(BobbyD12 looks around forlornly) Hello? Is anyone left out there? Heh, so sorry it's been…forever since I updated…school, what can I say? Well, I hope you like the latest installment.

(Pokes Pyrotic because of all the updating "reminders") Happy, you little pyromaniac?

(Pokes Horsiegir because of all the updating "reminders") Happy, you little…person?

(Pokes KernlToadSanderz because it's fun) Ha!

Just after Bobby, Anna, and Rogue had left Xavier's mansion, a different sort of scene was taking place in the old building in Paris. The fat man sat at his desk, idly puffing a cigar. The phone on the old desk rang shrilly and he answered in his thick French.

"Yes?"

"Bronc reporting, monsignor."

The voice on the phone was just unfamiliar enough for the fat man to not recall who it was. "Where are you stationed?" he questioned.

"America," Bronc explained, "New York."

The fat man remembered now. He had sent Bronc to New York to look into a rumor of some kind of mutant school. The rumor had been correct all right, but from what Bronc had told him about the defenses there, the fat man wasn't thinking about kidnapping mutants from there.

"Well, what about it?" the man snapped.

"I wish to inform you that I believe they may have discovered us."

The fat man jerked up in his chair, cigar forgotten. "What? Impossible!"

Bronc was certain of his statement however. "I heard them speaking of mutant kidnappings in Paris. They sent three young people, two girls and a boy. They're stopping in London first, then going to Paris."

"Carry on," The fat man grated harshly and slammed down the phone. Very well, he'd simply have to make a warm reception for them in Britain.

Anna walked slowly into the Jenson Hotel, her mind swirling with all the new thoughts and sensations her morning had brought her. The excitement of being in England had been completely eclipsed by her meeting with Dominic. She looked at the address in her hand and wondered what Dominic had meant about "not being idle all these years."

As she walked past the main desk, the elderly man she had talked with earlier hailed her with his mellow (and British) voice.

"Did you find what you were wanting, miss?"

Anna jolted back into reality and smiled at him. "Yes, thank you sir."

"You're quite welcome," the man replied, looking pleased at her answer. Looking at a notepad on his desk he added, "You are Anna Wallace, aren't you, miss?"

Anna nodded.

"Your friends told me to give you this message when you came in." He handed Anna a piece of paper sporting with Bobby's neat handwriting.

"Thank you, sir," Anna said and read the note as she wandered upstairs to her room.

Anna, (it read)

Rogue and I went out to get some lunch together, and knowing her I'll probably be sucked into some shopping as well . Sorry we missed you; keep safe while we're gone.

--Bobby

PS: Call us on Rogue's cell phone if you have any problems.

PPS: Rogue still has it.

Anna absently pocketed the note as she unlocked the door to her hotel room. When she opened it, she had to fuss with the key a bit to get it out of the lock, but when she did and looked inside, her heart skipped a beat.

There were clothes strewn all over the floor, her and Rogue's suitcases were overturned and empty. Every drawer in the pair of dressers had been pulled out and left laying on the ground, the sheets were ripped off the two beds and the mattresses were skewed, as if someone had been moving them.

For a minute Anna stood in shock, gazing at the mess, and then she closed the door and walked to Bobby's room, across the hall. With trembling hands she unlocked his room and stifled a groan as her eyes beheld the same type of disaster. She closed is door softly and went back to her own room. As she sank onto the stripped bed, one thought kept running through her mind. "They know we're here. They know we're here…"

Rogue was trying to interest Bobby in a shop window when her cell phone started beeping out the Macarena.

"Hello?" Rogue drawled as she answered. "Anna, is that you? What happened, sugar?"

Bobby stopped pretending to inspect the jewelry on display and turned to his girlfriend expectantly.

As Rogue listened to her friend, her eyes grew wide. "Both rooms?" she asked, horrified.

"Is she alright?" Bobby demanded, not caring that he was interrupting.

Rogue only nodded and continued listening. "All right, we'll be there in ten minutes. No, I'm sure. Stay in the lobby until we get there. Bye."

Bobby was already headed towards their rental car before Rogue's emphatic, "We need to get back."

Only when they were zipping through the London streets did Rogue tell Bobby what had happened to their rooms.

Bobby listened in grim amazement. "Thank goodness we didn't leave that disk in our rooms," he muttered. He glanced at Rogue. "You do still have it, right?"

Rogue patted her side. "Right here."

Bobby let out a sigh of relief and parked the car in front of their hotel. The pair walked quickly into the lobby where Anna was waiting, twisting her hands nervously. When she saw them walk through the door, she rushed to meet them, her relief obvious.

"Thank goodness!" she exclaimed. "I thought you'd never get here."

