Embrace teh Sulk All Ye Who Enter Here (attn Kat)

Katrina had not been sleeping. She had not been sleeping since the beginning of the school year. It wasn't that her body didn't need the sleep, it was more that it needed the sleep from about 1 in the morning to about 10 in the morning, or maybe 11. The school seemed to have other plans, though. They involved waking up the young illusionist far earlier than was really necessary and forcing her to go to math class first thing in the morning to learn about things she already had learned last year in her study sessions in the Mondragon Labs library with Slate. Yet, she still wasn't allowed to sleep in an extra hour. She'd much rather skip the math class and study with Slate, but that might have been because she missed Slate much more than the math sessions.

She was tired all day long, and then at about 4 pm her body regularly decided that it was about time to be awake for the next 8 hours or so. As a result her evenings were very productive. This evening she was hard at work on her Halloween costume. The really difficult part was, of course, deciding what she should be.

Katrina turned this way, then that way in front of the mirror, examining herself from every angle. She was wearing her nightgown, but it looked more like she was wearing a very lacy white dress with a big white bow on the back. And she was approximately halfway between invisible and visible. Except her feet. Those were completely invisible. She twirled once more. All in all, she didn't make a bad little ghost girl.

She wished she could show somebody, so they could help her decide what to become for the looming holiday. Like Calley. He would have enjoyed the idea of spooking people with her half-vanished act. But he had disappeared even more thoroughly than a cockroach when the light is turned on. And this time he hadn't come back. At first she hadn't been too worried, because Calley was always coming and going, like a cat who kept his own schedule and no one else's. Eventually though, she had become worried that something might be really wrong.

Maybe not a ghost. It suddenly seemed a bit too morbid of a costume. In a blink of an eye the ghostie was gone and in her place stood a cat girl with yellow tabby colored hair and finely etched tabby stripes across her skin, like a pale tattoo from head to tail. A yellow tabby tail swished behind her. Tails = definitely in style at the mansion. And whiskers, too. Katrina gave her whiskers an experimental twitch.

SLAM!

Yikes! Before she had any idea what had made the noise, the Kat girl had instinctively skitter-jumped behind the bed for protection. Random bumps in the night were rarely a good sign. Especially at the mansion, where bumps in the night could mean anything from attacking robots to rousing bouts of screaming pain.

After a moment it seemed like the SLAM! was really nothing more than what it sounded like, which was a door at the end of the boys' hallway and not a robot, or a painmancer, or a ghost, or even a vampire. And that meant that it was a rather curious noise, because who would be up this late at night and slamming doors, aside from hormonal teenagers with messed up internal clocks? If nothing was going to be attacking, then the curious Kat might go find out who was making such a racket.

Katrina padded quietly down the hallway, past the stairs and into the boy's hallway. She actually had no idea if girls were allowed down this way after dark, so she tiptoed extra carefully to avoid any creaky floor spots, like the one that covered the Formerly Gaping Hole Above the Stairway. Sneak. Sneak. Sneak. And... Door! There was one door slightly open, near to the end of the hallway. A door that hadn't been opened for at least a week, no matter how many times Katrina had checked it.

“Calley!” In that moment, she forgot all about those important teenage things like looking cool and acting her age. By the time she remembered the part about not being noisy at night, the door had already slammed shut again and she was en route to the bed, via flying Kat tackle hug with an illusionary tail streaming behind. The thought that Calley might not want company was filed under Should Have Been Obvious but Never Occurred to Her.

“Welcome home! I'm glad you got back before Halloween! I missed you!” Head tilt. Illusionary whisker twitch. Why was he hiding under a blanket anyway? File moved to Suddenly Became Blatantly Clear.

“You were gone a really long time this time,” she added in a small voice with a small frown and drooping whiskers. The statement was half apology for tackling him and half excuse for interrupting his solitary sulking and half a question about why it had been such a very long time this time.

Mental math -2. Good thing her math tutor was finally home.

The blanketed lump that was Calley didn't react to her tackle hug right away. Eventually as she spoke, he did give the blankets at flick with his finger, creating a tiny little opening in the blanket through which he peered with one eye. Katrina peered back at him, trying to read his expression through the tiny little crack in the blankets.

