((ooc: Continued from Round Two.))

Lisa looked even less happy with him than usual. He could tell, because her polite smile was set to maximum glow. She stopped talking to the blonde woman in front of her for a fraction of a second. The golden doors shut behind him. Then she continued, completely writing off his existence. This was Lisa’s usual state of equilibrium.

Calley had two styrofoam take-out boxes in a plastic Red Lobster bag, a nine pound restaurant souvenir, and a wad of napkins pressed to his nose. Two of those were precariously (and angrily) held under one arm. The last was keeping his other hand rather busy. The door opening had been achieved by a dexterous maneuvering of his rear. Annoyance to injury: the back of his neck itched. The fact that he couldn’t scratch it right now meant that he couldn’t stop thinking about it, either. It was driving him slowly, slowly insane.

This is why Calley walked to Lisa’s desk, and set his bag and a claw-waving lobster in front of her. Her smile twitched to a halt, like a skipping record, as the two foot long monstrosity avidly claw-clacked insults at her, the woman standing at the desk, and the Sanctuary in general.

“I nee’ ah fish ‘ank an’ a do’tor,” the shifter snorkled through his puffy nose. He scratched his neck luxuriously, and then gave a little wave to the other woman. “ ‘Ello, Boss.”

Everyday Lori spoke with Lisa. Messages needed answering, business running needed upkeep, mutants needed to know who to kill and who needed exorbitant fees charged to them. Every day was a little bit different and a little bit the same.

Today's difference? Lobster was on the menu and Calley's nose had blossomed into something quite different.

"Hi... nose. I mean Calley." It was a very distracting sight, that nose.

A quick look took in the whole picture. Live lobster, Red Lobster bags, broken face. "Somebody liberated a lobster." So those garbled, nasal words were likely fish tank and doctor. Which was an interesting order of requests. Another interesting thing to note... Lisa's highbeams were on and she hadn't moved to help Calley. At all.

"Call Sebastian, please."

Her stack of papers bowed slightly in the middle from the weight of the giant waving lobster. It was a thick stack of papers so his spiny weight was impressive. She didn't want to touch it in case it was wet in some crevasse somewhere, but... the thing WAS HUGE. And sort of everywhere. Antennae and all kinds of legs she never really stopped to notice a lobster had before he was on her to do list. (Literally. She needed that.)

"I think there is a tank in the kitchen..." And she needed her papers back without lobster drippings on them. So they had better salvage a tank fast. "I assume you want him alive since he's not already in your doggie bag?" Another reason to attempt not to touch it. Lori went for the kitchen. He had said tank first and this was way better than attempting to call someone back.

Calley appreciated decisive leadership. Within fifteen seconds, his nose was noted and separately greeted, Lisa was smiling a fixed smile while dialing, and they were on their way to get a tank. Calley took his lobster with him. It was an armful of carapace and scrabbling legs. He was happy those claws weren’t very flexible: a taxi ride later, and they were still hungry for his face. Or his jugular.

“Ah’m ‘oing to ‘eed rubber ‘ands, too.” He added to the list, as they strolled companionably along. Just an evil leader, her minion, and his nine pound lobster. Nothing to see here.

“Shou. ‘Ow was Romania?” He asked conversationally. Small talk. The awkward bubbling sounds his nose made when it was quiet demanded it.

They were going to have to do something about Calley's nose. "I can't understand a word coming out of your mouth. I guess that hurts?" Once in the kitchen, the staff scurried to get them a pot. Lori pointed instead to the tank where several catfish currently begged for escape. The head chef shouted orders and tonight's menu was quickly re-arranged. The boss wanted catfish? There would be catfish. Though she actually wanted the tank. "Some ice too. Double bag it."
Lori also fetched a roll of paper towels. Because the bubbling noise needed to stop coming out of Calley's face now. She handed him a wad. "Romania was as much a victory as any. I was really surprised how weak the spirit is, though. A few weeks with collars everyone was revolutionarily uninspire-able. I had to leave all on my own and then come back for the rest of them." Triangle eyes and the old one had been the worst of all she spoke with. She was embarrassed to call them mutants.

And leaving all on her own was no picnic. Not that the day to day of the Sanctuary was, but anything was better than a work camp.

"I'm actually glad to be back." And glad they had plenty of people to dump out the tank for them. The water looked not only rank after it had catfish in it, but heavy.

"What do lobsters eat?" Because they were cleaving catfish heads now. Calley should gurgle if he wanted one for the wriggly thing under his arm.

With Lori’s kind assistance, Calley installed his new drainage system. Ooo, three times the absorbency. The TV hadn’t lied.

“Why did you go?” Calley asked, in lieu of ‘welcome back.’ He set the lobster down on a countertop where it could gesticulate as to its vehement heart’s content, much to the chagrin of the cooks. They weren’t used to dealing with live lobsters. Not for long, anyway.

