"Special patient for you all," Cuddy announced without preamble, dealing case files like playing cards. Gregory House's diagnostic team, slumped in their customary work-lull stupor, had to snap awake or risk decapitation by folder. Kutner's chair legs raked the as he bent to gather his from the floor.

Cuddy's surprise attack seemed to have caught House slightly off-guard, as she actually managed to get casefiles into doctors' hands before he ripped out the first snide comment. She had off-balanced him more frequently of late – which is to say she managed it at all, as the achievement had once been only a hypothetical possibility – and more than one bright mind on his team was beginning to wonder why. The same reason, perhaps, that he had held her infant daughter without tenderness but with competence and something almost like ease. The same reason he was privately annoyed he had to hear about her various states of mind from Wilson instead of picking up on them himself.

"I thought all patients were 'special.' Or is this one special like a benefactor's nephew?" House's tone made it more than clear what he thought of special but he added the finger quotes anyway.

"He's not a benefactor's anything. He's from St Mungo's."

House was very – very – briefly surprised. "Then he probably swallowed a scalpel or one of his voices told him he was Jesus Christ and he tried to walk on water, whatever, not my area. Up his lithium and bundle him back to his padded room."

St Mungo's was the local mental institution. It wasn't politically correct to call it that, of course, nor was it any longer acceptable to lock away your special needs child or funny uncle, but despite the very clean, bright, modern layout and equipment, Mungo's retained an air of the macabre from the days when people did just that.

"Would you take a case for once? Read a file? Would you read anything?"

"Read Penthouse just last night. There was this blonde in there with the most am-"

"House!" Cuddy cut him off just as his hands came up to demonstrate what would almost certainly have been the size of some young pin-up's chest and at least three sets of eyes rolled behind her. "The patient is not psychotic, he didn't swallow anything, he doesn't think he's Jesus, or Elvis, or Santa Claus, or anything else you're going to throw out there. He's been hospitalized since he was a small child, so they have very good medical records on him, which is why everyone else has concluded that this is your case."

The Dean of Medicine paused for a moment. "Oh, and I need Foreman and Taub for this technique-exchange program the local hospitals are participating in, I'm sending them to Princeton General."

Immediate protests from every person in the room. House didn't want any other doctors playing with his toys, Foreman didn't want to leave the hospital lest his recent crimes against research be held against him in the outside world, Taub would rather have Cuddy mad at him for refusing to participate than House mad at him for leaving, and Kutner and Thirteen wanted to know why they didn't get to go.

"Foreman's senior on the team and Taub can behave himself in public."

"We behave," Kutner sounded a little petulant, occupational hazard of working all day every day for a six-foot-two child.

"There was that time you set a patient on fire," Taub whispered over his shoulder.

"And stopped your own heart," Thirteen added.

"You got it started again," Kutner hissed back in a tone that suggested he thought that an unreasonable excuse to ban him from field trips.

"Dr Hadley can stand up to House if he does something unethical, and Kutner's had a few creative saves, you may need to come up with some unorthodox methods to communicate with the patient," Cuddy fixed a gimlet stare at the doctor in question, since they all knew he would certainly do something unethical. A truthful explanation, but not a complete one, since all three second-generation fellows bit and bit hard whenever House snarled at them. The real reason was that Taub and Thirteen seldom got along, Foreman and Kutner had similar difficulties, and what Thirteen and Foreman did on their own time was their affair – and she did mean affair – but it wouldn't kill them to be separate at work. And she really did want Kutner's slightly warped mind on this case.

"Foreman, Taub, they're expecting you at Princeton General by eleven."

Cuddy turned on a perilously tall heel and was already several steps down the hallway before House rallied himself to call after her,

"What flavor crazy is he?"

The Dean of Medicine made a vaguely rude gesture and Foreman and Taub wisely took the opportunity while House was sufficiently distracted by the sight of the Cuddy's well-tailored rear to make their own get-away, though they weren't due at the other hospital for nearly an hour.

"I didn't set her on fire very much," Kutner mumbled as he flipped open the blue folder.

"Dude, let it go," Thirteen was already on page two.

AN: And so we begin again. Still working in the new team a little at a time, you get Thirteen and Kutner this time. Short chapter because that was the best place to break it up. More to follow!