He asked for something, well, this was all she had. Kalos opened her mouth to object, but Chase had many other things to say first.

"Why are you hiding?" A better question might have been 'Why did he keep doing nonsensical things?' Taking off one's clothing wasn't shameful. "There is a difference between not wearing clothes and shameful acts."

Oh! But his cheeks were so pink! Kalos eagerly watched him as he stammered through how all the uplanders treated clothing. Paper clothes? No. She was interested in seeing Chase turn into a gorgon. Somewhere in his explanation, he'd stopped doing that.

> “Here, I have an idea. Is it cool if I touch your overalls?”

He wanted her clothes now? She looked down at the blue coveralls still not understanding this boy. Kalos put the strap into his hand. Maybe he needed to be connected to her somehow?

Her breath left her in a rush when his body started changing. She saw it happening. It was a roll of some kind. Like his skin was many strands and hiding just underneath his demigod appearance was gorgon. Not only was he gorgon inside, he was pink. And the next thing she knew...

> “Now I look like you!”

He smiled at her saucer-wide eyes. He smiled with her teeth.

Kalos shrieked, a thin, high-pitched and continuous sound almost like a boiling kettle.

He had her skin, her coral crown, her eyes. His clothes remained the same, but he HE HAD HER VOICE! CHASE STOLE WHO SHE WAS!

She’d liked the hair, and faux!Kalos was sure that she’d like faux!Kalos!! It was a good trick!!

Actual!Kalos did not like faux!Kalos. In fact, she screamed right in the doppelganger’s ear, a cutting, shrill shriek. It was enough to frighten the doppelganger into letting go, and stumbling back. The form reverted as soon as he released her, and the boy fell hard onto the Legos. The geometric edges stabbed unforgivingly but cut no skin.

Unshifted and inhuman, the child scrabbled to his feet, vaulting over the couch to escape the screaming girl. However, as he was post-shift had just fluctuated eleven inches shorter and taller once again, Chase was wobbly on his feet. He stumbled and nearly ate carpet. Fearful red irises sat against black sclera, and his wavy two-tone hair fell into his eyes. Chase theatrically held a hand to his ear, looking dizzily over the top of the couch.

“You said you wanted to see teeth!” the shifter-child protested, “That’s the only way I could copy your teeth! You didn’t have to bust my eardrum!”

That was an exaggeration. But Chase was scared and maybe just a little annoyed and really, really embarrassed. Usually other kids liked his tricks. He grit his teeth, kneeling as the world spun around him. If he leaned on the couch he could probably stand. Instead he squinted his eyes shut and tried not to cry. Babies cried. And he was twelve. And he wasn't going to cry in front of a dumb, pink girl who screamed in his ear.

The moment he let go, he seemed to stop stealing her essence. The moment Kalos realized that he stopped sucking her soul or youth or beauty or power or however he managed it, she also stopped screaming.

A small group of students rushed over, some looking for danger, others more clearly curious came to see what the noise was about. Kalos wanted to stare them down, but Chase had finally done something so much more interesting. He wasn't a demigod and he wasn't her. He was something entirely other.

"I didn't know you would steal my essence." She protested, unrepentant. "You- you had my voice! I need it for me." Kalos hooked her strap back into her coveralls and hesitated. She wanted to approach this wonderful grey friend, but there were interlopers. She diverted to the nearest gawking demigod and waved a pink hand to draw their attention.

"I am sorry." She announced the words, but didn't sound the least bit repentant. She sounded like she wanted to kick them in the shins. "He is my Chase friend. I make the mistake. You go away."

Now other kids were swarming—big kids, mostly, investigating the racket that Kalos had been making. Chase rubbed at his face, covering his face with his arm.

>> "I didn't know you would steal my essence. You- you had my voice! I need it for me."

“I didn’t steal anything!” Chase snapped. It was the same argument he was always on the receiving end of. Except, this time, it was about his power. And, this time, he hadn’t actually stolen anything. Kalos was just. Being. Stupid!!! “That’s not how my power works! I just copy things! It's just pretend!! You still had your voice!”

