A'Cadia strolled back into the room, her emotions back under control.

"Well, is he gonna back us up or not?" Ziva asked when she entered the room.

"Yeah, sorta."

"Sorta? What does that mean?"

She scratched the back of her neck as she sat on the bed beside Skylar. "He'll come but only if he's in charge."

Ziva jumped up off her bed, jostling Craig who was sitting on the end, leaning up against the wall. "What? Why does he want to be in charge?"

"Uh, I'm guessing 'cause he thinks we've screwed things up thus far, also he's one of the X-Men so he has more experience. So yeah, he kinda knows what he's doing."

Craig leaned forward on the bed. "He does have a point, Ziva. I mean we did underestimate Lenny and we lost our powers. We could use Logan's help. And if he's willing to help then we should accept it. Also, respect it."

Ziva sent him a glare before she sat back down on the bed. "Whatever. Fine."

Craig patted her leg, but he focused on A'Cadia when he spoke. "So, what's the plan?"

"We let him know when we're ready to go, 'bout it." She shrugged.

"We need an actual plan then," Skylar said with a sigh.

"Yeah, works better if we have one," A'Cadia replied with a smirk.

***

Lenny settled his crown on his head. "Is everything nearly set to go?"

"Yes," Brittany answered from her spot on the edge of his desk.

He glanced over his shoulder at her, sighed, and looked back into the mirror. Honestly, he was getting tired of her perching on his desk like that. He spent hours polishing the wood only to have her plant her butt on it and smudge it. Giving his head a shake, he turned away from the mirror, satisfied with the placement of the crown. It was not quite in the center and slightly tilted, looking rakish, but regal.

"Good, good." He rubbed his hands together in satisfaction. Soon, he'd finally get what he wanted. Everything was finally going his way. He'd have Ziva on his side and if his luck continued to hold, A'Cadia as well. He couldn't believe that his little clawed lovely was happy over at camp happy-happy. She carried a wild side that he'd been encouraging along nicely before she decided to up and desert. Honestly, he couldn't understand why she'd even left. It didn't matter much, now he'd have a chance to get her back along with Ziva. It was about time too. If Ziva spent any more time in Craig's company then Golden Boy was certain to worm his way into her head and corrupt her further. His jaw clenched at the thought.

"So, what are we doing, Lenny?" Brittany was swinging her legs now, her heels clunking against his desk with every backswing.

He cringed and turned on her. "Stop swinging your legs! You're gonna scratch my desk!"

"Oh, wow totally sorry." She bent over awkwardly to look down and see if she had made any marks and promptly toppled off the desk. "Ow! I fell on my head!"

"Don't worry, I'm sure you didn't injure anything important," he muttered under his breath as he headed for the door to his office.

Brittany scrambled up off the floor and ran after him, rubbing at the bump on her head. "Wait for me, baby!"

"Don't call me baby, it's unprofessional," he told her as he made it to the elevator, punched the button, and scurried inside. Though he managed not to cringe as she sidled inside with him, smiling happily, and latching onto his arm as she did.

"I love this song!" She started humming along with the muzak version of One Direction's Live While We're Young.

Lenny wanted to smash his head into the mirrored wall of the elevator. This is what he got for letting her pick the elevator music. "I didn't know they had a muzak version of this song."

"Oh, you can get muzak versions of just about anything nowadays!" she gushed.

They stepped out of the elevator on the ground floor and into the lobby, which was crowded with his entire mutant army. Ready and waiting for him to speak.

"All right everyone, settle down please," he called out.

The lobby remained loud as the mutants talked and laughed. He tried a second time. Then a third. Frustration was setting in when Brittany took a step forward, cleared her throat, and then bellowed out, "Shut up you freaks! Lenny wants to speak to you!" As soon as they shut up, she stepped back beside Lenny, gave him a demure little smile, and returned her attention to the crowd.

Yeah, well, he was just gonna pretend he hadn't needed the brainless wonder to quiet the room as if he were of little significance. He would console himself with the thought that she was a cheerleader, she had exceptionally good lungs, of course, she could shout that loudly!

