As onomatopoeias went, snerfle about covered the one that vacated Calley’s sinus cavity.

“Steal the golden doors? Now who would do that? Why hello, Lisa.”

Shining desk. Shining nails. Shining smile, not aimed at him. Lupe had made the mistake of asking a question. That placed her in the ‘potential new resident’ category, rather than with ‘what the cat dragged in.’

“Welcome to the Sanctuary.”

Calley caught the closing door with one foot, leaving it propped a few inches open into the night air. “Don’t worry, Lisa. I got this covered.”

“We’re a non-profit outreach organization, providing a home and employment opportunities for underprivileged mutants.”

“Covered.”

“Can I interest—“

“Cov.”

“—you—”

“ered.”

“—in a tour? I’m sure Caleb wants to get settled back in. It’s so nice to have you back, Caleb.”

The smile: it did not waver. The sincerity: it could not be doubted. The glowering boy with the glowering toad on his head made with the glowering. A Bengal tiger made with the nosing its way inside the propped door, whiskers first.

“So nice to be back,” Calley piped. “So. This is the reception room. That’s Lisa. Next up: the hallway!”

It had a potted plant. And inoffensive modern art paintings.

The official point of it all, according to the official secretary, sounded very official. It also didn't sound much like what actually went on. Of course, if they told you everything you ever wanted to know about the goings-on at the Sanctuary in the first five minutes, what was the point of sending someone to infiltrate it?

As Calley-short-for-Caleb led the way into the hallway Lupe rolled her eyes at Lisa the secretary. Innocuous Calley was giving his innocuous tour and there wasn't much either she or Lisa was going to be able to do about it. She'd come back later to fill out registration forms if that sort of thing was necessary.

If she decided to stay, that was. Calley had better make the tour worth her while, or Lupe was probably going to catch a ride home in the first taxi she could find.

So far, she was not very impressed. There was a potted plant. And some paintings.

“So, what kind of employment did they offer you?” Guardian of the front step? Tour guide for unwilling tourists?

“Me? I’m an independent contractor. I run unscheduled security checks.” They had a lot of loose gratings, around here. He really should put those screws back.

“And coming up on your left, we have the cafeteria. Food, twenty-four-seven-ish, with proper respect paid to the cooks. You always want to keep the cooks on your side. The janitors, too. Lisa is optional. And on your right, the doorway to downstairs, where we plot city-wide domination and run intensive fight simulations to train our genetically superior mafia grunts. Straight ahead, rooms! Mostly college students and hobos, on this level. Free room and board, and all.”

As a general rule, it was hard to tell when Calley was poking fun, and when he was telling the truth. Sometimes—some glorious times—he could do both. Simultaneously.

The tiger had ducked into the cafeteria as they passed. There was some shouting inside; it reemerged to follow them, nomming a half pound of still-frozen bacon. Mmmm, tomorrow’s breakfast.

“So. Have you gotten a place in the city yet? ‘Cause this is pretty much rent-savers central. And you seem to have the prerequisite hobbies shared by many of our lower-level dwellers.” The Italian boy might have flashed a critical little sideways glance at her. The tiger was simply nomming, with eyes-closed contentment, on her other side.

Taken together, this may have been why both of them ran into opposite sides of a doorframe. Simultaneously. The toad took a dive, but Calley caught the falling glass more nimbly than he'd dodged the inanimate object.

“...Oww. So, uhm, what’s your mutation?”

'Independent contractor' could mean anything from electrician to mercenary. This boy claimed to be contributing to the places security force after letting her walk in with a bowie knife tucked into her boot. Maybe he hadn't been 'unscheduled' when she'd followed him in. Or he could be lying. It was hard to tell with this one, when most of what he said sounded like a joke.

Like those intensive fight simulations.

Ah well, she'd find out soon enough what was fact and what was crap. For now she just focused on memorizing the layout so she could find breakfast if she needed to. Though, she doubted tomorrow's would include bacon for some reason. And if it did, she would be avoiding it.

“I'm in a motel for now, until I find someplace I like.”

Jocelyn couldn't help but snerk at the boy and tiger simultaneously running into both sides of a door frame.

He recovered quickly, and didn't even endanger the life of his over-large toad friend. Too much.

“Hyperosmia.” she didn't bother asking him about his.

“Sounds unhealthy,” Calley said, gracefully guiding his feet to a more vacant area of the doorframe. The tiger did likewise in a mirroring fashion, its eyes now open, though the bacon was still being thoroughly enjoyed. A friendly encounter with a wall never hurt its appetite before, and it certainly wasn’t going to start now.

