Xing Fu Lee was not one of those boys who got a thrill out of stuffing a candy bar into his pocket and walking out of the store without paying for it. Petty crime didn't interest him. It didn't give him a rush, which isn't to say that he hadn't dabbled in it. Despite the rigid propriety of his upbringing, X had gone in with friends on stealing things a few times. But it didn't do it for him. No. He was too smart for that. Only idiots took risks without a chance of a big payout. The first time that the concept of thievery sent a charge through him was when he saw the safe.

Part of it was, undoubtedly, that he wasn't supposed to see it. He was certain of that. That look of guilt, insecurity and worry on the man's pudgy face was unmistakable.

He'd been sent to the principal's office by Mrs. Porter, a fussy old woman who got upset that he made a joke the whole class laughed at and then again and a third time. What could he do when the old bat was such a perfect, unwitting straight man and soooooo goddam boring?

The class really enjoyed listening to X more than they did her Gobi desert dry sophomore english lecture. X made another joke and had them doubled over laughing and she threw him out of class. X just rolled his eyes. What a cowardly way to deal with it? Why not make your stupid lectures a bit more interesting, instead?

He strolled down to the principal's office, not anxious or frantic or scared like he was supposed to be. X wasn't the type to be scared. He walked into the office with the yellow slip in hand and presented it to the secretary behind the counter with a mischievous smile. X was no fool. He knew where power was and where an 'in', a bit of favortism could help. The secretary adored ballet and loved that this athletic, and oh so handsome boy danced. She asked him what it was this time. He rolled his eyes and said, with a conspiratorial smile, that his jokes were much better than Mrs. Porter's lecture. She winked at him. At that moment, things could go either way. She could send him in to the principal's inner office, the door on the right, or just toss the yellow slip away as she'd done a couple times in the past for the handsome young dancer. She dithered. X went to the door and knocked and opened it, thinking that, by a sort of reverse psychology, he'd push her to dismiss the issue by starting to take punishment. It was then, when he'd just barely cracked open the door, that he glimpsed the safe.

"Oh, sorry," he quickly muttered and closed the door as a grumbled "Get out of my office!" came from within.

"Guess that settles it," said the secretary tearing the yellow slip in half.

X thanked her and made his way into the hall to get out of sight of the principal, in case the man came out looking for him. Because in that split second, he'd seen something that he shouldn't have, not only in the sense that he shouldn't have gone in the room. But, over the man's shoulder, past his desk and to one side of his chair, he's seen a metal door and a dial, a safe. There was a safe in the principal's office inside a low cabinet behind his desk. And in that split second when he'd had the door open, the principal's expression had clearly revealed that there was no good reason for it to be there.

And the mystery, puzzle and possibilities of this started to eat away at X. He took a seat in the cafeteria. Some kids came by and saluted him. Hey, X! They asked if he was going to be at the party the next night. X gave them a look.

Duh.

Of course I will!

But he didn't have any interest in being X, Mr. Cool, right then. All he could think of was that safe. Why would the principal have a safe at all? Any documents he deals with are public. It's not like he deals with state secrets or anything. Money? Why would he have to keep money in a safe here at school? The school system had a treasurer or something like that, somebody in charge of money for all the schools. Rockford or Rockman or something, right? And they paid by check. They didn't hand teachers stacks of bills. Why have a safe? And why look anxious or defensive about anybody even possibly seeing a glimpse of it?

This interested X. This really interested X. He thought about it for the rest of the school day and at ballet class that afternoon. Luckily, even with divided attention, he was still the best boy dancer his instructors had ever had in class so things were still fine. He just didn't check out how Stephanie and Zoe and Claire looked in their leotards this one time. He didn't use the multiple walls of mirrors to sneak peeks at them and the others. He wondered about the damn safe. It started to become something like a challenge in his mind now and then another thought occurred to him, a way to put some puzzle pieces on the board and see the whole picture. He turned down a couple different girls' offers of rides home so that he could walk and think about it.

And there, just three doors down from the ballet school, was a little shop that X approached. It had an old style wood door with a vertical ellipse of glass in the center and painted cursive lettering, "Guttman Locksmiths" on it. He knocked. It seemed like the thing to do. There never seemed to be anyone going into that shop. Maybe a customer was kind of an oddity. There was a bell that the opening door tinkled, and an old man, easily 65, 70 shuffled out in response to the sound.

