Unlock My Secrets

[Kitten King]

If she was aiming to drive him crazy, she was succeeding.

It was the third day he'd had to pick his lock into his own workshop. He'd thought for awhile, perhaps, that he'd simply lost it, and he'd have to keep looking until it turned up. He roamed the halls for a couple nights, with no success - and then, today, when he'd entered the room, he knew. Disassembled projects and things moved across the room from where they'd been before? It could mean only one thing... she had his key, and she was still pissed at him.

Well, that was great. He scowled at the stone floor as he roamed the nighttime halls again, hands in his pocket. There was no reasoning with her, was there? He'd even tried to be nice to her, at the end. He'd let her go without any resistance, off to nurse her own wounds. Sure, it was a little irresponsible of him, but it wasn't like he was a teacher. He was just the electrician. If a student hit her head, and then... ran off, that wasn't his fault. A nagging feeling in the back of his mind told him otherwise - he tried his best to ignore it.

[Ixtlilton]

Dragon had been having fun the last few nights. She'd been all depressed and emo before Lilith (and more successfully, Bonnie) had cheered her up. Bonnie had done the trick by presenting to Dragon one of his precious shinies. In this case, the precious shiny happened to have Flash's name on it.

It had taken her a few night's searching the castle to actually find the right room. But when the key fit, she knew she had the right one. She didn't even need the key, she could just slip in under the door, now that she knew which one it was, and the fact of the matter was, he had a great workshop going on in there. He didn't need to use it at night, right?

So now all that remained was what to do with the key. If she kept it (or, more likely, threw it down the sink), he could assume he misplaced it and someone else was getting in for forever, or at least until he had the lock changed. That would buy her time. She certainly couldn't RETURN it to him. Should she sneak up on him and slip it back into his bag or pocket or something and make him question his sanity?

Either way, revenge on him was like revenge on all the blue eyed bastards who'd tormented her in the past. Fair? Absolutely not. But as she roamed the halls, a shadow amongst shadows, she couldn't help but feel like it was deliciously satisfying.

[Kitten King]

The halls were empty, dark, and quiet at night - he liked it that way. While it was nice to have plenty of pretty girls to bat an eye at and flirt with here and there, it got exhausting after awhile. The break in the chaos gave him time to just soak in the silence, think a little, without distraction. It was... good, yet bad. Maybe the fact that this space of time meant so much to him proved that he liked a little suffering in his life. Was that sick? Heh...

Prrrooww? Flash paused, turning around and looking behind him to see a large, russet form padding up to him. He smiled a little bit, reaching down to pet her.

"Hey, Trin-Trin." Trinity just stared at him, the tip of her tail twitching - almost as though she were raising an eyebrow at him. She was the mirror image of the girl who'd given her to him, some days. He gave her a scratch behind the ears, and then kept walking. She followed him, her big paws moving swiftly and silently across the floor. He was lucky to have a cat like her, he knew. She was a Siberian, and female, which meant that she was about as hypoallergenic as a cat got - she also helped with the rat problem in the basement, which hadn't existed in over a year thanks to her quick claws. She got free roam because of that, and could go where he went, if she so felt like... so it was that together, they traversed a path through the castle in the dark of night, until Flash found himself standing in front of the door to his room.

He stood outside for a short time, just staring at the doorway as though he was not sure if he wanted to go in or not. Then, silent as he'd been this whole time, he stepped across the hall, and unlocked the door. He opened it and held it, letting Trin pad her way in, and then entered himself. He left the door ajar behind him - no one would bother him at this time of night, and if any students got curious, he could handle them on his own. Most of them wouldn't bother faculty, anyhow - particularly faculty that would just let them go. Moonlight bathed the small space of his single tower room, requested to allow him to be closer to the sky during electrical storms, and outlined the few possessions he kept in this room.

A worn messenger bag, his workbelt that hung on the left wall, a pile of mismatched clothing in the corner, and a small round table on which sat a single polished golden picture frame.

