He was still messed up inside. Canada was long over, but his trust was just... poof. Snow in the wind. Jude had his hopes and his future all tied up in the X's and all their potential role model-ness. He'd wanted to be good and needed and helpful, sure. But most of all he wanted to be wanted.

Instead he'd gotten slapped upside the head with booze-fueled attempted authority.

He swore, SWORE he wouldn't do this homeless crap ever again. He swore he wouldn't run away and he wouldn't grow up and he would be good and he wouldn't put himself on the path that he'd tried in that other future.

He'd gotten so wrapped up in trying to fill everybody's expectations that Jude didn't know who he was now. And he didn't know where to go. Or who to be.

So he entered limbo. He went nowhere. He got back to New York and he wandered, finding alleys and out of the way nooks for shelter when the wind got to be too much. He was terrified that he would disappear.

Nobody wanted him in this whole wide world. Nobody.

Jude huddled behind a thumping club in his dingy clothes from way back before he knew that he'd never get to shower again and was too numb to even cry.

Jack was on her last break of the evening, her lunch, and had taken the opportunity to step outside. You could hear the music everywhere, even in the staff areas of the club and outside. But at least when you were outside, you could drink-in the cold air and avoid the party-goers. Jack preferred to eat out here because there was no risk of someone seeing her eat, too.

The prawn leaned over as she exited, grabbing a loose brick off of the ground and tucking it between the door and the door-frame. No sense in latching it, she wasn't going anywhere. Besides, she'd be locked-out and would have to walk all the way back around to go back in. The prawn huffed, pleased with her quick work, and sank on her haunches. An expert primary hand hooked itself around the surgical mask that concealed her mouthparts, removing it before tucking it in a pants pocket. Jack eagerly undid the paper bag, fishing-out a sandwich that she'd made.

She didn't notice the dark-haired teen. Not at first. Most people had the good sense to stay out of dark alleys. Given her size and her ability to see in the low-light, however, Jack was afforded a certain freedom that most people didn't have. The prawn yawned, stretching her mandibles, before taking a bite out of her sandwich. Good sh**.

It was only after the first bite that she let her eyes wander, and only after the first bite that she noticed that she wasn't alone. A kid, perhaps a teen, was lingering up the alleyway from her. A dark-haired boy, seemingly human from this distance. She chewed slowly, fishing out her smartphone while she ate. Jack took another bite of her sandwich, and expertly typed a message in her text-to-speech app. When she finished typing, she pressed play.

<<You have an interesting taste in hang-out locations,>> a synthetic, female British voice remarked from the speakers of her cell phone, <<You'd better not be looking for trouble outside of my club.>>

Humans had no business in dark alleys, unless they were relieving themselves or looking to mug someone, neither of which was favorable. Jack took another bite of her sandwich, gaze trained on the silhouette of the teen.

He'd been spacing. For how long, Jude couldn't say. He was surprised that his spot had gotten so dark. Even more surprised by the back-lit hulk of a person who addressed him with a cheery artificial voice.

He would have guessed she was a mutant even before he'd heard the voice because his power tugged lazily at his insides. It was begging for him to copy something new. He'd been strict with it, or at least, he'd tried to be because he'd been too scared to grab powers untested.

She was... big. That was about the extent of what he could see even though there was a little bit of something escaping the club's interior. She said it was her club?

Two and two were not adding up to anything yet.

Even here he wasn't wanted.

"I'll leave."

Jude stood to go, but he just seemed to keep unfolding-- taller and taller and taller than he'd ever been before in his life. His shirt split. His pants split. His feet busted out the toes of his shoes and then out the sides.

"Tha fu-" He tried to say it, but it came out rather more like a trill of sounds. More than 2 hands reached up to feel this foreign mouth.

His head snapped back to the woman who was crouched by the door, clear as day and just as chitinous.

But... also rainbow. More rainbow than the rainbow, if that was possible. He tried to say something else, but all the words got jumbled. The only thing obvious was that there should have been some exclamation points attached.

