There was something different about the atmosphere in Sanctuary, sort of anxious, uncertainty mixed with fear and outrage. It was both subtle and abstruse, but also powerful, omnipresent, and oppressive. The air was electric, metaphorically speaking. A buzz of murmuring voices carried throughout the halls, sometime punctuated by an energetic and emotional sound or exclamation. If Aurion had it, the hair on the back of his neck would be standing up, with static sparks flashing between each strand.

The feeling in Aurion's chest, he could only compare to being claustrophobic. Maybe it had something to do with his anatomy, maybe he was picking up things and responding to them subconsciously. Whatever the reason, he was more twitchy than he had any right to be and felt like he wanted to get the hell out of Sanctuary. Yet he was nagged by something that he shouldn't, kept telling himself he was imagining things.

In Sanctuary there were two very good places to go if you wanted to see people, chat, and hang out, or to gossip. One was the cafeteria, for whatever reason people enjoyed spending time there. 'Food and drink were comforting things, that could have something to do with it.' he often thought to himself. The other shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, the Rec room. You could loose yourself in there, ignore the world, push the demands and trials of life away for a while when you were in the Rec room. Though you could just as easily, and maybe more often, hang out relax and have fun by yourself or with others, which accomplishes the same thing, just with a more positive outlook.

That was not the case today.

Today, the normally rowdy Rec room was unnaturally quiet compared to what it was most of the time. There were whisperings and hushed talking between many of those in the room, others were standing or sitting, with disturbed and grim looks on their faces. A fair number of them were even crying.

Aurion felt a shiver run down his spine and spread through his whole body. A little voice deep in his mind said very softly, 'You'd think they just found out a friend died....' A few of his joints must have popped, sounding very loud in that atmosphere, when the shiver ran through him because a few of the crowd turned to look at him as he stood in the hallway looking in. Clearing his throat he started to speak, "What's goi-"

"I got it, I got it. Here. Best one I could find." Said a voice that Aurion couldn't pinpoint. There was no pride or joy in that voice. It was almost disturbing to Aurion as he stepped into the room. It was only then that he noticed what they were all huddled around. The largest tv in the rec room. Someone had hooked up their laptop to it. People were on the floor, in chairs, standing, all eyes glued to the screen. Something about how they looked at the video as it started gave Aurion the impression this was not the first time they had seen it, but that made him wonder why they would watch something that disturbed them so much, not to mention watch it more than once.

Gina appeared on the screen, almost as large as life, and Aurion's breath hitched in his throat. His stomach dropped ten feet. Hands hanging limp at his side, he couldn't take his eyes from screen. There was a chance it wasn't Gina, but that he knew was about as unlikely as this video turning out to be rainbows and sunshine. With how grim these people watching were, there was no way that was possible.

When Gina went over the hood of the car he took an involuntary step forward as if to try and help her, so zoned into the recording he momentarily forgot it was a video of something that had happened. From that point until the end his fists were clenched so tightly at his sides that his claws pierced through his scales and caused him to bleed; His body was rigid, tense, like a great spring compressed and nearly about to release; His normally yellow eyes were almost completely black so large were his pupils. Even his tail was completely still.

When it finished there were renewed sounds of sobs, the sounds of repressed anger, and Aurion, saying one thing, very clearly, "Again." His tone was flat, emotionless, dead, it was in direct contrast to his body, blood still dripping from his clenched fists.

How many times had he seen it now? 10? 20? When had he lost count? How many baton blows did Gina take? How many kicks? Why was he still standing there, in the same spot, unmoving, the punctures in his palms had stopped bleeding, though his claws were still pressed into the flesh. Aurion hadn't even noticed when others came or went. At least he hadn't noticed until the mutant who had hooked up the laptop to the tv unhooked it. It took Aurion a couple moments to realize why the tv had gone black.

His head turned slowly until he was looking at the boy. Aurion's eyes had returned to normal since the first time had seen the video. Mostly. The boy noticed Aurion looking at him and being polite, like he was taught by his mom, looked Aurion in the eyes. He took an involuntary step back before his knees gave out, a shiver ran through his body preceded by a wave of cold dread and a sinking gut feeling. There was nothing threatening about Aurion's appearance, anger in his eyes, nor anything else about Aurion to make the boy feel like that. It was his eyes. They seemed distant, dead, unfocused, unseeing, haunted.

"Where is she?"

He was hit by that sense of dread again when Aurion spoke in that soft, low, flat, empty, emotionless voice. Again there was nothing tangible about Aurion to make him feel the way he did. Nothing besides that buried and often forgotten part of humanity that they all had, the instincts they inherited from their ancestors. Brent was seeing Aurion at his worst, seeing a predator that ruled its world, and it was looking at him, seeing him as nothing. All he could do was collect and move data and information from one place to another without needing any equipment. There was nothing he could do if Aurion decided to kill him.