"Listen up everyone! We are planning an attack on Xavier's school. We have nearly enough people to make this happen. As soon as we add a few more people to our ranks, we can head over to the school."

A voice sounded from the back of the room. "Why can't we just go now? Didn't you zap their powers?"

He gritted his teeth. "Not everyone at the school. Only a couple of students. The Wolverine still has his powers as does Storm. We need some more people," he snapped out at the questioner. He had the brains here, why did they insist on questioning him? Useless fools.

Without any further words, he spun around and left. Brittany clinging to his arm like a well-fed little tick. Which—in essence—she was. A pampered, brightly colored, little tick. He sighed as he made his way back up to his office, took off his jacket, and slung it onto the back of his desk chair.

"I really like that T-shirt on you, Lenny, it brings out your eyes," Brittany told him as she resettled her rear on the corner of the desk.

His gaze flicked over her before he dropped into the chair. She was serious about her comment. The shirt did not bring out a damn thing, including his eyes. It was seafoam green, his eyes were dark brown. The girl was denser than a black hole. He proceeded to ignore her and shuffle papers around his desk, checking on the Compound 13 shipments. His gaze flicked to Brittney and he shook his head. She was staring at her reflection in a compact mirror. What she saw while looking in a mirror was anyone's guess, though he had the thought that perhaps she didn't recognize the woman staring back at her from the mirror and was wondering how the little woman got into the reflective glass. Might explain why she stared into the mirror so intently. With a shrug, he looked back down at the papers in his hand.

***

"Looks quiet," Ziva commented from her spot in the passenger seat beside Skylar.

Skylar hummed in agreement, as she patted the steering wheel and smiled idiotically.

Ziva gave her a disgusted look before looking back at the building. Skylar was overjoyed about the fact that they had taken her shiny new Acura instead of Ziva's Kia. She loved the thing to pieces; it was exactly like Storm's except it was black pearl instead of cherry pearl like Storm's. Skylar's explanation of the colors, not hers. All she saw was black or maroon.

"Can we go in then? 'Cause Mack and Jack want out, like now," Stevie said from the third-row seat.

Craig twisted around from where he sat behind Ziva. "Stevie, can't you just get them to calm down for a bit? We can't go in until we're sure it's safe."

"Yeah, since when is safety suddenly important to you people? It apparently wasn't important on the way over here since I didn't have a seatbelt!" Mellissa griped from where she sat crammed between Stevie, Angela, and the cats.

"Shut up, Mellissa, we got here fine didn't we?" Ziva told her.

"Oh sure, we got here fine, what about on the way home? We should have taken two cars! Two cars people!" Mellissa complained. "I could have ridden with A'Cadia in her car! Her car is cooler anyway!"

"She has a point, my car is cooler," A'Cadia pointed out.

"This is a seven-passenger car, so we have eight people, big deal," Ziva said with a shrug. "And two cats." She shrugged again.

Logan shoved open the door and got out of the car. "Let's move people, times a-wastin'."

Skylar craned her neck around to look at him. "Really? Are you sure?"

"Yes, let's move." He started walking toward the building.

A'Cadia shrugged and scooted across the seat and out the door that her father had just exited. As she slipped from the vehicle, Craig opened his door and stepped out as well, flipping the seat so the curtain climbers could get out of the back.

Mack and Jack gave satisfied mews as they hit the pavement. Arching their backs and stretching their legs out one by one. Skylar and Ziva exited the front of the car, everyone followed Logan across the street, and in through the front door as if they owned the building.

"Where is the little weasel?" Logan asked them from where he stood in the center of the lobby.

"Fifth floor, corner office," Craig replied.

Logan stalked—it was the only way to describe how he walked—over to the elevator, stabbed at the button with a finger, and entered the elevator when the doors opened. The ride up was uncomfortable, considering the music. Justin Bieber's Mistletoe poured out of the speaker.