>> "I'll leave."

Jack grunted in approval. That wasn't her intention, exactly-- if he'd just said he meant no trouble, she would have let him be. But leaving was A-OK too. Then, she could eat her lunch in peace and quiet. The kid rose, Jack noted, side-eyeing them askance. But as he rose, he contorted-- stretched taller, grew outwards. The sound of ripping fabric drew her full attention. Spines and ridges became defined in the young man's form, until there stood a doppelganger of Jack in his place. The prawn sputtered on her sandwich, quickly stumbling to her feet. Phone clattered to the ground.

"Sh**!" Jack shouted unceremoniously, taking a few steps back, "'at duh Hell?"

An anxious primary hand found the crown of her bald head. He was... that was... her? How the f*** was that even-? Her doppelganger made a quiet trill, before his hands found his face. What the Hell. His attention snapped in her direction, and Jack's antennae dropped, eyes wide and mouth agape. This fas the first time she was face-to-face with another prawn.

There was another confused exclamation from the other prawn.

Jack quickly knelt to retrieve her phone, before returning to her rigid stance at the opposite end of the alleyway. She was totally dubfound.

"No 'ay dis real," she announced, "You looked like a kid just a second ago."

The prawn settled another hand atop her bald head, still firmly rooted in place. She was beginning to wonder if she was somehow contagious.

She typed another message on her phone.

<<Has this happened to you before?>> the synthetic voice asked.

Under normal circumstances, Jude tried his best to avoid copying physical mutations. He liked to be himself. Lately himself hadn't been working all that well. He was having trouble getting up the emotion required to be horrified or annoyed. He was too surprised and the rainbows were distracting. She'd just been a big shadow before.

He tried to echo her 'no way' but it was like talking with a mouth full of noodles. Or... tusks? Yes. That was the closest thing he'd experienced. He tried his best to talk around the extras.

"Khoppy pfaower." He cringed with his eyes. That was painful for him to listen to. The last thing he wanted to do was make another person mad at him for taking what wasn't his without permission. He held up his digits in a placating gesture and was distracted by the way that they looked.

"Mu'int"

The three articulated digits reflected the alley's ambient light in reds and all those other colors that he had no words for. And the other set of arms. They naturally wanted to tuck up in close. Ugh. But his only set of clothes was ruined. They hadn't been worth jack at that point, dirty as they'd been, but they had made him modest. Now the waistband of his jeans was the only thing keeping a few scraps in place and when he took a step his super tight boxers split at the thighs.

!!!

Was he!? Did he lose-!?

Yes. Jude peeked. But the answer was no. He didn't lose anything.

>> "Khoppy pfaower."

The prawn surveyed her doppelganger, thinning her eyes in scrutiny.

>> "Mu'int"

Ah, that made sense. The initial shock was wearing-off. You saw a lot of things, working at a nightclub that drew mutants and mutant-allies alike. But this was her first time meeting a "power copier" as it were.

"Dat's sun sucking rotten luck," Jack announced "Your hangout is a nyu-tant nightclu'."

Now that he'd explained himself, Jack seemed to be taking this relatively well. She fished her surgical mask out of her pocket and hooked it back onto her jaw-spikes, concealing her mouthparts.

"Need to get you close," she announced, "You tore den to shreds. No good."

Thankfully, Jack always brought a change of clothes for the commute home. And although the copycat was slightly bigger than her, her clothes were baggy enough to do the job. She reprogremmed her text-to-speech app to a male voice, and pushed the phone towards the copy's secondary hands.

"Hard to talk," Jack said, though she was sure he'd already put two-and-two together, "Use snart-sone, does talking sore you. Sounds less ridiculous."

Offering little more explanation, Jack grasped the copycat by his forearm and led him towards the door by which she'd previously been perched.

