Kealey was smiling, so Shin smiled too, arching his eyebrow. What was so funny? Miniskirts were serious business. This was no joking matter. It was all fun and games, until somebody lost an eye. That really wasn't the right phrase to use, though, was it? Shin inwardly shook his head with a laugh. No, it was not.

>> ”I was just telling him about the costumes I’m designing and their lack of miniskirts.”

"Ah," Shin bobbed his head, with arms crossed, eyes closed. "Yes. Not many of the costumes have miniskirts. I was just about to talk to you about that," He cracked one eye open. "Maybe mine?"

Ahem. He cracked a joke to break the tension he was getting. Something about the scene didn't sit quite right with him, but he didn't know what. It wasn't like he had a reason to think something was up. Shin shrugged off whatever odd vibes he was getting from her 'a-little-too-happy' smile, and the 'Calley' kid's silent sitting. He pointed a bent finger towards the interior of the room. "Can I come in? If we're talking about costumes, I've got a few more ideas."

Calley didn’t have to be an empath to peg the smile on her face as fake. Especially not when a similar expression was stretching his own lips.

“Umm, yeah. Come in,” he said, more for Kealey’s benefit than Shin’s. On a normal day, it wouldn’t be his place to invite people in to her room. Today, she was probably waiting to see how he’d react.

“Animal shifting,” he clarified, with far too much cheer. “I’m an animal shifter. I can turn into pretty much anything, if I’ve copied it. And... stuff.”

That was eloquent. Calley would have given himself a standing facepalm ovation, if he wasn’t still busy having a facial seizure. One thing at a time.

Shin knew something was up….Kealey could feel his suspicion as he stood in the doorway of her room and cracked a joke about the skirts. She laughed, thank the Lord it wasn’t a loud guffaw or anything outrageously obvious. Then again, the statement had actually been funny. ”Not that you don’t have the legs for it, Shin, but I’m not sure the mini-skirt would accomplish any more for your costume than a body suit.” The smile was definitely more genuine now.

Calley went ahead and invited Shin in, even if his gigawat smile was as fake as a three dollar bill. Did she look like that? No wonder Shin had been suspicious. Kealey ignored the urge to roll her eyes and nodded her head, ”You know I love ideas.” she said, and again it was the God’s honest truth. The costumes were hard to work on…really hard, she turned to her desk and the top sketch caught her eye. Crap.

Truth be told, Kealey had hit an inspirationally dry spot and had started working on a costume design for herself. It was a little embarrassing to say the least, and she hoped he wouldn’t see it.

Calley clarified his powers and Keleay’s eyes widened slightly. ”Anything? Wow.” she whispered, possibilities running through her mind. ”That’s a very cool power Calley. I wonder if I could feel your emotions when you were an animal.”

Shin smiled at Kealey's laughter. "Says you."

He walked in, and plopped down on the floor of the room, near the wall opposite Calley. He looked at the animal shifter curiously, arms crossed. That was a cool power, but a beautiful description? No.

It opened up a lot of questions, though. Kealey wondered if she'd able to sense his emotions while he was in animal form, and Shin looked up to her. "You can't feel animals?" He asked. He paused, and thought about that for a second. Probably not... If she was able to, she would have known what Thor was thinking. She might have been overwhelmed by every bird in the sky, and every worm in the ground. "Actually, forget I asked that," He decided. "That'd be a bit much."

A bit much... hmm. He crossed his arms, and swung his attention back to Calley. "How many forms? And can you mix and match?" Could he become a catboy, with mainly human features? What about a man-bat-panther? Earthworm Jim? Could he become a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, was what they were getting at...

Thoughts of a slight demonstration danced in his head at Kealey’s reaction; she liked his power. Thought it was cool. And he could help her test out the limits on hers, a little: all he’d need to do was splinter out a cat, or another easy form. It was simple enough. Cool, even.

Then Shin began his interrogation. The Japanese man was sitting across from him, also on the floor. Calley was not used to people joining him down on his seat of choice. He was on eye level with the man, now. There was something wrong with the older mutant’s eyes; he couldn’t quite tell what it was, from this distance. They didn’t look right. It reminded him of Cafas’ eyes, last week: of their tri-coloring, just before he’d been rejected.

Why did so many mutants have weird eyes?

Calley’s own were baby blue. It was the most unusual thing about him, not that that was saying much: his features, his build, his brown hair, they were all fairly nondescript. His mutation didn’t show unless he wanted it to, and even then, his power was geared towards just blending in to the background. Most people don’t bother with a cat, or a sparrow, or a mouse.

Calley did not like Shin looking at him, with those eyes. And he did not like the precision of his questions. Wasn’t the usual politeness to just ask about general things, and let the other mutant fill in the details they were comfortable with? Why did he want to know?

The blue-eyed young man shifted uncomfortably on the floor. “A couple,” he answered, “and yeah. What about you? What’s your power?”

He’d much rather talk about that.

