((ooc: Continued from "Mondragon Labs"))

Two things Calley didn’t appreciate in life: waking up inside of a scary rich man’s shirt, and the cute tinkling noise the bell on his Explode-a-Kitty brand collar made as he groggily blinked away the black spots swimming in his vision. Shifting six times in a day: not a good idea.

On the bright side, he was a cat again. A little white cat with black spots here and there. Going from human to cat was like wrapping himself in his favorite childhood blankie—it felt so much safer to be a cat than a teenager. He could have skipped the part where a migraine crashed into his head and he passed out, though. He could also have skipped the two heavily muscled security guards who had driven him here. They were staring down at him. One from the driver’s seat, the other from the seat next to him. He glowered back. Then, with the utmost of feline dignity, he stood, and calmly walked out of the neck of the scary rich man’s shirt.

They were parked four blocks away from the Mansion and out of sight on a side street. He was on his first official-type spy mission for his new Scary Boss Man. That was cool. But somehow, his excitement was getting drained out of him.

He was wearing a collar that would explode if Doc Jimmy spilled coffee on the remote detonation switch. His right shoulder had been dislocated two and half hours ago. He’d been death-threatened repeatedly in the same span of time. He was carrying explosives around his neck. He didn’t think he’d be able to shift again until he’d gotten about twenty-five hours of sleep and three or four hearty meals. The doctor in charge of the remote detonation switch didn’t seem to like him very much. He was wearing a collar. The collar had a bell. If he didn’t get moving soon, Doc Jimmy’s finger was probably going to slip. He was on his first mission. Hurray.

Calley jumped down from the jeep, and started padding along. Four blocks. He could do four blocks. Or at least, he could do one block, then one block, then one block, then one last block. It was all about tricking himself into thinking that life didn’t suck, and Doc Jimmy wasn’t watching the view from Calley’s bell camera as his finger pirouetted in slow circles around that detonation switch.

Just as at Hunter’s apartment earlier that day, Calley’s energy quickly returned to him in a rush, washing away the headache and about a third of his reasons to hate the world. It even let him ignore that sprained-ankle feel his shoulder had. It was strange: he felt like he could run the rest of the way to the Mansion, and at the same time, underneath that, he knew that he desperately needed sleep. He wondered how that was reading out on the good doctor’s vital signs monitor.

The Mansion was an impressive-looking place with an impressive-looking fence that had an impressive-looking gate. An impressive-looking gate with gaps between its bars plenty big enough for a small cat to squeeze through. He chased a startled rabbit about half-way up the lawn to the building, then sat down and groomed himself delicately as he surveyed the scene. Random kids running around: avoid those—they don’t know how to treat a cat. A few teenagers tanning or reading or just generally lounging on the lawn. Not a problem. There were strange smells on the air—a few other housecats, a fox, and at least two wolf scents made the top of his list, but there were some things he’d never encountered before. He smelled a distinct whiff of Kaz, too--not surprising, since the man was here spying for the Order. The sounds of this place labeled it as relaxed; more importantly, no one was coming his way. Calley stretched dramatically, testing out his injured shoulder. Those four blocks had done it good; it felt nice and warmed up, and ready to behave itself. Calley yawned, and paced up to the side of the house with a great air of disinterest. There were a few windows open on the second floor. There was a little decorative ledge between the main floor and the second, about eight feet up. Calley was a cat. It didn’t take a genius to make that leap—no pun intended.

He stalked past open windows with an on-important-business strut until he came to his preferred selection: an unoccupied room featuring a door that was already cracked open into the hallway. Perfect. He paused in the hallway to groom again, his ears swiveling slowly. The Mansion was alive with noise—people talking, laughing, having pillow fights. He even caught the distinct sound of some poor kid stumbling through his practice run for an oral presentation. Nothing said that anybody cared he was here. He washed his ears, letting his eyes scan the scene. The Scary Boss Man had said to assess the Mansion’s defenses, in addition to paying a visit to the room the would-be cracker of Mondragon Labs had operated out of. Simple enough. Except that the Scary Boss Man knew he had no clue what he was looking for, here. How did one go about "assessing defenses", exactly? His tail twitched irately. A little training would have been nice. And sleep. And a collar that didn’t have explosives, or a bell. Two things in life Calley loathed: exploding, and making adorable noises as he moved.

Hunter stepped into the lab and looked at Calley’s bell camera. He was already inside, and no one was with in ear shot, so he tapped the microphone. “Good work Calley, I want you to have a look around for something that looks like a security control room.”

