An old heap of a cab slowly and cautiously pulled up to the front of the mansion gates with a very familiar subject sitting in the back passenger seat. This subject wasn't a new mutant looking for a place to hide or a new family to call her own, she was a former team member who fell on hard times. While sitting in the back of this contraption of a cab, the female subject sat in silence while twiddling her silver heart necklace as she gazed out of the window in trance like state. And at that moment, every memory from this place flooded her mind with thoughts of regret, sorrow, and happiness. She carefully rolled down the backseat window of the rustic cab and peered through the beautiful lush green foliage that danced and caressed around the mansion's gates for any sign of life. She squinted her ice blue eyes as she looked up to the the blinding rays of the sun in the skyline and glanced down at the roof of the mansion. She could see the new terracotta tiles contrasting with the old as well the new landscape that was once her playground. She placed her smile in the palm of her hand as the memory of the destructive haywire mission manifested in her mind.


“Hey! I gotta go sweetheart, are you going to pay or what?” said the old cab driver in a thick New York accent. He looked to be in his early sixties with his white hair and beard. The female passenger snapped back to reality thanks to the impatient cab driver as she pulled out her wallet filing through dozens of credit cards that were more than maxed out only to find her last twenty. She thought about ducking the driver sense he tortured her with myths and folklores of his past as a local hero and a ladies man on the ride to the mansion. He focused his attention at the road ahead as he gestured his hand backward toward the woman rubbing his fingers expecting to get paid. The woman thought about dashing out that tin can of a cab, but she remembered she was turning over a new leaf.


“Here you go, and don’t expect a tip” the woman said as she threw her last twenty at the cab driver, “You should seriously consider finding a new profession” she said as she hastily grabbed the two rugged suitcases that sat in the seat next to her. As the woman’s black spiked heels stepped out of the rugged vehicle, she immediately placed her black wayfarer sunglasses upon her face to shield out the suns’ beaming ray of light. With both hands, she carried the suitcases and headed toward the mansions gate without closing the cab’s door. She walked midway up the driveway before stopping her tracks, “you’re services are done here, you can leave…now!" She said to cab driver while her body still faced the mansion gate. He abruptly jumped out of the driver’s seat and closed the passenger door she purposely left open. Angered by the woman’s childish antics, the cab sped off with rage.


As the woman approached the gate, she sat down her suitcases and rummaged through her vintage brown purse for the badge that once opened these doors on command, but she couldn’t locate it. She opened her purse and faced the sun, so that the ray of light could aid her finding a badge that was never sought after for years. “I know it’s in here somewhere” she said as she frantically checked every pocket inside the purse only to remember she threw it away years ago when she attained a new identity. She quickly gazed at the mansion’s grounds for any life to give her access inside where she noticed a keypad and a buzzer on the right side of the gate. She walked up to the gate and hit the buzzer, but no one answered. “How do these things work?” she asked herself out loud before she pressed it for the last time. “Hey! Is anyone there? It’s me...Deathstar”

Jiri had found his niche in the Mansion. It wasn't with people his own age: they were creepy and most of them were psychologically scarred and a lot of them didn't even look human. Jiri was just a normal teen, he was way out of his depth dealing with that. He just... wanted to relax. Pretend like things were normal, for once.

"I am King of the Kindergarten!" The five year old boy proclaimed, precariously standing on the lower branch of a maple tree. "Bow before me, all you mortals! Shut the gates to my castle and secure my domain!" 

A squealing, giggling herd of underage minions ran to do his bidding. A little boy with leaves for hair worked together with another to slide the metal gates of the grounds shut, and then wove vines in place to keep them lashed together. The other boy tapped his hand against the back of the intercom, and something sparked and fizzled. A taxi was pulling up down the street when they ran giggling back to the King.

"Me next! Me next!" A girl with kangaroo feet sticking out of her shirt shouted, accompanied by excited hopping. 

