Log // Forge, Kyle, Jamie, Catseye ~ Just like any old afternoon...

[x-catseye.livejournal.com]

Just another regular afternoon at the mansion. Of course, when you're talking about some of the student population, regular can be something else and then some. A shoe, a disappearing sandwich and a mad run around the house should just about cover it all.

Forge sat on the balcony, tapping his foot on the edge of the railing.

While it was true that he did technically have studying to do, and projects in the lab, and he really needed to see Dr. MacTaggart about the independent study, he was intent on sitting back and enjoying what was possibly going to be one of the last sunny days of September. And technically, he thought to himself, since Dr. MacTaggart had given him an open set of hours to meet with her, and since he wasn't there, this could possibly be what was termed by the other kids to be "ditching class".

Behind his sunglasses, Forge smiled. It felt good, to take his mind off academics for once. He leaned his head back, then heard a familiar growl. Cracking an eye, he could see Catseye curled up in preparation for a pounce, bracing herself between the railing and a potted plant.

Her eyes were fixed on Forge's shoe, unlaced and loose.

Teasingly, Forge wiggled his foot, taunting the cat with the dangling shoelaces. Then he heard it. The second growl, lower. Catseye's quick glance up gave Forge only an instant's warning before six feet of feral roommate dropped from the roof, seizing Forge's leg in between hands and feet.

"Kyle!" Forge howled as he was wrenched out of his chair and unceremoniously dumped on the balcony. "Ow, that's my good leg, you dork and -- hey! That's my SHOE!" Rolling onto his back, he saw Kyle dancing madly, raising the battered sneaker in his hand.

"SHOE!" he crowed, darting in through the door. Forge sat up, only to be knocked back down to the balcony by a purple cat using his head as a springboard to follow Kyle. Sliding his sunglassed back down over his eyes, Forge just lay on his back, looking up at the sky.

"Why me?"

~*~

Peeling out of the room had been fun. Heading down the hallway had been necessary! Going to human was required to have equal advantage in terms of weight. Especially since Cain had made very determined sounds regarding the removal of claws if he found more claw marks on the floor.

But going down the stairs at high speed was just pure hedonism, really, as far as Catseye was concerned.

Banisters were fun!

~*~

A healing factor didn't make falling hurt any less. It just made it so that if you fell from the top of the stairs to the bottom of the stairs, you got up faster and didn't have any broken parts. Or maybe that was the agility thing. Or both. Kyle wasn't thinking about it too much, he was already scampering to his feet and sprinting down the hall, intent on getting Outside. That meant going through the kitchen.

The kitchen had food.

Food. Shoe. Food. Shoe.

And then, he had a Genius Moment. This must be, he thought, what it was like to be Forge.

He could have the shoe and food. There was food all ready to be eaten, and he'd just make it up to the person who made it later.

For now, food! And the shoe.

~*~

Nobody really understood the kind of effort it took to taste-coordinate four different lunches eaten simultaneously in four completely different locations. Especially not when the one he was eating with Kitty, between classes, was almost always a wild card, and he couldn't really change the lunches he packed in the morning for the dupes he sent off to work.

Luckily, the kitchen at the mansion was stocked better than a minor supermarket, and he could usually control for delicatessen variance.

Usually. Today, he wasn't exactly sure what the turkey-on-rye he was eating in Manhattan really needed. It was a perfectly good sandwich, but it was just missing something, and so far Jamie had determined that what it was missing was not maple syrup, ground pepper, chocolate milk, pumpernickel toast, salsa, or cheddar.

He was shoulder-deep in the refrigerator when it suddenly came to him: mashed potatoes. Turkey on rye with mashed potatoes, that was the ticket.

When he turned around, potato in hand, to find that the plate containing his failed experiments had vanished, he just shrugged, got a new plate out of the cupboard, and hunted down the potato peeler. Maybe the old plate had vanished into a parallel dimension. But if it hadn't, whoever had stolen his lunch was in for a surprise.

~*~

There was, Catseye determined, no way Kyle was making it to that door. And if it meant jumping from the banister after a mad slide on the railing to get to him in time and get what was hers, then so be it. The short moment involving Kyle disappearing into the kitchen and re-appearing, sandwich in hand, was just giving her that much more time to set up the ambush, really.

And it was useful. Trying to eat and run was slowing him down just enough for her to be able to get him. And then the shoe.

With a far too gleeful yowl, Catseye suited thought to action, leaping upwards towards her target without a care in the world for landings.

Cats always landed on their feet. Or people. Both worked, really. And! Shoe!

A resounding crash followed, along with several thumps and further yowls as the aforementioned prey decided to be less than cooperative while attempting to snarf all the food at once while protesting loudly the entire time. It made for decidedly odd sounds, that.

Finally, Catseye rolled away and got up to her feet with a smug grin, stalking away while shaking her hand lightly, beaming as the shoe lace twitched like a wild thing each time her hand moved.

"Catseye won! Ha!"

"What? No way! I got the shoe!" was the semi-indignant, semi triumphant retort from behind her as she stalked away proudly.