Her first thought? 'We can't be friends anymore. Not like we used to be.' What she said was quite different.

"Means you'll be harder to keep under the Sanctuary roof without riot. Not that you stay over too often anyway." Did Lenna not really know what she was? It wasn't as if they sat down and had tea about it. They had met under... unusual circumstances.

"Do you really not know?" Because... she could work out a demonstration if needed.

Exactly what she hadn't wanted to hear. Her aura'd kicked itself up a notch. Now she was apparently at that other guy's level. Complete stop. But that meant... her eyes widened a little in recognition. That meant...

That meant that whatever mutant powers came into contact with her mutation ceased, then and there. They didn't work anymore. And if that was true, did the things those powers had done get undone? Did that mean...?

"You're kidding me." She stared at Lori. Suddenly, the pain was startlingly gone. Her mind was clear. If her aura undid things that mutants had done... mental things... would it have undone the mind control Slate had done to her?

And what else did it mean for her? Lori had shocked her, apparently. The back of her neck... oh dear. It no longer had that feeling it always had, that came and went. That nagging throb from the chip under her skin. The chip that couldn't be removed by the best Black Clinics in Paris. The chip that just might have been made using some sort of mutation. It didn't hurt anymore. It had stopped. Was this what 'full null' meant?

"Then, that means..."

Was she kidding? No. She was almost-fried-you-dead serious. She had been really worried which of course only made her grumpy now because the depth of her worry had showed her how much she had come to rely on and care about the non-death of Lenna. She didn't like leaving herself open to being levered and it seemed Lenna was leverage. She would have to be careful.

Though the girl seemed just dandy now.

> "Then, that means..."

"Yep." Lenna had it right. She was probably going to fly to coop and find bigger fish to fry her now that she was all nullified and everything.

Lori engaged her sulk.

"Good news," Lenna grinned at her darkly, from out of left field. "I just figured out a way we can completely own Slate."

Pause, step back. The grin slid calmly to a smile. Lenna looked Lori in the eye. "But first, I've got to explain to you some things. Clearly. Because things need being explained." She had no doubt in her mind that Lori just might be mad. If she'd been told something like this on any day of her life, the response would have been murderous.

But. Not. To. Day.

Today was Lenna's full-null Birthday. She was free of Slate's mind-control, and didn't have to listen to any of his immature orders ever again. And... she wanted revenge.

So, yeah. Lenna figured if she gave Lori the right incentive to trust her and believe her, she'd have a good ally. It was a bit of a gamble, but so what? She liked Lori better than that manipulative user, Slate.

Wait. What? She looked up at the other blonde. "What does Slate have to do with any of this?"

Not that she wouldn't mind edging a whole section of the mutant society out of the game, but... yeah. It was really random.

Lori swung her legs over the side of her gurney and leaned forward. She never did feel her confident, usual self in an adapted's range. Not that she'd admit that to Lenna. There was always something private and wild about Lenna. Something that kept Lori from complete trust.

"Spill it."

What did Slate have to do with anything?

"Everything." Lenna replied, lowering her voice and maintaining an even tone. This was serious business. "You'll find out soon enough." Once she started spilling it, that was. And 'Spill it,' Lori demanded. So, Lenna started simply.

"What all do you know about my past?" She asked.

Simple might have been freakishly difficult in another world, but this was Lenna's world, and her terms. She looked at Lori, expecting an answer.

What did Lori know about Lenna's past? Well, she tried not to pry for the most part. That meant that the private eye she'd hired had wanted too much money for too little information.

"Well, you suck at holding up convenience stores for one, you know how to use a gun and you like men with hairy chests and cowboy boots." What more did she need to know? The Order leader shrugged as she realized her obvious bias. If Lenna had been a mutant or human, she would have needed more credentials than that but somehow Lenna had just wormed her way into Lori's heart plans.

She raised her eyebrows at the other blonde expectantly.

Hairy chests and cowboy boots? Lenna arched an eyebrow.

"Maybe less on that last one." Unless she knew something Lenna did not, having been one of those men in cowboy boots for a bit. Lenna shook that thought away with a hint of disgust. "So, in other words, 'not much.' Okay." She could work with that. "There's a bit more to my past than just that. When I was little, my parents got murdered by pirates off the coast of Columbia. My mentor, Eliana, adopted me. She couldn't bring herself to leave me there... I gather. I can't really remember the whole thing well,"

She frowned, and looked off to the side, remembering the past. Lenna crossed her arms, and leaned forward where she sat, hugging her chest uncomfortably. "Eliana's boss, Cortez, decided to raise me like one of his own, training me to fill a role in his all-woman army. He was a drug dealer, and... he liked training young girls to be killers, apparently," She bowed her head, talking coldly, talking knowingly, as if she had gone through and seen it all. "I grew up, an assassin, a body guard, a killer, and a gambler. When I was old enough, I left him, to do my own thing. I got by for a while."

