For once in this world, google only had so many of the answers.

What the web gave her was this - some details of her military history, her awards, her work for NASA, the confusing switch she'd made to journalism of all things. James gave her more, details about their work for the Agency, about the years they'd spent as an intelligence duo, about the time they'd spent together. His was the only word she had about who she'd once been that came from a living, breathing mouth and from what he'd said, from his surprise when she'd busted them out of that cold prison of theirs with her enhanced strength and the ability to launch herself into the sky, she had not always been this way.

She had not always been a mutant.

Carol herself hadn't given this much thought. From what she'd discovered in her down time, she loved to fly and wasn't about to question the way in which her strength had changed since James' memories of her. And as far as accepting her mutant status...well, she was in a school full of mutants and her mind had been wiped clean. She wasn't about to freak out about being, well, a freak when she had enough else to deal with.

In fact, it hadn't been until a student of all people, the dark-haired girl who'd approached her in the dojo, had pointed out how clinically odd it was for a woman of her age to have manifested powers that Carol even realised something was not strictly normal about her. About her abilities. And wasn't that great? More questions.

This one, however, was within her means to answer...albeit with a little help.

"Doctor McCoy?" The query was accompanied by a knock on the door, even as a very blonde head poked around it. The white-haired black woman had sent her down here - mainly because Carol had had some very direct questions and she was the first X-Man that she'd come across - saying that one Hank McCoy would be more fitted to help with the blonde's queries regarding mutant genetics. And here she was, having headed down here with a certain amount of alacrity once her curiosity had grown too great and she'd made the decision to get someone of a more scientific nature than herself to check her out.

Granted, her timing wasn't brilliant - this visit occurring a few hours after dinner, when most sensible residents were off elsewhere, but it was worth a shot. That or Carol was just going to sit there until someone helped her with what she needed.

Which, given her stubborn nature (with memories or without) was a very actual possibility.

As much as Hank may have wished it to be so, science couldn't all be the sort of whizz! bang! flash! explosions-and-fluorescent-coloured liquids-in-test-tubes that was portrayed in the movies. Many times, science was simply a system of observation of minor phenomena and charting and writing about those observations, usually in not-particularly-exciting (or, at least, not objectively exciting) books which were read almost exclusively by other scientists. And though to the layman or the average theatregoer, it probably wasn't terribly exciting to see Jeff Goldblum sitting around for 80 minutes comparing feedback from his control groups, Hank had to admit that any part of the scientific process excited him greatly. It was as if he had a hammer and chisel, and was working to carve out a cliff-face to uncover some wonderful new discovery, and in which even the smallest chip was still significant, because it was all pushing onwards to that bold new frontier, expanding the horizons of knowledge ever-wider. And that was the great part about expanding horizons- it always brought such beautiful sunlight with it.

Sometimes, though, science didn't even look as exciting as comparing notes. Sometimes, it looked more like janitorial work than the work that would- and Hank truly believed with absolute conviction this fact to be true- lead to a new age of Enlightenment and Reason with a capital E and a capital R, one in which the principal political, spiritual and social movement would be the embracing of the mutant community and mutant genetic code. Right now, Hank was cleaning test tubes of (sadly non-fluorescent, but somewhat hazardous) liquids, and had just disposed of the fuzzy little Petri dishes which had been his 8th grade class's project for the week. Hardly the most exciting of things, but Hank felt bad getting someone else to do this sort of work for him. It was his miss, for goodness' sake, and therefore his responsibility to clean it up, not some New Mutant or student.

Hank had just been about to slot the test tubes back in to their rack and put them back in their designated cupboard (Hank printed off new signs for his cupboards every two weeks and made sure they stayed stuck on, so they rarely looked damaged and you could always find your way around his lab no matter who you may have been. It simplified teaching in the lab and made it so that he was able to organise himself that much more efficiently) when he heard a shout from the door.

He hopped up from his stool and stuck his head around his own corner, and saw the long blonde hair of one of the Mansion's newest arrivals, Miss Danvers- Logan's friend. Her arrival, naturally, had rather quickly become the talk of the school, though it had largely died down to something more resembling a buzz now. Hank was always glad to see a friend- and he sincerely considered everyone in the Institute a friend, regardless of age or how much he had spoken to them- around the labs, and smiled a broad smile which showed all of his teeth. "Ah, yes. Good morrow to you, miss," He had worked himself in to a rather Shakespearean mood. With his hands thoroughly distracted with the menial task of cleaning, he had distracted his brain by reciting a few sonnets of the Bard's, amongst others. "Are you OK?" Perhaps she'd just gotten lost and was trying to find the bathroom or something.

At first, Carol really was concerned that she'd have to commence with Operation: Sit-in - from what she could see the lab was empty and alarmingly sterile looking. There was a moment, just a brief one, written in a few rapid beats of her heart, where its clinical equipment made her mind flash back to where she'd awoken, needles in her arms and electrodes on her skin and scientists in white coats leaning over her--.

And then, no, there was a relatively familiar blue face peering around its own corner and Carol remembered how to breathe again. With a burst of irritation at herself for the flashback, she almost seemed to visibly shake herself even as she stepped further into the (to her) esoteric-looking room that was the Science Lab.

"Good morrow?" she echoed, the salutation bemusing enough to manage to distract her at least momentarily from her tenacious quest. Her lips twisted wryly. "And it's 'Carol', Doc, not 'miss'." Mainly because she didn't feel like the girl that the label implied to her and also because, who knew, she might have been a 'mrs' by now and, fuck, that was a terrifying thought. Something resigned and irritated flickered across her sturdy features then, but it clearly wasn't aimed at the Doctor and she made herself smile.

Because, well, it was difficult not to do so in the man's presence. As much as he privately reminded her of the Cookie Monster (something she wasn't about to share with him) he radiated a very adult sort of affability that was soothing after the relentless enthusiasm of a lot of the adolescent students and the more reserved treatment of the older mutants, the mutants who were very much James' friends, not her, and Carol was extremely conscious of her free-loading status. And how, were it not for him, she probably wouldn't be here.

But Hank was friendly. And Hank was here. That was what Carol decided to concentrate on as she swung herself up onto a handy countertop here with the unconscious grace that a mind-wipe hadn't been able to take from her, her expression as frank and as direct as the people here had probably come to expect from her. Like a shot arrow, like a bullet, Carol didn't meander on her journey to her target, she simply took the straightest path possible.

And Hank was her compass in this case.

"Define 'ok'," she said dryly, but she waved away any possible concern he might have displayed in response to that and surged onwards. "I have been told by 'Logan' that he doesn't remember me with powers. And yet I very clearly have them now." She wiggled her fingers illustratively, representatively. "I didn't think much of it, but then one of your students pointed out that manifesting after puberty is odd, so manifesting at my age? Even weirder." Her blue eyes were almost painfully direct as she sought out a face of a similar colour. "Ororo said that you're the science-boff around here and the one who knows the most about what makes us mutants. I was kind of hoping that you'd be willing to help me out with some answers here about why I am the way I am."

Her memories were out of her grasp now. But the story locked within her own DNA? Maybe, with this man's help, she could at least access that.