Lori let Kaitlyn's hand go reluctantly. The blonde kept an eye on her all the way up to the man who let her on stage. Once she was up there Lori waved to her so she could be sure of where they were and to confirm that they could see each other. Then she rounded on the other two.

"If you didn't want her along, why did you even let me bring her?" Blah. That didn't even matter. She puffed out a sigh and stuffed her irritation down. "You wanted to talk." In a public place so she wouldn't strangle anyway maybe? "Spill."

The Order leader tried her best to keep enough attention on the stage so that Kaitlyn would not feel neglected. Lori was trying to be at least a better mother than hers had been.

Didn't really sound like anyone was hopping with excitement for hot dogs. Didn't matter. It was a distraction. Hopefully, though, Kaitlyn'd do well.

Now that it was just her and her two friends, the ruse could slip. They could talk frankly. Frankly, Lori was too good at her job. Any blunter, and she'd have been able to double as a baseball bat.

Lenna smiled at her, as if any grumbling bluntness didn't matter, then pulled Michael closer. "It's more for him. You." She looked at the Michael on her arm. "I haven't told you some things yet. Like that Slate signed Mondragon Labs and all his holdings over to me. And that I basically own Columbia. Now." There was one other thing. She would save that for last, after the happiness about the major thing was all spent.

When Kaitlyn had left for the stage and Lori had let her feelings on the situation be known, Lenna pulled the Ranger closer and began. This cover was to cloak her informing him that she was now at the helm of Mondragon Labs, which by extension left her in control of Columbia and most likely the Kabal as well.

The Ranger knew she was planning on mounting a takeover, but this seemed too sudden for that. "Congratulations!" He would have given Lenna a celebratory hug, but that would only risk drawing attention. That could be done later. "So, he jus' handed it over?"

More for him. Lori huffed. Well why didn't they just not invite her at all? Ranger's reaction was quite interesting to note, though. He congratulated her. For some reason that seemed like not enough, she owned a country now, and also somehow it seemed like too much. Like maybe the cold, calculated acquisition of someone else's holdings should be a somber event.

In any case, Lori stuck close to the adapted and kept an eye on her ward. She still wanted to go on the log ride with Kaitlyn and that would require an adapted. Furthermore, Lenna had wanted her there for a reason. And until she shared that reason with Lori, the Order leader had to stick around.

"Yeah," Lenna replied. "He just gave it to me. Wanted to go to college. Some great leader, there, but I'm not complaining." She looked to Lori. "Now Lori and I are working together. A merger of sorts. Good for business."

She was smiling. This was all good news. Now, came the not so good.

"Oh yeah." She tapped her noggin, like she'd suddenly remembered one unimportant detail. "I kissed her." She laughed.

She wasn't seriously amused by it, but when delivering information like that, a joke sometimes helped lessen the blow. Sometimes.

Slate just handed it over because he wanted to go to college. Clearly his priorities weren't in order, when running countries college should be irrelevant. Though, his lapse of reason led to him handing over control which was needed anyway. And Lenna was now working with Lori, with a merger of sorts?

The Ranger was opening his mouth to ask what that meant when Lenna added, that she kissed Lori. He shut his mouth, unsure of how to respond. A look to Lori, then back to Lenna, then back to Lori, and finally back to Lenna as a visual formed in his head.

"Needed t' crash a police cruiser again?" He asked after a moment. He doubted that was why, but it would serve as a way to ask why.

He looked at Lori. Lori shrugged, but his head was already whipping back to Lenna. By the time his head came back around to Lori again, she was just finishing that first shrug. Eh. He was a bright boy. He would piece it together. No police crashes needed.

"She's yours right?" Lori shrugged and held up her hands peaceably before either of them throttled her for her next words. "But she did come on to me." Yes, Lori was taking the low road. She wanted out of any responsibility for hitting on Lenna now... also, now that particular road had been opened... well, she wouldn't mind traveling it.

Navigating a relationship with three people in it sounded like just the kind of disaster Lori could get into.

Not that she was hoping that would be the result of this little chat or anything. The best she could hope for was visitation rights... and even that seemed unlikely. Lenna wasn't really interested in Lori. She just wanted to use her.

The blonde found her attention wandering back toward the kid on stage.

On a table behind the stage, there sat what can only be described as a mountain of hot dogs. It towered over even the tallest man in the audience, and that man was a 9-foot-tall mutant. If they were to weigh the mountain of hot dogs, then weighed all of the contestants at once, they would find that the hot dogs weighed about twice times as much as all of the people who would be eating them. This led Kaitlyn to wonder: why would they make that many hot dogs? Even she could tell that it wouldn't be humanly possible for all of them to eat anywhere near this much.

