Good or bad it was still an idea

Door. A swinging or sliding barrier that will close the entrance to a room or building or vehicle; anything providing a means of access (or escape); a panel or barrier, usually hinged, sliding, or electronic, that is used to cover an opening in a wall or partition going into a building or space. A door can be opened to give access and closed more or less securely. By Google's definition, that was a door. By Calley's definition, door: a tall construct of humans that, even in a mutant school, was not well adapted to those who did not look the norm. In other words, door: not meant for tigers.

Calley's eyes narrowed. His large paws were planted in front of him. His haunches were seated irritably on the hardwood floor of the Mansion's entryway. His orange and black ringed tail, curled loosely around his rear, gave a slow curl from its tip, then fell back down. Curl. Down. Curl. Down.

"Door," the large Bengal tiger addressed its stately mahogany foe, "you have won the staring contest, but the war has only just begun. You will be opened. Heed my words. Hide your women and children. You, door, are going to be opened." The words were spoken with a proudly straightened spine and a whiskered head held high, carrying only a slight lisp as they passed sharpened teeth.

The door accepted his declaration of war with that same confident silence with which it had refused to open, despite his attempts to head butt, shoulder knock, and futilely-but-cutely paw at its round knob. Round knobs: the hellspawn children of doors and people with serious underlying animal prejudices. The door accepted his declaration, and knocked with laughter.

...The tiger blinked its way back to reality.

"Umm," it shouted, hopefully loud enough to be heard through his adversary's thick skin, "err, ah, umm... Just a second! Technical non-opposable-thumb-difficulties in progress! Be with you in a second!"

He stared at the door. Staaaaare. The door continued its frustratingly door-like behavior. The tiger laid its ears back, and began to thoroughly maul that round doorknob in a way that Ms. Nightowl probably would not approve of later on. But it was either open this thing as a tiger or open it as a naked teenage boy, and Calley had made his decision when he first padded down the steps from his room, sans clothes but plus fur.

crish slick grr nails-on-chalkboard! pant pant MAUL turn VICTORY CLICK

The door swung inwards, that stupid round doorknob clutched firmly in the mouth of the tiger, who walked it backwards gingerly. When he let it go, he granted himself a simple moment to try and cough the taste out of his mouth. Door knobs: foul creations bearing the unholy taste known only as Legion.

He raised his muzzle towards the girl. The new girl--he'd never smelled her around here before. The large tiger blinked its baby blue eyes twice. "Umm, hi. You smell like something I shouldn't eat and look like someone whose fashion sense I approve of. Like the hair stripes. Just sayin'. Umm, new resident? I'm Calley." He tried not to flash his teeth too many times during that introduction.

((ooc: If you put this code in your signature area, you'll get a spiffy link back to your profile for easy-to-find convenience:

[url=http://theultimatexmen.proboards26.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=charactersprofile&thread=2729&page=1] Nash Bryant [Nest][/url]

)

Yarr, thar be squirming! Calley resisted the urge to take a step closer--he tried to avoid the whole "sudden movements" thing with unknown mutants whilst wearing the form of an unsettlingly large predator--but he couldn't stop his whiskers from fanning forwards. There was something under her skin. Animal, vegetable, or mineral? Staringisrude staringisrude staringis--

She seemed startled over his compliment to her hair.

"Natural, eh? Doubly awesome, then." Calley's whiskers slanted down smugly towards his cheeks as he tilted his head a little bit to the side, indicating his body. "Mine are, too," he said, with the barest hint of a rumbling purr.

> "Ta. For you know not t'inking I'm edible, trust me I'm not. I'm Nash, by the way. ...Ya I'm new."

Calley's tail tip twitched. Twitch. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Miss Nash. Did you come far?" 'Cause your accent is awesome. "Oh, err," he dodge-jumped a bit to the side, landing lightly on an ornamental carpet that slid several inches with his momentum. He gave a startled look down to his paws and a surprised purr. Note to self: try carpet skating later. With a pouncing start from the top of the stairs...

But in other news: the doorway was officially clear. "Ah, come on in. Sorry. Are you hungry? Thirsty? I'm not sure where Ms Nightowl is--she's the Assistant Headmistress who's what makes with the paperwork and shtuff--but I could definitely hook you up with edibles. I'm on the kitchen's frequent flier plan. Or we could play 'Where's Nightowl' all around campus. It's actually harder than it sounds, sometimes. Especially since I'm honestly not sure if she ever sleeps." He'd noted the backpack-shift. "We could find somewhere to put that down, too. Do you have anything else?" He listed to the side, peering curiously out the door for any more luggage. When people showed up with only one backpack... it wasn't usually a roaringly good sign about their past.

