The fiasco getting the dna had been something Aura did not wish to recall but what had really mattered was she had obtained the DNA and the cloning of her old pet had gone well, she hoped. The issue was she was unsure which of the small skunks held her old friends DNA. The skunk had been her best friend and one of the most stable and positive relationships Aura had ever held, Most of Aura's friendships and relations had always been oriented for the war for her people. Even her family, Abyss, Syn and Amber had as often lead her into violent situations as she had them.

Alex had mentioned a teacher that could communicate and take over animals minds and stood sound reasoning to Aura that she might then be able to see their souls or memories. She knew it was a chance but she needed her friend back. She smiled recalling the fluffy black and white creature she had for long thought a cat. She had scooped it up when those animal rights mutants attacked the zoo and let all the animals out. She had been so sure of her actions. so sure she was helping. Thanks to her Reflective and Zombie friends she was more assured of her future then she had been before.

Aura had decided to try and see Liz as she came to pick Alex up. She had brought the cage with her, though the skunks only ever knowing her as mom, were unlikely to spray but they could Aura knew even at their young age. The trio of kits were energetic as Aura approached Liz's classroom, making sure she was alone and not occupied with somone else. The concept of grading things and other teacher realted things were lost on Aura who did not recall her own schooling much.

"Hello, I'm Alex's mom, Aura they mentioned you could see into animals heads, if so may i ask of your help" she asked with a smile. Well she knew the chances of these three having the soul of her old friend was slim do to the time of death to the birth of them but maybe clones shared a soul. She really had no idea.

Elizabeth flopped back in the battered rolling chair behind her desk and exhaled loudly and violently. What. A. Day. It had been frog dissection day for several of her classes, including the last class of the day, and no matter how hard she tried prepping for every possible outcome, the kids always managed to sneak something new into the experience. This time, in the very last class, one student Janet had accidentally touched her frog with her bare hand and that triggered her psychometry to push a vision into everyone’s minds of the last few minutes before the frog’s death. And several minutes after.

Once all the screaming and crying had ended (and Liz was certainly going to ensure some of them met with Gemma for counseling) they had just enough time to complete the rest of the lab. Unusually, there were no other practical jokes after that, so Liz hesitantly chalked it up as a Pyrrhic victory.

But that left her with all the cleaning up to do, even with most of the kids cleaning up after themselves. She had just left a series of the tools in one of the sinks when she decided she needed to sit down for a bit and just rest.

So naturally that’s when a student’s mother came in.

“Huh, what?” Liz blinked intelligently. She tapped her head as she caught up to what the woman said, although she was scrambling for context. “Yes, that’s me. Uh, sorry, who are you again? Which Alex belongs to you?” There were quite a few different Alexs at the school and Liz didn’t recall any off hand with a mother named…Aura?

“What kind of help are you looking for?”

It never once had occurred to Aura their might be more then one kid named Alex living here. Sh made sure to mentally note this issue in case in happened again. "Sorry new friend, Alex Sinnocent, the one whose related to our Reflective friend. Alex changes genders when injured and then heals off the injury" Aura mentioned casually. "Paperwork wise her mother is listed as Allison Sinnocent but since Allison dissopeared a year ago, i have stepped into a more active parental roll, we had sought to hide my relation to Alex before as we feared it could be detrimental to her survival or worse we feared she might wish to follow in my footsteps. " she explained deciding to not mention her long list of crimes, a habit she had established early on in the old days.

"I have watched almost everyone i have ever called friend and all my family die violently, be raped, as resulted in Alex or disappear without contact. she began as she did she set down the cage with a slight metal sound, and took the sheet off of the cage to expose the exited skunk kits. "My best friend through all those years was my pet skunk Solkat, she never left me, never went away. I felt i could be a person around her and not somones weapon. Animals as they are only live so long as Solkat passed from old age" she said

"I acquired Solkat's DNA and had her cloned. The kits here are three weeks old. The chance is low i admit, but i had hoped you might be able to look within their minds and see if my old friends soul lies within. I'll take care of them either way of course but it would bring me comfort to know, if it is within your power" she went on, looking around the room curiously as she considerd her thoughts and her words. "I do realize i am imposing on you and given my background i would understand if you you do not wish to aide me in this, i would also be willing to offer compensation, either one of the kits or cash can be arranged" she offered not wanting to make it seem like she expected the help with nothing in return.

