feathers ↣ w. worthington iii

(7) All in Favor of Banning Creeps From Gas Stations, Say Aye

"We never would've upset you if we knew you had superpowers." Dustin Henderson

Jean spent the next few hours catching Lilli up on everything that had happened recently in the mutant world. Apparently, the tides had turned and Kezing had the upper hand. Chaos been kidnapping mutants in the same way he'd kidnapped Cas and Lilli— one from Xavier, one from Kezing— except the ones who chose to stay with him banded together and brought him down. Lilli's mind was wild with ideas of how they'd done it— had they sat on him? Stuffed him in a cardboard box and shipped him off to Antarctica? Lilli could only guess—but she also realized that that was probably the reason that Sam and Emily hadn't knocked on her door like they were Jehovah's witnesses. Chaos was finally down.

So much for his dramatic monologue that one night at the Institute.

However, Kezing was still out there. There'd been more ambushes and attacks on the X-Men, but so far he hadn't attacked any of the normal students. Lilli was surprised that they were almost a year into this war and he'd still not attacked a single student. She had to give him props for that.

The X-Men were still training every day, however tensions were high like Jean had mentioned earlier. Apparently they couldn't trust each other and fights broke out all the time. They were constantly bickering and couldn't stop arguing. They were a mess and in no shape to be fighting a war against Kezing. If this ambush tomorrow turned out to be more than a small ambush like the ones before, the X-Men were screwed.

Lilli sat back after Jean finished catching her up. This news was not very good. At all. Her friends had once been the most powerful mutants in the world and now they were nothing but angry teenagers lashing out at each other. It was saddening to hear.

"Oh, Lilli?" Jean spoke up after a moment. "I meant to ask you earlier, but... how are you? We heard that Chaos kidnapped you."

"You heard about that?" Lilli asked, furrowing her brows.

"Yeah. Cas told us. We all— we were all going to come down here to find you and see if you were alright, but we figured you didn't want us to," Jean glanced briefly at Lilli, and she almost looked guilty. "We should've came. I can't imagine how scary that must've been— especially being ratted out by your own friends. I'm sorry, Lilli."

"Yeah, well," Lilli said, clearing her throat. "I'm fine. I put it all behind me."

"Lilli... I know you won't believe me, but we all understand why you left. Really. If we were in your position we would've done the same long before you did." Jean said. "No one blames you. We all talked and agreed that none of us would ever bring you into this life again."

"Jean that's... that's exactly what you're doing right now. You're literally driving me back into that life." Lilli said, laughing slightly.

"The thing is.. no one really knows that I'm here," Jean said quietly. "I came on my own."

"What?" Lilli exclaimed, turning in her seat to face Jean. No one else knew??

"I said I was visiting family. Not even Professor X knows. Just me. So it'll be a bit of a surprise for everyone, I guess..." Jean laughed nervously. "Surprise, here's Lilli!"

Lilli groaned and hid her face in her hands. "Jean..." she moaned. "Seriously?"

Jean sucked in her lips before chuckling nervously. "Hah... yep. Not even Cas knows, and we've been communicating for months. He'll most likely be there tomorrow, too."

"Jean! I promised him I wouldn't come back!" Lilli exclaimed. Cas was going to be so mad at her for breaking her promise...

Jean looked over, her eyes wide. "Shoot, really?" She asked. Lilli nodded and Jean looked back at the road. "Then... we're gonna have some explaining to do."