New York possessed a good number of homeless shelters, no real surprise when one considers the city’s size. There is only one however that can boast gold plated cathedral doors and the means to keep them, where any other institution would have been robbed blind long ago.

It was known as Sanctuary, a rather fitting title for an establishment which catered primarily to mutants who felt they had nowhere else to turn. Upon proof of an active X gene, and the filing of proper paperwork, residency was all but guaranteed, no questions asked, no judgments rendered and no payment necessary. The Sanctuary seemed to only have one golden rule; “What is ours, we keep”. Any who infringed upon this maxim with malice aforethought invariably failed to last long within their new home.

Rationally it was a system which simply shouldn’t have worked. Given that the vast majority of disadvantaged and homeless mutants were quite often those with the most destructive capabilities any attempt to house them all in one place should have been a spectacular failure resulting, at the very least, in a new ground zero for the city.

Yet somehow the Sanctuary not only survived day by day, it thrived. Growing in numbers and turning society’s most dangerous and unpredictable undesirables in too a cohesive, if not altogether organized, group. For the right kind of mind, a developing institution such as this displayed… potential.

Indeed one particularly infamous resident displayed a good deal of latent potential; one Isabel Duckmoor, a femme fatale who had risen to prominence in recent times and whose kill count would not have seemed out of place in a phone book. The girl was virtually an arsenal in her own right and had come out the better against both SWAT and NYPD on multiple occasions. According to popular opinion, she was, essentially, untouchable.

Which was why Zephyr had made a point of laying the girl out in less than five minutes when he’d first met her. Granted it hadn’t enamored the gamine to him but it had earned him a measure of respect and had, for a time, the formed the basis of a profitable, if not entirely stable, working relationship.

It was in the interest of this relationship that Zephyr had made his way to Sanctuary through the city’s crowded midday streets. Their last assignment had ended on a somewhat… tumultuous note and the elemental had fully intended to leave the buxom soubrette be until she’d had some time to clear her head. Surprisingly though, and for the first time the hessian could remember, Duskmoor had chosen to contact him, sending a simple text message requesting that they meet just inside Sanctuary’s golden doors.

He was quite curious to hear what the young woman had to say.

Kyle wasn't much of a believer in luck. Everything he'd done and dealt with up until this point in his life had been accomplished by skill and knowledge, not some unseen force that some said made the gun jam or the light change at the perfect moment. Luck was just another thing people clung to in an effort to cover their weaknesses or explain why they were down in the dirt. "Their luck was going to change?" Terrible excuse.

It seemed there was a higher power watching over them all, however, and it had to grind Kyle's face in that fact. That was the only reason Kyle could think of to explain the phone he found in the rec room one day.

The hour had been late when Kyle had found his way into the rec room, a quick stop to see if anyone else was up at this hour to kill some time. Sadly, unlike him, most the mutants in Sanctuary preferred to be asleep as this hour, so the room was as empty as a tomb. Sighing, Kyle was halfway out the door when something buzzing caught his ear. The source of the buzzing, which after an extensive search, was a phone, which Kyle found between the cushions of one of the couches.

The phone wasn't familiar to him and there were no outward signs of who the device belonged too. Luckily, there were a few ways Kyle could discover its owner. Flicking the phone open, Kyle let his eyes inspect the screen before his first course of action was decided. Plenty of people nowadays liked taking pictures of themselves with their phones, so with any luck, the owner of this phone would be one of them. Or at the very least, have several images on it that Kyle could use to figure out its owner.

The first picture almost made me drop a brick. Literally. It took a moment for Kyle's brain register what his eyes were taking in; the curves of a woman's body, almost perfect in both shape and form. The man in him stirred at this revelation, at this image, enough so that for a moment he couldn't think at all; just stare and admire. When his mind finally managed to fix itself to think, Kyle looked at the picture again, his focus regained. The focus of the picture, a woman, was lacking clothes of any kind, her modesty barely, if at all, covered. But it wasn't the body that drew most of his attention(at least after the initial stare and shock), but the face. He knew this woman.

Isabel. The picture was of Isabel, of that there was no doubt, but Isabel in a way that Kyle doubted many had seen her at all. Or if any did, they would not be alive to speak the tale.

Kyle's mind was already a blur with this, trying to put two and two together logically. Was this Isabel's phone? That hardly seemed likely, considering that Isabel didn't seem the kind of person to take images of herself like this. If she did, well, let's just say she did a wonderful job of hiding that fact from people. It seemed more likely, however, that the phone must have belonged to someone else, especially with the fact that the camera's angle showed both Isabel's arms in a position that would make taking a picture hard.

