Noel was pretty sure her phone was wrong.

“Hold still!”

Her head was yanked around again so that she was sitting ram-rod straight, looking at absolutely nothing while 3 of 6 girl scouts from St. Joseph’s Orphanage practiced for their knot badge with her hair.

That is never, ever coming out.

“How did you grow your hair so big?”

”I don’t know. I guess maybe I’ve never cut it before?” That didn’t taste quite right.

The other three girls were actually using the supplied materials. Noel had done nothing but wander in while looking for the girl scout troop her phone had told her to help.

The sponsor had introduced her gladly and then skipped off to only God knew where. By the time the real expert had showed up, Noel had gotten control of the rowdy bunch by promising to let them braid her hair. They’d already gone to town when the real, actually expected knot expert had showed so she just let them continue, only with knots. The result was much the same, actually.

Noel had greeted the expert with a kiss on the cheek and now the two of them were helping correct mistakes as best they could.

The fact that someone else had shown up proooobably meant her phone was wrong, but the woman seemed glad to have back up with this unruly group. They were disheveled and dirty and militant, but they seemed to respond well once Noel had given them each a number and made them form ranks.

There was, apparently, a serious amount of badges to be earned before their troop qualified for something regional and important.

“Two is looking at me!”

”Two has eyes. Eyes are for looking. What’s it hurting? Work on your knot, Four or we’ll have to sound off again.”

“Uhhg.”
“No! Don’t make me run any more!”

”Is that how you respond?”

“No, ma’am!”
“Yes, ma’am!”
“I made a square knot, look!”

Noel turned her head to see what Seven had accomplished when all the girls behind her groaned, a natural result of her turning her head and ripping their careful knot practice right out of their hands.

“Stop moving!”

“Number Oooooooone!”

Noel settled back into her seat and resumed staring at nothing with a slight smile. Naturally, number 1 was reserved for the leader of the pack.

The sun was shining, the birds were out, children littered the park… Today was, just like every other day, disgustingly perfect. Thoughts about her night with Ty had roused her at the ungodly morning hour of 10. Curse him and his southern charm for invading her dreams. He needed to learn to mind his own space, and to realize that fricking dream flooding was not okay. Except it wasn’t his fault, exactly.. it was Mag’s own brain repeatedly running with its obsession. She frowned inwardly. It had been a whole 10 hours and her internal dialogue hadn’t forgotten him. This issue needed to be remedied post-haste.

Gleeful giggles from a gaggle of girls grated against her generosity, slowly grinding it down to the grain. This granted a glare from the glowering grouch. Envious of their childish delight, Magnum hardly stopped to give them a second glance as she walked past. In the brief moment of staring, however, she was able to see six young girls and two adults, one with a plethora of knots tangling her strands of hair. Mag's feet struck the ground deftly, making absolutely no sound as she walked around the paved sections of the park. The wandering, though aimless, gave her space to think that she desperately needed. “Children, why can’t you go play elsewhere? Some of us have bigger problems than shoelaces,” she growled in discontent.

A lone robot strolled across the park of its own accord. Magnum thought back to a few weeks ago when the announcement had first come out: New York had released robo-cops to lessen the death rate in conflicts with mutants. They supposedly scanned for an X gene and handled the problem on their own. This made her immediately nervous. If the robot could really determine that she had powers, then it would mark her. Combined with all of the other sins in her file, being labeled as a mutant would kill her chances at semi-normal (if illegal) life. She turned on her heel, slowly making her way toward the trees to avoid attention. If she climbed, this little scout shouldn’t be able to recognize her as a mutant, and she could escape the shrill joyous cries of little girls.

The girls settled into fits of whispers punctuated by the occasional giggle. The general mood lured Noel into a happy sort of trance. There wasn't anything to look at if she was holding her head how her scouts wanted, so she'd let her mind wander through the memories she'd picked up lately about Glont International. Hades was boring, but weirdly efficient. Noel was determined to mine those memories to find some secret, but as the girl's voices gained in volume, they brought Noel out of memory and back to the here and now.

"...do you think...?"
"No!"
"Yes."
"It would be awesome!"
"Should we ask?"
"She'll say no."

"Girls?" The knot expert seemed to catch on to their growing excitement, but since the conversation was largely happening behind her, Noel couldn't really participate.

"On three?"

There was only one girl who'd remained in front of Noel —was that Seven? Noel should have taken notes— and she looked up from her friendship knot bracelet with a question in her eyes. In answer, the memorymancer raised a single shoulder in a slight shrug as if to say 'I don't know either.'

"One!"
"It's getting closer!"
"SHHHHH!"
"Two!"
"Can it hear you?"
"Yeah. Maybe we shouldn't count."
"What're you up to back there?"
"Go!"

The bracelet girl's eyes widened marginally and Noel started to turn, but instead her head got yanked violently backwards by her knotted hair.

"Girls!"

Noel was pulled off her seat and onto her back and dragged nearly a foot by her hair before the passing META bot had paused in its patrol. The girls had made a masterful knot of Noel's hair and worked together to extend their creation with some of their practice ropes until they had a long enough string to make a slip knot. They then lassoed the passing robot with the combination of hair and rope. Dazed as she was, it took a minute for Noel to put all that together. No doubt they'd forgotten that hair was attached to a person.

