Ororo strode into her editor's office for her weekly meeting. "Good morning Margaret," she greeted the older woman as they hugged.

"Ororo, dear, how have you been doing?" she didn't wait for a response, "The preorders on the Princess and the Beast have topped one hundred thousand, it's starting to look like you might have a chance at a best seller finally."

Ororo smiled and walked to the open window; Margaret's office was in an old apartment building with windows that opened. They were always open when the weather permitted, and the weather was wonderful today. She checked the soil in the flower pots Margaret kept on a shelf at the base of the window and found them to be dry. She placed a hand over them and a small cloud formed, a minute later it discharged its content in a miniature rain fall.

"Oh, thanks you," Margaret said, "I couldn't find my water pitcher this morning."

"Liar," Ororo replied sweetly, "you love watching me to this."

"You have to admit it's pretty amazing."

The rain ebbed and the cloud dissipated. "It's completely natural for me." Ororo commented as she turned. She watched her friend remembering how intimidated she had been by her the first time she had walked into this office, almost seven years ago, a stack of papers in her arms. She'd chosen her because the building looked old and romantic on the picture on her website. It told her that the woman who kept her office there was a romantic, and that's who she wanted to work with, not someone in a sterile glass building who was only interested in the bottom line.

She had showed up without an appointment and had waited half the day for this powerful woman to see her. When she had finally asked to see the manuscript Ororo squirmed on her seat while she read the first two pages. She put them down and asked "how serious are you about being published?" Ororo didn't have to even think about it, "extremely," she answered. Margaret had studied her before handing her a business card and telling her that she would call her back once she had read it.

The next week she was back in the office and he manuscript was returned to her, each page littered with red ink. Years on the street toughening her up kept her from showing a reaction, but she was terrified of those pages with almost more red than black ink on them. She nodded to Margaret and told her should would make the needed changes and call her.

Over the next year a story that had started as the fairytale life of an African princess Ororo told to herself to make the nights on the streets more bearable evolved, with Margaret's help, into the story of a woman looking for a way to be herself among African Royalty and prejudices.

The two had had momentous arguments over the story, initially the princess was a light brown skinned woman with white hair who was a mutant. Ororo relented on making her a mutant, but stood her ground on how she looked, and once she showed she could write her as a fully developed person, and not just some wish fulfillment character Margaret stopped bringing it up.

Once the manuscript was finished they started discussing promoting it, and Ororo balked at the thought of parading before crowds of readers who might comments on her book. So Margaret brought in Lindsey, and she became the public face of the Novel.

"Sorry for being late," Lindsey said as she walked in, almost as if the memory had summoned her.

"No worry dear," Margaret responded, "have a seat and we'll start planning the signing tour."

With everyone there they spent the next few hours discussing the cities and stores where Lindsey would appear, as well as some of the ideas Ororo had for the fourth novels so Lindsey could drop hints to the possible future of the princess.

* * * * *

Katherine put on her Bluetooth ear piece and routed the phone call through a new series of hubs and tried again; this was her third attempt. She ended up in the queue again and waited, sipping her coffee while the music played. This time it was less then a minute before someone picked up.

"Good morning," said a cheery woman's voice, "thanks you for calling Engram Financial, my name is Janine, how can I help you?"

"Hi Janine, my name is Bernadette, I work for Detrick Security, how are you today?" she responded in an equally cheerful tone.

"I'm going quite well, can I help you with something?"

"I certainly hope so, we received a call earlier this morning from Kevin Monton, at extension twenty two zero eight in your IT department, the note I have here says that you might have suffered a viral attack. Are you at your computer right now?"

"Yes I am," Janine said after a moment of hesitation.

"Good, here's what I need to you do, click on our start button and then run, then type 'c' 'm' 'd', done? Good," Katherine continued when the other confirmed it. She then gave the other woman a series of command to enter and asked her to give her the responses, which she then entered on her side, getting a little deeper through their security system with each new entry, until she was all the way through.

"There we are," Katherine said, "this is what I was hoping you'd say."