The corner of his mouth twitched into his habitual smile: that hurt, so he stopped it. “I mean, umm, not to question your psychological conclusions, but I don’t think it was the collars. Trust me. With or without the collar, people are who they are.” He found his hand scratching his neck. He stopped that, too.

Chop.

>> "What do lobsters eat?"

“You know,” Calley blinked (something which also hurt, but was harder to stop), “I have no idea.”

Back at the desk, Lisa was hanging up the phone, her smile still in place. According to the Iris Clinic, Sebastian Csendes wasn’t available today. He was sitting his medical school entrance exam. That was really just too bad.

Why had Lori gone? No one had bothered to question her comings and goings before. "They needed liberty. Red liberty." But that wasn't why she had gone. Someone handed her the double bagged ice cubes and she found a towel for them before passing them off to the nose. "Besides the fact that we libertines were sorely needed..." Sarcasm? What Sarcasm? Lori bat her eyelashes at the thought of the "liberty" they spread in Romania.

"I actually went to bargain. The Order did the smashy, smashy as we so often do and the rebels paid us back in the form of a few brilliant scientific minds and some machinery that isn't exactly legal in the states." They brought weapons and bloodlust and come home with some new toys for Faust Pharmaceuticals. Slowly she was turning this Order boat around and honing it down to a fine focus.

"Why didn't you go?" not that she blamed him. There were definitely times when she wished that she hadn't had to be there to facilitate the trade. But the Abyssi were too soft, half the Order mad and 3/4 of them unreliable. There was no one else that could have gotten her exactly what she had wanted.

> "...Trust me. With or without the collar, people are who they are.”

That was a thought to file away for later dissection. Lori could read people, she could talk circles around them and lead them by the nose until she got what she wanted, but understanding what made people the way that they were was often beyond her. For some, like Aura, there were obvious motivators... for others? Lori was flying blind and guessing or leading most of the time. People always did and said the most unexpected things.

"We had a hermit crab once. He ate peanut butter covered dog food and drank out of a sponge."

Lori had to tear her eyes away from the nose to regard the lobster. He had some wicked spikes that were tipped with orange. It wasn't a mohawk made of shell, but it was almost awesome enough to pass for one. A glob of fish gut landed suspiciously close to Lori's shoe. "Can you bag a lump or two of that too?" She pointed at it. It wouldn't hurt to try it. She didn't think.

"Just so you know, I have a horrible record for keeping things alive." She shrugged after her warning and went to grab another towel so that she could help carry the tank to Calley's room.

>> "They needed liberty. Red liberty."

Yeah. That about summed up why he hadn’t gone. The double bagged, single toweled ice was accepted with dubious hands. It was rather chunky and stuffed and solid. His nose was rather soft and un-solid. He was unsure how advisable connecting the two would be.

>> "Besides the fact that we libertines were sorely needed... I actually went to bargain. The Order did the smashy, smashy as we so often do and the rebels paid us back in the form of a few brilliant scientific minds and some machinery that isn't exactly legal in the states."

Calley flashed a small grin. “Nice, Boss La—”

Expletives deleted, and ice bag removed from nose. Oww. Just... oww.

>> "Why didn't you go?"

The nineteen year old straightened himself back up, with all due self-deprecating wince-smiles. “No one told me the cool kids were doing shadow-dealings.” It was something he should have known on his own. It bugged him that he hadn’t. He’d gotten so used to the Order doing nothing nefariously new that he’d clearly stopped paying as much attention as he should.

“So what you got planned from here, Boss Lady?” Shameless unsubtly: it was an art.

>> "Just so you know, I have a horrible record for keeping things alive."

“S’okay. If he dies, the mourning will be delicious.” Still: Calley preferred to keep it alive. It wasn’t the lobster’s fault it had been used for a tactical strike.

The tank: it required him to stop poking at his nose with the ice bag, to lift. That, he could do.

“Mind carrying Lobenstien?” He asked over his shoulder, to Cook Mook No. 2.

> “No one told me the cool kids were doing shadow-dealings.”

"The cool kids are always shadow-dealing." And he would do well to remember it.

> “So what you got planned from here, Boss Lady?”

Lori's eyes flicked across the tank. Up and across the tank. Had he always been so tall? Or maybe she'd only really seen his seated around the dinner table.

"Well, everyone is all up in arms about this here mutant situation we're in." The words were her father's and came out in a tone not too unlike what he sounded like.

They turned a corner and Lori shifted her grip. "They're just jealous." Probably more true than most of the humans were willing to admit. There was definitely one way to find out, though. "I've been rebuilding the Pharmaceutical company so that we can help as many people realize their genetic potential as is humanly possible." The wording made her smile.

What made her smile more? When it was finally time to put the tank down. She lifted with her legs.

