About the only good thing to come out of the whole mess dealing with the Nightmare King was that Julian finally managed to get his head on right. He finally knew who he was and what he was meant to do. But more importantly, after the year he had, he finally remembered what the X-Men were supposed to be, and how far off the rails everything had went.

Now it was time to get things back on track.

He called the other X-Kids together, to meet him at the ruins of the Xavier Institute to talk. It was time for the X-Men to get back to basics, and ironically, by doing so, possibly evolve it beyond anything the X-Men have ever done before.

If they were going to do this, they were going to get it right this time.

Barbaric arts of my time reveal me as outsider. Favorite poetry: epics. Popular dramatic ideal: heroism. Dances: wildly abandoned. Stimulants to make people sense what I took from them. What did I take? The right to choose a role in history.
-Leto II (The Tyrant): Vether Bebe Translation


Recreating one's homeworld on the ship wasn't the most creative move she could make, Sheeana knew. And she did her level best to avoid using the sensoriums wherever possible. She would not become dependent on their artificial comfort like so many others did.

But there were certain things unavailable in the city for her and music was one of them. So she found herself in the plaza at Arrakeen. The sun beat down on the cracked and ancient concrete, on Fremen travelling into the city to sell their goods, on pilgrims, on priests in their white robes. The heat was oppressive to most but to her it was life, and each ray that soaked in through her skin made her blood pulse closer to her skin.

She stood in the exact center. Old music, also native Rakian, came through from phantom instruments and she kicked her heels up. She went whirling, abandoning herself to the frenzy of movement, spinning until she was half blur, one leg held out to balance her like a figure skater. Arms flung out and aided her momentum, dark hair whipping about. She used this momentum to launch herself into higher and higher spinning leaps, sometimes coming down on a foot and sometimes on a hand. Everything melted away in the flux.

If left alone this way she could easily keep going until she collapsed. Luckily she'd left the door unlocked. She didn't much care either way if she were watched.

Castle Wyvern is not in shambles, but it is damaged.

And it stays that way, for the duration of the daytime. After all, Goliath can't do much about a damaged castle when he's a statue.

"Sunset" is accompanied, as usual, by a loud, growling yawn. Shards of Goliath's stone skin rain down on the present rubble of the castle's outer Western wall, and he crouches on his perch, surveying the damages with a strategical eye. He has had his moment for horror and fury. Now it is time to rebuild, and his is not the only home that needs it.

Daja's forge was looking a little worse for wear, after the Nightmare King's attack - the roof was a little singed in places, and some of her furniture has a few cracks from when they fell over from the tremors. But on the whole, she'd been lucky. The building still stood. Her tools had, for the most part, survived. And she'd been able to clean up most of the mess.

She made an effort to clean up the place even more, however. She had a customer coming - and while Daja was sure that Nura would understand that the place could not be in the very best shape, Daja could at least make the effort to make her forge as comfortable and welcoming as possible.

So Daja straightened the wooden furniture - and made a note to craft some more durable tables and chairs from metal in the future - and carefully laid out a few precious biscuits that she'd manage to acquire.

Hesitating, Daja debated - should she prepare some tea? From her trade with Sheik, she had precious few tea leaves. But, as her Trader heritage had instilled in her, building up good relationships with buyers was vital. However scare, the value of the tea was nothing compared to the value of an excellent relationship with a customer, who may buy again.

Decided, Daja began to boil some water - she would ask Nura if she would like some tea when she arrived. If Nura declined, nothing was lost, and if she accepted, then a solid foundation for negotiations was in place.

Roxie's lair is much as it has been, though there have been a few changes. With the girl's paranoia inducing the place to run at half-alert status, the runes across the outside walls stand out in softly-glowing dark-edged curlicue, and odd posts topped with silver-chrome metal orbs stand out at odd angles from the building, humming softly. On the edges of the roof perch things like small birds carved out of bits of ivory and fragments of office supplies.

On a level past the physical, the entire building glows with a soft supernatural aura—practically broadcasting that it's at weapons-readied status.

But the door is open, as it long has been, and there is no impediment to entering. Won't you come in?

One of the cold facts of life is that it was temporary. Medical science was an amazing thing. Where once the smallest scratch or sprain would fester and become fatally infected, now even failing organs could be replaced. Everything was artificial, fake, and what kept people alive was no longer a flow of goodwill and the trickle-down hand of god, but the flow of money.

Of course, Motoko had known that her entire life, as far as she could remember. It had been explained to her in detail, when she'd been still a child, still learning to walk again in her new body. We've put a great deal of money and time into you, miss. You had better not fall and ruin everyone's hard work. When that had failed under her growing frustration, they had bribed her.

It was easy to contemplate the happy unhappiness of the past when you were reduced to picking the droplets out of your joints by hand.

Motoko was standing, leaning on a fleshy wall because none of the furniture she might have dragged over from engineering would have held her weight. Every seam and panel in her right arm was popped open— the joint had come up warm. It needed lubrication and Stacy's humid interior was playing havoc with her success rate. Back home, she'd have shrugged and paid a small fortune for a replacement, but here she had no such luxury. Her buffer of safety was gone. So, she awkwardly held her own arm to the light, fragmented from wrist to elbow in pieces like the ruffled feathers of a bird and examined the coverage. Good enough.