It had been a few weeks since Kaitlyn had worked with anyone from Future Sight. Now, against her better judgement, she was at it again. Seeing Eros again felt like a great relief. In fact, it was too much of a relief for it to be normal or healthy. Gears began to turn in the back of her head.

"Welcome back, Kaitlyn," Alister greeted her as she walked through the door with something almost, but not quite, approximating warmth in his voice. This almost-warmth went away quickly; Kaitlyn didn't even have time to unpack, or even take five steps into the building, before it was all business with him again. "Now that you're here, we can talk about the next stage of the plan."

Kaitlyn sighed, feeling as if she were going back to school after a long break, and sat down on the couch. "Alright. What's that?" Her voice betrayed her irritation.

. . .

Kaitlyn stood in front of the door to Sebastian's new apartment.

She lifted a hand and considered knocking, but seemed to decide against it, pulling her hand back to her side again.

This had to be the dumbest idea Alister had ever come up with, future-telling or no. What was she even going to say to him? 'Hey, Sebastian, I ORDER you to give me immortality!' And Sebastian, who was also God, would be like, 'Oh, sure! Anything for you, m'lady. Here, have some root beer while I fetch the sacrificial baby that we're going to use to make you immortal right now. I keep a few of them in my cabinet just for situations like these.'

Okay, so Kaitlyn didn't know how this whole immortality thing was going to go down. She knew that she probably wasn't going to like the process, whatever it was, but that didn't matter because demanding immortality from a cult leader who makes everyone think of him as a God was an extremely stupid idea that couldn't possibly work. And no, she couldn't just ask for it nicely, said Alister, she had to demand it. If demanding things from any kind of God ever worked, she never would have ended up in the Sanctuary in the first place.

Shaking her head to clear out that particular nasty thought, she gathered her courage and finally knocked on the door.

The Church of Everlasting Life was gaining a life of its very own. At this point, there were so many eager volunteers that Sebastian didn't even have to help plan things any more. He even had someone to be in charge of the calendar of events and keeping it up to date on the bulletin board and the church's website.

Yes. They even had a website now. He hadn't made it. He hadn't even had a say in what it looked like, or rather, he had been at the meeting where they had signed off on it's final version, but some young graphics designer had given him an evil eye when he had made a suggestion about colors. Apparently his tastes were a little outdated.

He was truly a figurehead now. Just someone who signed papers and looked pretty. His list of duties included things like showing up at the biggest of events. For example, today there was a charity benefit auction for societies biggest spenders. Those that wanted the chance to eat dinner with a man who called himself a god paid exorbitant fees just for a place at the table, and they would have even larger purses to purchase the items at the auction; various artworks, antiques, and items of curio, all donated by the wealthier members of the church or their associates. The proceeds would be split into the refurnishing of the youth wing and given to charities to help cure cancer, the one thing Sebastian couldn't cure himself.

All Sebastian had had to do we pick up the tuxedo someone had had tailored for him. This was the first time in at least a century when someone else had done Sebastian's tailoring for him.

He checked his pocket watch. He'd have just enough time to do his errands and get to the gala event on time. Punctuality is next to godliness, or so it was said.

He was putting on his shoes when a knock at the door startled him into stumbling. He righted himself, slipped his shoe the rest of the way onto his foot, then opened the door. He was again startled at the sight before him. It was the little red head girl that was the talk of the church for all her devotion.

“Kaitlyn, right? How can I help you, my child?”

A unicorn man in a tuxedo opened the door. He looked very impressive, which served to make Kaitlyn feel even more intimidated by him.

“Kaitlyn, right? How can I help you, my child?”

The little redhead started to lose her nerve again. This was a stupid idea.

Something about being called his 'child' reminded her of some very scandalous rumors concerning this man and her adoptive mother. Said rumors were, she trusted, just as scandalous as they were untrue and therefore not worth considering at all, much less at this particular point in time. She needed to stay focused.

"H-hi, Sebastian," she stuttered, "I... just wanted to tell you that I think I deserve to become immortal now." Keeping eye contact with him was a struggle. Everything about this felt wrong.