Logan gave a low growl just before the distinct schink signaled the release of his claws. His arm came up and he stabbed the speaker, ending the wail of the muzak.

"Niiiiice one," Stevie said in an impressed tone of voice.

A'Cadia snickered, stopped when Logan shot her a glare. "Well, it isn't even Christmas, so the death of the music system was warranted in my opinion."

Logan rolled his eyes and stepped out of the elevator as the doors opened on the fifth floor. "Its death was warranted because the music sucked. Now let's go."

As they rounded the corner to Lenny's office Ziva arched an eyebrow and looked at Craig, who shook his head in wonder. At least Logan had decent taste in music, he'd known that elevator music was crap. Logan stalked toward Lenny's corner office. The found Brittany sitting behind a desk outside the office doors. It looked as if she was meant to be Lenny's personal assistant. Except, she appeared to be wasting time on her computer looking at her Twitter account, and her desktop was littered with the latest issues of teen magazines.

Logan scowled in her direction, turned away, and stomped toward the office doors, ignoring Brittany altogether. Something seemed to alert her to the fact they were present, some sixth sense or maybe it was simply the fact that Mellissa stepped up beside her and laughed loudly when she read something on Brittney's Twitter feed. Either way, Brittany suddenly turned and stared at them wide-eyed.

"Oh wow, what are you people doing here?"

"We need to see Lenny," Ziva told her as she followed Logan toward the doors.

"Let me see if he's available!" she said as she reached for the phone on the corner of her desk.

Logan spun about, grabbed the phone, lifted from her desk, and flung it at the wall. "Looks like your phone is out of order, no problem, we'll check ourselves."

"That was rude!" Brittany said with a gasp as her hand fluttered in front of her chest in agitation.

A'Cadia rolled her eyes, shoved past Logan, and pushed the doors to Lenny's office open. "At this rate, we'll never get in there."

They entered the office and found Lenny sitting behind his desk in his big leather chair. He glared at them as they piled through the door. "What do you freakoids want?"

Mellissa sauntered forward and set a bag of cheese puffs gently on the corner of his desk. They'd all seen her eating the bag on the way across the parking lot, finish them in the lobby, and reseal the bag on the way up in the elevator with Stevie's boogery assistance. None of them knew how they'd managed to make the bag look as if it were full and no one wanted to know, either. Nor did they want to know what she might have put inside the bag.

"I brought you a snack!" As she stepped back, Mack and Jack leaped up and perched on opposite corners of the desk, glaring menacingly at Lenny through narrowed kitty eyes while their tails swished back and forth like furry pendulums of death.

Lenny scowled at Mellissa as he smashed his fist down on the bag. "Gee it's empty. Like I didn't expect that you little cretin."

"They're in there, they're just fat-free!" she replied cheerfully as she skipped back to her place with the others. "You might wanna wash your hand." She grinned. "Mack hacked up a hairball in there."

Lenny made a face and looked at his hand before yanking open a drawer and pulling out a small bottle of hand sanitizer. "You are a disgusting little twerp."

"Whatever you say, blk water," Mellissa retorted.

Logan growled at Mellissa before looking at Lenny. "Look, Fish Bites, we're here to let you know that we're not intimidated by you or your lame army. You have the Compound 13, for now, but you can't hold out forever. We'll find a way around it and kick your ass. Count on it."

As soon the words "fish bites" popped out of Logan's mouth, Stevie cranked up the iPad and the song from the McDonalds Mcfish bites commercial poured forth from it. A'Cadia slapped him upside the back of the head and he shut it down.

"Ooooh, you brought the big bad Wolverine to intimidate me! Look I'm shaking in my boots!" He held his hands up in front of him in mock horror. Then released a snort. "Oh no wait, I'm not wearing boots. Now ain't that a shame? I'm not scared of you losers. I have the power here, not you." He sent them a scathing look, making sure to include the cats in it as well, though if Ziva wasn't mistaken she caught a slight flicker of fear behind his eyes when he glanced at those giant kitties.

