I'm so sorry this took so long to update! School just came out of nowhere, and I've written more papers than I've cared to write in my life. Anyways. I'll be updating a bit faster now, now that schools *mostly* out of the way. Anyways. Thanks as always for reading! :)

Lorelei sat on the docks in front of her father's warehouse, throwing bread crumbs at passing seagulls. They would scream and flutter away, then came swooping back once they realized she was throwing something edible. One particularly speckled one was exceptionally brave, and even went so far as to grab at the bag of bread. Lorelei had named him Mister Clutch; and he was the meanest seagull of them all.
"Shoo!" She waved her arm wildly and held the bag close to her chest. "It's not all yours, Herr Seagull. You must share vith your brothers!" She felt her heart twist a little when she thought of Iceman and the trouble he got into when he ate all the Hershey bars. He didn't share either… but he wasn't a speckled seagull; Mister Clutch had an excuse at least.

Lorelei sighed. She missed the X men; their constant bickering and general stupidity was very endearing to her - not that she'd ever tell them. She didn't even get to say goodbye when Magneto had invaded the X Mansion with his group of Merry Men; Kurt's teleporting had made her completely bonkers. At least she had been reunited her with her mother and father… sort of. Since she had arrived at her parents "base", Lorelei had seen neither hide nor hair either of them. They were always in some meeting with someone discussing something, shouting about whatever and never coming out. Her parents didn't even ask about the night Lorelei went missing, they just accepted the fact she was there now and then moved on with their lives. I guess it's because they're busy with their business, she figured. They have to talk to me eventually.

Magneto had done another mansion raid a day after he had unkidnapped Lorelei to bring back Blue Boobs. Angry Biceps Guy, er, Sabretooth, had apparently set off the alarm system which alerted everyone, and in the confusion Blue Boobs had run away. That part wasn't planned; but Magneto seemed happy she was out. Lorelei didn't get to talk to any of them though; they got to stay on the inside of the lair - Lorelei was banished to the outside.
In her Griffin form.
Keeping lookout.
From a perch.
Again.
Just like Germany.

It's like nothing has even changed… besides the scenery. Instead of a stately mansion to guard she had an ugly warehouse with bullet-proof glass and ridiculously thick walls, floors, and doors. She didn't get to watch a cliff, but she did have a nice view of the docks and boats… the large amount of water made her nervous though. The pigeons had been replaced with seagulls, the roof griffins with mutant guards, the flower garden with rusted boats, and the peaceful stillness with the metallic ring of civilization.

I hate civilization. Lorelei wasn't even sure what good she was doing out here. She stuck out like a sore thumb… or a five foot griffin statue placed strategically besides a door leading into a derelict warehouse that looks exactly like the place you'd expect to find illegal activities and drugged up criminals.

I am invisible. She had moved from her usual spot though, and even changed back into her human form… which brings us back to her sitting on the docks and throwing bread to Mister Clutch.

~~~~~~~~OoO~~~~~~~~~

Professor X studied the small group of X men in the "war room". No one felt like talking. The entirety of the week had gone spiraling downward just after Kurt had returned from his trip to Germany.

~~~~~~~~Recap!~~~~~~~~~

Remember a few chapte- er, days ago when Kitty and Lorelei were shopping? Kurt had left three days before then to investigate the Stillmans residence. Professor X had sent only Kurt to avoid a big scene. Kurt had been hiding in the basement, talking to some of the captives when suddenly a door had opened. Mister Stillman himself had walked coolly in and leaned against a wall, reading. Kurt stayed there, frozen, until a number of people entered and announced it was time to eat. Kurt used the loud noises to teleport away undetected. Or at least he thought. Stillman had noticed the puff of smoke over the top of his book and realized that the X Men were closer than he thought. Literally, they were only twenty feet away. He immediately left afterwards to inform his wife of this, and that it'd be best if they moved. Mrs. Stillman eventually agreed, and they readied to immigrate to the warehouse that Stillman had bought for such an occasion – because everyone knows the best place to hide is under your enemy's nose. You know what they say, "keep your enemies close" and all.

