(Continued from Seasons Turn)

Katrina had been working on a homework assignment during school. It was not the usual type of homework assignment. Nor was it the type her teachers would necessarily want her to be doing, at least not while she was supposed to be focusing on her mathematics.

“Katrina?”

The little illusionist was jerked out of her cloud contemplating reverie by the appellation of her name. On the board, three lines were drawn, two horizontal, the other a diagonal one that cut across them.

“The transversal?” she hazarded.

The teacher looked a bit surprised, but still added a reprimand, “You should really pay closer attention.”

The blonde teen couldn't help it if she had more interesting things to think about in the last class of the day on a Friday, like city-wide peace and sleepovers with best friends.

Her bags were all packed. Her mother had given her legitimate, though reluctant, permission this time. She'd also given Calley a stern look to rival all stern looks when they had asked. Katrina assumed this had been some sort of warning to bring her back in one piece-or else. But really, it was unnecessary: she'd be perfectly safe at the Sanctuary.

All she needed was for the bell to ring, releasing her from... brrrrrring!

There was a mad scramble for belongings and a stampede for the door. Katrina was not the only one with somewhere else to be.
--
Thirty minutes later Katrina (and her duffel bag) were at the golden doors of the Sanctuary.

It was purple-red, and a little bulging. It had a white splint taped across it. It greeted Katrina at the door from its perch on Calley's face.

He didn't want to talk about it.

"Want me to take your bag?" Calley offered, his voice a little nasal.

Behind her desk, Lisa looked up to offer a brief welcoming nod to the fourteen year old, then went back to her work. Today, she seemed to be re-filing filled files. Calley couldn't help but think she'd smiled at him more these past few days than she had in years. He tried not to be suspicious, but sometimes, the nose knows.

Down the Sanctuary's villainous hidden stairs and inside the door next to Isabel's room, a lobster greeted them both from his hastily set up tank on the floor. His rubber banded claws were raised in love, Calley was sure.

He didn't want to talk about that, either.

Next to the tank was a borrowed sleeping bag; there were fresh sheets on the actual bed, where Kat would be sleeping. Ms. Dumonde's stern look had been very clear on the subject of sharing. He wasn't quite sure why, which had lead to a sterner look. Seriously, though: she was Kat. And he would have only been in cat for—sternest look had made him swallow any and all protests.

"So," he snuffled, "I think we need to raid the cafeteria, terrify the populace with Cerberotaur, and plot. Maybe watch a movie. Any preference on the order?"

No local pun intended, of course.

Calley's nose was very colorful beneath it's bandages. Katrina's first thought was that Calley had dressed up as a clown to greet her as some sort of April Fool's Day joke. Upon further inspection, though, it was obvious that it was no laughing matter. It obviously hurt... it had to, with that color, but Calley still seemed cheerful enough as he offered to take her bag and led the way down to his room.

“Sure,” she replied to his question, then added, “Your nose looks very impressive, by the way. But probably you should have DocProf look at it, or Slate. Or... doesn't the Sanctuary have a healer?” Katrina tilted her head in thought, “Though, I suppose if you want it to be crooked to look different you could let it heal the normal way.”

Katrina waved back to the lobster in the tank as she entered the room. It didn't surprise her at all that Calley, being an animal shifter, would have odd pets like lobsters. That could even be another part of Calley right now.

The blonde teen pointed, “Does he have a name or is he another 'Calley'?”

The little illusionist considered her options for a moment. “Food and movie later, possibly overlapping, because they go well together. Cerberotaur... I wouldn't want to give any of the Order members nightmares or anything. So that leaves plotting.” Katrina had warmed up nicely for such an activity by plotting nearly all day long for her homework assignment for Slate.

“Did you have something particular in mind?” The last time he had, an epic adventure had been born, complete with three headed monsters and knights on noble aughiskies.

>> “Your nose looks very impressive, by the way. But probably you should have DocProf look at it, or Slate. Or... doesn't the Sanctuary have a healer?”

