The weather was awful. Blistering winds and unforgiving rain. Though Jack's carapace was enough to dull the sting of the raindrops, she could still feel the chill seeping into her limbs. So, the Amazonian woman retreated to the subway station, shaking water droplets free of her head. As soon as she descended through the tunnel, warm air rose to greet her.

In the bustle of the subway station, people jostled into her without much thought. Personal space wasn't a luxury you could afford, here. Jack followed the flow of the foot traffic, past stalls of magazines and convenience items, towards the terminal where her train would arrive. She checked her phone, more out of reflex than out of a desire to know the time. She was early. The phone was repocketed.

The prawn stood with her gaze toward the tracks, a hand upon her hip. Today's ensemble entailed the prawn's usual cargo pants and hoodie ensemble, with an additional canvas-and-sherpa coat for additional insulation. Jack unhooked her surgical mask from the spines along her jaw, but only to wring the water out of it.

"Hey! The f*** are you doing here?"

The shout pulled the prawn's attention. A guy in a baseball cap seemed to be addressing someone immediately in front of Jack.

"Hey man, it's not what it looks like, I just had to get my sh** from Ice, okay?"

Jack drolly turned her attention back towards the tracks. It wasn't her business if two a**holes wanted to bicker while waiting for the train.

Emma was making her way to the subway station from a part of town she wasn't really familiar with. She was looking into an opening at a real estate place and had gotten lost at which stop to get off at while riding the subway earlier.

She hated to admit it, but subways were a good way to copy mutations from people. You could fake a trip and one full hand contact later, Emma had copied some girl's mutation. It was easy to see since her hair and palms were like a light show. Though in her attempt to fake the trip, she really did trip. Which means that Emma touched this chick with her hands on her waist just above her butt as she was trying to catch herself from falling. Emma looked up when the chick turned around after she fell and said, "Wow, you're really hot." Emma slowly got to her feet and noticed that her hair was now a nice shade of pink. Emma didn't know what pink meant so she kinda scurried away in case she had ticked the chick off. Unless it could have meant she liked the compliment or was turned on, then Emma probably would have stayed. But she didn't wanna risk it. Most New Yorkers would deck you for bumping into them and she didn't wanna risk it.

Emma finally got to the right subway station, but by the time she did, her nicely curled hair and clothes were soaked and blown all over the place from the weather. "Great. Just great. I'm gonna look like crap when I get there. They'll never hire me lookin' like this" Emma thought to herself, making her way down the stairs and onto the platform. She stood there waiting patiently when suddenly she saw two dudes close to her start to bicker.

"It would be so funny to see one of them as the light show that chick had going on with her hair. Should I?" ,Emma pondered, "Let's wait a moment and see how their bickering continues."

Jack's first mistake was her decision to ignore the two "gentlemen", and she used that term very, very loosely. The conflict devolved into a shouting match. Lightning crackled from the aggressor's hands, eliciting frightened shouts from bystanders. By then, Jack looked up. By then, the man in that ballcap was swiping. His target dodged, he glanced Jack, and the spasm that the electricity sent through the prawn toppled her like a tree.

Son of a b***h.

Her limbs spasmed and her vision went black. Someone had broken her fall. But Jack was rearing for a fight and scrambling to her feet, despite her quivering limbs.

 "Hey, a**hole, why don't you fight outside, where we don't have t-?!"

Mid-reprimand, the prawn broke off. She had been shaking her fist at the men. Rather than a three-fingered, shelled fist, the hand she shook was freckled, pale, and very human. Furious red light crackled around her clenched fist.

 "Wh-what... the..."

Was this-? Jack drew the hand-- her hand, she supposed-- to her face. Fleshy digits met fleshy cheeks and teeth and--

 "What the f***?"

Jack looked down. These were her clothes, the clothes she'd left the house in, but they fit differently. The pants  pinched her waist where hips jutted out, her hoodie and jacket hung off of her loosely, and-- Jack pulled at the collar of her shirt. No. Way. She had boobs!

 "Holy sh**..."