She seemed to stiffen up as she said where she was from, but he got a laugh with his carpet antics, so it was all good. "London, huh?" He asked, his whiskers fanning anew. "That's cool. I've never even been out of the country, myself. 'Out of the state' is the best I can claim." He gave a quick grooming lick to his right foreleg, by way of looking sheepish. "I'm just a Jersey boy. Nothin' fancy. Not even from the shore--just Newark." As spies went, he was annoyingly unworldly.

>> "Water would be nice.... I'm guessing we would 'ave to find dis Ms Nightowl eventually. Right?"

The tiger's tail twitched in assent. "Yep. She tends to turn up, though. Usually carrying large objects. Or sitting in high places. Or at a quarter past two in the morning, roaming around." Calley may or may not have developed a slight fascination for the odd African woman, with her awesome sleeping habits and idiosyncratic speeches at War Room meetings. "But yeah, kitchen." He flicked his muzzle up, and down the hall. "Kitchen's that way. Definitely drinkables in the kitchen." He had started to turn that way when she replied about her luggage. His head swung back, ears twitching between full-mast and half-mast at her reply.

>> "dis is all I 'ave. When your parents are scheming to send you to military sc'ool 'cause no other sc'ool will accept you, you don't tend to pack a lot."

"Yeah... parents," he said simply, trying to keep his tone neutral. "Parents can kinda suck. My--" Urk. He cut that one short. At the Mansion, his official story was that his parents had died in a house fire, and he'd been in an orphanage for a few years. Therefore, his father hadn't disowned him. Therefore, his father was kindling, not a jerk, and potentially looking better for it. "Umm, yeah." He lamely finished. "Kitchen."

It's about that time that something black and squishy squiggled suddenly from under her skin. The tiger's ears decided that full-mast was where they wanted to be. Its tail stopped its habitual slow swishing, and before he could quite get a grip on himself, he'd crouched a bit lower to the ground. Hunting-low. Urk, again: he wasn't in housecat form, and it wasn't very nice to eat things that clearly belonged under someone else's skin. It probably wasn't even nice to innocently play with them a little.

>> "Um.... dat and I kinda wasn't really welcome der anymore."

With all the dignity of the eighteen year old Italian boy behind the tiger, Calley straightened back up. He half-closed his eyes as he coolly licked the back of his paw, and used it to rub the fur behind his ear clean. He hadn't been trying to hunt her creepy-crawlies. Nope; not him.

"It happens," he said, continuing his Supremely Cool Act with a too-casual tone. "So, should we get that water? We can go Nightowl hunting afterwards." His tail flicked: maybe he shouldn't have sounded so eager about the hunting bit. He took a step down the hall, pausing to make sure she was following him.

"Umm, if you don't mind my asking, what was that?"

>> "Der Leeches, I was born with dem. Dey live inside me. Do the stuff dat keeps me alive. Protect me when I need protectin."

Calley saw her impromptu foot samba and eye waltz, and politely turned his head back down the hallway as they walked.

"Sounds useful," he said neutrally, not quite sure what she thought of her own power. She wasn't shouting it proudly to the ceiling like some mutants, that was for sure, but she hadn't freaked out when a leech came out of her own skin as if her mutation was a hideous tumor in need of surgical removal, either. Personally, he didn't much mind it either way--as long as she wasn't an immortal with mind control and violent tendencies (really, as long as she just kept the violent tendencies on the down-low around him), then it was all good. Some mutants had really weird powers. Hers definitely ranked high on that list. Probably the highest he could think of, actually... but yeah. No problem with tigger.

They arrived at the kitchen. Naturally, this demanded some showmanship. Fortunately, the kitchen featured the glory of all indoor glories: a swinging door. The tiger squared his shoulders with his haunches and let his spine form a dignified Golden Gates sag. Lifting one heavy paw, he pushed the door open for her. "Ahem," he unnecessarily cleared his throat; "my fair lady Nash, might I present to you the Kitchen. The Kitchen, might I introduce you to your newest midnight raider, Nash." He continued to hold it, allowing her to enter first. Which hopefully she was okay with, what with the whole 'having to pass by a very large tiger to do so' angle.