He asked if he could help X. X asked him if he knew what a "Worthington 100" was.

The man gave a smile of a certain quality.

"Okay," continued X. "Do you know how to open one?"

The man gave another smile.

"You mean, without the combination?" he asked only slightly innocently.

X smiled. Obviously. And he put his gym bag down on the counter.

"What's in there?" asked the old man. X explained that it was just his ballet stuff, that he'd just come from class.

"You do that sort of thing? The-the tights and everything?"

X smiled. "Yup. Me and thirty girls. Thirty pretty, athletic, fantastically flexible girls and me."

The old man chuckled. "That's good. See, I never thought of that angle, a fella doin' it to have a shot at all those girls. I walk by there sometimes and old as I am I stare at the pretty girls. Just wonderin', just dreaming. Me, back at your age and this one or that one, not . . not now. Of course not. But you got yourself a nice angle there."

"Thanks," said X and he went on to describe what he'd seen in the principal's office. The old man agreed that there didn't seem to be any reason why the principal would have a safe.

"Can you teach me to crack it?" X finally asked.

The old man smiled. It was a smile that told of abilities still remaining despite age and that hinted of things done that could not be spoken of in most company. He was going to quickly disclaim any knowledge of or interest in crime. Who, me?! But there was just something about this boy. He didn't bother. They started right then and there and the boy pleasantly surprised him, amazed him in fact.

The old man wasn't sure what it was that had changed everything from how it used to be. But the world wasn't the same and he didn't much like it. Maybe it was how convenient everything was, a phone call any time you wanted it, for instance. Or maybe it was the stupid video games, always needing to be distracted from whatever was around them. He tried not to be that sort of cranky old man he'd made fun of when he was young, but damn, these kids were so scattershot! How would the world ever keep running with all these kids who couldn't concentrate on anything, when these kids were needed to actually take care of things?

But this boy was different. Show me again. Let me try again, he kept saying. The kid got it right, popped open the door of the safe in the back room the second time he tried, and it was a much harder one than a Worthington 100. But he wanted to do it again. And again. And he wanted to try every other box in the back room. When he finally looked up it was almost 11 o'clock. Nearly his bed time, he yawned, but the boy could've just kept going. He pushed him out and told him to come back the next day for some more training. The boy thanked him. And when he went to turn out the lights, there was a twenty dollar bill on the counter. It had to have been the boy. There was no way he'd left it there himself or that those cheap people who'd come in that afternoon had left it. But he decided it was pretty clever. The boy gave him the money without the whole, can't accept this, no I insist, scene having to play out. He pocketed the money.

And the next day, late in the afternoon, he half lied to himself and invented an excuse to flip the OPEN sign around to CLOSED and take a walk up the street past the ballet school. He looked in the window and sure enough, it was true. There among a flock of luscious swans was his pretty boy safe cracker trainee. Holy crap, the kid was a looker and built right even for wearing . . that. The boy never noticed him. He was carrying one of the swans over his head and glancing up at said swan's backside. And the way all the girls looked at him. He sighed as he got past the ballet school's window. He wished the girls had looked at him like that back when he was that age, but big ears, big nose and a small jaw, five foot eight. He'd never looked like that. He could've resented the kid being such a pretty boy but the boy didn't act like one. And he wanted to learn! He wanted to learn. And that was such a rare thing. With everything he'd gone through in his life, the heists he'd been in on, he had a lot to teach. Now, finally, there was someone who wanted to learn.

When the boy came by, again with a knock and just as respectful as the day before, he started him right in on the toughest safe he had. In no time, the boy cracked it. He really was a natural. A great ear, sensitive fingers and a sharp mind. He asked the boy how he intended to do the job. The boy told him about the party, at a house just a quarter mile away from the school. Slip out. Change. Break in. Get to the principal's office. Crack the safe. Find out what's actually in it and take whatever has any value. Go back to the party, have everyone think you never left. A house full of alibis.