Yeah, those first two options. No. Slate was Slate, and the DocProf… had been getting the wrong impression about Calley lately, based upon similarly acquired injuries. Ahem. Given that over half of the population of the United States was female, it just made sense that the fairer sex would be over-represented in his medical record. Yes.

"The Sanctuary has a unicorn, I think--but I guess he set up his own clinic, and is only 'on call'. The nurses are the ones who did this." He tapped the nose splint. A poor, poor move. Oww. And again, with feeling: OWW.

The lobster rose up to tap his legs against the glass, his claw-waving escalating further as Katrina returned his greeting.

"I'm still working on a name. 'Angry' comes to mind. Maybe 'Souvenir.'" Calley bounced on the bed, just a bit. That's what beds were for. "Any suggestions?"

Kat's other suggestion involved skipping to plotting. This was a sign that she was growing up right.

>> “Did you have something particular in mind?”

Grin, grin, oww it hurt to grin. Without further ado, the Italian teenager dragged a stack of pilfered Mansion books out from under the bed. (Under the bed being the appropriate place to keep pilfered anything, of course.) Myths and Legends of Japan, Here Be Dragons, and a half-dozen other books on folktales and monsters joined them on the bedspread. Cthulhu wiggled wrathfully on the cover of one of them; an aughisky dripped seaweed onto a black moor from another.

"Having observed that the Mansion's curriculum is lacking in certain vital preparatory courses, as demonstrated at Christmas," he intoned with the proper degree of stuffiness, "I have procured us proper nightmare fodder."

Their own powers could be quite well suited to nightmare fodder.

He pulled out a stack of paper, too, and proudly held up his notes so far: a surprisingly recognizable pencil drawing of the Headless Horseman. Complete with carefully scrawled annotations:

Horse -> me!
Horseman -> Kat, or InvisiKat + headless ghosting Ghost?
Pumpkin -> real? (how often do candles need changing? would it stay lit at a gallop?)

Target date: Oct 31 2010

>>>"I'm still working on a name. 'Angry' comes to mind. Maybe 'Souvenir.'"

Katrina contemplated the lobster. "If you call him angry, people will want to call him 'Crabby' instead. He might take offense to that, since he isn't a crab. 'Souvenir' is going to make people ask what he is a souvenir of. That would be an alright name if you don't mind people asking," Katrina looked up to meet Calley's gaze with one eyebrow raised; implied curiosity.

"Remember that book Slate gave me on stars? There was something in it about a constellation that was a crab... or a lobster. Maybe the name of one of the stars would be a good name for him." Katrina frowned and closed her eyes as she tried to remember what the book had said. "I can't remember them. There was one star whose name meant 'claws'. I'd have to look it up, though." Too bad she hadn't brought the book... but then, who would have thought she'd ever need it?

Calley, on the other hand, had thought to bring his stash from the library. Whether or not the library knew he had them, Katrina wasn't going to ask. Her eyes widened in appreciation upon seeing the covers, "Nice."

>>>"Having observed that the Mansion's curriculum is lacking in certain vital preparatory courses, as demonstrated at Christmas," ... "I have procured us proper nightmare fodder."

This was why she had so enjoyed the year of studying just with Calley and Slate. They learned things she was actually interested in knowing, and would actually use. Probably.

Then he handed her the annotated drawings. She scanned them quickly, a smile broadening across her face as Calley's idea started to take form in her mind.

"This is great! I could make you halfway invisible, too, like a ghost horse... and I think I can make an illusion candle if a real one doesn't work out. Would Ghosty be able to make herself headless or would I have to make that part invisible? Oh, and I can do the fog thing again. That's always a cool special effect."

"Too bad Halloween is so far away," Katrina sighed and handed back the paper in order to grab a book about Japanese myths off of the stack. Chapter one was called 'Kitsune'.

"Hey, this has to be where they got the idea for the nine tailed fox pokémon," she pointed to a picture. "It would be funny if we could convince someone they had fallen into a pokémon game for a day. See?" She pointed to the lobster in the tank and as she gestured, two red mushrooms with yellow spots appeared on its back.

>> "...'Souvenir' is going to make people ask what he is a souvenir of. That would be an alright name if you don't mind people asking."

