((OOC: Hey, Mansionites! I'd like to offer up an opportunity for a casual encounter thread! I figure none of this will warrant an entire thread on its own, but maybe we could have some people passing through, one at a time.))

The Billy Goats Gruff was an interesting story and all, but the troll under the bridge was waaaay too lenient. What kind of fool just let goats go on by with the promise that the next one would be better? That troll was a fool and Kalos was no fool.

"Oh. This way is closed." Kalos stood in the middle of the hallway with her arms out, making it so that students could not pass. Considering this was one of the main hallways that lead to the kitchen, it was causing quite a clog. Some students huffed and turned to go another way, but there were some persistent kids that Kalos was very blatantly ignoring.

She would not move for anything less than an adult. Or a bribe. That's definitely how she'd seen the guards in Atlantis work. So Kalos leaned, ever so casually, against the door and did not budge no matter what the children said.

D7 had asked her to delay people in getting to the kitchen. He had to make a run for their secret food stores and she was going to be the BEST bridge Troll in the history of the Mansion.

Elliott was HUNGRY and thankfully, he hadn't been thrown out of the mansion (yet). He'd planned on hitting up the kitchen and getting a sandwich, maybe a tiny bag of chips, but he'd caught sight of the annoyed students being turned away by a very interesting road block. The kid was different, that was for sure. He caught the attention of one student as they hugged back down the hall the way they had come.

"Who's the hall monitor?" He asked casually, gesturing towards the girl."

The brown-haired boy sighed, and blew a stray hair out of his face. His shaggy mane hung around him and over his eyes. "Kalos," he said, voice guttural. Germanic. "Girl from Atlantis. Mer folk."

"Whoa, really?" Elliott said.

"Yeah." He grunted.

"Cool. I'm going to sneak by her. Want anything from the kitchen? I can nab you a pop tart or something and bring it to the TV room."

"Nah. Thanks."

"Kay."

Conversation finished, Elliott stripped off his shoes. Carefully, silently, he set them aside and started walking up to wall towards the ceiling. He was far enough down the hall that he wouldn't be outright seen, but that would change as soon as he started walking on down the way.

Elliott strode towards the barricade as if he weren't waking on the ceiling, but just out for a stroll. He pointedly didn't whistle innocently as he went.

"But I'm hungry."

Oh. That hurt Kalos in the heart. But the children here were well fed. Not like D7 was. And D7 was fast. Hopefully he wouldn't need too much longer to get them the goods.

"You can go around. It isn't that far to another door."

A little something green was distracting Kalos from the one or two who stayed to bargain. How did he stick so good?

"Hey! I think I have something in my bag here if you want it. I could give it to you and you could let me through?"

The troll in the story did accept tolls....

"What does you have?" The ceiling man could continue to ceiling. There wasn't a lot she could do about that beside give him a stinky eye.

"Uhh. I think I have a tootsie roll. That's kind of like chocolate."

D7 would have to forgive her for letting one through.

"Okay. One tootsie." And she let him through.

As Elliott passed overhead, he winked down at the little "mermaid" and gave her a mock salute. That made two who'd gotten by her makeshift barricade. Had to feel good.

He didn't quite believe she was a real mermaid. She didn't look much like the Ariel from the kid's movie. Much in the same way he at one point had considered himself an alien (and maybe he still was, dammit), she could continue to think that she was a mermaid from Atlantis who had lived underwater. If there was a real Atlantis, that was cool. Deep sea mutant communities could exist. It sure was impressive their children and their children's children all developed mutations that allowed them to exist underwater at those pressures or whatever, but it didn't make them supernatural. It just made them different. He could have said unique... but the massive amount of people who could survive underwater just like each other made that word a tough sell.

He wished her luck with her hall monitoring racket. He may have seen some happy bribery happening! That was cool! Kids these days needed to learn their criminal enterprising early! He fully supported the education of the youth. So long as it didn't lead to mugging and murdering, that was. That was where he drew a line. Good luck, little hallway guard, and Godspeed. He vanished down the hallway, to the kitchens. A thoughtful smile was on his face.

Luke was intimately familiar with the kitchen and its surrounding area. Along with normal meals with the other students and residents, his mutation was one of the ones that 'require a degree of caloric intake considerably more than the mean'. Well, that's how he would style it if he wanted it to sound fancy about it. He'd not been into sports in Maine, but he knew the wrestlers and football players ate like four-or-five thousand calories a day during the season. Like that, but without the sports part.

Anyway, Luke came down for between-meal snacks pretty often, since being hungry is, y'know, bad? Also he got irritable when he was hungry like most people but he found that it was more of a problem for him given his other ANYWAY.

He paused in the entry to the kitchen hall, momentarily confused by the crowd of people until he saw the small pink girl in the middle of the path. Wait, wasn't she the one from Atlantis or something? Luke had no idea what that was about, but he was pretty sure he'd seen her around, and she always gave him the stink eye when she noticed him looking at her. That was weird, he had no idea if he'd done something to upset her without noticing. How would he know?

As some of the people were deterred in various states of annoyance, Luke moved up to her. She was like nine years old or so, and getting a clearer view of her monochrome eyes and rocky skin made Luke feel a twinge of sympathy. For mutants who looked it, unpleasant reactions were universal; Luke was used to it, and he was pretty easygoing to begin with, so adapting had been relatively easy. Even then, he wasn't immune, and a kid like her probably had it way worse...

