So far, today Petunia had turned herself into a multitude of bugs. The Mosquito form had drank it's fill from a toddler. Anyone can steel candy from a baby. It takes a really sick person to steal blood. And unlike a doctor, Petunia didn't need a needle. Doctors, Evil.

From there, she turned into a fuzzy bumble bee, and mingled with a group of potted flowers that had been stacked on fire escape outside a tiny apartment. The pots blocking the path to the ground to safety, should a blaze occur, but the flowers proved to be a fragrant delight. Petunia ended up jousting with a thin hummingbird then driving the animal away with sheer annoyance and eye gouging. Petunia drank her fill of nectar, then it was off again.

Life was always an adventure when you were as tiny as an insect.

Before long, petunia had drifted along on the wind, in the general direction of the mansion. As soon as she recognized the land scape from the last time she had been on the mansion grounds, her little fuzzy be body shot straight up in the air, about ten feet. Her wings snapped against each other then clattered into her normal bee buzz at the sudden stop in her elevation. Through multiple eyes and dirrections she was able to triangulate her position from the mansion, and darted into motion. Making a B line straight for where the x-men gates would be located.

Once outside the mansion gate, Petunia shifted again, into a monarch butterfly. Because according to Bart Simpson, no one suspects the butterfly. She flopped back and forth on the air, just outside the mansion gates for a minute, then pulled her wings together to slip in through the iron rods. Dropping a few inches before her wings opened again.

It took Petunia only a minute or two to discover a security camera on the fence. it only took her a split second to decide to tamper with it. Petunia positioned her little butterfly body so she was at the bottom of the camera lens. Her wings covering the lens as they folded straight up. Once the camera was properly blinded, petunia shifted to her human form. As her butterfly wings started to grow, petunia placed a forming hand over the lens to block the camera from looking at her. Her skin wings went from having orange and black coloring, to looking rather see through with a black stripe down a thrid of them as they took on the shape of Dragonfly wings. only much larger. large enough to lift her short thin body off of the ground.

And speaking of her body... A bug couldn't exactly cary cloths. The black shell of the butterfly disintegrated into petunia's pail skin. Replaced by soft brown, tan, and green moths to keep petunia looking modest. her long black, straight hair slipped over her shoulder as she began to examine the security camera that was currently in front of her. Not really caring if another one from another angle was still seeing her. Green slanted eyes examined the cords of the camera. petunia shifted on the wall so that her legs were dangling on the inside.

Now. What team of bugs would be the best tool for dismantling this toy?

Captain's log. Stardate 3:: Hour 3 of the training has just begun. I don't know how much longer I can keep this up. Mind focused, bent on control, I started my Mansion Helper shift today with a mission: balance one teeny tiny shard on my fingertip. The shard measures approximately 13 millimeters wide, sometimes 15, sometimes 17. The size fluctuates as concentration wanes. For the most part, it gravitates towards the higher end of the spectrum. Slowly, I seem to be getting more proficient at lower degrees of size. My eyes waver and shift from security camera feed of the main gates to my hand. I've been put in charge of watching for people. I can do both. Pay no attention to the sweat permeating my brow. That's just for show.

Hour 3.5: I just managed to keep the shard stable at 10 millimeters for a duration no longer than 6 seconds. This is the longest, and smallest, I've managed so far in my training. I am quite pleased. My scalp is glistening with the sweat of concentration. Not quite Picard, but in loving memory of.

Maybe next I'll try shard sizes past 3 inches in width...

~*~

The fingers on Shin's left hand closed in like a claw as the minuscule triangle increased in size. Slowly, slowly, bigger bigger. He closed his eyes for a moment, envisioning the shape in his mind outlined against the black-green grid of the matrix. A college math textbook sat on the desk in front of him, opened to a page on matrices. Beside it, a ringed notebook with a yellow cover sat. Hasty calculations and the Captain's log dashed down the page. The Japanese script on the page was loose, lucid. Shin had been at this a while. In tending to his broken arm, Doc Prof had let slip the ever-important suggestion of the day.