"The cups are in that third cabinet up there. There's bottled water in the 'fridge, or the tap water tastes really good, too." Especially if you let it sit for a few days in a large water bowl in your room, and gain just that first delicious hint of algae flavor. "Umm, please excuse me for not pouring for you. The Technical No-Opposable-Thumbs Difficulties continue, I fear. Erhm," he continued, tail sinking to lash erratically at the floor, "please excuse me not switching back to human form, too. I've got one, but, ah, I'm kinda sorta not one of those uber-fancy-shifters who can, ah," he licked at his shoulder, "keep their clothes when they shift," he finished. Change-of-Topic-Time!

He lifted his head back up, ears perking. "Oh, do your leeches need any special food? I'm not sure we've got anything for them right now, but Ms Nightowl can set things up special for you, when you talk to her. A lot of folks have different diets around here." He sat down, his tail coming to a twitching stop as it curled around his forelegs. "I tend to eat a lot of meat, myself."

>> "'ello, the Kitchen tis my pleasure to meet you."

Those words and the hakuna matata way she strolled past him into the kitchen were more than enough to earn an approving purr from the tiger's throat. He followed after her, sitting his large furry bum down on the tile floor next to the table before proceeding with his tail-curl-and-twitch.

>> "Don't worry about it. Is nice to know you ain't always furry, four legged and clawed."

"There somethin' wrong with me always being furry, four legged and clawed?" He asked, with mock affront that was pretty badly undermined by the slight purr that was still lingering in his chest. She seemed decent enough and non-homicidal, and she had greeted the Kitchen with the proper respect such a glorious keeper of food deserved: therefore, he was enjoying himself.

>> "I'm allergic to salt and some other stuff."

"Ooo, that might be a prob--"

splash splash splash-plop!

"--lem." He finished, firmly sitting himself back down. There were small non-speedily-moving creatures with little to no visible defensive capabilities conveniently trapped in her water glass. Nonetheless, that was not an invitation to play with them. He'd gotten half-way back to his paws at the sight, but he quite firmly glued his rear back to the floor. His ears and whiskers stayed pointed at their target, though, and his tail started rattling the table legs behind him in short whip-bursts of badly contained movement. "Ah, yeah. That might be a problem. Salt's a pretty common ingredient, isn't it? We definitely have to make sure Ms Nightowl knows about that. She can probably arrange for blood, too, once in a while. I imagine butchers and stuff probably don't want that, anyway. And--wait. Did you just say you only had to eat once a week?" The tiger's head dropped low on its shoulders with disbelieving envy, the continued slithering of her leechy friends forgotten. "I call foul!" He mourned, dramatically collapsing to the floor and rolling to one side with his paws tucked to his chest like a dead spider. "I've got to eat a couple times a day, or I pretty much start starving to death. And not just little meals, either. You're lucky," he accused.

>> "Ever see wot salt does to a leech?"

"Eek," the tiger said, its ears folding briefly down. "Only once, on YouTube. Does that seriously happen to you?" The very tip of his tail foofed out a bit--now that was gross.

>> "I do only got to eat once a week but I can eat more den dat. Just... I digest slowly, cause I don't have a stomach and the leeches do it all."

Doesn't have a stomach, huh? Calley was still digesting that little tidbit when she upended her cup, crawlies and all streaming down the hatch. Huh. Doesn't have a stomach. It was a little hard to wrap his head around. His stomach was such an important part of his life; really, he didn't know what he'd do without it. Fill up with leeches, apparently.

When she opted for the floor seat, he rolled to his stomach, and crossed his paws in front of him to face her. Dignity: +5!

>> "So can you change into other stuff too? Or do you just stay a tiger all the time?"

"Just the tiggering and the humaning, I fear." Calley intoned solemnly. Blatant lies: every spy's best friend, and made quite a bit easier when the teenager in question had never really seen a difference between lies and the truth, anyway. "Oh! And I did this half-and-half thing one time, but it was sort of under extreme conditions," he'd been getting horribly tortured by his current employer at the time, to be specific, "so I'm not sure I could do it again." Actually, he was pretty sure he could. But it had been a very ill-planned-out form: the bone structure in his feet had been all wrong to actually support weight, his hands had featured retractable claws but lost their opposable thumb, and he still wasn't sure whether he'd had the right number or types of internal organs. Chimeraing: something he'd realized it was very dangerous to half-ass, because if one of those missing internal organs was his heart, things might just get messy. On that note: "I can sorta heal, too. But just physical injuries, and just myself. And I'm not always the best at controlling it." In the back of their mind, Slate did not bother to glance up from his current meditations long enough to dignify being labeled an 'it' with a reply. As split personalities go, he was more confident in his own superiority than most.

