He's been watching her ever since she stood up for that Cajun back in the swamp. She won't talk about what happened when she was gone, and it makes him uneasy. Maybe she's under some kind of mind control or something. He almost hopes she is—it would give him an excuse to go after that cocky former Acolyte. The guy's always gotten on his nerves.

One way or another, it's obvious Gambit's gotten to her. There's no way she would have stepped in back there otherwise. She just pushed a woman off a cliff a few weeks ago, for crying out loud. If she'd felt anything remotely resembling that towards Gambit, she would've let him kick the miscreant around for a while.

He thinks protecting your own kidnapper shows signs of serious mental trauma, but Professor X doesn't seem too concerned. He wonders what the security in this place would be like without a rational adult around. Everybody seems more interested in how Gambit acted than how she feels about it. The prof has even made some comments that sounded disturbingly open to having the Cajun move in, if he wanted to.

No kidnappers are moving in on his watch.

She spends a lot of her evenings out on balconies, watching the sky but casting a lot of glances at the trees. He resets one of the laser cannons out on the grounds to be more sensitive to movement in the branches. She leaves early for school and hangs around late afterwards. He has some of the other kids keep an eye on her. One night he passes her room and hears music coming underneath the door—not the punk rock stuff she's been assaulting the air with ever since she came, but quick and bubbly music played so quietly he couldn't have made it out without enhanced hearing abilities. It sounds like New Orleans jazz. He makes sure there's a security camera with a clear view of her door, and one of her window, just in case she gets any ideas about sneaking out.

In the weeks since she took out Mystique, she was even more reclusive than usual. Now she's hanging out with everybody again, talking to them just like before and laughing a bit more than she used to. The prof thinks Gambit helped her as much as she helped Gambit, but he counters that a full-fledged X-rescue would have gone a long way towards restoring her sense of family feeling.

She starts getting irritated with what she calls his over-protectiveness. They get into a big fight over whether he's trying to look out for her or to smother her. It ends when he suggests maybe somebody needs to save her from herself, and she balls her fists tight by her sides and stomps off.

Ororo says he's as bad as a mother hen, and somebody must have heard her say it once, because he catches one of the students whispering something about a mother hen on steroids. He doesn't care what they call him. They can hate him, for all he cares. They'll get over it. They're kids. And nobody, but nobody, steals one of his kids.

He kind of hopes that Gambit comes back around, after all. He's got a few choice things to say to him.

For Rogue's sake, he'll keep the object lessons to a minimum.