Gawain was on his way home after a long an exhausting day of doing nothing.
...
Well, that was not exactly true.
...
He had been doing something. Several something.
Jut none of them worth any further discussion. School-less weekdays were boring like that. Ran a few errands to make himself feel productive, and then headed home to the Mansion, mirror to mirror for a shortcut.

Carrying an Irish wolfhound sized bag of dog food on his shoulder. Pretending to be a sailor loading sacks of pirate gold onto a ship. Yo-ho.

Only a few more mirrors; he only had to glanc through each one he passed to know which was he was headed. Walked this route a thousand time. A few more steps, and he would be...
...
...
...

"Maxine?!"

Swear to god that woman is haunting me.

And she also set up a... studio?...
... in the Mansion living room?...
...

Gawain glanced over his shoulder to see where he came from. There was no mirror. Not even a reflecting window. Not even a camera lense...
...

"Whut?!..."

Mirror stared. Cameras stared. Maxine stared. Only the little lights were blinking.

The five o'clock news. The time of day when America's average man-woman-and-child were just getting home from the office, play rehearsals, soccer games. The time they were just turning their televisions on, looking for something to gently anesthetize their brains before Autistic Doctor, Singing High School, or This is the Best America Can Sing. Where did they turn? To TVs original reality television: Wolf News.

The five o'clock news, live from New York. Not the ten o'clock news, with a pre-tapped segment. She wasn't dressed up like the poster girl for fan service, but was wearing a tastefully tailored skirt suit with a tastefully flashy blue blouse. This was it. She'd wedged her foot into the door of real broadcast journalism. She'd made it: now she just needed to convince the rest of the world to let her in.

The redhead took a deep breath. The cameraman—a professional, not an intern she'd dragged away from making coffee, or a lion shifter who got car sick—flashed her a thumbs up. You can do it.

Of course she could. She was Maxine Ralls, and she was going to nail this thing to the church doors.

"—now to Maxine, for a surprising development in our ongoing coverage of the M epidemic."

She smiled; she put her papers down, and folded her hands over them; she positively oozed confidence over the table and into homes all over the East Coast. "Thank you, Gerald. In tonight's top story, I present to you a torrid drama of love and betrayal, murder and drugs, unanswered questions and—Gawain?"

Maxine stared. Cameras stared. Gawain stared. In the sudden silence, all she could think to say was, "You're standing in front of my camera."

"...You know him?" Her co-anchor asked, with the sound of her career sliding back to the 10 o'clock slot.

>>"—now to Maxine, for a surprising development in our ongoing coverage of the M epidemic."

Gawain blinked back at the tiny lights above the cameras. He was... on TV?

Sh*t.

>>"Thank you, Gerald. In tonight's top story, I present to you a torrid drama of love and betrayal, murder and drugs, unanswered questions and—Gawain?.. You're standing in front of my camera."

"What the..." the young knight shook his head. Maxine's eyes spelled murder. In five different languages. And microexpressions that were not small at all.

"How the hell did this happen?..." something was obvious wrong. He was out of the mirror world, and in Maxine's studio, several streets and blocks away from where he was headed. Was it his powers acting up, or someone else's? It was a very important question. Because the person responsible was dead man walking.

Gawain did the only reasonable thing under such pressure: he decided to get smart. Hoisting the dog food onto his shoulder before it slipped, he grinned at Maxine.

"Wished upon the mirror to see me again, my lady?"

Dog food. He was actually carrying dog food, slung over one shoulder. He was in slummy jeans and a slummy shirt. They say the camera adds ten pounds. Little known fact: it added ten pounds of dirt, too. Had he even bothered to comb his hair before he stepped in to ruin her life?

"How did you even--? Why--?" There were not words to express this. He was smiling. He was standing between her and Camera A, getting his cocky face plastered all over Side-Camera C. A particularly enterprising soundman had even moved a boom mic closer to him, as if to help the sound quality on her fall from grace.

>> "Wished upon the mirror to see me again, my lady?"

They'd given her a whole three minutes. Three minutes of primetime air. And he was standing there smiling as he ruined it. She'd thought he was her friend. She'd dropped everything a few weeks back, to help him find his mother. He'd kissed her. And now there was one-minute and fourteen seconds until the weather forecast and the cameras were on him, not her, as he ruined her life.

"I am going to kill you," she said, softly. Good thing the microphone clipped to her fancy new suit would pick it up loud and clear, for all of New York to hear.

A cold lump formed in her stomach; something dry had lodged itself in the back of her throat, and she couldn't swallow past it. A burning heat was building in her cheeks, and her eyes were starting to—damnit—to sting. She couldn't cry. She was Maxine Ralls and she was wearing mascaras and she'd be ugly if she cried.

"Rex," she said, with clear enunciation. "Sic him."

The octoclip tumbled up over the news desk at fifteen miles an hour, its clips a silver blur on the studio cameras as it went straight for Gawain's smirking stupid slumpy-jeaned dog-food face.

She was not the kind of woman who went down alone.

>>"I am going to kill you."