He made the boy refine his plan. Is there a night watchman? Where's he stay? When's he move? How will you get past him? What are you gonna wear? What tools are you bringing with you? On and on and on. Question question question. He made the boy close his eyes and walk step by step through every step of it, from doorway to doorway, in his mind, through the heist. He told the boy that, over the years, he'd seen a lot of hotshot types who were so sure of themselves that they couldn't be bothered to plan things out thoroughly. And usually those guys ended up wearing orange jump suits and picking up trash at the side of the road. He made the boy go over it all again and, without hesitation, the boy did. He talked some more with the boy afterward, feeling a little bit like a proud papa and then the boy left, promising to be back Monday after ballet. He reminded the boy. Don't tell anyone! The average kid isn't like you. He's a-a stupid, scattershot little numbnuts who can't focus on anything! He'll-he'll post somethin' about it on Facespace an hour later! You can't trust your safety to him! The boy smirked. He knew.

X slipped out of the party, out the back door of that house, now ringed by parked cars. Practically asking for the JCPD to come by and shut 'em down, he sniffed to himself as he changed out of his clothes into all black under armour stuff. Then he slipped between some houses and onto school property where he pulled the black ski mask down over his face. He pulled the hook and rope from the bag over his shoulders and threw it perfectly up onto the roof edge with minimal noise. In just a few seconds he climbed onto the roof and brought his hook and rope with him to the other side of the building. He walked almost silently, his steps creating barely enough crunch of the gravel to reach his ears never mind some guy two floors down. Then he waited. Every hour, the watchman walked around the place. Probably has a watch set to beep every hour. That was the time to move, when the big lummox's own movement's would mask the sound of his. 11 o'clock. He heard some kind of sound and saw a flashlight lazily sweep back and forth by the main entrance and start to move away from him.

He set the hook and started to climb down. This part was tricky because the window he'd walked behind the secretary and unlocked that afternoon still opened the wrong way, one of those deals that swung open with the top end moving in. And the damn thing didn't open all the way. It meant he had to lower himself and hold himself with one hand while opening the window and then, awkwardly climbing in. Ballet dancer X hated being awkward. He slipped through the window and deftly caught some papers and a book that almost fell off the counter back of the window as he came through. He closed the window and removed his own mini flashlight, most of the face taped over except for a narrow slit.

He flashed the light for a second to show himself the path to the door of the principal's office. The door itself was locked but the old man had given him a set of picks and shown him how to use them. The principal's door only resisted a few seconds before compliantly opening with a small click. He waited a few moments, listening intently for the night watchman. Noises were coming closer. He closed and locked the door to the principal's office behind him as quietly as possible. He saw a sweep of flashlight under the door a minute later but then the light moved away.

The opening of the safe was sort of anticlimactic. It was too easy. X barely crouched beside it 30 seconds when it popped slowly open. But what was inside amazed him. Bills. Hundred dollar bills and twenty dollar bills, piles of them. They were stacked a bit haphazardly on two shelves, not completely with all the edges aligned, not all bound by those paper bank wrappers, just sloppily stacked. He didn't care. He allowed himself a moment to wonder how the fuck the principal had gotten all this money. Siphoned it off from the school budget, likely, the bastard! Then he removed the bag from over his shoulders, and scooped all the cash into it. There was also some paper work, accounting of sorts and he took that too. He was wearing thin black gloves, the kind for kayaking, and didn't have to worry about finger prints. He emptied the safe into his bag and then closed the safe door. He decided to leave the door to the low cabinet open, to let the man know right away what had been done.

Getting out was uneventful. X listened for the night watchman and when he was away, squeezed out the window, climbed up onto the roof, made his way over to the far side of the roof then went down again and through the woods to the house where the party had been going on. Only the cops were there now and breaking it up. He had to sneak over to retrieve his clothes and then changed behind the pool house of the place next door. He made his way to his house without anyone seeing him and only opened his bag in his room after 2 a.m. using moonlight to see all the cash on his bed. It took him a while to count it.

There was $47,280 there.

He couldn't stop smiling.

Forty seven thousand two hundred eighty dollars!

There was no way the principal was supposed to have this money. No fucking way. And this presented opportunities. He had to have been robbing the school department. Embezzling. He looked at the couple sheets of paper that had been in the safe. They seemed to be a partial accounting of the money in the safe with notes about "CAF", "SUPP" and "ASSEM" and dates.

What to do about it?! What should he do?

After pondering it a while, X's face took on a smirk.

"Yeah. That's it," he muttered to himself while undressing before counting out two separate stacks of $10,000 and $5,000. Then he pondered, where to hide the rest? He decided to leave it under his mattress for now but to bury it in the yard the next day.