"So it shall be!" The little boy pointed at her with a grin. In the next second, he was slumping, and blinking, but still grinning. "No fair, it was still my turn!"

The little girl straightened herself up to the tips of her tippy-toes, and put her chubby hands on her hips. "Know your place, plebeian, for I am... the Queen of the Kangaroos!" 

Meanwhile, back by the gate, a blonde woman with pink highlights in her hair was wrestling with her purse and the gate and the intercom. If she looked out onto the lawn, she would see about fifteen children, ranging from five to eleven in age, gathered excitedly around the kangaroo girl. If she looked a little bit further behind them, she'd see the body of a sixteen year old body unconscious on the lawn, and apparently tied up in leafy vines. 

Asking who had started it was a futile question. Maybe the kids had, when they'd started running from him his second day at the Mansion, squealing that the Body Snatcher was going to get them. Maybe Jiri had, when he'd taken to stomping after them with his best fee-fii-foo-fuum giant impression. But the kids had definitely been the ones to ambush him in the library an hour ago, and tie him up. We caught him, we caught him!

Kidnapping a body snatcher? Oh foolish youths.

It was only a matter of minutes before he'd made himself their king. Or queen. It really depended on who he was possessing at the moment. In the back of his head, the kangaroo girl was in hysterics as he directed his new minions with her voice.

She sounded a lot like his own little sister, back home. Why was it that little kids were so good at dealing with all this scary mutant crap? Jiri's sister had thought his body hopping was just a fun game, too.

Down at the gates, the new arrival was sounding a little impatient. The kangaroo girl stared at her with all the force a freckle-faced seven-year-old with pigtails could muster.

"You! You name yourself the Death of Stars? What business have you in my kingdom?"

"Hello," a small, precious voice said curiously, and Ambrose turned his head to see a little girl clinging to the gate, peering at him.

"Hello," he said, voice coming out deep and rumbling. "Who are you?"

He knew where he was, of course - his own manor was rather close to Xavier's Sister School, so he liked to prowl down around it occasionally when in his jabberwocky form, confident that everybody either didn't care or didn't realize when he was around. That's why he wasn't surprised when he saw the girl oozing an almost translucent green slime from her face, and when she scratched her cheek with her fingers and replaced the hand on the fence, the metal turned white to his heat-sensitive vision.

"Genevieve, and I'm six," she said proudly. Ambrose was tucked mostly into the foliage, really just napping because the area around the X-Mansion was so much nicer than the dead wastes surrounding his house, and he wanted to go places sometimes when he was in his true form. He turned his great head to squint up in the direction of the noise he could hear - the noises of other children playing, as far as he could tell.

"Why aren't you playing with your friends?" he asked, and she pouted in response.

"They're not my friends, she said harshly. "They're scared of me and don't want to play with me." Understandable, but really, children were such pretentious dickheads sometimes. So Ambrose resolved to knock them down a few pegs.

"Hey," he whispered, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial tone, "what do you say that we scare them a bit?" Immediately, her eyes brightened, and Ambrose could tell that, were she older, she'd make a magnificent businesswoman, with that sense of shrewd justice. What comes around goes around, after all.

"What should I do?" she whispered back, and Ambrose turned to look at where the other children were playing again. He could sense an adult outside the gates, white in his otherwise gray vision, and the children seemed to be keeping her from entering.

"What are they doing?"

She shrugged. "They kidnapped Jiri and brought him out there, I think. And -" She squinted at where they were scrambling around. "I think they're trying to seal the gates."

Ambrose, having thought of a plan at this point, grinned and let out a little puff of air. The girl looked back at him, excited, as Ambrose quickly relayed his plan to her. With that, she ran off, and Ambrose could see her white outline speaking with another child, before both returned at a jog.

"Here," Genevieve said, pointing at the patch of fence directly in front of Ambrose's mostly camouflaged face. The newcomer peered through the fence, trying to see what was back there.