[Ixtlilton]

People should really know better than to wander around the halls at night. Dragon was ALWAYS on the prowl, and in this particular case, well, who on earth would wander around the halls at night knowing full well that Dragon was likely to be prowling. Dragon was certain he'd brought this on himself, which was why she followed him guilt free.

She hadn't really expected him to have a cat, but you know, whatever.

So, this was his room. She slithered under the bed to lurk for a bit, trying to figure out how she could play this for maximum hilarity. She had to make sure he didn't figure out, since he knew what her power was, but that still left a lot of area open for messing with his mind. God, if she'd only ever gotten this chance with certain other people...

She eyed his fat cat warily. She liked cats well enough, she supposed. At least in theory. She'd never actually been as close to a cat as she was right now... did they have any magic cat senses?

[Kitten King]

Flash left everything where it was, upon moving across the room to sit down. Trinity followed him, paw after paw, and leapt onto the bed, where she sat down and began to groom a paw. Flash smiled at her again, glad as ever for her company, and then followed suit and sat down on the bed. He just sat there for a moment, head tilted back and eyes closed, trying to let the stress of the day leech away from everything else. There was nothing he could do right now about the key, so really, he should stop thinking about it, he guessed.. but he had the feeling that nothing good was going to come of it, and he couldn't get that thought to go from his mind.

Of course, there was no proof that she really had taken it. He could've just dropped it, or it could've been someone else entirely. He wasn't really sure what to do - like THAT was anything new, right? He was 'winging it' more often than he had a plan and he was honestly beginning to wonder how long he was going to be able to keep that up. Not too long, he bet... ah, look at yourself now, Flash. He was having one hell of a night, that was for sure. He sighed again, lowered his head and opening his eyes. He twisted where he sat and stared out the window, watching the moon for a few moments, then he turned back again, got up, and walked to the little table, where he ran a finger down the edge of the picture frame.

"...and what would you do if you were here, love?" He wondered that a lot - he could never come up with much of anything. Perhaps he hadn't known her as well as he'd thought. He looked back at Trin, who was staring at the bed with an odd intensity, as though looking through it. "I'll be right back, Trin-Trin. Don't wait up." He moved across the room, opened the door again, and was gone.

Quiet.

[Ixtlilton]

Unfortunately, it seemed Flash was plotting against her. He moped around a bit, and just as she was heading for the closet to cause a bit of chaos, he started talking to a picture frame.

What is he, in a soap opera? Dragon wondered to herself, sneaking closer in the unlit room. The picture frame held a photo of a blonde girl... woman? Woman, probably, with long, straight blonde hair. She would have guessed it was his sister if it weren't for the way he was talking to the phrame. Long distance lover, maybe? She glared scathingly at the pretty woman... Dragon didn't really like attractive women, and her hatred for blondes crossed genders for the most part, anyway. They were perfect together, Dragon thought irritably. Two pretty blonde idiots together forever.

However, Dragon wasn't going to get the chance to mess with Flash. He was getting up and LEAVING again. At this hour? What kind of a faculty member was he, anyway? That was no kind of example to set for children (no, the irony was not lost on her)! Well, she could cause more havock while he was out, anyway... where to start?

Sadly, she never got the chance, because before she even got out of the shadows, Flash's stupid cat started YOWLING. There was a loud thump as Dragon flailed in the shadows, causing the floor to vibrate violently. She paused for a second, having not realized she could actually do that, but another yowl from the cat sent her reeling out of the shadows altogether.

The cat was on the bed, sort of flopping about and yowling in obvious discontent. SHIT. Was it having some kind of KITTY SEIZURE? WAS HIS CAT DYING? Another yowl confirmed it for Dragon; Flash's cat was dying.

"FLASH!" she yelped out, running to the door and throwing it open again, hoping he hadn't gotten too terribly far down the hall. "YOUR CAT IS DYING I DIDN'T DO IT!"