In school, on Monday morning, he cracked a joke that had the kids in Mrs. Porter's english class roaring with laughter.

"That's it, Mr. Lee. I don't care if you're getting an A in my class-"

"What're you gonna do, send me to the principal's office? I dare you."

The kids ooo'ed and ahh'ed over this confrontation but it ended very quickly. Mrs. Porter sent X to the principal's office. He seemed nonplussed with the situation, standing there casually waiting for her to write out the slip of paper he would carry to the office, he seemed almost . . impatient. He made a quick stop at his locker to pick something up and strode off to the principal's office. There, there was an undertone of panic in the air. The principal emerged from his office and demanded to know if the cleaning people had been in his room. Things had been moved around, he said. The secretaries said no. The scheduled cleaning wasn't till tomorrow night.

X stepped around the counter that confronted students and, looking at the principal, motioned to his office. "Sir. I think you and I should speak," he said walking inside and sitting down behind the man's desk then putting his feet up on it as the man closed the door angrily behind himself.

"What the hell do you think you're doing? Get out of my chair!"

"Uh uh uh," he waved a finger slowly back and forth at the pudgy middle aged man. "You do want to find out what happened to all that money don't you?"

The man's eyes went wide. But he was caught between competing impulses, wanting desperately to say 'yes' but not wanting to admit the situation.

X grinned. "Oh, don't worry. I know about the money you and, what's that fat guy's name who makes regular visits? The school official who was here Thursday?"

The principal eyed him warily now. "I believe you're speaking of Mr. Rockland."

"Ah, yes, Rockland. Did you already call him about the forty seven thousand dollars?"

The principal reached for the phone. "I'm calling the police on you, you little thieving bastard."

X didn't move or say a word. And he noticed that, while the principal had picked up the phone, he hadn't dialed yet.

"Nine one one," said X helpfully. "But we both know you don't really want to call the cops, do you? They'd use nasty words like . . "embezzler" and the newspaper stories would include phrases like "had his pension revoked". No. You don't want to call the police and we both know it. You want to hear my offer."

"Your offer!? Listen, you little bastard. You stole from me and you're going to give all of it back. What's your name?"

"Xing Fu Lee. "

"Lee . . ? You're that sophomore boy . . . Top of your class . . . right?"

"Uh huh."

"You want to throw that all away right now, whatever promise you have, whatever future you might have made for yourself? You want to throw that all away to steal from your school?"

X burst out laughing. "That was pretty good. I mean, for a bluff with nothing behind it. Get fatty over here right now and I'll tell you two how things are gonna be."

The principal stared angrily at the smiling skinny bastard with his feet still up on his desk. But what option was there. He called and told Rockland to get the hell over there. "No! I can't explain why! Just get over here! Now!". And ten minutes later he was, though he was mystified as to why some kid was sitting behind the principal's desk with his feet up. Then the kid reached into his shirt and removed a tightly wrapped stack of bills and tossed it onto the desk.

"That's five grand," said the kid. "Oh, I'm Xing Fu Lee," he added, introducing himself to Rockland. "I'm a sophomore. I took your forty seven thousand two hundred eighty dollars last night. But I'll give you this five back now-"

"And the rest tomorrow!" demanded the principal.

X chuckled. "I've already called your bluff, chubby. Don't insult me. You have no leverage here. I'll give you five grand more at the end of the year, as long as things go the way I say."

"What about the rest of the money you stole?" asked the distraught Rockland.

"You mean, the money you stole first? Uh . . it's mine now."

"What-what is this 'the way I say' crap?" demanded the principal, already having moved on.

"It's pretty much that simple," explained X. "Any discipline of me disappears. Any discipline of my friends disappears. And I get veto power over any other decision that affects me or my friends."

"No," snapped the principal.

X looked to Rockland. "Is the issue of me or my friends getting a detention worth five thousand dollars to you, too? I'm assuming you two guys were sharing this embezzled money evenly. Do-"

"It wasn't strictly embezzled," corrected Rockland. "Not all of it. Though he-," he pointed to the principal who quickly barked "Shut up, Stan!"

"Oh, shut up yourself, Fred! I'm not gonna lose twenty five hundred dollars so that you can continue to boss one particular kid around."

