Not Until We Are Lost

Emma Frost ran through the landscape of her own mind, scrambling over fuzzy memories with jagged edges - there was the time she'd first learned her mom was an alcoholic, and that was the moment when she'd first touched another person's mind - in a mad, desperate race to stay one step ahead of the burning monster.

( And to think the day had started off tolerably well... )

Mikey woke up curled on a pillow, nobody else in the room. Nothing smelled like the birds, nothing smelled like the dog, either of them, and nothing smelled like Niks. It all smelled like, well, honestly nothing. Maybe that should have disturbed him, but he really didn't care. His stomach was telling him that he needed something to eat, and that was the most important thing.

Jumping off the bed, he discovered that the doorknob was round, and he had no desire at the moment to shift forms to be a boy and take care of it, despite how monumentally easy it was for him to go back and forth. Instead, Mikey opted to jump out the open window. He landed on soft grass, and took a moment to eat a bit of it. He'd throw up later, but that was okay. That's what grass was for.

The sleek black cat trotted around the building to where the smells of food were coming from. He had no idea where he was, though he was aware that it was another beach. Not the same beach, though. He remembered what he'd done wrong the last time, and opted to stay in the shade of the building. He could run out and play in the sand later, once he was full and well watered.

Before he got to the source of the food smells, Mikey came upon a pair of legs. They were irresistible, and he immediately rubbed himself against them, meowing softly in joy.

Mikey had already explored both floors that he could get to extensively. He'd also already discovered the food that he could get by just walking up to a window and asking for it. They never stopped giving it over, either. Every time he asked for something, he got it. Then he took it back to his room and ate it.

Restraint was not one of the things Mikey was good at.

So he eventually found himself laying on the floor of his room - what a glorious room, all the things that the birds had given him, the stuff from Simon, the stuff from Niks, all of it there! - with food remnants around him, and a bellyache.

It was not comfortable any way he turned, no matter which position he tried to lay in. His stomach complained loudly. He complained loudly. Yowling and groaning.

"Help." Mikey said it softly, fearing that if he tried to yell, he might throw up. "I'm dying. Dying. Dyyyying."

The catboy whimpered, studying the bones of what amounted to several whole chickens and two pie platters that were nearby. How had he eaten all of that?

Mikey didn't know how he'd gotten from the apartment he shared with the birds, but he didn't care. When he woke up and saw that he wasn't in a black and white world that's all that mattered to him. He was excited to see color again.

Two seconds later, he realized he was wearing shoes and a hat and stupid clothes. Immediately, Mikey pulled them all off and threw them into a pile. He didn't care about them. Especially not since he could feel the sun on him, and smell the water, and the rich plants. He wanted his whole body to experience everything.

Grinning, he sprinted up the beach, naked as the day he was born. His tail was puffed out behind him in a declaration of absolute frenzied happiness. His feet splashed into the waves that rolled in, and he didn't care. Baths weren't so bad anyway, but he was way too delighted to care about the wet.

Mikey ran and ran until he realized that he'd come upon his clothes again. Which meant this was more than just a beach. It was a thing surrounded by water. There was a name for it. What was it? Who cared.

He plopped himself down in the sand and began to cover his legs in it.

Sympathy had taken the cat with her, unsure about what the man had said about it, but unwilling to leave an animal that might possibly be hyper intelligent and/or magical on its own in a strange place. Not that she really had a way to take care of it, she didn't really have a way of taking care of herself at the moment.

Not in any substantial way.

She felt like she was back in Electric City, about to live in the park. There were at least people here that she knew this time. If she could find one of those faces, maybe she could get herself into a better situation.

The cat purred softly in her arms. She'd never met an animal that responded so well to the spoken word. It was as if it really did listen to everything that she said, and understood that she was trying to take care of it. It didn't squirm around or try to get away. It watched the people and places that they passed with interest and an intelligence she couldn't tell if she was imagining or not.

She sat outside of a small shop to give her feet a rest and watch the sun go down. There was no color to see, so Sympathy painted the sky in her mind.

Things had gone sideways quickly when the alien showed, and it didn't matter that sideways had yet to involve violence. Violence with this lot seemed always like an inevitable. There were some talkers, some thinkers, but violence was there. Max knew it to be true even of himself. So, when he came to in what felt like one his own dreams, he had to sit and breathe for a moment.