"I'n Jack, 'y duh 'ay," the prawn said as she pushed the door open and kicked the brick aside, "Jacquelyn Dyer. Stay close."

The two of them slipped inside, into the far-off throbbing music and dimly-lit avenues of the back portion of the club. The kitchen and guest-performer lounge were on this side of the club. They'd have to pass the dance floor and head upstairs to get to the employee area wherein the lockers were located. Another employee, a kitchen staff who was who was on their break, looked up from their phone, their expression breaking into a grin when they spotted the copycat in tow.

"Hey Chief, who's that you got with you?" she hollered. Of course they knew which one was Jack, because Jack was in-uniform-- her slacks and dress-shirt, tie, and vest-- whereas the mimic was essentially naked.

"Ny cousin," Jack fibbed, saving the mimic the trouble of answering, "He here to 'isit, needs a house key. Sore-got to lea's un."

The prawn left it at that, not even to stopping to see if her coworker had believed her. They continued up the hall, the music growing louder as they went-- just through the swinging double doors, they'd find their way to the dancefloor.

It was too hard to explain why he'd been here. The mutant thing was on purpose. This power hadn't been his aim. Actually, he hadn't quite devised a good plan yet. He'd been aimless. And this was the consequence of that.

She seemed to have a plan, though. Very practical.

Jude tagged along behind her tethered by their hands while he cradled her phone in his sub-hands. Which was... new. He tried to focus on typing and not tripping. That was easier said than done when his boxers provided a scandalous breeze

<<You didn't have to bring me in.>> Oh. Hey. It was a man robot talking now. How'd it know to do that?

People talking cut Jude's phone investigation short. Heh. Cousin. Jude vocalized a more musical sort of hello than he'd intended and he waved to the little people as they passed. He let himself be tugged on through, but noticed the open gawks and stares. Huh. Well, the rainbow was impressive, but usually people were less weird about it. Was Jack new? They didn't seem used to seeing this sort of thing. Jack... or Chief... or whoever she was. Jude didn't know enough to be ashamed. He went back to typing.

<<Why the mask? Please don't tell me we are poisonous.>>

Okay. So maybe he shouldn't have hit the button for the phone to read that when they got out to the dance floor. And he probably shouldn't have chosen to swap it from British Man to Australian Man. For some reason the word "poisonous" sounded far more plausible in that accent.

>> <<You didn't have to bring me in.>>

This earned little more than a loud huff and a dismissive shrug in reply. Jack didn't have to do anything. She could just as easily left the boxer-clad mimic out naked on the street! No skin off of her back! But she felt at least partially obliged to give the fool some clothes. He could thank her later.

The mimic trilled at the "cousin" remark and Jack smirked. She remembered the earlier days of growing accustomed to the vocalization. She hardly noticed the stares though, if she had, she would assume that it was because there were two Jacks now instead of one... or that the other Jack was showing-off a bit more chitin than what would be considered publicly acceptable.

>> <<Why the mask? Please don't tell me we are poisonous.>>

Through the double-doors they went, into the pulsating beat of music. Neon lights bathed the club and were accompanied by the run-of-the-mill effects that one would often find in such a classy club as this. Reassuringly, Jack shook her head, lightly prying the phone free of his hands to type her response. It was no use talking in the din of the main room, they wouldn't be able to hear each other.

Jack typed as they walked, expertly dropping her shoulder to cut through the revelers as she bee-lined towards the staircase to the employee area. She handed the phone back to the copycat with a new smattering of text written in the dialog.

<It's mostly just for modesty. People like to stare.> it read blandly. Now at the staircase, the prawn released her newfound companion. She jogged halfway up, pausing to look back at the mimic, and gestured for him to follow. Just upstairs and down a short hall, they'd find the locker-room. Jack clambered up the remaining stairs and strode down the hall, stopping just outside the door to the locker area. The hall was cramped and, again, poorly lit, with old band posters and some grafitti adoring the walls.

The music had faded behind them once again.

