Open the Golden Doors. Stage left, Enter:

An old Lady. One hand carries her cane. The other a Well-branded luxury handbag. (This goes badly with her flowery dress from somewhere around the seventies and her orthopaedic shoes. But who is a fashionista here?) She has a hat on -- flowers here too. Namely a real sunflower decorating the wide brim, which puts most of her face in shadow.

The stage: Marble floors look for something to reflect back... possibly her falling frame. Arrangements of flowers aboung this time of year. Spring is coming to the Sanctuary. Money is here as well. It shows. Leather chairs are around. Not the ceap ones either. Designer models. Tastefully hidden lights and open windows create an atmosphere some architects would sell their souls for. Lisa sits unpertubed at her desk. Looking up with a smile. Nice for a shelter it is. Very nice.

She notes these things. Takes note quite well.

The woman, she walks the careful walk of the elderly to reach inside. Slowly, with, or so it seems, deliberation. Her eyes focus here and there. Slow down at a nice floral arrangement on Lisas desk. Study for a while. Stay. Say: We have time to be silent. To wait for things to happen.

Lisa is silent and friendly. She is a secretary extraordinaire after all. If the woman wants to look... she can have a look. At the outside. The very nice outside. Because the inside, it is hidden well here. Behind the walls comes death. Even to the foolish old. But there is no need to show that now, is there?

We come to the point of no return, the one where one actually has to engage in social interaction. (Oh indeed a smile here and there. Nods. Something passes.) Words follow.

>> Good day to you, dear. Would you mind directing an old Lady to the nearest Order member?

The old lady speaks in a nice alto voice. Her eyes, under the brim of that abominable sunflower hat, are friendly. Warm. They say that everything is ok. Nice. No reason to be nasty.

Lisa’s smile didn’t falter for even a second as she reached into her purse. “One moment, please.” Her hand brushed against her .38 special on the way to her cellphone; this time; reassured of the former’s presence, she retrieved the latter. Fingers blurred across the device’s screen as she sent a message to one of the Order’s up-and-coming assassins: Unfamiliar old woman asking for a colleague. Come to foyer. ‘colleague’ was code for ‘Order Member,’ but it would be better to keep such words out of her text message history.

Seconds later, Dorian had sent her a reply: ’kk omw’

The secretary understood exactly half of that, but it was enough. “One of them should be coming to meet you in a few minutes. Feel free to sit down, and please be careful about where you use that word.” Not everyone in the Sanctuary knew the significance of the word ‘Order,’ and Lisa would like to keep it that way.

A minute had barely passed before a young man appeared in the foyer. Tall, dark-haired, slender, clean-shaven, moving quiet as a ghost. A look in his eyes gave the impression that he was thoroughly amused by something, and his mouth was frozen in a calm smile. The blues, yellows, and greens of his tie-dye shirt matched the colors of springtime well.

He stood in front of the “unfamiliar old woman” and bowed before presenting her with a note written in large, clear letters for the benefit of old eyes: ’My name is Dorian. I cannot speak. You wished to meet one of us?'

The old lady, she smiled a brilliant smile at Lisa, the secretary. She was already shuffling to one of those leather chair contraptions, her walking stick making nice plonking sounds on the marble floor.

>>Thank you dear. And one can never be careful enough in my age. You young people be careful, where you point your guns, though.

As if this was all totally ordinary. Perhaps, for her, it was.

She looked a bit lost there, on that chair. In her own world, looking off into the middle-distance that is dreaming, that is hoping, thinking. She had her thinking cap on after all. (Or was it? She had something infesting her head at least. A comforting feeling of the ordinary, that.) A feeling, yes, of transcendence. Not here. Not in my body. Somewhere else, that is: the Summerlands?

The note invading her field-of-view startled her out of whatever place it had been she went to when she thought. Her reverie, the otherness persisted though. As did that very nice smile and the friendly glint in her eyes.

>> Dorian. How nice of you to humor an old woman.

She pointed at one of the leather chairs, which obediently started to glow in an emerald hue and proceeded to float behind Dorian, whence it settled without so much as a sound. The glow disappeared, too. Creeping back whence it came probably.