[Kitten King]

Flash, sober night as he was having, wasn't against going around and wandering the halls all night. It wasn't as though he had a set schedule, after all.. it wasn't unusual for him to lay in bed, comatose, well past sun-up if he didn't have anywhere to be. He just left his pager on ear-splitting loud by his head and waited for the call, at which point he would haul his ass out of bed and actually get moving for the day. He was so off-kilter compared to everyone else, but it didn't matter much. The only people he really talked to where Jacob, and, ironically, Mika. Who seemed to keep thinking she could make things better with him - it never worked, of course. It just ended with both of them yelling and pissed off at each other, as always. No different than any other time.

Of course, he didn't have much time to think on those things. Or to get to the bathroom, where he'd actually been heading. Nope, instead, Dragon came bursting out of his room. OUT OF HIS ROOM. ...what. The hell. He didn't even have time to think on that though! (He was getting mental fuckin' whiplash.) Instead, he became instantly preoccupied. Trin?

"The ?!" He instantly spun on his heels, sprinting back across the hall to his room. "Move!" He practically shoved her out of the way, rushing in and half sliding across the room, almost running into the opposite wall. Extremely athletic of him, yes we know, but that wasn't the point. He crouched down beside Trin, and while she yowled and growled at him, he was silent for a few moment. "...shit, she's not dying!" A strange combination of words, but they made more sense when combined with what followed when he turned around and stared at Dragon

"She's having kittens!"

[Ixtlilton]

Dragon seemed to do everything dramatically these days. She hit her head dramatically, even, and there was something inherently dramatic, she supposed, about disappearing and reappearing. So she wasn't particularly surprised when Flash shoved her out of the way. How dramatic. She poofed into the shadows as quickly as she could, not wanting to risk hitting her head again. It was as if Flash was trying to give her a concussion. Technically she couldn't blame him since his cat was dying, but she probably would anyway.

She popped back out of the shadows, thinking that running away would not do good credit to her claim of having nothing to do with his cat's whole dying thing. However, she wasn't prepared for what she heard.

"...KITTENS?!"

Dragon had never actually seen that many cats. She'd only ever touched one once. (She'd touched more foxes. If shifters counted.) But she knew they got pregnant, and she knew you were supposed to keep that from happening. "...You know in the school rules it says all animals have to be neutered, right?" she said blankly, declaring literally the only thing she could think of.

[Kitten King]

"I thought she was, Vetra said she was a rescue!" Flash said, still feeling a little panicky and completely unsure of what to do. Rescues were supposed to fix the animals before you got them, right? Unless by rescue, Vetra had meant, 'Oh, I picked her up off the street, here you go,' or 'my cat-loving old neighbor couldn't keep her, so here!' ...shit that's exactly the sort of thing she would do, wasn't it? After all it was Mika who'd told her Trin was a Siberian, not Vetra. Wouldn't you know that if you picked her up from an actual shelter? Damn it, no time to think about it right now! He turned back to Dragon, mind racing.

"Listen, kid - I know you kind of hate me for whatever frikkin' reason, but do me a favor, won't you?" If she said no, he'd figure out... something to do, god, but he wasn't gonna be able to handle this alone. He needed some help. He glanced down as Trin yowled again. "Go get my sister - she's in dorm, god, 327 I think. Gold eyes, light brownish hair." He didn't keep track very well - he didn't care enough. The number sounded right, though. "Mika. She's an animal-speaker, she'll know what to do." She might be a little pissed about being woken up, but who cared. That little black rat of hers was probably the father, too... he sighed, annoyed, and looked back at Dragon. "If you won't do that then... stay HERE while I get her?" He was hoping she'd listen to him this time, as sad a prospect as that seemed to be.

[Ixtlilton]

"That's because you--" She paused. Now wasn't the time for introverted thought, really, but she went into an internal monologue anyway. Why did she hate him? It was because he was kind of a douche, and a flirt, but that wasn't REALLY why, was it? It was because of his face. He reminded her of things she didn't want to be reminded of. When she looked at his smirking mug, all she saw was Nova's blank face, watching her fall off of a cliff. Not even moving. She was projecting, that's what Dr. Craven called it. She was projecting onto him, and that was far from fair.