But who? Who could take a picture of Isabel like this and still be alive? There was the possibility that whoever had taken the pictures was dead and Isabel had taken the phone...but Kyle doubted the pictures would have survived if she'd done that. There were too many questions and not enough answers yet, so Kyle skimmed further into the images. After a few more pictures of Isabel as god had intended her, Kyle came across one that wasn't of her stripped down. In fact, it wasn't a picture of her at all.

This time, the image was of a man, naked from the waist up. The man was resting in what appeared to be a bed of sorts, which could be anywhere really based on what little the camera showed. He was a decent looking man and Kyle spent a few moments trying to see if the face on the image was one he might have noticed around Sanctuary. When he eventually came to the conclusion that he'd never seen the man before, Kyle closed the images and chose a new strategy.

The contact list. It didn't take him long at all to find it and pull it open. A look through it and Kyle was finally able to put two and two together. The phone had to be Isabel's. Syn was there, as was Abyss, Mercury, even Lori and a long list of names he didn't recognize. All signs pointed to the phone belonging to Isabel, which made the images even more curious. Why would she keep images of herself like that? And who was the man she'd taken a half naked picture of?

He should have stopped at this point, Kyle knew it. But his curiosity was a curse at times and this time, it was burning with a fire that could not be stopped. He had to know who merited a picture like that. So Kyle scrolled through the list and after determining that most the names were females, he narrowed down his suspect pool to a few.

One name was blocked, a dead end. Another was Abyss and Mercury, but the image wasn't of them. The man had normal colored skin, not burning red. Which left just one name; Zephyr. If Kyle calculated it all, the only person that the photo could have been of was this man. And it was time for Kyle to decide how far he was willing to go to learn the truth of this matter.

He sent the text to him to meet at Sanctuary without any second thought.

Midday came quickly the next day, especially since Kyle had slept little and woke early, spending all the time to just short of the meeting working out in the gym. At half an hr to the meeting, Kyle was showered, redressed, and waiting just inside the entrance to the main doors. Traffic was low at this time for once, a favor Kyle supposed he would grant to the invisible force that had allowed him to find the phone. Still, even with heavy traffic, Kyle would have picked out Zephyr's face easily enough when he entered, his gaze likely searching for the woman the phone belonged too.

Covered by the shadow of the door, Kyle grinned and stepped out into the light, letting out a low whistle as he did. "I must say, you are the spitting image of your photograph. Even fully dressed, it would be easy to pick you from a crowd. Zephyr, I take it?"

One of the better kept secrets of Zephyr’s mutation was his ability to recognize and track the various elements of air around him. He could see a summer breeze from almost a mile away and distinguish the subtle currents brought about by mere breath. It was almost akin to having his own built in radar, the elemental knew where the air was and where it was not.

Which was why, when he entered the Sanctuary’s black marbled foyer, the hessian took care not to open the aureate doors too harshly and so avoided crushing the unknown figure lurking in the doors shadow. Sanctuary’s administrators were a frequent, if indirect employer, and so Zephyr saw little point or profit in causing an altercation which could be easily avoided.

Sadly though the elemental hadn’t managed three steps past the shelters threshold before the same unknown figure chose to make a nuisance of himself, announcing his presence with a high pitched puerile whistle, which immediately grated upon the ears and earned the man a disapproving frown from the Sanctuary’s blonde receptionist even as Zephyr turned to regard the stranger with a dry look. and his mind the possible meaning behind his words.

The most salient stranger was young, perhaps later teens to early twenties, boasting a build that was neither imposing nor belittling but simply average. In contrast to this though he possessed should length sable hair which was shot through with crimson and contrasted sharply with the plain blue shirt he wore beneath a black leather jacket which black jeans and trainers covered his lower half.

All in all the young man looked like a slightly flamboyant street thug, an impression which was only reinforced by the faint, but noticeable, Canadian accent which lent a somewhat ungainly tone to the boys words though he was perfectly intelligible. "I must say, you are the spitting image of your photograph. Even fully dressed, it would be easy to pick you from a crowd. Zephyr, I take it?”[/color]

Hearing his moniker and the words preceding it, the elemental quickly reevaluated the situation. He did not make a habit of giving out his name, he was far too fond of the protection his relative anonymity provided him. The fact that he was apparently not only known t this stranger but had been recognized from a photo raised a number of worrying possibilities, not least of which was the fact that Duskmoor was conspicuously absent.

Still, Zephyr was nothing if not adaptable and so he gave the stranger a polite, if disinterested look, as he subtly began to exert his will on the surrounding air should he need to defend himself. “I’m sorry, do I know you?”

Kyle took a moment to give the man a look over after making his presence known, studying him in a way. There was nothing unique about the man in his clothes; a blue collar shirt over a black one, grey pants that were tailored from the look of them. His shoes showed sign of wear and tear, gray running shoes that had obviously been part of his attire for a long time. Putting the clothing aside, the man had strikingly piercing azure eyes that bored into Kyle as he approached. The most unique thing about the man, however, was the ghostly white hair that covered his head.

