"Lilli... we know where you've been." Sam said quietly, looking around to check for eavesdroppers.
Emily leaned in and looked Lilli dead in the eye as she spoke:
"With Charles Xavier."
Lilli's eyes widened. "Excuse me?" She asked, hoping she'd heard wrong.
"Lilli, we know all about you and your little friends over at that school. And your little running away thing. Getting caught by Kezing. Ditching your friends. We know everything," Sam said.
Lilli was stunned into silence. Who were Sam and Emily? Her childhood best friends? She looks between them suspiciously. "Alright, then," she said, "here's the million dollar question: How? How do my two childhood friends know about all that?"
Sam and Emily smiled equally fake, placid customer service smiles. "Because, Lilli," Sam laughed, "we're from Chaos!"
"We want you to join us," Emily whispered. "Imagine, all the power in the world at your fingertips! A new, healthy family you could be a part of! Join us, work for the Great Lord, and it's all yours."
Lilli stood up and started backing away, shaking her head. She just ruined her friendship with the people who mattered most to her to escape this hellish situation. She was NOT going back into the mutant world.
"No, I'm done with that world. Leave me alone!" Lilli said forcefully, glaring at her friends as they followed her. "I'm never involving myself in anything mutant-related ever again."
"Oh, Lilli. Don't be like this!" Emily said, sounding genuinely upset.
Sam, however, did not share Emily's sympathy. "If you're not involving yourself in anything mutant related, how will you sneak away? Using your powers is using the mutant side of you."
"At this point, I would do anything to get away from you two." Lilli said angrily.
"I believe it," Emily paused, smiling viciously, "given your track record of abandoning your friends."
Lilli felt a pang in her chest as she remembered the look on Peter's face when she told him she was leaving. Emily wasn't wrong. First, Lilli had left her normal friends at school. Then, she'd ditched her mutant friends. She really was an awful friend. But Lilli didn't want to think about that at the moment. She was too angry at her friends trying to force her into a life she didn't want to live, on the opposite side of the friends she used to fight beside.
"Can you guys just go crawl back into the dark little hole you came out of?" Lilli spat.
"Fine. We'll leave. But this won't be the last we see of each other," Sam growled. He and Emily gave Lilli one last look before turning around and walking away. They were probably expecting to take her with them. Someone at Chaos wouldn't be happy.
Lilli returned home and collapsed on the couch. She'd had a long day and wanted nothing more than to turn on the small TV in the corner and bore herself with whatever was on.
Lilli knew she would have to find a job and eventually move out of her parent's house. But without a high school degree or work experience, that would be hard. But she knew she could do it. The whole X-Men thing was just a small blip in her life's timeline. She would, from that day on, live a normal, mutant-free life. And it would be okay. It would be free of stress, unpredictability, and life-threatening situations.
It would be just how Lilli wanted it to be.