Regan kept running to the mansion as fast as her two legs could carry her. She kept a firm grip on the child as she made her way to the doors of the mansion. She wasn’t about to let this child die and she had already lost a lot of blood as it was.

Regan felt a slight squirm and felt the small hand press against her chest, the muffled words telling her to put the child down. She just clung her closer to her body for warmth, the soft fur on her arms cradled the child’s face. “It’s ok, we are almost back at the mansion, I’ll get you patched up and get you to the doctor. You’ll be alright.” She was actually thankful to see the child get a bit of strength, things would be alright.

Reaching the front doors, Regan used a free hand to swing one open and slam it shut behind her as they got into the foyer. She gently placed the child down on the floor and started stripping off her bloody coat. Once she got that off and the hat, Regan realized it was a young girl and she sighed.

She carefully rolled the girl over so that her back was facing up, resting her form on Regan’s knees. Carefully, Regan pealed back the bloody shirt to see the size of the wound, but when she tried to find it, there was just a pink mark where the wound had been. This girl had healing powers it seemed and it made Regan breath a hefty sigh of relief. She rolled the little girl back over to cradle her in her arms and brushed the stray red strands out of her face, stroking her cheek softly with the back of her fur covered hand while waiting for her to open her eyes and wake up fully.

Kaitlyn heard the gardener mutter something about a doctor. She didn’t have enough strength left to say anything about how pointless that would be. Everything started to fade to black again.

Soon, she was inside, on the floor, on the gardeners lap with most of her clothes coming off. What the heck was --? Oh. Looking for the wound. She didn’t think she’d have it anymore, by now.

It was hard to think. Coming back from the dead was at least ten times worse than getting woken up in the middle of the night. Every part of her wanted to go to sleep. Keeping her eyes shut, she felt herself being rolled over, gathered up in the gardener’s arms like a baby. She felt something furry rubbing against her face. Eyes opened, just long enough to take in her surroundings, before she closed them again and started to mumble.

“I didn’t even find out if you were hiding anything in the…” What was that place called, again? “The freakin’ glass thing. With the plants.” Her eyes opened again, and she tried to focus on Shamrock’s, with mixed success. Everything was blurry. “Is the plant kid even real?”

Watching the girl slipping in and out of her sleepy state, Regan’s green eyes searched her face for signs of her waking up. Finally she opened her eyes and started to speak, but it was making no sense at all. A plant kid in the greenhouse, what was she talking about? Regan tried to sooth the girl with a soft purr that rumbled in her chest. “Is that why you were in the greenhouse? Looking for a plant kid?” Regan wondered what the heck she was talking about since there was no plant kid in the greenhouse, but simple questions seemed to be the way to go about things right now.

Regan waited for the girl to answer her questions and continued to try and sooth her as she started to come back to reality. She wondered if the girl was a student here at the mansion, or if she lived here, and if not, what the heck was she doing out here? She sighed softly and watched the girl closely. She thought that she should maybe offer the girl more comfort somehow. Maybe if she told the girl her name that would help? “I’m Regan. What’s your name?” She smiled softly and waited for her to reply.

“Yeah, I guess.”

It sounded kinda stupid, when the gardener put it like that. Granted, that’s probably how Kaitlyn herself would have described what she was doing. So maybe it sounded stupid because it really was stupid. Maybe living with mutants for so long made the extraordinary seem ordinary to her, so she was more likely to believe stupid crap like the plant kid rumor.

Or maybe she shouldn’t feel stupid at all, and coming back from a near-death experience was just messing with her head.

Oh, hey, the gardener has a name: Regan. “I’m Kaitlyn,” Kaitlyn replied.

She probably owed Regan an explanation for this whole mess.

“The, uh…”

She closed her eyes and sighed, gathering her thoughts. It was hard to come up with complete sentences; she was still pretty spacey after the almost-dying thing.

“The other kids had this rumor about you, like…” pause, “keeping some kinda mutant plant kid in the greenhouse. So… so I thought I’d, uh…” pause, “sneak in and find out the truth.”

