A/N: He's back... :3


A motorcycle roared up the driveway toward the garage, crunching through fallen leaves and finally stopping next to the Cajun crouched beside his own well polished machine. Remy cursed as a duffel just barely missed his head. "Hey, watch where you're dropping your cargo, homme. Remy didn't spend de last hour rubbin' dis scuff out, just to get hit in la tĂȘte by de Wolverine's luggage! Next time, Remy gon' take dat Harley from ya!"

Logan didn't seem the least bit interested in Remy's outburst, as his eyes were on the field past the garage. Sitting in the grass on a blanket was Elle, watching Lilly as she played with some toys and a pile of leaves.

"Ah, you found a pretty distraction," Remy smirked, noting what stole Logan's attention.

"Who is that, with the baby?"

"Elle and Lilly," he explained. "Came here 'bout six months ago, after Jean found dem homeless. Real sweet, and Remy never seen a more loving mother than Elle..."

"Mother?!" Logan about flipped. "Did you say mother? That kid's a baby herself, for fuck's sake." He looked back at Elle, and watched her play with the baby. She was very caring, and he didn't see any resentment. He then wondered how the baby came about.

As Logan and Remy were watching, a ball rolled over toward the blanket. Elle noticed and picked it up, intending to return it to the kids it rolled away from. As soon as she touched it though, one of the students screamed at her.

"Hey, don't touch that!" The kid ran over and yanked it out of her hands. "We don't want your slutty whore germs all over our ball!"

Elle gasped and bowed her head, clearly upset by the outburst. The kid smirked, but didn't expect that the next second he'd be wrenched up by his shirt collar by a very angry Logan.

"What the hell did I just hear come out of your mouth, you little rat?" Pissed, Logan turned to the group of kids looking at him like they just got caught stealing. "You little bastards seem to have forgotten that all of you were once ostracized for being different. Well, what do you think you're doing to her now? You have no idea what kind of shit she's been through, so you have no right to judge her! If I catch any of you doing it again, you'll be running that track until your feet bleed, DO I MAKE MYSELF CLEAR?"

Hurried cries of 'yes, Mr. Logan' followed by speed trails to shame the Roadrunner cleared the field, leaving Logan to cool down. Once he gathered his wits, he turned back and found himself awkwardly face to face with Elle. "Uh... Sorry about that. And them."

Elle smiled, and nodded. "So you're the Mr. Logan I've been warned about. They told me you were very... unique."

"Unique?" Logan couldn't help raising his brow. "How so?"

"That you were grumpy for one, a loner, and that I should probably just stay away from you," Elle chuckled. "Though that last bit might have been Mr. Summers exaggerating. Remy said you were one of the less boring ones, even if you came off as ill-tempered."

"Ill-tempered?" Logan turned toward the garage, where he could see the Cajun snickering. "Well, that's just Gumbo's opinion. His head's full of swamp water, anyway."

Elle noticed that Logan's gaze then lingered on Lilly. "I'm sorry, I've been rude for not introducing us." She picked up her daughter, who immediately started giggling. "I'm Elle, and this is Lilly. It's nice to meet you, Mr. Logan."

"Just 'Logan' is okay." Logan nodded his head, but was taken by surprise when Lilly reached out and grabbed him for a hug. "Woah, there."

"Oh, I'm sorry!" Elle moved to take Lilly back, but Logan motioned that she was fine.

"What the heck, the kid's happy."

"I'm really surprised, usually Lilly doesn't take well to other people," Elle explained. "Maybe it's your hair... She's all giggles whenever Dr. McCoy gives her exams, at least she's not pulling yours."

"I'm flattered." Logan looked Lilly over, and like most he was immediately drawn to her brilliant blue eyes. They were so sharp against her black pigtails. As he was holding her, his senses picked up on something. He wasn't sure quite what it was. Her scent didn't come off as dangerous, in fact both Lilly and her mother smelled rather pleasant. There was just a slight feeling he got from the child, enough to throw him off.

"Cute kid," Logan said, handing Lilly back to Elle. "You going solo with her?"

"...It's a long story," Elle answered, gathering her back into her arms. Logan used the opportunity to scent Elle again, and got nothing. The strange feeling was only on the baby.

"I won't pester. If those kids bother you again, let me know and I will end it." With that, Logan turned and retreated into the mansion.


Logan's last stop after checking back in with the Professor and dropping his stuff off in his room was to see Hank. The only other feral mutant in the mansion, Hank usually understood Logan's quirks or knew enough to help direct him to a resolution. Logan found the furry doctor hanging upside down from a bar on the ceiling.

"Logan, welcome back from your sojourn! How might I assist you today? Got another nanomachine stuck in your chest?"

"Very funny. I wanna talk about the new girl with the baby."

Hank dismounted from his perch, and donned his lab coat. "Ah, you mean Elle and Lilly. Yes, I believe you were absent when she first came to the mansion. Poor situation, really. Elle was imprisoned in some kind of experimentation facility since she was four years old, and managed to escape on her own when she was fifteen. She didn't know at the time though that she had been artificially inseminated with Lilly, and gave birth while homeless. She was on her own for a year after that before Jean found her."

"What the fuck?!" Logan was getting more agitated with every bit he learned about the poor girl. "...As horrible as that is, it's not what I came down here for. You're a feral, you might know this. I got some kind of weird feeling about the baby when I held her."

"Weird feeling? What do you mean?"

"It's hard to explain," Logan began. "Something about her just throws me off. It's only on the baby, too. I checked the mother, nothing. I don't think it's her scent, because she actually smells kind of nice."

"I'll have to remember that the next time someone needs a diaper change," Hank teased.

"Real cute," Logan sneered in response. "You said the baby was conceived in a lab?"

"Yes and I already checked, neither of them pose any kind of threat to the mansion." Hank sat down in a chair, and scratched his chin. "Perhaps you are picking up on some kind of instinctual need to protect the child. After all, she is an infant without a father figure to keep her safe, and you have demonstrated lupine behaviors when in your feral state. Wolves will on rare occasions look after the pups of another wolf."

Logan couldn't help rolling his eyes. "I've never done that to any of the other kids here."

"Let's see, you've picked up Rogue, Jubilee, Kitty..."

"You've made your point, furball, so I caught a few strays. This is different, though," he insisted, running a hand through his hair, before remembering how Lilly giggled at him. "Elle even said the kid didn't usually take to strangers, and she crawled all over me."

"There is one other thing it could be," Hank supposed. "Maybe you subconsciously realized that you have the same mutation."

"...What was that?"

"Elle and Lilly, they have a regenerative healing factor like you." Hank shrugged. "It's not as potent I would say, because you've had a hundred years of honing and conditioning versus Elle's seventeen, but you very well could have sensed it on the baby. Elle was captured because she was an early developed mutant. Lilly has just recently expressed her mutation, so maybe she has an unrecognized secondary mutation that I didn't catch when I tested her six months ago, and you picked up on it."

"I'm telling you, I've never picked up any of these things on any of the other children here," Logan scoffed, before getting fed up and leaving the lab.

Hank waited until Logan was long gone, before locking the lab doors. Turning to the computer, he pulled up a secured report that he hadn't opened in six months. "You're right Logan, I just wish I could tell you the real reason your senses honed in on Lilly." Lilly's paternity report popped up on the screen, and with it, a picture of the feral mutant who had stomped out of the lab.


A/N: Too obvious? XD I gave it away in the first Kozure chapter, after all... ;)