She glanced over at the cage and slowly extended a pink link of aura from her finger to the cage, unlatching it, and slowly scooping them up into a basket made of pink aura. The kits were attached to aura as aura had been their only mother.

Elizabeth processed the first response well enough. Alex Sinnocent? It rang some bells. Liz didn’t know anything about the kid’s background though - that kind of thing rarely came up in classroom conversations and such, and Liz wasn’t in a habit of requesting the file and records of every student in the mansion.

But that was the last bit of information she was able to process, because the woman…oh goodness, where to begin?

So this woman wasn’t the kid’s mother, wasn’t even….legally a guardian? Woah, what kind of footsteps did a person leave behind if it could place a kid’s life in danger besides living at a school for mutants and the home base of the X-Men? That alone would’ve been a lot for Liz to deal with in a single encounter. It brought up so many questions and quite frankly, made her wary. She frowned in concentration.

But that wasn’t all. She had a cage with…baby skunks. And while she unveiled the skunks, she gave a…horrifying…synopsis of her past. There wasn’t even time to deal with that! There was more!

“I’m sorry,” Liz said in total confusion, only focusing on the last bit. “You…cloned your pet…into three skunks?” She snagged a scrap of paper and a pen and started writing things down. “Now you want to know which one has the original one’s soul? Is that right?”

The science teacher stared down at the paper. Again, where to begin? And how did you tell someone you had no clue what to do with anything they just told you? Honestly, Liz didn’t even know what expression to wear - her face was just pretty slack. Just when she thought she could finally rest, too!

“What exactly do you mean by your…’background’?” Liz finally asked. The whole thing about payment was way too far down the road because Liz wasn’t even sure what the woman was asking for, like, if that’s even how souls worked. Much less how she cloned a skunk!

She nodded "Well the place in south korea seemed a bit confused by the request but mentioned their was no guarantee of survival, so i commissioned four, one did not grasps life thread. I figured with a few the chance of the soul picking one of them would be greater" she explained calmly. She left out that she aquired that sample by raiding a research lab the NYC zoo was partnered with. Aura had never looked into religions very far past the one that had been hammered into her. She simply took reincarnation as a universal belief.

She did not know who she was or who Alex's parents were it seemed. Aura was surprised and it took her a second. She had assumed mansion staff or whoever actually ran the place would have like passed out a guide on dangerous mutants. She let out a breath and figured out where to start. "I was kidnapped after my powers emerged at thirteen and turned into a solider against humanity, my memories were re crafted and in many cases simply destroyed, but the main thing for them was i was warrior who would not question orders. The human soldiers killed everyone i knew but i survived and walked out of those woods believing humanity and mutant kind were locked in a cold war that would lead to our kinds destruction. I suppose the why and reasons don't matter much but the short of it is, I have killed her anti mutant gangs, I have fought both staff and students of this mansion, the Frozen and reflective friends i mentioned the Null ran me over, but i have also killed thousands of humans. I have only recently began to understand how to be more then a mere weapon, to understand what having agency in my life is" she had tried to make it short and had left a lot out but it had also not been as elegant as it sounded in her head. "Use to make the news quite a bit, the frozen one and the kinetic absorbing one arrested me, went on trial and to prison, then my adopted dad wiped out the prison. It's all on Binge in a nice seven part set but has a lot of inaccuracies. Had a mansion reporter kid do a internet interview to" She said recalling the kid as he picked questions to ask with Lisa watching the entire thing. It had been fun and interesting but that portrait of her was no longer correct. She also chsoe to leave out the attacks she had endured with Alex in toe as well as the bomb then went off at their house a year prior.

"Nothing can ever fix what i have done but im hoping my old friend can help grant me the strength i need. Things always seemed more calm and relaxed when Solkat was around, she aiways looked at me the same no matter what i had done" she said afraid perhaps she had shared to much information to quickly. She was bad at that she knew.

