Disclaimer: I do not own the X-men or anything else relating to the X-Men

Chapter 6

(Back with the other three X-men)

"Wonder what time she'll be back," Kurt drearily sighed out.

"Ma petite will be back after she gets done with the bank man and the lawyer, shouldn't take more than a few hours at the most." Gambit replied. "In the mean time Gambit thinks he'll go look around town a bit, see what he can find out about the 'new mine' being built."

"I'm not so sure that's a good idea young man." Maddie quickly cut off Gambit's senseless journey into town.

"But ma chère, Gambit just thinks that a little surveillance will help ma petite with her affairs. After all, the sooner she gets her business settled, the sooner we leave, and the sooner she be out of danger."

"Can it! You just want to follow Rogue around because you can't keep your eyes off of her for two minutes straight." Logan growled at Gambit.

"Well, excuse me, Mon ami. I hadn't noticed that you were keeping track of where my eyes were wondering."

"I said 'can it' Cajun! This isn't the time to pull out your wannabe lover-boy act."

"Please! Logan, Gambit! We must not fight at a time like this. Rogue needs us to be…"

"Keep out of this Kurt! Me and the Cajun are in the middle of a …serious discussion."

"Oui, Mon ami. Logan and I have been dying to have this discussion for awhile now, and since Rogue is currently not here to interfere, now is the best time to have this little talk."

"Yeah, so stay out of this Kurt! As for you Cajun, I'm getting really tired of your eyes trailing after Rogue. She doesn't need a thief like you going after her. Especially not when she can't have a relationship like other people can thanks to her abilities. You'll just hurt her more in the end." Logan bit out as he glared at Gambit.

Gambit looked momentarily shocked at this (insightful) tirade from Logan before he jumped back into the dispute. "Where my eyes go is none of your business, as I already stated. You make it sound as if you have feelings for her that go beyond being a teammate, Logan. Gambit thinks you're just jealous of his forward approach to Rogue's feelings. Gambit knows you're too much of a coward to fight back for the woman you got feelings for. After all, you let Jean slip right out of fingers, numerous times."

At this remark, Logan seemed to lose control of his emotions. At the same time that he began to withdraw his claws, Gambit began to charge a card. Maddie, meanwhile decided that this had gone too far, what she was having trouble with was deciding how to distract the two men from their useless bickering that was more than likely going to destroy the house. Quickly deciding that the best distraction would be to mention Marie in some way, Maddie shouted out, "Look here comes Marie! She must have forgotten something when she left earlier."

At this both men became somewhat pale, wondering if Rogue had overheard any of their brief exchange, what they didn't know was that Rogue hadn't forgotten anything. In fact, Rogue wasn't really there at all. Quickly looking up and toward Maddie, they soon realized that Maddie had mentioned Rogue as a distraction. At this realization, they would have continued their dispute, but Maddie had other plans. While she still had their attention directed at her, she decided to take control of the situation.

Maddie quickly seized Wolverine around his upper arm, and while ushering him toward the stairs, she began to diffuse the situation. "You know, I have all these little things that I haven't been able to get to due to these old knees of mine. It would be so nice if you could help me out."

Logan, looking at Maddie as if she were crazy, silently followed her up the stairs that led upstairs where the bedrooms were located.

'Whew, that was a close one. If that had gone any further I don't think Rogue would have had a home to come back to.' Kurt mentally relaxed as Logan was led away by Maddie.

"Well, now that Logan is gone, Gambit thinks he will go and look about town and see what he can find out for Rogue."

Just as he was about to head out Maddie called out for him. "Gambit dear, please come up here. Seems there are a few more things that need to be done than I thought."

Sighing and mentally cringing at the thought of how much work there must be, Gambit slowly trudged up the stairs.

'Rogue better hurry up. I don't think Maddie can handle those two for long. Every time Rogue is away for too long they end up in a fight. One of these days they're going to end up going too far in their little…disagreements. I hope neither of them gets too hurt when that time comes.' Kurt thought as he watched Gambit head up the stairs.

After discovering that her father had practically nothing in his safety deposit box, other than two old photos of her mother, Rogue went over to the lawyer's office and would have went directly into the building if she hadn't noticed the horribly gaudy sports car parked next to the building her father's lawyer was in. Immediately figuring out whom that car belonged to, Rogue knew that, first off, the car belonged to one Mr. Shaw junior, and, secondly, that there was no way that Shaw was in the hardware store next to the lawyer's office. This meant that, obviously, Shaw had to be in the lawyer's building. Just another bright spot to her otherwise abysmal day.

'Well, he can't be here just for fun, so what exactly could he be up to? There's no way he'll talk to me and if he knows I'm in the building he'll just shut up and leave. So the question becomes: What should I do… well, I could always 'overhear' the conversation from the window seeing as how it's a one story building, and there aren't that many people around.'

Acting quickly, Rogue went around the side of the building, and (avoiding being seen through the windows) she rapidly made her way toward the back windows. Luckily for Rogue, this part of town had been built with minimal space between the buildings barely big enough for her. No one in their right mind would be sneaking around in the small spaces between the buildings.