Furious red was replaced by a humored orange, with flickers here-and-there of green in her hair- she had hair!!- and emanating out of her palms.  A nervous laugh rose out of her as baffled fingers ran through foreign hair, pressed to a chest that she supposed was hers, and surveyed every aspect of the unfamiliar corporeal terrain.

 "Hahaha! Holy sh**!"

Emma was watching the fight start to ensue between the guys on the platform. While other people started to run away, the lightening show was pretty interesting to watch. When all of a sudden, a tall crustacean-like person came falling onto her. From what Emma saw, she got hit with some of that electrical power and it knocked her out briefly. Emma was startled and put her hands up in defense, realizing she had no time to move out of the way. In the moment of being startled and fell on, Emma suddenly bestowed the power she had gained earlier to the person who was now on top of her.

"Well, I was gonna save that power for later or one of the guys in the fight, but this could be interesting." Emma thought to herself. Emma slowly started to get herself off of the ground and shake the woozy off when she saw the crustacean-like person suddenly start to change into a more human like form and freak out about being human like now.

And now apparently, the person who fell on her was also a she. Because suddenly she held her hands over her chest and exclaiming that she had boobs now. Emma kinda smirked and stood there for a few more minutes, dusting herself off and looking over herself for bruises or cuts. She hit the platform pretty hard and hit her head slightly, but she thought she was okay. She rubbed the back of her head and kept her eye on the now newly humanoid lady with very orange hair and flickering palms. She did have to say that she was very pretty to look at, so keeping her eye on her wasn't hard at all.

"I wonder of she'll realize it was me who did that for her. Maybe she won't notice in all her excitement." Emma pondered. She did after all still had to look into that new position for a job, but she was gonna need to reschedule and it seems that she had missed the subway going the route that she needed while all of this was going on. "Oh well. It's raining cats and dogs outside and it's not gonna be a good day for good impressions anyway", Emma thought as she quickly called the real estate agent and made another appointment later in the week to come in.

Her mind hummed indistinctly, scared, excited, confused. This rush of emotions muddied the aura around Jack's hands and darkened her hair to an inky black. Once again, her hands found her own boobs. Maybe that wasn't appropriate in public, but it was so novel, and-- gosh, her feet were cold! Her bare, human feet!

“How…?” the woman mused aloud. The sting of the chill that crept into her bare feet helped center Jack. Hadn't she fallen into someone on her way down? Jack turned to search the direction she'd fallen, and was faced by a petite blonde woman. The woman had already pulled herself to her feet, but was rubbing her head bemoaningly.

“Are you okay?” Jack demanded, her face puckering with concern, “That guy came out of nowhere-” actually, the warning signs had been clear, she'd just been too stubborn to move, “-and gosh, I'm so sorry, are you hurt?”

Subconsciously, Jack noted that she was still taller than the blond woman, and a good deal taller than the people around her. Maybe a six feet tall, or a little bigger. Not as tall as she had been, though.

Another thought that crossed the prawn's mind was that maybe the electrical attack from the man in the baseball cap had been some sort of mutation-warping or -nullifying ability.

All of sudden, the lady with the new power was in front of her and checking on her. It was strange to her because normally people would just move on and not even remotely care what they did to another person. It was slightly irritating and yet sweet at the same time. She wasn't used to someone fussing over her.

When Emma looked up to the lady after looking over herself, she became speechless. When she finally found her voice, she said softly, "Wow, you're beautiful." And for a few moments, she forgot about her head throbbing and body aches. She smiled at her and murmured, "I'm how that happened." Normally, she wouldn't have said anything about her mutation abilities, but after the bump to her head, Emma found herself saying lots of things she would usually have kept to herself.

"I think I'm okay. I bumped my head kinda hard and I'll have some bruises all over, but I've had worse coming out of my old kickboxing classes. It's okay. I saw that you took that hit from that guy pretty hard and I think you blacked out. So I know you didn't mean to land on me. Thanks for checking on me. Most people wouldn't have done so much." Emma's cheeks slightly pinkened as she smiled up at the lady.