She looked really nervous, poor thing. Sebastian supposed it must be difficult to get up the nerve to speak to someone who claimed the title of god, someone you perhaps even believed deserved that title. With such a need for bravery, whatever brought her here must have been very important to her.

The little red head didn't beat around the bush. Though her voice was a little shaky, she jumped right into the heart of the matter.

And a serious matter it was.

Sebastian felt for the lump of the watch in his pocket. He knew what time it was already, since he had just checked,l but suddenly he felt the need to recalculate how long it would take him to get to where he needed to go, with all the necessary stops in between. He also calculated which stops were not necessary. Cuff links, for example. He didn't need them. At least not the fancy ones he had been planning to pick up. Those were too far out of the way now that he had other matters to which he must attend.

He frowned at the math in his head. There just wasn't enough time to have this discussion right now.

“Kaitlyn, earning immortality is a serious undertaking, not one to be considered lightly by either of us. I am on my way to go somewhere important, on church business. If you think you are mature enough, you may come with and we will perhaps have time to discuss this further at some point later in the evening.”

He didn't speak down to her as if she was a child. He knew very well that she was more grown up than she looked, because of all the responsibility she had shown thus far and all she had gone through in her short life.

Sebastian smiled gently, if she was looking up instead of at his shoes. His tail brushed back and forth encouragingly, drawing figures on the floor.

“Would you like to come along?”

Unicorn God looked at his watch. He frowned. Kaitlyn lost hope. Of course an incarnate deity like Sebastian would have a lot more important things to worry about than some stupid kid with immortality on her mind. Yet another reason why, she though, this whole thing was stupid, and Alister was stupid.

Hope came back when Sebastian started speaking. Or, at least, a sliver of hope. He didn't immediately say yes, as Alister had claimed would happen, but promised they'd discuss it if Kaitlyn came along with him, which Sebastian claimed she could do if she thought she was mature enough. When he put it like that, Kaitlyn couldn't imagine herself not going along with him.

She returned his smile and nodded eagerly, waiting for him to lead the way to wherever he intended to go. Something about that smile made the God-on-Earth seem a lot less threatening.

“Very well,” Sebastian offered her his arm so he could lead the way down to the car, “We will need to pick up something formal for you to wear on the way. We should have just enough time to stop at one store.”

He had one in mind, too. Whilst walking around the city, as he was often wont to do, he had recently spied a rather exquisite display of dresses at a shop not too far away. If his memory was correct, the shop had been called something along the lines of “Puttin' On the Ritz” whatever that meant. The dresses had been so sparkly he could have sworn someone had gathered whole constellations worth of stars and sewn them one at a time into the fabric.

Sebastian led the way out to where he had parked his car, the white Mustang with the three colored stripes down the middle: red, black, and pale green. It was fancier than he had ever used before, with lots of buttons he had yet to try. Maybe Kaitlyn could show him if there was a radio built into the control panel.

As a gentleman ought to, he opened the car door for her and waited fer her to sit in the passenger side. Before he closed the door he thought he had better ask a question.

“Is there anyone you need to inform of your whereabouts so they know you are safe with me for the evening? I'm not sure how long this event is supposed to last, but it may be a late night.”

... He was going to buy her something formal?

Kaitlyn almost gasped when she realized what this meant: she was going to have a dress! And she was going to wear it, and she was going to go somewhere fancy while wearing it, and... and... she'd given up hope on ever getting to wear one years ago; at least a year before she even went to the Sanctuary. It was a dream that she'd tried to dismiss as stupid or unlikely, but it was going to happen!

As far as surprises went, this was a welcome one. The Orderling managed to get her jaw under control long enough to let out an awed "thanks" as she took Sebastian's arm.

Her excitement dulled momentarily when she reminded herself why she was there. She needed to get into Sebastian's circle of immortals so she could help Lori learn more about him, and possibly even help the Oracle save the world. Even though the unicorn man was doing all of this for her, and even though everything Kaitlyn noticed seemed to say that Sebastian was a nice guy, he might still have some truly evil plans in mind. Also, it was going to be red.