During the Stillman's debate upstairs, Kurt had returned to the cages once feeding time was done; only to find them empty. He meandered around the twisted underground chambers in search of the people for a while before stumbling upon an empty room. The room posed no real threat other than the currently distracted back of a certain mutant who the X-men had run into on one too many occasions. He left without setting the captives free and quickly made his way back to New York.

Kurt arrived two days after Kitty and Lorelei's shopping and used the midnight hours to explain to the Professor exactly who the Stillmans were in cahoots with. Professor X was very troubled over the news, and gathered Storm and a few others to investigate the matter further.

The small group left two days after Kurt arrived, and Kurt was assigned to Lorelei's side until the Professor returned. He was told not to speak of anything he'd found in Germany to Lorelei, and was to keep her occupied for the whole day. This lasted until about nine o'clock – Lorelei's self-proclaimed bedtime – when she suddenly decided to use her powers of mass-stupidity and made fun of the professor. Kurt – who was very stressed over the Germany incident and having to look after a seventeen year old baby the whole day – decided enough was enough and tried to knock her out humanely. After successfully doing just that… he went to the bathroom to wash his hands.

And then Magneto.

~~~~~~~~Still Recapping~~~~~~~~~

The Stillmans had left with their bare necessities the day that Kurt had appeared. Having arrived at their already furnished warehouse that they got in advanced, they settled down quickly and got to work. They first contacted Magneto, expecting to have to wait a full week for him to return any sort of message. Magneto instead arrived the next day, because otherwise the story won't make se- uh, because Magneto was already in the area.

Magneto arrived with his group and they all introduced themselves and whatnot. Stillman learned his daughter was with the X men, and decided to scrap his original plan of drugging everything and instead went with the Rescue Daughter plan. Magneto left with his group and ordered Mystique to find a way into the mansion without disturbing everything. She returned later on with news that the Professor was going to leave the mansion in two days with a small group of the X Men, and advised using their dwindled numbers to their advantage. Magneto agreed and went to Stillman with the plan. Stillman said it was a good one.

~~~~~~~~Nope, Still Recapping~~~~~~~~~

It was the day that Professor Xavier had left, and Logan bounced as well. Originally he had planned to join the Professor, but was in such an uncommonly good mood that he decided to spend the day doing what he wanted instead. After much drinking and catching up with old friends and enemies alike, he decided to end it by staring longingly into the sea. He stopped in front of an abandoned warehouse that smelled like it was being used, but decided against busting down its doors. He didn't feel like exposing crack addicts today; he was in a good mood. He stayed on the dock a while longer before realizing how pointless it was, and left for the mansion.

He arrived nearly an hour later, with a nagging feeling that something shit was about to happen. This feeling was encouraged when he saw Lorelei and Kurt rolling in the grass. He entered the garage with the bad feeling mounting, and brushed passed Beast in a hurry to check on the mansion. He did this to convince himself that the day wasn't going to sour.

The day finally went south when he finished searching the second level, and descended the stairs in time to see Kitty being slammed through a wall.

