(Continued from "Uprooted".)

Katrina sighed and walked into her bedroom. She felt much better now that she had eaten, but now she didn’t have anything to distract her from her loneliness. The room they had given her was small and very plain. It held a bed, a nightstand, a small desk, a full-length mirror, and a dresser. There was also a closet and a large window facing the front gate. Without any decorations or personal belongings, it didn’t seem very homey. At least the walls were a nice color, powder blue. The curtains and bedspread were ivory colored and plain.

She glanced at her bed and saw her small suitcase next to it. She might as well unpack, since there was nothing else to do. She pulled her suitcase up onto the bed and unzipped it. Seeing its jumbled contents brought back that morning’s events in a flood.

She had woken up a totally normal girl with normal friends at a normal school. Now she was a mutant at a mutant school and her friends were miles away, accessible only through email, if only she had a computer.

It was strange to think of herself as a mutant. She had never really had much interaction with mutants before and hadn’t given them much thought. They existed somewhere in a world separate from Katrina’s. She had heard a lot about them, of course, especially from her father, who lately had been talking a lot about the Mutant Registration Act. Katrina had always written it off as politics, which was something that interested her only slightly more than math.

Katrina unpacked her oboe first and placed it carefully on the nightstand. Then she opened her closet, took out a handful of hangers and began hanging up her dresses. Thinking about the Mutant Registration Act reminded her of her parents. Why didn’t her mother tell her father that she was a mutant? If he hated mutants, what would happen when he found out? Would they have to split up? Would he stop loving her?

She realized with a lurch that her family was already split up, now that she was at this mutant school. Why did she have to come here? Was she really in danger from people who hated her father? Or was she in danger because she was a mutant? Or did her mom not want her dad to know she was a mutant because it would blow her own cover? She sniffed, hoping that this wasn’t the case. This was the time of night that they would usually do something together as a family. She missed them. She picked up a pile of silky nightgowns and threw them haphazardly into a drawer.

She refused to cry again, so she forced herself to think of something else as she hung up her last blouse. The thunder that was rolling in outside didn’t exactly help her feel more cheerful. She was still unsure as to the exact nature of her powers. Her mom had told her what happened last night; somehow her mom could see what she had been dreaming about. Katrina wondered if she could also make people see things when she was awake and decided to practice.

She pulled a chair out from the desk and sat down in front of the mirror. Her own gray eyes stared back at her. She didn’t look any different now that she was a mutant. She still had the same small nose and high cheekbones, the same pale skin and light blonde hair. Maybe she could change that. She stared intently at her reflection and tried to imagine what she would look like with blue hair. Outside, the rain started to splash against her window, but she ignored it. After a few moments of intense concentration, she could see sort of a bluish tinge, but that was just her imagination, wasn’t it? She had always had a very vivid imagination.

Suddenly the whole room was plunged into darkness. Katrina jumped at first, but realized it was just the storm. She went to the window and peered out. It was very dark and the rain was heavy. She could hardly even see the front gates, except when a flash of bright lightning would illuminate the grounds for an instant.

Then the lights came back on. They sudden blinding illumination hurt Katrina’s eyes, so she flicked the lights back off. She didn’t have any math homework tonight (hooray!), so she decided to just watch the storm for a bit before going to bed.

She peered back out through the window and the next flash of lightning illuminated a large line of people, running quickly across the grounds. She thought she was imagining things, when she heard crashes from downstairs. Glass broke, wood splintered, and she heard yelling.

She dove to the floor and wriggled under the bed. It was a tight fit, but she was small enough. She listened as the sounds of fighting spread through the house. She tried to breathe as quietly as possible and not panic. Why was the school being attacked? Everyone here was a mutant, so it couldn’t be mutants attacking. So it must have something to do with attacking mutants. Or maybe her father’s enemies were even stronger than she thought and they were trying to find her. Don’t panic. Breathe slowly.

Minutes passed and she heard voices right down the hall, then her bedroom door slammed open. Katrina could see heavy boots coming into her room.

Her mother’s voice echoed in Katrina’s memory, “If anyone comes after you... remember that if you can make people see things that aren't there, you might be able to make them not see something that is there.”

The boots stopped in front of her closet and wrenched open the door, and then they turned and strode toward the bed.

Don’t find me. Don’t see me. Don’t see me. Katrina thought desperately. A knee and a hand joined the boots next to the bed as the man leaned down.

She imagined herself as invisible, willing herself to blend in with the underside of the bed.

