The mansion adventure. (open)

It was early morning. The only reasons Katrina ever had to be awake at that time of day, especially now that summer vacation had started, was either because she had stayed up late reading and hadn't fallen asleep yet, or had nightmares that had woken her up early. Today, it was the latter of the two.

She walked down the street, her red-gold retriever pulled anxiously to get farther ahead and her arm was pulled straight out ahead of her. She had to walk stiffly so she didn't get pulled over onto her face. As she walked the sky turned cloudy, and it turned cool. The dog stopped to sniff a sign post, then turned up to look at her master with empty eye sockets. The tongue hanging down from her jaw-less mouth was blackened with rot. The dog tugged on the leash again and they were off again.

The sky continued to darken, but the clouds were not real. With her ability to see both reality and illusion, she could tell that these clouds were true clouds. Who would be making them, though? The corpse dog continued to lead her down the street and she followed obediently behind. The trees were gnarled and angry on this pathway. Their angry branches reached toward the pathway trying to ensnare the pedestrians walking by.

One person, walking ahead of her, nearly was caught by the white, finger-like twigs of a birch. He turned back towards Katrina, as if to warn her, but his hair was already transforming into rustling leaves. His toes had sprouted long and rope-y from his shoes and began snaking their way down into the earth, rooting him in place. His face twisted in pain and he tried to reach for her, tried to call out, but his voice was choked up by a squirrel that crawled out of his mouth. Beneath the tree, she could still see the man, walking away as if nothing had happened.

Reality was breaking down all around her. She could no longer tell what was real and what was an illusion.

Katrina had woken with a start. All week she'd been having these dreams where she became trapped in her own illusions and hadn't been able to escape them. She wasn't sure what had triggered it, but for the whole week she had been avoiding practicing her illusions at all. She didn't want anything to happen like it did in the dream, where the illusions had taken over reality.

Now that she was awake, there was no going back to sleep. It was almost time to get up anyway, at least for normal people. She would have liked to have slept until ten or eleven today, since she hadn't been sleeping well. Maybe a nap later in the afternoon sunshine would serve her better. Katrina opened the door to her bedroom and wandered out into the hallway in her silky pajamas: a matching t-shirt and shorts set she used when the weather was at its hottest. She checked her mothers' room first to find that her mom was still safely asleep. Then she headed downstairs, following the twists and turns of the halls at random until she saw someone else moving around, too.

It was a girl with short white hair, but it wasn't Ghost. It was a person Katrina had never seen before. She assumed that the girl must be a new resident or student.

“Hello,” she called softly and waved.

Katrina was not trying to startle anybody, so she was a bit surprised when the girl jumped. She jumped a little, too. At least the girl was most definitely and solidly real. She even said “good morning”.

“Good morning. What's your name? Are you new here?” Katrina smiled, welcomingly. Maybe the girl was looking for some breakfast or something. Katrina's own mother was in charge of the kitchen here at the mansion, and she was still asleep upstairs in her bed. At this time of day there wasn't going to be any fancy breakfasts unless someone made it for themselves.

“I'm Katrina, by the way,” she walked up to the girl and held out her hand if the girl wanted to shake it. She figured if the girl ad some sort of mutation that made it dangerous to touch her skin or anything like that, she would wear gloves or refuse to touch anyone. Katrina would be understandingly unoffended if her handshake were refused.

Pleasantries, pleasantries. It was always the same polite script when meeting someone new. First names, then nice to meet yous, then mutations, etcetera.

“Nice to meet you.” See? The same. It was a good thing they didn't have new people everyday, or the days would get boring indeed. Katrina decided to change things up for once. Rather than have her answer the same questions she had probably answered several dozen times, each time she met someone new in the school, Katrina would rather ask questions that would help her find out about Cailyn as a person.

“So, if you could have any one wish come true, what would you wish for?”

“Puzzles are cool. I tried to do one once that was called 'Hay in a Needle Stack'. It was the hardest puzzle ever, so it would take an hour just to find two or three pieces that matched. I never got to see what it looked like when it was all finished.”

She wondered if it was still set up on the card table in the basement back at her house in Virginia. It was only her dad that lived there, now that she and her mother were up here at the school. He had never been very into puzzles, since he was so busy at work being a senator. Was he lonely without them, or was he glad to be on his own? Katrina wasn't sure which answer she preferred, and wasn't sure that she wanted to know the answer at all.

What would her one wish be? Eternal happiness for all her friends and world peace were pretty standard ones. Whenever the digital clocks had all the numbers of the time matching up, she had called it 'wish time' ever since she was a little girl. She would race to the clock, press her finger against its face and wish for the first thing that came to her head. Peace and happiness was usually her first response these days. Sometimes it was good grades, or that I can see my horse, Galahad, again, or even that my daddy still loves me. She also wished for her friends' safety, wherever they were, be it at the mansion, back in Virginia, or wherever they may be. She could only pick one answer, though.

“I wish that when I grow up I can have a really big house. It will be so big that I can invite over all of my friends at the same time and there will be enough rooms for everyone.” And while they were at her house, they would all have to get along, too.

Since Cailyn was new, it would probably be polite to offer a tour in case she hadn't had one yet. Some of the normal pleasantries were still necessary, even if they were boring. They could still talk (quietly) while they were walking around the mansion she figured.

“If you haven't already been on a tour, I could show you around,” Katrina offered. “Is there anything you haven't gotten the chance to see yet?”