"Come to think of it," Calley said, refraining from rubbing his nose after a last minute hand-shoved-in-pocket intervention, "I've already got enough souvenirs." Implied curiosity: elegantly avoided.

"A star named 'claws', huh?" Calley cast a critical eye on the tank. The lobster was trying to turn around: all the better to continue threatening them. It was a pretty hard trick for a two foot lobster to do in a three-by-two tank. Fish tanks, by the way, were surprisingly expensive. Would a kiddy pool work better? It was spring. Those would be on the market, soon. "If you remember, let me know." Calley may or may not have had as much interest in his newly acquired lobster as he'd once had in a certain Rottweiler. On the bright side: it wasn't a faux pas to eat his newest pet.

Kat took to his sketch more swimmingly than a noble nine-pound lobster to a mere fifty gallon aquarium.

"Me thinks Ghost will need an invisible head. I've seen her turn herself ghosty before, but not invisi-ghosty. We could technically do this without her, too, but... she's Ghost." This was a clear point of merit, in and of itself. He expected Katrina's full understanding in the matter.

The stylized fox received much attention from the multi-shifter. "That's cool," he decided. "Though I have no clue how those tails are supposed to work. Nine-pronged spine? That can't be healthy." Thus spoke the chimera in him, with a slight shudder. So many nerve ends converging. Such room for excruciating screw ups. "It would be better if they were in a row, instead of a fan. Like this." He poked at the picture's back a few times.

>> "It would be funny if we could convince someone they had fallen into a pokémon game for a day. See?"

Calley grinningly approved of Paralobster. "That would be awesome. We could do it easy, hard, or tournament style--B.Y.O.P."

He drew over a new piece of paper, stuck a book under it for support, and started a quick stick figure doodle, complete with circled numbers.

1) Easy.
Mansion newb + wardrobe w/o back + pre-programmed danger room

2) Hard.
Illusions + chimeras + other abilities + unsuspecting person about to be elevated to the status of Trainer (would DocProf be willing to play Prof Oak?)

3) Awesome.
Bring your own Pokemon. Tournament on the Mansion lawn!

Calley paused from his hard labors. "You and me could make Pokemon with our powers, easy, and I bet that triangle guy could make Porygon." He snerked. "Emerald with a dye job and a rubber tail could be Vaporeon."

One of these ideas was going to happen. This was now a fact of Calley's existence. And now they knew what they'd be doing until Halloween.

>>>"Me thinks Ghost will need an invisible head. I've seen her turn herself ghosty before, but not invisi-ghosty. We could technically do this without her, too, but... she's Ghost."

Katrina nodded matter of factly. Indeed. Ghost was ghost indeed, therefore she must be included. “I can invisible a head, come Halloween.” No problem.

The little illusionist watched as Calley poked at the book indicating where the tails should be. “That would look way cooler than all fanned out anyway. Like a tail mohawk. Like this,” Katrina closed her eyes in concentration for a second, imagining herself with reddish brown fox fur, a slightly pointed nose, expressive pointed ears, tufts of fur on her cheeks, and most importantly, nine bushy tails arranged down her spine in order from smalled to largest. She opened her eyes and stood to examine herself in the mirror. Her shape was still more humanoid than fox, but her features gave a definite foxy impression.

She turned around to look at her back as well. It was kind of messed up where the illusion tails poked through her t-shirt, so she squinted and was wearing a halter top instead.

“Could you do something like that, except more foxy? And maybe white... you'd make a great Ninetails. You'd only need some special-effect fire.”

Foxkat leaned over Calley's shoulder as he sketched out his three ideas.

“Number three, most definitely. We could make a sign up sheet and hang it up at the mansion. I'll be a whole bunch of people would want to join a tournament.” Katrina snatched another piece of paper and drew out a quick grid.

Pokemon tournament sign up

Name:.................Pokemon's name:............... Pokemon's species:.....................

Below that, she drew a sideways tree bracket, like is so often used in sports, but had never seen anything on this scale of epic before.
____
____}---------\
____ . . . . . . . .}------------ (Pokemon Champion!)
____}---------/

“We could also give a prize to the most convincing pokemon, too. Like the ribbons for beauty contests. Except cooler,” because everyone new the beauty contests in the games were kind of lame.