Okay, okay. Okay. Okay. Liz was following the first part fine. Cloned a skunk. Why? Irrelevant. She probably didn’t want to go down that line of thought. As it was, she was already going mentally cross-eyed when the talk about a soul picking a body entered the conversation. That…what belief system dealt with that? Liz liked to think she was fairly open minded, and she’d certainly studied several of the world’s major religions, even if she herself stuck to her Christian roots, but for the life of her, she didn’t remember any that discussed what happened to a soul if you cloned someone or something into three, er, four offspring.

Liz had expected needing some kind of counseling or psychology training for working at the mansion. She hadn’t realized a PhD in theology would be helpful as well.

The blonde didn’t actually rub her face with the heel of her hand but she was very, very tempted. As it was, she ran her fingers through it, even as it was tied back firmly in a business-like bun, to keep it out of the way during the day’s labs.

But the woman kept answering Elizabeth’s question. And now the empath fervently wished she’d saved the clean-up for the morning.

The woman seemed nonchalant, very polite, and….what was the best way to describe it? Casual? Distant? She was a former child soldier and was responsible for literally thousands of deaths? AND had fought members of the school’s student body and faculty? Liz masked her face with the same placid look of confusion she had before, despite the growing pit of horror growing in her stomach.

This was a joke. It had to be. This woman had fought…was that Maya? Sam? And….actually Liz didn’t know who Null was. Saphirus? Assuming she was telling the truth. If she was, it was almost horribly hilarious that she was asking Liz about cloned souls. If she was joking, this was not funny at all.

But Liz wasn’t much of a gambler. She believed in being prepared for as many outcomes as possible. In the off chance this woman was perfectly truthful, Liz had to believe she was. And behave accordingly.

“Okay, okay. Okay,” Liz said several times. She blinked quickly. She’d process all of that later. She’d also make sure there were better security safeguards in place. Maybe she needed to train more birds to be passive scouts? She would just pretend the woman hadn’t said anything at all. “Okay. So before I go any further, I have to ask - why are you coming to me with this? I mean, I’m a high school biology teacher. You seem to already have access to more sophisticated resources than I do, given you were able to commission clones of your pet.”

Aura shrugged a moment and considered her response, she had figured this would be easier then it was proving but that was fine. "Well my Teacher friend, i mean you are a lot closer then that and Alex seems to trusts you and the people In Korea and you are both scientists" Aura said as if that explained everything. "Alex only mentioned you after i sent for it to be done anyway, otherwise i would a came to you first with that" she went on. Aura knew little of science, she had never needed to learn it. She could make a pipe bomb built knew little of why they worked, just that they did. Her life she had believed was to short and her people needed her. Well she had never been an A student in her high school years, the women who stood holding a trio of skunks knew far less. Aura also figured biology studied life and so cloning would naturally be part of that.

Plus Korea ...it's near Japan and last time i was there i fought a lot of Yakuza members, so i figure this was also is less risk of me being attacked and defending myself. They really do hold quite the grudge." she thought considering the time she had been knocked out and landed in a pile of fish heading for japan. She would have welcomed it but she was trying to be low profile and few dozen new murders would not at all do that.

"Don't under estimate your ability, you teach useful things, like math, history and science. My memories of school were erased, not needed when forging a weapon. All i can teach is combat. You will always have purpose, the world will always need you. The world needs the likes of my knowledge far less" Aura said looking at teachers as special people, people who would always have a path in life. Aura no longer knew her path. TheHoly was was done, if for no other reason then Aura could take no more of it.

Okay, that was a fair point. Liz certainly was easier to access than scientists in Korea. The blonde nodded begrudgingly. “So you’re not wrong…” she began slowly, trying to figure out what on Earth was happening. Aura wouldn’t have been wrong to go to Liz for a nice country-style breakfast at midnight when the restaurants were closed, either, but that didn’t mean the woman was right to do so!

Wait, what’s this about Yakuza?

Liz was so so so glad very few animals were around right now. She would not be able to have an…inane…conversation with a self-professed mass murder about detecting clone skunk souls while keeping a straight face if she’d had to deal with micromanaging animals at the same time. The downside was that she was completely on her own. None of the other teachers would still be around, having cleared off to go to their offices or wherever else. She didn’t think she was even in range to try to send some kind of message through Angua or Bruno, much less try to locate them and figure out how to communicate for help to their owners.

