What better thing was there to do on a hot summer day than stick herself inside the confines of a big box mall in New York? With all those boxes, racks of clothing, mannequins, and everything? The problem was, she couldn't think of anything better. That was the problem.

Sometimes, too much freedom drains all the life right out of a person's mind. They forget what options they really have. Summer breaks are the largest cause of this feeling of mundane malaise. Nothing seems interesting, nothing seems new. Everything is just 'whatever'.

It was absolutely terrible. She'd probably done too many exciting things the past week. All she could think to do now was spend some money on clothes she didn't need.

She needed something better to do.

And so, Amelia window shopped. She browsed and was amazed at all the things people wanted to sell to her. And all the cute shop clerks who wanted to help with that sale. Secretly, she hoped something more entertaining would come along.

The shark teeth presented a bit of a problem.

Whenever Jude smiled at a pretty girl, no matter how "okay" they were with him having triangle eyes, the teeth made them not okay. That is how he came to dragging his feet along the freshly waxed floors of the Mall. He had a small bag in his hand with replacement clothes, the twins were growing fast. Like regular weeds. And he had left everything behind when he joined the fight for the future. He'd gotten a few new tee shirts for the kids. He was waiting for something really fantastic to hit him before he bought it for himself.

Maybe he could pretend to be mute? Then he wouldn't have to open his big mouth...

Whatever. Not like anyone actually wanted to kiss that mouth now anyway. He was twelve. He needed to find a power ager. (He did know a power ager, but he needed to find a different one. One that wasn't going to end the world.)

Instead, he found someone with X-ray vision.

How did he know? Because the mannequin he had stopped to admire started fading away. Jude looked around for the guilty party. "I know you're out zere pervert!" But nobody seemed to want to 'fess up. Really... why else would someone with x-ray vision want to come to a mall?

He looked back at the mannequin and watched it fade into just the little screws that held it together. They sort of floated steadily in space. He could see bones of people inside, the metal things like door handles and the register. There was a safe in the back and... someone kneeling in front of it.

Jude turned in a hurry to get into the store, to get back to the safe and to dispense some serious justice, but there was a smallish skeleton window shopper in his way. He had to pull up short to keep from running straight into her. Seeing people without their skin made them seem to take up less room. "Excuse me."

Gina stood just in front of a store window, a few storefronts down from two unobtrusive, human-looking mutants. Of course, having nothing peculiar about their looks, she hadn't even bothered to look at them. Yet. She was too preoccupied with more important matters at hand-- specifically, analyzing an outfit in the storefront window before her.

To avoid being trampled to death by the foot-traffic, she stood atop a wooden bench, which was conveniently positioned on the opposite side of the walkway from the store. Not only was she spared from getting runover here, but she could see over the heads of passerby's, which was quite a blessing, for her.

What was not a blessing was the smeared and smugged mess that lay before her on her sketchpad. What had once been a Gina-esque outline clothed in an outfit nostalgic of the one before her was now a Gina-blob of eraser-inducded smuges accompanied by the occasional yet futile scratches of a mechanical pencil. A girl paused to peer into the store, but Gina was too intent on ruining her drawing more to pay her any notice.

Then, there was a young boy who began shouting after staring in alarm at a mannequin in the storefront window-- he shouted something about a "pervert" in a heavy French accent, and Gina chuckled, but quickly returned her attention to her drawing. It was rude to stare. The young boy trotted towards the store's entrance, seemingly distracted, and backtracked, apologizing to the girl he'd run into.

Now they had Gina's attention-- not because anything particularly interesting was happening, but because the dark-haired kid was now standing in front of the mannequin which she was studying, so it was kind of difficult to ignore him.

Something more entertaining. What could possibly be interesting in New York? The clothes were nice. The shop clerks were dutiful in their efforts to sell, and people... people were crazy.

A voice was raised. An eyebrow arched. A head turned in the direction of the voice to emphasize this, case and point.

For a moment, there was a flash of recognition. Who was the boy? Then it hit her. She'd played in a ball pit with him once. She knew that face. 'Zat voice'. That person. It was Jude. Why was he shouting about perverts?

