((Cont. from this thread.))

Isabel hadn't seen very much of the strange place she'd woken up in, but from what she'd seen she appeared to be in some sort of living area. Every door she'd opened lead to some sort of bedroom, most of them unoccupied. It must have been a very big facility to have so many rooms in one place. The hallway itself was very large, both in height and width and it seemed to go on forever. Maybe she hadn't woken up after all. Maybe she was having one of those dreams where someone walked or ran down a hallway and the exit kept getting further and further away regardless.

She was just turning a corner when someone nearly collided with her. She let out a sound of protest and took a step back as the unfamiliar boy quickly apologized and seemed to be trying to save his bottoms from falling off his narrow waist. He looked like he was older than her, but not by much, and he wasn't all that much bigger than she was. He also didn't look like a mutant.

As a general rule of thumb, Isabel had gradually stopped talking to the kids she had to live with that didn't have any mutant abilities. Then again, she didn't look like a mutant, either. The facility staff was constantly reminding her of that fact and trying to get her to behave because she could be more easily adopted than the other mutant kids if only she'd stop throwing temper tantrums and flaunting her abilities.

"Maybe you should watch where you're going," She shot back. She didn't know where she was either, but that didn't mean she had to be nice to him because they were in the same boat. Besides, he could still be a human and she wasn't supposed to get along with them. They were supposed to be afraid of her and stay away from her whenever they could.

But he wasn't afraid of her just yet. Maybe she had been moved to a new facility and the kids there had heard about her. She wasn't mean to other mutants if she could help it. Maybe he was a mutant, after all, and that's why he wasn't afraid of her. Then again, he had said he was new, too. Maybe he just didn't know the rules yet. "Why are your pants so big?" She asked rather suddenly, the way he was gripping at the waistband becoming more distracting by the minute.

Kyle was rocked slightly by the way the girl he'd almost run into snapped a reply back him, but seeing as it wasn't the first time such a thing had happened, Kyle managed to shrug it off. It was perfectly sensible, really, for her to snap at him, considering he'd almost knocked her over.

Kyle took the brief pause between words to look at her in greater detail. She looked to be younger then him, likely by two or three years. She wasn't a bad looking girl, though her clothes seemed to be as mismatched as his were large. If it wasn't for her facial expression suggesting a poor mood, Kyle might have almost assumed she was a nice girl to get along with. Either way, she was his first lead into finding out where he was, so he had to do his best to not send her away.

Her question caught him off balance and with a slight glance down to his oversized jeans, Kyle shrugged his shoulders as he hiked them back up again. "I'm...not sure really. I just woke up in this place and these were the clothes I was wearing." Tilting his head to the side in curiosity, he pondered his next words.

"Did you get sent here for being different too?"

Getting the door open, while not really that easy, was definitely the easiest part of this mission. However, he hadn’t realized just how much he was leaning on the door until it opened up, leaving him collapsing into the hallway. He landed with a hard thud, banging his head pretty good. Once again, he tried to open his mouth to shout out, but with limited success.

“Mmmaaooooo!” The gurgling moan was barely audible, but he was making progress. He felt like crying, but managed to hold it in. He always liked to think he was a tough guy, and now that he was melting there wasn’t a better time to prove it.

Shane tried to get to his feet. So far the only limb he’d had any success with had been his arm, and that only worked when he tried to stretch it, so that’s what he did. He thought really hard about lifting his left leg and stretching it out as long as it could get. A single foot rose out of the black goop. His one good arm, however, seemed to have blended back in to the main bulk of it again. Shane let out a sigh of frustration; this wasn’t going to be easy.

Then he heard it. Some voices from down the hall. They didn’t sound like his mommy or daddy, in fact they sounded like other kids, but they were people, and they could help him! He started thinking really hard about moving his other leg now, and it was working! Kind of. A second foot started to slide out of the blob, but the left foot started to get sucked back in, too. He stopped what he was doing and thought for a moment. If one went in while the other came out, then both at the same time should work! He tried it.

Everything seemed to be going according to plan at first. His right foot started slipping out of the goo, and his left leg just kept growing too. In fact, the left leg was extending faster then the right could keep up with. Once he’d gotten the right leg to little over a foot in length, the left was a good 3 feet long. Shane made a grumbling noise and let out another sign. It’ll have to do.

It was no easy task, but he managed to get himself up on the mismatched legs, leaving the long one on its knee. Slowly but steady, he started inching his way towards the voices at the end of the hall looking like a freaky, limping Mr Potatohead. He tried calling out again, “Mmmaaooooom!” It was still a long way off from full words.

