Thief in the Night

[Ash Addams]

Three a.m.

In the shadows surrounding the so-called Redención House, a dark figure moved with silent steps. His eyes turned upwards, looking from window to window but no lights shone within. Slowly, he crept along the side of the house, lingering for a little too long as he passed three trash cans over-flowing with a family's worth of waste. The smell of it hung bitter in the air, but it was the feeling it triggered in Ash Addams – the ache – that made his lips twist into a frown.

Once at the back of the house, he dropped into a crouch and waited. Everything seemed clear and quiet, but it was best to be sure. Getting caught was out of the question. After what felt like ten long minutes, Ash pulled the gloves from his hands. A sudden pang of hesitation hit him, as he looked down at his hands – but there was no time to delay. He needed to get in and out, with food and cash, in a matter of minutes. Urgency spreading through him, he quickly pressed both palms to the wood paneling of the back door.

The wood began to rot, undergoing decay that would ordinarily have taken years to develop, and within seconds there was a hole in the door big enough for a cat to squeeze through. Just a few more and the gap was big enough for a person. Feeling the surge of adrenaline that always came with using his gift, Ash Addams wriggled his way through what appeared to be the handiwork of the worlds largest termite and found himself inside Redención House.

[Feral]

Feral--otherwise known as Apollos to the residents of the house--opened his eyes and turned in his small creaky bed. The large red numbers on his alarm clock told him it was 3 am. He soured at the device. He would destroy it, but he was not the only one asleep in the room.

He sat up and looked around. Everything was good so far. The people were trusting him, he was proving himself to be useful around the house to Anna, but she was still mostly business and continued to ignore his compliments and advances. It was annoying really.

Feral stood and scratched at his chest. Since he was up, he might as well make sure everyone in the house was just fine.

The house stood creaky and broken in one of the poorest, most dangerous neighborhoods Feral had ever seen. Since he found the house and its purpose, he had been doing everything he could to make it something worthy of the tiny gods and goddesses that made use of it for shelter. They relied on it. They relied on him. And what future ruler would not go out of his way to provide the best for his people in both needs and protection?

Feral walked the top floor of the house silently. He had spent hours the first several days finding every creak in the floors so he would know how to avoid them and be stealthy. He checked every bed room and silently put teddy bears back in the arms of the children who accidentally dropped them off the bed or tucked a little one back in to make the child warmer. When he checked Anna's room he paused over her and tucked a strand of loose hair behind her ear and kissed her forehead. "Truly amazing," he whispered. "A lily among thorns."

He closed her door with care and crept downstairs. There was a draft in the room coming from the back door. He bristled spikes and blades on his forearms and began to armor his chest while he stepped through the living room to see what caused the draft. A huge hole had rotted away in the door. That was strange. He would have to replace the door tomorrow.

But it was strange that such a large hole would appear so fast. Someone was here, he knew it. He bristled into full armor and made his way to the kitchen. He would find the intruder and then it would be a very bad day for him.

[Anna Fernandez]

Anna sighed in her sleep and turned over, then opened her eyes. She blearily blinked in the darkness, trying to figure out what her alarm clock read, and then sat up.

The house was silent. What had woken her up?

[Ash Addams]

Five minutes. That was all he was giving himself. Even if it was stupid o'clock in the morning, there was no telling when someone might wake up and wander downstairs, bleary-eyed, in search of a late-night snack.

Priorities were food and money, in that order – and so Ash found himself in the kitchen. The counter-tops were cluttered with all kinds of things, jars and boxes and such. A bowl of fruit sat on the window-sill, most of it untouched, slowly rotting. Ash forced himself to look away, and went towards the refrigerator instead. He opened the door just a little, so that the light wouldn't illuminate the whole room. Inside, it was slim pickings. He fumbled a block of cheese out of the way – the chunk crumbling into a pungent dust within seconds – to grab a plastic-wrapped packet of bacon...

[Feral]

Feral silently stalked over to the figure silhouetted in the light of the refrigerator. He started to draw in his armor, but left one blade slightly exposed around his knuckle.

"Late night snacking?" He asked. "You know you have to cook that bacon."

He was about the age of most of the people that showed up at the house. Maybe he was new and Feral had somehow missed him?

"It's too early for that. Why not just get some of the tortilla chips from the cabinet?"

There was something weird about all this. The hole in the door and this guy. It set Feral on edge, but he resisted the urge to bristle into full battle array.

[Anna Fernandez]

Now she couldn't sleep. Anna got up, reaching for her robe. The wooden floorboards squeaked under her bare feet as she moved quietly around her room.

[Ash Addams]

The voice made him jump. There was no way of hiding it. Ash turned quickly, his body growing tense at the appearance of a stranger in the dark.

“.. 'm in the mood for somethin' a little more fillin',” he managed. His joints had locked up and he felt as if his feet had been soldered to the ground. Trying to look at the man behind him, without establishing eye-contact and giving his identity away, he glanced back toward the open fridge door.

