Jake Townsend smiled absently as he felt the cooling shade of the large oak tree wash over him. He had always had a knack for finding those special places that lay hidden in the shadows of the everyday world, and this was just such a place. Set a little ways off the northern gardens of the Mansion, he had found himself a secluded glade where he could rest from the midday heat and gather himself. He hadn't had a chance to train in a long time.

Setting aside the plastic bag containing his welcoming pack, he lowered himself against the heavily gnarled truck of the oak and tasted the connections that surrounded it. They were rich with history, excitement, and barely contained passion. A spot for lovers, he mused silently to himself with a smile. The grove had a calm, comforting feel about it. Jake allowed himself a moment to extend his senses outward, making a quick tour of the surrounding area. It didn't look like anyone else was around who could stumble into his training area. Good.

Calming himself, Jake casually pulled off his shirt and wadded it neatly up against the side of the tree while the filtered light washed over his tanned skin and mirrored shades. He was an athletic man, thickly roped with muscle, who had obviously lived a hard life and had come out the better for it. He had been build for both speed and power, and it showed.

After setting aside the shirt, Jake took out and casually discarded the contents of his pockets. His wallet, knife, cell phone, collapsible cane, and a half dozen other small trinkets fell haphazardly into the tall grass just down the slope from the tree without a care, some of them sliding for some distance before coming to a stop. This didn't seem to worry the young man at all as he stretched out his neck and arms.

Jake had often wondered why his training always worked best cross-legged. He hated the idea of looking like a new-age guru, but the exercises did seem to flow more easily like this. Perhaps it was something to do with people's perceptions. Maybe wise men who studied strange powers were supposed to sit this way. Grinning, Jake focused his mind on the many tattoos that covered his shoulders, chest, and back.

Each tattoo was complex and interlaced with its neighbors, creating an intricate weave not unlike that of a Celtic knot, only stylized with far more jagged loops and arcs. These were Jake's personal sigils, a language of meaning he had created for himself to represent everything he cared for. Discipline, power, honor, strength, and action all had a place here, their names carved into his very flesh. There is power in such a name; power that Jake could grab hold of and manipulate. When he combined this strength with the sense of self created by the tattoos, he found with practice he could push his boundaries gently outward.

Bracing himself mentally, Jake allowed the power of the Awe the flow through him and into the many connections that coiled around him, lending them a supernatural weight that bent and contorted meaning around him and which lent him until appearance and charm. Gradually, he took hold of the connections around him and directed a trickle of that overwhelming power into each of the sigils in turn, stretching out that small part of himself and trying to ignore the sounds of the songbirds that had begun gathering in the tree overhead.

Calley chirped absently, off-handedly greeting the birds he’d slept by last night. The former Order-aspirant former X-trainee former Kabal-spy had always had a knack for finding those wonderful little places tucked away into the darker shadows of the world. The ones that no one else was likely to find. The ones a shifter could just hole himself up in and rot miserably to sulking satiation. As those places went: this wasn’t one of them.

First: observe his branch mates. Chirp chirp! Chirp chirp, trill! Yeah. Glorious sunrise. Happy day to be alive, bountiful summer day, gray-feathered chicks nearly grown. Shut up. On another day and form, he would eat you. And your chicks, too.

Second: the hum and buzz of life. Oh, joyous life. A dragonfly skimmed past, searching. Not that it would have to look far—lots of mosquitoes, around here. There was a little mayfly sunning next to the songbird’s—eaten. Squirrels did squirrelly things, because that’s what freaking squirrels did. Trees grew and grass grew and weeds grew and hey—now there was even a human, too. Correction: mutant. Not many humans regularly strolled the Mansion’s grounds. And now he was disrobing.

Hurray.

The songbird fluffed out its feathers, and viciously began plucking disheveled ones from under a wing, listening to the happy chorus around him. At least someone was hap—

—Birdy. Facial. Twitch.

Seriously: look at that guy. It was like the whole grove revolved around him. Like Calley couldn’t even look away, even to do his all-important grooming. What was he? Just a guy. With tattoos. ‘Look at me! I let a burly man with a needle salivate ink into my skin!’ And an aversion to shirts, shared with such notable company as Kaz and Hunter. The former had grabbed him by the throat and threatened his life. The latter had grabbed him by the throat, threatened his life, and tore off his tail. Good company. Good. Freaking. Company. And what was with his little pocket-change collection? What—was that a knife? (It was a very shiny knife.) And a cell phone. (A particularly vividly colored one.) And a cane. Ha! Was blind boy blind? (The cane was especially fine. Though Calley had only made the acquaintance of one other. It was the cane of Luke Jacobs.)