Now he really felt like crying.

Turning a corner Hank spotted a young boy and girl standing next to each other. He ducked back around the corner and listened to them for a few moments. "Clothes?" He peeked out again and saw that the boy's clothes were really quite big on him. Looking at himself again, it struck him as odd that he didn't care about wearing clothes. "It's not like anything's showing or dangling around." He laughed to himself. Besides there wasn't anything in the room he woke up in, and he wasn't going to just go barging into random rooms to look for clothes that may or may not fit him.

He wondered how the two of them would react when they saw him. He had freaked out when he saw himself. Taking a breath he stepped around the corner tapping the wall with his claws. Hank wasn't doing it to get their attention, he just liked the feeling of them touching the wall, liked how they scraped against it. "Yo!" He blurted out. "Y'all know what this place is?"

Well, that made two of them waking up in strange clothes in a strange place. How unusual. She supposed the facility staff could have been moving kids to a new facility at random, but that didn't sound right even as the thought crossed her mind. The staff didn't usually just hoist kids off in their sleep, especially kids like her who could maim said staff members if they grabbed her. Something weird was going on, but she didn't know what.

The boy's last question brought her back from her thoughts. Was she there because she was different? She didn't know. She had no idea why she was in such a strange place. Was she on her own because of it? Yes. She'd been alone for a long time, but only in the past couple years had she been truly by herself.

"Yes. The people that used to be my parents left me on Christmas. They were afraid of me," came the reply. Maybe she'd gotten sent away again because the adoption staff was afraid of her, too.

A low moan halted any further information she might have imparted to the young man and caused her to look this way and that down either end of the hallway. Apparently there were others roaming the halls now, too. She couldn't make out what the owner of the voice was saying, but they sounded sad.

Before she could investigate any further, yet another sound caught her attention. A light tick-tacking on the walls followed by a shouted greeting as a reptilian-looking individual rounded the corner. Isabel hardly batted an eye at his appearance. She'd seen odder mutants. In fact, he reminded her a bit of Aaron, a young man that had only just recently left the facility she'd been staying in.

"Hi," she returned in greeting, continuing to observe the curious mutant. Visible mutants were her favorite. There was never any mistaking them for humans and they were always interesting to look at and to watch. "No. It looks like everyone's lost."

"You parents left you on Christmas?! There's something horribly wrong in that...but why would they be afraid of you? Did you do something bad or something like that?"

Even as he voiced the question, Kyle's mind was trying to understand what someone her age could possibly do to make her parents abandon her. Nothing came to mind, nothing that would warrant such a harsh punishment. Maybe the parents couldn't care for her and had her sent away for her own good...no, she said afraid of her. Maybe she was...different like he was. That made sense, considering Kyle knew not all parents took to the fact that their children were mutants like his did.

Before a reply could be made, a sound from the hallway beyond made him glance past the girl to see what the source was. Kyle couldn't be sure, but he could swear that something was making its way towards them, only...from this distance, Kyle couldn't be sure of what it was. Just as he was about to make notice of it and investigate, a closer sound had him spinning around to that source.

What he say there made Kyle widen his eyes in surprise. Poking its head around the corner was a lizard...a lizard roughly about his size. While the girl greeted the new arrival, Kyle simply stayed silent as his mind contemplated this new factor. Of course, Kyle had heard that some mutants had more obvious mutations...this lizard man was obviously one of them. His mind finally shoved his surprise aside and replaced it with curiosity and awe.

"Hi to you too, Godzilla junior. And what she said.

I think...that this place must be some kind of place where they send mutants. I mean, you're obviously one Godzilla Jr and I know I'm one. And if I had to hazard a guess, then this girl is one too and..." he paused as the thing coming down the halls finally arrived, causing Kyle to pause at the sight of...it? before continuing. In his mind, he was already asking the question but figured it was best to remain on his train of thought, ""so is..um...that. But uh..before we go on, maybe we should introduce ourselves. I'm Kyle."

Turning his eyes onto the others, he waited to here their names before they could figure out what to do next.

Shane was pretty sure he was dying. He was exhausted, and that meant that he was dying, basically. He was pretty sure that was a sign. Every step down the hall was draining the energy out of him. He was wheezing heavily, and loudly. So loud, in fact, that he was getting frustrated that they were surpassing his cries to his mom. He was really starting to get weirded out though. He was sweating, but the sweat was coming off of the gunk, like it was his skin. All the more reason to believe he was melting. Melting, and probably dying. He really wanted his Mom.

His awkward limp walk was anything but graceful, but at least it was working. Aside from the mild rug burn that was developing on his left knee from the constant dragging he wasn’t having too much trouble managing. It was just incredibly tiring. Why would anyone build such a long hallway!? Once he’d finally gotten the hang of it, he’d started trying to even out the lengths of his legs a bit more, but he wasn’t having much luck. The short leg seemed to refuse to change in size, while the long one grew another three inches or so during his efforts.

He did have the strange luck to sprout a little arm briefly. He got really excited about it until he starting moving it. It was at that moment that he realized how freaky the whole thing was. He panicked. The little miniature arm sucked back into his chest and he started to limp/sprint as quick as he could towards the other voices. He could pick out at least three different ones now. Three sounded like pretty good odds to him that someone would know how to fix him.

As he rounded the corner at “top speed” he got quite the scare. There were two kids, a boy and a girl. He was expecting them, and they weren’t why he jumped. The issue was that the first member of the group that he locked eyes on was the giant lizard standing opposite him. What had been intended to be an excited greeting instead came out as a gasping, gurgling scream. To make matter’s worse, some sort of reflex kicked in when Shane got spooked and caused the two legs he’d worked so hard for to suck right back in, leaving him a frightened ball of tar trying to catch his breath from both the shock and the exercise.

This wasn’t a very good start to the day.

Hank was a bit disappointed neither of the kids reacted the way he hoped they would. He wasn't exactly sure how he had wanted them to react, but it was different than how they had. Though the guy seemed to be more surprised than the girl.

"Gojirahahaha!" Hank tried to imitate the way that Asian guy had said 'Godzilla' from the newer 'zilla movie. He wasn't very good at making friends usually, or talking to new people, but he kind of liked this kid. 'He seems kind of silly.' The girl on the other hand...she looked a bit serious, but kind of cute too. Hank wondered if smiling would make her cuter, or just make her look more carefree.

Hank's eyes flicked from the girl to the guy a couple of times before he spoke, "Umm...Hank. I'd shake your hands..but, you know..." He wiggled and waggled his claws at them.

"Uh, so yeah, what's a muta-HOLY ****!"

Not it was definitely not polite, and definitely not something he would have said in from of his parents but hell! Hank had no idea the thing was that came into the hallway. It was like some sort of walking, or shuffling, oil spill. The thing was alive! Hank hadn't realized it, but as soon as the blob-thing came into view, he had dropped back a couple steps, onto all fours, tail lashing side to side, fin stiff, and a low rumbling came from his throat with every breath.

He could feel how tense his body was, it was as strange experience, he'd never done anything like that before. And he wasn't sure he liked it. It took him a few moments to push out of his...shock? That was the best way of putting it. Even after he relaxed and stepped towards the thing..person..mutant (Whatever the hell a mutant is.), he couldn't get his fin to relax. He looked to the girl and Kyle, "You guys think it's safe? Maybe it needs help?" Even as he asked he was already moving towards it, slowly, no, not slowly, cautiously. ''Cuz slow is for scared people, the brave people in stories and stuff move cautiously. That's what I'm doing, being cautious. Yup, definitely caution.'

'Godzilla Jr.' probably wasn't the best way to greet the new kid. Isabel knew from experience that some mutants could be a little aggressive or easily offended when it came to their visible oddities. She'd seen kids get into fights before over something like a compliment getting misconstrued as sarcasm due to one party's sensitivity. Thankfully, though, 'Godzilla Jr.", or Hank as he introduced himself, didn't seem to take any offense to the nickname.

The next arrival was even stranger looking than the lizard boy. It was like a pile of ink has oozed its way around the corner, or maybe tar, screaming all the while. The boy now known as Kyle didn't seem to be too surprised. Hank, however, fell almost immediately into some sort of defensive stance. She couldn't help but grin a little at the growling reptilian individual.

The black blob in the hallway was certainly one of the strangest individual that Isabel had ever seen, but she wasn't about to get all defensive like lizard boy had. She'd been spending more and more of her time hanging out with the other mutants at the facility and was more than willing to overlook and physical differences in favor of friendship. She knew what it was like to be treated differently just because she had special abilities. To have a physical mutation of top of it must have been twice as hard. She wasn't going to be like the humans that ran the adoption center. She didn't care if anyone looked different. She wasn't going to treat them like they were.

"Isabel," she said rather distractedly as the other two offered their names, her attention almost entirely on the heaving tar blob. Unlike Hank, she wasn't worried about getting hurt, nor did she really think she'd end up scaring the blob. She wasn't so sure he could ooze away very fast even if she did, especially with how hard it was breathing. At least, it kind of sounded like breathing.

While Hank was inching his way closer to Blobby, Isabel strolled right past him and plopped herself on the floor by the inky pile. She'd pat it on the back if it had a back to pat. "Don't worry. We're not gonna bite," she offered, letting her gaze drift between the trio she was sharing the hallway with. "This is a mutant," she continued, motioning to the tar beside her, and then back toward Hank. "And so are you. And him and me. Mutants are people with special powers or looks. We're different from humans."

Kyle chuckled lightly when the lizard man, who later introduced himself as Hank, attempted to imitate Godzilla. He was partially disappointed that Hank tried to imitate the new Godzilla, the one in New York, instead of the true and green Japanese Godzilla, but Kyle let that one slide. After all, not everyone was lucky enough to have seen the original king of the monsters in his best action.

That's when the last of them finally arrived and for a moment, Kyle wasn't sure if whatever this thing was was a boy, a girl or simply an it. The thing that approached them was a mass of ooze, a black blob that had what looked to be disproportionate limbs sticking out from the right places. Half a leg there, a full leg here, an arm appearing for a moment before fading back into the collective blob.

The blob was huffing loudly and for a moment, Kyle was about to make out what seemed to be words. Then the blob noticed Hank and a gurgle that could have been a shout of surprise slipped from it. In a single instant, all the limbs the blob had extended were gone, sucked back inside either on reflex or purpose. The ball still grew out and in at a steady pace, so Kyle guessed it was still breathing. Just...turtling.

Hank was first to react, a startled shout of surprise being his response, quickly followed by him dropping into a stance that Kyle guessed was one he adopted when he was in danger or feared he was in danger. The girl, who had given the name Isabel during this process, and himself, merely looked upon the blob with a mix of interest on his part and unflinching care on Isabel's. After a moment, Hank slowly edged back into a more comfortable stance, though he approached the blob as carefully as possible.

Isabel was first to fully approach, stepping right past the two of them to sit at the blob's side. The words she said next were obviously an attempt to calm the blob down and, after being sure she had finished, Kyle followed right in her footsteps. Moving forward and squatting down in front of the blob, he grinned lightly.

"Like she said, don't worry. You're among friends here. I may not look it and Isabel there might not look it, but we are. So take a breath, uh...and try to pull yourself together. Don't worry, I'm sure you can do it. Oh, I'm Kyle by the way, that's Isabel and the one behind me is Hank. And what might be your name be, if you can tell us."

Shane’s little white eyes peeked out from the ball that was his body. The group of kids in front of him were speaking softly, and it was calming him down. He really wasn’t scared of them, he’d just gotten a really good scare from the giant lizard, but even he seemed to be calm and nice. He managed to wiggle his way into a sitting position, but one without any limbs. He had the profile of a peanut, or a bowling pin. At least his head was still normal. Ish.

The group said the words that he was hoping weren’t true. "This is a mutant, and so are you." It was pretty hard to argue that that was what was going on, but he still didn’t like to hear it said out loud (though it was better then the melting alternative). How could something like this happen over night? Shane started throwing out questions a mile a minute, effectively ruining his plan to keep cool. All he wanted to ask what was going on and how he got to this place, but every sound that came out of his mouth sounded like his tongue was to big for his mouth. So he stopped, took a deep breath and tried his name.

“Sshhaan.” He was making progress! That time he only sounded like he had a big mouth full of food. He started making his arm again since that seemed to be the one he was best at. It was a pretty rough looking arm, but it had fingers, and he used them to point to himself. “Shaae,” he tried again.

That was the best he could do for the moment. He wasn’t going to let that be the last time he tried to speak though. While the others continued their conversation, he started doing mouth exercises and poking around inside his mouth with his hand. Something must be blocking something else in there. He was going to figure it out!

Hank wasn't feeling too good about himself now, after having reacted to Shane the way he had. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to, ya know, freak out like that." Hank would have offered to shake hands with him, if it were possible, and he wouldn't hurt the guy, instead he tried to give the guy a friendly, apologetic smile. Hopefully he asked, "Friends?"

Looking from Isabel to Kyle, "Why are we like this," He said motioning to Shane and himself, "But you two are still human? I didn't...I wasn't like this when I went to bed last night." Hank started rubbing the fingers of one hand together, "I mean, is that ya know, normal?" Hank slipped into a more comfortable, crouched, position. He would have to look up at the two, but he was looking at the floor, digging his a claw into it as he mumbled, "Not that this is normal."

Isabel was trying her hardest not to giggle as the putty-like mutant managed to sort of sit up and struggled to form words, presumably the name Kyle has asked for. It just sounded so strange, and he looked rather silly. Kind of like someone was trying to speak through something. Like his mouth was stuck under the surface of the goop and he was trying to talk around it. She had to wonder if he actually had a mouth. He must have. If he was able to make a sort of arm-like appendage, then surely he could manage a mouth. Maybe it was just a matter of pushing it to the surface. In any case it sounded like Shay. Or maybe Shane. She wasn't exactly sure.

Her attention shifted over to Hank as his words changed from an apologetic offer to the blobby individual to aiming a question at the more human-looking of the two. Isabel had heard similar questions asked before. There were a lot of mutants that seemed to lament their changes and were always desperately looking for answers about why they had to be the ones to change and what made them so different from everyone else.

As a result of hearing such inquiries, and because she had her own questions, she'd done a little research into the matter. She'd taught herself how to use the internet in the hours she'd been left by herself at her pa- at the Duskmoors' house. It was one of the few activities that the couple had allowed her to indulge in, as it often kept her quiet and out of trouble.

There were a number of things that different search engines yielded, though she hadn't understood a good portion of it. When things got into detail about the specifics of the x-gene, she was lost. She didn't understand that much of the human body to be able to grasp the meaning behind the technical terms. She had understood some of the simpler things that forums and ask sites had provided.

"It's something in your body that does it. Something called an x-gene," she began, trying to sort through what she remembered reading and to try placing that information into an easily understood explanation. "We're different from you because that's what our bodies decided. It's like how some people have red hair and other people have brown hair, except more random, I guess." She hoped that made sense.

With barely contained amusement, Kyle watched as the blob attempted to answer his question. Considering that Kyle could see no mouth to speak of, the garbled sound that managed to mangle it's way out was expected, but at least it served its purpose. It took a moment, and a second attempt by the blob to truly understand what it was trying to say, but they discovered his name was..Shane? and that meant it was likely a guy under that mess.

Turning his attention to the speakers in turn, Kyle first thought about what Hank was saying. From what he gathered from their reactions to themselves, both Shane and Hank hadn't been like this the night before. Kyle knew from reports that mutations could occur suddenly and without warning, age not playing a real factor because it varied from person to person. Kyle himself apparently had his powers, whatever they were, from at least age six, as that was the earliest he could remember himself not tiring out.

Kyle himself had been told just the other day he was indeed a mutant, which was why the only thing worrying to him was why he was in this strange place. The doctor had explained partially about how one became a mutant when he had been there; the girl's explanation merely expanded on it slightly. Smiling, Kyle turned towards her, adjusting his pants as they folded down once again.

"Looks like you've had time to look this up in detail. So...what's your ability then?"

The other kids continued talking amongst each other, but he wasn’t really giving them his full attention. Instead, he was focusing on figuring out how to make his body work. He held out his one arm, trying to flex the different muscles and wiggle his fingers. He felt like he was dealing with an arm that had fallen asleep, shaking it about, trying to get the blood flowing, etc. He was finally seeing some progress though. Although he was still at just one arm, he’d started to get the hang of shaping it to what he wanted, and it was a rather impressive looking sculpture, he thought to himself. Satisfied with the first, he started on the second arm.

He continued to let the conversation around him flow in one ear and partially go out the other. He picked up little bits of what they were talking about, but none of it was any immediate help to him, so he just focused on his hands. There was something about x-genes and red heads that seemed like it might have been relevant, but it all sounded too ‘sciency’ to him to have any real interest.

His second arm was coming along nicely. There was some initial problems with the first one retracting or extending when he created the new one, but he was getting good at it now, so it was an easy problem to solve. He was actually starting to have some fun some fun with it too. He felt like he was playing with building blocks, or modeling clay. Something where he could build what he wanted. It was probably better for him to stick with what he knew for now, though.

With two arms down, Shane jumped right into his mouth, shoving his fingers in where it’s faint outline sat. He pulled it open and poked around inside, digging for whatever was blocking the sounds in the same way he would try and get food out of his teeth. He couldn’t find anything too far out of the ordinary (in a sense), but he did notice that his breathing was less laboured now.

“I think I got it.” He mumbled to himself. Aside from the obvious jumbling of words that was often associated with fingers in your mouth while talking, the words came out normally. This took a moment for Shane to clue in to, but once he did, he became quite excited.

“I got it!” he shouted to his new friends. “Shane!” he added. "My name is Shane.”