"How bad is the damage?" Bobby asked.

Anna shook her head miserably. "Everything is turned inside out, it's like a tornado hit. It was so scary…" her voice trailed off.

Bobby gave her a quick hug. "It's all right. They were after the disk, not you."

He and the girls walked upstairs and surveyed the damage. Nothing had been broken or, as far as they could tell, taken, just messed up. Standing in the girl's room, Bobby ran a hand through his hair.

"After all the trouble we took to look inconspicuous, this happens." He sighed. "It's going to take a miracle to get us into Paris undetected."

The girls said nothing, but gazed vaguely around the room as if the answers were to found in the mess around them.

Anna sighed dismally and shoved her hands into her pockets. Her fingers touched a piece of paper. Drawing it out, she looked at it languidly. It was the address Dominic had given to her. "I need to tell Bobby about that…" she thought lazily. Then she straightened and gazed at the paper more intently. "Just in case, come to this address," she whispered to herself, repeating what Dominic had told her.

"What was that?" Bobby asked, staring at her.

Anna took a deep breath. "This is going to sound really weird, but I think I might have a way out of this mess."

"I swear, if I have to ask the question 'Do you know a man named Jean Bapsteist?' one more time, I'm going to murder someone!"

Kate and John's inquiries had not been going well. It had taken about half the morning to establish themselves as traders on the underground market in Paris, an easy feat for two people who knew as much as they did about that particular subject. But every time Kate would casually hint at that name, or even ask outright, people would say nothing.

"It stinks we have to do it this way," John grumbled softly as they walked together down a narrow Paris street. "It's got to look suspicious."

Kate agreed, but at the moment she was too irritated to say anything except, "Can we take a break now?"

John looked at his watch. "It's about one o'clock, let's get some lunch."

Kate sighed gratefully. "Finally we hear some sense!"

The two friends navigated their way through the narrow inner-city streets of Paris, that were dim, even in the afternoon. Finally they got into a more commercialized part of Paris, chose a small restaurant and sat down. Their waitress came and gave them their menus, after batting her blue eyes and flicking her blonde hair in John's direction. John raised his eyebrows at her and smirked, so complacent that Kate almost threw her menu at him.

"Order me something good, will you?" John asked Kate and leaned back in his chair. It was what they did every time they went to lunch or dinner, because John couldn't read the menu and had no desire to learn. Once, Kate tried to teach him the basics of the French language, but the end result had been her storming off in a high temper and John setting fire to every one of the workbooks she had bought.

"How would you like a tuna sandwich?" Kate asked, her eyes on the menu.

"Sound fine," John said, his eyes following their pretty waitress on her rounds. "Do they have any Coke in this place?"

Kate's eyes scanned the menu obediently. "Yep."

"Good," John said with satisfaction as the blonde waitress came to take their orders.

Kate ordered John's meal and two slices of pizza for herself. After the girl was done taking their orders, she hung around, making eyes at John. Kate thought it was all rather disgusting, but John seemed to be enjoying the attention.

After awhile the waitress left and John turned back to the matter at hand.

"King Bucket Head isn't going to be too pleased when we tell him we can't find anything," he commented.

"What else can we do?" Kate asked, hopelessly. "Either people don't know who and where he is, or they're not telling us."

John shrugged.

"We could pose as captor and captive again," Kate suggested. "It seemed to work before."

John shook his head. "We've used that scheme too many times before. The word has probably already gone out to be on the watch for it."

The blonde waitress brought them their lunch and received a coy smirk from John as her reward.

As they were eating, Kate continued thinking aloud. "If only we knew someone on the inside that could smuggle us in. Or, if only Professor Xavier could help us with Cerebro."

"If wishes were fishes, everyone would be sick of eating fish sandwiches," John said wisely.

Kate laughed and they continued eating in silence.

When the waitress brought their check, she hung around again, twirling a strand of hair around her finger. Kate was on the verge of asking her to leave when she said, in French, "What's your name, handsome?"

John looked up. "What did she say, Kate?" he demanded.

Kate translated for him.

"Tell her and ask for hers," John said next.

Kate did so and told him that her name was Carina. "She wants your phone number," she told him, wrinkling her nose.

John smirked again. "Go ahead and give it to her."

Kate turned to Carina and said a long sentence in French, much longer than necessary for a phone number. As Kate was speaking, John saw Carina's face fall, then finally, as Kate finished, she turned and walked away disappointedly.

"What did you say to her?" John asked, a little annoyed to find his source of entertainment gone.

Kate looked at him innocently and said, in a sweet voice, "Oh, I told her you were married."

A half an hour later Bobby, Rogue, and Anna were still in the girl's room, seated on various beds and chairs.