Hunter had had the tour, and knew that there were lower levels to the mansion. “Try heading for the lower levels, and having a look around there.”

((ooc: The timing of Crystal's attempted hacking at the labs seemed to put us about concurrent with the war room thread, so...))

Lower levels, huh? Lower levels. Sure. Whatever keeps the kitty splatter off of the walls, Scary Boss Man. Calley padded silently down the hallway until he came to the stairs. He had to stop half-way down to let his fur be molested by a grabby seven-year-old who obviously thought it was appropriate to pet cats in the same bludgeoning manner as dogs prefer. But he wiggled free, and made it to the main floor in a mad dash. He slid across the polished wooden floors, and made a graceless but high-speed turn to dash down into the depths of the school. When he was sure he wasn’t being followed any longer, he sat down and gave himself a quick lick-over to undo the worst of the damage. No, Calley was not an obsessive groomer—he just liked to look presentable, is all.

As he was grooming, his nose sent up a red flag, and he quickly bolted back to hide under the stairs. His nose was telling him that Creepy Cane Man, aka Kaz, had passed this way recently—the last thing he needed to do was be spotted here by someone from the Sanctuary. He still wasn’t sure how he was going to break the new collar to his Isabel; it was almost as bad for a cat to turn up wearing another owner’s collar as it was for a husband to show up with another woman’s lipstick on his shirt collar. He felt a little like a cheap whore. Hunter’s ho... all the groomings in the world weren’t going to help him feel any cleaner for awhile.

His mind was refocused for him by the sound of an opening door. Kaz and a woman stepped out into the hallway from a room down the corridor. “Ok, what is it you wanted to talk about?” The woman asked him, so low that Calley had trouble hearing. “Something about someone being followed?” At which point Kazzy dear went on to just about blow his cover. Calley held himself still and silent, and kept the shouting and hissing to the inside of his head. Kaz: one of the more impulsive crayons in the Order’s box. He said smart things, and then he did stupid things. A young lady ran past and entered the room while the pair were talking. Calley wasn’t interested in her, and he’d certainly heard enough out of Kaz there. The woman had mentioned a meeting that was going on in that room—every nerve in Calley’s body hummed with ready-willing-and-eagerness to get within hearing range. He thought he was going to tear something apart when Kazzy listened at the door a little longer after the woman had gone back inside. Then the man was gone, in a typical high-speed show-offy fashion that left Calley’s fur a little windblown, even under the stairs. Thanks, Kazzy, he thought sullenly. Then he slipped out from under the stairs. He lifted a paw in front of the bell camera, pointing down towards the door. “Merrow?” He asked. Which of course meant, Is it a good idea to get closer and try to have us a listen, or what? He was hopin’ for a yes.

Delilah was talking to someone in the corridor. The microphones on Calley’s bell picked up every word. So Delilah was an X-man. He’d need to be a bit more careful.
He watched the man she was speaking to listen at the door before dashing off at a speed that even his enhanced vision combined with the excellent camera barely perceived.

Assuming that the combination of pointing the camera at the door and meowing meant Calley wanted orders Hunter pushed the button for the microphone again. “See if you can listen in on them, I want to know what their planning. If you have to do you think you can use the key to open the door? Meow once for no, twice for yes.”

((ooc: Right-o, Scary Boss Man. Continued in "Results of the Sanctuary".))

((ooc: Continued from “Results of The Sanctuary”.))

Calley padded up the stairs like a small angry soldier on the warpath. He’d just been hit in the backside with a door. Not to mention that he hadn’t heard a thing for his troubles. What was the fun of eavesdropping on a secret meeting of the Do Gooders Club if you couldn’t even hear their charmingly altruistic plans? They’d come out looking like they meant business, too. That could only mean one thing: Calley had missed something good. He really, really hoped the Scary Boss Man had been able to hear something through his bell. And he really, really hoped the tapes would get played back for him at the Lab. Otherwise, the base of his tail had just gotten a bruise for nothing.

When he reached the top of the stairs, he realized something: he couldn’t remember which way it was to the room the hacker had been using. Great, he thought. If he exploded, he wouldn’t have to worry about bruises or bells or missions at all. His mother had been right: there really was a bright side to every situation.

Tail twitching irately, Calley took off down a random hallway. Classroom, classroom, uptight kid with glasses giving report on the current political state of Darfur, classroom, math lesson, jackpot: empty classroom. Calley was starting to get the impression that the Mansion was a school, as well as a boarding house. Fancy that. He pushed his way into the room, and hid under the teacher’s desk. This had to look a little strange back at the lab. But you know what? He was tired and he had a bruise on his butt and he needed someplace quiet where he could try and remember that map without having to worry about children attacking his fur. Calley tucked all off his legs under his body and tried to concentrate. Cat yoga: turkey pose.