Finally, after a long pause he responded in a saturnine tone,
>>>"Yeah, well... I had to see a man about a whale."

Yeah. Right. She gave him him an incredulous look, through that little tent fold in the blanket. What was that supposed to mean? That he didn't want to tell her what happened, or was there really a whale involved? Maybe a whale of a problem was what was bothering the cantankerous tiger shifter, though that still didn't tell her what the problem was.

She pouted. He wasn't glad to see her at all, it seemed. Then again, given the mood he was in, he probably wouldn't have been happy to see anyone. Had she expect her mere presence to cheer him up?

Yes, she kind of had.

So she was on to plan B, whatever that was supposed to entail. Her experience dealing with sulky teenage boys included a morose Geo who liked to smash things when he was upset and a lugubrious Dio, who needed hugs when melancholy gripped his heartstrings for some unknown reason. Now it was Calley's turn to be surly and unsociable.

And people said girls were moody.

She reached out a hand an pinched the top of the tent with her fingers. Slowly she lifted it up until she could see his whole glowering growly face. “Do you want to talk about it?”

>>>"No," he answered immediately. "I don't want to talk about it. Thanks."

Before Katrina could respond to that statement, Calley gave a mighty thrash (that sent the sheets flying sideways and Katrina skittering to the end of the bed) and let out a growl that was almost as fierce sounding as it would have been had he actually been a tiger at the time.

Then the boy who didn't want to talk about it, thanks, proceeded to talk about it an awful lot, in his own roundabout way. Katrina crawled cautiously back toward the middle of the bed again.

>>>"And why do people ask things like that, anyway? It's not like anyone actually cares. It's like--It's like--" 

“I care,” the thirteen-year-old said in a small voice as the tiger-shifter grasped at the air with his hand, as if he was trying to capture his next words as they drifted by on the night air.

>>>"It's like everything's so far away from everything else, that none of it even matters." 

She had a hard time wrapping her brain around that concept, but didn't have long to dwell on it before Calley was rolling back onto his stomach again, trying to smother his next words in his pillow. This time his flopping didn't send her skitter-flying, perhaps because she hadn't been sitting quite as on top of him as before.

>>>"I thought I was going to die. But I didn't. And I told Neena I was glad to see her again, and all she said was 'go to your room'. That's what you say to someone who broke curfew. Or hit a baseball through the window."

Katrina was speechless for a moment. Had she heard that right?

Calley's hand was grasping again, but this time grasped the sheet rather than air. The sheet whipped through the air and Katrina ducked so it wouldn't hit her in the face and the sheet settled again on top of both of them. It was much darker underneath the Impenetrable Shield of Misery. Even the slight glow from the window was stifled by the layer of fabric that now enveloped her along with Mr. McSulkface, who apparently had a very good reason for his current mood.

>>>"I thought I was going to die."

She had heard him right.

“Oh Calley, I'm glad you didn't,” Katrina did her best to put her arms around his thin, prostrate form that was halfway shielded by the bed and entirely tangled in sheets. Her efforts ended up resembling a cuddle more than a hug, in the end. “You're my best friend. I don't know what I would do without you.”

Katrina lay quietly for a moment. Thoughts swirled through her read about all the possible things that could have happened to Calley that he thought he was going to die. There were countless dangers in New York, from muggers to car accidents. He could have been attacked by vampires for all she knew, after all, it had happened before. Finally, so many questions had piled themselves up in her head that there wasn't room for them all any more and they began to slip out of her mouth before she had a chance to weigh whether or not it was the best idea to ask them.

“What happened?” The only time her life had been in danger (at the end of her stay at Mondragon Labs) she'd had friends there with her. At least if she had died, she wouldn't have been alone. Not that she wanted others to die with her, just to be there when she died. Not that she wanted to die at all. She couldn't imagine what it must have been like for Calley to be close to death and to know that there was no one there to even realize that he was gone.

“Are you safe now?” If the danger wasn't past, she'd do her best to protect him or help him escape. He wouldn't be alone in facing the dangers anymore. Not if she could help it.