‘Why not take to studying mathematics? A bit of excess knowledge in the field can’t do anything but help when dealing with complex geometry’. And Shin had eaten it up. Now his mind was divided between watching the security cameras, reading about all the possible applications of matrices in mathematics and computer programming on Wikipedia, and controlling a 3 and a half inch wide pink isosceles triangle. It was actually kind of exciting (A first for Shin where math was involved).

And so he when Shin opened his eyes a moment later to focus his split attention back on the screen, he wasn’t prepared for the multiple angles of strange he saw. One of the mansion’s gate cameras was black. Not showing static, or dead, just black. And the other showed the moth-covered backside and mottled wings of a mutant. He nearly toppled out of his chair in shock. The enlarged shard vanished as he spun his chair towards the exit, and the next thing he knew, he was pounding the ground towards the gate.

As he approached stealthily as a marching band, he subconsciously scratched a spot on his coffee-stained cast. There was a naked girl standing at the gates of Mutant Manor. It was his duty as mansion greeter to tell her she needed clothes.

Mmm summer breeze, it's hard to beat it, David was out enjoying the day, laying on the comfortable grass of the mansion. He opened his eyes slightly, peeking out across the grounds, what caught his eye he couldn't quite describe. It was right at the gates, or on top of them, she was at one of the cameras, so David decided to try and get a closer look. He used his power to hook into the security systems, it was fairly easy, since he had already set the system up for himself to peek in, though it was without anyone's permission. The camera revealed nothing, not like nothing as in just the ordinary, but nothing as in pure black.

He brought his mind back to the world and decided to go in for a closer look. Pulling himself up he let out a yawn and started his walk to the gate. As he got closer and closer he could make the figure out better, strange looking. She was definitely a mutant, though no surprise considering the Mansion was crawling with them, sometimes literally. He waited till he got within feet of the figure to speak up, "Hi" He said curiously. She seemed to be blocking the camera, that would explain why he couldn't see anything, but why? She could easily be seen by other cameras, and even any residents taking a look towards the gate.

Petunia sat on her ledge of the fence, with her hand still over the lens of the security camera. however the need to hide her self became less and less of a thought at the front of her mind. Or at least the need to practice hiding herself from a single camera, and the fact that the lens smply made a nice handle became more evident as she tilted her head this way and that, over the top of the camera, then leaned over so far her head was nearly upside down, to look underneith. Searching for the best place her bugs would be able to enter, and what bugs would be able to fit best through witch corners. it seemed here that mostly small bugs would have to be used. The tiny type, and even then, it might take them a while to slip through anything that was meant to keep out rain water, or weather elements in general.

Petunia leaned a little further over looking like she was about to do a nose dive off of the side of the building before her gigantic dragon fly wings buzzed and clapped to catch her balance and pull her back up to a seated position. Her head rose and her mouth formed an oh of surprise. Eye brows rising for a second, then pinching in pretend confusion.

Apparently they do actually watch the security cameras. petunia thought to her self but that also the fact that it had taken someone so long to confront Pix was a positive in her mind. Under the right cover, she could have planted something that would lead to a hole lot of fun, around the mansion, with fairly little trouble. That was information enough really, but her pixieish little mind wanted to know more. it's what kept her from bugging out right that second and just fluttering innocently away.

"hi."

Petunia's lips pressed together. She wanted to grin braudly but the grin that she was holding back was more like a happy cat that just ate a canary. She let her lips relax into a small smile before pushing off of the edge of the wall, and letting her dragon fly wings catch her mid way down. Setting her vertical body lightly and gracefully on her feet at the wall's foot. A trail of moths fluttered off of the moth substituted clothing, that basically gave the appearance of of someone wearing a fancy ice skater's outfit that just happened to crawl, and Petunia let a trail of moths flutter behind her, in hopes of giving the illusion that she wasn't in perfect control of her little friends. "Er, Hi."

Petunia's chin dipped and her lips pressed together again. keeping her eyes slanted up. There didn't seem to be any recognition on this young man's face from her last visit to the mansion. Her eyes darted to the second young man approaching. "I was wondering if either one of you could help me with something."