The hand reached over and lifted the bed skirt. Katrina held her breath, her eyes wide.

Don’t see me, please.

A face. A cop.

Then he was gone. He strode back out her bedroom door.

“All clear in here, I didn’t see any muties,” he called to his comrades in the hall.

Katrina waited. No one came back. The sounds of the bedrooms being searched gradually moved down the hall. She breathed again and decided to remain under the bed for a while.

Katrina stayed under the bed for a long time, listening and waiting. It was a long time to hide in such a small space and an even longer time to remain silent and still. From the sound of it, though, it was much safer to remain under the bed. With her ear to the floor, the sounds of the battle froze her in place with fear. She was so cold she could see her breath. She didn’t understand who were the good guys and who were the bad guys or even why they were fighting. All she could hear was crashes, growls, yelling, and occasional gunshots. Surely if someone was trying to kidnap her, the whole mansion wouldn’t be fighting. What was going on? She was too afraid to find out.

Eventually the sounds died away and silence prevailed. Katrina kept listening. When would it be safe? She kept listening.

...

The light began to change very gradually. It started as black and seamlessly shifted to slate gray, then pink started to creep in at the corners. Sparrows began chirping, carrying on with their morning rituals as if nothing had happened. Katrina awoke with a start. She was trapped. Pinned down by something. She panicked and bolted out from under the bed, glancing around the room and breathing fast. At first she didn’t recognize where she was. Everything in the room seemed unfamiliar… except there was her oboe case sitting on the dresser where she had put it the night before. Hopefully it hadn’t cracked last night when the cold came. She pounced on the bed and was halfway though checking it for cracks before she fully woke up.

As the sleepiness cleared from her head, so too did most of her confusion. The events of the previous day came back to her in a flood. What had the fighting been about? What would happen now?

Her bedroom door still stood open, as the cop had left it last night. Silence stalked in the hallways. Katrina listened and decided it was finally safe to venture out. She pulled her robe around her and at the last moment decided to take her oboe with her, for... she didn’t know the exact reason why. Except it was the only thing she had from home, the only thing that was really hers.

She poked her head out of the door and looked down the hallway in both directions. It seemed safe enough, so she proceeded toward the stairway leading down to the main floor. As she walked, the signs of the previous nights battle grew more and more obvious. Things were knocked over as people rushed by, running toward or away from the battle. Then there was the unexplainable hole in the middle of the floor. Katrina didn’t risk looking down through it, she was too afraid of the floor giving way. Finally, she reached the grand staircase and glanced down.

The first floor was in even worse shape than the upstairs. There was broken glass and furniture scattered everywhere. Walls were broken through in places where people or things had slammed into the plaster. There were bullet holes too. Katrina clutched her oboe case to her chest and carefully didn’t examine the stains that covered walls and furniture. It seemed like somehow the battle had caused a minor flood. Everything was soaking in an inch of water and it was starting to smell musty. The pathway to the kitchen was blocked by debris, much to the disappointment of her stomach, but the food probably wasn’t really trustworthy anyway.

Instead Katrina wandered outside to watch as the sun rose over the front lawn.

((ooc: Continued from a token post in “Search Party”.))

Calley was awake well before dawn, with the rest of the sparrow flock. If by "awake" he meant "chirping sporadically, and watching the gray dawn while hopping around in a tantalizingly yummy manner". Sparrows: he liked their compact form and the fact that they were everywhere, but he still thought of them as edibles. Which was rather disturbing. He should not be having fantasies about crunching his own wing bones between his teeth just to hear that sweet snap. But was a cat-boy-at-heart to do? Shift to parakeet, of course!

'Cause there was a random little girl standing on the Mansion lawn. And considering she'd just walked out of the Mansion... yeah. Yeah, that was not good. Know what else wasn't a good idea? Acting suspiciously tame while posing as a wild sparrow. So from the safety of his coniferous screen, he shifted. The bird that flew up and perched, quite friendlily, upon the little girl's shoulder was a light red bordering on pink, and quite stupendously aware of how undignified that color made it.

"Chirrip!" He trilled, quite pleasantly.

...Hopefully someone at the Labs was payin' attention to the video feed from the small silver band around his neck, concealed almost perfectly under his feathers. A stupendously good idea: not having li'l muties running around in areas that just got hit with intensive raids.

((...And continued in *glances at Katrina with an unreadable look* "Raid Aftermath... *shudder* math". ...Well titled.))