The hair was the only thing that stood out. There were no signs of winkles or age on the man, which meant that his hair wasn't white from age. A curious fact that rose questions, questions that Kyle would have to ask later if he could. For now, his curiosity was narrowed to a much more specific topic.

The glare from the receptionist didn't go unnoticed, a mental note being logged in Kyle's mind to apologize and repay her for the temporary annoyance later. Stepping closer to the man who he believed to be Zeph, Kyle stopped a few paces away, where neither of them were within arm's length of one another, yet could speak without having to raise their voices to be heard. Of course, just because they were out of arm's length didn't mean Kyle was outside his range; but that was a secret best kept for now.

"You don't, but that I hope to change.. I apologize for the deception, but I figured this would be the fastest way to meet you.

Allow me to introduce myself; my name is Kyle Albatross, to which you may call me either or by Forte if you wish. And the reason I've brought you here today is to talk about a mutual acquaintance we seem to share. I believe you're familiar with a woman named Isabel?"

He’d never particularly enjoyed being the center of attention, where some people reveled in the limelight Zephyr had always preferred being a member of the audience. Granted there were occasional exceptions for female company and other circumstances, however the varietage haired youth before met none of the usual requirements. If anything Mr. ‘Albatross’, a clearly contrived moniker, was beginning to raise a number flags the elemental didn’t particularly care for.

That being said, the gamin hadn’t yet stated anything which wasn’t public knowledge; the hessians own sobriquet while not widely known was in the Sanctuary’s files, and the rather… eventful, conclusion of his last meeting with Duskmoor would likely have gathered rather more notice than the elemental would have liked. After all, it wasn’t every day that a man managed to walk out of the buxom bonemancers abode in one piece, yet alone wearing her spare clothing. Rumours were bound to have spread sadly.


The mention of a photo was also slightly concerning, the elemental tended to avoid being caught on film when possible and he could only recall one which had been taken with any recency and that had been by Duskmoor herself. While the girl was the type to brag and boast the events leading up to that particular image should have been sufficient to prevent the brunette from even alluding to its existence, let alone sharing it.

Frowning slightly Zephyr reigned in his thoughts, he was beginning to make assumptions; he had no actual idea what photo ‘Albatross’ was talking about, nor why the man had sought him out. Still, in circumstances such as these there was an often overlooked grain of wisdom he could employ.

When in doubt, deny everything.

Keeping a firm yet subtle grasp on the surrounding air Zephyr allowed his frown to widen fractionally as he tilted his head to one side in an aporetic affectation. “I see… Could you perhaps be more specific? Isabel is fairly common name.”

Cool customer, this Zephyr. Even at the mention of Isabel's name, the man showed no clear sign to acknowledge that the name meant anything to him. In Kyle's mind, that could any number of things, some of which were easily ticked off the scrolling list.

The being standing before him was clearly the man in the picture, so a stand in was quickly thrown to the wind. It was also highly unlikely that Kyle had confused the woman in the pictures on the phone; his eyes weren't nearly that bad and he'd encountered Isabel enough times to be able to pick her out from any crowd. Of course, that would have to be a crowd of mutants, for she'd be a single figure standing out if it were a mass of humans. And probably the only one not fleeing in every which direction.

The most promising thought in his mind was that his was a test. Zephyr had to be a far cut above the rest to have earned the honor to get a half naked picture of himself taken on the violate beauty's phone; and then get a full snap shot, no several, of Isabel as many a man would wish to see her yet could only dream. For a swift death if they did. In the end, it came down to two possibilities; Zephyr had a much closer relationship to her that she hid from the world or that Zephyr had abilities beyond belief. And intelligence no doubt as well.

Tread carefully, young warrior, was Kyle's approach to this. For once, playing it cool was likely the best course of action to achieve his aims. Smiling, Kyle showed his hands, trying to prove he was unarmed or at the very least, had no ill intentions at the moment. He better then most knew that with a mutant, empty hands meant nothing.

"I could be more specific, yes. The Isabel I'm referring to is about, say, 5'10, decent build, long brown locks, a rather ample bosom, usually wears a large bow atop her head, brown eyes. Oh yes, and she's often violent, dangerous and has a proficiency in growing bones from her body in order to stab people. And she's a beauty by many standard. If that's not enough, this might be a bit clearer."

Reaching into his pocket, Kyle produced the bonemancer's phone, which he still had on him, having already flicked the device open before the man's arrival and located the appropria---scratch that, necessary image in the event it was needed. Moving carefully, he approached the man and held the device out to him, the image clearly displayed as the device rested in his palm. "I think her last name was...Dusk...something or the other. She's not in the habit of giving it out from what I'm told, but you pick up pieces here and there."