This was supposed to be easy. He'd done his research, or at least as much as he could concentrate on. He'd had to kill a few hours, after all. He wasn't idiotic enough to try this during the day.

He was, however, clearly too idiotic to pick a simple lock. He pressed his forehead against the door in frustration. Why wasn't it working? He had mangled a hanger and some paper clips to get wire like he was supposed to. He'd bent them like he was supposed to. He'd shoved them in the lock like he was supposed to.

Nope. Nothing.

Thud. Thud. Thud. He had to get in there. It didn't have any fancy locks, just a simple one in the door knob. He was no thief, though. He didn't really know how to pick locks or break into official offices - especially offices that he kind of had official ties to. He had to get in, though. Persi had been messed up enough by his humanist-religious parents already. Who knew what sort of idiocy they were driving into his undoubtedly too-willing skull? But he didn't know where Persi's family lived. He knew it wasn't far, as distances really went, but he could hardly search every property in the hopes that his former roommate would be the one to open the door. He needed Persi's file.

Kaitlyn held a roll of faded black cloth in her hand. While the boy was occupied with the door, she walked towards him as quietly as possible, curious about how close she could get before he noticed her.

She was now within arm’s reach, and he still wasn’t paying attention. She cleared her throat.

“Excuse me, young man,” she restrained herself from smirking, “Are you trying to pick the lock to that door with a clothes hanger?” She raised an eyebrow at his makeshift lockpicking kit. And his… well, calling it ‘technique’ might be a stretch.

Aiden stilled as soon as the mature-not-mature voice rang out in the dim hallway. He might be stressed out of his bloody mind - and with no shortage of excellent rationale for the state - but he wasn't quite oblivious enough to fail to notice that the speaker didn't sound as old as the tone and words tried to suggest.

Goody-two-shoes kid was not much better.

He slowly palmed his tools and glanced sideways, a disheveled fence of hair hanging in the way and dividing the youngish girl into narrow bands. Something tugged and tingled at the back of his mind, but he couldn't place her. He'd probably just passed her in the halls at some point, since they clearly both lived in the same place.

So, what reaction to take? Flee? He couldn't trust that he could outrun her, given the range of invisible mutations she could well have, but if she didn't have something related to pursuit then he probably could. If she reported him he would be rather recognizable, but his reputation may or may not protect him.

Or he could tell her the truth and hope for her mercy.

Mercy.

From a stranger.

Aiden had never met a merciful kid. Then again, he hadn't really met a merciful anyone before he had arrived here nearly a year before, though he wasn't entirely sure he would actually apply 'merciful' to anyone he did know here. 'Not cruel' and 'not bad,' sure. Merciful was another label altogether.

Was saving Persi worth risking the kid's reaction? It was worth this pathetic attempt to break into the office. A roll of the dice, and if need be he could still make a run for it. "Since my mutation doesn't protect people from idiots crazy enough to convince people to kill themselves or open doors, yes. Yes I am." And running on three... two...

Her eyebrow rose higher.

“…I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about, but I was gonna pick this lock anyway.”

She took a knee in front of the door and unrolled the black cloth. Small metal tools with strangely-bent metal tips were contained within, in little individual pockets. She took one out and poked it around in the keyhole. “You managed not to jam it up, at least.” That one went back into its pocket, and she palmed two others.

“So,” she looked up at him, making no indication that she was about to actually pick that lock. “What are you trying to do?” Something about saving someone from killing themselves? Sounded serious.

She what.

Aiden blinked. Several times, really. Scratch the goody-two-shoes kid. Evidently he had just encountered one of the bad ones. And was grateful for it. He was going to spend way too much time thinking about this later.

Persi first, though.

He skittered out of the girl's way, somewhere between envy and horror naming itself home of his expression when he saw her very professional-looking tools. He wasn't entirely sure what the one she shoved in first was supposed to do, but when she put it away and didn't use another immediately he twitched a little.

Rule-breaker kid probably didn't really care what he was going to do, but might be looking for leverage to force him to cover for her on whatever trick it was she was headed. Well, whether he succeeded or failed this story was undoubtedly going to get out. Letting someone think he didn't want anyone to ever know, rather than just not know yet clashed with his sense of morality, but it was the best option.

"I need someone's address," he said simply. "His parents made him think the only way to fix being a mutant was to kill himself, and I don't think they knew he was a mutant yet. Now they have him back."

Kaitlyn scrunched her eyes shut and took a deep breath. At this point, she was mad enough to start screaming and throwing things. How could a boy, living at Xavier’s and supposedly protected by the X-Men, end up back in the clutches of a family like that?

When she opened her eyes again, she looked directly into the older boy’s. “Alright,” she said. “Let’s say, hypothetically, we get in there and get the address. What comes next? How do you save him?”

Bad rule-breaker girl was staring at him.

Aiden's desire to scramble backwards, for once, had absolutely nothing to do with people staring at his mismatched eyes. He did have a bit of an answer for her question, though - he had been working on that very problem. Aiden Killian was a planner (and a panicker) rather than the sort to lead an impromptu reckless suicide charge. Mostly. He was apparently susceptible to heat-of-the-moment stuff too. But anyway.

