Perhaps Aiden would eventually be privy to a ride in a taxi that was not supremely awkward. That wondrous moment was still in the future, though.

This ride was horrible.

He was stuck in the car with a girl he really didn't know, but who had a host of less-than-perfected and less-than-polite skills, with an overall plan of breaking into some murderous strangers' home in order to rescue someone that he didn't really like much at all.

Persi didn't deserve to die, though. It took a pretty fancy degree of nastiness to get there, and Persi wasn't nasty so much as idly annoying. And a bit too inclined to star in TV commercials. ER-HEM.

They had to be getting close by now. Aiden peered out the window, distractedly zipping and unzipping the same section of zipper on his backpack over and over and over. He wasn't familiar with much of the city. He didn't know this part. He'd never been here before. There were a lot of buildings and not very many single houses. That certainly complicated things. Aiden wasn't used to apartments. He'd never even been in an apartment building before.

"Have you been around here before?" he asked his companion in crime quietly, still staring out the window.

(This thread is a continuation of This Looked Easier on the Internet.)

“Not really.”

Kaitlyn eyed the taxi driver. He was absorbed in a conversation on his headset, in a language she didn’t understand. She leaned in closer to Aiden and whispered. “I say we pretend we’re humans who met Persi after he ran away. We could knock on the door and say we want to wish him a Merry Christmas.”

And she would try very hard not to gag when she said ‘Merry Christmas.’ She had to try not to gag when she whispered it to Aiden just a second ago. Kaitlyn hated Christmas; it brought up a lot of bad memories. She was thankful Aiden was giving her something to focus on other than her bad memories.

Well, that was not helpful.

He was a little too quick to judge, though. Apparently Kaitlyn did have something resembling a plan, and it wasn't bad. "That should get the door open, I guess, but most humans don't wear sunglasses at night." He tapped the rather noticeable set covering his mismatched eyes. "And going without them would be even more obviously off."

It did sound less dangerous than breaking in or something. Well, literally breaking in. With shattered glass and physical force and whatever. He'd do that if he had to, but it probably wouldn't be the most successful course of action. Something calm, even stealthy, at least to start. That was probably the way to go.

Kaitlyn looked at him like he’d said something crazy. “Pff. There are normal humans with mismatched eyes. That’s not even a mutant thing.”

Then, Kaitlyn realized that the people they would be dealing with would probably be too stupid to realize that. And it wouldn’t help their case at all that both of them actually are mutants, and Aiden could walk around in the snow comfortably in a t-shirt and shorts.

“…But you still kinda have a point. Maybe I should just pick the lock instead.” Or blast the door down, if all else failed.

Aiden pointedly pulled off his sunglasses and stared at Kaitlyn. "Do I really look human to you?" At the very least, he knew very well that his eyes were pretty disconcerting to anyone who didn't expect them, and some people who did anyway. "Human mismatched eyes are both normal colours, like blue and brown. Silver is not blue."

Yes. He had a point. How kind of her to notice. "If you can do it without people on the other side noticing, that would be good. It'll be harder to explain what we're doing there, but hopefully it won't be hard to find Persi and then we can tell the truth and book it." Yes. That was pretty much his plan for getting Persi away from his parents. Tell them they were there to save him from them, grab him, and run like hell.

Gray was a normal eye color for humans, she wanted to say. But that wasn’t the most pressing issue. “How about we just, not tell his family anything? If we say –“

“We’re here,” said the taxi driver.

Kaitlyn handed him a debit card. “I mean,” she continued whispering to Aiden, “It’d be better if we said less. We’re his friends. That’s all they need to know.”

Soon, they were getting out of the cab. Kaitlyn pulled the crumpled-up note with Persi’s apartment number out of her coat pocket.

"I guess we can say I have an injured eye or something if they ask why I'm wearing sunglasses at night," he muttered. He still wasn't satisfied, but he wasn't exactly likely to be satisfied about any of this. Really, they were marching up to someone's psychopathic parents' door in order to rescue him from said psychopathic parents. Not a whole lot to feel satisfied about there.

Aiden tried not to slink out of the car and to the door that apparently led to the appropriate apartments. No security, not locked, just a general entrance. Okay. He edged inside and let himself sneak up the stairs. He didn't want to make a ton of noise, after all. They reached a hallway studded occasionally with doorways and little metal numbers. People really lived in places like this? Kind of made Aiden twitch.

He checked the number off Kaitlyn's paper and stopped at the right door.