He reached inside his lame-ass salmon-colored suit jacket where it hung off the back of his chair and pulled out a small ball. "Right, now, all of you have already been hit with the Compound 13 mist. Logan, however, hasn't. This here is our new and improved delivery system. Kid-friendly so we can market it worldwide."

Mellissa made a joyous sound. "Pokémon! Is Pikachu gonna show up? Wait, who are the other ones? Stevie look up the other Pokémon, now, do it!" Mellissa demanded.

"It's not a Pokémon ball! It has Compound 13 in it, he's faking people out, so they get blasted with the gas!" Ziva told her.

Mellissa stamped her foot. "That's not fair! I want Pikachu!"

"Shut up you little brat!" He pushed the little red button on the ball and flung it at Logan's feet.

With a contemptuous sneer, Logan kicked the ball into the corner of the room, where it hissed and spat a plume of Compound 13. When it finished and the cloud of gas cleared, Lenny snickered, rubbed his hands together, and gave Logan a smug look.

A'Cadia sent her father a sidelong glance and flexed her hands, her smile didn't quite reach her eyes, and it sent a slight chill up Ziva's spine. Yeah, Lenny should beware.

Mellissa suddenly skipped forward; as she did, she pulled a bottle out of the small backpack that was slung over her shoulder. "Hey, Lenny, I've got one more thing for you!" She placed a small juice container on the corner of his desk.

Lenny sneered at it. "Apple juice? Seriously."

"Oh uh, yeah apple juice. Just for you, special. It's organic!" She turned away to walk back to her place next to Angela, as she did, Ziva could have sworn she heard Mellissa mumble something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like, "Yeah, apple juice, not like it's a jar full of cat pee or anything." It took all Ziva had to keep a straight face.

Mellissa rocked back on her heels, hands clasped behind her back, smiling. "Oh, and you might wanna refrigerate that, it's been in my backpack all day!"

Lenny simply glared back at her silently. His gaze slipped from Mellissa over to Logan. "Now, let's move on, shall we? You're all finished. Over. Done. You have no powers left. I will rule, you will see. Now. Get. Out. Of. My. Office."

Schink. Schink

Lenny's eyes peeled wide at the sound, pinging back and forth between Logan and A'Cadia as he scrambled up out of his chair, backing away from them. "Impossible!"

Logan's smile was devilish. "No, it's not at all. You underestimated our recovery time. You know how quickly we heal." His smile grew. "You also hit A'Cadia already and while we weren't able to manufacture an antidote from the markers we found in her blood, our people did come up with a blocker that lasts for several hours, therefore I am unaffected. Now, what was that you were saying about having all the power?"

"Brittany! Brittany, call security! Now!" Lenny screamed.

Brittany appeared framed in the doorway. "Oh, I can't do that, Lenny. The big scary guy threw my phone against the wall. It's broken."

"Use your cell phone, you moron!"

She scrunched her nose at him. "But the number for security was programmed into the desk phone and I don't remember it."

Lenny gave Logan a panicked look as he took a step forward. "I wrote it down for you! Didn't you keep it?"

Her face was still scrunched up. "Maybe, let me go look." She left the room, a few seconds later her voice sounded from outside the office. "I found it! You did write it down on a Post-It-Note! Wait, I lost it."

Lenny groaned and pressed his back against the window behind his desk.

"No, no, I found it! It got stuck to my forehead! I'll call them now!"

"Too late, sea salt," Logan growled low and rushed forward. Lenny gave a high-pitched screech as Logan ran at him. Logan's fist curled into the fabric of Lenny's shirt and he lifted him from the floor. "Goodbye, kid." He threw Lenny through the window.

Ziva winced. "So not the way I'd wanna go." She stepped up to the broken window and leaned carefully forward to look down at the sidewalk below. Her jaw dropped. "What the hell?"

Skylar moved up on one side of her, Craig on the other side. Skylar frowned and moved her head from side to side searching. "I agree, what the haystack?"