"So this is how it goes? Aliens show up, and I faint?" That was how he started dreaming surely. He looked around, noticing the faces. "And, everyone came along for the ride, good to know." He knew he was talking to himself, but in a dream, such things didn't matter. At least he was dressed this time; he glanced down to check, letting out a soft whistle. What he wore was nice, and he smiled that he had at least dreamt of himself in his good trench. He glanced to the side, and there was the fedora. His hand slipped into the coat, and his smile grew grim - he even wore the holster with the gun. His fingers brushed over a suit that was so familiar; he nearly wept at having missed its comfort.

"Could be worse. No bats or bunnies. No talking frogs or dancing llamas." He didn't seem to mind the black and white, or more the shades of grey. It wasn't new to him; he did like color, but there was something freeing in the lack of color. He could fill in the spots if he wanted to with whatever combination, and no one could say he was fashionably challenged - even if he knew what some of the colors were.

"Now all I need is a damsel in distress, a case, and a sidekick." He didn't think he'd have that long of a dream, and he did notice that Eleni was around. "Or a Gal Friday would be better?" He saw a few other women. "Femme fatales galore."

Eventually, Piotr decided that enough socializing had gone on. People knew that their friends and loved ones were here with them, and that was a good thing. They could catch up further later, however. If he didn't interrupt, the meeting would go on far longer than anybody wanted it to. He'd provided some snacks, but no actual food. There would be a need for actual food at some point.

He cleared his throat to get the attention of everybody present.

"We are all here right now for the same purpose." Piotr's voice wasn't loud, but it was demanding. His accent cut through everything else easily. The edges of it were sharp, the middles heavy. He wouldn't, couldn't be ignored. "All of us were brought to this place, world or dimension, and we have all been seeking answers since we woke up. It is time to share what we have found."

He smiled a little at Mary, at Cas, then at Rob, still not giving up his position.

"I will do this in the most orderly manner that I can, so we can get the information and compare notes as needed."

Piotr turned to Castiel, who had spoken up first.

Piotr was anxious to get everything rolling. While putting the meeting off had given extra time to round up others who might need to be in on it, it meant a delay of information that he wasn't truly comfortable with. He'd managed to play it off with everybody that he'd encountered, making as if this wasn't as big a deal as it really was to him. Inside, Piotr had been twitchy. Anything could happen at any time. They were all dealing with the unknown. There were too many variables, the risk was far too high. Lingering only swayed things away from their favor.

It was very domestic, the way he readied for the guests. He didn't let Max lift a finger. It was the only way he could keep himself from stewing, really. To move, work. Put plates together. Ready beverages. Create a spread that Martha Stewart would have been proud of.

He even dressed up.

Black suit, crisp white shirt, black tie, shiny black shoes, hair combed impeccably, guns tucked away in their holsters under his arms and hidden carefully by the jacket of his expensive outfit. Not a lick of metal showing anywhere to give him away, and that was more a throwback to the long nights of watching a mark than anything else. Piotr didn't have any good reason for it now, but it felt right.

When there was nothing left to do, he leaned against the arm of the couch and worried his lip between his teeth. There wasn't a watch to check on his wrist, so he glanced every few minutes at the clock on the wall, ticking away in its hideous orange and purple motif, strange detached bunny ears the hands, a mangled face grinning behind them. It was disturbing at best, though Piotr didn't really see the image, just the minutes.

The doorbell rang and he opened it, taking up the entire doorway. He smiled at the first guests and stood aside to allow them in. He made motions toward the table of snacks and directed them toward the kitchen for drinks. Every single newcomer got the same treatment. Max still not allowed to do anything that might have taken even an iota of the control out of the Russian's hands. They weren't military people, those who were showing up, they weren't highly trained like he was, but he would be damned if he wasn't in command of everything.

There were so many faces that he didn't recognize, and still no sign of the one that he was still seeking. Rayne was not with any of the others that showed up. Piotr couldn't help the worry he felt for his charge. The strange woman who he'd met in Malden, what felt like a hundred years ago now. He didn't ask after her, knowing that if any of these people knew her, she would have been here. He'd been careful to set the time of the meeting right after sunset to accommodate her and any others that might be like her. If she was here, by some strange chance, and had not been informed of the meeting, and hadn't come looking for him, if she had, in fact, decided to keep herself secret, then she had a reason for it, and it wasn't Piotr's place to draw attention to her. The hope of that was beyond slim, however, and he knew it. She wasn't here, he just had to admit it.

He let everybody mingle for almost an hour, to make sure that all the people that had been told had a change to show up. That and it was obvious that some of them had been looking for each other for a while, and they were just now discovering one another. He couldn't bring himself to break that up. He knew how he would have felt if he'd found his friend. He wouldn't have been able to focus on anything else but making sure that she was alright.

