(Continued from Grey.)

Sebastian had a few last words to his apprentice and his apprentice's apprentice before he left.

“Play nice, you two,” and quieter, just for Forte, “And if you hurt her, I will hunt you down and you will wish for death.”

He continued through the narthex and out the door with Lori on his arm.

“You know, even though it was a bit irresponsible to encourage him, I'm kind of glad you brought him by. It was a bit of a dreary day before you arrived,” and now the sunshine was just starting to peek through the clouds.

“Since you've come all the way to my neighborhood and I have now thoroughly distracted your companion, would you do me the honor of allowing me to buy you breakfast?”

Every time he talked, Lori was reminded of just how drastically different he was now. Noel's power really was something to worry about. Mental note. Avoid eye contact. Also, avoid her kisses. Apparently that had something to do with it too. "I am just glad there was someone here better able to handle him." Wouldn't the old Sebastian have been irked? Perhaps Lori could be more frank with this one and openly support his endeavors.

"Breakfast sounds great. Will we need to drive? I have a car." Her yellow Hummer was parked up on the curb near the church if they needed it. If not, she would just pluck off the parking ticket it would probably gather and take it back home later.

“We can walk. The place I'm thinking of is not far from here, and walking would be easier than trying to park.”

So they remained arm in arm as they walked down the sidewalk. It was a little chilly, but breaks in the cloud cover provided a few pleasantly warm patches of light to walk through. After a few quiet moments of reflecting on the morning's events, a question got stuck in Sebastian's mind.

“So we seem to have determined that fighting random strangers just to lose is not worthwhile. Is there a cause that you would consider worthy of fighting for?” He asked not only because he was curious about her answer, but also because he wasn't entirely sure how he would answer the same question.

What was it with these immortals? First Paul, then Sebastian getting all philosophical on her. "Physically fighting someone for? Or the metaphorical kind?" She supposed it didn't matter exactly. For Lori both amounted to similar things, though... "I try to avoid most physical fights. It doesn't bode well for my public face to get her hands dirty." CEO and homeless shelter benefactresses did not typically stab people to death with their high heels. Lori was just special like that.

"But there are things worth fighting for. The people at the shelter, for example. No one was ever on their side before they ended up with me. No we're providing job training and tutoring so they can at least get their GEDs. Everyone needs a purpose and direction." She was trying to avoid mentions of family, though that was her typical word choice in this example. Lori didn't want to accidentally knock something loose in his head that she wanted kept hidden away.

"There are people I have come to care for, of course. And personal goals I want to champion like uniting people and finding common ground." Her favorite champion was, in fact, on her arm at this very moment.

"What is your goal? You have an apprentice, a sword, immortality... what will you do with them?"

Sebastian shrugged when it came to physical versus metaphorical battles. If something was worth fighting for, it would be worth fighting for in whichever way was necessary.

He understood what she meant about people being a worthy cause. He hadn't had a lot of close friends in his time, but he was growing rather attached to Noel. At one point he would have scoffed at the idea of it, but he would have fought for her sake today.

“Unite whom, mutants and humans? That doesn't sound like something that would go over very easily at the Sanctuary unless things have changed pretty drastically since I lived there.” Especially amongst some of the residents that had lived there the longest.

“And for what, a specific purpose, or simply for the sake of unity and peace?” Sebastian made an incredulous face. Those were nice and pretty words, but they were just words: intangible ideas that would be very hard to convince people to stick together. Especially groups of people that were so very different from each other. “You might need something a little stronger than words to get people to stand together and hold hands.”

Then again, what she was aiming for was a lot better than what he had in his list of goals, which was nothing. It was depressing.

The sun flitted away again behind an extra large and grey cloud.

“I think I want to find the meaning of true happiness,” he paused a moment, then smiled at her, “Do you have any brilliant ideas where I could look for such a thing?”

> “Unite whom, mutants and humans? That doesn't sound like something that would go over very easily at the Sanctuary unless things have changed pretty drastically since I lived there.”

"I would unite anybody who would, but as things stand it might be easier just to focus on the mutants we know and love."

Lori smiled at Sebastian's talk. "You make it sound like the Smurf village where everyone holds hands and skips down the lane together. I'm not so eloquent an elocutionist to think that I can talk people into that kind of cooperation. It takes common ground to make alliances and I intend to find that common ground." Find it or make it.

Lori believed whole-heartedly that her expectations were realistic in uniting people against a common challenge so long as the challenge was great enough.

