Xaviers!

Maybe surprisingly, Miriam is waiting in the Hangar when the Blackbird lands. She looks out of place and anxious as she waits to see if Will is on board.

Will was! And cheerfully waved at everyone else as he walked down the ramp and away from the crowd.

"Will!" Miriam shouts out to him, relief flooding her face as she tries to wave him over to her. "Thank god, you're back..."

"Oh, hiya Miriam! What's up?"

"Are you alright? What happened? You just kind of disappeared..." she says, glancing over at Sam and for a second she feels relieved to see that Sam seems to be injured and unlikely to wander over. She immediately feels guilty for it, but it's there for a split-second.

"Oh! An alarm sounded, so I had to go where I was useful. I helped!"

"You scared the hell out of me." she whispers maybe a bit too harshly. "Did Sam notice anything being weird?"

"Oh, things are always weird."

"Guess I'll find out if or when she comes to tear my head off... Come on, we better get you all sorted out." she says, trying to steer Will out of the hangar with her hands on his shoulders.

"OK! That might be fun. I had my head blown off over there, which was fun..."

"You have a very odd definition of fun, but you seem to have taken that pretty well..." she says, still sounding vaguely concerned.

"Oh, I'm fine as long as I'm be useful Miriam; you know that."

"Well yeah, but you should still be a little concerned about your well-being. Not that you have to be, apparently."

Once they're far enough from the Hangar for Miriam to feel like no one is likely to bump into them she stops Will. "Okay, time to get you all sorted out. I'll see you later." she says with bit of a rueful smile before delving into Will's mind and to the tower of her own making that's rising out of the clay in the middle of the forest.

Mel was laying on a tanning bed in the center of the tower.

"Finally remembered us, darling?"

"Not in the mood to deal with you right now. He's been missing for a week straight with all of this on full display, but please, go ahead, keep tanning." Miriam's avatar snipes as she drifts past Mel.

She reaches the well of clay in the center of the building and plunges her hands into it. Almost immediately the building begins to shake. Walls fold and columns twist themselves into nothing as the whole thing begins to shift and fold in on itself like an Escher painting. Miriam's hurrying not just because she's nervous but also because she wants to make sure Mel's projection or fragment or whatever she is gets caught in the process.

She needn't have worried, as Mel got up and walked over towards the box that was forming herself.

"You need to remember to put your toys away when you''re done with them," she warned, as she approached the box. "Otherwise, you're going to end up where I was. And I don't think you want THAT."

"Your passive-aggressiveness could stand to be a lot more passive." Miriam mumbles as the building finishes collapsing into a small box, still made up of dark-green bricks but only a couple feet wide. It sits in the small bit of goop where the trees don't quite reach, a couple of loose bricks scattered throughout. "There..."

In the real world Miriam sighs with relief as she withdraws from Will's mind.

Will blinked for a moment.

"As I was saying, Miriam, you're defined by those you choose to associate with. If you don't want your reputation dragged through the mud, choose your friends better," he frowned at her.

"Ehr... right." she says, looking confused for a moment before she realizes he's continuing a conversation she interrupted over a week ago but still struggling to remember the exact context. "I'll do that."

"See that you do," he said, storming off.


"Man, I have a headache..." he muttered, under his breath.