Professor X had returned a week after the incident to find Mystique uncaptured and Lorelei still missing. Apparently Sabretooth had broken into the mansion in the early hours of the morning, and miraculously set the shape-shifter free. Charles now sat in the meeting room with the X Men, and the stragglers he'd picked up in his travels.

~~~~~~~~END RECAP!~~~~~~~~~

"So…" Professor X folded his hands in his lap. "Tell me again what happened."
"I'll tell you what happened!" Scott slammed his fist down on the table, "It's a conspiracy!"
Wolverine burst into laughter, "Ya got caught with your pants down Summers!"
"Our defenses were up!"
"Logan, Scott, please." Professor X scolded. "Lorelei has been kidnapped for no apparent reason. We don't know Magneto's motives, and that makes this situation all the more dangerous."
Kurt looked down to his hands. "It's my fault," he muttered. "I left her side."

The professor looked to the blue mutant in sympathy. "The blame is not all on you, Kurt. There are many reasons as to why Magneto's raid was successful. True, we may not be in this situation now if you were able to teleport her to safety… but even in that scenario something might have gone wrong. We simply do not know, so there's no point in worrying about it."
Kurt muttered something under his breath and picked some lint off his hand.
"So what now?" Kitty asked.

Professor X stared at the table. I had hoped to come back to the mansion and focus on getting Stillman into custody before things spiral out of control… We could… no… hmm. Professor X considered his options for several minutes, and then finally came to a decision.

"Right now," Professor X continued slowly, "we should focus on getting a sample of that drug." He and smiled encouragingly to the group. "We'll split up. Hank, you'll lead a team in getting as much information as you can... try to find a clean version of the drug. Logan, you and a few others can go track Stillman down. He could still be in Germany, or he may have caught wind of Kurt and left."

Kitty raised her hand and spoke up, "Yeah, but what about Lorelei?"
Professor X still hadn't figured out what to do with Lorelei. The first place to check for her would be wherever Magneto was… but there weren't enough people to go looking for her. "Whichever group frees up first will help look for Lorelei. In the meantime, Kitty, you can stay with my group. We'll be staying here and monitoring everyone else's activities… and whatever other odd jobs come up"
Kitty groaned. Why do I get the boring assignments?

~~~~~~~~OoO~~~~~~~~~

Lorelei sat on an uncomfortable chair on the first floor of the warehouse. It was raining outside, and she didn't feel like getting wet. She was holding one of the rocks she was skipping stones with when the clouds decided to weep over her general vicinity; ending her games. She inspected its smooth surface, and wished she still had the ability to transform rocks into different shapes. When she had forced her mind and abilities into the griffin statue in an attempt to break it six months ago, she'd gotten stuck. When she used her rock-shifting abilities to get back out the two sort of meshed, and her powers and mind were now in the rock… instead of outside and in her physical body. Any attempt at transfiguring rocks in the environment now only caused her statue to form around her body. She'd never figured out how to shake off the statue, but to get back to her human side all she had to do was stop transfiguring.

Imagine it this way: Lorelei's stone form… is hot wax. You've got hot wax from a candle stuck on your fingertips. You attempt to get the sticky stuff off, but you're only allowed to use your fingers – nothing else. In your attempts to get the wax off, you only transfer it from one finger to the next. Say you give up trying to get it off and go about your day with the stuff still on you… and then try to grab another candle – in Lorelei's case, another rock – all you get is more wax on your hands. Well... if the wax is constantly hot I guess.

"Sooooo…" Lorelei attempted to start a conversation with Blue Boobs. "What's your name?"
Mystique continued rummaging through her bag of… whatever, ignoring Lorelei's question.
"I can't keep calling you Blue Boobs."
Silence.

"So… I can call you Blue Bo-"
"Please shut up."
Lorelei sighed. No one here was friendly; even Logan had a warm disposition when compared to Blue Momma.
"Heh… can I call you Blue Momma?"
"You can call me 'You'll Kill Me'."
"You'll kill… OH! Hah that's a good one!" Lorelei clung to the tiny piece of conversation and attempted to run with it. "So vat's your favorite color?"
"Ugh." Mystique got up and left, leaving Lorelei grinning haphazardly, unsure how to proceed.
"Good talk!" She shouted after Blue Lady, "We should grab some coffee next time!"

~~~~~~~~OoO~~~~~~~~~

"Ve should grab some coffee right now!" Kurt gripped hard and shook Logan's shoulder, pointing excitedly to the passing Starbucks. "I vant the one vith the cream!"
"You don't need coffee." Logan pried the priest's fingers from his collarbone and went back to driving. "We need to get to the airport."
"Can ve can buy a souvenir?"
"No."

"Kurt, take a look at this thing." Scott handed Kurt his phone, hoping that slashing the bright and colorful fruits would distract him from the fact that he was sounding more and more like a crazy person.
"Kurt I've said this before," Jean patted his head, "You need to sleep."
"Nonsense! I'm fine! I could hit two stones vith one bird, and I don't even like mustard."
Silence.
"Tomatoes aren't even vegetables you know, they're fruits."
"We know." Scott replied. "You should get some rest. The Stillmans might not have even used the airports… this could be a goose chase. We could be here for hours."

"The fuck is that?" Logan squinted against the glare from the oncoming traffic, and despite his superior reflexes, he could not hit the brakes hard enough to keep from colliding with the man on the highway.

