Your Steed, Fair Knight (attn: Mirror)

The door cracked open. For a moment, the face highlighted in the white morning light seemed familiar. Calley started to raise a lazy, waving hand to it.

Then he realized the face had breasts. (Below the face. There were breasts.)

And he was very, very naked. (They were feminine breasts, as breasts went.)

Calley skittered for cover. The last time this had happened in the Mansion, he’d grabbed a pillow for tastefully scanty concealment until he could scrounge up clothes. This was not such an easy thing, in a garden shed. There were rakes. Shovels. Shears.

Was that a once over? Was she giving him a—she was!

>> "Sooo, when that angel told me I'd find a boy in a manger, this was not quite what I was expectin'. Maybe I got the wrong address... Are ya all right there, kid?"

Calley put a stop to the undignified search for non-dangerous cover-ups, and settled for some awkwardly grinning standing. Facing forward. Because she was the one with the eyes and the roaming and the he-felt-a-little-violated. Contrary to popular Mansion rumor, Calley did still have his modesty. Walking around naked was not his preferred state. In human form, anyway.

“I,” he declared with all due rosy-cheeked confidence, “am slightly chilly. Spare a coat for a poor naked soul?” He’d prefer her pants, but the ladies: they tended to take that the wrong way. And really, who asked for someone’s pants?

Coat, whoot! And sweatshirt, too. Calley caught them with a thank you door angel grin.

>> "Rough night, huh?"

“You could say that,” the older teen replied, his blue eyes awkwardly searching for a way to put these on that covered things, but didn’t—errhm—well, they were a girl’s clothes. And a girl might not appreciate the thought that her clothes had been brushing up against a random guy’s... You see, there are certain anatomical differences between...

Bleh. She could wash the cooties off he sweatshirt later. He wrapped it around his waist in an impromptu kilt, and put the coat on more traditionally. There: he was both decently clad and no longer freezing. As much.

>> "C'mon let's go inside before ya catch your death out here. The hell were ya thinkin', sleepin off the buzz in the shed anyway? It's a friggin' freezer."

“Ooooh, you are telling me.” He hopped from foot to foot, wincing in preparation for the barefoot trek across the Mansion’s frozen grounds.

>> "Ya didn't happen to notice a big black horse wanderin' around here, did ya?..."

The teen upped the ante to a snort and an amused grin. “Guingalet? You just missed him. Said he was stepping out for a bit. Care to leave a message?” Oookay, that dead grass was exactly as cold as it looked. “Furthermore: race you!”

Guingalet set off at a galloping bipedal gait (one hand modestly keeping his kilt closed).

“I am a total cheat,” Calley replied with a grin, “just for the record.

Inside, it was ever so toasty warm. Even the wood floors in the entryway, usually a little chilly, were delightfully warm in comparison with the ground outside. The painful frost wore off of his feet as he pranced over to the stairs. Stairs: they had carpet running up them. He paused a moment, wiggling his toes into its warmth. Mmm.

“Thanks for the save,” he said, looking back to the coatless, sweatshirt-less girl. “That run’s a lot less pleasant sans covering.” Not that he would know. That would just be, err, silly of him. To get caught without clothing. Repeatedly.

He tilted his head, looking at her face. “Do you have a brother here? ‘Cause I think I’ve met him.” And Sir Gawain had certainly met Guingalet. Welcome to Xavier’s Sister School for Gifted and Talented Re-Introductions.

>> "Yeah actually I do... kinda. Sorta... I mean... Nah, not really, 'tis jus' me."

Blink. Well, that explained the resemblance. "Human shifter, huh? That's cool." Though he'd never heard of a human shifter that didn't completely change, when they shifted. Wasn't the whole point of that mutation to be unrecognizable? Maybe she/he/it'd just copied twins. Among other forms, of course. A shifter of Calley's persuasion couldn't imagine that things would be more limited than that.

>> "Were you at Maya's wedding?... Never mind, go get decent, I'll wait for ya in the diner."

The teen popped a smart salute. "As you command, oh Master." Spoken like a true loyal steed, if he did say so himself. Not like those will-run-away-mid-battle kinds. Heh. Yeah...

Dressing was accomplished following a run up the stairs, and a brief consideration: which room where his clothes in, again? Not Katrina's; that would just be weird. Not Ghost (...and her husband)'s. Maybe Cafas'? But the other teen would probably be sleeping, now. Especially after his own Cthulhu run-in last night. He opted for checking his own actual, legitimate, filled-out-paperwork-for-it-and-everything room first. Score: he'd wisely stored a pair of khaki pants on the floor, and a white T-shirt under the bed. He dug boxers out, too, but they were somewhat olfactorially questionable. With high assumptions that she wouldn't be seeing inside his pants twice today, Calley came back down the stairs, her own borrowed clothes neatly folded. He was carrying them with both hands as he entered the room, creating a solemn one-man procession of the utmost dignity.