Calley was such an anomaly...he’d killed someone, Kealey was sure of it, but he had definitely been proud of his powers. Kealey watched him closely, her fascination elevating. Then Shin sat on the floor and the conversation changed.

Shin sure had a lot of questions for Calley, and that made Kealey incredibly nervous. They were innocent questions though, questions that anyone would ask when they were trying to get to know someone else. Kealey was sure she’d have asked similar things had this been a normal conversation.

The questions had changed the emotional climate though, and as Calley’s suspicion skyrocketed and dislike started to creep in, the blond swallowed hard. It was pivotal those emotions didn’t seep into her actions.

This wasn’t how this conversation had been supposed to go. Kealey didn’t know how she thought it was supposed to have gone…Calley had been the initiator, but this was wrong.

Kealey wracked her brain, trying to figure out what she could say to help the situation and coming up with absolutely nothing. She’d been sure that Calley had been about to demonstrate his powers…it sure would have been a distraction.

”Won’t you show us one? I’d really love to know whether or not I could feel emotions from someone like you.” she asked, putting on another bright smile. A bright desperate smile.

”I’d love to see your favorite form…”

A couple was not a listing of each form, but he hadn't expected that. "Impressive," He commented. And that was an affirmative on mixing and matching? Very cool.

Calley wanted to know what he could do. Shin pointed to fingers to his own eyes, then pulled the hand away, pointing them towards the boy across the floor from him. "I see distances exactly, down to the number. And I make triangles. Hence the triangle eyes." He didn't give him the entire write-up. The kid was giving brief answers. He could exercise brevity, too.

Kealey changed the subject, back to Calley. She wanted to see his fave form. Shin smiled at Calley. "That'd be cool."

Shin’s description was brief. Every bit as brief as his own. Was Triangle Boy... mocking him? Calley didn’t know how to read the other man’s smile. And he did not like the idea of showing off his splintering in front of him: the Asian had already guessed about his chimeraing. Calley had only one trick left after splintering, and it wasn’t even one he could control—he still wasn’t convinced that he was the one who’d turned Katrina into a cat. Or that green girl into a mouse.

...Yeah. That had probably been him.

The point remained, though: did he want Shin to know about his splintering? The guy wasn’t exactly being detailed about his own abilities. If Calley hadn’t seen him at the King Pharmaceuticals fight—

Oh. The fight.

Yeah. Shin probably knew just as much about Calley as Calley knew about Shin, thanks to that fight. Probably even more: Calley hadn’t been paying too much attention to the rest of the combatants, but his last little flare would have made it very hard to ignore him. He’d created around a hundred animal forms, and tried to trample-maul an X-Men to death.

Yeeeeah. It was a little late to think about secrecy.

“Sure,” Calley replied, hoping to hide his slight blush by averting his gaze to the floor. He stretched out his hand, as if to touch something: the next moment, a little white cat with black spots here and there sat under his hand, its head tilted up so the pink nose just brushed his fingertips. The young man drew back his hand; the cat stood up with a stretch, and walked languidly over to where Kealey sat. Greetings were soon being exchanged between her leg and the soft fur of his head.

“This is also me,” it proudly informed her, its black-tipped tail flying a royal standard behind it. There was no hint of either awkwardness or shame to its actions; leg twining was simply the rightful domain of any cat.

His human form was still blushing slightly; one-half of him hadn’t gained the confidence boost that always tinted his thoughts as a cat. One half of him was also a mute, for the moment, while the other continued to purr its approval with uncomplicated affection. Kealey was fully acceptable, as humans went, and the cat had no problem expressing this.

Shin, the cat did not bother to acknowledge.

Small details were exchanged about powers and Kealey didn’t add anything to the conversation. They both knew what she could do with her powers, and what they didn’t know, they didn’t need to know. They were both being vague though, about their powers, and Kealey tilted her head. Why?

Calley was embarrassed about something now, and the suspicion was running almost absolutely rampant. Shin, on the other hand, was cool. Slightly suspicious as well, but cool and confident. All the suspicion was making Kealey jumpy. It appeared that Calley was going to give her a demonstration, though.

Out he held his hand, and Kealey’s surprise was so great at what happened she was able to forget about how suspicious she was feeling. When Calley had said that he was a shifter, the blond had expected to watch him changing from a human into something. Not creating another being.

The cat moved forward and Calley pointed out that it was him as well. It took her a moment to realized that the voice had come from the cat. Woah.

It rubbed against her legs, and Kealey instinctively reached down to give it a scratch behind the ears. It was cool enough that she almost forgot to cast out for the emotions.

She tried….and felt only the same thing she had felt before. Kealey stared at the human body that was still sitting on the floor, ”So…both of these are you?” she asked, voice soft with slight wonder.

”How do you feel?” she asked, looking down at the cat, momentarily oblivious to everything else.

Oh, neat! The boy could make kittens.

Suddenly, Shin was reminded of a picture he'd seen on the internet once, of a cartoon character named Ratman, surrounded by cats. He'd been their furniture. They'd dominated him, and he'd had no say.