So Liz locked those thoughts in a box and firmly shoved it (and the part of her that was babbling in pure terror) to the side.

How did you handle a predator that hadn’t decided yet if it was going to kill you? You kept it busy and made sure you didn’t look like food.

Elizabeth smoothed back her hair and tightened her bun up a bit before nodding her head. “I am…flattered…that you would come to me, Aura,” she said. “While I do appreciate - and agree with! - your assessment of teachers, it is better that you had gone to the Korea for the cloning process, as I would not have been able to assist in that in any way. My specialty is helping students learn, you see.”

The blonde spread her hands and smiled humbly. She decided to completely ignore all that stuff about memory erasure and child soldiering. She’d deal with that (by freaking out) much later. “Cards on the table though, I cannot guarantee I will be of any help with finding this soul,” she said. “Alex is right - I do peek into animal heads, but quite frankly, I’m not sure I can detect…souls. Then again, I’ve never tried it before. Have you spoken to any religious officials or spiritual experts, like priests or holistic healers about this?”

So she had chosen right to do commission the south korean lab though Aura was not sure why Liz could not have just helped her learn to clone. She decided to let it go however as she already had the kits she needed. Maybe if in another eight years this happened again she would ask Liz about learning biology so she could just do it herself.

Her aura fluttered into view in this whisps at the mention of priests, an almost scared look crossing Aura eyes though it never made it to her. She shook her head, "The people who kidnapped me and made me into a solider taught me that. Of the nine gods, we were to worship Alpha, lady of the forest who taught us that a world could only have one intelligent race at a time, and so with mutants existing humanity had lost its natural right to the world. If you did not obey orders given to you then when you died your sould would be devoured by the lord of should, but if you did as told you could be reborn with your friends." she said taking a breath before speaking again. "We would stand outside for days at a time in all weather to hear the sermons but i can't ask them as they are dead and im mostly sure they lied about a great deal anyway" she said recalling the horrific and bloody scene her last day in those woods was.

"It's fine you might not be able to , i assumed their was a high chance of that you might not be able to detect it. All im asking is that you try My Teacher friend. " Aura said her auras wisps fading out entirely. "I figure in the worst case i wait six weeks for them to be ready to be independent and if one stays of their own will, they must have Solkats old soul." she explained with a shrug. "Solkat died many years ago so her soul likely has passed already to a new body she tried tp explained knowing Liz likely did not worship her gods and thus trying her best to explain.

"I enrolled Alex here so they would not turn out like me. Meeting you so far as proven that to be a good choice. No kid should ever grow up like me" she said her eyes looking like a haunted childs for a few seconds and then whisps of pink returning before both vanished under Auras attempted stoic facade.

Okay, Elizabeth had to admit she was getting rather invested now. Oh yeah, the whole thing about genocide and fighting the Yakuza and even fighting staff members of the mansion was still there in the back of her mind, but she’d spun it into a cocoon and would only let that emerge later.

From an objective standpoint, this woman was fascinating!

“What religion is this?” she asked. “It vaguely reminds me of some classic-era bear cults or even a militant form of Wicca.” Nine gods and the leader of the gods a lady of the forest? Okay, the whole “only one intelligent race at a time” thing aside, Liz could get behind that kind of religion. Like, she thought Aztec mythology was amazing, even if she personally was opposed to blood sacrifices.

An anthropological experiment. That’s how Liz had to treat this woman. Otherwise she’d run gibbering out of the room.

Aura didn’t even seem let down by the chance that Liz couldn’t help, and in fact the woman (who now had faint glimmers of pretty pink energy shimmering around her) had backup plans. For something so important that a person would get DNA and have the animal cloned, so sure seemed to be treating this as nothing more than shopping around to see which grocery store had lemonade in stock. Oh, you don’t have it? Eh, worth a shot.

Fascinating.