The word “stupid” was trying to fight its way out, but he knew he’d get in trouble for calling Kalos “stupid”. Momma would know.

Kalos tried to shoo the big kids away, but they had to be sure everything was okay.

“Hey, dude, are you okay?” one of the older boys murmured, “Chase?”

He was extending a hand towards Chase, and Chase became acutely aware of the fact that he was still sitting in natural-form on the ground.

“Don’t touch me!” Chase warned, “Get away!”

He got up to his feet, still wobbly. He pushed a clenched hand into one of his eyes, which was dribbling tears. Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid. This was all stupid! His face was hot, and now he was crying, and his butt hurt from falling on the Legos. And worst of all, all of these kids saw his real face, not his human one! Chase wobbled to his feet, pushing past the big kids, towards the hall. He didn't want to play with Kalos anymore.

The shifter child hobbled down the hallway, churlish, as he began putting his human-form back on. Everyone had seen him. Everyone! They'd seen his gross skin, and his gross eyes, and his stupid hair. And it was all Kalos's fault! Stupid Kalos!

Chase found a niche to tuck himself in, in another lounge area. There was a gap between the wall and an arm chair perfect for a twelve-year-old. He sank into a seated position, drawing his knees to his chin. If you looked close enough, you could see the crown of his head and his ratty shoes.

It wasn't fair! He was just trying to show off. People usually liked his tricks.

She would have been terrified if he'd been an adult, but Chase was in a very unique position. She did not like getting shouted at, but she did like that he stood up for himself. Kalos would have been conflicted if he hadn't been so perfectly gorgon.

Chase insisted he hadn't done anything to her. She'd still been standing there.He had just pretending...? It'd been fine when he wasn't her. He had started to turn just her same color of pink on just his face, even now he was very pink. She checked herself to make sure he wasn't stealing her color. She seemed okay.

Kalos watched Chase interact with the other kids. They seemed concerned. He wasn't having any. Again, Kalos approved. She even felt a surge of protectiveness. She really didn't understand why he was crying, though. He had said that he didn't do anything wrong. Did he need an apology from Kalos? She scratched her head and her fingers scraped loudly against her exposed scalp.

"What did you do to him?" The older kids had no answers and so they looked to her for answers again, even asking the same thing. Perhaps they thought her answer had changed?

No one seemed happy to be here. Wasn't this supposed to be a happy place?

"I do not know?" She didn't have to explain to them what she already didn't understand and her tone was dismissive as a result. Why weren't they leaving?

"You shouldn't have screamed."

And he should not have a dumb face. Kalos frowned at him. "Okay."

That seemed to confuse them. Good. Kalos dropped back to the Lego and picked up her plane. Chase's pyramid was still there... It would only take a few more pieces to complete...

---

She tried not to take too long as a result, the final product was far less polished than she had hoped. She had his triangle all done and on top was a blocky figure made from smoky, almost transparent gray blocks. The head had two single pip, round pieces that she'd yanked off of a partial attempt at a car. She'd also found a frilly, special piece that was a flower and that went into the hand... or where a hand would have been if these rectangles had more better shapes.

Down at the bottom there was a little pink rectangle, the top most piece was a little bit of her coral which she'd snapped off of her crown and jammed into place.

Perfect.

She had to ask and once she found him, all she could see were a pair of shoes. Kalos set the pyramid down and nudged it toward him and then ran back to the Lego pile.

The dour young man remained sulking in his hideout. After he stopped being a tearful, snotty mess (well, he was still a mess, he’d just wiped it on his sleeves) Chase put his human face on again. Maybe he shouldn’t have yelled. Kalos was from the ocean, if she was telling the truth, so maybe she really thought that Chase had stolen her soul or whatever. Even if it did sound stupid to him.

There were footsteps approaching, and it didn’t take a lot of guessing to figure out who it was. They were small footsteps. Had to be Kalos. Chase didn’t say anything, at first, out of stubbornness. Tup-tup-tup. Pause. Fwish. There his pyramid was. Well, it was finished too. And… there was stuff on it. Tuptuptuptuptup. Kalos was gone.