A small laugh escaped her lips as Kaitlyn started to share the rumor of the plant kid with her. She shook her head at the girl and gave a small smile. “You didn’t need to sneak into the greenhouse to find out the truth. You could have come and seen me during the day and just asked to look around, I wouldn’t have minded at all.”

With a heavy sigh Regan rubbed her blood free hand over her feline face and looked down. The sight of the blood, the thoughts of what had happened, chasing down Kaitlyn and almost killing her, the trashed greenhouse, they were going to have a lot of explaining to do! “You do know that because of you sneaking in and fighting with me, we now have a huge mess to clean up and I have to give you a fitting punishment. Though I’m sure getting chased down by me and almost dying is punishment enough really, I have to give you something else to keep up appearances.”

She mulled it over slightly and tried to decide what she was going to do. Her thoughts trailed back to the disaster of the greenhouse and a fanged grin crossed over her lips. “You can help me clean up the greenhouse and fix up all the damaged plants. That way you can see for yourself that all that’s in there are actual plants, and no plant kids. Sound fair to you?”

“But… I wasn’t trying to fight with you…” Kaitlyn whined. “My power goes off when I’m scared, sometimes. You were growling in my face.” These statements were true, for the most part. Blasting Regan in the chest was such a split-second decision that Kaitlyn couldn’t tell anymore whether it counted an accident or not.

“Besides, if I asked your permission first, you could’ve… like, done something so I couldn’t notice your secret.” Sneaking in by herself was really the only way to be sure, rules or no. And if the rules were supporting some kind of child abuse, they were stupid rules and she ought to be breaking them.

Also Kaitlyn kind of didn’t want to spend her free time cleaning up the mess she made.

Listening to the girl whine about her powers made Regan raise an eyebrow, she wasn’t entirely sure that the girl was telling the whole truth but it was a possibility after all with her being so young. “Well either way, you helped make the mess, so you are going to help clean it up. I’m sure the teachers will agree with me Kaitlyn so there is no reason to try and get out of it.”

“I don’t have a secret to hide Kaitlyn. We can go back right this second so you can see for yourself. There is no plant kid in that green house. If there is one I have no idea about it. But considering I’m a cat, I’m sure I would have found it, just like I found you.” She sighed and shook her head, this little girl was going to try and wiggle her way out of getting into some trouble, too bad for her, Regan was smarter than that.

There were still a lot of possibilities that Kaitlyn hadn’t ruled out yet. What if the plant kid was lying dormant in some kind of non-responsive plant form the entire time? Or if it could hear Kaitlyn, but was hard enough to injure that it didn’t take any of her threats seriously? What if not even Regan herself knew about its existence? What if…

No. She’d seen enough. It would be stupid to keep looking into it. The whole plant kid thing was a stupid rumor, and the moron who came up with that rumor needed a fist in his face. Mystery solved.

“Fine,” she sighed. She would go ahead and help Regan fix the greenhouse, and it would probably suck, but she could deal with it.

“…How do people even come up with stupid rumors like that, though?”

Smiling, Regan helped Kaitlyn back up and onto her feet as she accepted her fate and asked about how a stupid rumor would start. “Well I suppose someone thought that it would be cool if there was a plant kid in the greenhouse and started spreading it around for the giggles. Rumors are nasty things, always end in someone getting in trouble.”

Regan handed Kaitlyn her coat and hat that she had pulled off trying to find the girl’s injury. She figured that she should escort the girl back to her room to make sure she didn’t end up starting more trouble, and because it was the responsible thing to do after all. “Well Kaitlyn, I’m thinking I better get you back to your room so you can get cleaned up for bed. I’ll walk you to your room, and then I’ll head to the administration desk and book a time when you are not in class to come help clean up the green house with me.” She gave Kaitlyn a soft smile and patted her on the back, as much as she was still mad that she had snuck in, she liked Kaitlyn.