“Let’s see. We should probably take the next stairwell. Would you rather go up or do--?”

The tiger and Calley both stopped. The tiger even went so far as to quietly shy back behind Lupe’s legs, as a little black something with a white stripe down its back calmly emerged from an open doorway.

“Oh hey. Aura’s skunk. This is the part of the tour where we don’t make sudden movements.”

The skunk slowly, slowly waddled across the hall, from its doorway to another across the hall. The hall had never seemed so wide before.

“I swear I’m going to live trap that thing to upstate. It’s been eating all my mice,” Calley complained quietly. “Of course, then she might kill me.”

He was not joking.

Jocelyn had thought the musty smell was part of Calley's personal zoo. She hadn't figured there were others in the building that had such exotic pets.

She froze along with the tiger and the boy. She slowly reached up with her hand to plug her nose preemptively.

Skunks.

And their murderous owners.

This job just kept getting better and better.

“They let people keep skunks as pets?” She whispered at Calley.

The skunk stopped to look at her for an agonizingly long moment and then continued along it's waddling way once again.

“Not usually,” the frozen Italian whispered back, “but she’s Aura. Aura makes furniture from dead people that weren’t dead when she started. On a related note: never, ever take her up on an offer to dance. Just sayin’.”

The skunk looked back at them, then disappeared into the dark crack of an open door. Its tail disappeared last, in a flippant flick of white.

Calley allowed himselves to start breathing again. Through his noses, even.

“Yeeeeah. So. As I was saying: upstairs or down?”

The tiger peered around her thigh, bacon in mouth. That door. It did not trust that door.

Lupe let go of her nose.

Downstairs or up? “Which is more interesting?”

She was almost afraid to find out, what with skunks and bone furniture on the list of interesting things she'd found out about so far.

She was going to have to tread very carefully, if she wanted to get out of this alive. Or better yet, she could just walk out now and never come back, Captain Cynthia Myers be damned.

Except.

Except the captain was right. Jocelyn probably was the only one that could do this. And she had already gotten the damn tattoo.

“Are there any other hazards I should be aware of before we continue on? Pit traps with spikes at the bottom? Telephones that blow up when you answer them? Elevators leading straight to hell if you press the wrong button?”

“Depends on the definition of hyperosmia, and your general building entrance and exit preferences. I think up is pretty neat, but it’s just some more rooms and a roof top. Down has more things, in the tour guide-y sense.”

The teen idly tossed the toad-bowl between hands (croak! croack! cro--!) as he waited on her decision. The tiger idly pushed its ears under her hand, its bacon rapidly disappearing.

“No pit traps with spikes. There are pit traps with electric grids, but those are at the Mansion, not here. Oh! Beware Giant’s Bane’s room. It’s in one of the sublevels. I keep smelling something reptilian, down there.” Possibly more than one somethings. And one time, he’d seen something with far too many legs casting shadows under the door.

The tiger’s ears gave an entitled flick near her fingers, in case her hand hadn’t gotten the message.

Lupe chuckled at the tiger's antics. Like any cat, he wanted what he wanted when he wanted it. Snack time was over. Now it was petting time. She let her fingers scritch and scratch until they found a spot that the tiger seemed to like.

“There's really only one definition of hyperosmia. It means I have a keener sense of smell than your handsome friend here.” She gave him pat on the head in between scratches to the ears. “But I don't have claws or teeth nearly as fine as his.”

“Lets try downstairs first,” she decided, “but we can skip the reptile room.” Lupe tilted her head at the toad in the bowl. “Can he... breathe okay in there?”

He or his handsome friend may have snorted their disbelief on that sense of smell issue, but both of them were feeling content enough to be the bigger men. If she wanted to believe she had a better nose than a fierce predator like himself, then... then that was just...

“A little to the left, please,” the Italian purred, as the rumbling tiger pressed himself against her leg. “Breathe? Of course he can... umm.”

croa... croa... cro...

“Eheh.” Calley shook himself a little, and punched a hole in the saran-wrapped top with one finger. “All better. So... downstairs it is. I should probably get him to his kiddie pool anyway, before he changes back.”

Calley led the way down the stairwell, as her new tigger friend tried to keep himself glued to her hand.

If she had already suspected that Calley's tiger was not a normal tiger, it was now confirmed. First, he was tame. Not in and of itself all that unusual.

