her to it and nodded slightly at his explanation. "Yeah that will happen if you shake it to much. But if you add a candy called Mentos to a soda called Coca-Cola it'll really make it erupt like a massive volcano." Bethany said with a slight laugh it was kind of amusing to see it happen sometimes seeing a whole 2 liter bottle of coke shooting out like a volcano was always a bit entertaining to watch sometimes.

She turned her attention over towards Klara mentioning a tracking spell or something like that as she looked at Ed who always had a hair sample of just about everyone. "We could try something like that, maybe Ed could help out with that or something he does have a hair sample from her for healing and whatnot." Bethany pointed out maybe sprinkling in some Asgardian magic they could track down Mary wherever she was right now.

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Carolina listened to Avery as they explained how it felt being in a completely new body now and she could understand it being weird with being born with the body you had, then it suddenly being changed. Carolina turned to look at Avery when they asked her if it was weird for her to see them with a completely new face now.

Carolina smiled towards them and shook her head slightly, Avery was still the same person that she liked no matter what they looked like. "You are still the same person that you are when you first came here even with a different body and face. You are still you which is what I like." Carolina said as she looked at them blushing slightly as she ran a hand through her hair slightly.

---

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Perry was truly in heaven.

She was stepping into the shoes of her favorite detectives! Which, as she thought about it, all mainly were men. Granted there were the likes of Miss Marple and Nancy Drew. And now....Peregrine Mayfield! Or Miss Peacock as her character dictated. "Well hot dog! This place is the cat's meow and all that jazz and why don't you come on over and see me sometime!" She directed this to pretty much no one. She was just having fun!

She took out the map provided and decided to head towards the pub. Once inside she looked around. If she were a clue, where would she be? There are plenty of areas in the pub and plenty to hear also. She hoped no one followed her, though she could hardly blame them given her detective prowess. But she couldn't trust any of them!

She went to the end of the pub and began her search.

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Max's pad lit up with information. Three known things that were wiped off the board for him. He began to inspect all the other suspects more closely, his kind focusing on the details of their dress, shoes, accessories, hair color, and as he did he began to pull into information from another life, one he hardly recalled save for the odd dream or two that would plague him at night. He'd always had a thing for fashion, but now he had an intimate knowledge of it, modeling, the feel of fabrics he never could afford. He used all this information to make a mental bank of details on each and every suspect. Should anything come up in another room, he could cross reference this with what he knew to narrow down even more details of this murder.

Once he felt satisfied, he watched as Perry made her way over towards the Pub Location. He waited a moment to see if Mire would love somewhere or Jacy, but for now they seemed to be reviewing their own information. A part of him wished to follow alongside Perry, to ask her what her thoughts were so far while they searched for clues, but even she could be the killer attempting to lure him off the tracks. So instead he made his way over towards the Museum, marveling at the massive structures of dinosaurs that lined the inside. His shoes clacking against the tiled floor as he began his search in earnest for any clues.

---

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"I do have her hair for healing. I could use it for a tracking spell. But that just gives general direction." Ed says, most of them should know that because any who had been helping Lance look for Bruce knew the flaw of Ed's tracking spell.

"Give me a moment to get it together." Ed took a couple bites of his sandwich and pulled out a small box with several vials in them. Each of the vials were carefully labeled with the names of each of the X-Men. He had made sure after their last trip to space to collect hair from the others. It had become too much to just let sit in his pocket so he had gotten a special box to keep them organized in.

As he finishes casting the spell the small compass snaps to the south and pulls. "Ah, she is south of here, and pretty far away." He explains.

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Antoinette read the message over a couple of times before she looked at the others. She rocked back on her heels, thinking about the last time she had a conversation with Mary, let alone saw her.

”I know she was searching for something, but Mary and I never talk much beyond mission protocols. Maybe we should find Edus. He has a tracking spell we could use. It isn't specific, but he can send us in her general direction at least.”

Jean was rather cryptic about what she thought was going on without revealing anything to the group. Which Antoinette found strange since this was Mary's home. Surely everyone here should know what was going on if Mary was in trouble.

---

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Guin grimaced, quickly scanning the letter in the photograph. The handwriting was definitely Mary's - messy and difficult to parse, but hers. And she didn't need to be a telepath to know what Jean was hinting at, that she was afraid it was all going to happen again - that Dark Phoenix was going to happen. Honestly, the entire Phoenix Force seemed to be more trouble than it was worth. And Mary probably was the last person in the world who should have been given that. If anything, she needed stronger medication and a real therapist. If Guin could've gotten rid of the Phoenix, she would have. In a heartbeat.

"I mean, I love her but - she's actually insane. Maybe it's the Phoenix, but it could also be that she's actually batshit. Or maybe both," Guin shrugged. "But until we get the Phoenix out of her, we won't be able to help her. Do you think you could do that, Jean? You did use to host it." Annie had a good point too, that they could go to Edus to track Mary - Guin was also musing about hijacking a satellite or two and setting it to the task.