Finally, he stood in the center of the living room, his eyes skating over the seating, knowing that there wasn't enough for everybody and regretting it, and cleared his throat to get the attention of the assembled.

"We are all here right now for the same purpose." Piotr's voice wasn't loud, but it was demanding. His accent cut through everything else easily. The edges of it were sharp, the middles heavy. He wouldn't, couldn't be ignored. "All of us were brought to this place, world or dimension, and we have all been seeking answers since we woke up. It is time to share what we have found."

He smiled a little at Mary, at Cas, then at Rob, still not giving up his position.

Anna had been on her own for the past year. There had been Castiel for awhile and then he'd disappeared on a hunt. There was no sense of closure, no hint as to what might have happened. He was just... gone without a trace.

Gone meant death for hunters, though there was a part of her that wasn't ready to believe that. Even if it might not be true since her grace had faded, there was a part of her that believed that she'd know if Castiel died.

Regardless, she was on her own and there was a whole world's worth of people to help. Anna continued on. Hunting, staying off Heaven's radar, surviving. Always surviving.

She didn't know what to think when she woke up in a house. She hadn't slept in a house since her human parents... well, that was something that was better not to think about. There was a moment between sleep and wake when she was almost back in the house that she'd grown up in. When she almost expected her mom to be making eggs or pancakes or something like that. It was only once consciousness truly settled in that she realized how unlikely all of that was.

The former angel sat up and took in her surroundings. She frowned. What was this? It didn't feel like a trickster exactly, but where was she? And what was with the creepy bunny motif?

She wandered through the household, finding more of that odd sense of decoration. Who lived here and why did they seem to be intent on combining the commercialized celebrations of His resurrection with All Hallow's Eve?

The redhead made it out the street, hoping that she would find more answers there. Hoping, and... she stopped and looked around, confusion etched into her features. Where was she?

Ever wake up to the smell of something burning and not know what it was? Jack had at least once or twice, and that still didn't make anything easier. She jerked forward, her hand going for a gun that wasn't there. She winced as the other arm was jarred slightly as the spatula she was holding hit the counter at an awkward angle.

Her eyes were wide open soon enough, and she was definitely awake. Living on the road in an existance that demanded instant awareness, even when someone hadn't gotten much sleep the night before. At least she didn't think she'd gotten much sleep.

The hunter wasn't prepared for what she saw when she looked around. The spatula was an odd thing to be holding, but she'd done some odd things in the past. At least odd things that led to dead things or undead things or dead undead things. Not a very nice kitchen in what looked to be a very nice house; a quick glance out the window suggest, the nice house was in a nice neighborhood. The odd didn't usually land her in front of an oven with pans full of burning breakfast items - sure, she'd had that short time as a short order cook, but this was nothing like that griddle. The odd definitely did not prepare her for the glance down at the June Cleaver/Father Knows Best get up. It was more Father Knows Best than Leave it to Beaver.

"What kind of nightmare is this?" She tossed the spatula in the sink and turned off the stove top ranges before yanking the apron off. Jack took a few steps before realizing the faint clicking on tile was the heels she was wearing. "What the hell?"

No, this wasn't going to work. She could roll with many punches, but waking up like some housewife in suburbia without the whole working to get to that point, a point she didn't think she was cut out for, was not her idea of fun and relaxing. She didn't do anything with the food; it was too late for it. Instead she took off her shoes, turning them to use the heels as weapons, just in case.

Jack Oat was pissed, and someone had a good bit of explaining to do.

Getting the sedative had been a little more complicated than he'd thought it would be. It turned out that the Tower was okay with handing the stuff out when it was for a plot or assignment that they handed out. If you had those credentials, they gave it out like candy at Halloween. But they were a little more cautious when it was for something that they hadn't spearheaded. They didn't seem to care very much that it was for a possible discovery that would benefit them, or that it was surrounding a pick-up that they had arranged.

Luckily for Evan, the person who was in charge of the labs when he'd gone to fetch the sedative had been female. It didn't hurt that she was an introvert. And it made it easier that she was a bit mousy. While she was very protective of her job and didn't want to get into trouble, she was not quite so protective of herself and easily fell to his charms. He felt like a bit of a jerk for manipulating her, but he'd made a promise that he would get this and help Niks out.

He arrived at the apartment almost a half an hour late. There was a whole vial of sedative in his pocket and a syringe. He didn't really want to hold the kid down and give him a shot, but if it came down to that, well, then he was ready. His other pocket held a can of tuna. The kind that had a lot of liquid in it and stank to high hell. The hope was that the odor would overpower the scent of the drug. That the flavor would eclipse the bitterness. If the kid was a werecat, or even just somehow a cat who could become human as he seemed convinced, then there was going to be a problem with his senses. They would be much more sophisticated than any human had. What Evan and Niks might not be able to detect, Mikey would discover with ease.