Katrina liked this idea.

“When can we start?” She was bouncing with excitement, and all nine tails swayed with each bounce.

When could they start, indeed.

They had the posters done before dinner. One copy was daringly placed in the heart of the Order's supply territory, on the same run in which they brazenly pilfered their dinner. Later, clutching their ill-gotten soft serve ice cream cones, they (mostly Katrina) talked Lisa into letting them use the Sanctuary's copier. It's color copier. (Katrina was good.) This greatly increased their poster productivity. In short order, before their cones were even gone, they had a respectable stack of posters. They divvied it in half: Kat would get the Mansion and the Mansionly area, Calley would take care of the Sanctuary area.

Movies were then pilfered, and rec room couches equipped with mounds of blankets and pillows. Random other residents were dragged in, and made to share in popcorn. Movies turned to Apples to Apples, Apples to Apples turned to taking turns changing into PJs in the bathroom. Then came good nights, and sleep.

Then came troubles the likes of which not even Katrina's mother would fathom. Calley woke up the next morning, and stretched his claws towards the ceiling.

Clack clack--

clack?

The stars were taunting them. One by one they winked down at the little trainer and her pokémon in a celestial language that spelled out, 'you can't catch us, lowly earthwalkers'.

Those jerks. Boasting about their lofty perch. Didn't they know that a perch was just a fish?

'And don't you know that Pisces is a fish, silly dirtfoot?'

The insults were getting a little annoying.

“Come on Pigeot, let's fly! Do the impossible! Pierce the heavens!” Then, they were looping upwards through the misty clouds. It grew brighter and brighter as the stars got closer and closer.

From way up here, the stars no longer looked like little tiny pinpricks of light. They looked like giant glowing beasts, all in silver and gold and burning blue.

'A visit from the mudcrawlers. How quaint,' Libra twinkled at them.

Then, in a swirl of light brighter than flames, the sky attacked. Taurus charged. Leo roared and a solar flare whipped through their flight path. Scorpio flicked it's tail threateningly behind them.

“Are all the lights in the heavens our enemy?”

Cancer clacked his starry claws, 'Yes.'

...

Katrina's eyes fluttered open. The sun was so bright in the Spring. Really, if it knew what was good for it, it wouldn't be rising for another hour or so at least. She squeezed her eyes shut again, willing it to get dark again.

Clack, clack. Clack?

Huh? Katrina sat up and looked. Calley was somewhere, maybe in the bathroom or something. He never could make it all the way through the night without at least one bathroom break. In his spot, though, was the lobster.

“What are you doing out of your tank? Don't you need water to breathe?” Katrina untangled herself from her sleeping bag and made her way over to the lobster. She was the only one here, and that meant she'd have to be the one to take responsibility for this monstrous crustacean's well being.

“Huah!” The lobster was surprisingly heavy and surprisingly not-wet. Somehow, she managed to carry him over to the tank. “You are an impressive...” The little illusionist stopped midsentence, lobster suspended right next to it's watery home.

There was already a two foot long lobster in there.

>> “Huah! You are an impressive...”

While Calley appreciated the compliment, he did not appreciate the looming threat of watery drowning. Yes, he was a lobster. No, that did not make him a sudden fan of aquatic living. It only burned a little to breathe. He was just fine. In fact, all of his legs were peddling with frenetic happiness—see? This was what a happy, healthy lobster looks like. A happy, healthy, terrestrial lobster. As the tank continued its approach, Calley found his tail curling against his abdomen curling against his carapace. His antennae began to wibble.

Happy happy healthy joyful lobsters cannot hysterically laugh, but they can clack their claws shut around tufts of a fourteen year old’s pajama shirt, and stare up at her with soulful black eye beads.

And they can wish very very much to be any other form.

And they can realize that the shirt they’re clutching is suddenly, inexplicably, alarmingly empty.

Then they can fall a few short feet to the ground, and feel their tasty innards warming with gratitude for the simple things in life. Like tough exoskeletons, and not landing in tanks on the way down.