But she was physically incapable of apologizing anyway, and being fifteen, even that cat-pregnancy induced moment of clarity was rare, and faded quickly into the whole "right, pregnant cat" thing.

"...Yeah, I know where that is." She was, after all, 316, and not terribly far from there. "I'll go, um, do that then." And with that, she stepped towards the door and, leg first, slid into the shadow. She always liked the melting sensation, like spinning down, down, down... But she didn't have time to savor right now. She raced down from the teacher's dorms towards the girl's dorms. She'd had more than plenty of time to explore. They gave you so much time off here... school work (if she bothered to do it all! She didn't HAVE to!) didn't take all that terribly long, and they seemed to expect her to sleep for like eight or ten hours. She didn't, of course, so she spent hours a night exploring. It took her no time at all to slip under the door to Mika's room and...

Pause. Slip back under the door. Reappear. And knock. Loudly, mind, but she still thought it would be a way less rude awakening then someone suddenly being in your room for no apparent reason. "Miss... um..." HE'D JUST SAID HER NAME. SHIT. "Animal-talker-lady?" she called out, pounding on the door again. "Feline emergency!"

[Kitten King]

It was Xanthur that sensed her coming first. He woke from his nap and lifted his head up, blinking around in the shadows, unsure of what he was sensing. There were a lot of things in the castle that did that to him. Then the knocking started, and he stood quickly, shaking out his fur and giving a shoulder a quick lick. His girl stirred beside him, and he leaped off the bed, getting out of her way. She mumbled something incomprehensibly, mind sorting things out for a moment, before she seemed to really get what was being said. Emergency?

"Coming!" They were probably disturbing her roommate, but the cranky plant-manipulator would have to deal. Some things were more important. Not even bothering to turn on a light in here, since she could see just fine in her own right, she quickly pulled on some better clothes than her sleeping ones, grabbed the smaller of her two bags to sling over her shoulder, and pulled open the door. The face wasn't familiar to her - she wasn't even sure that she'd seen the girl (boy?) around. "Let's go - you can tell me what's wrong on the way." Xan slipped out behind her as she shut the door, which was fine, considering the time and that it was a cat problem. He looked particularly worried, though.. she had to wonder why.

[Ixtlilton]

By the time Mika had come to the door, Dragon had reminded herself of the other reasons she disliked Flash. His cocky attitude, his playboy ways... They comforted her into thinking she wasn't actually just taking her issues out on him. After all, since she'd started paying attention, she'd noticed he was a topic amongst the girls in her class. She'd thought it was just his default setting at first, but now she was starting to wonder if he wasn't actually some kind of pervert.

Well, he had a girlfriend, right? That photo? ...Why did he flirt with other girls if he had a girlfriend? Was he a horrible person?

Her rambling thoughts were finally interupted when the door opened. ...Was everyone just taller than her? Was that it? Goddamnit. She glared up at the girl a little bit when she obviously didn't recognize her. "I'm in your English class," she said a little scathingly. Although really, she was the first one in and the last one out every day, and she sat behind this girl. But... directly behind. C'mon. She was invisible even when she was visible!

Oh, right, cat. She was about to slip into the shadow when she remembered that she was expected to LEAD this girl to Flash's room. Well, then she could leave, she supposed. "It's your brother's cat. I thought it was dying but it's apparently having kittens, so he asked me to get you."

[Kitten King]

English class? She didn't remember her... but then, Mika didn't really pay attention to the humans that much, especially not in class. She was more concerned with the doodles on her paper than anything she heard in English. She paid somewhat more attention in History, but she was still a little, ah.. lackluster in her studies. She did okay, sure, but she wasn't exactly A+ material either. "Sssorry. I don't pay much attention in class." Shrugging it off, they started off and Dragon explained it. Her face twisted from worry into an annoyed scowl, for more than one reason.