"And Storm wonders where we learn those words from," Angela said with a tiny giggle. "Well, except for haystack, does Skylar ever swear?"

A'Cadia shoved in alongside them. "What are you guys complaining about?"

Ziva gestured at the sidewalk below. "No grease spot! That's what! If he hit the pavement, where is he?"

Brittany breezed into the room, smiling at them. "Security is on their way up! If you're looking for Lenny, he's gone. Barbie called me, she was down below catching some rays, and she saw Lenny fall. She transported him out before he could hit the ground. He's totally safe! So, like, no worries!"

"Where are they?" A'Cadia snarled.

"I don't know, she didn't say." Brittany took a step back, putting herself a safe distance from A'Cadia. Her phone rang and she held up a finger. "Hold on a sec, would you. Hello? Oh, hey, Lenny, baby. Oh, okay, sure, right. I'm glad you're okay. Right, bye!"

"Where is he?" A'Cadia repeated.

Brittany stared at the phone with a frown. "I'm not sure. But wherever he is, he said he's chilis. Which doesn't make sense, I mean okay, I guess if they were someplace cold he'd be chilly. But chilis? Unless there are chili peppers, maybe they're at a chili festival!" She gave them a questioning look.

Ziva slapped a hand to her forehead.

Craig looked at her. "Does that mean he's at a Chili's restaurant?"

Skylar shrugged. "I'd go with that."

"Me too, I'm hungry!" Stevie said brightly.

"Let's just get out of here," Logan said darkly as he stalked toward the door. "There's too many of those damn restaurants we'll never find him before he moves on." He stalked toward the door and Brittney scrambled quickly out of his way.

With a shrug, Ziva followed him. The others fell into step behind them. A'Cadia grinned up at the broken speaker in the elevator as they stepped inside. Just as the elevator doors closed, they heard the distinct ding of the second elevator, the doors sliding open as theirs slid closed, and the sound of the security force racing down the hallway toward Lenny's office.

"Well, that was good timing," Craig said, sounding relieved.

"Damn straight." Logan led them out of the building and back to the car.

The ride back was mostly quiet. Save for Mellissa's renewed complaints about her lack of a seatbelt.

"Seriously, this is child abuse! I should report all of you to CPS!"

Logan held up a hand and released the claws. Mellissa's complaints subsided to an angry grumble.

They managed to slip back into the school unnoticed by Storm, a major accomplishment on their part. Though Logan speculated it might have something to do with a note he left telling her he was taking them out for pizza. As soon as they were inside, they moved upstairs and into Ziva and Skylar's room for a quick meeting.

Logan propped his body against the doorjamb. "We surprised him today but don't expect him to back off. The little monsoon of stupidity has balls, I'll give him that much. And unfortunately, he's too stupid to be scared enough of me to back off."

Craig rubbed his temples. "Right, this is going swimmingly. What do we do now?"

Logan shoved himself away from the doorframe. "Nothing. At least for the moment. We sent him the message. He knows we have a strength he can't defeat. Give him some room to stew. If we get lucky he'll trip himself up and we won't have to do a damn thing."

A'Cadia snorted. "Or he'll get lucky and stumble onto something bigger and we'll be screwed even more."

"Don't buy trouble, princess," Logan told her with a little smile before he turned away and left the room.

When A'Cadia turned to the others to say something, she found Skylar beaming at her. "What?"

Skylar threw her arms around her and hugged her tightly. "He called you princess! He's given you a little nickname! We'll have that special Daddy/Daughter moment before you know it!"

A'Cadia shoved her away. "Stop it, Skylar! This is not a Hallmark movie! God, get over it!" She rose and stalked out of the room angrily.

Skylar was still beaming.

Ziva shook her head. "Let her be, Skylar. If you push her she's likely to skewer you."

"It'll be worth it if she and Logan have "that moment"!" Skylar gushed.

Skylar was all about those happy-happy family moments. If they didn't watch her, she'd start a family scrapbook for Logan and A'Cadia or something equally as ridiculous. And it would likely involve a lot of glitter too.