Mikayla looked at her Uncle Ted suspiciously for a second, before scooting out and sitting at the far end of the couch. She was fidgety, which Ted more or less expected. He'd had a good idea that she'd hung on their every word and the look on her face said it all. So, he made no bones about what he was going to tell her, and spelled things out concisely. It was actually a good thing she'd listened in. That way, there was little bullshit and more ground covered. The sooner he told her how things were going to be, the sooner that Mikayla would find out life could be easy or hard. That it would be up to her.

"C'mere," he'd said, and extended his hand to her, palm up, almost like you'd call a dog over. She eyed his hand a second warily...it was the same hand that had swatted her, but on a leap of faith, took it and scooted over about halfway. Ted stifled the chuckle and pulled her to sit on his lap. She squirmed for a second.

"Let's get somethin' straight, Mikayla. You're -on- my lap. Not -over- it. There's a difference. Right now, we're just gonna talk. Actually, I'm gonna talk and you're gonna listen. When it's your turn to talk, it'll be entirely up to you whether you remain sitting like this or if you get flipped over across my knee. And it ain't hard to stay out of trouble. If it's trouble you want, it's trouble you're gonna get. You're not gonna wear me down, little girl. I'm bigger than you, I'm older than you, and I'm making the rules. I told you some of 'em earlier when you still had an attitude. You still have the attitude now?"

She glanced up at him a little less sullenly, but still sulking. "Nosir. But you...you...I only said that to Gram 'cause I wanted to be with Daddy," she sighed. "I knew she'd get mad and I figured she'd send me home. Not to you. I don't know why Daddy's so hung up on numbers, that at ~this~ age or ~that~ age I can do sh-stuff."

Ted smirked and congratulated her sarcastically on controlling the profanity.

"I'll tell you exactly why. 'Cause you're a little girl. Maybe if you were a boy, he'd let you be home. Ain't sayin' it's fair, but that's life. You come from a family that's got all boys. You're the only girl in two generations. Girls are still kinda new to us. And there's a lot of creeps out there. Your Daddy would never forgive himself if something happened to you while he wasn't able to watch you. The law even says he can't leave you alone. You want him to go back to j-break the law?"

Ted had backpedaled a bit. Yes, Mikayla knew Mike had done time, but it's not something that's easy to talk about. Her eyes misted over and she shook her head furiously no. It was clear she hadn't seen it from that vantage point, and it was enough to make her brain click and for sense to kick in, to the point where she couldn't even argue the possible "fairness/unfairness" issue of girls not getting the same freedom as boys. Not at this age. Daddy was one to shelter her to a point, but they'd watch the news together at dinner. More often than not it was girls that went missing or bodies found than boys. And Daddy had told her more than once when a little girl not much younger than her had been abducted not far from where they lived, and her body was found within 12 hours, that he wouldn't know what he'd do without her, that it made sense. The whole generations thing. But Daddy didn't actually explain it as calmly as Uncle Ted just did. Daddy would get angry seeing those stories on TV and there was always an edge in his voice; Mikayla couldn't understand that the cases like that on TV were things that sometimes had Mike DiBiase fighting insomnia. That those things could have happened, maybe -would- have happened, under Mikayla's mother's watch. That "There but for the grace of God go I" was a phrase Mike would say silently to himself. Names like Casey Anthony and more recently, Rayne Perrywinkle, were stories that haunted him.

Tears started. The thought of Daddy in jail made the mist turn to full tears. Ted hadn't expected her to give in so easily to reason, nor was he as immune as he thought to little girl tears. When a thought could reduce her to bawling, it was a lot more effective than the swat over the back of the couch. He hugged her tightly, his chest like a protective wall of muscle. He thought maybe she was afraid of the creeps he'd mentioned and apologized if he'd scared her. He'd apologized in a quiet, sincere voice. She found her own voice through tears and said, "No, you didn't do anything wrong. I just don't want to lose Daddy to prison."

They talked about things like stranger danger and how the family didn't put rules in place solely for the purpose of making Mikayla miserable. He was able to coax a smile out of her toward the end of the talk, but the smile faded when he did remind her, "I'm not gonna tolerate brattiness, though. You're not a dumb kid, 'Kayla, and you're not gonna play me like you play Uncle Brett. I told you, I could be your best friend or your worst enemy. What's it gonna be?"

She looked at him thoughtfully after wiping her eyes with her sleeve and gave a little wisecrack..."My best frenemy." Ted did have to laugh. She did have a wicked little sense of humor for somebody her age. And clearly she was tired. The nap she'd taken when she'd arrived with Senior hadn't been enough to sustain this conversation too much further into the night, and before he knew it, if he didn't get her tucked in bed soon, she -and- he might end up being monsters tomorrow. He picked her up like she was half her age, which was easy, and brought her to the second bed in the 2-queen bed hotel room. He tucked her in as if she was his own, letting her sleep in her clothes rather than try to unpack her stuff this late at night. She fell asleep within minutes and if his ears didn't deceive him, she might've said as she had when she was little, an I love you along with her goodnight. Of course, whether he heard wrong or right, he responded to what he thought he'd heard.

He had heard correctly, after all. She fell asleep feeling a lot more secure and less fearful. This didn't mean that a few days later, she didn't find herself the recipient of a series of swats that wouldn't go on report to Daddy, but she'd earned those less out of disrespect and more for acting bratty towards Peyton Orton. The hotel's restaurant offered a buffet, but they didn't offer it for a food fight. In her defense, she hadn't started it.

Who did?

Randy Orton did. He'd torn the piece of paper off half of his drink straw, and had blown the paper off with the intent to shoot Ted with it. It had flown off target and hit Mikayla right dead center in her forehead. She hadn't seen the shooter but thought Peyton had. The next thing anybody knew, broccoli florets had been catapulted off of her spoon and she'd landed a direct hit on Peyton's chin. "Mikayla!" Ted had warned, and Randy was more startled than anything. Whereas Peyton got off with a warning after he'd countered with a spoonful of corn, Mikayla had been abruptly brought upstairs after she'd followed up the broccoli with a forkful of mashed potatoes, scoring another direct hit. Peyton was shocked more than anything, but Randy had slipped him a $10 bill to "take it like a man" and not rat Randy out for being the strawpaper shooter.

"It was a little piece of paper, Mikayla, not a damned rock!" Ted said as he'd tugged her out of the restaurant by the hand and took her upstairs on the elevator. Oh, she was livid. She did have her Daddy's temper sometimes, a temper that Ted too could share but he'd spent much of his life learning how to water it down. "You don't act like an animal at the table!"

"HE started it!" she'd insisted. And truth told, Ted didn't see who 'he' was. Had he known it was Randy, he'd probably have just fired a strawpaper back. But since the little girl overreacted, corrective measures were taken. Nothing too severe, but just a reminder of who the boss was. 15 minutes later, they were back downstairs. Her eyes were a little teary and she sat a little gingerly, but Ted would be proud to say that out of his time with her, that was the only time he'd had to take it to that level. He'd also kept Mikayla for an extra couple of weeks...weeks she'd ended up *asking* to stay with him, rather than go with Uncle Brett.

Brett was actually a little perturbed, thinking that Ted 'replaced' him in their niece's heart. It wasn't that. It was just that between her overprotective Daddy and her very laid-back uncle, Ted was the perfect balance, the happy medium, and it would be a time in the summer that she'd actually learned quite a bit. She'd even written a heartfelt apology letter to her grandparents, without Ted even prompting her to.