Chase waited until the footsteps vanished, then leaned forward to inspect the pyramid. He poked at the flower-wielding figure, and then at the very-obviously-not-Legos bit. Pink and kinda rock-like. Chase prodded and then picked it up.

The shapeshifter pondered what to do next. Leave the pyramid and go back to his room? That wasn’t very nice. If Mama was here, she’d tell Chase he’d have to apologize. But he didn’t really do anything wrong? At the very least, he should go back. To clean up his mess. Not to apologize.

Chase slid the pyramid out of the way and unfolded himself, frowning. He picked up the creation, replacing the coral, and then padded back in the direction of the room where the Lego pile was. He kept his eyes down as he passed some of the concerned big kids, puffing his cheeks out. Nosey Figgins. He paused at the entry to the other room. Kalos was there. Awkwardly, the boy walked over, sitting to the side of the smaller pink child.

“It looks really cool,” the boy admonished, regarding the finishing touches that Kalos had made, “Is this part from you?”

He pointed at the coral sprig. Bashfully, he kept his gaze down, despite wearing his human face now.

The X-jet wasn't complete, but Kalos had lost interest in it. Instead she started grouping the blocks roughly by color as she brooded.

The older kids were lucky that she wanted to stay, otherwise she would have kicked them right in their pretty demigod shins. Chase had turned out to be the most admirable person she'd met at the Mansion so far. And he looked at her like she was... Like he wasn't a Gorgon too! She'd seen him!

Kalos scooped all the yellows together to pick through them.

She ignored him on purpose when he sat down. She had a partial blocky circle done and she wasn't sure if she was mad or in trouble.

> “It looks really cool. Is this part from you?”

"You have said you need a thing from me if you want to pretend." She looked up at him, eyes full of contrition. "But only for pretend."

He was a Demigod again. Kalos' eyebrows dropped low into a pout. "Why don't you wear your other face?"

Chase’s glance flicked towards Kalos as she offered her explanation. Something from her when he wanted to pretend… he puffed his cheeks out again, his brow furrowing.

“I don’t wanna pretend to be you if it scares you,” the human shifter mumbled, “Usually… people think it’s funny. They like to use my power to play tricks on grown-ups, that kind of thing… I haven’t scared anyone with it before.”

He made note of the Legos and their same-color piles, and began gathering loose ones, continuing to sort them.

>> "Why don't you wear your other face?"

Chase kept his attention focused on the Legos.

“I don’t like my other face,” he said simply, “Sometimes, up here, people will treat you bad for looking different. If I wear this face, people don’t treat me bad. Does that make sense?”

His gaze flicked to Kalos, swirling with a pensive, concerned orange-yellow. Maybe they had something like that, in the ocean? Chase backpedaled a bit.

“People are usually nice here, inside Xavier’s,” he assured her, “But outside, they aren’t always nice.”

"It's okay if it's pretend. My heart had not been ready and for that I have my sorry." She'd expected him to turn into something like her. Not exactly her. Playing tricks had not occurred to her. She used to play mean tricks on the guards, slipping small things into their shoes and pockets so that they would take the terrible smell of that grimy pit home with them.

Kalos dumped the almost circle in disgust. She didn't know what the sun looked like. It was a terrible attempt.

> “I don’t like my other face,”

"What?" She was glad she'd dumped the toy, Chase was being dumb. He needed her full attention so she turned and gave it to him. She did not want to frighten him again, but this was important.

"I like your face." Not his other face. It was his face-face. She insisted. It was obvious. Glorious! Why would he not like it?

> “Sometimes, up here, people will treat you bad for looking different..."

"No. Not here." Again, she insisted! She had opinions and they were the correct ones. The X-men was different! The Mansion was different!

He conceded that point, thankfully before she got too worked up. But pointed out that there wasn an outside to up here.

Oh.

Her eyes prickled with tears. "Did they kick you?" The smell and the muck had been the worst, but what Kalos had seen out of the windows was all very, very clean. That made her tick down the list of terribleness she had suffered at the hands of Perci and his enforcers. Kicking. That was the next worst.