The taller woman surveyed the felled blond with genuine concern, but the remark that followed caught her off-guard.

>> "Wow, you're beautiful."

A flicker of green, chased by a pink that persisted.

"Am I?" was the incredulous response, a toothy grin breaking across her face, "You're a vision, yourself."

It was a stuffy thing to say, that someone was a "vision". Jack was just delighting in the ability to say the "v" sound, honestly. That, and the apparently-human appearance made her feel more brave. Jack inclined her head as the other woman explained that she'd be fine, despite some scuffs and bruises. She was a kickboxer (how cool and unexpected!) and besides which, she'd seen when Jack had been toppled.

The taller woman rubbed the back of her neck bashfully, giving an apologetic smile, "That doesn't mean getting crushed beneath an eight-foot behemoth was necessarily... part of your plan? But I'm glad that you're okay."

Jack was embarrassed-- embarrassed because she'd been caught off guard, that she'd blacked-out from electrocution, and that she'd nearly flattened an attractive bystander in the process. Jack fished her phone out of her pocket, but she didn't turn it on. She used the black phone-screen to survey her reflection. Pale skin, angular face, cold expression (though perhaps just because she was freezing her a** off)... blond hair fell in unkempt waves past her chin, and lavender eyes squinted contemplatively. A smile quirked at the corner of her lips. Jack repocketed her phone.

"You did this?" she pressed, excited yellow coursing into her hair. The subway screamed at some distant part of the tunnel. It would be here soon, "This is your mutation? How cool."

Her hands were glowing, after all. Jack didn't mean her remark to be reductive. If anything, her excitement had not abated. She was human... each correctly-pronounced syllable was delectable... And it was all because of the woman in front of her.

"My name's Jacquelyn. Usually go by Jack. It's a pleasure."

God, she sounded so classy without the speech impediment. Jack extended a hand as she introduced herself.

Emma smiled and answered back, "Yeah, you really are." She even giggled at Jack's comment about her being a vision. She had never been called that before, but it was nice. Emma suddenly noticed that the pink hair showed up. "So I take it that pink hue means a good thing, right?", she asked playfully.

Emma reached out and placed her hand on Jack's upper arm when she saw that she was embarrased about her fall. "It's okay", she said, "It wasn't exactly a part of your plan today either, but I'm glad I got to be the one who caught you. Because otherwise you'd be talking to someone else right now instead of me." Emma blushed a bit more, biting at her bottom lip subconciously.

Jack was so excited about Emma giving her another mutation. Emma smiled at her, guessing it was a good thing to do. She didnt really know how she felt about this mutation of hers and what other people would think of it. That's why she had kept people at arm's length and put on a facade to get close to people without letting anyone really get close to her. "Yeah, I guess it is pretty cool. I never knew how other people would think of it, so I didn't really tell people about it."

Emma heard the subway coming in the distance and knew she needed to head home or somewhere soon. Emma looked into Jack's beautiful lavender eyes and then noticed her slightly cold expression, saying, "You look like you are pretty chilly. Do you live nearby so we can get you some dry clothes? And I think I may need to lie down for bit, but I don't wanna try and go home by myself."

Emma took Jack's hand and introduced herself as well, "My name's Emma. Will you stay with me until I feel better?"

A tinge of purple responded to the other woman's remark about pink, but was then replaced by yellow-orange and an absurd laugh.

“I don't know what it means!”

The woman tenderly announced that she was glad to be the one crushed under Jack, a hand patting the sleeve-clad arm. The pink came back to her hair and hands, and a flush rose on her pale cheeks. It was amazing how much she could feel, with human arms. Jack pinched the back of her own hand, delighted by the sting that answered.

>> “You look like you are pretty chilly. Do you live nearby so we can get you some dry clothes? And I think I may need to lie down for bit, but I don't wanna try and go home by myself."