"I don't see anyone kissing out there, you liar -" Ooh, clever of her. He'd just told her to lure someone here.

And before the boy could finish, Ambrose lunged out of the bushes at him, claws hooking into the holes in the metal fence and growling not three inches away from the boy's face. He screamed, and ran off back to his group, and Ambrose could vaguely hear him shouting in panic about a monster in the bushes. Grinning wickedly, he slid back into the cover of the foliage, and Genevieve smiled back. He quite liked this child, to be honest - maybe she had a future at JW. When she was older, though.

Deathstar gently tucked a strand of her frazzled blonde hair behind her ear as she leaned her head toward the intercom. Due to the static noise, she didn’t hear a response, so she frantically proceeded to press multiple buttons with varying functions to get a reaction. “Come on! Is there anybody home?” she yelled as she punched different combination of numbers hoping to gain access to her former place of residence. Now Impatient and defeated, she turned her back to the gate, grabbed her purse, and searched desperately for a hair brush to beat her messy pink streaked hair to submission. Her hair now in an unkempt ponytail, she closed her eyes and released a deep exhale to release any anguish. In the midst of her trance, she stopped her train of thought to the sound of children’s laughter.

In the midst of her struggle, she focused her attention on the mansion grounds. Using her index finger, she tipped her black sunglasses down to the base of her nose to get a better view. There seemed to be a lifeless body on the lawn surrounded by freakish looking children. “Hey!” Deathstar belched out hoping to catch the attention of one of the attention. With her hands clasped on the gate, Deathstar waited patiently as one of the children walked toward her.

"You! You name yourself the Death of Stars? What business have you in my kingdom?" the little freckled girl said.

"Death of Stars? your kingdom?" Deathstar was taken back by the little girl's astute view on strangers. She quickly pressed the sunglasses back over her eyes and crouched down to one knee to speak with the little through the gate. "Hey!, didn't anyone ever teach you about speaking to strangers?, I guess this place is no longer haven for people like us" Deathstar said with a smirk on her face. "How about you go get an adult to speak to me? OK!..hun" Deathstar refocused her attention on the lifeless body that layed on the lawn.

"What happened to this place?

The woman knelt down when addressing the Queen of Kangaroos, which was only proper. Either that or she was being condescending to children and then she would pay. But the Queen was generous enough to give this wayward stranger the benefit of the doubt. 

The seven year old followed the woman's gaze back to Jiri's rather unconcious form. When she turned back toward the gate, there was a fierce grin under her freckles. She stood tall, super tall, as tall as her tip-toes could make her, and looked down on the crouching woman. 

"Let him be an example to you! Of what happens when an adult crosses the Kangaroo Queen!" The kids around her dissolved into fits of laughter. "If you wish to enter my kingdom, you must, ah--"

Just then, a little boy came tearing over from the fence by the edge of the forest, yelling as he came: "-agondragondragondragon there's a dragon!" He doubled over in front of the boy in the tree. "Your majesty there's a--"

"She's the queen now," the boy said, pointing at Jiri's new host.

The boy took in a gulp of air, and ran over. "There's a dragon! Like a huge black dragon! It got Gwen or maybe she's controlling and it might have been kissing someone and it is evil!"

The Queen considered this issue carefully. Yes. Kissing was evil, it was true. A kissing dragon was the worst trial her kingdom had yet suffered.

She turned back to the blonde woman at the gates. "If you wish to enter my kingdom, you must prove yourself worthy with a quest. Become my knight, and fight the evil dragon!"

"Minions," the kangaroo girl gestured expansively, "open the gates!"

The plant boy made his vines retreat back into the earth. The boy who'd fried the com system earlier came over, and helpfully fried the lock, too. The gates popped open with a fizzle and a puff of smoke.

[OOC: Sorry for the short post. More will come once the action moves a bit closer to Ambrose.]