Oh right, they had to actually knock. Aiden found the guts, though, even if he would really rather be halfway down the stairs already, if not halfway to the mansion.

Anthony had been hoping for a while that his parents would get home. He felt sort of bad about it, since it would mean Blake was dead, but there wasn't any way Blake wouldn't die, and obviously Blake wanted to, so why not just give him what he wanted? And the longer their parents were gone, the more Blake was being tortured and the more Anthony had to sit around thinking about it. He just wanted the entire thing to be over. Besides, it was Christmas; they'd promised to be home for Christmas, but Anthony had waited up until midnight and they weren't.

Anthony sort of hoped that meant they were having trouble actually convincing themselves to kill Blake. It would be kind of horrifying if they weren't at all bothered by it. But they'd never really liked Blake that much and they did think they were helping him, and if they were bothered by it that meant they'd still be stressed when they got back, and Anthony really just wanted it to all be over. Just be over; he wanted to be able to go back to pretending Blake and Michael were off somewhere at a friend's house or something and were just fine and it wasn't half his fault that Blake was dying and Michael may or may not have. Nothing really was distracting him, though; he couldn't stop thinking about it and thinking how he ought to go try to interfere since Blake was (maybe) not dead yet and then thinking how that would only mean he'd die too and thinking he should try anyway and knowing he wouldn't. It had been six days; Maria had given up trying to talk to him or visit after the second. Anthony suspected a breakup was coming, but really couldn't bring himself to care yet.

Evidently it was over now, though. Anthony had been asleep for less than an hour when a knock woke him up. Sort of weird that they'd get back so late, but really Anthony couldn't blame his parents for not wanting to stay in the house where Blake was killed. Also weird that they would knock, but probably they just had their hands full and didn't feel like digging out the key, or something. Either way they wouldn't want to be stuck waiting, so Anthony only took the time to put pants on before going to get the door.

...Okay, those were definitely not Anthony's parents. He blinked at them a few times before making a guess. "I think you got the wrong apartment."

“This is the Blairs’ apartment, right?” Kaitlyn made a show of looking at the number by the door, then looked back to Anthony. Same general age range as Persi, looked similar enough to him. Brother? “Yeah. We’re some of your brother Persi’s friends. We wanted to, uh, wish him a Merry Christmas!” Those last two words almost hurt to say. She hated Christmas.

Kaitlyn noticed another thing about the guy who answered the door. He looked like crap. It was around this point that she realized a serious flaw in her plan: normal people aren’t usually awake at 2AM. An entire winter break spent sleeping during the day and waking up at night with Victoria almost made her forget. “Er, sorry if we woke you up.”

Person answering the door don't run don't run that was not a parent. Hm. Not Persi, similar to Persi. Brother? Aiden's twitch was mostly internal. Oh good Kaitlyn was talking he could let her talk okay. This was a good time to have practice in looking outwardly not-panicky. Friends was a weird word but some people liked to call people friends.

He briefly wondered if this guy would realize what time of night it was and whether or not he'd think it was odd. Oh! They could be out wandering the city for the holiday and had a bunch of people to get to, and Persi was just low on the list. Right. That made sense. City people wandered around the city, didn't they? He wasn't a city person so he wasn't sure, but he thought so. He'd spent enough time around social more-city-ish people. Not willingly, but he had. He nodded in agreement.

"Is he in?" he asked quietly. He couldn't see into the apartment from where he stood and he didn't fidget trying.

...Okay, so they had the wrong apartment--sort of--and the girl at least was insane. What was a twelve year old girl doing out in the middle of the night anyway? Teenage guy, sure, but thirteen year old girls generally didn't wander around the city past midnight. Anthony had not expected insanity to change that. And the guy... her brother? had to be insane too to let her. He ought to be able to just pick her up and carry her home, but no, here they were at Anthony's door at two AM. Figured. "It is, but I don't have a brother Percy." He certainly hoped not, anyway; a third secret brother that had been kicked out when he was a kid would be too much, Anthony thought.

Oh, and now the girl figured out what time it was. There really wasn't an appropriate response to that, so Anthony just raised an eyebrow and stared at her. Possibly. He was a bit too tired to be sure of the eyebrow part.

Oh the twitchy guy managed to speak. That must be an achievement. "Neither of my brothers are here. They're at a religious... retreat, thing." Anthony shrugged and tried not to think about what he was saying. "You know, go pray and cleanse sins for a week thing." A week was probably enough; he couldn't imagine Persi lasting much more. And then their parents could think of excuses about where he was.