As much as the boy wanted to proclaim, “You should be sorry!” he bit his tongue. Kalos was the first person remotely close to his size and he didn’t want to lose his first friend his size. Abby used to be his size, but then she got taller, and turned into a teenager. Teenagers were on a whole other level. The big-kid level.

>> "What? I like your face."

Kalos seemed shocked that Chase could even suggest such a thing. Of course she was shocked—she was pink. It wasn’t like she could put on another face whenever the whim struck her, not like Chase. The boy cracked a timid smile, without showing his teeth.

“Thanks,” the boy murmured, “It’s definitely different…”

Again, Chase’s assertions about the world pushed Kalos into a state of shock. She insisted that this place was different, and then the boy clarified that, sometimes, things were different on the outside. Hindsight 20-20, maybe he was scaring his new friend. Maybe he shouldn’t talk about this stuff. How old was Kalos, anyways? She was definitely short, but maybe it was not right to talk about bad people with her. Maybe he should do like the adults did, and only talk about the good things…

>> "Did they kick you?"

The boy’s smile slackened. An old memory tugged at his mind, thoughts of his first parents. They’d done far worse than kicked him. His eyes cut towards Kalos, catching her expression, and his face hardened. His parents had been bad, and the house had been bad, and he never wanted anyone else to go through that.

“Sometimes,” the boy said, “But outside, usually, people just stare and whisper things about you. Mean things. And then when you look at them, they look away. Sometimes people yell at you. Sometimes they try to kick you.”

It didn’t feel right to lie like an adult did. It didn’t feel right to tell Kalos that everything would be okay on the outside, because it wasn’t okay! He’d been out with Momma plenty of times where people had done or said mean things.

But Momma always leapt to her son’s defense.

“But even if there’s bad people, there’s good people too,” Chase explained, “There are good people inside, and good people outside. Good people will always come to help.”

He fixed Kalos with a determined stare.

“I wouldn’t let them kick you,” the boy declared, “If someone tried to kick you, I’d stomp on their foot.”

That's what Jorge had said to do. If someone bad was trying to hurt you, the first thing you did was stomp on their foot as hard as you could.

Rather than let herself fall into a blubbering mess, Kalos' eyes hardened like the lump of hate that burned in her chest. She wasn't mad at Chase, but at the idea that people were mean enough to use what gifts were given to them just to hurt other people. Up here was supposed to have been different!

Her skin mottled a flush of purple wherever the skin was thinnest: her lips, cheeks, and even the tips of her ears. Her lips pressed tight together. Talking and whispers dangerous beats, but abuse was a whole other level of bad.

"There is no excusing people who kick."

And just as suddenly Kalos' skin sapped back to pink and her eyes opened wide. She'd thought about kicking those big kids. Not kicking like she had endured. Or like whatever was happening to make Chase lose his smile. Her hate evaporated.

Real, big tears welled up and this time she wasn't able to stop them from rolling down her cheeks and sinking into her skin. Despite all that she managed to meet Chase stare for determined stare. She would have to find the good people that Chase was talking about. The good people on the outside.

"I don't want you to kick people." She was very concerned about that. Stomping might be okay. She would have to look into stomping.

"You're a good person." She insisted. If that wasn't true, she was more than willing to believe it anyway. He had a Gorgon face. Even if he didn't wear it all the time, he knew what it was to be Gorgon.

"I don't want people to hurt anybody." She wiped again at her wet cheeks. "Someday, can you show me the good outside?"

Chase had bashfully returned his attention to the bricks as Kalos worked her way through whatever emotions were bubbling up. She started crying, Chase noticed, as the tears rolled off her cheeks and onto the carpet, which was in his field of vision. The shifter child looked up again.

>> "I don't want you to kick people. You're a good person."

Chase wanted to hug Kalos and told her it’d be okay, but hugs stung. He slid out of his hoodie, which was already gross and snotty from his crying and wiping his face, and held the clean sleeve out to her.

“I won’t kick anyone, promise,” he said quietly, “Here. It’s to wipe your face, if you want.”

Mama could wash the hoodie later.

>> "I don't want people to hurt anybody. Someday, can you show me the good outside?"

Chase nodded solemnly.

“Absolutely.”