Liz caught a deepness in the woman’s eyes but it wasn’t there long enough for her to decipher it. She smiled humbly. “It’s the goal of all parents and educators that kids turn out better than we ever were. All we can do is love them and cherish them and do whatever we can to prepare them for their futures.”

Then Liz glanced at the cage of baby skunks. ”I can go ahead and take a look now, if you’d like,” she said, nodded at them.

"They called the god's the Xel Siun, a cycle of reincarnation towards eventual Mutant Utopia. I am not familiar with either of those but i have grown to understand my belief system may well have never reached past the woods and that i may well be its last adherent" she said honestly. The thoughts brought that night back to her mind, that day in the woods she saw everyone she knew die. It had taken her a decade to understand that was not her fault and still sometimes it was hard for her to believe. Her response left out remy as well who had quite literately walked from the grave Aura had made for her, she was still trying to deal with that.

She nodded as Liz mentioned. Part of her hoped that the educators she failed to recall had tried. "I Like to believe my parents felt that way but i have to few memories of them to know. " she said a few more flickers of pink appearing around her. "I suppose i could teach people how to fly the x jet to, so i could teach more then war" she said jokingly brightly recalling the strange incident of body swapping and all those annoying aol adds that had played in her mind. "Random City wide body swapping, My dad ended up in the tri-sharded ones body, and I in a Mansion students, we stole the X jet, got several pallets of toilet paper and TP'd the mansion." she explained in amusement.

{color=f700c5]"Thank you, They are use to me and Alex, if you have to touch them go slow though, even baby skunks can spray and it smell's no better"[/color] she said not knowing how Liz's power worked at all. Still she also did not want to accidentally scent bomb the womans classroom either. She knew from experience what it took to get rid of the scent in doors. They were cute balls of fur even to Aura's eyes and she could see the three skunk kits were very curious what was going on around them.

She tried not to get her expectations up on this, knowing Liz might not be able to even see souls and if she could she might not be able to understand Solkats soul. She was no expert on the souls cycle as a warrior and not a priest so it hard to tell Liz what to look for as well. However the chance was enough hope for her at the moment and worst case maybe she would go fight a bear at the zoo to let off steam.

Again, this woman was fascinating. The only other alternative was insane, but that was far too easy a cop out.

Liz was furiously scribbling down notes as the woman talked, using every shorthand trick she knew, as well as several diagrams and pictograms. This was a religion to look into later - at the very worst it was a fun thought experiment. And this thing about the woods? Definite nature cult. Although if Aura was the last practitioner, it didn’t seem likely there’d be much information on it. Eh, she’d add it to her to do list, right after informing Sam, Becca, and the X-Men that a self-proclaimed serial killer has just waltzed into the mansion.

“So you can fly the jet? Pretty cool,” Liz said, not even batting an eye at the rest of it. That stuff was fairly commonplace, really. Well, TPing the the mansion wasn’t, but that still sounded fun. As long as she wasn’t expected to clean it up, of course.

Then it was time to do what the other woman had come here for. “Don’t worry about spraying, I’ll make sure they don’t,” Liz reassured the woman. She immediately relaxed her psychic floodwalls and began pouring a cocktail of peace and tranquility into the kits, drowning any fear, excitement, confusion, or alarm with a total state of Zen.

She reached for the cage opening and started to undo it. “Again, I can’t guarantee I’ll find anything, but this could take a couple of minutes. I’ll have to inspect each one individually,” she said. She dragged the cage to within arm’s reach and placed her hand inside on a kit while sitting back in her chair. “It will look like I’m unconscious - don’t worry, that’s supposed to happen.”

Then Elizabeth’s body slumped, the lights out and nobody home as the owner traveled into the first skunk’s mind.

She nodded with a smile. "It was fun and easier then driving a car which i never have mastered" she said recalling the one she can driven through several fences and then landed in a pool. She had not much interest in doing so as she had been walking the city for so long she knew how to navigate on foot even if it did take way longer to traverse. Her eyes stole a glance at Liz, as much as they could see with the desk anyway. Aura was not great at being subtle on such things though she tried to be sly.