Her eyes rose to meet Lori's. "Until I killed someone I really shouldn't have, and Cortez got mad. He sent my best friend after me. I killed her." A snort of derisive self-loathing escaped her, and she bowed her head again, looking away. "Wish I hadn't. Happened before I knew what had gone down. I got mad. Did something stupid. Flew to Columbia, to get revenge on Mr. Drug Lord father figure from my past... it kind of sounds over the top, cliché, doesn't it?" She asked Lori, but didn't wait for an answer. It was a messed up story. She didn't need anyone else to tell her that.

"Cortez got me. He screwed me over. Put this," She turned so Lori could see the base of her neck, and pulled back her hair. Lenna spat the next word out. "Chip. Inside me. Used pain and threats to make me do whatever in the world he wanted." She hid her shame and turned so Lori couldn't see her neck with a sad sigh. Again, she tried to look Lori in the eye seriously. She got half-way, eyes partially hooded, showing annoyance. "That's when I met Slate."

She fell silent, long enough for Lori to get in any questions she had now, before they got to the good parts of the story.

It wasn't everyday that Lori got to hear a conversation that started with "My parents got murdered by pirates..." granted, there was a lot more to the story, but... pirates! Lori knew this wasn't the moment to pretend to swashbuckle and yo-ho about rum, but oh how she wanted to.

And a drug-dealing boss with an all woman army? That sounded a bit like her. Lori wanted to meet a few of these people and shake their hands, but at the same time started to get worried about how Lenna actually felt about her. If Lori was something like the people of her past. The ones that she was talking about like boogie-monsters... where did that put Lori?

Well. At least Lori wasn't a gambler. She never had been stupid enough to fall for that vice.

Lenna met her eyes and talked about the kill. Both blondes knew a thing or two about that. The wind died in Lori's pirate fantasy sails. This actually was serious.

And then it got real serious.

All humor drained out of her system, flushed by a wash of ice water in her veins.

Lori did not like being told what to do. Lori did not like being used. Put in a box and only brought out when useful... She had been there before. But she had no idea that Lenna had been there as well.

And that was when Lenna met Slate.

"What did Slate do?" Because if Slate didn't end Cortez, Lori was going to.

"He used his powers on me," Lenna said quietly. "When I hurt my hand working at a construction site in Columbia, while spying on him for Cortez. Put the mind control joojoo to work in my head, and I stupidly gave him permission. And then, after I'd told him far more than I ought have, and put him in a direct meeting with Cortez, all of that became startlingly clear. I had to make a choice. Try and help Slate, or let the jerk die at Cortez's hands. Except it wasn't really a choice. His mind control was still working," Lenna's lips formed a pouty from, then turned downwards in an upturned V. "Whatever he said, I did. Whatever he asked, I gave him answers to. And when I was in a position to end Cortez and take his life..."

There was very little passion in her eyes, very little motion to her body or storytelling joy in her voice. "He stopped me." It came out flat.

Put the mind control joojoo to work in my head. The phrase sort of drowned out all that was around it. She hadn't really known... they had uncorroborated whispers, but... how did you really know if someone was really brainwashed or had any kind of mind joojoo put on them?

Slate... needed to be put down. Coercion was one thing. The person could always say no in the end or the middle or even the beginning. But it was still a choice. Brainwashing was circumventing the choice and sucking a lot of the fun out things. It was a whole new level of bad. How could anyone hope to fight that?

Lori shifted in her seat. She had been tensing up and leaning more forward as the story continued. And it hadn't ended to Lori's liking. "What does your schedule look like this next week?" Lori stretched. "Your story needs better resolution than that." Surely it wouldn't be too hard to book a couple seats to Columbia for the weekend.

"I haven't finished with my story, yet." Lenna said. "Please. Let me finish."

She waited for Lori to stop jumping the gun, then went on.

"Slate put me in a tough position. At the time, I thought I either had to make good with him, or he'd off me for knowing too much. I gave him Cortez. Then that bastard did something odd and mystifying."

Her lower lip protruded in a pout. It helped keep her own yap shut, though. Lori folded her legs back up onto the gurney like a good little listener and nodded Lenna to go on. She could behave herself when she needed to. But she would rather be doing something proactive.

"He spontaneously combusted?" Because very little else would keep Lori from paying him a visit.

"He gave me a choice. And let me go." Pause. Lenna sighed and looked away. "At the time, I didn't know what to make of it, so I ran. Off to Paris, to try and deal with the thing Cortez had had surgically implanted in the base of my neck. See, he wasn't messing with it anymore, but I didn't want to take any chances... and then, for some reason, Slate came up again, over there, by way of a pair of his sloppy subordinates. They were planning something at the Louvre. The Mona Lisa. So... my interest was picqued. When I got back to America, I contacted him for a job."

Bad confession. Made her look stupid. She didn't care. "Not my best moment, I know. Point is, that's how it became clear what Slate was doing, and why he needed to be stopped."

"How are you going to stop him? Slate, I mean?" And the Mona Lisa? Lenna had gifted Lori a painting. One of her favorites, actually, since it had the splash of titian red and showed an epic struggle. It had meant a lot to Lori, but it was no DaVinci. Suddeny she felt like the second fiddle.

"What do you need from me?" A second fiddle could still play....