Oh crap. It was not the death threat, or being live on national television. Gawain was pretty sure Maxine could arrange for his murder if she wanted to; with her connections, nothing was impossible.
The really, truly terrifying part, however, was her eyes.
Maxine was about to cry.

>>"Rex. Sic him."

On a similar note, he had no idea the octoclip could jump.

But it did. It pounced straight onto his face, and there was no tender octoclip love for the young knight. He could see cameras closing in as he went down, vengeful paperclips clawing at his face. His only hope was violence graphic enough for the cameras to sh...

...sh*t.

Gawain looked up. The octoclip was gone. So were the cameras.
Was he dead?...

Heaven smelled like dog food. Or maybe it was hell.
Whatever it was, it looked like the Mansion living room. Two mutant kids sitting on the couch, staring at him with eyes big as saucers.

Gawain sat up. He looked around. He was sprawled on the floor in front of the TV. The weather forecast was playing merrily on the screen.

Maybe it was all just a dream...?

"Dude! You were on TV!"

... maybe not.

"Damn." Gawain muttered.

Two hours later the young knight was knocking on Maxine's door with a box of chocolate and a pair of very strong magnets.

It was the fourth or sixth time she'd replayed it, at a fairly conservative estimate.

"—isn't the first time police have had cause to tangle with the Csendes family. Earlier this year, the Iris Clinic was shut down for practicing illegal medicine—"

Her ice cream was Beyers. At five or six bucks a container, a girl could rest assured it was the best. Toss in strawberry and white chocolate chunks, and any victorious reporter in her right mind would be curled up on her couch, celebrating with bowl number two.

She should probably get some real food in her stomach, soon. She'd been too nervous to eat dinner... now she was wrapped in a kitten-print fleece blanket, wondering if a girl could give herself diabetes by eating too much sugar. Could she? Mmm, even if she could, it was still delicious.

Oh, the door!

"Gawain!" She had flung it open almost as soon as her eye touched the peephole. It bounced noisily against the chain; she closed it again (maybe a bit more loudly than necessary), rattled the chain off its track (which took more fumbling than usual), and flung it open properly.

Opps. She didn't hit him, did she?

But the point was: "Gawain! You brought chocolate!" Just what she needed. The redhead grinned a flushed grin as she tried to drag the mirror-walker into her humble abode. "Since when do you come in through the front door?"

"—at ten o'clock this Friday night, for in-depth coverage on this developing story," the redhead on the television finished, with a triumphant smile. Everything had gone perfectly. So perfectly, some of her co-workers had taken her out for celebratory drinks afterwards.

>>"Gawain!"

The door made a loud, ugly nosie as the chains rattled; it almost looked like some kind of a wild beast trying to break out of the apartment. Gawain took a step back.
The door slammed closed.

Well, that was nothing really unexp....

>>"Gawain! You brought chocolate! Since when do you come in through the front door?"

"Wh..." Gawain did not even have time to say goodby to his young life as Maxine dragged him inside. She looked...

... cheerful?...

"Yeah, I just..." he handed over the chocolate first, hoping that would occupy her hands, and glanced around for Rex "... I wanted to apologize. For tonight. Um..."

She looked really cheerful. Oh hell.

"... Maxine, are you drunk?"

"...For tonight?" She repeated, taking the chocolate in her hands and turning it over and over. Brand: within acceptable price range. Not too cheap, not 'you owe me a baby' expensive. Recommended serving size: one piece. Pfft; she could write her own recommendations, thanks. She was a professional.

"For toni... Ha!" Box and arms leapt around his neck. "Wasn't it great? They're going to replay it on the seven o'clock news. And the ten!" Which was a fantastic time slot, really. It already felt nostalgic.

She wiggled back to the floor, took a second to steady herself on his shoulder (his nicely firm, manly-until-midnight shoulder), and grinned.

"I'm not drunk, I'm victorious." She corrected him, with a pat on his growing-boy chest. "Stay! Watch! Celebrate! It's all thanks to you, you know."

As questionable as that Seattle trip had been for useable journalistic results, it had been written down on her quarterly performance review as showing bold initiative. It was that kind of praise that landed a girl her first prime-time segment.

>>"...For tonight? For toni... Ha! Wasn't it great? They're going to replay it on the seven o'clock news. And the ten!"

Gawain winced when Maxine jumped at him; but instead of the slap he had anticipated, or well-manicured nails digging into his eyes, he got a hug. a very cheerful one too.

"Wh..."

>>"I'm not drunk, I'm victorious. Stay! Watch! Celebrate! It's all thanks to you, you know."

"Maxine... are you okay?" he glanced at the TV set "I mean, I'm really sorry. I didn't mean to walk into the studio like that. I don't know what happened..."

What was going on with her? Was the trauma so bad she just blanked out the whole thing? Did he manage to break Maxine's brilliant mind?...

"Wh... I mean... I don't understand. I ruined your show."

The redhead rocked forward on her heels, staring into the good knight's face. Staring. He was a little flushed, his speech broken, and the words coming out of his mouth...

"Gawain," she asked, squinting up at him. "Are you drunk?"