"Is everything ok?"

"Yes Janine, everything is fine, looks like your anti virus software stopped the attack and everything is fine. Thank you very much for your time."

"You're welcome," Janine said before Katherine hung up.

She didn't waste any time moving through the bank's files and system, looking around while trying to find a particular user; when she found him she accessed his computer and typed up an email.

'Dear Mr. Armstrong, This is Katherine Pride, from Pride Security, as you can see since I am sending this from your own email address, I was able to breach your security systems. You firewall is impressive and was able to keep me out, but I was able to talk one of your agent into giving me access to your system without them being aware of it.

'It took me three tries to achieve this; the first two transferred me to your IT department as soon as I mentioned I needed to verify your system. This is the safe thing to do, but you need to put in place a procedure where the other agents will be warned this happened, so that your safety department can be made aware that an attack is happening.

'If you have questions don't hesitate to contact me. Katherine Pride'

She sent the email and leaned back in her chair, that had been a productive morning, she thought to herself. She took her empty coffee cup and went to the kitchen. While she waited for the coffee machine she ran through her agenda for the rest of the day. She was startled by someone wrapping their arms around her and as a reflex she phased and backed through him to get to the door.

"Damn it Peter!" she said when she recognized the wide back, "you scared the hell out of me."

Peter turned and looked at her sheepishly, but grinning, "sorry."

"Shouldn't you be at work?" she told him as he walked to her.

He wrapped his arms around her, "Protesters showed up at the construction site so they had to shut it down for the day." Peter bent down to kiss her, but she stopped him.

"What if someone sees?"

"Henry's locked in his lab and there's no one else here," this time he kissed her, over her rather weak protest. Neither of them was quite sure why they had decided to keep their relationship discreet; Katherine justified it by telling herself she didn't want to have to deal with the jabs about dating a ghost, Peter didn't care he was just happy that she was back in his arms.

"So it's just the two of us?" she asked when they broke the kiss. Peter nodded and she grinned. "You know, the gym is sound proof."

* * * * *

Scott lumbered into the kitchen feeling like a zombie, even wearing his glasses the light hurt his eyes, a side effect of using his power as much as he had this week. He had hoped to be able to sleep in on this last day of the week while everyone was at work, but he'd been woken up at five by Henry pulling heavy machinery to his lab, and after the almost sleepless night he'd had he was in no state to be up.

He made a bee line for the coffee, ignoring Peter at the table cheerfully eating breakfast. He poured himself a cup and after making sure it wasn't too hot downed it, making a face at the bitter taste; he preferred his coffee with milk and sugar. He poured himself another cup and added the needed ingredients to it. He watched Katherine join them, saying a polite hello to Peter before getting a cup of coffee.

"You look horrible," she commented as she looked at Scott.

"And whose fault is that?" he replied bitterly.

"Excuse me?"

Scott looked from her to Peter and sighed. "Look I don't mind if you don't want us to know you two are back together, but if you're going to continue sneaking around at night, can you at least have Peter sneak to your room from now on? Or maybe learn to have sex in silence? I'd forgotten how thin the wall between my room and his was."

Katherine turned beet red and Peter wouldn't look up from his bowl.

"How, how long have you known?" She asked meekly.

Scott chuckled, "how long have we known each other? On the day after my date with Jean I could tell you two had patched things up."

"And then there was the wondrous scent of two people in love," Hendy added as he walked in and went to the fridge for one of the cases of protein shakes he kept in there. "You know Scott, I can install a sound canceling system in your room." He quickly downed three bottles, "Actually, considering everyone here is seriously dating, maybe I should install one in every room."

Scott looked at him, "what do you mean everyone?"

Henry smiled, "I mean even Ororo has someone serious in her life."

Scott was about to say something when the person in question entered the kitchen. Ororo stopped in the doorway when she saw they were all looking at her. Her first reflex was to make sure she had gotten dressed this morning, and not just imagined it. Satisfied that she hadn't made that mistake again she returned their gaze.

"What?" Ororo asked in a demanding tone.