"I know his cat, yeah - I told him to double-check that she was fixed." She saw the cat more than her brother, to be honest - she was around with Xan more often than not. Still, this came as a bit unexpected. After all, how many unfixed cats were there in... the castle... God damn it. "Wait, Xan. Xanthur. Please tell me you're not the father." The black cat's little ears went back, and he quickly darted ahead of them, trying to get out of range. "Xan."

'That would be a lie!' he meowed over his shoulder, and took off the direction that was more than familiar to him.

"XAN, YOU-" Oh god she was gonna get in so much trouble. She'd been allowed to have Xan go unfixed, since he was an older cat even when she'd first come, since all other pets were supposed to be fixed in the first place. It shouldn't have been a problem. "...right. Well, I know the way - hasn't moved rooms since he started as staff last year." She glanced at Dragon again, just thinking of something. "..how do you know him anyhow?" She was kind of grudging to answer that question, since he'd been even more flirty and dodgy ever since he'd come back, and he'd been kind of a flirty ass before. Curiosity was gonna kill her one of these days.

[Ixtlilton]

"Wait," Dragon said, her brain chugging away as they walked. "If you can talk to animals, why didn't you just ask the cat if she'd had any surgery, to see if she'd been fixed?"

She'd had to get her FERRET fixed, and she was the only one on campus with a pet ferret! But these two idiots hadn't fixed their cats? God, they couldn't even get like... a kitty abortion (did those exist?). It was too late. They would be awash with kittens.

"Oh, how I know him?" She paused, condsidering the best way to phrase it. "I was fixing a refridgerator when he showed up and kept flirting with me. I got him to leave, but he came back in and startled me, so I ran headfirst into a fridge and got a minor concussion."

Ah, they were back at his room now. "It was, uh, just luck I ran into him tonight," she lied, starting determinedly at the wall as she walked into the room. "I was passing by... And I heard the cat."

[Kitten King]

…well Dragon had her there. Why hadn't she just done that? Ohhh, because she didn't have a BRAIN, that's right. Smart, Mika. So smart.

"If my brain worked, maybe I would have been able to come up with that," she admitted with a reluctant grumble. "And it shouldn't have mattered, if a certain black furball had done as I asked." Listening to Dragons' second story though, she felt a little less idiotic - who runs into a fridge? Well at least it was her brother's fault, so she could harp on him all she wanted later, if she needed an excuse to. It seemed like it was fight or surrender with him, all because of his inability to let go.

Not that other people didn't have that problem, but damn. Only he could hold onto something for this many years.

"Just luck, huh?" She sounded a little dubious, and to be honest, it was because she was. She didn't have much time to think on it, though, since events were unfolding more quickly than predicted.

"Thank god, get over here, it's not breathing!" That caught her attention.

"What? Move over, I have this." She did nothing short of shove him out of the way and snatch (albeit gently) the first of the kittens out of his hands. It was a tiny little thing, even more than normal - she couldn't be sure until she saw the others if this was because Xan was the father or not. She dug through her bag, snatching out a towel and a small bulb syringe. She worked quickly to clear the airway, thanking god that she'd spent a summer using her free time to shadow in a clinic in a breeding community, and probably startled the hell out of the other two when she suddenly brought her arms up and then swung them down with the kitten in her hands.

"WHAT are you-"

"It clears the airway, don't worry. I know what I'm doing." Unlike you, she wanted to snap, but she held her tongue. It would do nothing right now… she did the motion again, and a third time, before a little sneezing noise came from the white-furred bundle, followed by a little mew. "There we go, scream for me little guy." It was odd wording, but the louder a little kitten mewed, the better sign it was. The following mew was still quiet though, so she knew it'd have to be tended to. The first two could come really fast though, so she needed to be watching Trin… she stood up again and moved over to Dragon, holding out her hands. "Here, I trust you more than him. Rub - not too hard, but vigorously enough."

"'Scuse me?"

"HUSH. You didn't even take her to a vet." Yeah she was a little stressed, but she'd have to calm down soon enough. Couldn't have Trin picking that up - it'd only make it worse.