xp_logs | Kurt and Catseye, late night

Our two nocturnal residents run into each other and introduce themselves.

The halls were quiet at this time of night. A few residents kept irregular hours, but Sharon found that more often than not she had the halls to herself.

But not, she sensed, tonight.

The sensation of being watched had been nagging at her. Now she could feel the attention on her like a physical weight. Sharon sat down in the middle of the hallway, tail twitching. She decided to address the situation in the only way she knew how: tactlessly.

"I smell you, but I do not see you."

A voice spoke from above her, and when she looked up, yellow eyes were shining in the dark of the ceiling. "I did not wish you to, until I knew who you were. Hello, Sharon."

The cat's head snapped up towards the voice. She didn't run; instead she went very, very still. The only active part of her was her tail, which twitched stiffly.

"Nightvision is excellent," she said, returning the yellow gaze with her own. Her tone was wary, though not uninterested. "Even not searching the ceiling, should have noticed you. Suspicious."

"That is an aspect of my powers", he explained, repositioning himself in the corner to start making his way down. A patch of deeper darkness followed him. "In the dark, no one sees me if I do not allow them to."

Curiosity overcame caution. Sharon padded closer to the stranger, head low but tail a little looser. "Strange," she remarked. "Even now still cannot make you out clearly. What is your power?"

"Primarily, teleportation. The darkness is a side effect, as I go through another place and if I wish, I can open the door halfway as it were, and it draws in the light around me. It does not work in full daylight, a patch of unexplained darkness would be very conspicuous." He hopped down lightly to the floor. "My name is Kurt."

"I am Sharon." The bite of sulphur to his scent barely registered to her; now that he was out of the shadows Sharon could finally see him clearly.

She abandoned caution and loped to close the remaining distance between them. Her tail was now held high and switching with interest. "You are visible mutant also," she observed, sounding pleased as she looked him up and down. "Not just skin pigment, but structurally, like Kyle. Ectrodactyly?" This was directed at the nearest two-toed foot.

"Indeed." He lifted his foot for her to see more clearly. "On both my feet and hands."

Sharon crept closer for a better look. "Nails, not claws. And fur. Now that I am close I can see." She raised a tentative hand and glanced up at him. "I would like to touch," she said.

Kurt gave her a reassuring smile. "Please, feel free - yes. nails. As far as we can tell, my mutations are only physical apart from the teleportation, so I am not quite like you and Kyle."

Sharon stretched out a hand and gave Kurt's toes a gentle pat, lightly touching the joints. "Elongated phalanges for gripping? Looks to favor plantigrade locomotion." She move to stroke the top of his foot to get a better sense of his fur. "Seems double-coated, but does not lay flat. Fuzzy." This seemed to please her. She sat back and looked up at him. "If you do not have claws, how do you climb walls? Setae on the soles of feet and palms of hands, maybe?"

He turned his hands over, inspecting them. "I have never really thought about that. Perhaps I do have those, although I do not really stick to the walls. Once I am at the top, it is only about stretching myself across the corner and finding a nail or some such to hold on to."

"I climb!" Sharon crouched low, then sprang to the nearest wall. She hit the surface with all four feet and a surprising lack of sound. She hung there for a moment, tail twitching, and began to climb.

"My claws," she explained as she moved slowly up the wall. "Cannot climb glass or altogether sheer surfaces. Easier with more texture and incline." She paused at approximately the point Kurt had initially been, then leapt back down. She added, a bit too late, "Bad for wallpaper, though."

Kurt grinned at her. "The wallpaper has had worse, I promise you. We tend to buy resilient ones."

"I will test," she vowed, tail flicking playfully. From her new angle, though, she noticed another detail. She stalked closer again. "You have a tail also?" she asked.

That got a warm chuckle and his tail flicked forward. "Indeed I do, and I can hold things with it and hang from it if there is a suitable object to do so."

"Mine also!" Sharon circled Kurt's legs, and as she did she twinned her tail around his in a distinctly un-catlike way before releasing it. "Mostly New World adaptation, and absent in true felines. Very useful when climbing."

“Very much so”, he agreed. “As well as for balance. In my younger days, I performed in my family’s circus.”

Sharon gave him an appraising look. "Not in freakshow, I hope. Would be a waste of your talents."

“No, no”, he assured her. “We did not have such a thing. I was an acrobat.”

She gave him an approving nod. "Yes. This is much more worthy. How did you come to be here?"

"That is rather a longer story. Have you been told much about the people who live here?"

The cat dipped her great head, her tail twitching knowledgeably. "I have been told many things. Secret base of the X-Men. A wormhole I am forbidden from touching, presumably also secret. At least one person who is possibly a clone. Strange place. But interesting also."

"You know enough to understand, then." He paused for a moment, thinking. "The X-Men helped me out of a... situation, and I saw what they do and decided to stay and join them."

The tail twitched again. "So they proved their worth," she said thoughtfully. "I was looking only for a home."

“And you will have one”, Kurt assured her immediately, “for as long as you wish and with no conditions of earning your keep.”

The very tip of her upstanding tail twitched again, smugly. "I earn it," Sharon said. "My presence enriches all."

He chuckled. "You have certainly enriched my evening, I have to say."