He could see the gate, formerly a dark grey, suddenly glow with a flash of white near its center - frying the lock, he supposed, which meant that they were letting the woman in. Except. The boy they'd sent of running was gesturing back to where he and Genevieve stood, and now the kangaroo girl was gesticulating in that general direction too, and it seemed as if he'd have company soon.

"Genevieve, would you mind playing there a bit and acting all innocent? I know you'd be perfect at it." She giggled and sat down in the grass, immediately beginning to pluck dandelions and blowing the fluffy white spores everywhere. If not for the acid dripping down her face, she would've been the very picture of an innocent child, and Ambrose couldn't help but decide for sure that he wanted this child to work for him when she grew up. Somehow.

Ambrose himself slid back into the bushes where he wouldn't be seen. There, he curled up around himself, keeping one eye slitted open ever-so-slightly to watch for whoever was coming, lazily swishing his tail back and forth through the underbrush.

DeathStar, quite annoyed by the little runts, picked up her two rugged suitcases and proceeded through the gates onto the mansion grounds. As her black spiked heels clicked the graveled pavement, for some reason she couldn't turn her attention away from the body on the mansion's lawn. "What did I get myself into?, she asked herself as she stopped dead in her tracks and pondered about the young male's body that lay lifeless a few feet away from her.

She quickly turned her attention back toward the little kindermutants that allowed her access through the gate. "Hey you!, Kangaroo girl, who's in charge here? and why is there a dead body on the premises?" Deathstar asked in a serious tone. She was not too keen with children, in fact, she promised herself that she will never produce children.

The woman entered their domain through the gates they had generously opened, but she was like a train hobo let into a charity art banquet. She simply had no appreciation for the culture into which she had stepped. 

"Does she not know what 'Queen' means?" One of the children whispered to the kangaroo girl, in that over loud whisper that children have.

"Maybe we need to talk more slowly. And louder," the kangaroo whispered back. She turned, and placed her hands on her hips before taking her own advice. Loudly taking her own advice. So loud she wouldn't be surprised if people could hear her all that way at the next Mansion over. "I AM THE KANGAROO QUEEN. I AM IN CHARGE. HE IS NOT DEAD HE IS AN EXAMPLE. WILL-YOU-SLAY-THE-DRAGON?"

The children around her covered their ears and giggled in great appreciation for her majestic voice. Jiri was quite proud him(her)self, and allowed a regal grin to dimple the seven year old's cheeks. There was no way that could be misunderstood.

"YOU MAY LEAVE YOUR LUGGAGE WITH MY VALET, HE WILL TAKE CARE OF IT," she added, pointing to one of her subjects at random. A boy with dog ears hurried forward to tug at her bags.

"I AM THE KANGAROO QUEEN. I AM IN CHARGE. HE IS NOT DEAD HE IS AN EXAMPLE. WILL-YOU-SLAY-THE-DRAGON?" Ambrose raised a nonexistent eyebrow. Well, her voice carried - he was rather far away at this point, and he could hear her shouting. It seemed as if they were ganging up to get someone else to fight him. Apparently he'd made an impression. He squinted, attempting to identify whoever it was that stood outside the gates, but really couldn't. Damn his eyes.

"There's a lady outside, Genevieve suddenly said helpfully. "She looks kind of mean." An adult. An X, then, or a former member of the team? Neither boded well. But if she was a former or present X (he doubted the latter, because otherwise he'd likely know about her), she likely wouldn't attack him outright. So he merely nodded and stayed where he was, but watched the white figure more closely this time.

