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Guin found the little mall at Salem Center to be so cute. The places she typically shopped at were for rich people, filled with useless stores selling things for thousands of dollars, without a single Hot Topic in sight. Nordstroms could only dream of being featured in the sort of places that the Starks would shop - and here, at Salem Center, it was the crown jewel in a dying mall. She secretly hoped that the mall would actually go under within a few years, just because the thought of doing urban exploration of it in, like, a decade sounded so trippy to her.
She popped a pretzel bite into her mouth, having grabbed a little thing at the Annie's. She then offered one to Pietro. "Want one, babe?" she asked him. They had been more or less wandering through the mall. She knew that Mira was at the mall (telepaths always know), but she was avoiding her. And for good reason. Guin was the reason that Mira had killed a lot of people. And they hadn't really talked much since that had happened. They had been good friends once - and now, Guin couldn't help but feel like she was drowning in guilt whenever Mira was nearby. Not a great recipe for an enduring friendship.
"Where do you want to go next - we could go to GameStop, see if they've got anything fun? Or we could go get you some new shoes, those ones are looking kinda worn out already. Didn't we just get those though?" Guin added with a frown. Speedsters did tend to go through shoes pretty quickly - an occupational hazard. "Oooor we could look for one of those silly, like, photo booths - the ones that spit out the strip of pics?"
She was genuinely happy here, just wandering the mall with her husband. It was nice to be back on Earth, too. After everything they had been through, Guin had started attending narcotics anonymous meetings again. It was helpful, just to have a place to go where she could talk about things - maybe not always how she had seen evil versions of her friends and witnessed the wreckage of a world where all hope had been lost, but hey, it was the little things in life that mattered. She had gone on a ski trip with her dad and Pepper as well when they had gotten back in the Swiss Alps. She was already ready for another vacation. Guin was always ready for a vacation.
"Oooh I wonder if we could rent motorcycles somewhere nearby and race them...." Guin then suggested, before eating the bit of pretzel she had offered Pietro.
Neil wasn't too sure what time he had woken up - or what time it was currently. He had installed black out curtains, letting no helpful rays of sunlight on through. His phone was abandoned on the desk, out of charge. And since he had no roommate at the moment (for which Neil was eternally thankful, he was still getting reacquainted with... well, himself), nothing from the outside world had disturbed him. No, instead Neil had spent hours pacing back and forth around the room, flipping furiously through the Curse of Strahd campaign materials. His last D&D group had been put on pause (read: ended) due to his ex-girlfriend dumping him and fleeing the Mansion, his family imploding with a zombie attack, and most of the X-Men team going off to space, where even Roll20 wouldn't help them.
At some point, Neil had stopped pacing. He had briefly contemplated lying down on the floor while he read, but it hadn't felt natural. No, what had felt more and more natural to him over the past year... were his mutant gifts. He focused on the books and the papers he had been scribbling on, as well as himself, and he had tried to use his telekinesis to levitate all those things at once. It had taken him a few tries to get it down and stable, dropping himself and/or the books a fair amount, before he had managed to pull it off. He was floating about six feet off the ground, his legs crossed, and the books gently floating all around him, going further and nearer as needed.
He could've stayed in that zen like pose for hours.
And maybe he did.
His stomach growled. Neil sighed. He had really been in the zone. And while the drastic change to his appearance had been, well, drastic, it was almost more annoying how many people just no longer recognized him. People had gone up to him, assuming he was a brand new student, and not a member of the X-Men. He had been chastised by one of the teachers for not being in class, despite no longer needing to take any formal classes at the school. And one particularly weird kid had told him that she had loved him in the Phantom Menace, despite having almost zero resemblance to Hayden Christensen.
Neil lowered the books (and himself) down to the ground. Maybe some of the old D&D crew would be getting lunch around now - he could start talking to them about characters they might want to play. He was anticipating somewhat of an uphill battle to get people to switch over to 5e for Strahd, but he had his arguments ready. His stomach growled again. Neil rolled his eyes slightly, annoyed at his own body - it was still weird at times to think of his body as being his, he didn't recognize himself most times when he looked in the mirror. He threw on his jacket and left his room, locking it up behind him.
Not too far down the hall, he saw Bethany talking to someone he didn't recognize. "Don't tell me Lance got hit with a shapeshifting curse too," he joked, his voice somewhat quiet as he walked up to the two.