Hunter watched Calley retreat up stairs and locate an empty room to lie down in. Leaving the speaker set to cat frequency Hunter activated his microphone again. “Good job so far, we heard everything that went on in the meeting. Now head for the hacker’s room and identify them. Once you have return to the car that dropped you and you’ll be issued with a bag of spy cams.”

“To place them you will have to become human, but we have a solution to the fatigue that you suffer from transformations. Dr Ingram is en route to the car and will upgrade your collar once you get there. Now go to the room and find out the occupant’s name. My people will handle the rest.”

Calley trudged up the stairs, tail at half-mast, really wishing that the sunlight streaming in through the windows into this beautifully decorated building wasn’t so cheerful. Why couldn’t the sunlight, just this one time, focus in through a pane of glass and set that expensive imported carpeting on fire? That would be cheerful.

He had a vague remembrance that the room he sought was on the second floor. He seemed to remember that it was somewhere in the middlemost hallway, towards the end. According to the briefing information that had gone along with the map, that made his target an older resident. That was nice—his fears of having a super-computer-genius mutant child squeal “kitty!” and dive bomb him were laid to rest.

Hunter’s reassuring words to him back in the classroom ran through his head again. “Good job so far”, was it? Now head to the hacker’s room, identify them, walk four block back to the car where Doc Jimmy is going to do something horrible to you and your collar, get spy cams, walk four blocks back to the Mansion, and trot all over the place planting them—as a human, no less, was it? Great. That last part hadn’t been said, but Calley thought it was implied. The chances of them giving him spy cameras as a goody bag for a successful first mission was slim-to-nil. He didn’t even want to know what the good doctor was going to do to him to get him to shift to human. Nothing in the best interests of his health, that was for sure. He had three little words. He wondered if the doctor had ever heard of them: “Do no harm.”

He wandered to the very end of the middle hallway. He was sure it was in one of the last ten. Don’t ask him which side of the hallway it was one of the last ten on; so really, one of the last twenty. He prowled down the middle, and leapt up to perch on the window at the end of the hall sill to regroup. Okay. His nose had good news for him: fifteen of those rooms hadn’t been used recently. One of them had a cat—a queen Siamese—but that was just a trivia fact. That room seemed to have only one occupant; a woman. He was pretty maybe almost sure that was the place he was looking for, from what he remembered. The solo occupant would certainly make sense: computer techies weren’t known for their stunning social skills. The other rooms were all doubles—there were two guys living in that room over there, and two girls in that one, that one, and that one.

...And a thirteen year old in a Hans Solo T-shirt coming down the hallway, looking a little like a sulking puppy. Calley licked at his left foreleg, watching the kid out of the corner of his eye. He wasn’t a biting cat. But in light of today’s joyous series of events, he was up for reconsidering that stance, especially if anyone--not to name names--got grabby on him. The boy came closer. Calley switched his attentions to his right foreleg. The boy stopped at the door where the Siamese lived, and started turning the knob. Calley hopped off of the windowsill and wasted no time in twining around the kid’s legs in a purring, meowing storm.

“Woah,” the kid said simply, “hi there... cat. You’re new.” Hi there... kid. You’re observant. Now, I believe you were opening the door...?

The boy gave him an awkward pat on the head, then earned a spot in Calley’s heart: he opened the door.

((ooc: Continued in "Guest Room - Iris/Rayne".))

((ooc: ...Aaaand we’re back from "Guest Room - Iris/Rayne".))

Four blocks later—four very long blocks later--a little white cat with black spots here and there arrived back at the Jeep. He sat down sullenly next to the door and glared up at the muscle men inside, waiting for the promised collar-modifications and other such tortures to begin.

Dr Ingram was not impressed at being sent out of the labs. While away all his work was put on hold, as it was all too valuable and too complicated to entrust to others. Still, Hunter had insisted, and he would get to try the collar modifications. He arrived at the jeep just as Calley sauntered up to it. at least he assumed it was Calley, it looked like a small black and white cat.

Getting out of his car he scooped up Calley rather roughly in one hand and opened the jeep door with the other. Tossing the cat inside he grabbed his briefcase and got in as well. “Your body suffers from physical stress when you shift, hence why it knocked you out after shifting multiple times in one day.”

