I Accidentally The Entire Dining Hall (Open)

Since Roland had returned to the Sanctuary, he began taking mental stock of the place. It wasn't so much in disrepair as it was atrophied from lack of use. It was a stark analogy to the state of the Order. He hadn't been around Miss Faust enough to know what drove and motivated her, but he sincerely hoped she had some plans up her sleeves. As it stood, the place was barely a hair above Romper Room with deadly intentions. Changes were sorely needed and he was determined to be the catalyst for said change.

The food in the cafeteria seemed to be a fine place to start. The so-so slop that it was currently peddling was barely above elementary school fare. While starving people off the streets would eat anything and be happy to eat it, professionals, which they needed more of, would demand something more substantial. Overseeing crime waves took alot out of a guy. This task, among many others, needed to be assigned to others. The workload needed to be shared among the troops. How else could a mutant army be formed?

Looking over the assembled eaters, Roland noticed many eyes upon him, not counting the guy with multiple eyes. It was a funny and ironic thought that these soldiers believed that mutants were superior to humans, but didn't see the further reach of such a hierarchy. Once you got past sapiens, the circle came full and mutants began to behave as animals. There could only be one Alpha in a pack. Roland's own eyes squashed any stray looks from the pups. Any time, any place. One punk was just as ----


THWWOOOOOOMMMM!

A shockwave blasted through the cafeteria, a wake of tables, chairs, and mutants flying aside. Roland's eyes travelled to the point of origin of the blast, finding a child. Judging from the living jack o' lantern dusting himself off, Roland could see how she might have been frightened. What a gift. If it could be sculpted and trained, it could be some great arsenal. Before Jacko got to her, he stepped between the two, his eyes locked with those of the flaming head. "Obviously an accident.Take a step back." Jacko's fiery grin peeled back over his skull. "And if I don't?"

Roland raised his hand in a gun gesture, his finger pointed between those orange orbs. In less than a blink of an eye, the same finger was curled around a warm trigger. "I'll put that light out for good. Find out if I will really do it.Please" Two birds with one stone. A potential weapon saved and the pack sniffed the air , recognizing the scent of true superiority. Jacko took a step back, like a good pumpkin. The rest of the room followed suit, returning to banal murmuring. The gun disappeared, Roland's hand reaching in his coat pocket and retrieving a cigarette. Leaning into the pumpkin, he lit the tip of it off his head and blew the smoke in his face. Go scare the tourists with that face.

Crouching next to the young girl, he extended his hand."That's some gift you have there. I'm Roland Pruitt. What's your name?"

All was returning to its natural state. Roland looked at the table and chair that Kaitlyn had been sitting in and in an instant they were back in place before her. She looked sad. Roland stood and looked around the room. Now what? No nanny to take to the baby. He'd have to find someone to do that. Maybe Isabel. She seemed to like sitting around the Sanctuary, so maybe she could watch some of these...kids. He might have chosen to abandon the scene that moment had the girl's mutation not been evident. With the right training, it could be something very useful. Especially in the package presented. Most law abiders would hesitate and then be on their back.

He went to the line and suggested to the servers to make something the little girl would like so she didn't do her thing again. they came up with pancakes, powdered with sugar and topped with chocolate chips, a tall glass of milk escorting it. Returning to the table, he placed these things before her with some silverware, its appearance on the table in its proper sequence. A chair appeared beneath Roland as he sat, leaving another table short and a disgruntled eater thinking of saying something. Only thinking. " Kaitlyn. What brought you here to the Sanctuary? Do you have parents that know you are gone? Are you an orphan?"

Roland continued to draw on his smoke, blowing it over her head. " Not often we see little girls running around unattended. llme what has happened so far here before now."

The girl was red-headed, short, and very much out of place. Calley recognized her.

The man was black haired, vertically normal, and more well dressed than the average hobo his age. Calley recognized him, too.

For himself: he was shorter than one and taller than the other, brown-haired, and carrying a black kitten on his shoulder. Or he had been, a few minutes ago. Then everything had gone boom, and Calley had found himself here while the kitten had found itself... over there.

Considering the kitten was a splinter of his mind, the sudden perspective clash was a little confusing. And slightly nauseating. Though that might have been due to the kitten hitting a table leg.

A table leg unfortunately close to the man and the girl. The man, Calley recognized by smell: he'd been around the Sanctuary recently. Calley tended to meet people by smell first and sight later, these days. The girl he hadn't smelled before. She was very, very new, then. Nonetheless, he recognized her from two places.

Place the first: an NYPD missing poster that he'd lazily spied while begging donuts from his favorite cat-loving detective.

Place the second: the epicenter of the boom.

He reluctantly wobbled over to pick up his kitten, and caught the last part of the conversation.

>> "And I have a dad. but he doesn't know where I am. And I don't want him to."

"They're looking for you, you know." He piped in, returning the kitten to its shoulder perch. "The police. Your dad must have filed a missing person's."

Either that, or that whole 'Ms. Lori and Mars and the weird exploding thing' incident had them interested in her. That would explain why the missing flier had been in the office of a mutant crimes detective.