~~~~~~~~OoO~~~~~~~~~

"Beast enjoyed science. Science was nice. Science was understandable. Science did not tell him that he smelled or needed to comb his hair. Science was his friend. He loved science. Science loved him."

"He did not like the science where you did things with dead bodies - the cutty-openy science. Dissecting frogs was fun, if it was for science. Scraping brains off the floor and putting them into tubes was not fun, even if it was science. Needless to say, he did not appreciate Wolverine brining in dead science, with the hopes the Beast had science to revive dead bodies once they were smashed with cars, scientifically-"

"Kurt, shut your mouth right now."
Kurt looked over to Beast, wounded that the other blue mutant did not appreciate his background narrative. "But-"
"No."
Kurt sighed and left the lab, to the tune of his imaginary sad violin background music.

Beast gingerly scooped more brains into the little test-tube. He really didn't like this part.
"Soooo… let me get this straight..."
"He just came outta nowhere." Wolverine stared balefully at the smashed body on the table. "Thought I saw something, then it was there." He shrugged disinterestedly and went back to his staring, hoping the dead would give up and leave the guy's body.
"Hmm." Beast responded, nearly dribbling some stuff onto his hand.
Scott poked his head into the lab, making the two men jump at his sudden appearance when he spoke up, "Hey. We have a match."
"Well I've got a cigar." Wolverine looked over expectantly at his least favorite X-man.
"Not… that match. We know who the guy is."
"And?"
"He's a hobo."
"Yes thank you, his tattered clothing didn't already give that away." Beast strained to keep his sarcasm reigned in, but the brain stuff was getting to his head.
Scott straightened his paper, unfazed by Beasts response, "He's a mister John E. Boye."
"Alright now you're just fucking with us." Logan got up from his chair and snatched the paper away from Scott and read it himself.

"Jonathan… Murdoc… is this even important?"
"Could be. Scott, please tell me you had the foresight to put his name into the da-"
"Of course I did!" Scott grabbed the paper from wolverine, hurt that they would question his intelligence. "I said he was a hobo. He's been in jail a few times for drug possession, but that's it. No job since 2008, divorced, no kids, had a dog at one time or another…" Scott went back to reading the printout. "He was a professional hot-dog eater."
"I wonder what he was doing on the highway?"

"He was high." Beast slammed on a starnge looking computer a few times before it spat out a long sheet with numbers and weird words on it. "He has almost every drug conceivable in his system… wait… no…" Beast skimmed over the paper while the machine continued to sputter and protest. "Its one drug with basic elements from some others… like a super drug."
"Sounds like fun." Wolverine picked at his nails.
"I think this might be Stillma-"
"I KNOW WHOS DRUG IT IS!" Jean burst through the door, gripping triumphantly to a tiny bottle. "It's Stillmans!"