(He had mauled Luke Jacobs.)

(Thoroughly.)

And Luke Jacobs hadn’t been glaringly, insufferably, unwanted-memory shirtless.

There was a moment—a small, small moment—when one particular songbird on the branch was deathly silent. It was at this point a fact became clear: one should not ignore songbirds.

There was a songbird. And then there was a burst of panicked feathers from the rest of the flock, as they burst into flight.

And then there was a cat. Falling, in a controlled arc, towards that odiously exposed chest, on that thinks-he’s-so-important young man.

Then, friends, there were claws.

Oh happy day.

Jake tensed suddenly as his mediative trance was interrupted as heavy tendrils of recognition and mischievousness suddenly and inexplicably adhered themselves into his web of meaning. With inhuman speed, his senses swiveled to the shape of a songbird dropping off the branch and suddenly unfolding into a wickedly armed feline.

Jake managed to look up, the sun glinting off of his sunglasses, as the twisting cat slipped past his chin and drove its nails into the skin just beneath each of collarbones, followed just a fraction of a second after by those of the cat's hind legs against his ribs.

“AHHHHHHHHHHRRRRRRRRRR” Jake yelled in agony as the vicious feline skidded to a stop putting four four-inch-long skid-marks of ravished flesh down his body. The young man's reaction was immediate. Taking hold of the potentially rabid feline with both calloused hands, he shoved with all of the strength available to him, trying to tear the creature from his flesh and fling him into the grass beyond.

Tensing only makes the claws cut more effectively. Count that as lesson two.

The hands wrapped around him, and threw. The cat was sent into the air. With smooth acrobatics born of years of practice in this form, the feline moved itself in midair to position itself for a maneuver most humans took for granted: it landed on its feet.

It was a small cat. White, with black spots here and there. It was full grown, but still had a certain slender proportion to its body and limbs that spoke of kittenhood. Its eyes were baby blue. Its ears were flat against its head. The hair on its tail was perfectly smoothed down, sleek with loathing.

“You, Sir,” it said, in place of the traditional hiss, “are getting on my nerves.” Really, he couldn’t seem to drag his blackly dilated pupils off of the man. The blood suited his chest. If the man wouldn’t put his shirt back on, then Calley would simply provide cover for him. The cat dodged back in, aiming for a leg.

Legs were a lot like trees, once you sunk your claws in. Excellent for climbing towards higher targets. In this case, Calley was aiming for a shoulder. A shoulder was a sturdy base for a kicking, scratching, mauling campaign.

There was more than one way to skin a human.

“You, Sir, are getting on my nerves.”

Jake grimaced and slipped the mirrored shades from his face and dropped them into the long strands of grass before turning his white eyes towards the whispering feline and moving into a crouch. Inwardly, his mind surged forward in the grip of the Awe, calmly calculating and watchful.

He should have noticed the... creature, before now. The training regime had caused him to lose focus. New York, it seemed, was a far more complicated place then back West. Now that he was focused squarely on the beast, he could see the heavy strands of meaning washing off of him, heavier and more vivid then any typical animal, and its center a knot of mutable impossibility. This creature had focus and care. That would help, he reflected coolly.

Jake stood to his full height as the cat surged through the tall grass like a shark rising through the surf. As it approached, he watched the cruel cable of intention extend outward, lashing at his right leg and up to his shoulder. Forewarned by a moment, Jake surged forward with the leg the cat was rapidly approaching and aimed a savage football style kick right along the path it intended to approach, hoping to catch the vicious feline off guard. If it wanted the leg, it could have it, but he was going to make it a painful prize.

If Sir Shirtsalot wanted the kick, he could have it. But Calley was going to make sure it was a painful prize.

It was like he’d trained for this moment. With Jupiter, to be specific. It had been black kitten versus big red super-powered foot then. Now? Now, it was obvious from the first impact of toe against felinious chest that Shirtsy McTopless didn’t have super strength. Or super speed. Or steel toed boots.

The cat flew up at impact, chest aching with a bruise that would form the next time he shifted to this form. For now?