“How could Neena be so...” cold, uncaring, heartless, Katrina did some grasping at words at words of her own, “...so stupid?” She had thought that the assistant headmistress was cool. It had seemed like she really cared about the students, but now the tween wasn't sure what to think about the white eyed teacher who couldn't even see that her student needed love more than he needed some lame punishment.

He was safe now, probably, most likely, he thought. That was a good sign. Also a sign that he might still be in shock, just a little bit.

Katrina snuggled closer when Calley rolled over onto his side, and put both her arms around him in a proper hug. Finding out that her best friend had almost died was not exactly easy, and it had to be even harder for him, being the near fatality. She felt guilty that she hadn't even realized he was in danger. She hadn't been nearly worried enough. He was Calley; he left sometimes, and he always came back. Her childlike thoughts had never stretched to imagine that something might actually happen to her friend that would prevent him from ever coming back at all.

She took the time to really appreciate being able to hug him as she listened to his story. The last time she had hugged him, she hadn't realized that it might be the last time ever. One never did realize those things at the time.

>>>"...I kind of went to face my evil-overlord-father-type figure, I guess. I've... been planning it for awhile, but I still maybe didn't really think I stood a chance. He's strong. But... I guess maybe I'm getting stronger, because I didn't die. Which was a nice surprise. Except I really pushed it too far, and I think I might have almost killed myself. The fight was a few days ago, but my powers are still out of whack."

Tiger shifting and healing could get pushed too far and get out of whack? That was a little confusing to the twelve-year-old until she remembered that Calley was the one who originally advised that she not to trust every other person with the knowledge of the full extent of her powers. Probably he prescribed to his own advice and hadn't told anyone what he could do either.

>>>"It was... it was..." His hand curled into a fold of the sheet, tightening slowly but steadily. "Not scary. It should have been, but it wasn't: I acted, and it all felt so right. Focused. But then it was over."

And the evil-father-person...?

>>>"What's scary is that I'm here. And... I didn't plan to be. I've been planning for over a year. Since before I met you, even. Every day, I've had a plan, and a goal, and things I had to do. And now it's over. And I won, I guess. But... I don't have anything planned now. Just a talk with Neena. After that, there's just... nothing."

He'd been planning to have a fight to the death for over a year? And he hadn't expected to win. Katrina hugged him even harder and sniffled. If her cheeks were wet, she didn't realize it. Her mind was too busy reeling from all of the information. He hadn't told her his plan. He probably hadn't told anybody. He hadn't even told her he when he was leaving and knew he wouldn't come back. But how could he have explained it? She wouldn't have let him go if he had told her.

She had so many questions, but she couldn't possibly ask them all at once. There were so many holes in his story. Holes that could have been filled in with details about weird powers and mysterious father's fates. Those questions, though, could wait. What was important that Calley was safe, and that he knew he was wanted here, even if teachers were overly strict and tween girls intruded into his Personal Sphere of Angst.

“It sounds like you need to make some new plans now. Better ones this time, that don't include dying at the end.” Katrina was trying to be lighthearted, but it was a sad effort to cheer him up, considering that she had punctuated her sentence with a big sniffle right at the end.

Calley actually laughed. Almost. A little bit. The villainous tatterdemalion figured that was a good sign in her efforts to make him feel better. And he hugged her back, which was even better.

“My plans?” The thirteen year old thought about it for a moment before answering. “I'm going to go to college. After I graduate. And I'm going trick-or-treating on Halloween. I don't know what I'm going to go as, yet though. I was working on a plan for that when you got home. Being a kitty was one of the options.” There were a lot of options. Illusion costumes gave her a lot of possibilities.

“Umm, you could come with me. But only if you want to.” For some reason, she felt just a little shy about asking him.

Katrina had always known she'd go to college. The practical question of how she'd get there had never occurred to her. Certainly education for mutants didn't just stop after high school graduation.

“I'm sure there are colleges that accept mutants. Or I suppose I could pretend to be a human. I don't look very mutant-y, at least, most of the time I don't.” She gave her illusion whiskers a twitch that would tickle Calley's chin.

“I'm surprised you never thought about going to college, especially since you will graduate soon. You and Slate could double major in vet science and math, or something like that.”

