Wherever Original Rupert was in this moment - Heaven, Hell, another universe, or a crappy apartment in Manhattan - he must have been smiling to himself, even if he did not know why. Sam, around and dealing with his own things, was definitely going to laugh his ass off if he every heard about it. Mirror made sure to tackle the thing on a Maya day, because somehow deep down that felt more appropriate. Or maybe she was just glad to put off the inevitable for one more day.

Eventually, she had to go and face Kalos.

Ever since Becca and Mirror got a grown-up apartment in another part of the Mansion, with an adjoining room for Kalos, this issue had taken on a sort of urgency. Even if they made sure the Antlantean preteen could not accidentally wander into the bedroom at an inappropriate time, she was getting to the age when... things needed to be addressed. And since she was still having problems with basic technology, Maya definitely did not want to wait for her to figure things out for herself.

"Um... Kalos?" Maya knocked on the half-open door of the coral girl's room "Do you have a moment? I'd like to talk to you about something..."

Witness me.

Fall Break was a non-break for those who had no other home to go to. Living at the Mansion was fine and all, but Kalos sometimes envied those had somewhere else to be. Now that she knew there were so many other places, it was more and more difficult to justify just staying inside.

And yet, she stayed inside.

She'd flipped lazily through channels and came across an (apparent) television tradition of marathoning movies in series. Kalos no longer believed in magic, but the Perry Hotter movies made her feel like it was still possible. Kalos walked the squishy carpet hallways with Wingardium Levio-SAH on the brain.

People were here. Probably outside enjoying the leaves and dirt and cooler weather.

She slipped into Mirror and Becca's room as a shortcut to her own and stopped to climb up the side table and pick at the curtains.

Yeah. Most everyone was outside. They'd be back eventually. They had to eat some time.

She accidentally pulled open a drawer when she used her toes to grip the side table while climbing down.She hadn't assumed that there was anything worth snooping about, but there was an entire drawer dedicated to a handful of toys. Toys that were fun colors. Why in the world would they keep toys for themselves and none for her? Unless... they were her Christmas presents!

Kalos looked around to be sure she was alone before she lifted one toy, a wand of some kind, out of the mess of the rest. How would they know she had just marathoned through 3 Perry Hotter movies? And that she would like to make absolutely sure that magic wasn't real? She was sure it was an option they just hadn't tried enough...

She gave it a swish and flick and it wobbled.

"Slightly springy." As Mr. Ollivander would have said, the wand chose her.

Footsteps alerted Kalos to the fact that someone was approaching and she slipped from Mirrecca's room to her own. She swished her wand at her own curtains, but nothing happened. She flicked the wand at the riot of colors that was her dirty clothes pile. No cleaning or folding or movement at all. She did manage to fumble the wand, though.

She clicked something that she hadn't known to click and fumbled it worse as it started buzzing like an electric current.

> "Um... Kalos?"

Oh crap! She couldn't be caught with her own future present in hand! She looked around for a good spot. The clothes! The giant pile would surely hide it best!

Maya knocked at her door and Kalos fluffed the dirty clothes pile, she grabbed an audiobook and popped her headphones on as she flopped onto her bed. she was totally innocent as she called, "Come in!"

Her dirty clothes pile buzzed innocently in the corner.

There was some scurrying in the room before Maya opened, waiting for the obligatory ten seconds that the unspoken code of household teenagers required. Kalos was a sweet innocent child, but that did not mean she had less of a right to privacy. And Maya did not want to make this any more horribly awkward than it already was bound to be.

>>"Come in!"

Maya entered, finding Kalos inconspicuously lounging on her bear with earphones on.

"Hey, kiddo." she smiled, walking in, and taking a seat on the edge of the bed "I was wondering if we could... talk about some important things? Like..."

There was a buzzing sound somewhere in the pile of things on Kalos' bed. At first, Mirror glossed over it.

"... like, I noticed that you have been spending time hanging out with Chase and Toby. They are nice kids..."

What was with the buzzing?...

"... and you are getting older now and making all kinds of friends..."

buzzzzzzzzz

The penny finally dropped.

"Kalos." Maya's eyes narrowed "Did you get a phone somehow?"

Maya typically had a resting nice face. Today, the nice was cranked conspicuously up to 11.

Kalos sat up, unsure of what she'd done this time, but ready to deflect. "We can talk..." Of course, she wasn't going to just admit to any of the many things it could be. She was going to wait and see which ones Maya knew about.

> "I noticed that you have been spending time hanging out with Chase and Toby."

Wait. What?

"What's wrong with Chase and Toby? Are they sick? Is it puke?" If they were sick, she was like 80% sure she would be next. Puking was the actual worst. Maya now had her full attention and she pulled the headphones all the way off. Yeah. They were nice kids. What of it? Where was this going?

