She'd always suspected there was gross negligence running rampant at the mansion. And she tried the polite route of ringing the com and waiting patiently by the gate. Waiting. And waiting. Hands on hips. Buses came and went. She folded her arms. A camera flashed. Lori contemplated taking a seat on the curb near the tall grass when a freaking geriatric couple toddled past in slow motion.

Lori had her limits. Children were running the Mansion and today, that was going to change. She would start simply with the things she could do in the here and now.

Here lay two obnoxious birds and one large wrought-iron stone.

The electricity mutant charged the gate that stood between her and the Mansion lawn. She was pleased when she raised her hand toward the metal structure and the wrought-iron struggled against its moorings. There was a distinct up-tick in camera shutter clicks as the whole thing pulled free from the ground.

Pulling things toward her own personal magnetic field proved a calculated risk, but she was pretty quick in directing and side-stepping the gate as it rocketed past her and accelerated toward the crowd of gawkers. There was quite the mad scramble and more than a few people had to dive in order to avoid getting hit.

"From this day on there is no soliciting, no loitering, and no photography." Lori pitched her voice so that she was sure that she'd be heard and smiled her sweetest. "These rules will be enforced for the protection and privacy of the minors that are in attendance at this address and extends to fifty feet from the gate." She smiled again and extended her hand toward the gate. As if they hadn't seen it. As if it hadn't almost flattened a few of them.

They jumped even further away when the gate jerked from its resting place. "Thank you for your understanding and compliance in this matter." Smile, smile, so many murder smiles. This time the gate dragged slowly toward her. Lori was glad that she didn't bring Roger here today. Her gut said the place needed to be cleaned up. Her gut was rarely wrong.

Lori pulled the gate closed with her firmly settled on the inside.

It didn't occur to her until she nearly had the gate seated back where it had been (if a little worse for wear) that someone may have actually tried to use the com to let her in, but that her own power had probably fried it. No regrets.

Well the day had finally come. Max had spent weeks trying to make enough money to pay his rent, who knew that a studio apartment in New York city would cost so much. He had saved up some but was still short for the month. The landlord had posted a notice that he had a week to pay or be evicted, and facing the fact Max decided it was time to move on.

He had heard rumors that there was a mansion nearby that took in mutants. Opening a popular gossip rag had turned out to be more helpful. He had read that the Mansion was a safe haven for mutants, and there were suspected ties to the X-Men. Max approached the gates, his duffle bag filled to the bursting. A small group of people were standing outside the gates looking terrified of something.

He pushed past an old couple and approached the gates. They looked scratched, bent, and generally in a bad state.

"Damn, maybe this place is not as flashy as they made it out to be." he sighed.

He tried the buzzer , to no avail. He decided he could either stand there and wait or make his own way in. If they took in mutants they would probably be okay with him making his own way in. He pulled his power, making himself weightless, and launched himself over the gate and onto the well groomed lawn of the mansion.

He noticed a woman walking away from the gate with her back turned. If what he had heard about the Mansion were true she was probably a kind teacher or something heading inside. He approached her slowly, shifting the bag on his back.

"Excuse me. is this the Xavier Mansion? I'm kinda looking for a place to stay." He said

She'd been working herself up, mentally. Lori had to be ready to defend herself if one of the less friendly X-men showed up. There was also the small matter of having kidnapped a few of them... for science. She could probably still do science, now that she thought about it. And, having access to a whole slew of new powers and all the genetic diversity that entailed could—

> "Excuse me. is this the Xavier Mansion? I'm kinda looking for a place to stay."

Well. At least he hadn't called her ma'am.

"Sure is, pudding." She turned expecting... well, someone maybe a bit smaller. Not that his voice had sounded particularly young. It was just that Lori never expected everyone to be taller than her. "It's the Sister School, but "gifted youngsters" all the same. C'mon. I'll get you signed up."

Because there was no better meat shield than a kid looking for sanctuary. Lowercase S. She didn't have her paws in government funded anything anymore. Lori hesitated all the same, eying the kid up and down before turning toward those big ol' wooden doors. "You look a bit old to be enrolling. Are you trying to join the team?"

The shorter woman greeted him kindly. Maybe this place wouldn't be so bad if everyone were this nice. He had basically just shown up and announced himself a mutant. Almost anywhere else he would have been met with some less than friendly greetings but this woman seemed rather pleasant.

He adjusted the straps on his massive duffle bag and started following the woman towards the mansion. She mentioned enrolling in school and Max felt a pang in his stomach. Few terrors got to Max as much as the thought of being stuck in a classroom. She mentioned a team, perhaps she was talking about the Xmen. He had always heard there was no such thing as a free lunch, he would probably need to try and join if he was going to live in the cooshie mansion.

"I'm 19. Definitely not looking for more schooling, so yeah suppose I'm here to join the team." He sighed.

Maybe he could get a nice HR job with the group and not have to do a ton of field work. Whatever he ended up doing he hoped it didn't involve a ton of field work, so with his luck he'd be out on the streets patrolling everyday.

"I'm Max by the way. Are you staff here or just another resident?" He asked

Yes, yes. He would do quite nicely. The boy might not be an innocent little student, but he was fresh off the turnip truck and quite likely new to mutant politics.

"Hey, if you don't want to be an X, you wouldn't have to. There's jobs to fill around here. Gate duty, for one." Because that was a thing she'd just established that needed doing so, yeah. She'd hire him to shoo the twerps who took photos of mutants from the gate. Far be it for Lori to pressure someone into doing actual vigilante "good."

The elemental charged the metal tack on the Mansion's front doors and pulled the fittings toward herself so that the heavy double doors pulled themselves open before Lori and Max had to dirty their hands with touching anything that could later be dusted for prints.

"Lori Faust," She beamed proudly and offered her hand, even if her skin was buzzing with low-level electric charge. "Public Relations and Mutant Experience." There. That sounded rather like a real job. And now it was one. She was hiring herself. Sam could thank her later.

"Let's see, administration is down here." There were convenient little signs that pointed out which direction they should go to register Max and Lori's son Roger as residents. "But, I bet you're dying to get a look around. We can totally leave the paperwork for later. You want to head upstairs and see the living conditions?" Also neatly labeled for their convenience. This was maybe the second time Lori' been to the Mansion and she'd never been upstairs.