The dress, that is. She wanted a red dress. A sparkly red dress, ideally, but she would be happy without the sparkles. And shoes! She needed new shoes, too; you can't wear sneakers with a sparkly red dress. That would be informal. They needed formal; therefore, they needed nice shoes.

When Kaitlyn got into the passenger seat, she was smiling. She'd been doing a lot of that on the way towards the car.

Sebastian's question caught her off-guard. "Well... maybe Eros would want to know. He sort of owns the place where I live now."

This Eros person... owned the place where she lived? The only person who cared if she came or went was her landlord? It made sense now, why she spent so much time at the church, if she didn't really have a family to spend time with. Sebastian could sympathize. The church was his family, or as close to one as he had ever had.

After settling himself in the driver's seat and arranging his tail and seat belt comfortably the immortal asked, “Do you have a phone, or would you like to borrow mine?” He stuck it in the cup holder between them, in case she needed it, then put the key into the ignition.

Before turning the key Sebastian inhaled deeply, smelling the new car smell and getting mentally ready to run the most high tech machine he had even run before in his life. Granted, this wasn't the first time he had driven it. It was more like... the fifth or sixth. He normally would just walk or take the bus, but it was too far for the former and Calley insisted that he not do the latter any more. Therefore, he must take the Mustang.

While she made her phone call, the immortal did a quick mental rundown of all the necessary controls. Clutch, brake, and accelerator were all where they ought to be. As were the wheel, the mirrors, and the stick. The lights were tricky; they had their own little dial off to the side of the steering wheel. The wipers, in case it rained, were on a twist knob on the turn signal. Sebastian only knew that because he had read through the entire owner's manual under an overpass in the middle of a downpour.

The rest was just fancy dials, switches, knobs, lights, bells, whistles, and buttons he didn't press. “Info”, “Setup”, and “Reset”, for example, seemed to have no practical purpose. Nor did any of the buttons on the steering wheel, such as “- Vol +”,“+Set”, and “-Set”. He had tried them while the car was parked, and they didn't do anything. Not even the “OFF / ON” one, which probably should have been an emergency engine stopper, or something of the like. Not that a car really needed that. It wasn't the kind of thing that had been necessary fifty years ago, when Sebastian had learned to drive, and it wasn't probably necessary now either.

Sebastian still remembered where all the actually useful and necessary controls were. That was the important thing.

“Ready?”

The pale immortal turned the key in the ignition and pulled out into the road. It was a weekend, and traffic was relatively light for the time of day.

“I've heard a lot about you,” he started, thinking of the reports he'd heard about her involvement at the church, including her somewhat traumatic rescue of the youth group, “but I still feel as though I don't know much about you. Would you tell me more about yourself?”

They pulled up to a stoplight. The store that was their destination was just a few blocks away.

The Orderling didn't have her phone with her; she couldn't let Sebastian think she owned something that fancy. "I don't have one. Can I...?" Kaitlyn slowly reached for his phone, then, upon realizing the answer to this question was 'yes,' picked it up and started dialing.

The call was answered almost immediately.

"Hi, Alister. It's Kaitlyn. Can you tell Eros something, the next time you see him? ...I'm gonna be doing something with the Church, so I probably won't be coming back for a while."

A pause. Kaitlyn shrugged.

"I dunno. Just seemed like the right thing to do."

Another, shorter pause. A sigh.

"Yeah. You're right. I didn't have to call. See you tomorrow, then? ...Alright, bye."

That was pointless. The phone returned to the cupholder. Kaitlyn looked at Sebastian and shrugged. "I guess so."

The car made a very impressive sound when it came to life, and now that she actually took the time to notice it, the car as a whole was actually pretty impressive. Due to her limited experience with them, the Orderling really thought owning any car in the first place was a pretty big deal; but a fancy car like this, she could tell, was something on a whole other level. Sebastian's car looked substantially cooler than almost anyone else's on the street, as far as she could tell.