The thought of lobenstein making for a delicious death made Lori feel a bit better about Calley. As nice as it was to keep things alive, accidents did happen. This was just a lobster, but recognizing that there could be a benefit to his death meant that Calley could see that there might be benefits to the deaths of others. Even if he didn't participate it was better to condone, tolerate or pretend to understand. Anything less made for quickly sinking sand.

Lori sat back on her rump behind the tank.

Sus Chef 24601 made a grand gesture of putting the behemoth in the tank. The lobster fit in there, but he didn't have to be happy about it. In act, he was shaking his clawfists in an awesome imitation of an old man gesture. If the lobster had a lawn, Lori would be getting off of it now.

"What are you going to do with him if he lives?"

Sus Chef handed over a bag with a few catfish odds and ends in it. Lori was happy to pass that one on to Calley.

She had the distinct urge to tap on the glass even if prolonged exposure to ground made controlling herself that much harder.

The lobster seemed to take offense at its new home. Calley took that as a good sign. An angry lobster was a healthy lobster, right? Right. He accepted the bag of fish bits goodness, and held it up to inspect the contents with an expert eye. Even if grandpa clawfist snubbed it, this was good stuff. At least, in certain forms.

“If he lives,” Calley said, poking a squiggle of intestine aside through the clear plastic. Was that a liver? He was pretty sure it was a liver. Mmm. “Then I train him to attack intruders. We can put up a warning sign.” Also: train him to walk on a leash. Because he really, really wanted to walk the lobster past Lisa’s desk wearing a little dog harness and a leash.

Calley flop-sat on his bed, in all its plain glory: it still had the standard-issue white sheets that came with the room. That pretty much reflected the rest of his decorations, as well. The lobmeister had just unwittingly become the centerpiece of his room, by default. He crossed his legs casually and balanced the squishy fishy bag on his head. It wasn’t a lime green squeaky hedgehog, but then, a lime green squeaky hedgehog didn’t conform to the shape of his skull. It was the kind of cold that made it feel wet, even through the plastic. That kind of tickled.

“So.” He said, as the chef left them to their lobster viewing delight. “What can I do to help you help the genetically disadvantaged, Boss Lady?” One of his feet twitched against the bed as his usual smile twitched into its proper position.

How lobsters would go about staving off SWAT, RUPERTs or X-Men Lori did not know, but the idea was amusing. Perfectly worthy of a "Beware of Lobster" sign or maybe even a Lobster crossing? "I hope he lives." Though she did not envy the innards that Calley was poking his way. King crustacean tapped Calley's fingers. Without his rubber bands no doubt those fingers would be much shorter.

>“So.What can I do to help you help the genetically disadvantaged, Boss Lady?”

"Unless you can smell x-genes or magically, genetically replicate them there's nothing right now." Unless... a plan was hatching... "Actually... you can." Dark blue eyes flicked back and forth as if she were reading a paper, though it was recall rather than actual. "Do you happen to know a mutant with a bizarre power? One you've never seen before? Never imagined or believed until you saw it?"

“How bizarre do you want to go?” The teenager asked, raising a deliberate eyebrow. “I’ve green girls with stone gaze, I’ve got silver flying men, I’ve got triangle manipulators, speech-impaired lizard boys, and nerve manipulators. Heck, I’ve even got Rapunzels with super-strength hair.”

Gender-shifting mirror walkers definitely made the mental list, but loyal steeds did not include their Knights in reports to the big bad boss lady, nor did aughiskies always tell everything they knew. Likewise, the husband of a cat’s First Retainer were exempt from mention, even if they were unicorns. Lori probably knew about Sebastian, anyway.

Metal manipulating roommates, on the other hand, were simply too common to count. Clearly, there was no other reason to leave them out.

“Want a report on your desk on Monday?” The multi-shifter asked, with an impish grin.

"You're... volunteering. To do work? For me?" She was touched. Really she was. She would wipe away a tear if the gesture wouldn't be a such a sore waste of materials. "Are you sure you're feeling well?" One narrowed eye, one wide one. Had this lobster gone to his head?

"I hope you're not getting my hopes up." And that was about all she had to say about that. Lori put her feet underneath her. She wasn't going to move that tank anymore. It could live right there where it was. "Let me know if he has babies." Surely there was such a thing as a girl lobster, right?

>> "You're... volunteering. To do work? For me?"

Calley had never had a Boss-figure sound so appreciative. Conclusion: Lori must not have very good minions. No wonder, when the other Orderlings seemed to fill their schedules with the slaughter of humans and with threatening of children in the dinning hall (with any luck, the gun guy wasn’t an Order member). He’d clearly have to set the bar around here.

After dinner that night, a pile of messy handwritten pages recently torn out of a notebook where stapled together and shoved under her closed office door. Two things about them were surprising: they were fairly detailed, and they were actually legible.

If and when Lobenstien had babies, she’d would receive a similar report on the matter. And possibly a celebratory lobster squeak toy.