"Depending on just how far it is - he's from the area, I know that - bus or cab to within a few blocks. I need an idea of the layout of the place and if they're actually there. That'll determine the rest of the strategy. Ideally he's okay enough to walk out himself and finally clued-in enough to do that so I don't have to break something over his idiotic head and drag him out." Aiden spoke quickly and quietly, with his stress showing through a bit but not overriding the fact that he had thought about this already.

“Hmm.” Kaitlyn nodded, staring at part of the wall, deep in thought. “You’ll prolly need help,” she concluded after a few seconds. “I’ll be going with you.” Saving mutants' lives was more important than skulking around, practicing her lockpicking.

Using the lockpicking tools already in her hands, she started working on the door. “I mean, if I can pull this off. It’s different working with an actual door.” Until recently, she had only been playing with the pair of low-quality padlocks she got for her own lock-picking practice. She was new to picking locks the old-fashioned way.

Chink. Click… chink chink. Chink. Click.

This could take a while.

Say what.

Well, this was awkward. He didn't want help, but he didn't want to have to do it alone. Would this girl be helpful at all? Did she have other useful skills beyond picking locks -

Wait, actual door? She hadn't actually picked a real lock before? Aiden rocked back, unimpressed. Wanna-be bad kid, more like. "Are you sure you're up for it? Persi tried knives and fire; I doubt his family's going to do less." He ran a hand through his hair. He had shoved everything he thought might be useful into his old backpack, from his batons to what medical supplies he could scrounge, and was ready to make a run for it as soon as he knew where he was going. His lack of weather-appropriate clothing ought to keep anyone who didn't know him from thinking he had any plans at all to go outside, and those who did know him would probably laugh at the thought that he would vanish into the night.

"What are you trying to do anyway?" he asked abruptly, the question slipping out before it occurred to him that it might not be well received. On second thought, if she were trying to do something nasty, it would be better to find out now, and have a chance at ditching her, than only find out in the middle of something critical and dangerous.

She lost focus; the clicking stopped. “Knives and – what?” What kind of idiot tried to use knives and fire to open a door? Was Persi the kid who tried to – oh right he used those to try to kill himself. Sigh. Why did this boy have to keep talking? She tried to ignore him. The clinking of tumbler and pick resumed.

About ten seconds later, he opened his stupid mouth again. She turned and gave him a death glare. “Let me tell you what I’m trying to do: I’m trying to open this door, so we can get an address and save Persi’s life. You might not have learned this in the master class you took on lockpicking in Elder… Skyrim Scrolls or whatever, but lockpicking is friggin’ hard. it takes more than ten seconds to do. If you don’t shut up and let me finish I will ram your face through this door and we can work from there. Okay?”

He followed her advice.

Two minutes later, the door was open. She packed her lock-picking tools back into their respective pockets and rolled them all up.

Had she really not clued in or heard about Persi's attempted suicide? And she thought it would be a good idea to tag along? This was definitely not a good idea. He should start thinking of ways to leave her b--

Ai shut up. He even shut up in his head for a while, before eventually muttering that she got the name wrong and Dragon Age was better anyway. In his head. He didn't want more facial scars. Or, you know, the pain of having his head shoved through a door. Into a door would be bad enough.

He stayed quiet until the door opened, hesitated, and then pushed himself to his feet to edge into the office while the girl was packing up her tools. Files with addresses. Filing cabinets? Those looked promising. He crept across the room, more than a little paranoid that he was going to set off some alarm.

“I heard about Persi, by the way.” She turned the light on in the office and shut the door behind her. “I mean, the suicide thing. But I thought he did it ‘cause of the bullying, and I didn’t know about his parents.” Nobody she’d talked to knew the whole story, and she didn’t spend a ton of time investigating.

“I’m Kaitlyn, by the way. Now that I totally broke the rules for you.” Not that she wouldn’t have broken that rule by herself anyway.

Oh. "He didn't really talk about it until afterwards, and even then it wasn't exactly intentionally." A bit indirectly, and certainly not my parents are evil and stupid and they made my life suck. Actually, that would have been an improvement, since Persi would have had to realize how idiotic his family was in order to even think it. "But even a roommate with his head in the ground picks up on some things, I suppose. And I'm Aiden."

He wished she hadn't turned the light on. What if someone came by? Now they were announcing their presence to anyone who might stumble past!

... although he could now see that the filing cabinets each had a lock and a label. He had no clue what Persi's last name was, but he suspected the school wouldn't require the same sort of official identification as a human institution. He found the cabinet with the Ps and gestured Kaitlyn over.

Kaitlyn attempted to pull open the “P” drawer on the filing cabinet. It was locked.

“…Why would they lock these?”

She unrolled her lockpicking kit again. Soon, the filing cabinet was unlocked. It took her less time to open this lock than the last one.

“Persi is spelled P-E-R-C-Y, right?”

"Because it's private information and they don't want random people getting into it?" Really. Why wouldn't they lock them? Most of the filing cabinets Aiden had ever seen came with locks. If you had locks and stored private information behind them, why would you not lock the locks? It was just common sense.

"P-E-R-S-I. He's weird like that." He joined Kait to flip through the files. No, no, no... Lookit that! He tugged a file free and flipped it open. Address... address... Wow. The file actually had one. He grabbed the nearest pen and scrawled it on the back of his hand. "Right... now to get there."