Evan knocked, thinking of strategies while he waited for an answer.

There were some sounds of things shifting, voices, but it was cool and dark where Mikey was, and he didn't care what the outside world wanted. He wanted to sleep. He'd seen the little cave like area and he'd crawled right inside. Nobody seemed to even notice. He hadn't even done it as a cat. Just walked right up and crawled right in. People milling around and everything. It just went to show, in Mikey's opinion, how stupid people were.

"What's that?" he vaguely registered the deep male voice. "There's a fucking kid in there."

Mikey knew then that they had found him. They were going to shoo him out. He opened his eyes and yawned, not really caring about being yelled at. People always sounded really angry, but if you ignored them, generally they eventually shut up.

He found himself looking into a pair of angry eyes and saw that a hand was coming in his direction. Likely to try to grab him and pull him right out of the cool, dark place.

"Don't touch!" Mikey growled, kicking his foot out.

"Get out of there, you little bastard!" The voice came at him again. The breath behind it was stale and sour. Kind of meaty.

Mikey would get out, but not the way that the man wanted him to. He scooted further away down the long space and then bolted out the other end, missing the swiping arms entirely. Proud of himself and pleased, Mikey made a face. Nobody could catch him if he didn't want them to. Nobody.

"Does that fucking kid have a fucking tail?" Came another voice. It seemed that a crowd had formed. People drawn in by the discovery of a body that might or might not be alive. Staying to see the drama unfold before them. Amused by the show that they were getting now that they realized that it was not a corpse. Perhaps a little disappointed by that.

His tail twitched, irritated. Really, the boy was the one who was irritated, not the tail. But the tail told on Mikey when it came to feelings a lot of the time. If he wasn't paying attention to it, sometimes it betrayed his innermost thoughts.

"Not a kid!" He turned and shouted. It was true, really. He was almost twenty years old now. But what he really meant was that he was a cat. He didn't know how or why, but he was a cat who could become a boy. That much was obvious to him because of the tail. And his eyes. His nails he kept trimmed now, since they'd started to make him wear pants, but if he let them grow, they became more clawlike than anything. Boys didn't have features like that. Cats did.

"Where are his shoes?" Mikey could hear the concern in that voice.

"Shoes are dumb." He answered.

He really wanted to get away from this crowd now. He was done with them. He was done with the whole thing. But as he pushed people aside to get through, the man with the angry voice beginning to follow him, Mikey realized that the smells were not the same here. This was not New York. He began to panic.

It wasn't unusual for Mikey to wake up and the whole place be empty. Everybody always had things to do. Shiro and John were almost always gone from the penthouse, doing things that nobody ever spoke about, and the rest of them had their own lives to attend to. Even the nights that he decided to stay at the mansion, Mikey tended to sleep so late that classes had started. Being alone did not bother him, anyway. He did like the companionship he found with those in the penthouse, and he loved the attention he got at the mansion. In the end, though, he was a cat. Independent. Free willed.

He stretched and yawned, sliding out of the bed he'd occupied last night, stopping to take a quick sniff. Vanessa. She always smelled so nice. Even if she did share a room with that other one, Davan. Davan was strange, and that was coming from a boy who thought he was a cat.

Mikey left the penthouse behind, leaving by the front door this time instead of the roof. Going from the roof meant that he needed to become a cat all the way, and he just didn't feel like trying to mess with clothing. He wanted to get some snacks. You couldn't buy snacks - or even steal them - when you were naked. That he'd learned the hard way.

Long ago, Mikey had stopped caring about people staring at him when he looked like a boy. It used to make him nervous. He'd let go of that, with help from Shiro. To see that being a boy wasn't terrible, that people who stared didn't always mean it in a bad way. Most of them out there knew what mutants were, which was apparently what Mikey was. He didn't want to believe it, still. He was a cat, he knew it. A cat who could turn into a boy for whatever stupid reason. The fact that he still had a tail when he was a boy proved that to him. So did the eyes and his fingernails.

He strutted out of the front door of the building like he owned the place, pausing to glance to the right and then the left, trying to decide which store he wanted to go to. He hadn't put on any shoes. People were always trying to force shoes on him. They were lucky they'd gotten him to start wearing pants. Shirts, too. There was no way he was going further than that. Shoes were wrong on so many levels.

Turning to the left, Mikey lazily began his walk to the shop.