Suddenly, Jude started towards her. He jerked to a halt. Her eyebrow arched further up. No flinching. No worrying. Just, ... okay. There was worrying.

"Jude." She looked at him. "Are you okay? ... And who is a pervert?" Amelia asked. Also, had he said 'excuse me?' Did he not remember her? Any time a boy did that, even a younger one, it was rude. She hoped he was simply being polite.

> "Jude."

It was a girl's voice, vaguely familiar. If he had some context he might be able to place it without a face, but her skull wasn't really a recognizable feature.

The little frenchman both looked over to the store and reached up for her shoulders, ready to shake her by those shoulders and tell her all about the robbery taking place inside, only.... he didn't quite make it to her shoulders. In his defense, those fleshy girl parts were something he did not have and they were also hard to see when, in his sight, they weren't there.

"Zere is a robbery!" His vision was already receding. The furthest penetrated layers of the store faded behind walls. Oh no! Another mutant nearby?

He turned back, confused, Jude pushed harder against the girl's chest. He needed to make the importance of this discovery known!

Who is a pervert?

"We ave to stop it." If she knew his name, she would also know that he was honor bound to do the right thing. Stopping a robbery was definitely the right thing.

Gina improvised on her drawing, letting her attention return to the sketch before her and only paying partial attention to the two people before him. The girl seemed to know him. The boy didn't seem to recall who she was. In fact, rather than even answer her, he just groped her instead. Gina couldn't contain her look of mild horror. She wondered if the boy was by any means related to Rhythm.

>> "Zere is a robbery, we ave to stop it!"

There's the pervert, Gina thought dryly, frowning. Yeah, she was pretty sure that he was a schizophrenic now. But, she gave the boy the benefit of the doubt, peered into the store in confusion. Things seemed awfully normal within the store, for a robbery to be going on. Perhaps it was in another shop? Gina gave up on her drawing, slid it into her bag and hopped off of the bench, glancing up and down the seemingly endless aisleways of the mall.

Nope, just the normal ammounts of chaos. Needless to say, this interaction had snagged her attention. She wanted to see what would happen. It was, however, uncourteous to just eavesdrop on conversations. Gina tried to dismiss this common courtesy by reminding herself that this boy seemed like a shameless, psychotic pervert, that it would be for this other girl's own good if she stuck around, but still...

Gina rummaged into her bag, which took a good long while, until her hands met the smooth contours of her cell phone. She pretended to check the time. Meanwhile, the interaction between the two continued.

Jude. Put his hands. There. Gene Roddenberry had a memorable quote for this. He used it on his famous show, the thing that netted him great stars like William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy. It went something like this:

"... to go. Where no man. Has gone before."

Perhaps it wasn't quite the intent of the quote. What did it matter what quote passed through Amelia's head as Jude's hands went where they ought not, and his words rushed out of his mouth in dissonance with what his hands were doing and where they were straying.

A vein in her head pulsed as she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and clenched her right fist.

The final frontier. Jude had gone there. Bad touch.

This kid was young, and probably had teenage hormones starting their path through his body, but last time they'd met, he sure hadn't been this fresh with her.

"Jude..." She began, quietly. Dangerously. She would give him the benefit of the doubt. "Your hands. Remove them." Icily, she smiled. "Or I will remove them for you." Then more sincere, opening her eyes and looking at him, she finished. "Are you alright?"

All this robbery talk? Unimportant, compared with hand location and current behavior on Jude's part.

He was lucky she wasn't some sort of anime bimbo who had a pulsing forehead vein, clenched fist, and sent perverts flying into the stratosphere over simple misunderstandings at the drop of a hat.

He moved his hands. He took them right back and looked at them with as much confusion as could be.

They were only skeletal hands to him, right? Jude held them up in front of his face and watched the vision fading. He looked at the window to the store, but it was only a window again. He looked back at... "Ami!"

Ami looked angry.

"Are you okay?"