"And my friends!" corrected X. "So harmless. A few kids, whoever I say, get out of a few detentions and you don't get reported to the police. No letter goes to the school committee, the superintendent and every teacher in this school. You still have your pensions annnnnd you two get five thousand dollars more at the end of the year. Otherwise you get that five and nothing more. What'll it be?"

X enjoyed the angry glances back and forth between the two of them.

"Oh, suck it up," sneered Rockland to the principal. "You're the one who fucked up and got the money stolen. Keep it here. Nothing'll ever happen to it here, you said. Good call, Fred."

With an angry groan, the principal nodded to X.

"How'd you find out about it?" he immediately demanded of X.

"I saw that you had a safe a couple days ago and thought that was kind of odd. So I cracked it and found all your stolen money."

"It-it's not strictly stolen," reiterated Rockland.

"Then what is it?" demanded X.

"It . . a lot of it is money that would have been spent anyway. When Fred and I were going to hire someone to perform at an assembly or a dance, the school district might allot a thousand or two thousand dollars for it. But if we got someone to perform for less . . ."

"And why wouldn't the school know that they had spent less," began X thinking out loud. ". . unless you two made the people you hired officially take two thousand and give you five hundred or a thousand back to get the gig. Kickbacks. That's what you did."

"It's the same deal for the school district," snorted the principal. "What's the difference? And it wasn't just people performing at assemblies. It was everything. Paper. Pens. Food. Especially food."

X snickered. "Yeah, that cafeteria shit tastes like it's as cheap as possible to make your kickbacks possible."

"But, you see the point, don't you?" continued Rockland, much more anxious not to seem like a bad guy than the principal. "It-it really is pretty much the same food you'd have gotten anyway. And everything else was the same. Nothing was different for the school district. But Fred and I made some money by driving good bargains. That's all."

"Yeah, tell that to the cops if it comes to it. In the mean time, I've got another item that you'll have to take care of," he said turning to the principal. "I want you to hire the Jump City School of Ballet to give a performance a couple weeks from now, Friday the . . 17th," he said looking at the man's desk blotter calendar.

"What, have you got a girlfriend dances there?" snickered the principal.

"No. I do."

"What?!"

"You want me to have everyone at school see you dancing ballet?"

"Actually, just the girls if you can arrange it but that's probably not possible, so, yeah, everyone."

"You want a school assembly on a Friday afternoon for the whole school to watch you do some foufou ballet?"

"More like some athletic solos and a few very romantic pas de deux."

"They'll kill you. The boys'll kill you when they find out."

"Not likely. Everyone in the sophomore class already knows I do ballet."

"I hope they do kill you," snorted the principal.

"Uh uh uh. Remember now, Freddy. Things go the way I say or you don't get the other five grand back."

"What're you gonna do with all the rest of the money?" asked Rockland.

"Hide it where you can't find it and invest some of it."

"Invest it?"

X nodded but didn't explain.

At ballet class that afternoon, everyone was excited about the news that they'd been hired to give a performance for X's high school. X had fun pretending to be surprised. Then, after ballet class, he showered and changed and made his way over to the locksmith shop just down the street. He knocked and grinned upon entering and went straight into the back room. He put ten thousand dollars on the old man's desk and watched his eyes get big as saucers.

"What's that?"

"Your cut."

"You did it?! Oh my god. You did it!"

X explained everything to him and told him exactly how much money there'd been. He said that he wasn't sure how much to give him. The old man had said that guys who didn't actively take part weren't entitled to equal shares of a heist but he sure as hell deserved more than nothing. The old man said it was way more than he had to give him. X insisted that the old man take every penny of it.

But he also had a request. "What if I wanted someone to teach me all about alarms or all about some other part of taking down a score? Would you be able to put me in touch with a top guy in the field who could teach me?"

The old man nodded with a smile. This was getting better and better.

"I'd pay you and him and he'd never have to know that I'm Xing Fu Lee and I'd never know that he's Kevin Jackson or Sam Keller or whatever. We'd just be two friends of Mr. Guttman."

"That would work," nodded the old man with another contented smile.

And that's how they did it. The old man contacted a few of his long time connections in the business. It was a pretty sweet gig for them. They stopped by old Guttman's locksmith shop and taught some dark haired kid about alarms or hacking computers or jewels or banks. Each of them got two grand for an afternoon or so of work, paid through Guttman who X had given 4 grand in each instance. It was a sweet deal. A little tutoring in the down time between jobs at a nice price. And the anonymous kid that old Guttman introduced them to was pretty sharp and motivated, a pleasure to teach, actually.

