"I can't—"

"Yes you can." When Lisa said it that way, Calley really saw the error of his ways.

"How long is this going to take?"

"Take those with you," was her helpful reply.

"...How many?" The shifter asked.

"All of them."

It was a cardboard box, approximately the size and shape of his arms' maximum capacity. It got even more interesting when he shifted into something a little more comfortable: his puma man form. Never get caught guarding the Order's prisoners without one. Pro: the claw tips to his fingers really helped with grip. Con: they only helped so much, when he had to walk so far. Not to imply that he'd walked from the Sanctuary to Faust Pharmaceuticals carrying a huge box: only an idiot would do that. Miles was a smart puma, who knew how to beg rides off of people who owned things called 'cars.' No; the long trenches scrabbled into the sides of the box where already there by the time he'd managed to make it up the front steps, and jostle the door open with a foot. By the time the elevator dinged open in the basement, the trenches had turned into lacerated hand-holds.

In the box was yarn. Yarn piled higher than his purple puma glasses. Skeins up to his twitching puma ears. He was color-blind in this form, but even he could appreciate a grayscale rainbow when it was heaped in front of his nose.

Bleh.

He'd had plans for tonight, thanks. Important plans. For one thing: he needed to check in with Lupe, and see whether the Future Sight's frenchman was the real-Jude-deal. His own nose was giving inconclusive results: the two socks he'd nabbed smelled vaguely similar, but the same person? He couldn't say. Lupe could consider this her final test: if she could really tell him—really, truly tell him—whether Jude was Jude, he'd admit it to himself that her schnoz was better than his. And if she could... then maybe she could make sense out of the tangle of scent trails that had traipsed all over Ghosty's apartment. Maybe she could pick out the most important one from that mess, and follow it to where a wind elemental had gone. Maybe.

But he wouldn't know tonight, because he had to carry yarn, and babysit someone in the basement. At least it wasn't the penthouse—he knew who was in the penthouse. The penthouse disturbed him, on a level he couldn't even name; more so because the guy seemed happy.

Whatever. Lupe kept late hours: he might still get out of here in time to catch her.

The puma man couldn't see the door coming: it just suddenly materialized, on the side of the yarn box where sight existed. He jostled and balanced, and managed to get a paw free long enough to button-mash the right combo.

"Special delivery," he called out, as the door opened. "I trust it won't kill you to take this thing out of my face."

His tone made it clear just how sad he would be, if that happened.

Sitting for extended periods of time made her back hurt. Walking became tedious with only 9 square feet of track. It would have been more. The cell was much more spacious compared to her Romanian counterpart, but the room was cluttered with comforts. Toilet, water cooler, heating pad, snack drawer, landry basket, wardrobe, snoogle, stacks (and stacks and stacks) of books and of course the knitting needles.

She appreciated the knitting needles (which were incredibly blunt, but still in working order) but unless she started turning the books into paper yarn the things were useless.

They just sat there. Useless. Like her.

Those knitting needles more than anything else taunted her into taking walks around her cell. The books said she needed exercise and so far no one had taken her up on her promises not to run away if they let her outside to walk.

Ghost made another stubborn round along the walls until she heard the elevator. It was hard not to run to the window to see if it was Dr. Lily or someone else. Not that Ms. Lily wasn't nice, but... well, sometimes diversity was better.

Especially when it came with yarn.

>"Special Delivery."

Ghost did not see face, but she did see claws unlike any claws she was familiar with. "I can take that, sure." Yarn was not very heavy, after all, and when she accepted the box her swollen belly only got in the way a little. Really, the claw holes helped her grip too.

"Oooh! Looks like some good stuff in here!" Ghost's hair was longer now, white tips brushing below her chin line and brown roots grown out a good two and half inches. Her thin arms and legs remained so making her large tummy a round, central focus that was hard not to look at. Twins took up a lot of space. The air elemental shifted her box to a one arm and hip maneuver so that she could offer a hand to the man with the ears.

"Thank you for this. I'm Ghost. It's very nice to meet to you."

"You're Ghost," the puma man repeated, with a blink of golden eyes behind purple glasses. He took the offered hand because it was offered, and shook it because that was what one did. "You're... a very pregnant Ghost."

He'd known she was pregnant. It was hard to miss, with cradle plans in the works and a budding mother who let a visiting cat eat more of her breakfast than usual, even though it fit in her lap worse than usual. But it seemed like she'd swallowed a watermelon or two since the last time he'd seen her.