"My lady," he intoned, presenting the tidy pile to her, with a half-bow, "I return to you: your clothing. You have my thanks, eternally."

That aside, he started rummaging for breakfast. Something easy. Something that didn't require actual cooking. Over his shoulder, he asked, "Do you still go by Gawain when you look like that, or do you have a different name for each form?"

"I'm Calley in this one," he helpfully added. "Which is a pretty good default, any time you see me. Since it's kind of my real name, I guess." There appeared to be cereal on that top shelf. And not just any cereal, mind you: rice krispies. Calley wasn't the tallest boy in the world. Fortunately, he wasn't the most dignified, either: he hopped up on the counter, and claimed his prize. "Errhm, you want anything while I'm up here?"

He handed the cereal box down to the elegantly perched countertop lady, and took a step over to the next cabinet. Two bowls got rescued from the lightless confinement: he hopped back to the kitchen floor, their proud savior, and tucked them under one arm before officially offering her his hand.

"Pleasure to meet you whilst wearing fully functional vocal chords, Miss Maya," he said, with a grin.

Next: to the fridge! There was milk to be had. He pulled out the half-empty carton, and dropped it on the counter. The bowls followed. He held out his hand for the cereal box, like a surgeon asking for a scalpel. Assuming she turned it over, there would be pouring afoot.

"Mmm, I can pretty much turn into everything. Animal-kingdom-wise. Not so much on the bipedal primates, though." He flashed another grin. "That would be your turf, I gather." Milk followed, into his own bowl. He hopped back up to sit on the counter, handing the lady her own breakfast: the milk sat between them, so she could pour as she wished. To each their own white water line.

"So what do you normally look like? I mean, this is me," he motioned with his distinctly spoonless hand to himself, then nodded towards her. "Is that you, or just what you put on this morning? What's that like, copying people?"

On the issue of spoons: he leaned forward, and opened the drawer between his dangling legs. Two were rescued, and one passed her way. Thus did the feeding begin.

Bowls were clicked with courtly formality, and the breaking of their fast did begin. His own fast was broken with crunchy spoonfuls, as he listened to her mutation with a quizzical ear.

>> "Nah, 'tis all me. I don't do the shiftin', it more like just happens to me. Daily. An' I only change gender. Pretty much everythin' else is original. So ya only get Maya, or Gawain. Not nearly as awesome as changin' into animals."

"Ahh," he said. "A double-shifter, huh? I guess that makes sense. I know plenty of animal shifters that only have two forms. Makes sense that some of you human-shifters are the same way." He nodded, his internal logic satisfied. "I tend to shift daily, too. 'Specially at night, and 'specially if I'm wearing my human form. It's kind of unstable, I guess. I usually wake up as a cat, or one or my more practiced forms." He gave another nod, clearly sympathetic to the plight of a fellow wakes-up-as-something-else shifter. That Gawain/Mirror always made that shift, and that he/she couldn't control it the rest of the time, didn't cross his mind.

>> "Can ya do mythical creatures too?..."

"Can, and do." He gave a sheepish grin over his bowl. "Though I don't do them like the real mythics-shifters can. I kind of mix-and-match normal animals, until I get something close. Doesn't work so well: my manticore is mostly porcupines and turtles, and my griffin can't really fly." The grin turned impish. "I put a little electric eel in him, though. Myth meets Pokemon."

He crunched his way through another spoonful, then blinked baby blue eyes over at her. "So how do you use your mutation? I've pretty much gone the spy route, myself." He drowned a piece of cereal under his milky ocean, with an impish grin. "Not that it's too hard. The Factions are pretty terrible about keeping spies out. I mean, I confessed to being a spy, mauled an X-Men, joined the Order, and then got personally invited by the X-Leader to come back here. In the same week, mind you." He lifted his bowl to his lips, and took a hearty sip. Mmm, Mansion-sponsored breakfast. Really, it wasn't that Calley was being cocky, or terrible at his chosen proffession: it was just that he needed a challenge. Badly. Maybe announcing himself with neon letters would help with that. Not that it would really even make a difference: it was hard for people to be paranoid of every animal (and animal shifter, and animal-esk mutant) that they came across. Therein lay his strength. Therein lay the reason he was a very, very bored spy.

"What d'you like to do with yours?"