xp_logs | Jean-Paul, Rachel and Nathan

Jean-Paul is stalked, shanghaied, and winds up being fed cookies and beer.

Something was off and had been off ever since he'd returned from his agility training.

Jean-Paul was certain that he was being followed, but every time he thought he'd caught a glimpse of movement from the corner of his eye, there wasn't anyone there to see. His room seemed to be inviolate --for once -- and that was a relief, but that didn't change the glimpses of no one that he kept missing in the hall or library.

He finally gave up around the time he went to check the evening mail drop-off and caught a glimpse of what had to be the largest squirrel or smallest person on the grounds ducking behind a tree.

"You might have noticed that I have a very heavy crate of books here. I will have no problem squishing people who are underfoot with it."

A soft giggle was his only reply for a moment. Then, a round little face surrounded by curly red hair and dominated by wide gray eyes peered out from behind the tree. "Won't squash me," Rachel informed him. She stepped out where he could see her, revealing that if she had been a squirrel, it would have been an awfully pink squirrel; the easiest description for the shade of the winter coat in which she was bundled up was 'Pepto-Bismol'. The wool hat, on the other hand, was lavendar. "Dad would be MAD. Boom! Splash!"

"Do I look like I'm afraid of your father?" Jean-Paul set the books down on the porch and regarded his alarmingly-hued new shadow. "Why are you following me?"

Rachel grinned and floated a few centimetres off the ground, eyeing him. "'Cause it's fun." She reached out a mittened hand. The mitten was bright blue. "Come have cookies! Please?" The big gray eyes were beseeching.

Options: Go along and hope that whatever this was would be over with as soon as possible. Run and be followed by a persistent, small, female Nathan. Run very fast and be tracked down by a large, male Nathan looking to avenge his daughter's disappointment with the world.

"Fine, I will play along." He paused long enough to shove the newly-arrived books to the corner of the porch and headed for the stairs. Halfway down, he noticed that Rachel was not treating hand-holding as an optional matter; she'd latched on to his fore and ringfingers like grim, be-mittened death.

She was also beaming at the world - and at the much taller figure that stepped out into view on the path leading down to the boathouse. "Found him!" she sang out to her father. "He wasn't hiding."

"Clever you," Nathan said, and winked at his daughter, provoking another fit of giggles. He turned his attention to Jean-Paul, raising an eyebrow. "Well?" he drawled.

"No good deed goes unpunished, but that is fine. I wear martyrdom well." He'd hoped that he would be released with Nate's appearance, but Rachel seemed to want to keep her prize. "You're looking rested, at least."

"Oh," Nathan said, falling in beside them, "I am. Turned off the computer, slept in, played with her Highness half the day... I may even have napped at the same time she napped, but let's not tell anyone else about that, shall we?" Another fit of giggles from Rachel. "Moira's kidnapped Dom... somewhere, I'm not sure where, for conversations of the female sort. So we'd have the boathouse to ourselves. I could even offer you a beer with your cookies."

"Beer!" Rachel piped up.

Jean-Paul relaxed a bit. "Good. You needed it." The current stupidity on the journals could wait, he decided. "What did you tell this child about me that she has to treat me like a kite on a string, anyway?"

"That you bore careful watching," Nathan said with a perfectly straight face. "Because you might run off, if she didn't keep her eye on you." And, as if on cue, Rachel was looking up-and-sideways at him with what might have passed for suspicion if she hadn't been grinning from ear to ear. "She learns fast."

Jean-Paul pulled a face at Nate. "You are not going to let me forget that, are you?" He glanced down at Rachel again. "She can't tell what I'm thinking, can she?"

Rachel gazed up at him innocently. "I'm cute?" she volunteered, and her father nearly fell over laughing.

"I am immune to cute. A happy side-effect to being me. And right now I am thinking words at your father that Madame Dom will teach you when you're older, I am sure." It wasn't that bad, really, but still...he was not exactly emotionally equipped to deal with children. He'd barely been able to assert himself over a cat.

Nathan laughed the rest of the way to the boathouse. Where, thankfully for Jean-Paul's peace of mind, Rachel sat down at the coffee table with a small plate of cookies and her box of crayons, and limited herself to grinning at her father and their guest as she doodled. Nathan returned from the kitchen with two beers, setting one down in front of Jean-Paul.

"I think she likes you," he said, claiming his favorite armchair. "Watch, you'll have a portrait to take home with you when you go."

"How did you...?" Oh, right. The school. He'd definitely spent too much time in his own company these last months. "Sorry. Had a mental lapse. I have actually been summoned home for the holidays. Home as in colder and more northern."

"This is a good thing, I hope?" Nathan ventured, eyeing his friend. "I mean, back to old stomping grounds, etecetera..."

"An obligation. A friend of a friend broke her leg badly. She will be on her feet by Christmas, but not so good to drive from Montreal to Sudbury to see her family. So she called and asked if I would drive her." He shrugged, picking at the label on his bottle. "I can fly up, drive her, hide out and ski for a day or so, then reverse things. And it is not as if I had plans."

"I was going to offer an invitation to Muir," Nathan said, "but that can wait until another time." He popped open his beer, and with a flick of telekinesis, sent it gently in Rachel's direction. Without even looking at him, she deflected it neatly into the wastebasket. "Nice one, Ray."

"Thanks!"

Jean-Paul rolled his eyes heavenward and thought in Nate's direction.

'Yes, fine, your daughter is cute and talented and none shall stand against her. It really is insufferable of you to show off your powers in stereo.'

Out loud. "I am not much for the holidays anyway, but I appreciate the thought."

Nathan was repressing a grin. "I'll think it again sometime, like I said," he promised. "Sounds like you're rather looking forward to some quiet time hiding out and skiing, though."

"It's something to do. If I accept her invitation to stay, it means that I will have to answer the same stupid questions everyone asks and be polite about it. If I go skiing, it means that I can misbehave."

"Grumpy," Rachel said in a sing-song voice. "Grumpy, grouchy... grumpy."

"Rachel," Nathan murmured.

"GRRR!"

"I've been shanghaied by someone who'd have to levitate herself to qualify as an ankle-biter," Jean-Paul pointed out. "It's embarrassing. So I'm allowed to be growly."

Rachel tilted her head at him, as if trying to process his words, and then extended the piece of 'artwork' to him. It featured three stick figures - one tall and gray-haired, another much smaller with curly red hair, and one with a fearsome scowl.

Jean-Paul raised one eyebrow, then remarked casually to Nate, "When she gets old enough to build a decent vocabulary, I am transferring back to Alpha Flight."