---

"Oh!" That made much more sense to Runa - she was familiar with the process, not so much in terms of beverages, but she had seen reactions of this form before on Asgard. Her brother, Forseti, had enjoyed tinkering with the things around them, often finding strange rocks and adding tinctures to them in order to cause them to fizz. It was a strange magic, but one that Runa enjoyed - one that felt different from her own magics, but no less real or important. The matter of tracking Mary seemed to be resolved quickly, with Edus giving a location. "Cousin, do you feel up for a teleportation spell? I imagine they wish to see their friend quickly. If not, I do still have this sling ring - and it is fun to try a more rugged Midgardian approach to magic every once in a while."

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Avery smiled, relieved to hear that from Carolina - and then their eyes widened slightly as her words hit them, replaying once again in their mind. What she liked. They didn't know what to say, freezing for a moment, as if that would stop time. It had been a while since they'd dated anyone at all - yes, they'd had crushes, but nothing serious. They were passing things, moments that drifted in and out of focus. And even when they'd dated Sara, sometimes they'd felt an absence - like there was an emotional need that wasn't being met, like just one person, one love, wasn't right for them. It was something not uncommon in their family, at least their paternal family - their cousin was much the same, as was their aunties. Polyamorous through and through.

So did they like Carolina? Yes. But they liked more than just Carolina - they liked Perry too, for instance. And Max. Gods, did they like Max. But an old and powerful wizard like him would never have eyes for Avery, they knew that. They didn't know how Carolina would feel about that - if she'd be okay with dating someone who was poly - but maybe they were getting ahead of themself.

Maybe it was fine to just enjoy the moment.

"...Can I kiss you?" Avery murmured.

---

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To Max's eloquent words, Jaclyn assumed her character by outwardly giving him a superior sort of look, as though she thought him rather a dramatic sort. Inwardly, she smiled. He was a compelling actor. Another in-character glance was cast to Perry, as though to say 'what are you carrying on about?', though this was followed by a brief smile so Perry would know Jaclyn was just playing.

She had nodded to Mira's rundown of how the game would function, and subsequently watched the other three go off to the Museum, Pub, and Hyde Park respectively.

Making her decision of where she wanted to go, she shifted glances back in Max and Mira's directions, as though suspicious that they might be of the mind to slip off in other directions. It would appear at first as if Jaclyn were following Perry, though she would then continue past the pub with only a glance through the window.

Jaclyn's destination was the dock; what seemed an excellent place to find a wayward clue.
She could already imagine some crate being craned away and a clue revealed underneath, or an accident causing crates to break open to the same result. Who knows, maybe she would even encounter the two computer-controlled players -she was certain where she found one she would find the other, Watson and Mr. Holmes being what they were. Though now that she thought of it, if she encountered only one, would that be a clue in and of itself?

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When it came to searching around for clues, the group got a sort of mixed result sort of things. Max found absolutely nothing at the Museum. There didn't seem to be any sort of helpful things there, at least none that he could see at the moment anyway. Maybe at a different location there'd be something?

Perry would find something that would definitely be helpful when it came to the clue searching at the pub. She'd see the revolver weapon in a display case up on a high shelf behind the counter of the restaurant. The weapon was sitting there, with a layer of dust, indicating that it seemingly hadn't been touched for a long time. Maybe she could ask some of the patrons of the pub and they'd know something?

Jaclyn over at the docks would find the motherload a bit when it came to suspicious clues. Down in the water by the docks, she's see something in the water, she'd be able to reach down and find a Cricket Bat that looked like it maybe could have gotten discarded there by someone for whatever reason.

Mira wasn't having the greatest luck over at Hyde Park. She was looking around for clues, and wondered for a moment just what sort of clues she was looking for exactly. Something that could tie someone to the location, or maybe a weapon that looked like it was discarded or left there for some reason. Something that had been messed with and left behind. But as of right now, she had found nothing. Mira was going to look around a little more here before moving onto a different place if nothing turned up.

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"I'm always up for a teleportation spell, but we might need a better location then just far away to the south don't you think?" Klara pointed out to her cousin. "At least so you don't miss in your aim or something like that."

"I'm not sure how sling rings work aside from you use magic to open up a portal using them. So not sure if that would be too much of an issue or if you have to even just think of a person and you basically teleport to be right by them or something like that," Lance commented with a bit of a shrug. Unsure of what else to really say on the subject matter.

"Maybe we can try a different tracking spell to get at least the right town or city or something like that if just trying to use that Midgardian device to appear over there or something. We do have multiple options how this could work out."

"Actually sounds almost like with the concerns people have they want to stage an intervention at this point or something like that. When we don't even really know what's going on with anything." Lance was fine potentially just waiting to see if Mary popped back up at the mansion, but if everyone else wanted to see about finding out where she was and going there, he wouldn't fully stop them about it. He was concerned a bit too about the disappearing for days at a time, so there was obviously something she wasn't telling them

---

Annie and Guin
"It unfortunately isn't so simple to remove it, especially if a part of the person with it wants to keep that power." she explained, shaking her head a bit at the comment.

"The only way it ended was when Jean died. Which was not an outcome we wanted. The only reason she's here now is because of the fact that the entity decided to resurrect her itself. Which is not something you can ask of something that could blink you out of existence. Or burn you to death which both are not exactly anything anyone wants to have happen. But that is the full on worst case scenario. And depends, since Jean had gone fully dark by that point, there was a point of no return."