"You're..." Here. Right here. Holding the box he'd just carried down. The awkward, hard-to-carry box. The black-furred man jumped into gear. "You shouldn't be carrying things. Here, let me. Umm... where do you want to put this?" By water cooler? Snack drawer? Wardrobe? Evil snake pillow? For a mutant containment cell, this place was surprisingly cluttered.

"I'm, ah... I'm Miles." He said. "Are you... comfortable? Anything else I can get you?" Another blink. One stubby finger pushed his glasses further up the bridge of his wide nose; above them, his ears convulsively swiveled, as if picking up sounds through the sound-proof walls. Below that, his tail was locked in a rigid curl.

She was Ghost. She was standing right here. She was not dead. Really.

Yes. She was Ghost. The elemental nodded her head helpfully to confirm his stunted statement. "That's my name. Or, that's what people call me anyway." Sometimes the name really threw people off. She wasn't dead. Currently, she wasn't even see-through thanks to her handy dandy shock bracelet.
 
"Twins." Once Miles was done with her hand, she smoothed it across her belly to tug down an almost-too-short shirt. "I think there's at least one girl, but it's a little hard to tell at this point."
 
And then, the pregnant freakout. It just made her smile and freed up her other hand to rest against her back, which, as it turned out hurt even when she was standing. "You can put it anywhere you think there's room, Mr. Miles. Maybe near the books? One of those is full of baby patterns. That's my first plan of attack." Also, some of the stack appeared to be library books. Hadn't she had those for a long time already? She would have to ask someone if that mattered.
 
The only place to sit, really, was the hard slab that passed for a bed. The snoodle and a heap of blankets made it look more like a nest than anything else. Ghost made her way to the heap and sank in before pulling her feet up into her lap. 
 
"You could get me a Stairmaster™, or better yet, you could take me outside every once in a while. I already promised I wouldn't run away." Where there was new interaction, there was new hope. Maybe Miles had a soft spot for preggos? "Other than that I'm pretty well set. Can I get you anything? There's water and little bags of cookies or crackers, raisins…" She listed a few items off, most of which seemed like pretty healthy snacks to have on hand. It was only polite to offer since he was a guest in her cell.

"Twins?" The puma man choked, the tip of his tail foofing. "Does—" Jude know? Except he might be a fake. Sebastian? Except he may have tried to kill her, and certainly didn't seem to care about her fate at present—probably didn't even remember she was pregnant. Not his fault, but still.

"Does... that get, ah, uncomfortable?" This was an intelligent way for a fuzzy-faced man to finish his statement. A fuzzy-faced man who had clearly been around his share of pregnant woman, and knew exactly how to behave. He jimmied the box in place against the wall opposite her bed, after sliding a few things around with his feet. Then he promptly turned around, and sat on it. The yarn mountain made for a surprisingly solid, if not altogether stable, base.

Did he want cookies? Little bags of cookies. Or crackers. Raisins. He wobbled atop the mountain—or maybe the mountain wobbled under him. His tail fwaped down atop an errant skein as it tried to roll off.

"I'll ah, I'll talk to someone. About the walks." He'd talk to Lori about more than that. Keeping man-slaves in her attic was one thing; locking First Retainers in her basement was something else.

Did she... know she was a prisoner? Was she a prisoner? She was in the rooms were kidnapped people usually went, and the door was locked. Granted, it was an awfully snuggly room.

Her hair was longer. And... not entirely white. Brown? It didn't seem dark enough for black, if he compared it against his own fur. Not light enough for blonde, either. Had she been dying her hair before? He'd never smelled dye on—

There was a shock bracelet on her wrist. His tail forgot what it was doing; it curled up, and the skein rolled off, plopping with a fuzzy bounce to the floor. It was a cold cement floor, under whatever else had been put on top of is.

"Are you... really going to use all of this?" The puma man asked, picking the skein back up with a clawed hand.

"I won't pop. Promise." Hehe. He seemed incredibly nervous about the whole 'there's two babies in there' thing. And she had thought he looked a little pale under his black fur when he first spotted her. Now he looked downright woozy.

"It seems silly to complain about aches and pains that are a natural part of the process. Besides, they're taking good care of me. Better than I would have taken of myself, I think." All that she had to do was concentrate on making some good, healthy babies. Everything else was taken care of for her: meals, laundry and even entertainment. She didn't have the stress of the bookstore on her shoulders or worry about Jude or Sebastian. Okay. Maybe a little worry for Jude and Sebastian, but there wasn't anything direct or pressing.

