A/N: short chapter, I know, and not so very interesting, but it'll get better (I hope)

Fighting Destiny - Location

Down in the med-lab, curled up in a chair, there was a sound asleep Marianne. She had every right to be exhausted she and Hank had been patching up victims ever since they had gotten back. And the day, and night, after that, they had been up consoling the same victims. The consoling was with help of the others, but still: Marianne and Hank were out of order.

"Should we wake her up?" Ororo wondered, while looking at Logan and Michael.

"No, she fell asleep just now, I'll take her upstairs and get her into bed," Michael whispered back. Like the rest of them, he had managed to get some sleep while Marianne and Hank had been patching the victims up.

Silently, he walked over and lifted the sleeping woman into his arms. Instinctively, she snuggled a bit closer towards the warmth.

"Bub," Logan stopped him before he could leave the med-lab, "make sure she sleeps in."

"Don't worry," Michael grinned, "she'll sleep in, or I'll personally knock her out. The hard part will be keeping the rest quiet enough so she won't wake up because of them."

"We'll take care of that," Ororo smiled at him as he passed them and headed towards his and Marianne's bedroom.

As Marianne slept, Michael, Xavier, Logan, Hank and Ororo were working as hard as they could for the victims. Michael had been putting in calls to the leaders of the underground he knew from three years ago. Luckily, that hadn't changed. With some convincing they got places for the victims in the few safehouses there already were.

When Marianne woke up the next morning, they were all gone. After thoroughly scolding Michael for not waking her up, she went to work on looking for whatever could be causing those rifts in her own dimension. It was a Sunday, and it was a bit of bad weather: it just wouldn't seem to stop raining.

At first, she didn't know what to look for, but with Emily's help, she figured out she should be looking for an unexplained increase of energy. After calling in Kitty's and Hank's help, they began to tie each unexplained flood, vulcano-erruptions, earthquakes, Lance excluded, and other natural phenomena. But it would take a while.

"Bobby! Ray! Stop that! Now!" Marianne scolded the two boys who were, currently, fighting over who had cheated on the computer game. Ofcourse, they completely ignored her.

"Then we call out the big guns," she grumbled, while Michael smirked: he knew what was going to happen. She had done it before. He motioned the others to watch.

All of a sudden, the two jumped up with a loud cry: "What was that good for?!"

"It wasn't even real water, relax," Marianne giggled, "now, what was going on here that demanded a display of just how 'mature' the two of you are?"

Both Ray and Bobby refused to answer, ducking their heads.

"Am I going to get an answer this century?" she crossed her arms and glared at the two of them.

"Ray was cheating!" Bobby then replied, simultaniously, Ray accused Bobby of cheating.

"Aha, I see, and ofcourse, far evolved as you have from the caveman, you decided the best thing to do was to bash eachother's skull in. How mature," sarcasm was dripping off of her words, "Now, if I was Logan, I would put you in the Danger Room, if I was Tank, I would pitch you into a training session, but seeing as I am Marianne," both boys sighed in relief, "I am going to do something far, FAR worse."

"Can she, like, do that?" Kitty asked Michael.

"Considering the fact that she manages to keep the occupants of the safehouse in line, most of the time, I think she can certainly do that," Michael nodded as he watched Marianne drag both boys with her.

"Man, zhat was scary. Was it me, or did she act like a mom?" Kurt joined the group.

"It's not you," Michael shook his head.

"What is she gonna do?" Rogue wondered out loud.

"We'll hear during dinner," Michael grinned.

Meanwhile, Marianne had finally tracked Logan down and had got approval to have the two polish the Blackbird with cotton buds, under strict supervision.

"Ya know what, Ray?" Bobby groaned after a while.

"What?" Ray's voice was heard from the other side of the jet.

"I think she was serious. Gimme Dangerroom anytime..."

- = Other dimension = -

"She's what?!?" Shadow cried out.

Rogue glared at the blackhaired man. They had picked him up during them closing the third rift. They had been forced to explain the entire mess to him, and too be honest: he didn't react too weel to Marianne's and Michael's disappearance. Well, he couldn't care less about Michael, it was Marianne who he worried about.

"Why ain'tcha lookin' for 'r?!" he demanded.

At that moment, another, loud explosion resonated through the safehouse.

"We are," Sarah winced, "we have two people working on a device that will be able to get them back."

"And that explosion was theirs?" Shadow grimaced as the rest nodded, "Why do I have the feelin' it'll take a loooong time before we see Marianne back?"

- = With Marianne and Michael = -

Marianne and Michael returned to their room after having spend some time down in the rec-room, when Marianne reached to turn of the computer and the program it was running, her hand froze just before the button.

"Something wrong?" Michael looked at her.

"I... it... the program... it found our ticket home," she turned to look at Michael, her expression was a micture of fear, ecxitement and caution.

"Something is telling me it won't go easy, getting us home," Michael said, "we'll handle it tomrrow, Anne, come to bed. The rest is already asleep and I don't think it will disappear in the middle of the night."

"I... I guess so," Marianne nodded, but left the computer on.