"Let me get his straight," Bobby said slowly, after Anna was done with her story. "You think Dom has organized a group of mutants here in London, and he's offering to help us?"

Anna nodded. "It sure sounded that way to me."

"Do you think he's trustworthy?"

"Bobby! Have you forgotten how he helped get us out of that living nightmare years ago?" Anna asked indigently.

Bobby shrugged. "No, I'm just making sure he hasn't changed, that's all."

Anna smiled wryly. "He seemed the same to me."

"What did he feel like?" Bobby asked, putting his feet on the arm of his chair.

Anna was startled. "Oh. I forgot to feel him." Not only had she forgotten, but also she had had no desire to remember. Going into his consciousness would have brought her closer to him than she wanted.

Rogue spoke up for the first time from her seat on her bed. "I know this is going to sound stupid, but who is this Dominic person?"

Anna answered her question. "He is a boy Bobby and I knew when we were captured, a long time ago. You remember that, don't you?"

Rogue nodded. "He's a mutant, right?"

"Yep," Bobby said. "His power has got something to do with controlling water, I think. I don't really know, I never saw him use it."

"I did, once," Anna interjected. "After we were set free and before he went back to England. He made the water in my glass dance in the air to the music on the radio. It was really cool."

"Are we going to trust him?" Rogue asked.

Anna looked at Bobby. "Whatever you say goes, sir."

"I'll think about it," Bobby told them. He rose out of chair. "We should clean up our rooms now, huh?"

"We should," Anna said, pulling a mournful face, "But I don't want to."

"At least you two can help each other," Bobby replied, heading for the door. "I have to do it all by myself!"

"We can help you later," Rogue promised as he left their room and closed the door again.

After lunch, Kate and John headed back to the places where traders of the black market usually congregated. They typically met in the basements of poor looking houses in the heart of the city. Their routine was basically the same. Kate would strike up a conversation with someone while trying to look old and important, and would gradually bring the talk around to what she and John were supposedly selling.

"Slaves," she told one clean shaven man. "Do you know of anyone who would be interested?"

"I might be able to find a few people who would like to pick up some girls," the man offered, with an oily grin. "There's always a demand for them."

Kate shuddered inside at the thought of giving anyone over to this man, but long lessons from John had taught her to keep her voice even. "We'd be much obliged," she said. She turned away, then stopped and said, as if an afterthought, "You know, I heard of a man named Bapstiest a little while ago. Someone said he might be interested as well. Have you heard of him?"

The man laughed condescendingly. "Whoever told you that was pulling your leg, little one. There's no one here by that name that I know of, and I know everyone here." With that, he moved off to talk to someone else.

Kate gave John an eloquent look that said, "This is pointless, let's go" as clearly as if she had said it aloud. The pair was always careful never to speak in English when they were in places like this. There was no need to advertise that they were Americans, even though everyone probably knew it anyway.

John shrugged and motioned towards the door. Kate followed him out of the basement, through the alleys, and out onto a main street.

"We're going on a wild goose chase!" she exclaimed when she figured it was safe. "No one knows where he is."

John made no sign that he heard her remark and bent down to tie his shoe. John was crouching on the ground, rocking back and forth as he fiddled with his shoelace when he rocked backwards too hard and fell on his back. He lay there for a second, looking the way they had just come, then hulled himself off the ground.

"You know, John," Kate said as he started walking again, a bit faster, "you really need to find your center of balance. Isn't there some class you could take or something so that you wouldn't fall flat on your back when you try to tie a shoelace? Maybe you should take dancing lessons to make you more graceful…" Kate was still chattering away when John grabbed her hand and started pulling her along at a faster rate until they were almost running down the street.

Kate stopped talking and looked at her friend in surprise. John's face was grim and his mouth was set in a determined line.

"What's wrong?" she whispered.

"A man's been following us since we left that last house," John explained. "No, don't look at him!"

Without another word to John, Kate raised her voice and said in French, "No need to pull me like this! I can't help it if we're going to be late for our meeting with Marc." She turned to John and said angrily, "You should have told me what time it was!"

"Pardon," John said, shrugging his shoulders. He wasn't sure what Kate was saying, but he understood that she was trying to explain their frenzied dash. He nodded slightly at his friend, showing that she was to keep it up.

Kate did so with gusto, jabbering on in French about how they were going to be late for their meeting with their dear friend Marc if they didn't hurry.

John looked in every shop window that caused a reflection and saw that their follower was still on their tail. At long last, he spotted his motorcycle and hurried to it.

Barely giving Kate time to sit down behind him, he twisted the throttle open and roared off down the road after having the satisfaction of seeing their follower stop at the street and stare after them.