Deathstar placed the palm of her hand on her forehead out of frustration. She released a deep exhale to calm her dying patience. Before speaking to the kangaroo girl, Deathstar turned her back from the bunch and pondered about her approach to current situation. She bit her bottom lip and closed her eyes in an attempt to meditate in the middle of their exchange. "LOOK! YOU LITTLE...", Deathstar yelled before she composed herself, "I don't have time for games, you hear?" she knelt down to the little girl's level and slowly approached the girl before losing control of her temper. Deathstar snatched and gripped the neck of the Kangaroo girl's shirt and pulled the girl closer to her face. "I'm not playing games with you or any one of your little twerps", she pulled the little girl's face close to her own. "When I or any other adult asks a question, I expect an answer, GOT IT?", Deathstar released the little girl from her grip and re-focused her attention on the lifeless body on the lawn.

"Who is he? and why is he laying on the grass unconscious? you better answer me or I swear I'll..." in the midst of her interrogation, another little runt stole her attention when he decided to take a peak at Deathstar's luggage. "Don't you even think about it, "If you touch that you will leave this mansion on a gurney". And like a flip of a switch, Deathstar returned her attention back to the kangaroo girl. "I'm still waiting"

The kangaroo girl was forced to the very tippy-tops of her long fuzzy toes as she was bodily hauled up by her shirt. The other children, the Queen's wards, fell into a state of stunned horror at seeing such violence against their leader. Like any playground group, they waited, breath held, for that deciding moment in every kindergarten leader's existence. The Ultimate Test.

Would she cry?

The girl's brown eyes grew overly large and shiny. Her breath hicked once, twice, as she drew in a big giant impossibly large breath. Then she stealed herself. For her subjects. For her young nation.

Her shout was loud enough to wake all the heroes of yore.

"LISTEN UP DRAGON! IF YOU SLAY THE EVIL SORCERESS I WILL GRANT YOU KNIGHTHOOD IN MY KINGDOM!"

Someone had to be the hero in this tale, and clearly it wasn't the big mean scary lady who was not acting like a very nice adult at all.

"Take her luggage, it must have secret evil jewels that-are-the-source-of-her-villainy! To the forest! To our scaly protector!"

Good and evil was very fluid when you were seven (or currently inhabiting a seven-year-old). The Kangaroo Queen helped one of her (his) minions grab the end of a suitcase, and together the tots all ran, screaming and whooping, towards the forest's edge.

Well, except for Jiri's body. That was still pretty much an unconscious lump on the lawn.

Uh.

Well.

That was new.

Genevieve looked at him in confusion. "I don't think our plan worked," she said, a bit stunned at the sudden turn of events.

"I concur," Ambrose responded, equally confused as to what was going on. Was he the good guy now? Was he, as the monster, somehow now the good guy now that the woman had shown her true colors?

Apparently so, it seemed, considering all the children were fleeing in his general direction. He emerged from the bushes as they ran over, screaming and yelling for him to vanquish the evil sorceress. He was supposed to be the bad guy. He came over here with the intention of being the bad guy. Even so, he moodily plodded towards the gate, Genevieve following from inside the grounds. Really, this was supposed to be the first in a string of gradually more evil acts. He had a series of bombings planned for Wednesday night and everything. Oh, well - looked as if those bombings would have to indicate Ragnarok's rise, instead of scaring some children.

"Excuse me, miss?" he called as he neared the woman, who stood inside the walled property, having resolved to be polite if he had to be good. "I've been ordered to chase you off the premises." Oh, wait. He could still be the bad guy - and to an X at that. Even better. "I may have to follow through if you don't cease being a complete and utter asshat to these children."

"Dammit!"

Deathstar belched out loud as the kinderbrats scurried off with her rugged brown suitcase that encased valuable and priceless things such as old pictures of her home, a locket passed down from her grandparents, and a old house key from her home in NY. She pondered at the thought of her belongings being used as toy cars in the possession of these ungrateful children and her icy blue eyes watered with unsurpassed anger at the mere thought of it. She clasped both hands on the nape of her head trying with every might to control her rage.