It was reassuring that Sebastian had already heard about her, after everything that had happened. However, it was a struggle for her to come up with an answer for a question as broad as his. "Well... I'm a mutant." She started and stopped, debating with herself what to say next. "I... uh... the first thing my mutation ever did was blow up the apartment I lived in a couple years ago. So I ran away. I ended up breaking a lot of stuff with my mutation on accident, until some other mutants found me. They helped me figure out how to use it, and they gave me somewhere to live, too."

Groups of mutants could be a useful support group for a ingenue just coming into her power. They could also be very influential. That could be either a good thing or a bad thing, depending on the group and their modus operandi.

The group that had taken in Sebastian when he had first found out about his powers hadn't been led by one of the nicest people in the history of the world.

“Just be careful,” he cautioned the younger mutant, “that they never force you to use your powers in any way that you don't think is right.” It was probably obvious from his tone that he had his own stories behind that piece of advice. Though, his memories from that long back were a bit foggy, almost as if they were missing a few pieces.

A child soldier that could not die was bad enough. A child soldier that could blow people up just by touching them was something he hoped to avoid completely. Make that child immortal and … a combination of child, explosions, and immortality would be dangerous. Terrifying. And useful. Gods, but she could be useful.

Perhaps he was tempting fate just thinking about it.

“Are they good people, those that took you in?”

They were nearing the store now. In fact Sebastian could see it ahead of them. By chance, someone pulled out of a parking space just in front of him leaving a spot wide open on the street corner. He couldn't believe his luck. He parked. They'd have to finish this conversation inside.

Sebastian's warning made her pause. She stared at the dashboard, deep in thought.

Each time she'd used her powers for the Order, she felt like she was doing something right, but she knew most people would see it differently. Helping in a fight against the X-Men, breaking things to make a point for people who wouldn't pay their dues... sure, these were ugly things to do, but in the long term it was all for a good cause; that is, selling M. The M drug would change the world. It would wash away people's hate for mutants, so nobody would stand outside her new home shouting nasty things about her family anymore, or shoot at kids who can't control their powers. If humans could have power too, then they'd stop being so jealous and hateful.

At least, that's what Lori and everyone had lead her to believe. Kaitlyn didn't know what she'd do if it all turned out to be wrong.

"Are they good people, those that took you in?"

She snapped back to the real world. Nodded. "I think so."

As they parked, she looked around, trying to determine where they would be shopping. She hoped it was the one with the sparkly dresses.

Again Sebastian offered his elbow to the young lady.

“I hope they truly are as good as you think they are.” Adults could be tricky like that sometimes. As tricky as the concept of good and evil. Sebastian wasn't even sure he qualified as someone who could speak on such a thing. Luckily they had reached the shop that was their destination, so he didn't have to just now.

“Here we are,” he announced as he pushed open the door for the prospective little goddess. He let her arm go, so she could wander and look at all the sparklies while he went to speak to a sales person about the urgency of finding something quickly. The women he found was a thin lipped woman who looked to be about sixty. Her name tag indicated that her name was Marilys.

Marilys noted that the gentleman that came in with the young girl was already dressed up, all the way from top had to tails (one of these actually being a tail). His daughter, she was going to go ahead and assume 'daughter' so she didn't have to think about any less pleasant possibilities, was still in sneakers and jeans. Clearly this man had not been thinking ahead. Perhaps he had assumed his child's mother was going to get her all dressed up for him. Or whatever. It wasn't her place to pry. It was her place to get this little girl into a dress and shoes that fit her as quickly as possible.

“Let me get a changing room all set up,” she smiled at the pale mutant gentleman with a smile that didn't reach her eyes.

All the ice melted out of her gaze and her voice when she spoke to the little girl, though, “Come here, dear. Why don't you tell me what size dress and shoes you are and I'll go see what we have that will fit you?”

Sebastian let the lady usher his charge off toward the back of the room, leaving him alone near the counter. He'd be needed in a little while to ooh and aah at all the dress options, but for a few minutes he was free. He used this time to browse the jewelry at the front, looking, just in case, for cuff links.

Kaitlyn took the deity's arm, and let him lead her into a world made of color and sparkles.