Kitty flew all, right. Kitty shifted to red hawk. Red hawk beat its wings just off the ground, gaining clearance for stronger wing beats. Stronger wing beats meant higher altitude. Higher altitude meant a moment of circling; a rush above the trees’ branches, and a sudden crash back through. A forest wasn’t an ideal place for hunting prey. Good thing Calley’s prey really caught a fellow’s eyes.

Red hawk screamed towards the man’s chest. Freaking. Shirtless. Chest. Polly wants you bleeding, Attention Hog. Put back on the shirt, or lose the epidermis.

Jake gritted his teeth as the crazed feline wrapped itself momentarily around his leg before being thrown backward in a flurry of claws and fangs. It took him a moment to register the pain from the numerous small scratches and piercing wounds that littered his leg and the dull strand of satisfaction streaming forth from the cat. Oh great, Jake grunted inwardly, he's playing the attrition game as well.

It was almost nauseating watching the cat transform once more, this time into some small bird of prey. The cat hadn't even struck the ground before he transformed. Jake gritted his teeth. This was going to be a challenge. He watched as the birds stiff wing beats drove it up through the canopy of the tree and into open sky. Jake could see the arc of intention turning back towards him once more. The bastard was going to take another pass.

“F***ing bird...” he growled angrily. He could see the threads of frustration arching from the beast to himself. Why the hell was this thing so pissed?

Setting his feat, Jake took hold of his mental connections as the bird finished it's half-circle in the air and then plunged through the canopy at him like a rocket. With only a second to react, Jake essentially shoved his power into full reverse and strangled his outward connections while throwing himself to the side. Instantly, Jake jumped from being a beacon of attention into virtual invisibility as the Shroud encompassed him, making him utterly ignorable to everything around him. If he was lucky, maybe the bird would learn a cruel lesson about physics and hit the ground.

The quiet day, that Sara had been beginning to enjoy was turning into a not so quiet day, that she was beginning to be annoyed by.

Sara had awoken, in the x-men mansion, with her vission. So that was a plus. Thanks to a recent mutation growth there were days so woke up with her sight, and days she was struggling to learn how to cope without it.

She'd chosen to take full advantage of the opportunity today. Having her sight was something she was no longer going to take for granted. Seeing how she could not fully control when it disapeared and what she could best describe as a 6th sense took over. For some reason, it had been pleasurable to just walk on the top of the mansion's large fence, without the aid of a cane. To see and know where her feet had to go next to avoid falling on her tail side, rather than to feel things out with a cane and leaving a large chance of her body having to use it's healing factor up to chance.

Sara's tail flicked to the right and to the left now and then to correct her balance, but her elegant posture never shifted, as her swaying legs and feet made her movement on the narrow wall, look like she was just walking in the side walk. The sun felt good as it heated her fur. giving her the sensation of being wrapped up in a hot towel that forced her muscled to relax. Her eyes closed as her face pulled back into a yawn, exposing elegantly curved fangs that made the gesture either scary or fascinating to young children. She was just starting to feel like she could fall asleep when she heard a man yell on the other side of the lawn.

One eye cracked open in search of the yeller in question. Sara wasn't really interested in jumping in the middle of excitement right now, but yelling on the x-men's property was normally something that should be investigated. It only took a moment for Sara to look through a set of trees and find a man kicking a cat.

Well that got Sara's attention. Her head snapped in that direction. More concerned about animal cruelty than the fact it was a cat going air born, then falling.... and becoming a bird. Huhh.. .. ..

OK then. Mutant on mutant. Not mutant on animal. Still alarming. Still a situation to investigate, and possibly interrupt. Sara practically dove off of the fence, on the outside. A little finger wave hello to into one of the security cameras that was stationed at the foot of the brick fence outside, just in case Streak was watching the monitors, before she took off around the outside. Practically flying over the grass on padded feet. mean while, the attacking bird, er, ahh.. .. Mutant in question rose up in the air high enough that Sara could see him over the top edge of the fence. Sara's stride's extended. her attention switching between bird mutant in the sky, and her surroundings she was weaving through on foot.

The bird was diving just as Sara reached the destination on the outside of the fence, where the battle was taking place on the inside. Sara hopped back on top of the fence, taking up a relaxed seated pose. Her shoulders curved so that her elbow could rest on the fence line to support her tilted body. Her ankles crossed as they stretched the other way. Mean while her eyes intently followed the bird and Sara looked a lot like a cat staring at a tank of panicking fish.