"Dis 'ay," Jack called, "Lockers in here."

She keyed-in the code and, once the door unlatched itself, she slipped inside, holding the door open for the mimic.

"'at's your nay-n?"

Jude craned his neck to see around the club as they passed. It was actually really neat in there. Loud, but TV had prepared him for that much. Had he ever actually been in a club? Ever? Technically he was underage, but that had never stopped him from doing things before.

She stuffed a message back into his sub-hands. Huh? Oh. right. Not poison. That was good news. And so was clothes. Did he still stink? Did he dare hope for dinner too? Jude was getting way ahead of himself.

She held the door for him.

His name?

"Do I hab to say?" Jude hesitated just outside the employee space. He typed quickly.

<<I don't want to go back right now.>>

>> "Do I hab to say?"

Jack shrugged. No, he didn't have to say. She could just give him a name. Hm.

>> <<I don't want to go back right now.>>

Didn't want to go back where? Didn't want to go back and get changed? A series of annoyed clicks escaped Jack.

"You're al-nost naked," Jack retorted, uncertain of what the mimic meant, "Need close."

Jack was not about to explain to management why her doppelganger was running around the club in boxers. She was wise enough to lightly reclaim her phone, lest the boy really didn't follow her in. The prawn then disappeared into the dressing room with a sharp jerk of her chin, letting the door begin its slow swing shut. Whether or not he chose to follow was up to him.

The prawn found her way to her locker, the agitated clicks dulling to a quiet "urrrr". Given the poor quality of her fine motor skills, her lock was one of those that you could slide up, down, left and right in a particular pattern to open. She fussed with the lock then, with a click, sprang the mechanism. She undid the lock and fished-out her bag. A quick-search procured a pair of cargo-shorts with a belt and a wife-beater. That would have to do-- Jack certainly wasn't parting ways with her hoodie for the sake of an unfortunate copycat. She replaced her bag and refastened the lock, returning with an armful of clothes.

There was nothing wrong with almost naked! People wore less in summer! It didn't even feel all that naked considering the carapace. Just... y'know. Drafty downstairs. Jude had a few clicks of his own regarding that. Honestly, with how flamboyantly that they looked, this rainbow prawn was far too obsessed with propriety.

That was too much of an argument to try to get through his mouth, though. If she didn't want him to walk around in his boxers, he didn't want to make trouble for her. After all, right now, his actions reflected more on Jack than they did on him. If he went out into the wide world, how many people would believe that they were cousins? Most would (probably rightly) assume there was only one.

She wasn't making him do anything. He actually did need the help.

Jude caught the door with an inch to spare before it closed.

"Thanks." Although he'd take back every syllable if he'd known what she was handing him to wear. He probably failed in keeping his face from the horror that was cargo shorts.

And a wife beater? Did she dress in wife beaters? Currently Jack appeared rather dapper. Jude was, frankly, jealous.

"Coul' I shower?" If there was one, that would make the indignity of donning class-less clothes easier to bear.

>> "Thanks... Coul' I shower?"

Jack tilted her chin down at the mimic, leveling a look of "Are you f#$%ing serious?" at him.

"Listen, kid, dis a nightclu'," Jack intoned, "Not a hotel. Do you sink dere'd 'e shower here?"

Jack saw the look he made at the proferred clothes, at which the real Jack gave a soft huff. These were her own clothes, bought with her own money, that she was giving this young man without so much of an expectation of him returning them. And they were practical! You could only get stretch-knits over the massive primary arms and much more fabric beyond a tank-top ran the risk of snagging on the spines along your shoulders and arms. The same went for the spines on your legs. You had to wear baggy pants (Jack preferred cargo pants and shorts, for the sake of practicality) to accommodate the strange morphology.

"Geez, kid, Just 'ut duh close on," Jack said with finality, unceremoniously dumping the clothes towards the young man. It'd be up to him whether he accepted the deposited clothes or let them fall, "Iss it's so terri'le, you can change later, yeah? I don't care 'ut you do as-ter. Just care now."

