((ooc: Continued from Ascendant.))

His future vision was already wrong: going to Sebastian's little love nest wasn't the first step. The first step was going back to Ghosty's apartment. Someone had jiggled the window since the last time he'd been here; there was just enough room now between window and frame for a cat to claim its proper doorway. Inside, its black-tipped tail disappeared under a certain twelve year old's bed. As expected, he had his choice of balled up socks. He took a pair of boxers, too, for good measure—and carried them back to the Sanctuary in hygienic ziplocs borrowed from Ghosty's kitchen.

Three bags were left just outside the heating vent in Lupe's room: penguin boxers, big man sock, little boy sock, post-it note.

So you think your nose is amazing? Tell me everything you can smell about the owners of these. I'll be back tonight.

Probably. Probably he'd be back tonight. But anyone who knew him knew to add that disclaimer in, when it came to his specific location at a specific time. Lupe would figure that out eventually, if she hadn't already.

The second step, then—not the first—was going to Sebastian's apartment. He went in as a human, because that's the way he'd seen it. What he hadn't seen: humans had to pay to get past the front doors. This was a problem, for a guy who'd maxed out his account withdrawals for the day. Fortunately, a guy from the Sanctuary was there working out, and spotted him the cash.

Calley put a token effort into looking like he was thinking about maybe using the machines; when he realized no one cared what the Italian kid was doing, he gave it up and ducked up the back stairs.

Sebastian's room was unlocked.

The kitten-abuser was absent.

Calley squiggled under the bed. The wooden floor was rough under his back; the bed frame was wooden, and just high enough to let a determined shifter wiggle underneath. It was here; he'd seen it. A black box taped childishly into place. The first step—scratch that: the second.

He didn't really know what it was, but he worked it free of its tape, and started wiggling his way back out, feet first.

By the time Sebastian returned from his shower, the underside of his bed had sprouted a pair of wriggling legs. The legs had socks that were a little too small for his ankles that looked like maybe they might have belonged to his little sister, and shoes that were a little too big like they might have belonged to his roommate, and faded jeans that may have belonged to anyone at all.

Sebastian reached across the wriggling legs to grab one of the swords he'd left lying across the bed. He drew it casually and pointed it downward at the wriggling form.

By the time the boy's head emerged, he would be faced with the tip of a katana, attached to a dripping wet immortal clad only in a towel.

“Didn't anyone ever teach you not to break into people's apartments while they are showering?” Or any other time, really.

He wasn't angry, or smiling. He was calm. Calmly pointing a sword at the boy, which suggested that he had better start explaining himself.

"Seriously?" The young Italian said, with the half-bored gumption of someone who has been here before, and learned entirely the wrong lesson from it. He slowly wiggled a little further; enough to get his arm out from under the bed, so he could slide the little black box over to the unicorn man's feet. Besides that, he made no sudden movements. But he didn't make them because he didn't want to make them, as his own calm expression clearly showed.

He also splintered out a little insurance policy with black spots here and there under the bed, but that was between him and the dust bunnies. The cat splinter crouched silently, one paw standing ready to swipe out if he did get himself stabbed. He was pretty sure he could reabsorb himself before the unicorn shuffled around his mortal coil. Pretty.

Talking was always a good thing in these situations, though. Constructive. Absolutely never lead to trouble.

"Try stabbing that instead of me, and consider it my first bit of work: someone bugged your room." That was a guess, actually. But what other small electronic box would be furtively taped under someone's bed? A sword dissection would prove him right, he was sure. Baby blue eyes steadily met light blue ones. "Now. Could you go put on some clothes, New Boss Man? You're dripping on me."

New Boss Man?

The boy on his floor was not only being disrespectful, he was babbling nonsense. There were no bugs in his room.

The unicorn man raised an eyebrow, partly incredulous, partly confused.

“Who are you?”

He looked kind of familiar, like a relative at some family function whose name he ought to remember, but didn't.

“What is this thing?”

He kicked the box gently with his bare toe. It looked like some sort of electronic device, but he had no idea what it did. It could be anything from a time telling device to a bomb. He wasn't going to be stabbing it until he knew what it did.

“And what are you doing here?”

The immortal stepped sideways, around the boy's body on the floor, not at all concerned if his tail flicked a little bit of water here and there as it passed. Now the boy was closer to the door than he was.

Whoever he was, he looked pretty harmless. Not that looking harmless meant anything.

“Now, I am going to get dressed. Are you going to stay and watch, or are you going to wait outside the door?” Sebastian tossed the sword back onto the bed where it clattered against it's mate. Then he reached for a shirt.

New Boss Man passed the violence test with flying colors. There was no picking up and throttling (which would have been even more painful, now that he had put on healthy weight). There was no kicking-while-he-was-down (which made him officially the better half of the Unicorn-Kitten Abuser couple). In fact, he even put his sword down, and graciously acceded to putting on clothing.