A man with a booming voice spoke into a microphone, welcoming everyone to the contest and going into something boring about the history of hot-dog-eating contests at Coney Island, which, frankly, Kaitlyn didn't really care about. By this point, she was standing at the table on the stage, and there was a tray of hot dogs in front of her that probably weighed about half as much as she did. Unless she stood on her tip-toes or looked around it, she couldn't see the three adults that came with her. A stagehand brought her a footstool to remedy this problem.

At some point, when she wasn't paying attention to the announcer, the audience and most of the contestants started chuckling. Kaitlyn shot a questioning glance at the contestant next to her, and in doing so realized that this man had writhing, fleshy tentacles around his mouth. Tentacle-face whispered to her: "Last year, Carol accidentally ate the plate that the hot dogs were on, so she got disqualified. Carol's the ball-shaped one, by the way."

Woah.

Firstly, that was a girl!? When Kaitlyn first saw the ball-shaped mutant, she assumed that it was a guy. It... she... kinda looked...

The little orderling decided not to think too hard about it. Her. Decided not to think too hard about her. Yeah.

Secondly, the plate in front of Kaitlyn was a little bit wider than her arm was long. How could somebody eat that accidentally?

She found out the answer to this question pretty quickly. In fact, she would soon find herself wondering why Carol's problem wasn't more common. This was the mutant division of the hot dog eating contest, and it seemed that everyone had an eating mutation except for her.

Once the competition started, everyone onstage was eating inhumanly fast. Tentacle-face was shoveling food into his mouth with his face-tentacles. One guy un-hinged his jaw and started shoveling food into his gaping maw. Yet another person transformed into something that vaguely resembled a hippopotamus, and was shoveling food into his (her?) mouth. It would be very difficult to describe the scene on that stage without using the word "shoveling" a few times here and there. Carol, however, was literally inhaling the food. She was like some kind of mutant food-vacuum.

Kaitlyn tried her best. She really did. But once she had eaten her three-and-a-half hot dogs, it was over. There was nothing she could do but sit back and watch the feeding frenzy unfold around her.

>>"Needed t' crash a police cruiser again?"

She smiled weakly. Actually. A thirteen year-old girl.

Suddenly, she was his. His? As in, he owned her? And, wait. She'd come on to HER? Lenna spun on Lori. "Sorry?" She blinked. "I seem to remember you kissing me first. Back during the body swap."

It was her fault, honestly. It wasn't all Lenna's. It wasn't like she was a lesbian. And she certainly hadn't sought Lori out for girl-on-girl action.

Lori posed a leading question to the Ranger and, following her raising her hands, stated that Lenna had come on to her. Yes, he considered Lenna hi, and were she to have kissed another man he would have be cross to say the least. Though, her kissing Lori is more interesting. As for Lenna coming on to Lori... he turned to Lenna who was launching into her rebuttal.

A rebuttal which brought back up the body switch madness, and was a moot point all it served as was finger pointing.

"The who kissed who aside, why was there kissing to begin with?" His tone was only sharp enough to divert the conversation from finger pointing to the reason it transpired at all.

The body swap hardly counted considering that Lori had technically kissed herself first. Or Michael. Really, Lori liked to pretend the whole thing didn't happen because it made her brain hurt.

And he had every right to want to know why there was kissing. Lori shrugged and could really only guess. "Lenna wanted to impress a teenager who was expecting as much?" Something like that. Katrina was a persuasive little thing. Because, really, it couldn't have been that Lenna actually had any feelings for Lori. Michael had absolutely nada to worry about.

"Impress a teenager? Impress a teenager?!" What? She scoffed. That was insane. "It wasn't anything like that." So, what was it?

It was complicated.

Dammit. Lenna glanced away. She was pissed.

"Katrina thought Lori was on a date with me... and was being nosy about Kabal stuff... and there was all this cloak and dagger coverup bull-****... and it made sense at the time."

She spun on Michael. Then, she spun on Lori. Frankly, she didn't know who to spin on. Her head hurt. Her cheeks were burning. "I wasn't using you... that's a lie. And..." She looked weakly at Michael. "I wasn't intentionally cheating on you."

God, so what? If they all sat down and went through this, how did she feel about all those involved in this triangle right here and now?

Lenna pressed her hair back out of her eyes and held her head with a sigh. Her brow furrowed. "We need to sit down and sort this out..."