As for her beliefs on happiness, "I don't know about the meaning of happiness and frankly, I don't think I care. I would rather just be happy." Seriously. Too much philosophy, not enough rancid chaos for her to gesture at dramatically and unite the people against. But, if it would help him go megalomaniac. "I suppose, if you're dead set on looking... whenever I'm ever looking for anything I would start at a library and find myself a sympathetic librarian."

Sebastian did not know what a Smurf village was, but he got the picture, and it was one that she had painted, not him.

He wondered what kind of common ground might unite people in the way Lori was talking about. In his experience the only thing that really brought large groups of people together like that was some sort of opposition. It was also his experience that as soon as that opposition was out of the way, people returned to selfishly worrying about themselves. It was human nature.

He chuckled at her insistence that she didn't care what happiness meant so long as she could be happy herself. Maybe that's what he needed to do, too. He just wasn't sure what it was that made people happy, or more specifically what would make him happy. Somehow he doubted the answer would be at the library.

“Alright, what is it that makes you happy? Money? Power? Holding hands and singing songs? Pancakes?”

He added the last because they had arrived at their destination, the Cobblestone Cafe. It had a patio, but at this time of year it was a little too chilly for anyone to want to sit at it. The inside looked like it was decorated by someone's senile grandmother, with doilies instead of coasters and plastic flowery tablecloths, but the food was excellent.

“Don't judge,” he warned her, “until you try the food.”

What made Lori happy? A challenge, for one, but mostly "Pancakes. Definitely pancakes. Money's like a river, it's only good if it's flowing. Power is fun, but the ones at the top have the farthest to fall." That was why it was a lot more fun to play around at the bottom. The top took work and maneuvering and made some blondes paranoid about safety... not Lori, of course. She was thinking of the magnificent Lisa, one of the blonde trifecta of power.

And Lisa would have tried her best not to look disgusted at the interior of this diner. "What's wrong with it?" The plastic coated tablecloths made for an easier cleanup. That meant the owners cared about that cleanliness business. And the doilies... okay, the doilies looked all lumpy and hand made. "Okay, so it's not my style, but it looks like somebody loves this place." And besides, coasters meant that she didn't have to worry about condensation on the table.

Yes. A 5 start restaurant was nice and all, but there was nothing better than food cooked with love (AKA: butter) by a cook you can trust as soon as you see 'em. There didn't appear to be a single skinny cook. Or skinny server for that matter.

A portly man passed them plastic covered menus that looked to have been printed from a home computer. Cute.

"Do you come here for the pancakes?" That question could go for the server or the unicorn. What was the draw?

“I come for the paycheck and a workplace where everyone respects you,” their server commented as he carefully set two glasses of ice water on their doilies and left them two straws wrapped in paper. His violet cat slit gaze caught the unicorn's pale blue knowingly.

Sebastian nodded thoughtfully. He hadn't ever really thought the particular reason why he came here. It could have been the pancakes, he supposed, but there were plenty of places he wouldn't go back to even if they had the best pancakes in the world.

This place was peaceful. He didn't feel like a brawl was going to break out over the teacups because of some trivial difference of opinion or because some punk teen was looking for a fight. No one would come here, of all places, looking for a fight. There were doilies.

“Peace, pancakes, and good company,” Sebastian finally answered after thoughtfully sipping his water.

“Don't order too many pancakes, though. When they say they are as big as manhole covers, they really mean it.” He had made that mistake the first time he'd been here and had eaten leftover pancakes for breakfast for a whole week.

“I'll have one,” he informed the waiter, “with fruit on the side instead of bacon.”

Respect? He got respect working in an doily infested cafe? More power to him for that. Lori went for her straw in order to keep herself from saying anything stupid out loud. She scooted the whole thing closer via doily.

"Same for me." Lori smiled and passed back the menu without having to go through the thing. Bacon. So delicious. So heart attack inducing. Sitting with a vegetarian made it easier to snub the delicious stuff. If she had a personal physician, he or she would be proud.

"So." The waiter didn't especially seem inclined to hang out and chat. He had an order to place on their behalf. "You're carrying swords and training apprentices all for the sake of peace?' As queen of contradictions, this kettle was fully equipped to call the pot what it was.

He half smiled at Lori's sassy comment as their waiter wandered away to inform the kitchen of their selections. He had meant peace more in the quiet sense than in the anti-fighting sense. He had no real opinion on that. Humans had been fighting with each other for millennia. It wasn't going to change now.