"They are nothing but a bunch of little brats Deathstar, no need to attack" she said softly to herself as if she was counseling her vengeful inner voice to cease fire and retaliation, but in her current state, there is no other way to deal with the matter. She had a small amount of energy stored in her body from a previous fight that took place a couple of days ago at a local Deli. A group of young thugs thought they could torment and assault an elderly woman who owned the small shop, but of course Deathstar had the last say and the reward of a free meal wouldn't hurt either.

In Deathstar's mind, she fought a hard fight with her self-concious. She would have rather settled this matter peacefully, but her mind was racing and a clear mind was no where in sight. She quickly took off her shades and revealed her glowing black eyes. With her fists clenched and glowing with an array of colors, she turned her body in the direction the children ran before she caught the attention of a stranger.

It was a beast with dragon-like traits and it addressed her as if she was a stranger, and that didn't sit well with the former alumni. She was a bit taken back by his appearance, but her undying rage couldn't seep through her unstable mental state. 

"You have no right addressing me!" She yelled out to the beast while still battle stance. "Who are you to chase me off the premises? to chase me out MY HOME?" Deathstar felt disrespected and threatened by the beast. She didn't know if it was a friend or a foe, but then again she was back inside the mansion gates where freaks like him were no longer the minority. She had two dilemmas on her hand, on one side the bratty children ran off with her luggage and on the other she had this man-beast in front of her. In Deathstar's mind, something was not right in her old place of residence. There were freaky children that ran amok, a lifeless body on that lay stretched out on the lawn, and now a dragon-beast that called for her to exit, all hell was about to break loose and Deathstar was ready for anything. She carefully took a few paces back and stood on guard for any incoming assault from all angles. Before she will sprawl in action, she figured she will give this ugly monstrosity to beg for mercy.

"WHO AND WHAT ARE YOU? ANSWER ME OR ELSE!"

The children fell unanimously silent as the big black dragon emerged from the woods, and even more silent as he said a bad word. They looked at each other, each daring the other with their eyes.

"Asshat!" The vine manipulator yelled, back at the evil sorceress. The cry was taken up by a dozen young voices, gleefully bouncing behind the safety of their new protector and revealing in this amazing new word. "Asshat! Asshat!" It was their battle cry, their call to their champion, their urging onwards to victory.

The dragon soon proved himself to be perfectly polite and civil and a storybook lesson in not judging a book by its scaled dark-themed cover.

"This was our home first!" One of the other kids shouted, which was supported by a chorus of yeah!'s. None of the children remembered this angry blonde being at the Mansion, so clearly they'd been there first. "Damnit!" The kid added, for good measure, with that certain thrill of saying a bad word. But she'd started it.

"You have no right addressing me!"" the woman screamed, over a chorus of little children yelling "asshat!" like some sort of battle chant. If he could, Ambrose would have raised an eyebrow. She was mad. Over a bunch of little children messing with her, too. "Who are you to chase me off the premises? to chase me out MY HOME?"

Ambrose was about to respond when interrupted by another of the children. "This was our home first!" someone shouted, followed by an almost threatening cacophony of "yeah!" Ah, children. They amused him, sometimes. Maybe he'd pick up one of his own to work with in the future.

"WHO AND WHAT ARE YOU? ANSWER ME OR ELSE!" Well. She was getting really, really angry.

"I'm tempted to tell you, but you should've asked politely," Ambrose said, amused. Of course he wasn't going to be perfectly cordial in this situation - he came here intending to be a villain, after all, and if she was a mutant who ended up destroying parts of the X-Mansion in her rage, he'd have absolutely no problem with that. "There are children here. You'd do well to show them how to be polite. Like this. Children!" And he raised his voice on the last word, with his next words coming out almost taunting.

"Hello there, m'lady," he said mockingly as he swept into an elegant bow. "Would you care to bestow upon me the great honor of knowing your name? Oh, wait - I think I caught it already. Wasn't it... asshat, or something of the sort?" He looked over to the children, almost as if looking for confirmation, his face set in an exaggerated pondering expression.