> "Kalos. Did you get a phone somehow?"

"No?" Uncle Jorge had said yes, but Gemma had said no louder and more often. "Who would I call?" Everyone she knew was here, mostly. And they rarely left for long...

>>"What's wrong with Chase and Toby? Are they sick? Is it puke?"

Oh, this was not going to be easy. But at least Kalos was now paying full attention. Maya was about to try and change the course of the conversation, but she was interrupted by the buzzing pile of clothes. Sure, teen laundry was a creature of its own, but that pile did not look ripe enough yet to start moving.

Did she manage to get a phone somewhere? All teenagers ever wanted was a phone.

>>"No? Who would I call?"

That's exactly the problem.

Maya sighed, the buzzing painfully obvious between them.

"The question is, who would call you. I can hear the buzzing, Kalos. Hand it over."

Who would call her? Kalos was insulted despite having only just made the opposite argument of having no one to call. "Who would not call me? If I had a phone, I'd be—" It didn't matter what she would be getting by way of phone call volume because at that moment, Kalos realized what the buzzing was.

Her pilfered Christmas present, stolen before its time. Swishing and flicking all by itself in a loud buzzing hum that Maya could hear despite being hidden.

She went pale and then flushed a hefty purple before crafting her words carefully.

"I do not have a phone." How much trouble would she be in? If she denied everything, Maya would still hunt down the buzzing sound. And then she'd be in more trouble for hiding things. No matter how Kalos ran the calculations, she was already busted here. It was time to face the music... or the buzzing.

Kalos sighed, defeated.

"It's a wand." She was ashamed, knowing that she shouldn't have snooped ahead of time and of course, the ultimate shame was hers: she got caught. Kalos went to fish out the Perry Hotter wand from her clothes pile and plopped it into Maya's waiting palm without further ceremony.

Yep. Time to face the buzzing. Maya didn't beat her, but she got plenty creative about punishments. Once, she had to write the entire soillander alphabet 20 times. She'd thought her fingers would crack from the strain of it.

It was most definitely not a wand.

Kalos plopped the buzzing toy into Maya's palms, and to say that Maya was not prepared for that plot twist would have been an understatement. For a long moment, she stared at it with a mix of frozen shock and horror on her face. Oh, how she wished it would have been a phone.

Rupert. Laughing himself into an early grave.

Once the deer-in-the-headlights moment was finished (metaphorically by the truck running it over), Maya switched the toy off with a panicked movement and hid it behind her back on instinct, wholly realizing how stupid that must have looked.

"Oh, sh... oh. Wow. Jesus f... Wow. Ooooh boy. How did you even... Okay. Wow." she blinked, staring at Kalos, trying to grasp for the shreds of her carefully prepared talk. "Um. Kalos. Kid. This is most definitely... not a wand. Where did you even get it?"

Two things struck her as odd. One: Maya knew where the button was. The wand had not been boxed as most toys were, and Maya seemed to know it. And, more importantly, two: Maya was embarrassed. Had Kalos ever seen Maya embarrassed before? She couldn't recall...

"No. It is a wand. See?" Kalos reached for the wand. Maya hadn't really hid it very well, it was only just behind Maya. Kalos squinted at the letters she unfortunately had to know with her face a little closer to the object in question because the letters were there, but very very small.

"Mmmessage Waaaaand. See? It's a wand." Totally exonerated. Where she got it was far less important than her correctness and reading ability, both of which had been stressed as important.

"Is it yours? I was only borrowing it." She gave it a flick of the wrist so that it wobbled in that funny way again.

They needed a closet with a key. And then maybe they needed to bury the key.
Maybe they needed a locked vault with a mirror in it.
Why hasn't she thought about that before?

>>"No. It is a wand. See?"

Maya yelped as Kalos reached around her and recovered the... most definitely not a wand. This whole thing was getting more surreal by the minute.

>>"Mmmessage Waaaaand. See? It's a wand. Is it yours? I was only borrowing it."

"Massage." Maya sighed, taking it back again. Kalos needed to put more effort into her reading classes. For everyone's sake. "It's not that kinda wand."

If she tried to do magic with it... well. It wouldn't make the kind of magic Kalos would expect.

UGH.

"Look, Kalos, this is kinda... um, part of the thing I wanted to talk to you about. Because you are growing up, and you... um, might be interested in... adult things, sooner or later."

Massage? That didn't sound like a real word. Probably one of those Brand words that was a made up thing that only meant it was made by one person. Like Kleenex, the guy that made flimsy napkins. Totally made up.

Maya, patron saint of exasperation, was showing her true colors now with a glance heaven-ward. Kalos fought down the tightening of her throat and speeding of her heart beat. She still wasn't sure what she'd done wrong here, besides the obvious. Because according to Maya, it wasn't the obvious. But Maya was on her side. Becca was on her side. She hadn't been hit the entire time she'd been here. It was going to be okay. She didn't have to run just yet.