"Ah..uh...uh." Brent stuttered, mouth agape. Swallowing hard, "I-I don't k-know. I'm sorry." He tried to take his eyes from Aurion's, but something in his gut told him, yelled, screamed at him to stop, to not take his eyes from this mutant.

There was more to that voice than Brent ever knew or guessed.

Another boy in the room had a sixth sense about danger, physical and non, he hadn't gotten anything except a low buzz or tingle in the back of his mind due to the tension in the area and Sanctuary in general. But when the tv had been turned off and the laptop unplugged, the buzz changed, and it sounded like he was in a clock shop that just struck noon, all of them going off at the same time, the tingle became stabbing pain behind his eyes.

He was young and only recently come into his power. In the following two years, he had gotten control of it for the most part, but he hadn't been able to pinpoint what, or where, the danger was coming from, except in a few cases. The situation with the mutant being beaten and Aurion was one of those few cases. Terry didn't need to look at him, didn't need to see Aurion to know it was coming from him. Now that his attention wasn't focused on the video, he was like a rabid dog, being held back by the thinnest of rope, the last strand THIS close to snapping.

Maria was a fair telepath with a slight empathic talent. Normally she was able to keep things out quite well, but the stress of the day, the disturbing video, and trying to keep herself and her friends together, keep them from breaking down, had drained her, eroded her will, her mental walls, leaving her more open than normal.

When Terry's mind picked up the danger the strength of the emotion that ran through him and Brent hit her so hard she nearly whimpered in pain. Instead she pressed a thumb into her temple trying to push the pain away. A glance towards Aurion nearly made her retch. In her mind she saw Aurion like a vast lake, the surface was dead, still, no breeze, no sounds heard. But when her mind accidentally glanced under the surface of the water it was nearly torn apart by the violent currents there. Emotions raging against emotions, thoughts tearing other thoughts apart. Being thrown around in that mental torment, she glanced up, from under the water, at the lake's surface and could see the stress, the tiny rips all over it. The surface was more like a barrier, holding the primal nature at bay, than anything else.

To her it felt like forever, but the mind could be like that. Seconds had barely passed since Maria had looked into Aurion's head accidentally. From where she sat she could see Brent and Aurion, felt Brent's emotions, could hear his mind, even if he couldn't himself. She knew before he did that he was about to get himself, and maybe all of them killed. So she yelled in his mind, tried to keep him from taking his eyes from the large mutant, to keep him from looking away.

Maria and Terry both relaxed sharply, almost at the exact same time, nearly collapsing, when Aurion turned from Brent. There was no haste in his movements, no wasted movements, but he wasn't slow either. There was not confidence, no pride, no...anything from Aurion. He just WAS. Those that had seen the scene and watched Aurion leave the room had no doubts that at that moment, there was no humanity in the inhuman mutant. That sense of inhumanity from Aurion sent a ripple of emotions through them, not knowing if what they felt was good or bad, if they should be ashamed or not.

They did know from Aurion's reaction that this thing with the winged girl was not something that will blow over, something was going to happen, and that scared many of them.

By rec room standards, the place was about as packed as it usually was on a weekend night. However, there was no laughing or giggling or even talking for the most part. Everyone was just standing around, staring at the largest television in the room that stood against for the far walls. That was different. Usually, the nosie from the place could be heard throughout the entire hall way, almost to the foyer. But tonight was different. And that was what caught the shadow mutant's attention as he walked by the recreation room that night.

Shade slipped in and slid past the mostly younger group of mutants as he made his way to the back of the pack. Being one of the taller mutants (at least, compared to the youngsters around him), the shadow specter was able to see the screen decently as it unfolded. The scene was brutal, to say the least. As it played through once, the visible half of Shade's face frowned and he crossed his arms across his chest.

Although the shadow mutant's outward appearance might not have changed much, the nerve endings inside his brain were firing in rapid sucession as thoughts of ways to respond. Images of the mass number of humans did cross his mind (more than once). However, Shade had a creeping suspision that NYPD's finest as well as half the mansion was probably sitting directly outside the Sanctuary doors, just waiting for some dumb mutant zealot to run out so they could shoot them full of lead.

This was a tricky situation. It would require more finesse than brute strength and random killings. Shade took a seat in one of the cushioned armchairs and withdrew a steel blade from his hoodie pocket along with a sharpening stone. As someone demanded for the person to play the ViewTube clip again, the shadow mutant set about sharpening the six inch blade. He had acquired the blade after his run in with Lenna, his first Adapted. He never wanted to be that helpless in a fight again.

The slow scraping of metal against stone continued as the clip was played over and over again as people came and went. Many of the younger crowd cried out verbally for vengence. Others just shook their heads and walked back out. Still, others were in tears. Shade just continued to sharpen his blade, pausing every couple of strokes to check its sharpness.