No wait. There was robbing happening. "Robbing!" He reminded her and zipped to the side of her and into the store. Past the till queue, beyond a rack of clothes, Jude reached the back door and grabbed the handle and flung it.... he jiggled it instead. Locked. Someone cursed softly behind the door and Jude pounded on it.

"I know you're in zere! I saw you withs X-ray vision!" In fact... why didn't he have X-ray vision anymore? The only person he had been near or touched...

Ami.

Did she even know she was a mutant? What kind? He hoped she was a door smashing kind. Wouldn't that be convenient?

(( Skipping Gina for the moment, at Gina's request. ))

Benefit of the doubt had been given. Benefit of the doubt, Jude had apparently needed. Jude was such a goofball. Either the greatest actor in the world, or...

"Completely insane..." Amelia trailed.

What was he going on about, now? Robbery? Not even apologizing? Yeah. She didn't understand boys.

Glancing over her shoulder at him, she had to wonder what his game was. What was he up to? Would horn-spearing be involved?

Inside the store, the clerks eyed the young boy nervously. What exactly was he doing...? They never got to ask.

No, Ami was not a door-smashing mutant. But the door-smashing mutant behind the door was. Except, luckily for Jude, he was not really into smashing doors young boys were behind. Instead, he aimed for a wall. And then, another wall. And he was striding past Jude towards the exit. Just as Amelia curiously stepped in his way.

Shove. Fall. The girl hit the floor with a protest. "Hey!"

The guy shot her a dangerous glare, then stalked onwards, briefcase held tight against his chest.

"You do not disrespect a lady!" Jude pointed dramatically at the man.

The man scuttled away without so much as a backward glance to acknowledge Jude's dramatic accusation. Well! He was just adding rudeness on top of his trespasses. The tiny frenchman stopped to offer Ami a hand (he was a gentleman after all) and then all in one breath he asked the pink cheeked attendant girls to call mall security and to check their safe if they had access.

Then, it was definitely time to catch the offending pervert!

"Help me Ami. You have longer legs zan me."

Once out of the store, Jude looked left and then right. Which way did he go?

Gina was ready to just wander off, for it seemed that the other girl was handling herself quite well without her intervention. In fact, the two went into the store together, which must have been a good thing. She shrugged, began to stroll away, quite ready to just return to the Mansion. She was done for the day, had nothing else to do. Yet, as coincidence would have it, as she began to stroll past the storefronts, the same man that had run into the other girl, the same man that was robbing the store, also bumped into Gina, and quite rudely.

Gina stumbled forward, nearly tripping and falling. He was well dressed, and toting a suitcase, but he hugged the suitcase to his chest and seemed rather distracted.

"Hey, watch where you're going, jerk!" Gina snapped, readjusting herself stiffly. The man didn't even so much as look at her. New Yorkers, she huffed in annoyance. Gina wasn't one to be pushed and to just let it slide. She expected an apology, and there wasn't anyway that he'd just accidentally hit her that hard-- no, she wanted an apology, and she'd get one. And then, she'd go home. Gina began to follow him, eyes trained on his rapidly retreating form.

"Hey, you, dude in the suit!" Gina snapped, her voice climbing in volume and pitch. No doubt half of the mall had heard her now, with her perturbed shouting. Some people were glancing towards her, curiosity peaked by the shouting gargoyle girl. Everyone, except the man with the briefcase.

>>"You do not disrespect a lady!"

The irony of Jude's statement was not lost on the girl as she sat on her rump on the cold floor.

Hmph, she thought. Boys.

Boys, boys, boys. Failing to defend her honor, and then asking for her help.

Amelia wanted to ignore that hand. Now, she was mad at him. Even if she'd tried to give him the benefit of the doubt. Getting shoved down did that. Put one in a bad mood. She got to her feet. Then, she sighed. Heavily.

"What the hell is going on..." She trailed quietly to herself. She did not follow Jude in chasing. She stood with her arms crossed, wondering only that.

A resonant "Hey, you...!"[/i] turned Jude's head toward the angry shape of a winged girl who was calling out... was that? Yes! There in the distance... that was him!