Beady black lobster eyes wibbled up at her. Antennae waved desperately. Then, Katrina's world went dark.

All around her, a cave of fabric twisted up to engulf her. She was swimming in a sea of cotton. She twisted this way and that, thrashing around until she saw light ahead, then, ...zoom!

The overlarge fabric trap had completely messed up her hair. She could feel it sticking up in every direction. She arranged her hindquarters beneath her, licked her hand, and ran it over her hair to flatten it down. Velvety triangle ears got in the way. The littler-that-usual illusionist froze and slowly lowered her hand: it was in actuality a paw. A white one, with pink pads and sharp little claws curving out from the toes. She looked down, around, and around. She was much more flexible than before. Also, she had a tail. And fur. Everywhere. White fur with blonde tabby spots here and there. And it was all sticking straight up.

That would never do. Instinctively Katrina licked it flat again. Back, side, legs; she cleaned as fast as she could. She daintily lifted her leg to take care of the fur on her stomach and immediately froze. She was not a she. Katrina lowered her his leg back to the floor with a startled expression widening her his grey eyes. Being a cat was okay; being a male cat, not so cool.

Someone was to blame for this, and the someone was most certainly the gigantic lobster with the beady black eyes quivering in front of her was the most likely suspect, a suspect that was now the same size as her.

What the heck, she tried to demand or the crustacean but all that came out was, “Meow? Mroow!”

Meowed questions and mroowed accusations were met with defensively raised claws. The crustacean deferred responsibility: this was not his power. Despite all surface similarities—the animal shifting, for instance, and the fact that the cat before him looked suspiciously like a certain form of his own—he remained resolute in his innocence. He could only shift himself(ves).

No; for this, the crustacean could claim no responsibility. Clearly, this was some illusion. In which case: he did not appreciate being dropped.

With insulted pride, the mighty sea warrior gathered his eight legs (two of them held stiffly aloft), and paraded himself in a tack-clacking circle around the littler-than-usual illusionist. His inspection was carried out from all angles. Hindquarters were wiggled at with long antennae; a tail tip was brushed over by three pairs of high-stepping legs. Finally, facing front and center again, he gave a deadpan lobster stare. This was not funny. Just because his black eye beads could find no flaws in the illusion did not change one simple fact: she was poking fun at him. And she’d dropped him.

With this fact in mind, the lobster reached out a claw towards her face, aiming to pluck off an illusive whisker. With great justice.

The illusionist warily watched the lobster with eerily colorless eyes as it clickity-clacked its way all the way around her him. It got closer and closer and it even touched her his tail with spindly lobster legs. The reaction was instinctual and instantaneous. The tail foofed.

The lobster completed its inspection. The urge to clean the lobster germs off the tail was nearly irresistible, but staying vigilant was far more important right now.

In her his head, Katrina automatically began to tally up the pros and cons of pouncing his sorry tail violating crustacean self.

Pro: sharp kitten claws

Con: thick crustacean armor (somewhere in the back of her his head Koga's voice repeated “carapice”)

Pro: superior feline speed on land

Con: large clacking weapons attached to the lobster's hands (“cheliped, cheliped, cheliped”)

Pro: Lobsters were fish (nonono, repeat after me “arth-ro-pod”)

Pro: Fish were delicious (Shut up lizard boy, no arguing.)

The overgrown crayfish clickity clacked right up to her face. Katrina narrowed her his eyes suspiciously. It reached out a claw towards her fine white whiskers. Katrina bared her his teeth. The lobster snipped.

The sound that Katrina made could have frozen the blood of a fire breathing dragon. If the lobster knew what was good for him, though, he wouldn't freeze. Because with the sound of a hundred demon violins came eight needle sharp claws attached to two pink padded paws attached to a very angry white kitten with blonde tabby spots here and there.

Delicate work. Delicate, delicate, delicate work. Three doors down the hall, Jack was putting the final touches on his ship-in-a-bottle. The fifteen year old insomniac lay sprawled on the floor, the Digimon theme song—season one, English dubbed, thank you—humming in his studio-grade headphones as he worked to delicately, delicately raise the ship’s white sails.