The catman seemed very direct. He looked at her more than was polite in Ghost's opinion. That gave her license to stare right back. Black fur, yellow eyes... what kind of cat was that? He reminded her a little of Sara, but there weren't black lions were there? What was that black cat in the Jungle Book?

> "Are you... really going to use all of this?"

"Probably not, but a girl can dream." And if she did finish it, they would bring her more. Whoever they were, they seemed to like her enough to dote on her, but not enough to let her free.

"Are you... leopard? Is that rude for me to ask?" Ghost held out her hand for the skein of yarn Mr. Miles was picking up from the ground. That one was pink. He probably didn't want that one.

"Panther," the big cat replied, with a twitch of his stubby whiskers. "Jaguar, to be specific. You are too polite to be rude."

He wasn't sure if this was Stockholm Syndrome, or just Ghosty being... Ghosty. It was cute and familiar: also, disturbing. She obviously didn't recognize him, which was exactly the point of this form. But if he was a total stranger bringing yarn to her prison... she should not be offering him snack foods?

He handed the yarn over, somewhat hesitantly.

"So... why are you here? Who brought you?"

Maybe she thought it was a good thing? Maybe it was?

The tail gave a wayward flick of could-use-convincing.

"I'm kind of a cat person." Ghost beamed at Miles for his compliment. "We have a little white one with black spots here and there around my bookstore. Nothing as cool as a panther, though." It was fun to see the whiskers and the ears move in much the same way that a smaller feline's might.

When he handed the yarn over, Ghost dug around for the end so that she could use the ball as a center pull. It also gave her something to focus on while Miles asked her the one question she really didn't want to answer.

"I'm here because... because someone made a bad decision. He could have done worse." At first Ghost thought she was going to be dead. She frowned at the yarn ball. It was hard to find the end sometimes on these suckers. She started plucking out the entire middle of the ball.

"And he's going to come around. He just needs somebody to believe in him." Martin really was a good guy deep down. Ghost wasn't going to ruin his recovery from his bad choices just because he made one poor mistake.

"Why are you here?"

A little white cat with black spots here and there? The tail gave flicked up and to the left. The whiskers twitched.

...Around her bookstore? Just around her bookstore? Not the proud specimen who had a timeshare in her apartment? The tail did not droop; it simply flicked back to the right. Feh.

It curled slowly upwards from the tip, as she explained more serious matters. So Sebastian had tried to... do something. But he could have done worse, like succeed.

"You should definitely believe in him," Miles said, with ears-forward assurance. "He's probably just got someone behind him, telling him the wrong things. But he'll figure it out." Now that he had the proper panther backing him up. Calley would figure out what Noel had done to him. It might take awhile, but time was something they had, especially with Ghosty safe and sheltered.

Though Lori had some explaining to do. How had she known what was going to happen?

"Why am I...?" The panther's round ears twitched back to present. "I, ah... I'd like to learn to knit." Yes. That was it. "Err, please?"

Ghosty wasn't the only one who could be polite.

"See? Nobody else believes me when I say that, but..." Did that mean that Miles knew Martin? And that he already knew Martin had been the one to ruin her apartment and he knew Martin was a trustworthy man.

"You know him, don't you?" Now she was watching his ears, whiskers and tail carefully. "Tell him... tell him I forgive him? Next time you see him?" There was no yarn pulling now to distract her. She would have a nod of assent at least before she agreed to teach him the way of yarn-fu.

Calley Miles nodded. Miles nodded with all of his heart. "I will. And I'll tell him again, after he forgives himself." Which might take more time. First the unicorn had to remember enough to realize what a horrible person he was; then he had to get good again. But Calley would be there for him, for his First Retainer's sake.

The knitting proceeded. The first lesson was scarves. Because... scarves. They were long and straight, and didn't really have much going on, besides being warm and cuddly. Ghost did not offer this explanation, but the panther man fumbled the needles with his stubby fingers enough to figure it out on his own.

He left the cell with homework: at least twenty more rows by the next time she saw him, or she would be very disappointed in him. The panther made his promises. Then he locked her back in her cell, alone with her bags of healthy snacks, her snake-pillow, and her box of yarn.

A fluorescent light buzzed above his head. The corridor stretched out in either direction, its doors anonymous, and uniformly closed. Were there other people in those?

Calley didn't really want to know, right now.

