<div class="floatright">(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v50/BriarRose/RP%20Characters/Reel%20Peeples/4f7e8a87-1105-4493-97b9-3c029eb6890c_zps70265bce.jpg)</div>"What?" Kamala's surprised voice echoed from the bathroom, and she poked her head out of it to send Kurt a puzzled look. "I thought I...oh, I guess you weren't in the room." She laughed and ducked back behind the door before emerging a moment later, a mussed outfit cradled in her arms. "I'm here for a medical conference. My company sent me and two of my colleagues to speak about our advances in gene therapy. We're trying to build enough funding to make the technology available to the general public, which will make all of us boatloads of money. Assuming the babies don't start popping out all deformed. Actually,<em>that's</em>why we're here at a conference, rather than an investor's meeting. Trying to make sure what we do doesn't backfire horribly and create a new generation of mutant supervillians or something."<br/><br/>As she spoke, Kamala dumped the clothes into an empty trashcan, pulling out the liner and spinning it around to make a little plastic laundry bag, which she tossed into her open suitcase. She thought of changing, since the little white dress she wore didn't exactly scream 'unavailable' and she no longer trusted herself to make rational decisions, but that would take too much time and require an explanation she didn't care to give, so she passed. Zipping the bag up, she thumped it onto the ground, and immediately began casting around for something else. "Hathi!" she said urgently, and unleashed a string of curses in Hindi. Something began to rustle in the depths of the bed, and a pillow fell over to reveal a little gray whiskered face. The mouse whuffed indignantly, and turned to bury itself in the pillows again.<br/><br/>"Oh, no you don't," Kamala grunted, and clambered onto the bed on her hands and knees, disappearing for a moment in the copious bedding. She emerged, her hand firmly clamped on the creature, which wore a tiny saddle. Her free hand brushed at her hair, trying to get the soft strands to lay in place, though they denied her through the power of static electricity. "Sorry," she muttered, smiling sheepishly at Kurt, "she never listens." She clambered off the bed and straightened the skirt of her dress while the mouse disappeared under the curtain of her hair.<br/><br/>Kamala only had the two bags, and the one she'd asked Kurt to lift was the heavier one--the duffle was lined with towels and filled with her modest armory--a rifle and a handgun--along with an emergency surgeon's kit, which took up most of the space. She felt strange asking him to take both, so she lifted the handle on the one she'd hastily repacked and motioned to the door. "I'm ready," she said. When they left, she defiantly abandoned the keycard on a dresser.<br/><br/>The trip to the ground floor took less time than it had taken for them to ride from the penthouse, and she found the elevator less stuffy than before as well. Kurt's presence was comfortable and patient, and Kamala discovered that her attraction to him was easier to handle if she treated it as her own, rather than a curse. Rationally, she recognized the earlier compulsion a result of the magic, but Kurt was enough her type that she could smile comfortably and treat the anticipatory tingle as a reward for flirting well done. It didn't have to lead to anything, she kept telling herself. As a result of her line of thinking, their short elevator ride passed with fleeting glances and self-conscious smiles.<br/><br/>As they exited the elevator, back in the ground floor lobby, she grinned her thanks, "Now I don't suppose you know of any hotels that have rooms available? On the other side of town? Far away from here?"