Blue had been on good behavior since he moved in with Juniper. Or, moved onto her couch, since he had no belongings to really consider it 'moving-in'. But he was on edge given the amount of bodies he had created lately, and bodies tended to attract attention of the police, the authorities, and even several unethical 'organizations' if you weren't careful. Needless to say, Blue was trying to stay under the radar.

Given that he was a walking match, he was not succeeding so well.

Today, he found himself followed by a stray cat, who seemed far too amused by his blue flames. This, in turn, was attracting attention from pedestrians. As the white stray bounced beside him, swatting at the fire, Blue finally turned to glare at it.

"Git outta here! Scat!" He waved at the cat, who surprised him by sitting on it's backside, and glaring at him. The cat had splotches of orange and black, and the glare Blue was given was infuriating. I don't...harm....animals, he reminded himself. But then the cat raised a paw, and took another defiant swat at his flames.

Blue's powers activated. The cat's paw caught on fire. The cat hissed, then...

The world got...bigger?

Blue didn't remember much after that. There was some hissing, what he could have sworn was laughter, his own flailing attempts to run, and ...there was a tail. He had a tail? Why did he have a tail.

It was a good thing he wasn't wearing his only fireproof clothing today, because the loss of pants and shirt would be fine. And he had no belongings to lose. The cat seemed disappointed there was no wallet. Wait, why did the cat want his wallet? Blue got tangled in a shirt as he tried to get answers, and in the end, he found himself sitting outside his apartment door.

Outside Juniper's door.

As a cat. He was a f***ing cat. If he ever found that damn mutant, he would burn it to hell and back.

His tail twitched. Blue hoped Juniper would be home soon. This was not his day.

There was a cat. Another cat. Not one of the two she already had. Uh-oh.

She stared at it from the spot she had frozen in over by the stairwell since the elevator was broken again.

Could she handle a third cat?? It was just sitting there, as if it had already chosen her place as it's home. Maybe Clyde or Berry were on the other side of the door antagonizing it and it belonged to someone else? Yeah, probably. That would make sense.

"Hey there, pretty kitty." She approached slowly, shifting her paper bag of groceries from one arm to the non-dominant one, and held out a hand toward it. "Are you lost?"

It was grey, or... almost blue-furred. A bit like Berry, really, but less fluffy. She briefly wondered if it was a parent to the little stray cat, but... heh, that would be silly, wouldn't it?

"No collar, huh." It looked grumpy. Actually, no, scratch that, murderous in a feline way. "Are you hungry, sweety?"

She fished her keys out and actually set about unlocking all of her stupid locks for once, seeing as she didn't know how the cat would react to being pushed through a door by a stranger.

Once unlocked, she held it open for the new kitty experimentally, and like she had assumed both Clyde and Berry darted out to investigate the new arrival. Clyde took a sniff here or there with his failing nose, before giving up and heading back inside without a care.

Berry puffed up three times his size to try and get an edge up on the larger cat, growling a tiny growl and hopping around sideways as he approached. Juniper took her sweet time recording it all instead of helping, because CUUUTE!

"Oh, God, Berry you're going to kill me with cuteness one of these days."

Once the kitten got a sniff of Blue, he relaxed and de-floofed. It took a literal second to switch to purring and cuddling and trying to rub his back in Blue's face now that it was so much more accessible.

"C'mon in. Who's hungry?!" She fished a can of wet food out from the store and shook it, and both of her cats quickly followed.

Juniper arrived, and did what Juniper would do when she saw a cat, and began to coo, and gush, and call him pretty.

Oh hell, was he pretty? Had he been turned into a pretty cat? He would kill that cat when he found them over this. Because of the pretty. Because of the cat. Because of allll of this. There would be a BBQ kitty. No, he would scratch him first. Claw, then flames. Then flames. So many flames.

Blue was impatient as Juniper unlocked the door, because why couldn't she just let them through like normal? Ugh. He resisted doing anything too dramatic while Juniper was carrying things, because that would risk things spilling, and frankly, if she was buying things the traditional way, he wasn't going to waste her money like that. But, he needed to make this clear fast that he was not a cat, he was Blue, and he was not pretty.