Anyway. Whatever she was doing, he kinda needed to pass her. "Hey, you mind if I go through?" He dropped to a knee in front of her and smiled. "I was just gonna grab a snack. Unless there's something bad in there?" If there was, he wasn't sure who asked the pre-tween to stand guard, but he assumed she wasn't just hanging out for fun. Maybe. He was a kid once, he knew kids found ways of entertaining themselves.

"H-hey!" Kalos waved her arms at the green man, but was ultimately ignored. Her not-so-righteous indignation was lost on the ceiling walker. Okay. D7 was really going to have to forgive her now. Two got through? She worried at her lower lip with bumpy coral teeth.

Okay. It would be okay.

She turned around to the few that were left. Almost everyone was digging in their pockets and bags. They'd gotten the idea once she let the kid with the tootsie roll through. Except. Not that one guy.

The Atlantean couldn't help it, she narrowed her eyes. Dogs were mean. She was safe here, but her heart did not listen to her mind as it should. Her chest thumped fast and her tentacles itched beneath their coral fingers. This dog was also a person, and he knelt before her as a knight might. (She'd been looking at pictures of princesses and knights often featured as an accessory to the floofy dress and castle.)

So. Did she mind if he went through?

"I mind." She squeaked and the guy behind the knight dog groaned. He had his bribe all ready to go. "No thing is bad for in the kitchen. NOTHING." D7 was not bad. And neither was food. Maybe the green man from the ceiling was bad. Because he had not stopped to pay his toll.

"What about a gatorade? Do you accept gatorade?" The kid behind the knight dog blurted out his words and held out a very green bottle of something.

Of this Gatorade, she did not know. "Is it magic?" Because, it sort of looked like a magic potion...

Wait, huh?

Okay, that kind of threw him off. And apparently a bunch of the other people had gotten the idea that the little girl was a toll...booth? She was definitely not happy to see him, so he stood back up and stepped slightly back and to the side, folding his arms and staring absently down the hall.

On one hand, she was like, ten? Luke could outrun her. She probably didn't have much authority to block the way. But that would be a jerk move and an escalation. One person steals past, suddenly everyone else does. Stampedes were bad. Stampedes down narrow hallways in the direction of young children were triple-extra bad.

Honey instead of vinegar? She definitely had something against him, and given her age and mysterious possibly-undersea-related origins, Luke couldn't hold being unnerved against her. He was used to it, and while that didn't make it completely fine at least here it probably wasn't out of genetic-discrimination-based disgust. Still, making nice might not do much here.

Luke groaned quietly, leaning back against the wall. There were a lot of people here now. He wasn't thrilled about it, but it might be best to just wait. "Hey, what's your name? I'm Luke." He asked towards her. At the very least he could see what her deal was later. But he'd still rather have food now.

Was it magic? The question threw the kid off and the dogman stepped back. Good.

"Yeah. It's a magic potion. It makes you not super thirsty after you run when you drink it."

It was no invisibility potion or potion of bravery, but... it did look pretty green. "Ok. You may have a go in." Also, the more foods she could collect, the more D7 would forgive her. The whole point of this exercise was to gather up foods to refill their hidden cache.

Kalos accepted a slightly bruised banana and a hard candy called Life Saver that was not magical before the dogman talked up again.

"Kalos is the name I choose." She asserted that fact much more bravely than she felt. Why was the dogman not leaving? And why were there more and more people? Could they not just want to go around? Kalos tried not to let the sheer number of eyes bother her. "I am of Atlantis and this is my door to guard! You pay a toll or do not pass." She declared it mightily enough that one or two people did actually turn away.

She also accepted a baggie of jerky and let that one pass. Maybe... maybe she could bribe the dog to go away. Just as these students bribed her to go through.

"Here, Luke." She threw the jerky bag past him and back down the hall. "You have snack. Go away."

Whaaat? She was being handed a crunchy filmy wrapped yellow log that was squishy. When she squished it, cream was inside.

"Twinkie. It's like a little baby cake." The girl seemed happy enough to share this new wonder with Kalos and Kalos was dumbfounded. Baby cake.

...Wait she was actually from Atlantis? Luke hadn't been sure he bought that to be honest. That would at least confirm his suspicion as to how/why he made her uncomfortable. There were probably not a lot of, let's be honest, canines or canine-like things in the ocean. Wait was she like a mermaid then? She had legs, but...

It occurred to him that she was legit demanding a toll. That was weird. Then she threw food at him. That was also weird. He opened it up and was pleased by the strong smell of cured meat from the little baggie.

Okay, this whole thing was kinda out there. He had a snack though. Somehow. A little ocean-girl threw it at him but still! He pulled out a piece and ripped off a chunk in his teeth. He could go back to his room or go outside or something now. Win/win?

"Uh, thanks Kalos. See ya." He gave a little wave and walked off and down the hall, popping the rest of the jerky piece into his mouth as he did so. He added one more "Good luck!" as he left, but honestly he wasn't sure who he was encouraging.

Man, you'd think he'd get used to some stuff, but half the time whatever was going on had nothing to do with mutants beyond 'mutants are present'.