"'est 'e has is a sink," Jack said, "You could 'ipe down 'iss a 'a'er towel."

It was better than nothing. Jack remembered, during her time on the streets, there was many an improvised grooming in a park bathroom, during the wee hours of the morning when no one was likely to come-in.

It depended on the kind of club it was. If there were cages and glitter involved... Buuuut this was not a strip club. Jude had never been to a strip club either. He'd just been hopeful for a second there. For a shower.

Jude's antenna did strange things as he became aware of them. He suddenly couldn't un-feel them. He had to reach up and make them STOP whatever it was they were trying to do.

He let the clothes drop and then looked from the sad heap up at the original prawn. He had clearly insulted her and for that he was sorry. He was even more sorry for her choice of clothes because now it was Jude that would pay the price for those questionable decisions.

"Hyy do you care?" He formed the words slowly and with care. They weren't an accusation. It was an honest appeal. Why? Why did it matter if he was a stinky naked prawn? Did it bother her that there were two of them now?

The kid ran a hand over his antennae, and asked--

>> "Hyy do you care?"

Why did she care? The prawn surveyed him, her expression unreadable. On the most practical level, she felt responsible for the mimic. He'd copied her power and, as the result, shredded his clothes. On the other, since he'd mimicked her, now he looked like her and was waltzing about naked. Which wouldn't reflect well upon her. Then, on the deepest level, Jack had inklings about the kid's background-- he was sitting in an alley, and was looking for a shower. Perhaps these were of little consequence. On the other hand, Jack couldn't help but see some of her younger self in him... from her street-dwelling days. If he had a home to go to, he wouldn't be asking for a shower at a nightclub-- he'd just go home and change.

The prawn shouldered a shrug, eyes cutting sideways in a noncommittal way. She turned to go back to her locker, breathing a trilling whistle. She could tell the kid what she thought, but you shouldn't assume that about a person. Maybe he just like sitting in a dark alley and asking strangers about showers.

"'y 'ouldn't I care?" Jack finally retorted, flopping onto a beat-up couch at the corner of the room, "You didn't 'lan on turning into nee. Now you're naked. Need close. I ha'en to has close. And nost solks don't ask sore showers at nightclu's." The prawn fixed the kid with a knowing, unflinching look. She didn't say that she was onto him and she didn't say what she assumed about his living situation. But something in her demeanor said that she knew.

"You re-nine'd nee uzz ny-sells," the prawn said with finality, " 'eyond just looking like nee, you re-nine-d nee uzz ny-sells. I only doing 'ut nakes sense to nee."

She asked a question right back that was so like Maya, so like the woman that had gone around the world in search of him, that Jude's eyes started to feel the first prickles of moisture. Could a rainbow cry? Jude didn't want to find out so he took his time collecting the things he'd callously let drop to the floor. A man had his pride, after all.

"Sis is Noo 'ork. No'ody cares unless 'ou ged somesing in re'urn."

That wasn't quite right. There were good people. From what he'd seen so far, Jack was good people.

He sighed and clicked. So she'd been here at the rock bottom before. And apparently she thought rock bottom could benefit from clothes. Naked might be fine indoors, but he really didn't want to get arrested for indecent exposure. Or, like, at all. Jude acquiesced to the wisdom she was sharing and passed the clothes to his sub-hands before he made his way over to the sink.

"You seen ok noa. Nouh? NOW-UH." W's turned out to be difficult. All of his speech therapy was pretty much useless now that he no longer had teeth. "Of duh dwo secons we kno'n each o'er."

He turned the tap to hot and hoped it would heat quickly.

"So'as your s'ory?" That was awful. Where'd that phone gotten to? Oh. In one of his many hands. He typed and then tossed the phone back to its owner.

<What's your story? Only if you want.>

He made sure that the door remained open a crack behind him so that he could hear Jack's reply.