The pink persisted, and the prawn could feel herself shaking her head. No matter how cold she was right now, she guaranteed that it would be colder outside. And the last place she wanted to go while looking like this was back home… to put on old clutches... there was so much to do, when you looked like this! But where could she start? It was a thought Jack had entertained every now and again, ‘What would she do if she could human again?’, but she'd never thought that it could actually happen.

“I don't actually live around here,” the taller woman confessed. She'd been sent this way to get something for Devon and, having retrieved it, would need to make her way back at home to deliver it, “I'm near the Central Park Zoo…” which was across town, “... I'm sure I'll dry out! I'm just not… you know… used to being so… vulnerable. To the elements.”

Jack looked at her feet again, wiggling her toes. Shoes would be helpful, but would it be worth it to buy shoes?

>> "My name's Emma. Will you stay with me until I feel better?"

“I'll stay with you, Emma,” Jack assured her, shaking her hand. The pink was still there. The subway screamed into the terminal, gliding to a halt. With a hiss, the doors opened. Jack released Emma's hand.

“After you,” the taller blond said politely. The two of them boarded together, bumbling through the crowd. Miracle of miracles, there was a seat, and Jack did her best to stand in front of it, blocking the seat so that Emma could take it. If she needed to lie down, there was no sense in making her stand. The train lurched into motion, pulling out of the station.

“Do you know... how long this lasts?”

If this was her mutation, she might know… but some people weren't familiar with specifics. There was so much she wanted to do… try on a dress, take a hot shower, and… well… there were some objectives you couldn't entertain in polite company. Jack shook her head.

"Where do you want to go?"

The first priority was the other woman's wellbeing. Jack had to remind herself of that. She was only in this position because of that woman's mutation.

Emma laughed with Jack and said, "Well, I think that pink shows up when you like something or someone says something nice about you. Because it turned pink when you started to blush too, I think..." Emma nodded her head in understanding when Jack said she wasn't used to being vulnerable to the elements, but that couldn't possibly be comfortable. She had to help Jack out too.

When Jack told her where she lived, Emma said, "Well, I'm not as far away as you are. We could go back to my apartment, if you wanted. You could get some dry clothes and a hot shower, at least."

Emma followed Jack into the subway car, noticing that she had made sure to block the open seat for her. Emma smiled at her, sat in the seat and patted the open space next to her in the seat for Jack to sit, wanting to lay her head in Jack's lap when she laid down.

The subway started to leave the station and Jack asked Emma if she knew how long it would last. Emma nodded her head, saying "It lasts about four hours, but you have to stay close to me." She didn't tell her that close was a max of 10 miles from her because she wanted to keep her company. And if she took that shower later, Emma had to remind her not to scrub the hand prints off. They could get wet and wouldn't simply rinse off easily. You had to scrub at them pretty good to get the inky black prints off your skin.

Calling attention to the blush only caused it to deepen. Skin had its downfalls. The train lurched into motion, accelerating in spurts, prompting Jack to clasp a nearby pole for balance. The pole was cold against her palm.

>> "Well, I'm not as far away as you are. We could go back to my apartment, if you wanted. You could get some dry clothes and a hot shower, at least."

“I think your clothes would be high-waters on me,” Jack teased. She couldn't fathom showering in a stranger's house, either, “I’ll make sure you get home, though.”

She made a point of surveying the car around her, willing the blush to go away. Her face felt stupid hot, and her heart was stuttering in her chest. She was way too lesbian for this. And everything was pink, pink, pink.

>> "It lasts about four hours, but you have to stay close to me."

Time was limited, then. And buying clothes, such as shoes, wouldn't be an incredible priority. Jack surveyed her long, slender feet. They'd look good in shoes. She didn't even know what size she'd wear, though.

She glanced back towards Emma, a smile cracking on her features. What an interesting gift Emma had. Infinitely more interesting than looking shrimpy and punching things, “Can you give humans powers too, or just mutants?”

Emma laid her head down in the seat, unsuccessful in trying to get Jack to sit next to her. Though she didn't blame her, Jack didn't know her very well. Let alone enough to be comfortable at her apartment or alone with her. And maybe she just slightly thought she was cute to look at, but nothing more. Emma still wanted to show her or hint at her attraction to Jack, but didn't wanna press it too much and Jack run from her.