Come to think of it, the last time he'd been here, he had kissed her. Sure they'd been off to a hotel room in Seattle since, but Vicente had been there with them—that was like having your stodgy old grandpa chaperoning. This was the first time they'd seen each other since then, and... he'd brought chocolates.

She put a hand to her mouth to stifle her any undignified squees.

He'd gotten drunk just to bring her chocolates. Who knew the Prince of Orkney was so shy?

"Come on, Gawain. Why don't you take a seat?" She said soothingly, taking his arm and attempting to lead him to a chair. No, not a chair. The couch—room for two. "We can watch the news, and eat chocolate."

She was sure they could think of other things to do, too.

The 7 o'clock news came on: local sports team, holiday shopping, conservations up in arms about a few odd deaths among New York's wolves, pileup on the Jersey turnpike, and—this was the good part, kids—Maxine's own segment.

"Thank you, Gerald. In tonight's top story, I present to you a torrid drama of love and betrayal, murder and drugs, unanswered questions and—"

"I probably could have eased back on the mascara," she commented with a critical eye. Then again, if it had taken her seven times through to notice that, she was probably in the clear.

The segment played through to completion, without a knight in sight.

"—over to Luis, with weather." The redhead on the screen ended, her triumphant smile an echo of Maxine's own.

>>"Gawain. Are you drunk?"

The young knight blinked. He was apologizing and hoping to stay alive... and she was... laughing?...
What the...

>>"Come on, Gawain. Why don't you take a seat? We can watch the news, and eat chocolate."

"The news? But..." he followed, too shocked to resist. He sat. He watched. He knew what was going to happen, and that did not make it any easier. Was this some kind of torture? Was she going to make him watch over and over again to punish him?...

>>"Thank you, Gerald. In tonight's top story, I present to you a torrid drama of love and betrayal, murder and drugs, unanswered questions and—"

Gawain braced himself for the hit... and it never came. Maxine was brilliant and cheerful, and the show ended with the weather, instead of a murder threat.
Gawain turned to look at Maxine, searching for signs of... any sign, really, to clue him into whatever just happened.

"I don't understand, Maxine. What happened? I walked into your studio today, and I thought it was live, and ruined everything, and you were..." gulp "... going to murder me."

Maxine did the only reasonable thing: she muted the TV, scooted quietly closer to Gawain, and set the back of her hand lightly to his forehead.

A little warm, but boys usually were.

"You don't have a fever... Hmm. Nothing happened tonight, Gawain." Except for a strong piece of quality speculative journalism, thank you. She smiled. "I've got proof, too: if you had ruined my show, I would have murdered you."

It was a rather sharp smile.

Maxine checked him for fever. He didn't have any. Gawain shifted uncomfortably.

>>"You don't have a fever... Hmm. Nothing happened tonight, Gawain. I've got proof, too: if you had ruined my show, I would have murdered you."

"Yeah, I figured." he smirked at her "That's why I brought chocolate."

Not like that would safe his life. But it was sturdy enough a box to be used for a shield, just in case.

"I... am not sure what happened, then. I am not making this up." he wrinkled his nose "I was mirrorwalking home, and then... suddenly I was in your studio. And then you got pissed, and I... stumbled out of the TV in the Mansion living room. I thought... I thought everyone saw me walk into your show."

Maxine blinked first; snerked second.

"Gawain," she said, resting a lazy arm over the back of the couch, "you were mirror walking to the Mansion and you ended up in my studio? Now I admit, I'm not the expert on your power... but isn't that impossible? Don't you usually straight-line it?" She grinned. "There's this crazy new thing that kids are doing these days. It's called a 'practical joke.' I don't suppose you've ever heard of good little Mansion-mutants ever pulling one of those, have you?" She didn't suppose any of them had been sitting in the living room, laughing as he stumbled out, either.

She grinned even harder, and sidled a little bit closer. "You know what we should do? Mirror walk on back, find out who did it, and haunt their reflection. Or maybe just drop Rex on their head."

Her guess was an illusionist. Or some kind of mind-manipulator: they'd certainly done a number on the Prince of Orkney, here. Which had led to her getting chocolate and a boy on her couch... Really, these Mansion kids weren't so bad.

>>"Gawain, you were mirror walking to the Mansion and you ended up in my studio? Now I admit, I'm not the expert on your power... but isn't that impossible? Don't you usually straight-line it? There's this crazy new thing that kids are doing these days. It's called a 'practical joke.' I don't suppose you've ever heard of good little Mansion-mutants ever pulling one of those, have you?"

Gawain kept wrinkling his nose. The idea of the Mansion kids pranking him was just... no. He would never be able to live that down. There had to be another explanation. A better one.

>>"You know what we should do? Mirror walk on back, find out who did it, and haunt their reflection. Or maybe just drop Rex on their head."

"Well, I guess I could do that" he smirked at the idea. Rex could be a lethal weapon. He has experienced that earlier "... too bad you couldn't."

All right, so Maxine was not planning on killing him. Good news.

"I don't think it was a prank too. If someone could do that... I'd know. And I don't think anyone has the mutant power in the Mansion to make me walk through a non-reflecting TV set."