That's odd Sara's attention wavered from the bird as she scanned the ground for the other mutant. hadn't he just been there? Sara shook herself from the awkward feeling and her attention darted back to the bird. "I'm new, sort of-" Sara wasn't exactly new, but at the same time, she wasn't a part of any team. She was just there and new was a quick explanation. "-but I know things like this are meant to be saved for the danger room."

Ahg! Sara quoting Sam. What was becoming of her mind, the longer she staid at the mansion? and this was goody two shoes stuff. personally, if it wasn't for the fact that this looked bad for the mansion, and to the other people here, Sara felt it should just be ducked out. Then again that was a feeling based mostly on instinct.

>> “F***ing bird...”

****ing shirtless pre-mauled man. For a blind guy, he sure seemed to be tracking Calley’s movements well. Probably someone like Luke, then. Luke had looked distinctly better post-mauling, if Calley’s memory served. Clearly, this guy was begging for such an improvement.

Height: gained. Target: hard not to sight. Altitude: dropping. Engage blood-curdling scream: check. Ready shreddin’ claws for high-impact landing: check. Vindictively cackle in the depths of soul: check. Disappear target: check.

Wait, what?

The hawk kept plummeting, half in surprise, half because he couldn’t stop on a dime, half because if the guy had just gone invisible, he might still be here, and 50% failing in math. The hawk didn’t actually hit the ground. But that, of course, is only because the little white cat with black spots here and there did.

Four knees bent low over four perfectly planted paws, absorbing the impact. A tail flicked. Ears swiveled. Whiskers fanned, and nose flared. All the little cat could detect, though, was an interloper.

>> "I'm new, sort of, but I know things like this are meant to be saved for the danger room."

“Meh,” Kitten yowled, sitting down. It looked around, tail tip curling and ears flickering in something close to confusion. Shirtless. He vaguely remembered a shirtless man, yes. What he wasn’t remembering was why he’d felt the urge to eviscerate said shirtless man. In general, he saved the evisceration urges for non-complete strangers.

Tail. Twitch. Emotion manipulator? The guy had crap control, if he was. Unless it wasn’t him; he did seem to be kind of invisible now, and those two powers didn’t usually go together. Huh.

Calley’s sour mood fell on the next available target, with somewhat less uncharacteristic violence.

“Something you wanted, cat?” She was a distinctive mutant. He’d met her once before; her name was something generic, like Sally, or Sara, or Sue. A meh to remembering, though. Meh to the world.

And meh to unmauled men, wherever they be.

Jake grunted and stood, watching the oblivious feline twitch irritably. Glancing down, he studied the wounds he had suffered. They were long, painful, and bloody, and anger coiled inside of him. For a moment, he considered blind-siding the damned cat. There were plenty of thick branches around that would serve well enough, but it seemed that the other 'cat person' seemed to know who this guy was. How many of these cat creatures where there in this town?

“Something you wanted, cat?”

Jake grunted. Your one to talk.[/i] As the adrenaline from the encounter began to wear off, he decided to study the pair. He didn't want to maintain the Shroud for long, he might need it later, so he worked fast, studying the intricate web of meaning that played out from the pair of them. The two of them knew each other but the strand of recognition was tenuous at best.

Turning his attention to the assault cat, he wasn't surprised to find his karmic connections as mercurial as any normal cat's. The creature maintained a thick core of connections that seemed to play off in all directions, most heavy with age and power. Curiously, most of the connections he could identify were decidedly one sided, stemming from others and pouring into the feline. It was as if the cat was always on the defensive, afraid to let himself experience anything he didn't choose to. It was strange, but he was starting to expect that from mutants. As he studied further, he caught a glimpse of one of the many connections that Jake had managed to sever with the Shroud. Shirtlessness? That's what set off the cat? Jake sighed and refocused on the girl.

The girl was far easier to read, and more enjoyable by far. The karmic weight of her connections marked her as a person who reveled in experience, and that was something that Jake could respect. She was also temperamental and stubborn, the same as him on many levels. It would be best to stay on her good side.

Jake quickly grabbed his shirt and slipped it on despite his wounds. There wasn't any point in aggravating the attack-cat further, although he doubted it would make any difference at this point. Hopefully, a cat or a hawk was the best this mutant could pull off. Once the Shroud fell, he wouldn't be able to tap into that power again for about the thirty or so seconds that it took to study the pair of them. That's a long time in a fight.

Standing, Jake walked past the twitching feline and over towards the wall on which the female was standing. He felt more comfortable with the gravel and concrete around the wall then the soft grass in the nearby grove. As he stepped onto the gravel trail at the base of the wall and turned towards the angered cat ready to fight if necessary.