“..you want somethin'?”

[Feral]

Feral raised an eyebrow. "What's your name?" He asked as suspicion rose in his mind.

He reached out with a bone blade and hit the kitchen light. The light didn't bother Feral terribly much. He drew back the blade and stared hard at the guy. Definitely not someone he met before.

"When did you get here? Who knows you're here?"

[Anna Fernandez]

There was the faint sound of voices in the kitchen, and Anna pulled her robe in close around her, belting it at her waist. Walking down the stairs she could see a little bit of light coming from the kitchen, and a cold breeze from outside, like a door was open.

[Ash Addams]

<meta http-equiv="CONTENT-TYPE" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><title></title><meta name="GENERATOR" content="OpenOffice.org 3.0 (Win32)"><style type="text/css"> <!-- @page { margin: 2cm } P { margin-bottom: 0.21cm } --> </style> After spending hours creeping about in the dark, becoming accustomed to the gloom, the light hurt his eyes. Ash narrowed them against the glare. Questioned, he offered little more than a mute shrug and glanced towards the kitchen window. This was getting too risky. He'd hoped the guy would just get whatever he wanted from the kitchen and then fuck off, but he was hanging around, snooping...


“..think I need some fresh air,” he mumbled, and began to make a move for the backdoor.

[Feral]

Feral reached out and put a heavy hand on the new kid's shoulder. "Hold on, you're not in trouble, yet. I only asked your name and when you got here. We have space for you if you're looking for a place to stay."

He was trying very hard to follow Anna's example and show patience and kindness. "If you made that hole in the door, it's ok. We can fix that. But all you had to do if you wanted help was knock."

[Anna Fernandez]

"Hola?" Anna stifled a yawn and walked into the kitchen. "What's going on?"

She woke up a little more when she saw a young man she did not recognize as a tenant, or even a visitor. Apollos had his hand on his shoulder, keeping the newcomer from bolting out of the open back door. No wait, the door wasn't open, it was destroyed.

It took a few seconds for her to determine that the kid was hungry, perhaps even starving, with one hand on a package of bacon she'd left in the fridge to thaw for breakfast. Anna immediately went into action, making sure her robe was belted tightly and then moving to the stove and getting a pan out.

[Ash Addams]

The hand on him made Ash bristle. He was wearing protective clothing but still, that feeling of human contact – even through a barrier – made his gut ache with a hunger that no amount of hastily made bacon sandwiches would satisfy. He watched as the woman, newly appeared moved towards the stove. It made no sense. He'd broken into the house and now they wanted to cook him breakfast?

“Look, I don't want any trouble,” he muttered, letting go of the plastic-wrapped bacon with obvious reluctance.

[Feral]

"And you won't get any here," Feral said. "I'm Apollos, and the woman at the stove is Anna. This is her house, and she makes it a point to welcome people who need it."

Feral took the bacon and put it on the counter where Anna could reach it. "Now, how did you make the hole in the door? You're not in trouble, I'm just curious."

Feral motioned for Ash to sit and pulled a couple of glasses from a cabinet, which he filled with water. "Here."

[Anna Fernandez]

"It is no trouble," Anna insisted. "This is Redencion House... but you knew that already, no?" Bacon was sizzling in the pan quickly, and she knew that the smell of it would keep the young man rooted in place better than Apollos' hand.

"We welcome all mutantes who come needing shelter." Anna shivered a little in the cool breeze from the rotted door. "Eggs, or perhaps a BLT?" The bacon smelled so good as it cooked that she was a little worried it might bring down some of the other current House guests.

[Ash Addams]

Ash didn't sit. He was still struggling with the urge to bolt, then and there – but it was probably already too late. Inside, he was kicking himself. He hadn't known there would be mutants, hadn't even thought about that possibility. This was what came of a lack of planning, a lack of research.

...but damn, the food smelled good. It made his stomach grumble with longing and his mouth turn down at the corners, knowing the lack of satisfaction it would inevitably give him.

“Whatever,” he shrugged. The guy was still looking him over, his body language indicating that Ash should sit.

“I didn't mean to.. wreck the door. I just.. needed some money.”

[Feral]

Feral waved the kid's apology away. "The door can be fixed. What do you need the money for?"

Feral still had most of the cash from the last time he went rampaging. He wondered what this kid could possibly need. Most of his basic needs could be fulfilled by the House. Hopefully he wasn't in bad sorts with any shady individuals. Feral could take care of that too.

He smiled. "Come on, relax a little. At least give us your name."

[Anna Fernandez]

Anna listened and watched Apollos interacting with the boy, willing to let him do his best to set him at ease. Sometimes she wondered about the older mutant's motives, but other times he seemed perfectly in tune with what Redencion House was all about.

As the bacon cooked, she retrieved a loaf of homemade bread and cut two thick slices.