Oh come on. Help a naked bug girl out.

"Was she really... mounting the camera? Perched like that on the wall, I mean." Shin scratched his neck uncomfortably as he approached David. His mouth turned vertical in a look that was a cross between a frown and a smirk. Hazel eyes glanced over one shoulder – Nope. This really was Tuesday, and that really was a bug lady. This really was happening. He wasn’t dreaming the 5 foot tall moth-girl with piercings galore. Bikers might be jealous of such skewered ears, but he was certain they’d want the nose. And the wanton destruction this girl was obviously up to, seated haphazardly on the top of the wall and leaning out over the camera, eying it like a brand new toy, fresh for dissecting…? Well, some people were just wont to destruction.

He slid in place next to David, crossing cast with arm. The girl dropped from the tippy top of the wall, jerking mid-way as her body snapped up by the tug of dragonfly wings. She landed gracefully in front of them, naked as the day she was born... if the day she was born happened to be mating season for various breeds of moth. Shin did his best to look eye-level, did not stray to note the disconcerting trail of insects fluttering behind her, in fact, they looked to David. Leave that bug lady alone, eyes.

But like a train wreck… he looked to the sky impatiently. Heaven help him.

“Just what kind of help do you need, lady? People visiting the mansion usually wear more clothes…”

David watched as she fell, no more like fluttered down to earth, it was a strange sight, even for a building that housed strange thoughts. David stared at her, not a stare of lust, as she was practically naked, and not one of judgment, seeing as how she was a pretty odd one out here. No he was used to the odd, enjoyed them, they were interesting. He stared at her out of curiosity, were those really actual bugs?

He took a few steps forward, leaning in to inspect the living wardrobe, they were indeed moths "Mm Hmm". He muttered, then a realization hit him, to him he was merely staring at the bugs, from an outside perspective, he was staring at the woman's breasts. He took a quick step backwards, his face turning a shade of red. "Uhmm yeah sure, always willing to help."

One of the two men that had come up to Pix seemed to have no problem with personal space. Or having a lack there of. Petunia noted how close he got to her to stare at her, er... bugs, before he realized this and went to step back. Petunia braught her hand up to shove him slightly on the forehead, lightly.

"Uhmm yeah sure, always willing to help."

“Just what kind of help do you need, lady? People visiting the mansion usually wear more clothes…”

Clearly one of these two men were a lot more willing to help with the other. Note the way that one was much more willing to get close to pix. oh and the way he looked at her.... er... Bugs... Then note the other who chose to not back down but also not really get close and the skeptic tone to his voice. Oh yes. Very skeptical... "I thought you people here were supposed to be more open minded." Petunia said with a head tilt in the first man's direction. "Don't people have trouble like this all of the time? The only reason I'm garmently challenged is because of my mutation, witch is what I was going to ask for help with."

"In that case..." Shin worked a white business shirt off over the cast, and tossed it to the bug girl inattentively. "Problem solved."

He stood there in blue jeans and a white undershirt, eying the moth-clad figure suspiciously. Why had she been climbing on the gate and fretting with the cameras? That was worth noting. The fact she spoke the truth about 'keeping an open mind' didn't help her position. Shin shrugged. "Most people who come here are usually clothed, and don't fret with the cameras... hold on."

Shin grabbed David by the sleeve and pulled him a few feet away to talk. He spoke in a hushed whisper. "What do you think, David? Suspicious? Was she actually doing something to the cameras, or..." He glanced back at her with a smile and a left-handed wave. "Do you think she's telling the truth?"

Before David could say a word he was suddenly pulled to the side by Shin. She had a good point, they were an establishment geared towards helping mutants, butt most of those mutants used the front door. Shin explained his suspicions to him, and David turned back to the girl.

"Well, I do admit it was a little suspicious, definitely pretty odd." He said turning back to Shin, then looking across the grounds at the other mutants. "Then again mutants alone are odd by default. What if she is just a socially awkward mutant, we can't just turn her away... I say trust her, but be careful." After the previous, rather violent, events he had been a participant in, he had grown to be more weary, but simply turning people away was too hard.