“Nah. It's more of a shared hobby, I just have a bit more experience that I'm trying to get her to absorb. I don't really have any plans to try changing the way humans have been interacting since the beginning of time.”

The beginning of time for him was back in Greece, back when wars stretched on for years because one city kidnapped the most beautiful woman from another city. No war was ever fought for a reason any less pointless. It might be worth fighting for a loved one, but it should only involve the people who were actually involved, not whole tribes, cities, or countries.

“I don't really have a goal,” and that was part of the reason he felt so melancholy lately.

He gave Lori a little hint about Noel's power. Maybe it wasn't a big secret, but it was new to Lori. She'd never known Noel to absorb experience. Of course, as far as Noel and Sebastian were concerned, neither of them remembered that Lori knew Noel at all.

She had been hoping that Sebastian was planning to mobilize some kind of sword army, but alas! He was far less focused. And much less militant than she'd hoped. Swords were only their shared hobby. Pah. That was no reason to unite the world against him.

"No goal?" At all? The idea was so foreign. Was that a side-effect of Noel's power? "How is that possible? Surely you have some goal. You want to eat your pancakes, you want to keep breathing for a while? World domination? No?" They all sounded like good options to Lori.

Keep breathing? He hardly cared. He'd lived so long that death was curious.

World domination? Ha! The world was so messed up, he would hardly want to be the one responsible for running things. It would practically have to be torn down and built up again from scratch before it would even be close to tolerable.

She sounded so disappointed in him. He felt a little bad that he didn't have some kind of goal to tell her about.

He was going to get his medical degree at some point, but he couldn't remember why, since he was a healer anyway. It was somewhat curious that powerless humans had managed to replicate a healer's ability, just as they had replicated throwing fireballs, creating explosions, and flying. But that wasn't really a goal.

Sebastian knew dozens of languages, played several instruments, had learned the art of dancing in all but the most modern of styles, and had mastered sword wielding in every style he had encountered. He'd read a million books and watched the embers of a million fires smolder. There was no other hobby he really cared to take up, no other task he felt the need to accomplish, and yet he still wasn't satisfied with his life. There was something missing.

This was getting depressing. And here he'd thought they were just going to have a nice brunch and talk about pancakes.

Was it achieving a goal that made someone happy or simply having a goal and striving toward it? Did a person's level of happiness correspond with the difficulty of their goal? Did Lori's goal of uniting the world bring her that much more enjoyment because it was so impossible? Did Forte's goal of fighting and defeating a strong enemy make him happy because the challenge was so great?

Maybe Lori was right. He should have a goal. But what? What would possibly be challenging enough that it could drag him, an immortal, out of the mire of indifference? Thus the train of thought looped back around to the world domination station, but the unicorn man didn't find it any more appealing than he had before.

No, there must be some other impossible task that might be appealing, he thought. He simply needed to think on it. In the meantime, he could return to the university. Students had all kinds of crazy and impossible ideas.

“I think I'd like to go back to medical school,” he responded after a long thoughtful silence, “but that isn't nearly as exciting as your goals. Do you have any plans for how to make them come about?”

He thought on it for a while and that did give Lori some hope. Hope that he crushed with some helpful goal-oriented and entirely non-threatening words.

"That's... admirable." And so not the direction she wanted him to go. "Why would you go to medical school when you're a healer? Is it just the one schooling project you haven't done yet...? or...?" The most devious medical pursuits she could think of were eugenics or chemical warfare or...

> “but that isn't nearly as exciting as your goals. Do you have any plans for how to make them come about?”

"I do and they're falling flat." Lori lamented the failure of her plan to the one who was unknowingly failing. She was so disappointed in him. How much did she have to take away from him to make him into the evil force of nature she wanted? "Admittedly, if I didn't care what people thought, I could probably get more done." Torture? Steal Noel away? What motivated him now? Obviously, it wasn't the baby momma she had at home.

“There's always more to learn, and healing can't do everything that modern day medicine can.” Like cure cancer, eradicate a disease before it even took hold, and countless other things.

Sebastian picked up his fork and prodded the giant pancake that had appeared in front of him, looking for the best place to begin. Lori seemed to be deflated, and he wasn't sure why. A few minutes ago she had been so excited about her goals and now they seemed to be dragging her down. Perhaps she had chosen one that was too difficult to achieve.

“Is there anything I can do to help?”

He put the first bite of pancake in his mouth and chewed thoughtfully.