And, at school, things got better and better. At first, X was only helping out a select few kids. Erasing a detention here. Getting someone into the National Honor Society there. And once he had had his tutorial in hacking computers, a few grade adjustments certainly seemed in order. It never became explicit but his reputation built and built till half the school seemed to know or have heard that that sophomre, X, that Xing Fu Lee could fix anything for you. Anything!

He performed with the rest of the Jump City School of Ballet in front of the whole school. He was the only guy, and, really, the star of the school, so he had easily more time on stage than anyone else. It was great advertising. He started going to more parties and had junior and senior girls practically throwing themselves at him. He took advantage of it, making new conquests left and right. Oh, a couple of idiot senior football players tried to make fun of him for being in the ballet, but the first one who forced a fight hit the ground hard. He was better at calling another guy names than protecting against roundhouse kicks. The other one was a better fighter and actually hit X once, but X left him dazed and bleeding on the sidewalk outside the front entrance of the school amid 50 onlookers and after that no one much wanted to say anything about his taking ballet. X also made it a point to do both their girlfriends. And, to judge by their reactions, to do them much better than either of those two doofuses had been doing them.

Life was about as good as it could be for a high school sophomore. The only thing was that an itch had started to develop. X was as flexible as could be. He could do splits front and back or legs out to the side. He could scratch the bottom of his foot while standing if need be. But he couldn't scratch this itch. It was created the night that he stole the money from the principal. High school was boring. It was no challenge to him. Ballet was a bit boring, the classes anyway. But that 15 minutes he'd been all dressed in black, climbing onto the roof of the school and then down to the principal's office, breaking in and making off with all that cash! That had been exciting. He'd been calm the whole time, not jittery or jumpy but it was like an electric current of excitement went through him while he was doing it. What a rush!

He wanted to do it again. He wanted to take down another score. He told the old man how he was feeling. The old man counseled patience. Most of this "job" is the right choice of target and the right preparation, he told X. He talked with X about the scarcity, these days of worthwhile targets, of businesses that operated with a high volume of cash. He and X talked for hours about possible targets before X decided on the Safeco supermarket just down the street. After a couple weeks, the old man had a solid record of when the armored cars picked up money from the place. Monday afternoon and a late week, either Thursday or Friday pickup were the ones made. They decided on a Sunday night heist.

They were well into the planning when X's ballet teacher confronted him about, well, pretty much everything he was doing except the thefts and suggested he enter the Gotham City Ballet scholarship contest. When he won he the contest and left Jump City for Gotham, he left not only his family and friends and a network of influence over the high school but also a well planned score at that Safeco.

The itch that had almost gone away in the course of planning the Safeco heist now returned. But there was nothing he could do while starting as a new student at the Gotham City School of ballet. And then, there was the day after his first big break as a performer filling in for Mr. 100MostBeautiful and earning standing ovations. He was sitting in one of the chairs in the incredible leather and rosewood appointed office of the company's director while the Ballet company's officers were telling him he should accept a long contract that wasn't in his interest.

They were frustrated that they couldn't either entice or intimidate him into accepting their offer. He barely reacted to what they said. His eyes weren't quite on either of them. It annoyed them. These boys were usually so easy to deal with when they first made a big splash and they were offered contracts. But this Xing Fu Lee wasn't having any of it. He wouldn't even look them in the eye as they ranted at them. Eventually, he left the room and they regretted shouting at him like that and decided it was good that the boy wouldn't look them in the eyes, that he was so non-confrontational.

But X had been focusing and what he was seeing and thinking could not have been much less confrontational. There was a painting on the far wall, Degas ballerinas, not surprisingly, in a big, thick wooden frame. But the frame hung oddly. If you looked closely, it seemed to hug the wall on the right side and maybe just slightly separate from the wall on the left, as if it wasn't hung at all, as if . . .

No, the company directors agreed, after he'd left the room, they wished they'd handled it differently. The boy's going to be a tremendous star. They'd never had an athlete like that, six feet tall, not bigger than some others but an incredible athlete. They shouldn't have shouted at him like that. But he had to be put in his place a bit. Still, he hadn't taken it too badly. He'd had that odd smile on his face that last minute or so.