When Jack mentioned Emma's clothes being high waters on her, Emma laughed slightly. "Some of my clothes maybe, but I have maxi dresses that are too long for me. Those would probably fit." Emma noticed her looking at her bare feet. "We could get you some shoes. It may be temporary, but who's to say you wouldn't be human again sometime?"

She looked up at Jack to see her smile, Emma still couldn't believe her beauty and that smile that made Emma smile as her face grew warm. Relationships were something she never really had before, but something she really wanted. She wanted someone to come home to, who would love her no matter what, and could help her see what a true relationship should be like. Not the constant hurt and betrayal that she saw her mom go through with her dad.

She suddenly snapped out of her thoughts when she heard Jack speak again, asking her about human or just mutants getting her gifts. She thought back to what happened to her dad. He was human, so she could bestow to both. At least she was pretty sure. She hadn't purposefully given a human a mutation yet since coming to New York, but it still counted. "I can bestow to both.", she said softly.

The statuesque woman smiled and nodded as Emma explained the clothing situation. Jack wasn't entirely sure what "maxi dresses" were (since she didn't wear womens' clothes, typically), but she supposed that wearing a dress removed the possibility of high-waters.

"I mean..." Jack trailed, in regards to the shoes, "This... is a first for me... I think getting shoes would be more trouble than it's worth..." The walk home would suck, big-time, but if it was only once... she could deal.

She nodded as Emma explained that she could give humans and mutants powers.

"That'd be a sharp kick in the pants, for a human," she mused, pushing her free hand through her hair. What a novel sensation! A wry expression touched her face, "I'd assume people aren't usually as... enthusiastic... as I am...?"

The trains squealed into a station-- stopped to let some people off, and more people board-- then it wheezed back into motion.

Emma nodded when Jack said that the shoes would be pointless. It would only be four hours, but Emma figured that it couldn't possibly be comfortable.

Emma laughed when Jack commented about humans getting a mutation being a kick to the pants. "Yeah, it is, but I haven't bestowed many humans before. My Dad was the first. I somehow turned him into a cat. I have no idea what happened after that cuz I got so scared. I just took off with my Mom and made our way here eventually."

Emma's head was still throbbing slightly, but it was more managable. She eased herself up into a sitting position and waited for the dizzy spell to wear off. She looked up at Jack and smiled and giggled at her question. "Actually most people are, but never knew who did it to them. You're the first one to figure out it was me."

She felt the train slow to a stop at the station and after a few minutes start up again onto the next station. "Ya know, I'm starting to feel a little better. We don't have to go back to my apartment if you don't want to. Or we could just get some new clothes on and then come back out to explore. What do you want to do Jack?", she asked kindly.

A chuckle escaped Jack, in spite of herself. Turned her dad into a cat! Her hair flared orange just thinking about it. Well, thank God for small favors, at least she’d been turned human instead of turned into a cat! What a funny way to find out about your mutation. Reflexively, the taller woman covered her mouth when she laughed, a habit acquired from when she had prawn-y mouthparts.

“I can’t imagine how bizarre that must have been,” Jack admonished, “My coming-out,” in more ways than one, Jack thought drolly, “-was decidedly less lighthearted. I don’t remember much of transforming. Except that it f***ing hurt.” And, well, being trapped in the basement, attacked by her dad… but Emma didn’t need all of the details.

Emma seemed to have a change of spirits, announcing that she was feeling better, that they didn’t have to go back to her apartment, et cetera, asking Jack what it was that she wanted to do. Jack tapped her chin contemplatively, squinting her eyes at the smaller woman.

“You sure you aren’t gonna pass-out on me?” she pressed skeptically, “I mean… you did get… flattened by a two-hundred-plus-pound rainbow-shrimp.” With spines.

“A shower does sound nice,” the prawn assured her newfound friend, “Or clothes that aren’t so… soaked? I’d be down to go to your house, or maybe to a Chars to get some clothes.”