>> Do sit down, dear. And call me Granny. Everybody does.

Her voce was in that pat-pat your face register that some old people simply were able to conjure out of their voicebox. That feeling of warm-and-tingly welcome. One of the arthritic hands, old hands, veined hands -- slightly trembling -- snaked into the modern oh-so-stylish bag. It came out with a plastic container, the lid of which was carefully replaced whence the plastic had come. The container started glowing and hovering between them.

>> Homemade Cookie?

They smelled delicious.

It took Dorian a few moments to decide this ‘Granny’ probably hadn’t poisoned her cookies. That mutation of hers seemed to indicate she had much more direct ways to kill people.

Once the cookie was in his mouth, it took him even less time to decide that, should these cookies be poisoned, he was about to die happy. A smile and a nod was the closest approximation to ‘thank you’ he could give without voice, writing, or sign language as he sat down.

Dorian pulled a small, palm-sized notepad out of his pocket, along with a pen, with which he began to write. Again he used large print, easy on the eyes. ’Delicious, thanks. But you didn’t come just to give us cookies.’ He tore the page out and handed it to her, still looking amused. There was something funny about such a seemingly kind old lady wanting to meet with criminal types like himself. He couldn’t even imagine what this lady would want to do with the Order.

The cookies still hovere between them -- as if there was an invisible table there. The note proceeded to join it, after Granny had had a look at it.

>> Yes, why, I do.

Leaning back in her chair, she seemed to think for a second, a finger idly tapping on her cheek. Her smile was brilliant, in her voice, on her lips. The tapping stopped.

>> I want you to help me kill a few people.

How was that for nice old ladies?

Dorian blinked.

Of course she did.

He pulled a piece of chalk out of his pocket and stood up, holding up a finger as if to say, ‘just a moment, please.’ After taking a few steps away from their chairs, he held his chalk out away from them. A scratching sound could be heard, and a few chalk markings could be seen floating in the air. He walked around the chairs in a wide circle, holding the chalk up the entire time, leaving a circle of chalk floating in the air around them.

With that done, he smiled, put his chalk away, and wrote on his notepad: ‘Now we have some privacy. Please go on.’

The invisible concrete wall he just conjured up around them would block any sounds or people from going in or out.

Her eyes, they followed him around. Bored in his back. Smiled at his face. All the while he made his round. They strayed a bit, stopping at the chalked lines that hovered (to her) in the air. Just a seconds hesitation. Smile. Be there for you.

The green glow around the paper and the cookies never wavered. Neither, it seemed, did her aplomb. She set down her handbag. Yes, she set it down beside her chair. Somehow this was significant? Of course it wass. She was a woman. Everything was significant, was it not?

>> There was, as I know you are aware, an incident involving police officers a while ago?

She looked at him for confirmation. There was, she was sure, not a single mutant anywhere who was unaware of the happenings. Or at least the proceedings ex post facto. The ones before were murky, to say the least. But this was as it always was. The media playing games. The differnt sides of the debate playing. Only now she was playing, too.


>> I have happened to... come across... data regaring the last remnants of an organization called the Church of Humanity.

And what fascinating data it was. A whole Church of Mutant haters. Decimated. And more really, as it was more than every thenth who had died under Auras pink blades. It was a lot. But there always were rests, that is, if you did not excise a cancer perfectly, you tended to have things grow back.

>> Remnants, especially, of a fiscal support structure.

Yes, she had set down her handbag. Now she took a cookie and bit into it. With gusto.

Dorian nodded slowly as he listened. When she paused to eat her cookie, he began to write.

‘You want that structure gone, correct?’

If so, they had a common interest. It would help the Order’s long-term political goals, or at least those goals Dorian thought it should have, if the people with lots of money to support mutant oppression became… unavailable.

She was crumbling a bit here and there with her cookie. She then stopped, the thing half eaten like some obscene moon, to look at Dorians writing; what a nice had it was, she noted. Nothing at all about scrawls and scribbles. It probably had to be that way, what else to do without voice?
She took a deep breath for her answer. It might be a bit lingering. But these things were important. Speaking clearly.

>> The structure, dearest, are banks. You cannot make them gone without a host of bad things happening, no?

