Lucky took a chug of milk from the carton in front of her. "Didn't see any reason to mess up more dishes," she told him as he handed her a cup.  She shrugged and poured the last sip of milk into it, as if to prove her point.  Her chin was proudly pointed up, as if to advertise she was going to be every bit a twelve year old.

     Cable poured himself a cup of coffee that had been brewing and, with his back turned, added something to it from the small flask he carried around.  He remembered his own son as a preteen.  "So what did you do today?"

     Lucky looked up from watching Gilligan trying to escape from the headhunters. "Shatterstar and I practiced for a bit."  She laughed at the antics on the screen.  "Nice to see some things don't change."

     "Television obsolete in your time?" he asked her while popping toast.
 
     Lucky shrugged, "It's more pay-per-download on the Internet than this."  They watched the screen for a few minutes, until Celeste came storming through the kitchen.

     With a distracted look on her face, she wished the two of them a good morning.  Taking a double take, she looked directly at Lucky and made a weird face.  "Too much, too early..." she murmured.  "I'm Celeste," she offered to the girl.

     "Have you had your monthly breast exam?"  The child asked brightly.  "Never can be too careful."

     The bewildered look Celeste shot Cable was classic.  "Last commercial," he explained.

     Celeste more or less walked out of the kitchen.  "Way too much..." she whispered as the door shut.  "Way too early."

     He turned to the child with a frown.  "That was uncalled for," he warned her.

     Lucky shrugged.  "She'll die of breast cancer if it's not caught in time."  To her way of thinking, it would be a lot easier to change as much as possible when the chance presented itself.

     Cable was much more experienced with the subtitles of time travel than the child.  "You have to think things through," he tried to explain while knowing it was useless.  The girl was too naive to wait for the right time, and too eager to even want to.  That wasn't to say that she didn't know what she was doing, she was simply too young to be in the position she was in.  That was a feeling he could relate very easily.

     She turned to watch Mary Anne and Ginger flirting with the Skipper for a moment, and then turned back.  "I meant to tell you... I made a small change in the timeline... Ariel was supposed to have fallen and broken her back in my timeline, but I pulled her out... was that okay?"

     Cable sighed and added a little more of the contents of his flask to the coffee.  Allowing himself a brief chant, he turned to the girl. "It'll have to be.  There are going to be ripples---"

     Lucky stuck out her chin, "Big changes," she insisted.  The stubborn, 'the earth will fall off its axis before I change my mind' tone of voice would have made Cable think that this was Domino's daughter even if he didn't already know that.

     Taking a chug of the drink, he tried again.  "There will be changes when we can find the places to change them.  Things like Ariel not breaking her back are one thing..."

     "Then why can't I tell Celeste about her breast cancer?"

     "The way you did it was rude..." He sighed and drank half of his cup.

     "And it would be polite to let her die?"  Lucky turned her back to the 'Beverly Hillbillies' as she said that, hoping to start a verbal sparring match with him.

    He could always telepathically glue her lips together, Cable thought wearily—and stopped.  Standing up to get a cup of coffee, he took an emotional reading of her and felt grief rolling off of her in waves.  Lucky handled being upset by upsetting those around her, he noted.  "We'll find a way to make sure she gets the message," he compromised.

    Lucky switched the channel to 'The Brady Bunch' for a moment until a thought hit her.  "You know about Timothy now... you're a grandfather, or will be soon.  And you're older than your father! Isn't that weird?"

    "Get out of here!" Cable roared as the implications of that hit him.  Once she left the room, he took a chug from the flask.

**

    On his way to get breakfast for the group staying in the cottages around him, Sam passed a kid bearing a resemblance to Domino. X-teenagers? he wondered to himself.  Please, dear Lord, no.  The X-Babies were annoying enough.

    He opened the door to the kitchen, only to find Cable gingerly nursing a cup of coffee.  "What's with the new kid?" Sam asked the man.

    Cable held up a weary hand.  "Do not talk to me now," he started in a quiet voice.  "Only Jack Daniels can talk to me...  He's my friend.  He doesn't have kids.  His kids aren't older than his father.  And his kids don't have kids who are older than their grandfather."

    Sam blinked.  "How much of that stuff have you had?" he asked while quickly gathering breakfast for Rahne, Mike, and Li'l Bit. It appeared that Cable had finally flipped.