Maya tried again and this time it was Kalos' eyebrows that sailed heaven-ward.

An... adult wand? Sounded like an adult excuse to keep the fun stuff all to themselves.

So that's what this was about? Maya was afraid that Kalos wasn't adult enough?

"I like plenty of adult things." If she sounded defensive, it's because she was. Kalos scrambled to think of what things were considered "adult." "I help wash the clothes... sometimes. And one time, Toby an me were hiding on the X-jet and—" Was that alarm she saw on Maya's face?

This conversation was definitely not going as planned. Not even close. Leave it to an Atlantean teenager to throw a... um... instrument into the machine. Maya was not enjoying this one bit, and from the looks of it neither was Kalos.

>>"I like plenty of adult things. I help wash the clothes... sometimes. And one time, Toby an me were hiding on the X-jet and—"

Maya's eyes widened at the last comment. Oh god, no, not even Karma can be that big of a b...

"Kalos, we need to talk about sex." she blurted out. Oh well. It was not like this could get any worse, could it?...

Maya interrupted her innocent tale about freaking out Cold Steel by pretending to be ghosts. He'd been totally freaked out. Almost as freaked out as Maya was now to start blurting out dirty stuff. Kalos' mouth flapped open for a moment. She was almost insulted.

"I don't want to have a baby." Why would she? She was still a babe in this land, herself. Kalos' eyebrows crinkled and scraped as the hard parts bunched in new ways.

"S-E-X" —see? She could spell —"that's how- That's where- You know, not a lot of-" This was turning out to be more difficult to say then Kalos had imagined it happening. In her head, she just blurted it out. The mad king of Atlantis had a eugenics program and she hadn't been invited. She didn't want to be invited. Not now, not later, not ever.

"The king, you know? The old, crazy one? In Atlantis? He... wasn't shy." The people who didn't look right, in the mad king's opinion, were exempt from his advances officially. Unofficially Kalos heard things. And Unofficially, being wrangled into service at the palace and being in proximity meant that she'd seen plenty. Plenty enough to make her hands and knees feel shaky.

"I don't act like an animal. You don't have to worry." And frankly, Kalos was disgusted that Maya thought she might...

Kalos looked appalled at Maya's choice of topic. Tough luck, she was in it now.

>>"I don't want to have a baby."

So far, so good.

>>"S-E-X that's how- That's where- You know, not a lot of-"

Okay, so Kalos had some ideas of what Maya was getting at, but not a lot of eloquence to go with it. And she was still upset at the whole conversation. Not that Maya had been that much of a role model.

>>"The king, you know? The old, crazy one? In Atlantis? He... wasn't shy. I don't act like an animal. You don't have to worry."

Sh*t.

"Oh. That's..." Maya sighed, shifting so she could sit more comfortably on the bed (and dropping the toy on the floor for now, out of sight). "Okay, Kalos, you are not in trouble. That's not why I wanted to talk to you. And you have... probably learned some things from Atlantis that might now be true."

>"Oh."

Yeah oh! Kalos set her jaw. Whatever was coming, she was saying no. No, no, and no. And she could run away. And-

> "Okay, Kalos, you are not in trouble."

"Oh." She realized that she'd been holding her breath and that her shoulders had bunched. She worked to unknot herself and relax her hands and face as Gemma and the myriad of psychologists had taught her in the last year. She wasn't in trouble. They wouldn't make her do anything she did not want to. She was not here under any conditions, other than to live and to learn.

Kalos sat criss-cross applesauce and tried again.

"I learned a lot of things that are not true. There is a world above the ocean that I didn't know was here, but unless things work differently up here, se-" her bravado died on the word sex and Kalos pivoted, "doing that makes babies for girls. I do not want babies. I do not want to ever do that." On this, she was adamant.

Hearing that she was not in trouble visible relaxed Kalos. That was a good thing. Adults often seemed like they would get angry for weird reasons, Mirror remembered as much from her own childhood. And this was really not a thing that she wanted to seem angry about, given Kalos' history with Atlantis.

>>"I learned a lot of things that are not true. There is a world above the ocean that I didn't know was here, but unless things work differently up here, se- doing that makes babies for girls. I do not want babies. I do not want to ever do that."

"Oookay" Maya could work with that, that was a good place to start "Alright, Kalos, that's totally okay. If you don't want babies, you don't have to have them. No one can make you." except for certain governments, but that was a whole other story "But I think you maybe should know that sex doesn't always have to result in babies." thank all the gods, otherwise the Mansion would be totally overrun in no time "Sometimes people just do it for fun."

Sometimes.