Cats were cool-hooded, self-centered gods of Ancient Egypt. They'd been worshipped.

Scratching post that. They still were worshipped.

And this kid could turn into them.

That was pretty cool. And the kid was both a cat and a kid, at the same time? Fantastic.

Hmm... what could one do with that? Shin paused to consider his imagined life as a cat. Yarn-balls, scratching posts, mean dogs, laps. Pampered purring felines.

"Being a cat must be fun," Shin mused. And also... really good for getting in and out of trouble. Hmm... Something ticked in the back of his mind, but he didn't focus on it. His memories of the KP battle were still hazy. He hadn't remembered the memorable kitty flood, nor Luke's near-death. The only memories he remembered clearly involved Kasumi's near-death, Slate's saving her, and Sam auditioning for Mutants Gone Wild.

He wasn't suspicious of anything like that, though. Nope. That emotion had changed to jealousy. The cat was getting Kealey's attention... and it wasn't paying any attention to him.

Purring resounded as fingers met ears. The cat tilted its head down and arched both neck and back up, permitting her easier access to her most agreeably scritching goal.

The young man on the floor, meanwhile, nodded mutely at her first question: both were him, indeed. The cat answered the second as it continued pressing its small body against her leg.

“I feel odd. Mostly like what I was, but also like this. A cat’s mind filters things differently than a mere human’s.” Witness, for example, his word choice. Superiority was calmly assumed. “Feeling both at once is what makes it odd. What do you feel from me?”

Shin’s statement was not a question. Statements, not questions, did not require any answer at all. The cat’s twining naturally lead to its rear being pointed in a Shin-wards direction, as it lovingly continued to seek Kealey’s affection. The boy on the floor was more sociable: he looked at the triangle mancer briefly, and gave a one-shouldered shrug.

Odd. He felt odd. His brain was actually a cat’s brain, and he was feeling things the way the cat would feel them. Only then he was translating those things into English and speaking through the cat’s mouth. Kealey was fascinated.

She continued to scratch the cat lightly with her fingers as it twined and moved around her legs. Calley asked what she felt, and Kealey cast out, really looking for feelings in the room. What she found was the same as it had been before the shape-shift, that and something else…jealousy? Not from the cat though, or the suddenly quiet boy.

Kealey looked up at Shin, yup, he was the source. Well, the cat was just paying attention to her, which was ultimately a good thing considering the circumstances, still…

She grinned at the trianglemancer, ”I don’t feel anything from the cat part.” she said, then nodded in the direction of the boy, ”And he feels exactly the same as he did before. It’s so strange. Can you make both parts feel different things, or is all of that split up like your voice?”

She grinned at Shin again, still petting the Calley-cat, ”He’s just like a normal cat!” she said.

Just like a normal cat, was he? Hmm... somehow, Shin didn't quite believe that. He smiled at Kealey and nodded, but the jealousy was still there... and a hint of a question, nagging. Shin looked to Calley-Kid, rather than Calley-Cat. Where had he seen that face before...? There was something akin to deju vu at work, here.

Where had he...?

His mind hit a brick wall of realization. Shin paused. The jealousy ran off with its tail between its legs. Shin looked at Calley's face, hard. Curiosity mingled with a small amount of suspicion. Shin suspected something... but... he needed to confirm.

"You don't... heal, do you?" He asked. Shin spoke slowly, as if his mind was still trying to wrap itself around the weight of his words. "Because I know a guy... Slate... with a face a lot like yours... he saved my girl... my ex-girlfriend... and rode a unicorn."

Pause.

He didn't blink. Riding unicorns was perfectly natural behavior. It didn't merit blinking. Why did this Calley-Kid have a similar face to Slate's? Was there more mystery to guy than what he already knew...?

Kealey’s hand was a suitable partner. The little tomcat twined and spun, his feet lightly dancing with, around, and under her most excellently waltzing fingers.

Le purr.

>> ”He’s just like a normal cat!”

His human self grinned at Kealey’s exclamation, though the cat again was the one to answer her questions. “I feel all that I feel. But I feel it in two places—my left ear, if you please—and in two ways.”

That she did not feel any emotions from his cat self was an interesting point to note. He tucked it away, and flicked a tail in a Shin-ward direction.

“You,” the tomcat replied, as the boy on the floor lost his smile, “have met my brother.”

Le meh.

He felt everything…two ways…but Kealey was only feeling it one. She nodded her head and complied with the cat’s request, scratching behind its left ear and wondering what it would be like to have a pet like this.

”I only feel it one way.” she decided triumphantly. ” Apparently a shifter’s shifted forms are immune to my powers.”

Shin spoke again and Kealey listened with interest, he seemed to be familiar with Calley, or someone a lot like him who could heal, who saved people and rode unicorns.

Blink, blink. Unicorns?

Kealey opened her mouth to comment on that one, but Calley interjected before she had a chance

Apparently he had a brother.

”Oh, you have a brother.” the blond said, still scratching behind ears that demanded to be scratched simply by virtue of their existence.

”Does he go to school here too?”