Calley gave a second of thought for any trickery afoot, then inconspicuously made a certain cat splinter go poof.

"Thanks for the offer," he smiled with the utmost sincerity, sitting up, "but I'll wait outside. We can have a nice discussion on your little black insect infestation when you're done."

He closed the door behind him, and leaned against the wall next to it. He turned over the black box in his hands. There were little holes on the front—for the microphone? Screw holes on the back—the kind that needed a triangular screwdriver, like those McGrease King toys he could never take apart as a kid. Residual tape stickiness all over.

When Sebastian exited, he'd find an Italian boy with cat ears laid back, trying to pry open the casing with his claws.

Out of the four questions he had asked, the boy answered only the one that was least important.

Sebastian stared at the door for just a moment after it closed behind him, as if the door could explain the boy's behavior. The door was even less forthcoming with its information than the one who had walked through it. The unicorn shook his head and proceeded with pants, coat, and the scabbard that let him hold a pair of swords in an X across his back.

Right before he opened the door, he took a cursory look around the room, checking especially beneath the sheets and under the bed.

He didn't know what the boy had been talking about. There weren't any bugs. Most modern beds, including the one he shared with Noel, were bug free. It probably helped that modern day people didn't put straw in their mattresses.

Seeing things, spouting nonsense, inability to hold a conversation: Clearly this boy was just a lunatic.

The immortal walked out the door, turned the corner, and found the boy, now with cat ears and claws, trying to scratch apart the electronic box, presumably so he could eat it.

Definitely crazy.

Sebastian wasn't going to waste any more time trying to talk to madmen. He had science to be done and experiments to run all day today. And he had to stop at the pound to pick up a cat worthy of living well beyond his normal nine lives.

Oh, so they were on to the cold shoulder already, were they? This relationship was really progressing by leaps and bounds. He fell into step behind the unicorn man, paying the bare minimum of attention necessary to where they were going so he didn't go falling down the stairs. He managed to wiggle-jam a claw under one corner of the casing.

Crick. Crick. Snap.

Ah, the power of simple tools: in this case, the Claw Lever. With a corner of the plastic casing snapped away, said claw was free to blindly rummage inside, doing what young cats did best with electrical wires.

Zap!

“Mrrk!” Calley shoved a tingling finger into his mouth for a moment, then sent it back in to vindictively drag out its attacker.

He dangled his hand over Sebastian's shoulder; from the hand dangled a lazy claw, from the claw dangled a vivisected microphone on a roughly severed wire.

“I,” the Italian cat said in his most informative tone, “came to get this. This," he continued instructively, "is a bug. A member of Insecta electronicus, suborder towhichyouwereoblivious. It's primary evolutionary drive is the recording and/or transmission of everything said around that upstanding bed of yours. So. Any clue who's trying to record your most intimate conversations, New Boss Man?”

Calley was answering the man's questions; he was just doing it in reverse order, and in his own good time.

Record and transmit were kind of technological words, as were electronics and to-which-icus, which were not real Latin at all, but Sebastian got the idea. Someone was using the black box to listen to him. It was kind of ingenious really, like a cell phone that only worked in one direction.

He really didn't have any idea who would want to listen to him, though. Especially not in their bedroom. Nothing exciting ever happened in there.

And maybe the cat boy was a little odd, but he did kill the electronic insect. Sebastian would let him keep following for now.

“I don't know of anyone who would want to listen to me.” That, kitten boy, was how grown ups answered questions. Question, answer, question, answer; that's the way it had been for centuries.

They were outside the gym now, waiting at the bus stop. The bus would be here shortly. It would take them to the pound. The kitten boy could help him pick out a kitten, if he wanted. If he was still following him at that point.

"You really don't have any clue who I am, do you?" The cat boy conversationally asked, as they stood on a random spot in the sidewalk. Public transportation? What kind of immortal rode that? If Calley was going to work for this man, he was going to have to arrange for a more dignified coach.

He shoved the black casing in his pocket; that left one of his hands free to hold the microphone up above his head for closer inspection, and his other free to idly bat at it.

"How's this?" He asked. " 'Grr, arrg, I'm gonna kill you Doc Jimmy' -- 'No no, noble cat, do not kill Doc Jimmy, he shall make you an immortally frolicking youth.' -- 'Grr, arrg, I'm gonna think about it' -- 'Go forth, divine quadruped, and think.' "

He thought he did the voices quite well, himself.

"I thought about it." He said, shoving the microphone into his pocket with the rest of its corpse. "I figure you need someone to look after you. So sign me up for the immortal job perks, New Boss Man."

See? There were the man's questions, answered. All of them.

Talking cat that followed him around. Cat-boy that followed him around. It made a lot of sense, actually, that both strays were one and the same. It also saved him a trip to the pound.