“You get lost, huh? It sounds like you need a mental map more than a tour. Here, come with me and I'll show you how to avoid getting lost in the mansion.”

Katrina led her back out of the kitchen and back to the main entrance that housed the grand staircase. “The mansion is shaped kind of like an x. This is the center. As long as you can find your way back here, you can find anything. There are four wings. That one,” Katrina pointed to the hall that began just to the left of the front door, “is where all the offices are. The infirmary is down there, the headmistress' office, the greeters' office, and some of the smaller classrooms. Above all that is the girls' hallway. Below it, in the basement, is the big meeting room which is called the war room for some reason.”

Katrina turned clockwise and pointed to where they had just come from, to the right of the front door. “That's where the living room, dining room, and kitchen is. Upstairs is the adult hallway. Downstairs is the laundry room, the boiler room, and all that boring stuff.”

She rotated again clockwise. “That door leads to the library. Upstairs is the boys' hall. Downstairs is the Danger Room.”

She turned toward the final hall. “That's where all the classrooms are. Upstairs is a bunch of extra rooms, including the computer lab. Below that is a mysteriously locked door. I think you have to be an X-man to go in it.” Or you had to be able to slide through the crack under to door with a friend who could very helpfully turn herself and others into air that could fit through tight places. Not that Katrina would know anything about that.

Then there was the fact that Cailyn liked planes. Katrina knew there was a plane behind that mysterious door she had mentioned. She had seen it, but she'd had to be very sneaky in order to do so, which meant that it probably was supposed to be a secret. So, as much as she wished that she could show off the most excellently sleek and awesome looking X-wing (which she had decided was a better name for it than 'Blackbird') she knew that she shouldn't. Perhaps she couldn't, either. She didn't know any way of getting in other than under the door and she didn't have the ability to fit through right now.

“Planes are cool,” she admitted with just a hint of guilt in her voice for not revealing her knowledge of the mansion's plane. “My favorite way to go fast, though, is in a really fast car. It feels faster when you're in a car than when you're in a plane, even if it isn't really as fast. It must be because you are so much closer to the things you are driving by.” Katrina bit her lip and tried to think of someone who would have access to see the hanger where the plane was kept. Sam came to mind first. For some reason she could clearly picture him sitting in the cockpit ready to fly her anywhere she wanted to go, though she had never actually seen him anywhere near the plane.

And 'lo the new girl revealed exactly how new she was. She was still at the stage where she had never ever heard of the X-men and didn't know what a danger room was. Katrina remembered that back when she had first heard about the X-men she had thought they were an evil group of murderous mutants. She had been terrified of the mysterious team the entire time she had lived at Mondragon Labs during registration. Now that she lived at the X-men's base (and had sat in at one or two of their meetings) she understood them a little better. She now knew that most of the individuals on the team were good people. Some were a little ruthless and scary, but mostly they were friendly and nice and only wanted to stand up for what they thought was right. Katrina still thought the fighting-for-what's-right part was kind of silly, since violence only caused more violence, but for many it seemed like the most straight forward answer.

Katrina decided to answer the girl's questions in the order she had asked them. First, “the Danger Room is a training room that is equipped with various robots and holograms. People use it to practice using their powers or to train for combat or self defense or even just to work out. If you've ever seen Star Trek, its an awful lot like a real life holodeck.”

Katrina's current nighttime hobby of watching Next Generation episodes checked out from the school library revealed itself once again. If she wasn't careful, she'd be wearing fake pointed ears and greeting all her friends with Vulcan hand signs and well wishes soon enough. Though, her friends had all been rather busy lately gallivanting around in other countries and catting around town, and the ensuing boredom on the end of the young illusionist was one of the reasons for the nightly doses of klingons, androids, vulcans, and awesomely bald headed captains.

“The door leads to all the secrets that the X-men don't want to share with normal students and mansion visitors,” Katrina made a face at that. She obviously didn't think it was necessary to keep silly things like a jet and a round silver room locked up behind heavy metal doors, stern holographic programs, and electrical pit traps. “We can go look at the mysterious door, but we won't be able to get in... unless your mutation is the ability to unlock doors. Mine isn't.”

“The X-men are the crime fighting team of mutants that live here. I think their official goals are to protect humans and to give young mutants a place to be safe and to learn. Something like that. I'm not sure exactly how they go about protecting humans or who they are protecting them from, but that's the basic idea. I hadn't heard of them until I moved here, either.”

Cailyn looked confused by her Star Trek reference. At least, that's how Katrina interpreted the look on her face. Maybe the older girl just didn't like the old television show or something. Katrina hadn't been all that interested in it herself until after she had seen a couple of episodes.

The white haired girl did want to go see the door. Katrina couldn't blame her. She was pretty curious herself. It had taken her nearly six months to finally get through that mystery door for the first time. Cailyn hadn't said she wasn't a lockmancer, but she hadn't said she was either. They would see soon enough.

>>>“Almost got lost again.”

Cailyn was kind of a funny girl, like a child, but Katrina liked her. She was nice so far, and her curiosity matched Katrina's own.

“Down the stairs first.” Katrina pointed dramatically, as if she were leading an entire army rather than one girl. “This-a-way.” In the basement, Katrina turned toward the mysterious doorway that hid the mansion's very own airplane, among other things.

The young blonde gestured as dramatically as if she was Vanna White, “Here is-,” she stopped short. There were sounds coming from the other side of the door. She waved for Hymn to come closer and pointed to the door. “Someone's inside,” she whispered.