He ignored Clyde, ignored Blueberry who was so much bigger here at cat level. When did the kitten get so big? Why was the purr so loud. Ugh. Once Berry realized it was Blue, the kitten was even harder to keep calm. "You're so loud!" he complained. It came out as a meow, and Berry only purred louder. Blue pushed past the kitten and marched to his spot on the couch and jumped up to it. Holy frickity----He almost landed on the back of the couch in an overshot effort to get there. Cat agility. That was...unusual. He slowly loosed the hold his claws had on the fabric and flopped backward onto the spot. Claws. Yeah, those worked. Good to know.

Juniper was wagging food around and the other two cats ran to it. Blue snubbed his nose at the smell. How could they be excited for cold wet mush? Nope. He wouldn't do it. He could just wait for Juniper to cook something more edible.

If she cooked something more edible. Crap, he normally cooked. Could she make dinner without him? She had before, but, there were burnt dishes involved. He glanced over at the kitchen, somewhat concerned now.

uh. This cat was definitely different. Her other cats were going nuts over whatever junk food they packed into the little cans. She frowned as she plopped two cans down for the voracious little monsters and scratched her head while looking at the new arrival.

Huh... What was it that Xavier fed his cat? He like, cooked and junk... right?

"Okay, so maybe Tuna isn't your favorite. Guess I could try and whip up some of that stuff Xavier makes." Rifling through her fridge for ingredients, she pulled out some chicken. Then rice from a cupboard, and there was one last sweet potato she could use, too.

"Alright... I can do this. It's just cooked chicken and rice."

Never mind the fact that Blue was always there to correct her, or just flat out cook for them. She could do this!

She dug out a pot for the rice and a knife to get the chicken ready, and

"Oh, right, wash hands first."

This was going to be a disaster.

Blue watched, eyes judgmental and as sharp as ever. It was...actually kind of cool seeing things in cat vision, but he would not be distracted. He had to keep the apartment from burning down. If things were going to burn, they would burn on his terms!

While he waited, his paw twitched once on the couch, then again. He felt the uncomfortable need to kneeeed. The spot wasn't comfy. It needed to be softer. He flexed his paws a few times, then froze.

He needed out of this body.

Blue marched to the kitchen and moved to where he could watch Juniper. Juniper and the chicken. Juniper in the oh dear god she had a knife.....

She could phase, but what if she dropped it? Blue wondered if he needed to step back. He gave a unhappy mew.

She'd gotten the chicken sliced into a few irregularly sized chunks, and was about to move on to cutting up the sweet potato-like Blue had shown her, when the new cat mewed and she looked over at it. It was watching her in... was that concern?

She blinked, head tilting back a little and she pursed her lips for a moment.

"Hey, wanna see something neat?"

She looked around conspiratorily, as if someone was gonna catch her, and leaned toward the cat with a hand cupped over her mouth. "Don't tell Blue, okay?"

With a nod to herself, because clearly, the cat wasn't going to answer, she stepped on back and flipped the knife in her hand around with a little spin so that she could pinch it by the blade. A long time ago one of her friends had shown her how to throw knives... and while she really wasn't great at it sometimes she could pull off a neat little trick... or a prank.

"One... two... three!"

Juniper flipped the knife up and it arched. She tracked it with her head and as it crested and started to come back down, she flung a hand out and caught it in her palm.

No, literally, in her palm!

"AHHHHH!" She hollered dramatically, but not at the being-murdered level, and clutched at her wrist while doing a panic dance in a short circle.

Then she crouched and held her palm out, feeling like an accomplished idiot, to show the new cat that she was unharmed. She had just phased the knife through her palm and left it there. Not a drop of blood was in sight.

"Ta~da~"

Giggling, she pulled the knife out and sighed, perhaps a bit sadly. "Bet I gotcha, huh?" She went to stand so she could wash her hands and put the dirty knife in the sink.