“Hm.” Realization, convenient realization.

Though a regular cat would be a quieter and less sarcastic companion for all eternity, testing this method for turning regular mutants immortal was going to be much more useful. Especially since a mutant cat boy could do things like point out how people could electronically be listening to him for some unknown reason. And really, the snark wasn't too bad. It was kind of how Sebastian imagined a cat would speak, if a cat could speak, and he did like cats.

“Alright then. Are you still opposed to Dr. Ingram doing the procedure? I believe there are other doctors at Mondragon Labs Medical capable of managing a simple blood transfusion.”

The bus arrived. Sebastian paid his fare and the cat boy's too.

“Watch your step...” the unicorn man turned to consider the boy as he followed, frowning slightly. He had to call the boy something, but he had not offered up a name for himself, so the immortal filled one in, “...μαλακό.”

Malako: Greek for fuzzy, and a perfectly appropriate name for a cat that follows you home.

Malako? Was that Japanese for cat, or something? It had some of the same sounds to it that came out of Ghosty's mouth when she was being extra-polite and forgetting her English. Calley quirked an eyebrow, but had no complaints. It sounded sort of slick; he'd certainly been given worse names, under other boss men.

He gave Noin a little wave as they went past the front desk. Noin gave a little smirk, and a tap to the wooden pencil she always kept tucked over one ear. He'd never actually seen her write with it--but that really wasn't the point of a small wooden stake, now was it?

They headed to the medical bay. No, Doc Jimmy wasn't invited. Doc Jimmy was not allowed anywhere within sight taste touch or smell of that room, or Calley would have recanted his generous offer faster than a whale accelerates due to gravity.

Even without Jimmy around, even with people who had actual bedside manners in attendance, the Italian wasn't doing very good with their advice to, "Just lay down, and relax." Especially not when they made him ditch the cat ears and tail; it was probably best to try this while he was 100% Homo superior, to minimize the risk of things going horribly wrong in unique and exciting ways.

"You're not going to keep my blood, right?" He asked, trying not to--crap, he looked. He looked at the needle the doctor was shoving up his arm, connected to its incredibly non-comforting tubing. "After you take it out? Because that would be creepy." In fact, he wanted some guarantees right now that that former-body-fillant of his was going to get destroyed or something, as opposed to getting shipped to another part of the complex or something, where another Doc Something could get his plain-pasta-eating hands on it or something.

He didn't know what he was expecting; maybe for Sebastian to get hooked up to something too. Like you saw in movies. But it was just him, on the bed, as they got out some nice pre-prepared bags of blood. Guaranteed pathogen free--only the finest grade of immortality on tap here.

"You're... going to stay here for this, right?" He asked the unicorn man. "Make sure they don't do anything funny?"

Nothing funnier than completely taking out his blood. He felt like if his Old Boss Man had asked for this, he'd have been able to put together some very anatomically accurate diagrams as to where he could shove that idea. It probably wasn't too late to bolt; Sebastian hadn't even bothered to have him restrained like a proper blood-sucking boss.

But he had to do it; this is the way his future went.

No they weren't going to keep his blood. Yes, he'd stay and make sure they didn't do anything funny. An operating room wasn't really the place for humor anyway.

It didn't take as long as Sebastian had expected. When the doctor told him they were finished, the immortal almost didn't believe them. It had been so easy. To think, he'd had the secret to eternal life all this time and it had never before occurred to him how to share it. That would be really sad if he'd ever had any loved ones that he hadn't wanted to lose. As it was, it was just an interesting scientific discovery similar to humans being able to replicate with machines what birds had been able to do for millennia.

The doctors slid the tube out of the boy's arm and puncture wound left there was gone in an instant, having knit itself back up again.

So it had worked.

Excellent.

The doctors just had a few more tests before they would let their patient leave. Was he feeling dizzy at all? Could he stand up without falling over? Could he remember his ABC's?

Malako passed all of these tests with flying colors and was discharged without further ado.

“Excellent, now that we know you're...” Sebastian started, but was cut off by a heavy industrial strength door banging against a big metal table.

Doctor James Ingram had never looked quite so much like a mad scientist as he did bursting through the door brandishing a gun, “One last test.” Before anyone had a chance to respond Ingram pointed the gun directly at the cat shifter and pulled the trigger.

It was not often that a situation necessitated violence, but a unicorn man who deigned to be a god didn't carry a pair of swords around because they looked impressive. It took half a second for the door to open, another half to aim and fire. It took half a second to realize what was happening, half a second to draw a sword, another half to lunge forward. The gun clattered to the floor, then everything was still.

Sebastian had Ingram by the throat with his left hand, icy fire burned between them both, seeping through skin, racing through blood veins, lined his lungs, and pooled in a heart that was frozen between beats: a heart that had a blade through it.

