xp_logs | There Will Be Peace...: Act 2- Scene 1- "Where Have All the Children Gone?"

Jean approaches Jan about not having seen Nico and Dori for most of the day.

Backdated to Friday the 26th.

Intuition was a persistent thing. Something had been nagging on Jean's mind all afternoon. It was only when doing one of her checkups on the students did she realize what that was.

"Have you seen Nico or Dori lately? I'm...not sensing them nearby. Did they say anything about going skiing or heading into town?" she said as she walked into the main living area.

Even then Jean would've gotten a glimmer, though. No, this was...definitely out of her coverage area.

Sometimes she thought about issuing ankle monitors with adamantium casing to all the students. Functional and fashionable.

Jan looked over at Jean and shook her head. "Nope," she said. "They didn't say anything to me. I saw them this morning but haven't seen them since. Everyone else is here? They can't have gotten very far without a car unless they called a taxi."

"Everyone else is accounted for," Jean said. She walked over to the window as the curtains pulled back. She peered out.

"It doesn't feel right. Why would they leave?" she said, then turned away, folding her arms as she stared at the fire, watching the flames dance. Her eyes flickered toward Jan.

"Call the local cab company, see if they had any young women call in earlier in the afternoon. I'm going to run a trace on their cell phones. Either way, they have some explaining to do."

"Maybe they left a note somewhere?" Jan frowned, wanting to think the best of people while at the same time hoping the girls hadn't been hurt. "Maybe they thought they'd only be gone for a short time, although they still should have told one of the chaperones. But yeah, I'll start calling cab companies and see if anyone was sent over here today."

"Maybe," Jean said, walking over the desk in the corner and opening up her laptop.

"I'll check for any signs after I run the phone trace. If they're in danger knowing sooner rather than later will make me feel better." That nagging feeling was still eating away at her.

"And here I thought we were going to get one normal vacation," she said with a smirk.

Jan shook her head. "Nah, not a chance. There's too many people from Xavier's here. Field trip curse, right? It's like a rule or something, you get this many people who live at the mansion together away from the mansion and something is going to happen. Let's just hope whatever happened here isn't too bad."

"Remind me to check with Amanda when we get back to do a thorough mystical cleansing of the mansion, again," Jean said ruefully after she typed in the parameters for the search and waited, tapping her fingers against the desk.

"How's it going with the cab company?"

"No luck so far," Jan said, "but there are more to try. At least there aren't like a zillion different cab companies, but there's more than one."

Jean nodded, staring thoughtfully at the screen.

"It's taking awhile to--" The computer suddenly beeped, registering their location. If Jean hadn't had been propping up her chin with her hand, her mouth probably would've fallen agape.

"Oh." It was one of those recognizable, placeholder phrases, the one that uttered with somewhat startled surprise in lieu of not quite having much else to say.

Jan looked over at Jean. "What? What did you find?"

"Well....I know why I couldn't sense them. They're definitely not in town, or even in the state for that matter," Jean said, turning the laptop to show her the map on the screen where the cell phone trace had located them: Los Angeles, California.