"That is good my new friend, As i do not know if tomato juice takes the smell of walls" she said considering. It made sense to Aura that it would but she had never tried. She looked over at the kit's sand saw the calmness overtaking them. She simply trusted Liz as she worked here and was a mutant, the idea that Liz might might lie had barely crossed her mind.

"Thank you for trying, my Pretty friend, no matter the result" she said sweetly. She was glad Liz had warned her about how her power looked when it use or she might have been a bit alarmed when Liz slumped over, as it was she just tried to make sure Liz would not fall, not knowing if she was prone to that sorta thing. She watched fascinated, their really was few things more beautiful then a female mutant using her powers. Aura bit her lip softly "Beautiful" she almost whispererd as she watched. She refocused her mind on the kit's wondering on the results as she waited. Her eyes shifted between the kits and Liz as if she could help if something went wrong, if something could?

Aura had no idea the three skunk kits were just new born life starting it's journey fresh without memories from another life. She knew however it was unlikely and she was likely to leave disipointed, she glanced back at Liz well not entirely.

Elizabeth sank into the skunk’s mind and took a brief moment to gather its thoughts. There…wasn’t a ton there. Her empathic docility was doing a wonder on the three, even if it was harder to do now that she was no longer in her own body. Still, it was simple enough to extend the effect to three animals within one foot of her.

She did not miss what the woman said though. Beautiful? No way going comatose was beautiful - Aura must’ve been referring to the kits. Liz could understand loving animals and as she directed the skunk to look up at the woman, fond memories flicked to the front of the skunk’s mind. Good. These skunks were well cared for.

Then she set about rooting through the skunk’s mind for…a soul, she reckoned. Whatever that looks or feels like. What markers would denote the presence of a soul, or a soul vs a former soul? Perhaps she could focus on familiarity? In the off chance that a skunk had actually reincarnated into one these, perhaps it would unconsciously be more familiar with Aura?

Well it was worth a shot.

One by one, she moved through the skunks, focusing their eyes on Aura and chasing any memories and feelings that welled up as a result. She ran down rabbit holes and side paths, seeking related memories that got stirred loose, in case any of them hinted at anything more than the typical life experiences of a baby skunk.

Finally, it was time to withdraw.

She guided a skunk back to her hand and a second later she was back in her own body. She straightened up and began closing the cage. “I don’t know that I detected any kind of a soul,” she reported. “And if I did, I don’t know how to distinguish it from any soul the skunks might already possess. However, I can tell you that this one is far more fond of you than the others.” She pointed at the one on the far left of the cage.

“They all like you, but that one has the best connection. It could be a lingering effect of a previous life, or it might just simply like what you do better than the others. I can’t really say more than that.”

Aura waited patiently as the woman worked, she could only imagine what the woman must see or feel when she used her powers. She wondered how aware of the mental intrusion the skunk kits were, they certainly looked calmed. She had not met Solkat as a kit so it was hard to say of any of them acted like her old skunk and likely to early. She watched the kit's look up at her one by one with a bright smile.

Well the woman might not of found a soul but she found something valuable anyway it seemed to Aura. Maybe that fondness was the signal she had wanted, maybe not but it was a source of comfort anyway. she followed where the woman pointed and shook her head amused."Been calling that one, Delta, after the God Of Love, the other two are Nova and Dragarria, Goddess of war and the Goddess of monsters. It is interesting to me of the three, that one would have the best connection." she said trying to quickly explore what it could mean if anything.

Perhaps it was a sign, she had no way to know. Her fate forged as a warrior, and not of the priest she had no true way to connect with the Gods. One way of seeing it was as the gods approval for her changes, the other was coincidence. Aura wanted to believe the first more. Perhaps Delta had claimed her service from Alpha, it was not unheard of she knew, it was also possible she knew that Alpha had lied about Humans. The lies of the gods had been mentioned in the sermons before.

"I think you have given me hope for the future. It is interesting to me that of the three you picked the one named after the least violent of the three. I suppose we can not know for sure if it means anything" she said just now considering the idea of an appointment might have been best. She had no real idea what teachers did when not Teaching. "I do hope i was not interrupting anything, i just considered an appointment may have been best. Does your power always render your body helpless?" she said glancing back at the cage, focusing on each of the kits in turn before looking back to Liz.