Really, this boy needed to work on his planning ability. He was, what, eighteen, now? He was practically grown up. By now he, or rather they, should know what they wanted to do with their life. Never mind the whole planning-revenge-over-using-powers-almost-dying thing. Where was his back-up plan, in case he didn't die, huh?

As for trick-or-treating...

>>>"I think I'd like that, yeah."

Planning ability + 1!

“Yay! Now I won't have to go with my mom! She said I had to go with an adult, but you'll count, 'cause you're old enough!” Katrina managed to bounce with excitement and squeeze-hug him to punctuate her sentence all while lying down. Her enthusiasm was high enough that together they averaged at least a looking-forward-to-it on the excitement scale. It was also high enough that she didn't immediately register that her was mattress-smothering himself again and his words were coming out all quiet and guilty-like.

>>>"Remember back in the Labs, when I told you that maybe you shouldn't always be completely and thoroughly honest about your powers? Well, I might not have been completely and thoroughly honest with you. I'm not a tiger shifter. I'm... kind of a tiger-bird-snake-whale-falcon-spider-mouse-turtle shifter. If that makes any sense.”

She did remember. She had kind of figured somewhere in the back of her mind that he might be giving that advice from personal experience. She was a little surprised, more from the fact that he was finally telling her, than the fact that there was more to his powers than he had told her originally.

>>>“I, ah, told Neena about that. And a couple of other things. I'm not sure she's thrilled."

“That's really cool. About changing into all those things I mean, not about Neena being mad. Can you be any animal, or just the ones you said? Can you turn me into an animal too? Can you fly? Do you always turn into boy animals? Do you always have a collar with your animal name on it, like when you are a tiger?”

The thirteen year old stopped to take a breath and waited a moment for him to respond, but then thought of another more important question, “Umm, Calley, how do you know when it is safe to tell someone everything about your powers? What made you decide to tell Neena? And me?” And should a certain thirteen year old also tell Neena about her powers, or was telling Neena about hidden powers actually a really bad idea?

Katrina had a hard time believing that Calley could possibly be only one grade above her, but as he had explained, it was possible. If he continued at the pace he was going, they'd be in college at the same time. Weird.

She also had a hard time believing that Calley could answer her rapid fire questions as quickly as she had asked them, and in reverse order. It was something her elementary school teachers had tried to train out of her, but a skill that she had polished nonetheless. So far, there hadn't been many people who could even follow that many questions at once, let alone match her for speed and reverse order it to top things off.

She took a second to make sure she had all of his answers straight in her own head. The collar went buh-bye, the male-female question had been dodged, flying is awesome, he wouldn't do animal experimentation on her, and he could turn into everything except a gray squirrel. And flying was definitely cooler than being invisible no matter what their score on the relative usefulness scale, so there.

“Let me know if you figure out how to change other people, too. I'd love to go flying with you some day. And squirrels are dumb anyways. If I could only be one animal it wouldn't be a squirrel. Either a horse or a bird would be my choice. Cats are cool, too.” She gave her illusionary tail a twitch.

Calley's answer to her other question was slower,
>>>"I don't know." ... "I... just wanted to, that was all. I wanted to tell her, and I wanted to tell you."

“Oh.” That wasn't a very helpful answer. Touching, but not helpful. Katrina sighed and flicked her tail again. She wasn't a spontaneous person. She was a planner. She couldn't just decide on a whim to do things like tell someone the full extent of her powers, it had to be carefully considered with all of the consequences weighed out. She wasn't even sure if she wanted to tell Neena. She had a sneaking suspicion that the woman already knew, but she sort of suspected that the white eyed teacher knew everything about what happened in the mansion. Sometimes it even seemed like she even had eyes in the back of her head. Telling her would relieve that tension of not knowing whether she knew, but it would also mean that one more person could potentially pass that information into the wrong hands. Neena would never hurt her, Katrina knew, but she might let something slip that would perk the interest of someone who would have no qualms about it.

Katrina gave her tail another twitch under the blanket. It was warm and cozywith two bodies under the covers. The heat made her eyes feel a little droopy, though, and they were blinking very slowly.