Second, it seemed to understand English. He snorted when she told Calley that she could smell better than the tiger. Tame and intelligent.

Third, when she scratched his just there she got not only a tiger rubbing up against her leg, but an young Order member with half closed eyes practically purring for her as well. Tame, intelligent, and linked somehow to his original creator.

Good to know.

Lupe followed down the stairs, noting automatically which ones creaked when she stepped on them. She kept one hand on the railing and the other on the head of her big striped kitten friend. She had a feeling that for the price of her bacon each morning for breakfast and a few scratches she might have at least one person at the sanctuary who probably wouldn't kill her if they found out...

Mentally she changed topics, “What do you mean, 'before he changes back'?” She kept her thoughts curious about her surroundings and Calley, one never knew who might be listening in.

Bacon and scritches could win friends with most of Calley’s forms, truth be told. It was not a weakness he was particularly interested in correcting.

“Oh, I haven’t introduced you, huh? Lobenstien, meet Lupe. Lupe, Lobenstien.” A bowl full of toad was held in her face. The toad glowered and gulped in his new air supply, in that order. “He’s easier to carry this way. Gets kind of big, in his real form.”

“All right. So up on your left, here, we have the pool room. Pretty much what you’d expect from a pool room. Make sure to check for jellyfish shifters before you get in, and for anything from the lower levels. Locker rooms, weight room—I never go in there, but the muscular peeps seem to like it. Rooms on the right, sprinklers above, carrying an umbrella down this hallway is advisable—we’ve got a fire-serpent-mancer, and they finally fixed the heat sensors. Umm, rec room right there—that’s awesome—and... my room!”

The tour paused a second as Calley tried his doorknob. Oh good, someone had picked the lock since he’d been here last. That made things easier.

Inside was a bed (sheets: standard-issue white, pillow: absent), a dresser (dusty), and a grating vent (with signs of wear on the screws). There were no particular decorations, but there was a kiddie pool on the floor, growing algae.

“Just a sec.” The Italian teen walked over, and unceremoniously dumped the contents of his toad bowl into the festering water. The toad hit with a cro-PLOP! “There we go. All right. So, on with the...”

croa-K! croa-K! hop-splish!

A blink, and a slight glance back. “Umm. Can toads live in salt water?”

“Nice to meet you,” Lupe replied to Lobenstein the toad-who-wasn't-really-a-toad. Lobentein croa-Ked his response.

The lower level was kind of like a community center, with places to work out and hang out. Felix would have loved living down the hall from a swimming pool and every type of gaming system imaginable, in their respective rooms. Not that he would ever be coming here. Personally, she could have done without the strong smell of chlorine permeating everything on the floor.

Acheew!

“Does each room have it's own bathroom,” she wondered out loud. Or did everyone on the floor go down to the locker room?

That question was quickly answered when Calley steered her into an example bedroom, apparently his own. It wasn't locked. In fact, it didn't really look like it could be locked anymore. The furniture was somewhat sparse, kind of like a college dorm room. There was a personal bathroom though.

Aside from the kiddie pool, Calley's looked kind of impersonal. Jocelyn's would too. Her guess was many of the people who lived here didn't come in with a lot of personal effects. It would only be the people who stayed for long periods of time that would start to accumulate enough possessions to actually give a room some personality.

While she inspected the layout of the room, she heard a splish! followed quickly by an “Umm.” She turned to see Calley looking slightly worried about having just dumped his toad into the kiddie pool.

“I don't think...”

One second there was a toad, floundering in too deep salt water.

“...so.”

The next second, the toad was a lobster waving his claws angrily in Calley's direction as he tried without much success to climb the wall of the kiddie pool.

The name Lobenstein made complete sense now. He was huge!

“How did...” Jocelyn looked down at the lobster and then at the tiger, still glued to her hand, trying to connect the dots. “What is he really, then?”

“See?” Calley pointed, his chest puffed out proudly in an I’m-so-smart manner, “much easier to transport as a toad.” The Italian flashed a grin her way. “He is what he is. What you see is what you get.

“He was expensive, too.” He added, by way of frowning afterthought. Rubbing the bridge of his nose was surely an unrelated action.

“So. Are you thinking you’ll want a room, too? This is the usual floor for oldies, or people who get up to police-attracting shenanigans.” It was clear from his tone that Calley didn’t count himself with the shenaniganers, and from his age that ‘oldies’ didn’t exactly mean the gray-haired club. “Lower down gets creepier, and higher up is the land of the co-eds who expect us to pump their gas one day. Up to you, though.”