He took the elevator up, and knocked lightly on the door of one Lori Faust, CEO. The panther man leaned inside, wiggling his five rows of stitches and his head-sized ball of yarn. He had no idea what color it really was, but it was a nice enough shade of gray.

"So. Your prisoner is teaching me to knit."

So. Lori should explain that.

Click, clack, click, DING! Lori glanced over the last line she had typed before manually sliding the typewriter head back to the left to reset it for the next line of typing. Ziiiiiiip.

> "So. Your prisoner is teaching me to knit."

The blonde glanced up over her reading glasses at the fluffy blue rectangle. "Damn. You're way better at it than I was." Though, that baby cooker might be a better teacher than she had. Lori went back to her clicking and clacking, every button she jammed down sent a lever up to slam ink onto her page.

"Also, I wouldn't call her my prisoner. More a prisoner of circumstance." click, clack, click, clack. DING! "You're aware Sebastian went off the deep end and tried to kill her?" Blast, all this talking and typing really didn't go well together. Lori had to fish around for the liquid paper and lift up the paper rack to reach the typo. The Order Leader wasn't about to let a perfectly good mutant and her unborn babies go to waste

"I'm not as cold hearted as you might think, Miles. She wants to go find him and apologize for the mess." The elemental had said as much to Dr. Lily many times. If she could just apologize to Sebastian, surely everyone would quit misunderstanding what happened. Lori took off her glasses and leaned back in her chair. She wasn't going to get any typing done during this conversation. "Surely you don't think that's a good idea?"

Calley appreciated the CEO's discretion in using his panther-y code name while he was panther-y-ed up.. He also appreciated her appreciation of his first knitting foray. Ghosty had said it looked good, but Ghosty had once said his cookies were good, when he'd purposefully brought over a burnt batch to try to feed to Jude.

"I had to redo the start a few times. I kept losing stitches." But that was not the point, and he would not let her distract him. Not even with her overly reasonable air, and her strange click-clack device.

The panther slipped into the room.

"She told me about the apologizing. Probably not a good thing. Any clue what set the pony man off?" He edged, one innocuous step at a time, over to the side of her desk.

"And how did she end up in your hands?" Read: in your dungeon. But if the Boss Lady was being politically correct about this whole thing, he could be, too.

With the utmost of discretion he leaned over her shoulder, whiskers twitching and eyes intent. "...What the heck is that thing?"

It was large and boxy and metal. The missing link between wood block letters and the modern iphone?

> "Any clue what set the pony man off?"

"Not exactly." She globbed a bit of liquid paper on the offending typo and blew over the drying mess. "Think he's having a midlife crisis or something." Not exactly her concern. Outwardly, anyway.

>"And how did she end up in your hands?"

"Believe me. I never intended this." Would have been tidier to just have her dead, but then they'd be missing a fantastic scientific opportunity. Bosses, despite what one might think, spent an awful lot of time answering to their subordinates. Something about keeping the gears and cogs in the machine happy to be turning...

"Sebastian wouldn't pay her ransom so I did." The blonde tapped her finger on the paper and didn't come away with any white on her finger so Lori pushed the mechanism back into its noisy setting. "Got herself kidnapped and it might just be the best thing for her right now." Could the money be traced back to Lori? It would be a long and winding road, but yeah. She knew there was nothing that could be buried so deep as to make it untraceable. Explaining it as ransom made this a rescue scenario. And, in it's own twisted way, it was.

"Now if I let her go, she's gonna go hug a unicorn until he stabs her. If I keep her, we all end up babysitting." Catch 22. Lori didn't sound particularly happy about either option.

Calley, ever the distractible cat, lost his focus. Lori took her hands off the keys of the typewriter and looked at him,twitching whiskers and all. "Typewriter?" Not ringing any bells? She went on incredulously. "It's a manual keyboard from— what do you want, Miles?"

Some cogs needed more oil than others.

Calley wasn't stupid: he knew what a typewriter was. He'd just... thought the last remnants of their species were being carefully preserved in museums. A stubby finger hovered ever closer to the rounded keys on their tempting stiletto pegs as he answered.

"I want to take her for a walk. That is, she wants to be taken for a walk. You know, around the block, or to a park, or something. She's got pregger-aches. How old is this thing?"

Without intervention, there would soon be chicken pecking on her carefully typed page. It was okay—nothing that CTRL+Z couldn't fix. Calley knew his keyboard shortcuts.

"So who kidnapped her? And how did you hear about it?"