"He is thief!" Okay, so that sounded less stupid in his head, but that was Jude's war cry as he brushed past the girl toward the fleeing man.

Only... wings... were a mutation. And wings weren't the only thing that girl had to offer.

He really needed to figure out what made one mutation slide into place over another.

The first things to go were his shoes. He hadn't noticed that the girl's feet weren't feet at all, but instead some kind of bird-like talon structure. The next thing to hit were the horns, and a whopping headache to go with it. Still he ran. So close to catching the bad guy!

Jude stretched out a hand that was almost more claws than fingers. And gray skin. And... spots?

He stopped running and doubled over.

Wings.

This was going to hurt.

The battle cry of the French boy was enough to make Gina pause and glance over her shoulder. Was that-- no, he couldn't be talking about the jerk in the suit-- she glanced over her shoulder and saw that, yes, it was the boy from before, he was indeed chasing the same man, and was loudly declaring that this suited man was the thief. Gina didn't much care who he was-- be he thief or prince of a far-off land. He needed manners, and he would be getting a good scolding.

The boy managed to pass her with ease, and Gina let him go ahead. His goal was far nobler than her own, so she wasn't too concerned about getting to the bad guy after the French boy did. Yet, as he passed the gargoyle girl, she triggered some sort of shift in him-- as he ran, his feet split through his shoes, transitioning into a foot structure very much akin to Gina's. Gina paused. Perhaps, if she stopped pursuing him, the transformation would stop--?

For only a moment, she believed that her hairbrained scheme had worked, for she couldn't see the horns protruding from his head from this vantage point that she had from behind... but then, the boy held up his hands, and she saw that his fingers were gradually developing claws, and his skin was going from flesh-tone to grey, as if being overtaken by a disease-- the disease that was Gina's mutation. A sick feeling hit her stomach, and she watched in a mixture of fear and fascination as his skin gradulally became more overwhelmed by the gray.

The boy bent over in pain, and Gina swallowed her nerves-- this meant that either the wings, his tail, or both were about to emerge. Gina came to his side, placing a concerned hand on his shoulder. She was at a loss as per what to do, maybe a little bit frightened-- "What to Do in Case Another Mutant Starts Taking Your Form" wasn't exactly common knowledge, so Gina was rightfully worried.

"I'm really sorry," Gina breathed, "Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry-- if I'd known--" But how could she have known? She wasn't only apologizing for the transformation, but for subconsciously writing him off as a crazy-boy as well, when he was really just an ability-copier gone haywire.

She removed her hand from his shoulder, stood to seek out the man in the suit. She could still see his retreating form making his way down the straightaway of the mall. He would have to wait though, because at this point in time, her primary concern was to make sure that the French boy was alright-- after all, she'd never "evolved" into being a gargoyle, she'd just been born the way she was. Thus, she imagined that, yes, this really was going to hurt.

Okay. Before, she hadn't chased Jude chasing the guy because she hadn't believed him. Because she'd been mad at him, and because she simply didn't care. All of that seemed less important once he started transforming into something else. Something rather similar to the something that he'd brushed into.

Okay. What.

It hit her. Obviously, Jude was a mutant. Obviously, he was a mutant, or obviously the girl he'd brushed had a mutation that spread her transformation like wildfire. That was a cliche'd phrase and she knew it, but she didn't care. What was happening to Jude was more important.

Amelia was not a bad person. If a friend (and yes, Jude was still a friend after all of that) was in danger, she helped them. Jude would get helped.

The guy she hadn't been chasing, she left that way. Not being chased. Maybe the police would catch him? Maybe not. That really wasn't her job, now was it? It wasn't like she was able to do much to help.

Amelia ran to Jude's side. "Jude!" She shouted. Yeah. Real original, shouting someone else's name when they were in danger, but hey. What could she do? "What's happening?" She asked. Because 'are you alright' seemed a fairly stupid question at the moment.

The girl was helping. The one with the horns and the talons. Amelia figured she wasn't a bad person, and hadn't likely done this on purpose. Amelia snapped her eyes to the girl. "What should we do?"