Beast stared at her incredulously. "You stole my thunder," he whispered.
"It's Stillmans!" She repeated. "I found this in his shoe, in the sole. It was sewn inside. It… says Stillman on it." She held the amber-brown bottle up to the light, revealing a liquid with a tiny pill-looking thing floating around inside.
"WELL," Beast threw the paper into the trash, thoroughly tired and upset. "I guess my work here is done."
"Aw, Hank." Jean walked over and patted his furry arm. "We need you very much. I might have found the bottle, but we have no idea what it is. We neeeeeeed you." She tugged at his lab coat, trying to sugar him up. "Please?"
"Meh."

~~~~~~~~OoO~~~~~~~~~

Lorelei adjusted one of her stone feathers that was grating against her wing. She was attempting to fly by hopping down and flapping furiously from the metal walkways that reached across the upper levels of the warehouse. It was impossible, she was too damn heavy.

"I believe I can flyyyyy…!" She howled for the fifth time as she careened back down to earth, this time cracking the concrete floor upon landing. "Dammit… it was like that when I got here!" She told no one in particular.
"OH LORELEI YOU CRACKED THE FLOOR!" She chided herself out loud.
"I AM SO SORRY!"
"YOU SHOULD BE!"
I need friends. She flopped onto her stomach, etching tiny pictures into the concrete.

"Vat are you doing?" Lorelei's father peered over her shoulder, watching her draw a tiny sun with a smily face.
"Vone day, ven the archeologists come, they vill see this and say, 'Oh, maybe those homo sapiens vere actually dumb. See how they draw their sun vith the smile? Don't they know the sun is not sapient? Maybe the stupid Homo-sapiens worship the smile-sun-god, and sacrifice-'"
"Das ridiculous." Her father scoffed. "No vone vill find the pictures. I have something to show you, get up."
Lorelei did as she was told, but stayed as a griffin just to irritate her dad a bit. "Are ve going to Disneyworld?"
"Nien."
"Vill we?"
"Maybe."
"Ven?"
"Shoosh! See this?" He opened one of the inner warehouse doors that lead to his office. It was filled with wooden crates with the family crest.
"Are these the drugs?" Lorelei looked skeptically between the crates and her father. She still had no idea what the drug did. Probably nothing too nice.
"Ja. We disperse it soon."
"Vat does it do?"
Mr. Stillman looked down at his stone daughter. "Science." He answered simply.
"Ja but… vat science?" Lorelei opened one of the crates and peered inside. Hundreds of little brown dropper bottles looked back at her. "Vat do they actually do?"
"I said science!" Her father folded his arms and glared at her. "Close that box, I just wanted you to know which door to guard more closely!"
"Oh…"
"You are dismissed."
"Vat?" Lorelei's head nearly snapped from the speed at which she turned to him. "I am not your employee! You say 'thank-you Lorelei, that vill be all' or something like that! I am your daughter, not a dog!"
"Ja, that is all or vatever." He made a shooing motion with his hand, "now go out!"
"You. Are. Large. BUTT!" Lorelei howled and darted out the room, intent on never looking at the door, the drugs, or the damn warehouse ever again. "Vhy are you so mean? I didn't even do anything!"

Lorelei sprinted out the front door of the warehouse, literally smashing right through it. Damn, I don't know where to go. She ran circles around the warehouse and its surrounding buildings, trying to get a sense of where she was. She gave up after thirty minutes, settling for roosting on the metal roof of one of the buildings. The rain had let up a long while ago, but some tiny puddles still lingered to reflect the moon and make tiny waves when the wind blew. Maybe dad vill feel bad now. She pretended to close her eyes as she drifted off to sleep. Maybe he vill feel bad and take me to Disneyland… Disney…vorld… vichever. She fell asleep before she noticed mister clutch settling down between the space of her wings and her shoulders. If she had seen him, she would have howled in protest. Cleaning poop off anything is not a fun job. Especially when it's on your back.

Will Lorelei go to Disney...worldland? Will we ever know the difference? Will Kurt *finally* sleep? Will the drug ever be used? stay tuned next time to find out maybe. and remember, -DONT DO DRUGS KIDS-!