“That's exactly what I was about to ask you.” Jake muttered snidely standing beneath the she-cat's perch.

Sara had no recognition for this other cat, other than the fact that he was, indeed a cat... for now. With the exception of him talking to her, everything chemically and physically was feline. Sara could smell him. However, beyond that, Sara had no idea this was Calley, the person she believed was the brother to one of her bosses, Slate. When she met Calley, she only knew he was a tiger shifter. At least that was what he led her to believe. She had no idea that's who this little black and white spotted cat was. As confermed by her nose, even his smell changed. Something she found odd because the bird smell still lingered, but the cat smell was what she knew was current.

“Something you wanted, cat?”

Sara shifted over the wall, so that she was perched in a sitting position. Her eyes scanning the area for the other mutant but not finding him. At least not right away as her nose flared and her ears flicked back and forth. almost keeping rhythm with her tail. "Only to make sure you two don't kill each other. It's not in the mansions best interests over all, to have fighting on their grounds. I know security will come out and be a lot tougher than I am however," Sara crossed her legs so she looked quite comfortable and at the same time, predatory, on the wall. "If you must continue this ridiculous behavior, please go a head and get what ever manly problems you have with each other resolved now. Finish it off with a nice manly marking of testosterone and be done with it."

The movement of fabric caught Sara's eye, and her eyes darted off of the Calley cat, to the place where the other mutant was. Though he took his dear sweet time returning completely to her full sense of sight. Sara smirked at the place he chose to stand. Did he really think she was going to be that protective of him? Stopping a fight wasn't really a fight preventative.

>> "Only to make sure you two don't kill each other. ...Finish it off with a nice manly marking of testosterone and be done with it."

>> “That's exactly what I was about to ask you.”

“Meh,” the little cat replied again, licking at a paw. “He started it. Or someone did. It’s not about testosterone: it’s about mind manipulation.” An irritable ear flick, and a pair of blue eyes most pointedly not looking at the re-shirted man. Not that he bugged Calley on anywhere near the same scale as before. Now he was just an annoying bleeding man in a forest, like Sara Sally Jane was an annoying furry girl on a fence. “Or emotionmancing. Or something. Give a tom credit for having a bit more composure than that, generally. That boy doesn’t even look edible.”

Not edible? Clearly not even worth Calley’s attention, much less eating. The little tom switched his grooming attentions to his other paw.

Jake grunted and crossed his arms, trying to ignore the sharp lances of pain that shot up over his chest. He supposed, in the end, he did probably start all of this. For months he had traveled on his own, wandering through the vacant countryside and small towns that dotted the Midwest, and there was no shortage of space in which to train. Here in New York, it was like there were mutants behind every rock and tree.

“It was more like emotional flak,” Jake explained with a somewhat frustrated air, turning his head towards the girl above him. “I was training alone and I guess this guy wandered too close and took a face full of my power, but all I can do is exaggerate what people are already thinking. It was an accident, and for that I am sorry.”

The apology was grudging, but honest. After all, it was Jake who was bleeding from all of this. Jake glanced down at his shirt, where two distinct vertical lines of blood had begun to seep through the cloth. Was he bleeding that much? Frustrated, he pulled the fabric away from his wounds.

“S***.”

Sara's head tilted as she watched the other, much smaller, much more spotted cat lick it's paws. She couldn't help but be a little mouthy. "Ever walk through something really grose, then lick those?" Sara wasn't very impressed by this show of what ever the cat was showing, but at least she knew what she felt about the cat. She wasn't sure what she felt abut the young man, with the small tangy smell of blood coming through his shirt like the color of red on his shirt. Huhh. the cat got him good.

He gave an explanation of his powers, witch Sara found to be creepy. Sara dropped to the ground, landing on her feet with a light thump. "Is it possible for you to have control over your abilities or does it just effect a general area?" Sara asked. If he just effected a general area Sara really didn't want to be standing next to him. She had entirely too many things she bottled up. Things that just plane didn't need to come out.

"As far as training yourself goes, there are places for that as well. Namely, the danger room I mentioned before." She shrugged trying to look indifferent. "Or if you really must practice outside, double check your surroundings by giving a vocal warning or something."

OOC: I have no idea what I was thinking and posted out of order. I am very sorry to both of you. I've taken my post down so Calley can post his. I have no idea how I got confused on the turn order...