    "Not nearly enough," Cable whispered as Sam tossed a container of ice cream, a bowl of cream cheese, and a box of cereal in a plastic bag and quickly exited the kitchen.  "Jack Daniels doesn't have six generations walking the earth.  Jack Daniels is good.  I love Jack... In fact, I think I'll sleep with him."  And then he quickly emptied his flask in one gulp.

**

    Jono didn't talk, or sigh, or do anything that he normally did when he was trying to infect the group with his bad mood.  In fact, all he did was merely sit on the back steps for an hour as Gen-X ate breakfast.  Through lacy windows, the teenagers watched him and talked about him in mute tones, trying to figure out what would be the best thing to do.

    After a while, Jubilee tired of the discussion and slipped out.  After making a quick stop after his guitar

    Finally, Jubilee sat down next to him.  "It's for the best, you know that."

    *Doesn't feel that way.* He continued to stare at the dancing leaves.

    She nodded.  "It hurts like crazy... I miss her too."  A fresh wind blew some leaves over the sidewalk and Jubilee sighed.  "But just because Ariel's not here doesn't mean we stop being her friends, Jono."

    A golden image flashed in his mind, one of Ariel happy and free of the drugs. *I'm not goin' to give her up.*

    Jubilee nodded, "Neither am I.  I'm still her friend, even after all the stuff we said to each other.  And I know she's going to get better..."  She trailed off, knowing that Ariel was in for an uphill fight.

    Not sure what to say, or if words were appropriate, he reached over and grabbed the girl's hand.  The squeeze said it all.

**
    Celeste looked down as she remembered the child's remark.  Monthly breast exam? she wondered as she stared at her chest.  They look good to me.  Settling behind her desk in Emma's home office, she smiled for the first time.  It wasn't like she had a family history of cancer so she didn't need to worry.

    A flurry of calls later, she had started on her agenda.  A hair appointment, a doctor's appointment, a call to her ex-boyfriend's voice mail, and a shopping appointment were quickly taken care of, allowing her to perform her real job.  By the time that Emma made her way in, Celeste had made a dent in the work on her desk.  "Morning!"  Celeste called.

    Emma nodded and sat down in her leather chair.  "You found out..." she started to drag the bitter truth about Tony out from Celeste.  Emma had tried to warn the woman, using her doubts to get her away from the door.  But Celeste had decided to take a chance, and now she had to face the consequences.

    The younger woman made a face.  "Is Tony Stark still free?"  It was time to move on and a date with someone like him was a good way to start.

    Emma stared at her and smiled.  A date with a successful genius who had more than a few things in common with her assistant would be an excellent sign to Tony Longhair that what they had was fleeting.  And, more to the point, Celeste was different enough from the people Stark knew to insure that they wouldn't be serious but still end up as friends.  "I'll set it up."

    Celeste nodded.  "Thanks..."  She turned her attention to her work until Emma started talking again.

    "Do you ever feel like we live in a goldfish bowl?"  Emma asked in perfect seriousness. "One stone dropped in the bowl and the waves never stop."

    The past couple of days were a prime example of the inbred world that they inhabited.   She had finally taken a chance on her happiness because she had seen how fragile that could be.  Celeste had demonstrated it by realizing she could have loved Tony, but he fell off the wagon because of the guilt of seeing what had happened to Ariel.   Sean had invited Terry here because he wanted to be close to his daughter.  That had led them all to finding out about Lucky.  Sam had found out that his sister was heading towards trouble because he had come to help Celeste.  Rahne had started to confront her past with Craig because of seeing the mess that Ariel had caused.  Jono had actually shown an emotion other than angst because he dared to show his love for Ariel.  Angelo had discovered that he hadn't been a father after all.   And all this had happened because a girl had gotten drunk, stolen a car and crashed it.

    Celeste shook her head.  "I prefer to think of it as a circle of friends and what affects one affects the group."  A lot of good had come out of all this, even if she was suffering from the bad.

    "Same difference," Emma pointed out.

    Celeste nodded.  "Sure, but you can laugh at my idea," she allowed.  "There is no laughing at you."

    With that, the two women got to work.  They had a business to run, an underground to keep straight, and a social life to plan.  In other words, they had a normal day ahead of them.