This dress! Those shoes! That one! All these! Her eyes jumped from one thing to the other, a little overwhelmed by the fact that she would soon be wearing some of it. Her hands reached everywhere, delighting in how velvety this green one felt, the silky smoothness of that blue one, and how weird it felt to run her hands along the sequins of this red one. This red one would have been exactly what she wanted, if it wasn't made for somebody well over a foot taller than she was.

She was only dimly aware of the conversation Sebastian was having with the woman up front. In fact, she barely felt any reason to recognize that there was anyone else in the store other than her, until Marilys came strolling in.

Kaitlyn knew her shoe size well enough, but hesitated to reveal that she didn't know her dress size. This was not a problem. Marilys grabbed a measuring tape and went to work. Soon, the saleswoman knew just where to look.

For the sake of time, it was a good thing that Kaitlyn knew what she wanted; the two very quickly narrowed it all down to two red dresses. One was almost entirely covered in tiny sequins, and it had a strap that went over one shoulder. It was almost, but not quite, exactly what Kaitlyn had been looking for. The other wasn't sparkly at all, but it was made of a smooth, shiny material, and it had long, loose-fitting sleeves that she thought might look cool. She stared at both, paralyzed by the thought of having to choose between them.

"Why not go try them both on?" Marilys suggested. "Your father said you were in a hurry."

The girl's face was a mixture of confusion and terror. It took her a second to realize what was going on. "Oh! That's not my dad. He's the head of the Church."

Saleswoman eyebrows went up. That raised some questions. Against her better judgement, she asked one of them as she led the girl to a changing room. "Oh? Which church?"

"It's the Church of Everlasting Life."

Marilys had heard about them. Weren't they some kind of weird cult that worshiped a unicorn mutant?

She glanced at Sebastian.

Kaitlyn and her dresses disappeared into the changing room before Marilys could say 'unfortunate implications.'

In a few minutes, she would reappear, wearing the shiny dress with the sleeves.

Sebastian was inspecting the necklaces, since they didn't have cuff links. He liked the sparkly ones best, and thought there were several that would look nice and delicate on Kaitlyn for tonight's event, but he couldn't really choose one, he decided, until he knew what her dress would look like. It couldn't be too long or too short.

The unicorn man could feel the angry eyes boring into him, even from across the store. He looked up and saw that it was time for Kaitlyn to try things on, and thus, time for him to go give his expert opinion on which dress he liked best so that the women could decide they hated it and choose a different one. This had been the female tradition for centuries.

He didn't think he needed to be glared at quite so ferociously, though, for such a small thing as not paying attention.

The immortal made his way back and sat in the obligatory male observer's chair, usually reserved for fathers and boyfriends and whomever else girls dragged along when they wanted someone to see all the dresses they were trying on.

The first dress was very nice. It was shiny and red, had an interesting shape, and was not too terribly risque for a preteen. The unicorn nodded appreciatively.

“I like that one. The sleeves are nice.”

Then because he didn't want her to think he liked it too much, in case this was the one that she actually wanted to get he added, “The neckline is a little low though, don't you think?”

Marilys' glare told him not to mention her neckline again. He shrugged as if to show that he merely didn't want any undesirable people to be taking advantage of the young lady while she was in his care (or when she wasn't, for that matter). Any father, uncle, or older brother would do the same.

Affirmation! She smiled. The sleeves got unicorn-god's stamp of approval.

...Or did they? asked a voice in the back of her head. 'Nice' was a very versatile word. It came in many different shapes, sizes, flavors, and shades of meaning, and it was hard to get a bead on how Sebastian was using the term now. Was it an approving 'nice?' A noncommital one? A derisive one? What did he mean by calling those sleeves 'nice?'

And what was this about the neckline?

Kaitlyn turned to the mirror and looked at it intently. It wasn't like she had much to show off down there. Maybe someday. Until that day came, though, was it really such a big deal? Was this too much? She turned again and gave Sebastian a worried look. "I think the neckline on the other one might be even lower."

Marilys inhaled audibly. This was getting painful to watch. She excused herself to grab a few pairs of shoes for their consideration.