She waved her cookie around as if to point at the marble around them. Banks, they were important in the sceme of things. The cookie paused. A crumb had detatched itself and landed on the papers floating between the two of them.

>> Though it would, possibly, be advantageous to have a leak somewhere about certain Banks holding mutant hater money.

Her smile, it was beatific. Old and wrinkly and so totally nice and warm around.

>> I want those financiers dead. Spectacularly. It is what you are good at, no?

She lived at the Mansion. She taught there. Not to mention certain intelligence contacts of hers. But it never did to show all cards in your hand at once. Not when you did not even remotely need to.

There was something deeply unsettling about watching such a warm old lady talk about killing people like this. This was not why Dorian looked so worried, however. He only got worried when the word ‘spectacularly’ came up. He began to write his response:

’I can certainly do spectacular, but I worry about the message that would send. Making clear who did it and why could justify mutant haters. It would also tip off authorities and make my work difficult after the first few. Is subtle acceptable?'

Dorian handed his comments to the woman. He wasn’t an independent contract killer. He would take this job because it meshed with his interests, and he cared more about the results of his work than anything like ‘payment’ or ‘customer satisfaction.’

Her answer was short and to the point.

>> Make them fall from high places. Have them drive into walls with their fast cars. Let unexpected electrocutions happen. Or something like it. I do not want them to die in ways that scream mutant. Only in ways that make abundantly clear that they are nasty., nasty people and have made certain people have grievances. Blame it on the Russian mob after the fact.

Yes, her smile was beatific. She had thought some things out it seemed.

Dorian listened, certain to erase his previous message before anyone else could see it. When the old woman was finished speaking, he gave his chin a single stroke, as though giving her idea a single second of intense thought. Then, he wrote:

’I could do something like that.’

He particularly liked the part about making them look like nasty people. They could be found dead in a seedy neighborhood, overdosed on illegal substances. Or he could push one off a building, after making sure they were drugged. He would just have to hope that the autopsy revealed all the drugs. Hell, this could be incredibly easy if the people in question were already prone to using illegal substances at high altitudes. Oh, and hookers! Dorian really wanted to involve hookers in these murders, somehow. Just to make his victims look even worse.

Or he could make it look like suicide, then type out a fake suicide note that makes it look like they were completely insane. He could even include references to drugs and hookers in the fake suicide notes.

But he was getting ahead of himself.

’Do you have a list?’

It was like a shopping list, of course. Small aper, white with lines. A round dozend of names, addresses and... were those social security numers? Written in a flowing, flowery hand that Droian could probably guess the provenance of.

It even came with a fridge magnet. A little pink pig. Not one of those wildly smiling ones. No, a real sow. Something you could find on a farm somewhere in the midwest. All of it withdrawn from the edless spaces of The Bag.

Welcome to the analog revolution?

>> I do.

It was like he had just accepted a marriage propsal. At least she seemed to think so. The thing floated towards him. Nicely behaved. Nivcely written. Nicely done?

>> May I look forward to reading the papers?

The mime looked at the list for a moment. Raised his eyebrows. Soon, he gave his benefactor a slight smile and a single nod.

Walter tried to move, but his arms and legs were held together by some kind of invisible restraints. He tried to scream, but he couldn’t open his mouth: invisible tape held it shut. Not like anyone was around to hear it anyway. Giving up, he rested his head against the driver’s side window on his luxury sports car. That’s where his wife would find him later that day, dead from carbon monoxide poisoning, a cocktail of drugs and alcohol still in his system, no sign of restraints to be found.

His suicide note, typed in an open document on his laptop, revealed that he had been disgusted with himself, his profession as a banker, his religious beliefs, his numerous affairs, and his drug use. Half of his bank accounts had been drained that day over the internet, from that very laptop. His money was transferred to a number of local charities, including an all-mutant homeless shelter in Brooklyn and a scholarship fund for an all-mutant private boarding school.

On an unrelated note, The security question for those particular bank accounts involved the last four digits of his social security number.

He stood up and turned an invisible doorknob inside of his floating chalk circle. The lock clicked. As he opened the invisible door, the chalk line broke, leaving an exit for himself and the old lady. He held the door open for her.