"Doesn't help that I got manipulated by others to cause that to go that far. Though I do agree, finding her before it gets worse we might be able to stop what's going on before it reaches that point."

"Guina's right though," Pietro said, finally speaking up after a while. "Mary is kind of insane, sort of anyway."

"What do you mean by that?"

"...Wait, you seriously don't know? Actually scratch that why would you we found out by accident she didn't even tell us or last I checked really anyone. But she's got a split personality and the other one that occasionally pops up is very murderous. Which probably in this instance might cause even more issues..."

"...That would cause bigger issues. When did she start having these problems?" Jean definitely was concerned about that, and there was a bit of urgency in her tone of voice.

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"Maybe we can get Guin to use Cerebro or something to track her down to the exact location where she is." Bethany suggested, she wasn't a telepath so she couldn't use the device to track Mary down. Bethany watched as Ed pulled out a little box that contained everyone's hair and pulled out the vial that had Mary's. Sometimes she did tease him about collecting people's hair but that was only in a teasing way really as she watched him use the spell.

Runa pulled out something she wasn't sure what it was really as Klara mentioned a teleportation spell that she could use to teleport them all to wherever Mary's location was. "Looks like we just need to find a way to exactly pinpoint her exact location." Bethany said sighing slightly she was still very worried about Mary and why she had been disappearing recently.

---

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Carolina blushed deeply as she turned to meet Avery's gaze asking for them to kiss her, her heart racing slightly as she gave him a slight smile. Carolina had lost her first love October when OMEN was a thing, and she hadn't really fallen in love with anyone in a really long time. She had a few crushes here and there but nothing more than that.

"Of course you can silly, been waiting for you to say something." Carolina said as she moved over and wrapped her arms around Avery pulling them into a loving hug, while meeting their eyes. Carolina then leaned in and gave Avery a loving kiss as she looked up at them she was glad that they had the same feelings that she was having for them. "So does that mean we are a couple now?" She asked them giving Avery a loving smile as she gave them one more loving kiss.

---

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He let the spell drop and went back to his sandwich. He was almost done with it. Ed listened as the others discussed what they could do to find Mary. He considered the options. The sling ring could theoretically take them directly to Mary, but what if she was in the middle of something important. They didn't know why she was gone or what she was doing. If they showed up unannounced they could cause more harm.

"It wouldn't be easy for me to pinpoint Mary's location. I could triangulate her, but that would take several teleportations to work. I've heard of using a map, but my magic works through Sympathies. Without a map that would have sympathetic connections I wouldn't get anything. Might as well throw darts at a map." Ed explained.

"I'm alright with trying to find her, but I don't think we should drop in on her without warning. We don't know what she is doing. It could be dangerous and us showing up messes things up. If we triangulate her, at least we have a better idea of where she is, without causing instant disruption."

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Antoinette blinked owlishly at the people in the room. Her head moved between looking from Jean and Scott to Guin and Pietro before looking back again. She had to think back to the last time Mary had a slip, and the only time she remembered was when they were in that alternate reality. Could she have slipped again? Of course, Antoinette knew that mental health problems didn't just magically go away. Mary was likely fighting every day, but maybe things had been calm until recently. It would explain why she was gone so often. She could be looking for answers for her mental health or the Phoenix.

Jean's story with the Phoenix had been like a bedtime story for the students of Xavier. She was sure everyone knew the story of the Phoenix and how Jean had fared with it. But Mary having it on top of everything, that could definitely be cause for alarm. Especially if she was sending notes that declared she was in trouble.

Antoinette tapped a finger to the bottom of her chin, processing all the information. "It's been a while for sure. The alternate reality was when I noticed," Antoinette said, glancing at her friends for confirmation. "If it's getting bad again, she definitely needs her team." Her family, Antoinette thought, but she wasn't sure if Mary considered the X-Men her family.

---

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Max began to walk around the Museum, looking throughout the room for any clues. Nothing seemed to be popping out at him, no torn clothing or set of footprints, no weapon tossed half-hazardly to the side, not even blood splatter or residuals from the weaponry used. He knelt down by one of the displays, checking the checkered flooring before he felt something tugging against his shirt. His hand reached up, touching the cool metallic necklace that was beneath his shirt, feeling the imprint before standing back up and deciding this room had nothing left for him…for now. His fingers tapped against the hidden amulet as if to decide whether or not it was fair to even use.

Max began to walk out of the Museum, he placed his hands inside his pockets, deciding that for now it would be an unfair advantage to use his magic to gather information for this little mystery. He decided to make his way over towards the dark alley. It felt a little too on the nose, but he stopped just short of crossing the threshold. Looking over to his left and seeing the room that Perry had waltzed into. He decided to make his way into the Pub instead, standing over by the bar and tapping onto the wood as he looked towards the bartender. ”Mind if I get a Pimms Cup?” he asked before leaning his back against the bar and facing towards Perry. ”Find anything so far? Or are your ends as cold as the corpse we're helping?”