Concentration.
Concentration was knife tip, catching a soap bubble.
Concentration was a pebble that held back the landslide.
Concentration was what stood between her bedroom and utter annihilation.

For Jebra Winslow, the importance of concentration could not be overstated. That was why she practiced in the small hours of the morning, when the local mongrels weren’t yet being lured out of their doors by the smell of breakfast cooking; when all the philandering red monkey tailed men were safely abed, with or without their expanding harem.

Her bare foot slid across the floor. Her hips swayed to the side. The coins on her loose belt jangled. Jebra Winslow danced, and the candle flames scattered around the room rose up in serpentine lines, dancing with her, two doors down.

One door down, Nikolai was hacking into the Russian satellite system. Because he could. Because they had made the mistake of putting up enough barriers to attract his attention, but not enough to keep him out. White text scrolled across the black screen in front of him. The computer’s cords ran not to the wall, but directly into his arms. His fingers twitched now and then, as if in pantomime of a keyboard stroll. This was no delicate work; this was no feat of grave concentration. For a genius such as Nikolai, this was simply—

a thousand seagull beaks held by a thousand green-eyed men being ground against a thousand chalkboards in nine hundred and nine-nine screaming throats

Jebra Winslow tripped, and fell flat on her face. Thirty fiery serpents ran rampant over her walls, her carpets, her pillow case, and her newly replaced Johnny Have-My-Babies Depp posters. One of them curled around an air duct cover, then plunged straight through into Jack’s room, where the boy yelpingly pulled his hands away from the flames. A white flickering tongue tasted the air. Its head turned towards the bottle held in its coils.

“No,” the boy said. “No, no, no—“

The resulting EMP blast did nothing to stop the snake from lovingly setting the little ship ablaze, but it did wonders to knock out every electrical appliance within twenty feet. The lights above his head flickered erratically and died.

Down the hall, Nikolai found himself on the floor. He was not quite sure how he’d gotten there. His computer sat on the desk above, thoroughly dead. From the room next door, he heard a clacking, clawing clatter. The scrawny teenager pushed his way to a more vertically dignified position, and removed the computer cords from his arms. Then he groggily limped out his bedroom door, and glared down the hall at Jack, who stood standing with a bottled fire serpent in one hand and a fierce scowl aimed at Jebra Winslow.

“Don’t look at me,” the belly dancer growled. She jerked a well-used fire extinguisher off the wall, and turned it on the snakes slithering out of her smoke-enshrouded room.

Three doors down from Jack, two down from Jebra, and right next to Nikolai, the door to Caleb Swartz’ room shuddered in its frame with a clack-clack-scrape. Nikolai tentatively reached out a hand, and opened the door.

Firelight gleamed off of proudly raised claws as they back haltingly out the door, and burned in the eyes of a white queen tom with tabby spots here and there. Through smoke and fire snakes, under the dim bulbs of the emergency lights, the epic battle spilled out into the hall.

Three teenagers paused a moment to contemplate this scene.

“Five dollars on the lobster,” Jack decided.

“Five on the kitten,” the technopath countered.

Jebra just growled, and turned her battle back on her own slithery foes.

(I took some creative liberties with your lobster, I hope it's okay.)

--

Three young teens were standin' around
The Order hall like a pitcher's mound
When suddenly a lobster burst from a room
And white cat chased with outstretched claws of doom.
The lobster got pissed and turned to attack
but didn't expect the cat to be on Niko's back.
She had climbed up there; elevation was the answer
Much to the dismay of the technomancer.

The hacker desperately tried to wave his arms
To dislodge the cat, before her his claws did him harm
But she hung on tight, just like a back pack
And the lobster snapped at her his tail with a clack-a-clack clack.
He had an impressive reach but the tail was too high
All he could pinch was a bit of the teen's thigh.
The teenager yowled and the cat finally saw a chance
to pounce the crustacean and do a victory dance.

This is the Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny
Lobsters, kittens, and explosions as far as the eye can see
Only one will survive, I wonder who it will be
This is the Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny.