Continued from Here

Devyn was not allowed to cry. Future Olympians did not cry. She was stronger than that, tougher than that. She didn't train every single day of her life just to break down in panicked tears in the middle of the room right then and there. So what if she was in a strange place, with strange clothes and no one and nothing familiar around her at all, future Olympians did not cry. Period. So why did she feel like breaking down in tears in the middle of the hallway until her mom came to hold her and tell her that everything would be okay and that there was a logical explanation for all of it?

Devyn sniffled, picked a random direction along the hall and began walking. Tears did not stream down her face but it was a very near thing. She was going to be strong, she had to be. Any moment now her mom or Steven or Krysten or maybe someone from school was going to show up, explain that she was the victim of some elaborate prank and then everything would be ok again. That's exactly what was going to happen, right? The problem was that with every step she took, the panic got worse and that illusive logical explanation seemed less and less probable.

“Mommy! Dante! Where are you!?”

Around the corner Devyn went, confusion and fear quickening her steps, only to run into an equally panicked sounding small grey form. She fell to the ground in a painful heap. To make matters even worse, she felt a sharp pain in the center of her chest as a purple tube emerged from it and shot towards the little grey person. She screamed and tried to crawl away from the...whatever it was that emerged from her own chest.

Gina did, however, cry. She didn’t feel safe without her brothers there to defend her, or at least her mommy to hide behind. She didn’t know where she was, she didn’t know whose clothes she was in, and despite her wailing shouts for “Mommy” and “Dante”, they didn’t answer her. They weren’t there. She was all alone in the big, scary place and she needed to get out. Gina mopped at her eyes, shivering and hiccupping through tears. A slightly-larger form ran Gina over as the child dipped her head to wipe at her eyes, thus Gina was in the perfect position to cover her face.

Being in elementary school and outwardly different, Gina was well-acquainted with bullies. She felt something jab at her and Gina winced away, momentarily forgetting her fear as she stammered, “Please don’t hurt me, my brother w—”

Gina was wincing and drawing away from her attacker, but she paused as wide, tearful eyes spied the purple tube. Gina looked up at the other child, uncertain of whether she was a he or a she (she had no hair!), but certain that she was one of them. Gina sniffled mournfully, backing up against the wall.

“You’re different like me, are you from Mendocino? My name's Gina, and I don't think I've met you before,” the little gargoyle observed, “I-I-I can’t f-find my mommy. Or my brothers. H-have you seen them? Th-they don’t l-look like me.”

This little spiel was broken up by sniffles and a continued attempt to dry her eyes, but at the confession of the fact that Gina couldn't find her family, she was set to crying again. Even so, she was still the motormouthed ten-year-old that would eventually grow to a still-talkative, but not-so-given-to-senseless-chatter fourteen-year-old.

“I want my mommy,” Gina whined, sitting parallel to the wall and curling against it, using her wings to shield her.

Bad enough that Devyn had awoken with purple skin in a strange room in a strange house with no one around that she knew, but now she had some kind of tentacle emerge from her chest. Try as she might she couldn't run away from it because somehow, impossibly, it was a part of her. A second purple thing emerged with a piercing pain beside the first and the two tubes started wrapping around each other, as if they were dueling to the death.

Devyn started hyperventalating. This couldn't be happening, it couldn't, it was impossible. None of this was real, it had to be some sort of bad dream or prank or...something! No, she had to calm down, she knew she had to calm down. Her sister was a mutant and her aunt so clearly she had to be too. Didn't she hear somewhere that mutants ran in families? Ya, that made perfect sense. So she was just some sort of really freaky purple mutant and if that made sense then surely everything else would come to make sense too, wouldn't? With that settled in her mind, she took several deep breaths and managed to calm herself. Sort of. At least enough that she wasn't about to pass out and the puple tentacle thingies stopped trying to fight each other.

“You’re different like me, are you from Mendocino? My name's Gina, and I don't think I've met you before. I-I-I can’t f-find my mommy. Or my brothers. H-have you seen them? Th-they don’t l-look like me.”

In her moments of panicked weakness, Devyn hadn't heard anything else the grey girl had said; because it was clear now that she was calm enough to take a good look, that the grey figure was a girl. "My name is Devyn and I think I'd remember you if I saw you. I don't know where I am either, I think maybe we were kidnapped. And...I guess I am different now..." Her voice radiated obvious confusion and she snuck a glance at the now calm tubes that had burst from her chest. They now rested on the ground, not doing much of anything except twitching every so often.

“I want my mommy,”

"I want my mommy too." With a great deal of awkwardness, Devyn patted Gina on the back to try and reassure her. It was pretty clear that she would have to be the one to figure out what was going on because Gina, whoever she was, didn't seem capable of it. "Okay. We can figure this out. Both of us are far from home in a strange place with no familair faces. I woke up purple and you woke up grey. I think someone kidnapped us, but I don't know why. Maybe...maybe there are adults around, I think we need to find one of them and then I'm sure it'll make more sense." Or something. Everything was so confused in her head, but that sounded like a very adult thing to say, didn't it?

The bare feet stuck to the floor as the younger version of Hokee ran down the hardwood floors. He could still hear the plea echoing in the deep recesses between his ear. There was nothing in the world in which could stop his hard headed mind once he was in action, so much so that even wearing a dress didn't seem to falter him in the slightest. The things one would do for love, even if it was for a TV star whom would never give him the time of day, he could still day dream about it. Plus if he saved Hannah Montana from whatever it was that she was yelling about, she had to give him a shot!

Rounding around the last corner, the back of the dress flapped to a stop as he crashed into the wall. There was a purple person! Not only that, but there was something that looked like it came out of Wizard of Oz. Was the stone looking monkey thing trying to eat the purple person. Oh no! This had to be the one eyed one horn flying purple people eater! Hannah Montana would have to wait a moment, there was a purple person in crisis! What if the purple people eater went after Hannah Montana!

"STOP you evil fiend!" Holding his palm out in the air, the long free flowing brown hair swayed . "Its not good to eat purple people!" Snapping his fingers, because that's what people in dresses do, the child moved himself to stand between the two. Snapping fingers, wearing a dress....if anyone who knew who he was caught him like this, he'd be spending the next week up the flag pole hanging from his pants. "You best be not putting a wing on my home girl Hannah either. Don't make me go all school yard on you!"

>> "My name is Devyn and I think I'd remember you if I saw you. I don't know where I am either, I think maybe we were kidnapped. And...I guess I am different now..."

“I’m Gina,” Gina replied with a quiet sniffle, “I’ve always been different.”

At the mention of maybe being kidnapped, and the hesitant but reassuring pat on the shoulder, the grey-skinned child rose to her feet, adjusting the pants that were far too big on her body. Whoever was in-charge of clothing them hadn’t done a very good job on judging what size they wore. There was another sniffle, and Gina mopped at her eyes. She wanted her own clothes back. She didn’t

>> "I want my mommy too. Okay. We can figure this out. Both of us are far from home in a strange place with no familair faces. I woke up purple and you woke up grey. I think someone kidnapped us, but I don't know why. Maybe...maybe there are adults around, I think we need to find one of them and then I'm sure it'll make more sense."

Gina nodded her head as Devyn spoke, before quietly protesting, “W-what if the only adults here are the ones that kidnapped us?”

It would be a good idea to find adults, but not here. Maybe outside of this place, wherever they were. She was about to propose going outside for help, when yet another girl intervened. She came skidding around the corner and slid into a wall, Gina stepped back uncertainly as the new girl in the dress sized them up, and then stormed forward, wedging herself between the two of them

This girl wasn’t wearing any shoes, but at least her dress fit her. Ginas’ pants and shirt didn’t fit, and Gina adjusted her pants awkwardly, dropping her gaze.

>> "STOP you evil fiend! Its not good to eat purple people! You best be not putting a wing on my home girl Hannah either. Don't make me go all school yard on you!"

Rather than snap a retort at the girl in the dress, as an older Gina might have done, ten-year-old Gina scooted past the girl in the dress and hid behind Devyn. Dante wasn’t here to defend her, so the purple-skinned girl would have to be his substitute. Once securely behind Devyn, Gina surveyed the dark-haired girl, latched lightly onto Devyn's arm.


Given the security of having a human shield, Gina finally spoke up, “You’d better be nice, or else my friend Devyn’s going to go all schoolyard on you!”

Gina didn’t know what going schoolyard on someone meant, but it sounded really mean. Maybe like a fight. Gina couldn’t fight very well, but she could always bluff on Devyn’s behalf. She didn’t even know who the heck this Hannah person was, so she didn’t bother addressing that matter.

“I’m Gina, I’ve always been different.”

Well that was interesting. Did mutants work like that? Born different? Her sister hadn't gotten powers until just recently and her aunt told her she didn't get powers either until she turned 14; it was something of a favourite story of hers. But if humans could suddenly become mutants overnight like Devyn had, she figured it would probably be possible for them to be born mutants too.

“W-what if the only adults here are the ones that kidnapped us?”

Devyn frowned, mentally berating herself for her own stupidity. Of course the humans here must have kidnapped them, how else could they have both ended up here? And in clothes that were too big, just to make things even stranger. "Ya, I guess you're right." Once again she had to fight down a feeling of panick. But no, she was the responsible one, the future Olympian. She would figure this all out and fix it. Somehow.

"STOP you evil fiend! Its not good to eat purple people!"

Devyn stared in confusion as a third girl in a dress came skittering in and, apparently, assumed that Gina was trying to eat her. Or something. That misconception proved very much false as Gina ran and hid behind her, of all things, and started yelling challenges of her own at the long haired newcomer.

"No one is eating anyone and no one is going schoolyard on anyone!" Whatever that meant, anyway. Devyn's voice was loid and obviously irritated. "Now, explain yourself Princess." She put her hands on her hips and glared at the brown haired girl in front of her. The effect might have been more intimidating if not for the oversized bathrobe she was currently wearing and the weird purple tubes attached to her torso that were twitching in response to her own irritation. She tried to ignore them all.

This was very unexpected, much like finding himself driving a car when he couldn't see over the dashboard all that well. Still, things could have been more, well, it could have been vastly more different. He hadn't expected the winged girl to hide behind the purple person, and he certainly didn't notice the tentacle things flapping out from the huge bathrobe at first. With the monkey girl behind the purple girl, he had no other option then to look at the purple girl in greater detail.

Those were not tentacles, they looked more like a bunch of twisty straws or something like that coming out from her. It was different, exciting and disgusting all at the same time. Raising his eyebrows slightly, Hokee puffed out a breath of air to move his long bangs from his nose. Putting his own hands on his hips, the boy moved his head like the girls in the ghetto. He most certainly did not just get called a princess. He wasn't a princess and isn't one!

"Do you drink out of those?" Okay, he couldn't keep focus with the thing flapping about like a kite string. It wasn't every day he saw a purple person, let alone a purple girl who had straws coming out of her. She kinda looked like a Barbie doll he mutilated because a girl in his class made fun of his hair. Though the purple girl didn't look like she was a victim of the microwave, which was a good thing in ways. It would be rather neat to drink a few different milkshakes all at once if he had straws like that attached to him.

A head of mussed brown hair peered out into the hal—

>> "STOP you evil fiend!"

He froze. Held position. Clutched his sheathed sword more tightly, in a valiant manner.

>> “You’d better be nice, or else my friend Devyn’s going to go all schoolyard on you!”

Edged. Edged slowly, edged carefully, edged to the corner and peered around. Just by one baby blue eyeball; slowly, covertly, so they didn't notice.

>> "No one is eating anyone and no one is going schoolyard on anyone!"

Girls. Three girls: he thought he was older than all of them, but it was hard to tell with girls. They got weird and growth-spurt-y around this age. One was in a bathrobe, and was purple. Not the bathrobe: the girl. The one behind her was gray. And had... wings. The third one, the one facing off against them in her dress, was normal. Human. Like him. Kind of cute, except for one fact that all three shared: girls were loud.

"Seriously," the twelve year old maturely sighed, stepping out into the open with his sheathed sword resting casually against one shoulder. He slid up next to the normal girl's side: someone had to have her back, with those other two ganging up on her. Cool, Caleb. Play it cool.

"You've got to quiet down, ladies. You all got kidnapped too, right? So. We should have an... alliance, or something." He eyed Purple and Gray a touch skeptically as he said that; he'd never seen mutants before. Not up close. But... that was about as obvious as they came. Whatever: he only had to trust them long enough to get Dressy and himself to safety. "You know. To find our way home."

Yeah. Yeah, and he'd keep them safe. Damsels in distress, and all that.

"First, we need to find cover. Get our bearings. Figure out when the guards come by, and how to get around them without being seen. That's always the first step."

In video games. But the point remained valid.

>> "Ya, I guess you're right… No one is eating anyone and no one is going schoolyard on anyone! Now, explain yourself Princess."

Gina nodded, remaining firmly behind Devyn, still staring at the other girl from behind her. She frowned at Devyn’s protest about not going schoolyard on anyone, and with a faint groan, ducked back behind her. But she did maintain the authoritative tough-girl act, hands on her hips. To which the girl in the dress anti-climactically replied,

> "Do you drink out of those?”

Gina peeked back out again. Maybe the mean-girl in the dress wasn’t too mean. As she peeked back out, a boy approached and sided with the girl in the dress, light blue eyes passing over Devyn and Gina judgmentally.

>> "Seriously, you've got to quiet down, ladies. You all got kidnapped too, right? So. We should have an... alliance, or something. You know. To find our way home."

Gina looked at him skeptically. Why did they kidnap them? Were they mutants, too, or did they just kidnap whatever kids they could grab? She wasn’t sure about him, just like he wasn’t sure about her and Devyn.

>> "First, we need to find cover. Get our bearings. Figure out when the guards come by, and how to get around them without being seen. That's always the first step."

“Our bearings?” Gina echoed softly. Finding cover meant that they had to hide, but they had… guards? Of course they couldn’t be seen, but… what were bearings?

"Do you drink out of those?"

"Um." Any thoughts of being strong and in control of the situation left Devyn right then and there. The tube things waved around in protest and indignity at the question. "No I cannot drink with them. They, uh, they're very dangerous so you should be careful." Ya, that sure did sound good. That's what a future Olympian should sound like; confident and strong in the face of adversity. Now if only she were not in an over-sized bathrobe and if only they would do something suitably threatening, then she might really be onto something.

"Seriously, You've got to quiet down, ladies. You all got kidnapped too, right? So. We should have an... alliance, or something."

The newcomer had some impeccable timing, certain to distract everyone enough so that they wouldn't' notice the fact that Devyn was far more confused and out of her element than she wanted anyone else to realize. Although, come to think of it, she really didn't like the way he was looking at her and Gina and was sure to place a suitably disapproving look on her face which she was sure her mom would have been proud of. People didn't judge other people by the way they looked, it just wasn't polite. Even the sword didn't excuse him from his lack of manners.

"Right, get our bearings" Devyn agreed, sagely. "I think we need to get out of this place because any adults here would be our kidnappers, right?" Just because someone else suggested that bit of wisdom earlier, didn't mean she shouldn't assume it for herself. Without her really noticing, the tubes in Devyn's chest slowly began receding back underneath her skin.

It made sense now, this was why there was a purple people eater....to eat purple people that had tubes sticking out of them which were not for drinking. They looked really freaky now, that was since their purpose was not for consuming milkshakes. A real shame, it would be cool to watch someone drink a milk shake through that. Disappointment was an understatement. What was even more of a downer, was the concept he was starting to get that Hannah Montana was not there, which really sucked!

Just when things looked like they couldn't get any better, Hokee could feel a presence next to his body. A guy with a sword. Now this was cool. Maybe he could help him find Hannah with that sword. It would be more useful then a girl who was purple with funky straws that were not straws and the grey monkey girl. The guys mouth seemed to start running off, but Hokee's attention was diverted into a different direction. A sword would be really nice to have, something that he should have. If he had a sword, he could save Hannah Montana all by himself. Then maybe she would give him a kiss or even better yet, an autograph!

"I'm not kidnapped. I'm trying to find someone...." The words mumbled out of his mouth as his fingers inched towards the sword. A guy with a sword was a cool thing, but it would be better if he was the guy with a sword. Then it wouldn't be to bad being in the dress, he'd be like a modern day ninja or something like that. Ninja's were cool. They could run up walls and jump across roof tops. One day he would be able to do that. Maybe even with a sword! The weird looking girls drifted further from his thought process as he was drawn more to the concept of having that sword. "You can go get earrings, and I'll just stay here with the sword..."

He didn't like the way the mutants were eyeing him. Like they didn't trust him. He'd always heard they were paranoid. Which was probably part of why they were so dangerous. Dangerous and—

>> "Our bearings?"

--ignorant. It's not like it was safe for them to be in school with regular kids. There was a mutant up at the high school by where he lived; the PTA was working hard on getting him expelled.

"Yeah, bearings," the little Italian explained, lifting his chin a little. Just to show them he wasn't afraid. "Bearings are... that thing were you..." How could she not know what bearings where? Had she never seen a movie where anyone was lost at any time? They always talking about getting their bearings. "That is—"

Saved by the purple one. Who was clearly the brains in this color spectrum.

>> "Right, get our bearings."

"Right," Caleb said. "Exactly." She knew. Bearings: got to get 'im.

>> "I think we need to get out of this place because any adults here would be our kidnappers, right?"

And that too. Nod nod, assertive nod. Now if she could just stop doing the my-exposed-worm-veins-are-wiggling thing, he might just like her. His eyes flicked to them then rooted themselves back on her face. Which was... not really an improvement. That purple hue to her skin—it looked sort of... textured. Like someone had pulled a slick skin over her coiled-up insides. She wasn't... covered in those things, all over? Was she? Under her skin? The hair on his arms stood up in gooseflesh. Maybe he'd just stare at the human girl. Who was talking. So that was a good reason to lookawaylookawayjustdragyoureyesaway.

>> "I'm not kidnapped. I'm trying to find someone...."

Caleb's eyes narrowed. Nar. Owed. "Oh yeah?" He said, casually shifting his sword to his other shoulder. ie, The one furthest from those inching fingers. Caleb was an expert in inching fingers. Not that he ever used them himself. "So where are your parents, girl? And where are we? And what are you doing here? And what do you know about why we're here?"

Dressy was being even more suspicious than the mutants. Enemy spy? Maybe. He slid a step away from the human, and sort of vaguely almost in the direction of the mutant girls. At least they weren't trying to get him to play dress up. Girl dress up.

Gina nodded in concurrence with Devyn. Yeah, dangerous. Devyn was all that Gina had in the way of defense right now, so she had to make her defender look intimidating, to scare of the girl in the dress and the scrutinizing boy. As Devyn spoke about getting their bearings, Gina unfastened herself from the taller girl's arm, still standing behind her like a silent, grey shadow. She reiterated what Gina had said about not trusting the adults, and the gargoyle nodded her head even more adamently. So they should... start moving and stop talking now, right?

The girl in the dress protested that she hadn't been kidnapped, and Gina gave her a wide-eyed stare.

"Who are you looking for?" she inquired guilelessly, as dress-girl tried to reach for the sword that the little boy toted. And then, the girl was rambling about earrings. And the boy was rambling about something else. Devyn seemed to know a lot more than the little boy did. Said little boy was interrogating the girl in the dress about where her parents were, stepping towards Devyn and Gina in the process. Gina fidgeted uncertainly, blatantly confused.

"Um... I'm uh..." her words flowed slowly forth, before Gina finally proclaimed, "Why don't we go, then?"

More to Devyn than to the boy with the sword or the girl in the dress. The girl in the dress was mean and loud and weird. The boy with the sword was just weird. At least Devyn was someone different, like Gina. That made them instantly trustworthy.

Devyn shot a very disapproving look at the girl in the dress as she tried to inch her way towards the sword the boy was carrying. Kidnapped or not, theivery was simply not acceptable. Except that apparently she was not kidnapped, she was looking for someone and if one of the four of them was not kidnapped, did that mean she was with the kidnappers? Perhaps and until she knew for sure, she was determined not to trust the girl, not one little bit.

For that matter, Devyn really didn't like the way the boy was looking at her and she sent him the best death glare she could muster. Here she was, kinapped with a grey mutant girl, a theif and a rude little boy, lost confused and very much without bearings. She tried to meet Gina's eyes, trying to impore her mentally that it was to be the two of them together until the end, or at least until they figured out what was going on. The two humans, well, they could stick around but there was no way she was going to like them, not at all. Besides, purple skin and tube things meant she was a mutant now and wasn't being a mutant kind of like being in a club? Yes, an exclusive mutant club in which she and Gina were members. And the other two most certainly were not.

"Yes, time to go," Devyn agreed. A little shy or not, her new mutant friend had some good advice. "I think we should go that way." Devyn pointed down the hallway, sounding much more confident than she actually felt. The illusion of confidence was amost as important as confidence itself. Her coach had always told her to visualize the result she wanted, so that's what she did. She imagined, as hard as she could, a nice safe door at the end of the hallway that led outside. Then she began walking, hoping that someone was following her. Or at least hoping that her new club mate was following her. Because she just couldn't trust the other two.

Things were a bit strange right now. Everyone else seemed to not know why there were they and totally convinced that they were kidnapped. Odd. Why would people kidnap kids, that was just something very peculiar. Hokee certainly wasn't a rocket scientist, and well not the top of the class either but he certainly wasn't a dummy in the slightest. He wasn't kidnapped, nope. Rather proud and boastful, the young Hokee proclaimed with dignity, "Hannah Montana." Who wouldn't want to find her, she was amazing!

No one seemed to want to be to close to him, that was really weird. Not like there was much room for him to talk, considering the purple tube things and gawky wings. Even sword boy was inching away from him, what was his problem? Okay, so wearing a dress wasn't exactly the coolest thing in the world to be wearing right now, but there weren't many options for him to go by. It was a dress or run around with his butt mooning the world while running in a shirt to big for himself.

"You're all nutty." Yep, that was it, they were all crazy. "If there were adults, why aren't they here?" From what he could recall, there didn't seem to be any older people running to the rescue of the sobbing girls. What kind of adult would leave children alone freaking out in a place this big? Most adults maybe, he wasn't sure. Not like he trusted them much in the slightest.

Making a fist, Hokee waved it up in the air at Mr. Swordsy. "I was driving a car and I don't know where they are. We are in Hannah Montana's house and I think you ALL kidnapped HER!" There, his peace was said. There couldn't be any way to misunderstand him now. Waving a fist held his stance, even if the dress did tone it down a bit. Though very much like 'Rock, Paper, Scissors', fist beat smart mouths but swords could destroy a fist. Oh well, to late now. Jump into the fire, then find the way out, this was a motto of life to live by.