According to the voice coming from behind the girl, the police were trying to find her and take her back to her father.

This explained a lot to Kaitlyn. Ever since she woke up in the middle of Manhattan yesterday, she had been overwhelmingly afraid of the police, but she never understood why until now. The police wanted to take her back to her father. She didn't want to do that, so she wanted to stay away from the police. That made sense. Policemen were supposed to be the good guys, she thought, and so it was weird that she would be afraid of them.

Would good guys want to take me back to Dad? No. So they're not really good guys. That guy has a kitty!

It was true. The boy who had just told her about the police was also the proud owner of a shoulder-kitten. That is, a kitten who resides on one's shoulder. A shoulder-kitten. The sheer novelty and adorableness of such a thing could not pass by without her commenting on it. "There's a kitty on your shoulder!"

Certainly, one with a shoulder-kitten could not be a bad person. Why, then, was Mr. Pruitt pointing his gun at him? Something was wrong with the world. Kaitlyn didn't want shoulder-kitten-guy to get shot at! But Mr. Pruitt was a good guy. He saved her from fire-head-dude. But shoulder-kitten-dude had a shoulder-kitten, so he must be a good guy too! This was all wrong!

Kaitlyn was holding on to her glass of milk with both hands at the time. Moments later, her cup no longer existed. It had shattered into uncountable pieces, sending droplets of milk and tiny bits of plastic flying in every direction. Scared by the gun and the exploding cup in equal measure, she let out a brief, sharp scream. But she didn't hear it. She couldn't hear anything.

Hands went up. Panic and the desire for survival played across the boy's face. Now that the initial shock had passed, Roland's vision focused down the long line of the gun. The face , the body, everything was Slate.

“Calley. Stupid. I, ah, see you’ve met my brother.”

Not Slate. Slate's twin? Lives here at the Sanctuary? What kind of family was that? Did they feel each other's pain, like so many twin stories suggested? It could be a consolation to make Slate writhe in horror in his office for some unknown reason.

" I can give you his address if you want. He’s pretty easy to find. I’m, ah, sure he’d love to see--”

Love to see? Doubtful, unless one counted a tiny room fit for interrogation and a free trip to France. Seriously, why would----

Air covered his face and body. It happened so fast that Roland didn't hear the scream on the other side of the bubble. He felt some wind and then he took his turn at flying. Time seemed to slow down as the table, the girl, and the twin zoomed away. The floor's tile sped by as he looked down at it, his feet pointed at the room's ceiling. Wind. He was a kite, passing by on a spring breeze, weightless. Until he hit the serving line. Then weight returned with a vengeance, as glass shattered and he found himself lying face down in coleslaw.

To kill children or not to kill children? That was indeed the question. Roland could hear giggles becoming cackles as Pumpkinhead and countless others reveled in the vindication of the Big Bad Wolf eating crow. But oh, how they forget. This wolf did not wear sheepskin. This wolf put hot metal in people. He pushed himself back until he was standing behind the cafeteria glass, hairnetted ladies staring at him. They weren't laughing. A towel wiped the muck from his face as he stared at the two children. He felt himself. No gun. His eyes scanned the floor, no gun.

A short vault and hop over the line and his eyes set about to looking for his weapon. The general fanfare died down as they saw this man was not one of good humor. Their eyes seemed to also look for what he was looking for and soon, soon the tables and chairs began to groan against the tile as people started deciding to take their meals elsewhere. " You have just about as long as it takes for me to find my weapon, kids."

The little girl made a cup go boom.
The little girl did not know who did it.

The little girl made the Big Bad Trigger-finger angry.
The little girl told the Big Bad Trigger-finger where his gun was.

Calley remembered being distinctly smarter than this, back when he was that height. His habitual smile twitched in place for a moment.

“Miss,” he said simply, “ ‘kids’ is plural. That means he’s threatening both of us. So.”

So yes. Calley bolted toward the door.
The little girl could take care of herself, even if she didn’t know it yet.

“Miss, ‘kids’ is plural. That means he’s threatening both of us. So.”

Threatening?

Kaitlyn could do nothing but stare as Calley ran out the door. She had a feeling that she seriously needed to re-assess her current situation. What was it that Mr. Pruitt had said? You have just as long as it takes for me to find my weapon... what did he mean by that? What did they have that much time for? The girl looked back at Roland, who seemed to be pointing his gun at the door. Was he trying to shoot at Calley again? Even though he knew that Calley had an evil twin?

Wait. 'Threatening both of us.' He was threatening us? How could she not have noticed this? ...Would now be a good time to run?

"I'm fine. Why don't you make sure that Calley is alright? He went through that door over there."

Kaitlyn regarded the man with some suspicion.

"Sure," she answered, trying to mask her suspicion with a smile and fake cheer. She didn't quite know how to classify Mr. Pruitt any more. Maybe she shouldn't have trusted him as much as she did.

The girl walked to the door with the man, making sure to direct her smile at him when she reached the doorway. After she rounded the corner and was sure that he couldn't see her, she began to run as quietly and quickly as she could in the direction that she thought Calley had taken. Perhaps he could clear things up, if he was to be trusted.