RELEASE YOUR HOLD, CITIZEN. The META bot intoned at full volume.

"Oh S***, One!"
"M'okay." Noel reached back to pull on her hair and give her scalp some slack. She didn't even know where to start so she scooted herself closer to the META for more slack.
"High five!"
"We got it!"
"Do we know how to un-tie knots?"

The META extended a hand toward Noel's face and a red light shined at her before she could get up.

MUTANT IDENTIFIED. Its robotic declaration cut through the girl's celebrations and brought a level of seriousness to the group. The knot expert, and only other adult, hurried over with a pair of scissors and she, too, got the red light scan.

THREAT IDENTIFIED. LET'S COME TO A PEACEFUL RESOLUTION. DROP THE WEAPON.

"Just scissors. See?" She held the up for a moment as she approached, "We're just going to cut the ropes and you'll be free, Mr. Robot."

Noel wasn't sure that was cause enough for the META to reach for its weapon, but despite being still tethered to the robot, the memorymancer was scrambling to get to her feet now before things escalated too far.

In her search for the perfect tree, Magnum was oblivious to the hair-and-rope lasso that the girls had woven. As they threw it around the bot, she found the perfect tree. Small enough to be scale-able and sturdy enough to support her weight. Her fingers touched the ribbing in the tree's old trunk. First waking up before noon, then a stroll through the park... and now an upper body workout? Today just kept getting better. As she prepared to give a tug, a loud, robotic voice boomed across the flat, green space.

RELEASE YOUR HOLD, CITIZEN.

She let go, turning around to see who dared take on the META Bot.. A rowdy bunch of girls working with knots and hair. Not exactly the fearless group of mutant rights warriors that one might expect, but a welcome change none the less. At least the small girls didn't have any chance of getting hurt.

MUTANT IDENTIFIED.

Holy crap. Her muscles tensed. The bot couldn't have scanned her from that far away. Her vision focused in a little closer, paying attention to the direction the bot was looking. Its scanning hand and 'face' were pointed to the poor girl on the end of the loop. This took Mag by surprise - she didn't look like a mutant. Being able to pass for normal was in itself a very large accomplishment. Mag found herself thoroughly impressed until...

THREAT IDENTIFIED. LET'S COME TO A PEACEFUL RESOLUTION. DROP THE WEAPON.

Her fingers immediately dropped to her hip, only to remember that while she'd grabbed her gun this morning, she was only carrying six rounds. And, from this distance, she wasn't going to risk missing. In her lifetime, Magnum had already witnessed the deaths of too many children. The lucky ones were shot. She dropped down into a more defensive stance, seeing someone walk toward the robot with a pair of scissors. Presumably, this was to cut the unfortunate mutant free.

Without thinking twice, Mag found herself moving away from the shelter of trees and toward the conflict. Silently, she set up a shot that a markswoman with her experience could never miss. The .44 caliber in her hands would put a nice hole, or a very exaggerated dent in the least, on the robot's shiny armor. Then she would have five more to disable it. Crouched behind a bush, she watched the actions of the META bot carefully. Though Magnum had no intention of attacking first, she wouldn't hesitate to fire if the bot made one move against anyone. Her mind ran quickly over every possible situation. She didn't trust machinery in the slightest.

HALT.

The robot insisted as Noel stood, well stooped, next to the META and inspected how exactly her hair was tangled around the thing. He had a couple articulated joints with crevices and she seemed to be looped into the neck joint, firmly locked between two moving plates unless she could manage to loosen the tension of the knot somehow.

HALT.

The other adult took a brave, slow, non-threatening step forward and the robot reacted by firing its taser leads at the knot expert. The girl scouts' eyes collectively widened as they saw one of the day's authority figures felled with one non-lethal shot. Her body went rigid on the ground and a single, long banshee wail escaped her mouth. The keening sound drowned out the angry murmurs between girl scouts.

Noel froze with her fingers hovering maybe 4 inches away from the knot of rope and hair when the robot moved to holster it's weapon and immediately un-holstered the gun which had a brand new cartridge seated at its tip. The tip remained pointed at the sky as it continued to warn her off.

HALT. BACK AWAY FROM THE UNIT. It started to shuffle sideways to give itself space and Noel kept her hands up and visible, but took the steps required to keep pace. She wasn't about to let herself get yanked off her feet again, but she also didn't want to get tased. Clearly it wasn't programmed to deal with being tethered to a mutant.

It stopped, maybe two feet from the rock where Noel had been sitting that was now swamped with concerned scouts and leveled the weapon point-blank at Noel's chest.

MUTANT IDENTIFY.

She didn't have a chance, though. With battle cries of "WE stand for courage, confidence and character!", "Get him!", and "Get the gun!", six little girls mobbed the META. They grabbed at the gun, his armored plating, and generally treated the robot like a jungle gym.

Seven stood next to their felled teacher with wide eyes and far too shallow breathing.