Slowly approaching each windowsill, she stopped at each for a second to listen and see if Shaw was in the room that the window belonged to. When she neared the end of the wall she was pressed against, she noticed a window that was slightly ajar. Nearing this particular window, she heard two voices murmuring. After coming to this window, Rogue crouched down to listen to this conversation.

"You told me she wouldn't come back to town let alone come back with unknown men who could screw everything up! What the hell do we do now?"

Rogue had no doubt that that exact voice belonged to Shaw.

"Relax before you do something that will screw this up."

This voice belonged to an unknown man. Rogue could only assume that the voice belonged to one of the lawyers in the building. Perhaps this man was even a newcomer to the town.

"Me do something to mess this up? IT already is messed up or haven't you noticed?"

"Yes…things are more…complicated now but perhaps the presence of these men will turn out to be…beneficial to us?"

"Beneficial! Beneficial how? There are two of them that look like they are more than a little rough around the edges and who knows what the third one can do! I mean if they're all hanging around with a mutant that has to mean they must be mutants too. And since we don't know for sure who they are or what they can do they could screw everything up. They're unknown factors! Everything we've been working for could come crashing down at any moment with those men here, I mean we didn't even have a plan for the possibility of that drunk's daughter showing up and now…"

"That is where you are wrong. My…colleagues and I have been hoping that young Marie would show up to take care of her father's affairs after his death. You could say that things were…well planned out in the event that she returned to this particular town. As for her companions, they can be taken care of. They may even become useful should they have certain…abilities the good doctor desires."

"Fine. You take care of those outsiders. I won't be blamed if something goes wrong. I was just here to warn you that more pawns were being added to this dicey game you started. I don't want your overestimation of yourself and your underestimation of them to mess everything up for me."

At this exclamation from Shaw, Rogue heard a chair being moved quickly followed by the sounds of footsteps and a slamming door. A muffled 'Fool' could be heard from the only remaining occupant in the room.

'Good Doctor, huh? Wonder who exactly that is?' Rogue wondered while silently reliving her dream from last night. 'And who exactly are his colleagues? They must have a certain reputation if he was hesitant to mention them.'

As she was pondering exactly what could be going on in this town, she made her way back to the front of the building, making sure she waited until she heard the roar of the engine in Shaw's car before returning to the street. After straightening her hair and clothing she headed to the front door of the building and drawing in a sharp breath she slowly entered the building.

The first person she met was a secretary by the name of Linda Jones. Rogue was not familiar with this name, meaning the woman must have been relatively new to town, especially if Maddie had mentioned her in the letters she sent Rogue. After all, Maddie knew everything about everybody in town and she would have made sure to get to know anyone knew to town.

Walking up to this woman, Rogue politely attempted to get Ms. Jones attention. However, she was so 'busy' answering phones that Rogue failed to gain her attention for several minutes. When she finally got Ms. Jones full attention, the woman wouldn't even listen to her enquiries about Troy Edwards, her father's lawyer. The woman didn't believe that such a young woman would have any need to visit such a prestigious lawyer.

When the phone began ringing again, and Ms. Jones decided to put Rogue on hold yet again, she finally chose to take matters into her own hands. She left the secretary's station, and began to walk down the hallway to find Mr. Edward's office on her own.

"Miss! Miss! You can't do that! Get back here! HEY! Get back here you little brat!" Shouted Ms Jones from down the hallway.

''Little Brat'… yeah right. Like I'm gonna listen to you.' Rogue thought as she walked down the hallway. She could practically hear the secretary frantically calling security as she hurried down the hallway, making sure to look at each plaque outside each door.

Coming to the end of the hallway, Rogue finally met one of the so-called Security men. Roughly about 6 feet in height, the man could easily have passed for a professional football player, although he seemed to have more of a "come near me and I'll break you in half" kind of attitude. Funny thing was, Rogue knew she could take him; all she needed was to take off one of her gloves.

"Miss, I'm afraid you're in an off limits area, especially since you don't have an appointment and you don't even have anyone's permission to be in this area."

So saying, the security man grabbed Rogue's arm and roughly began to drag her down the hallway.

Rogue, fed up with the treatment the people in this building were giving her, yelled "Listen, right now I have a lot of things to do and all I need to right now is to see Mr. Edwards so I can go over my father's affairs and since y'all seem hell bent to keep me from doing what I need to do, I figure I…"

"Stewart. Leave her be. She's the daughter of one of my clients. Linda should have given me a call to let me know she was here. I have been expecting her for…quite some time now."

"Oh! Sorry Sir. I had no idea. I only received a call saying there was an intruder in the building. I had been told to immediately…"

"Yes Stewart…I know what you've been told but as I just said, she is a client now. So Let her go." Hissed her father's lawyer.

"Yes Sir! So sorry ma'am. Won't happen again. Have a nice visit." Stewart hurriedly said as he hastily dropped Rogue's arm and backed away.

The lawyer watched as Stewart walked away before addressing Rogue again. Meanwhile, Rogue was stuck in place having recognized that particular voice. After all, she had very recently heard said voice discussing her and the other x-men in town only minutes before. Rogue slowly turned around to see Troy Edwards, her father's lawyer and apparent conspirator.

"Well, shall we step into my office?"