Twenty miles away, the distance between the two mutants and Xavier's School was still growing as an orange-haired woman held herself in stony silence. The blonde man carrying her as he ran at sub-sonic speed finally brought himself to ask her something.

"So what's the matter?" He asked with a British accent.

"They're good people, Badlands. And I hurt them," Glow answered and huddled closer to him. She almost whispered the next sentence, "I hurt him."

Badlands frowned and furrowed his brows together in concern for his team leader but did not say anything.

"Where the hell did she go?" Scott shouted.

"I'm assuming that one of her associates pulled her out. I can no longer sense her on the grounds or anywhere within a five-mile radius. I'd have to use Cerebro to get a confirmation, but I don't think I'd be able to track her anyway," Xavier said as calmly as he could. "These are her other teammates."

Xavier wheeled himself to the control panel where Glow had been sitting. He called up what little information he had on the Future Tech Team. Three more holograms sprang to life, with a fourth hologram of Glow at the forefront of them.

"The woman dressed in blue with the brown hair and rather odd eye make-up is Auroara Stanley, better known as Whirlwind. Her ability to control air and wind far outstrips Storm's own powers in that area. Do you remember Hurricane Clyde?" Xavier asked.

"I remember, the hurricane was predicted to be one of the worst ones to hit the Carolinas in decades when it suddenly changed course and veered out into the open ocean," Storm said. "That was only last summer, but it was regarded as a small miracle."

"That was no miracle, that was Whirlwind's doing. She hails from South Carolina apparently, and still has some affection for the place," the professor corrected.

"You're telling us that this woman has the power to move hurricanes?" Jean asked, a bit flabbergasted.

"She's also the team's second in command from what I gather." Xavier motioned to the only male member of the team. "The blonde gentleman is one Michael Clayton, alias Badlands. We're not quite sure just what it is he does. The final member, the Asian-American woman in black and red, is known only as The Mezmerizer. A telepath of unknown power and ability."

"The telepath she said she runs with, the one who taught her how to shield herself from mental probes." Jean shook her head, amazed at such a highly organized team with such incredible powers.

"There have been rumors of The Mezmerizer long before she joined the Tech Team," Xavier informed them. "She may well be the mutant responsible for the rise of the New Realm, working alongside the entity known as DreamWeb."

"The what?" Logan said. "Do you people invent this stuff when I leave, just to confuse me when I return? If you knew about all this before, why didn't you tell us?"

"Because, Logan. I got snowed in as well. Glow 'suckered' me with her act as easily as she did everyone else," the professor admitted with some chagrin. "Compared to The Future Tech Team, the X-Men are rank amateurs who have not half the years nor experience of working together."

"Now the big question is, what the hell are we going to do about it?" Cyclops crossed his arms. "Our security has been compromised. There's also the distinct possibility that we enabled Glow and her team to get information that could lead to the death of a man, possibly several."

"I'm not so sure that's a bad thing," Jean whispered.

"What are you saying, Jean?" Charles Xavier asked as he turned to look at his second oldest student.

"I read some of the journal entries of DeLeon's that were recovered from those disks. Logan. he talked about you like you were a- a rabid animal that needed to be put to sleep!" Jean pushed a few strands of her red hair out of her face and started pacing. "He called Glow a 'useful' mutant and was disappointed that he couldn't do to her what the doctors in charge of Logan's surgery did to him! He was hoping a metal skeleton would boost her electrical capacity!"

"Professor, I'm not condoning what she and her team are doing. But knowing that such a man even exists terrifies me. Maybe Glow has the right of it this once. The X-Men weren't meant for such things, but these people seem to be made of harder stuff."

"If we let them kill this one man then shall we be any better then Magneto in his misguided attempts to save the mutant race?" Storm asked.

The room fell silent. Logan sat down, flesh pale and sweating as he thought over everything that Glow, Jean, and everyone else had said. He put his face in his hands, and sighed. He got up, brushed past Cyclops and headed out the door.

Scott moved to follow but Jean put a restraining hand on him.

"Let him be. There's nothing we could do anyway. We don't know where the doctor is, or where Glow's team is," she told her fiancé.

Logan made his way out of the mansion, finding a sudden need to get some fresh air. At this time of the evening students were mostly in their rooms studying or in the recreation room so the outer ground were empty.

Logan made his way to the poolside and sat down on a lawn chair near the edge.

How could he have misjudged someone like that? His instincts were never wrong. Something about her should have tipped him off, something, even her scent! But she'd slipped in under his radar so well that he actually thought he could trust her. Actually thought that they could.

"Logan?" a soft southern accented voice spoke behind him.

He whirled around only to find Rogue behind him. He relaxed again, kicking himself for being so distracted that a kid could sneak up on him. "Don't you have homework or something?"

"I can finish it later," she said, sitting down next to him. At his glare she added, "I promise."

"I heard what happened," Rogue said after a moment of awkward silence.

"Oh? Just what did you hear?" He said as he tried to sound bored and non-committal.

"Jubilee and Bobby told me they saw you and Glow kiss at the record store today." Rogue swallowed as if she wasn't sure she should be putting her nose in his business. "And now Mr. Summers and the other teachers are walking around looking upset, and Glow's room is empty. Miss Grey said that all of Glow's things are gone, including the disks and they don't know how it happened."

Logan snorted. "Rumor mill works fast here."

"Why did Glow leave? I thought, well, it seemed obvious that she liked you," Rogue asked. "We all thought she'd stay."

Logan glanced at her quickly and turned back to staring at the water, pondering his answer. "She used me to get in here. She's a mercenary who leads a team of them. When she got the information she needed for the completion of her mission she bolted. And no, we don't know how she got out - she just disappeared in front of the lot of us. This is the first I've heard of her things going with her though."

"Oh." Rogue turned to stare at the water, unsure of what the proper response should be. She was saved from having to answer by the sound of feet approaching. The man and the girl turned to see Jubilee and Bobby approaching, with Kitty on their heels.

"What is this? Don't any of you have better things to do?" Logan asked incredulously.

"We heard." Bobby sat down on the ground on the other side of Logan, and the two remaining girls sat on the ground in front of him.

"Is no part of my life private in this place? And how did you hear anything? It only just happened!" Logan wondered.

"We're sorry, Mr. Logan," Bobby told him. "We liked her, she didn't treat us like the other adults here, present company excluded of course. She was more like a big sister than a teacher or mom or something."

"And you know this from the one day she spent here?" Logan sounded skeptical.

"Well, she was cool. And we thought she liked you," Jubilee said weakly.

"Since when did a bunch of teenagers get involved in my love life?"

"Since you became an X-man," Kitty told him. "You're family now."

The silence that settled on the motley group was comforting now, rather than awkward.

Inside the mansion Jean, Ororo and Xavier watched from an upper story window.

"I don't understand, what do the kids see in him?" Storm asked. "They flocked to him instantly."

"They understand him better than they do us," Jean said.

At Storm's puzzled look Xavier took up the thread of the conversation and explained. "We've all been where those youngsters are now. Logan, on the other hand, is still there. They're all trying to find out who they are, what their identities should be. We already know who we are and what we shall be, and the memory of our struggle to get to this point in time is fading. They can relate better to him because he's still going through it."

"They understand Logan because his pain is their pain," Jean whispered as she stared at the group below them in the pool's courtyard.

"Professor! Professor!" Scott came running up to them and paused to catch his breath.

"What is it Scott?" Xavier turned to his first student.

"You have to come see this."