Ingram gave half a gasp, “Had to... test... hypothesis.”

The unicorn man squeezed off the man's words in burning cold anger, knowing full well that as soon as he let go the man would die, “Not. Necessary.”

Now he just had to decide how not necessary Ingram was.

It was a little cold. The doctor assured him that the blood had been heated to human body temperature before they'd hooked it up to his veins, but it was still a little cold. He shivered, and did his best to lay still.

Was he feeling dizzy at all? A little. "Not really."

Could he stand up without falling over? Good question. "...Yes." Apparently.

Could he remember his ABC's? "As long as I don't have to say them backwards." That was a lame gimmick, anyway.

Could Doc Jimmy shoot him in the chest? Yes. Apparently, yes. Calley didn't see what transpired between the unicorn and the psychopath. He had his own minor issues to deal with, thanks.

His shoulder hit the bed. It was nothing but a sheet, a thin mattress, and a hard metal frame. It clattered backwards as he fell; the sheet went down with him. It was supposed to be a white sheet; he knew it was supposed to be a white sheet, but the red kept spreading out, further and further. Why was it doing that?

Calley coughed, but something was filling up his lungs before he could breathe back in. He coughed again: red.

He was so cold.

The doctor was at his side. Calley didn't want the man's hands; he rolled on his side. Coughed, and breathed in: a gasping, choking breath.

The doctor wasn't trying to touch him anymore. He was just staring, with a gleam in his eyes not unlike Doc Jimmy's. "Look at that. Just... look at that."

The red stopped spreading. Calley lay where he was, his breath coming back to him. The floor was cold. His heartbeat was loud and fast in his ears; the cold tingled across his skin, and settled back into his chest like a servant returning home.

It seemed like his laugh was the only sound in the room.

The shifter pushed himself up off of the floor. Could he stand up without falling over? Oh, yes. Was he feeling dizzy at all? He'd live.

The Doc wasn't looking at him. The red-haired schizophrenic was staring at the unicorn, like a hand on his throat and a sword through his heart were a big deal. Like they were a bigger deal than a certain shifter he'd just failed to kill. Now that wouldn't do at all. Calley wiped a sleeve over his mouth. "You know what, New Boss Man?" He said, "I appreciate the thought, but I think I've got this one."

Baby blue eyes met Doc Jimmy's. Cute, fragile little Doc Jimmy; not even a mutant.

"I'm immortal," the shifter told him. "You're not. If you ever touch me again, I'll make sure you remember that, for the rest of your statistical blip of a life."

Sebastian was livid.

Logically, he knew Malako should be fine. He had seen his arm heal and knew that it was working, but it was absurd to jump straight to testing mortal injuries on their first test subject in the first few seconds of his immortality.

He disliked guns, he hated idiots who used guns, and he despised wasteful, reckless, blundering, defiant imbeciles who used guns to shoot holes in his newest ally.

Contempt twisted Sebastian's upper lip. It would be so easy to take the doctor's pathetic little life. All he had to do was let go with his left hand.

Behind him, Malako laughed, and stood, and spoke. He was fine, but the risk had been as pointless as this red haired maniac's life.

>>"You know what, New Boss Man? I appreciate the thought, but I think I've got this one."

“Very well,” Malako was the one who had been shot, it was his right to carry out whatever vengeance suited him.

Sebastian withdrew his sword first, leaving his hand on Ingram's throat just long enough for his powers to start mending up the twin holes through his heart, just long enough to ensure he wouldn't die before his fine colleagues could get him hooked up to life support for a few days, just long enough that the man could listen to and understand every word the newly immortal cat shifter was saying to him.

The unicorn man wiped the blood on his sword off on the only clean corner that remained on the bed sheet, then re-sheathed it.

“Let's go, if I'm to be your New Boss Man, there's some things that you should see. After we get cleaned up, of course.”

There was a newly acquired church building to show off, apostles to meet, 'theology' to discuss, and dozens of other things to be done. Including buying a new jacket for his newest employee. Because, really. Purple? What self respecting immortal wore a girly purple coat with slits cut in the back, bloodstained or not?

"Sounds great, Sebiroth," Calley said. Because once upon a time, he'd been the sort of kid who sat in the basement with a game controller and a save file that recorded more hours than his homework for the week had taken. Certain resemblances were not lost on him as the immortal—the other immortal—wiped his long sword clean of blood.

"So. You actually know how to use that thing, huh?" The shifter flashed a grin. "Teach me."

As Calley followed the man's long black coat and flowing white hair down the hall, there was just one last thing he needed to do. He didn't even know it, until they passed by the open Board Room door. Calley paused. Paused, and backtracked.

"Just a sec, New Boss Man." He ducked inside. When he came back out, a certain something had returned to its proper place on his shoulder.

The lime green squeaky hedgehog had passed into the hands of the pantheon.