"How about you? What can you and your friends do?" The tiger asked, whiskers doing a dance between fanning with interest and remaining at a dignified post next to his orange and black cheeks. "You don't have to really answer that, if you don't want to. It's pretty much the most common question you'll get around here, though, the first time you met people."

>> "When I get salt in me I react but with medical treatment I'm ok... My leeches dough... if any of dem come in contact with it... dey.. die."

Well that settled that, then: she did seem to like her power. Or at least her swarm of friends. And her swarm of friends seemed to like her. The tiger sporfled as a leech crawled out of his fellow teen's nose. Her powers were definitely qualifying as something he didn't see everyday. And on a daily basis, Calley did tend to see a lot.

>> "Oh, I see so you're like a... a... Weretiger? ...Dat is the word for bein' both isn't it?"

The tiger's black-tipped ears perked, then dipped, and perked again. "Yeah," he decided. "Yeah, it is." He'd been calling himself a tiger shifter, not a Weretiger; but really, wasn't Miss Nash's name for it just so much better? He'd unconsciously derived tiger shifter from multi-shifter, his real power. A Weretiger, though... a Weretiger really just fit the bill, now didn't it? If a boy said 'Heya, I'm a Weretiger, nice-ta-meet-cha-what's-your-power?', no one returned with; 'Oh, a shifter? Can you do other forms?' A Weretiger was just a Weretiger was always and completely a Weretiger. Calley's tail tip gave a solid twitch of resolution: henceforth, he was a Weretiger.

A brief strand of purr lifted out from his chest. Miss Nash was proving to be exceptionally useful company.

>> "If you can only become both under extreme conditions den it probably isn't all that safe right?"

Purr ended. Calley groomed one foreleg briefly. "That's what I'm thinking, too," he said, switching his attentions to his other leg. "It definitely wasn't... umm, pleasant. The trigger, that was. And it wasn't the most useful form, either. I'd much rather stick to straight-up tiger." Or straight-up human, if he absolutely had to have those stupid thumbs. Human form wasn't like tiger form: it didn't come with its own furry security blanket wrapped snuggly around his body. He was always more jumpy in human form, and he always had that stupid habitual smile plastered to his face.

>> "I don't mind you askin', or anyone for that matter, it's when dey ask and insult me dat I tend to get a little pissy."

A brief purr-laugh rumbled through the kitchen. "I don't think you'll have to worry about insults here. Most of the younger kids are probably going to think you're the coolest thing since that girl who could summon earth worms out of the ground. Just umm, don't let them trick you into pulling pranks on everyone and their cousin." He lifted up a hind leg, and briefly arched his head around to scratch behind an ear. Aaaaah that was the spot. Leg down. "Now if you want to pull pranks, by all means. Just don't get tricked into them." The tiger's blue eyes were bright with that distinct light of complete and total innocence: he hadn't ever joined the younger kids in their constant pranks. Nope. Not li'l old tigger.

>> "Leeches saliva can knock people out or paralyze them, dere slim can be used like glue and I use it on my cuts a lot, I have thicker skin den most and I can breathe under water cause I breathe through my skin."

The tiger's head unconsciously shot upwards, following the path of her finger to the ceiling.

>> "Ummm.. and- ...I'm scary?"

The tiger's head came down again. He briefly licked at his chest, watching the leech master out of the corner of his eye. "Hmm," he began thoughtfully, "I don't know." He pushed his way back up to a seated position facing her; his large head swung up, left, down, right, center. His whiskers fanned to attention, then flicked back to 'at ease' as he appraised the girl before him. Finally, he glanced over his left shoulder with disinterest, letting out a large yawn. "Nope. You're just not trying hard enough. Where's your Scary Face? I'm not going to get nightmares unless you've got a good Scary Face. Honestly," he tilted his head the slightest bit back, blue eyes sparkling at her as his tail dusted the floor in long sweeps. "It's like you're not even trying, Miss Nash."