8 The Waiting Game

[With Batman and Catwoman, Batman POV]

Despite his earlier protest, Scott looked far too eager about entering Jean's room, taking the lead in guiding us with a pace barely slow enough for Xavier to keep up within his wheelchair. If not for the sunglasses hiding his eyes, I could probably see stars in his eyes.

Reaching a door with Jean Grey's name tag on it, Scott takes a nervous breath before opening the door and letting us inside. "Don't break anything now, I don't want Jean to come back home and get mad at me for letting you in here," He tells us, but looking at him now tells me he himself has never been in the room.

Entering the room first with Selina behind me, I hear her question me with an almost teasing undertone. "What are you hoping to find in here, detective Sherlock."

"Anything to tell us where she could have run off to," I say, looking around the incredibly tidy room. The bed has been made without a single wrinkle on it, everything is neatly placed on the shelves while the books on the bookshelves are organized alphabetically.

Heading to the table, which has a lone laptop on it, I open it up to find it password locked. I didn't get the chance to prepare a lot for the mission before being transported to the cafe, but I still carry common tools with me everywhere I go.

I take out a USB stick from my toolbelt and plug it into the computer seeing it unlock seconds later.

The desktop background is the default one for Windows 10. Looking around once more in the room, I see no pictures of family or friends, not even the Xmen.

Opening up her email, I ask Xavier and Scott, "Did she have any family or friends outside of the school, a boyfriend maybe she could have gone to?"

"Of course she didn't have a boyfriend," Scott spits out, looking disgusted at the idea.

"And family or friends?" Selina follows up, directing the question at Xavier, knowing that Scott won't be much help.

"Jean hasn't been in contact with her family ever since coming to the school as a child. She did have a few friends from Bayville High, but they were all normal people. I don't think she would risk endangering them by asking for refuge from them."

Finished with looking through the emails, which consist of only school emails and other useless trash, I closed the laptop.

Finding out anything about Jean has proven to be a failure, with her room yielding no useful evidence and the answers from Scott and Xavier being equally unhelpful.

Tracking down the Phoenix's energy signature could be done if only I had my equipment, but unfortunately, I was caught unprepared and didn't have time to bring those with me this time. I will have to set up a kit for any future missions to prevent this kind of thing from happening again.

With those thoughts in mind, we walk back to Xavier's office, being forced to wait for the Phoenix to make the first move.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[With Superman and All Might, 2 hours later]

After departing Xavier's office, Ororo led Superman and All Might to the west wing of the mansion, which had seen the most damages.

There they found several older students and teachers of the school with mutations helpful for construction already working hard on the reconstruction of the broken building. Some, like the boy who could vomit endless amounts of cement, could one day go far in the construction business.

As Xavier's right-hand woman, Ororo takes the role of coordinating the rebuilding, giving tasks to both All Might and Superman so they can make themselves useful.

After several hours of working together, the two superheroes had found themselves to be quite compatible friends. It's as though they had already known each other for years.

"Man, I never thought my laser vision would be strictly used to weld together metal pillars." Superman comments to All Might, who is busy holding up said pillar on which he is currently using his laser beam.

"Don't worry about something like that, just be happy you can be of help." All Might says with a smile more prominent than usual. He had now been using his quirk for several hours, and like before his fight with All for One, he was feeling no strain on his body whatsoever.

"Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm always delighted to help others," Superman says with a chuckle before trailing off. "It just feels a little weird being in a place with so many superpowered people."

"Don't worry, you get used to it. In my world, almost everyone has power." All Might reassures his new friend. "When everyone is special, no one is"

After finishing up the last of their work, the two head to find Ororo to see if there is anything else that needs to be done.

"You have already done more than enough to speed this up. Now we just need to wait until the rest finish up with their jobs, and the kids will be able to move back in their rooms by the end of the day," Ororo tells them, happy with all they have done to speed up the rebuilding process.

"I'm sure you're both hungry from work, go grab yourself something from the cafeteria, they have something for all tastes." She follows up and sends them away, focusing on finishing up the last of her work.

Heading off to the cafe, the two men kept chatting about their experiences as heroes.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[With Flash]

It didn't take long for Flash to find some friends among the mutants in the mansion.

Finding his way to the living room, there were two people playing videos games on the large tv mounted on the wall.

A blue-skinned man with a long tail extending from his lower back is the first of the two to greet Flash. "Hey, you must be one of the otherworlders Xavier told us about. My name is Kurt."

"Xavier was the headmaster, right? He revealed the existence of the cafe to everyone in the school?" Flash asks, a bit surprised at how open they chose to be about the whole thing compared to The Justice League, who keeps the door to the cafe as a top-level secret.

"Not everyone here, just the members of the Xmen know about it. He said us helping in missions could improve our power in the future, so we should go check it out soon." That made some sense to Flash, still letting so many people know is a risk.

Before getting the chance to say anything else, the second person throws a spare controller over to Flash. "I'm another member of the Xmen, you can call me Kitty. Seeing as your just walking around aimlessly, you probably don't have anything to do for now, right? Come play some Immortal Battle with us. We were just about to look for a third player."

"We were?" Kurt asks, not recalling that being in their plans but went along with it anyways.

Sitting down on the couch between the two mutants, Flash starts getting really into the game until several hours later when he receives a notification from the cafe's system.

[Bonus Mission 4: Prevent Tragedy- Prevent The Dark Phoenix from killing any mutants.]

[FAILED!]