Scooping up Calley again he began pulling studs out of the briefcase and attaching them to the collar with little care. “Each of these studs contains a shot of adrenaline, which will automatically activate if you transform. It will prevent you from passing out, though after a few minutes you’ll feel a little woozy as the adrenaline wears off.”

With the studs attached he pulled the name tag out and began fiddling with it, using delicate looking tools to attach something to the front of it. “You name tag will now change to read a different name with each animal form. While a cat your name is Mr Fluffywhiskers.”

Finally he took the bell and began to tinker with that as well. “If you shift to human and wonder around in public the collar will look suspicious, so it will now change to look like a necklace while you are human, but it’ll still be firmly attached.”

With his final modification done he pulled out a small black bag. “Inside are various items which you will need to place about the room.” Leaving the bag on the seat for Calley Dr Ingram stepped out of the jeep and got back into his car. He sped away, hurring to get back to his work.

((ooc: ...Hunter, you--you just--I... *shakes head, shoulders shaking with either silent mirth or suppressed tears*))

Mister Fluffywhiskers.

Calley watched the man getting into his car.

...Mister Fluffywhiskers.

He watched the guy speed off.

Mister... Fluffywhiskers.

He'd just been tossed around, roughly handled, and renamed.

Mister.
Fluffywhiskers.

He just--he-- He shuddered. The doctor had-- he'd just come over and--and--

...Calley felt violated. And those sympathetic looks the muscle men were giving him? Yeah. Those were not helping. They were a little appreciated, though. His head tilted slowly to the side as he stared off down the street in the direction the doctor had disappeared. Was this what shock felt like? He was pretty sure this was what shock felt like. Would the doctor care that he'd just sent one of his patients into shock? No, the doctor would not care that he'd just sent one of his patients into shock.

...Calley's head slowly, ever-so-slowly, turned towards the bag on the seat next to him. It was small. It was black. There were various items inside that he needed to place around the room. Okay... okay. His gaze rolled up to the two men staring down at him. Hmm. He was going to be butt-naked in front of them in just a moment. That would be awkward. Yes, awkward. And yes, shock.

He shifted back to human; immediately, he felt a full-body kick-in-the-rear telling his body to shut up and ignore its depleted energy levels. His subconscious assigned the adrenaline shot a voice that sounded as suspiciously disheartening as Doc Jimmy's. There was something to be said for his collar upgrade: it got him moving. He slipped back into the Scary Boss Man's oversize clothing, jammed the little black bag into his pocket, hopped out of the jeep, and actually jogged a half-block back towards the mansion. About the time he was passing the woman walking the perfectly trimmed miniature poodle, the adrenaline wore off: he did a drunken lurch-step sideways. The poodle promptly turned guard dog: it nipped at the overlarge pants like they were going to personally strangle its overfeed Mistress. Calley apologized, and hurried away from the woman's down-her-nose disapproval of him. He took great pleasure in noting that Mister Antonescu's pants now had a hole in them approximately the size of a mini-poodle's mouth. It was about all the pleasure he could see in his life: because apparently, when Doc Jimmy said "a little woozy" he meant "I'm trying to kill you. Here, let me set up this intravenous Drain-O drip around your neck. It will only hurt until you go dry-heave in those bushes."

Calley took the good doctor's implied advice, suddenly happy he hadn't eaten the Siamese's food. Behind him, he heard poodle lady step it up to double time. He couldn't really blame her. Shifting seven times in a day: just what the doctor ordered.

Calley arrived back at the Mansion looking like someone who needed to sleep. He pushed against the gates. They didn't open. He glared mutely through the gates. A bleach blond anorexic cancer-tanned eighteen-year-old girl got off of her towel, and tentatively opened the gates. "Are you a new student?" She asked. "Or have we just not met? Sorry!" She laughed perkily, "I haven't been here long myself."

"Sunglasses." Calley said simply.

"Come again?"

"Sunglasses." He pointed to the large-rimmed pink gafas del sol perched upon her movie star nose. "You're tanning with sunglasses on. Didn't know the raccoon-eye look was in this year." He didn't feel mean for saying it. He didn't even feel mean after the girl had stood stone-still for three seconds, drawn in one horrified breath, then fled back to the Mansion to presumably look in a mirror. Hey: someone had to tell her. Calley made sure to shut the gate behind himself. He was polite like that.

He made it up to the Mansion unchallenged, and casually let himself in through the front door. It was nice to know that there were new students around. That just made their security system all the more hilarious.

((occ: Back to Iris' room, one more time!))