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Her sister had always been one of absolutes and it was one of the points of disagreement between the two.  It was refreshing to speak of the philosophy of the future with someone who's views more closely matched her own.  The idea of Utopia was the idea of perfection and perfect did not exist, at least as pertains to humans and their evolutionary counterparts, mutants.  There was too much emotion, too much passion and not enough dispassioned intellect to ever make such a thing feasible.  Of course, all these things that made perfection impossible also served to make humans and mutants into the gloriously varietied creatures that they were.  All good things came with their price.

"I think there does need to be some degree of working together," she nodded, appreciating the passion with which he spoke.  "There does need to be more of a focus on eliminating hatred and violence because that harms everyone.  However, mutants are not the same as humans and that also needs to be acknowledged.  We need to start policing our own because humans are simply not equipped to police us themselves."  They were the stronger species.  Of that, Aura was undoubtedly correct.  "We shouldn't feel ashamed of working for our own best interests even if we're working with humans in order to try and achieve them.  Humans aren't going anywhere anytime soon."  That shouldn't have to mean killing them although, perhaps, sometimes the occasional death was necessary.

"How do you try to implement change?  I mean real change, not just change in a person or two here or there."  Since her return to the city, she'd felt directionless and lacking purpose.  Sure, she was re-learning what it was to be human and having some success in that and sure she had returned to finish her GED, but what happened after that?  Where did a walking corpse belong in the world?  Humans judged her based on appearance and genetics.  Some mutants were less judgmental but she hadn't exactly had much success getting close to anyone; she was too much the predator, a creature of death and nature.  Would she forever lurk in the shadows, sit on the sidelines watching things happen around her?  Once, she might have been content with that, but now she wasn't so sure.  Aura wanted her to join the new Order that was forming but she wasn't certain of that either.  She wasn't certain of much of anything.

Amber felt no sense of self-consciousness at being watched when she changed forms.  Self-consciousness seemed to be one of the more pointless feelings and one of the more common ones among humans.  Her warning had been purely for Benji's sake, knowing that many found her transformation to be grotesque and disturbing.  What did she care if she grossed someone out?  That was their problem, not hers.

This was the first time she'd ever ridden in a pocket.  She'd always known it was possible, of course.  She'd gotten close to pocket riding before and hopped on to the odd shoulder or head.  She'd even be on the other side of this bizarre scenario and been the ride before, a rather for more sizable dinosaur being ridden like a horse.  A horse with giant horns and a crest full of hard bone.  Now that had been an experience to remember and probably even more so for her lucky (unlucky?) rider.  This?  This was also proving to be an experience to remember.

One might not expect a ride in a pocket to be especially interesting and one would probably be right if said ride involved a normal human running at normal human speeds.  This was not a normal human and she could only guess at the speeds he was running, but most certainly they were not normal human speeds.  When one was little larger than a mouse and mostly hidden away safely in folds of fabric, it wasn't exactly easy to tell just how quickly they were travelling, but judging by how vigorously they were bounding and the sound of wind in her sensitive ears, she could only guess it was pretty damn fast.  She knew there were dinosaurs out there who could run as fast as 80 km/hr, but she'd never had the fortune of possessing one of those forms.

Their speed was such that it wasn't safe for her to travel with with her head outside the protection of the fabric around her, so aside from a few brief, blurred glimpses of city, she remained mostly in the dark.  Sometime after their mad flight began, they slowed down, stopped while he took a call and continued, eventually landing with a thud.  At the end of their mad dash, she was placed on a shoulder as her ride began talking to a young dark haired woman.

Nodding her tiny lizard head at the introduction, she scrambled off Benji's shoulder, down his leg and onto the ground.  Running a short distance away she began the process of resuming her human shape and within a minute a young, naked, corpse-like girl once again stood where once there had been lizard.  If offered the shirt from earlier she would take it, otherwise she made no attempt to cover herself nor did the cool night air seem to bother her.  "Thank you for bringing me here, Benji."  She nodded in his direction.  "Hello, Shiv.  I'm Amber and I fell through a rift between worlds."  She wasn't very good at the whole introductions thing or very good at the nuances of human interaction in general.

It was late, sometime well after midnight and, as per usual at this time of hour, the living room was deserted save for her.  For a number of reasons, this was Amber's preferred time to read.  For one, she was normally asleep during the brightest and hottest portions of the day due to the sun being the constant enemy of her sensitive albino skin.  For another, she had an uneasy relationship of rooms full of people at best and an outright social phobia at worst.  This was the time when she didn't have to worry about too many people triggering claustrophobic feelings.

Only in recent days had she begun spending more time in the common room of the Mansion and only as she'd begun to feel more comfortable in the new life she was creating for herself.  It wasn't easy for one such as her to fit in, in part due to her corpse-like appearance and in part due to her somewhat spotty understanding of human social rules.  It was so much simpler in so many ways to live as a dinosaur in the woods and doing the right things at the right times was a constant struggle for her when so many of those things didn't make a damn bit of sense on a practical level.  Tone of voice, how you carried your body, how close you stood, laughing at appropriate times, not laughing at inappropriate times; the list of social rules was endless and confusing.

In more recent days she'd re-discovered an enjoyment of reading, something she'd thought long forgotten during her many months spent in solitude in the woods.  To read about the crafted lives of fictional characters proved a delightful way to spend an evening.  Who knew, maybe she might even learn some things about how to properly interact with other people?  So tonight, as with the 3 nights prior, she found herself stretched out across a couch with book in hand quietly and pleasantly reading.

Congrats on the new character. Amber is officially jealous of the whole human voice and clothes also shifting bits.

Welcome back. Looks like quite the fun power.

From the skies, she sought a secluded patch of woods where she might be alone for the time she needed to re-balance her inner nature.  She'd left in the evening while the sun was still in the sky but before full dark.  Always, the sun would be her enemy as much as she might sometimes wish otherwise and it was only in those short periods around dawn and suck that she could co-exist in relative harmony with it.  At least while she was human.  Why that was an issue only with that one form she'd never been able to figure out.

As the sun began to set, it became more pressing to find a suitable location.  Only her boar crock had much skill when it came to seeing in the dark and in the sky it was even more difficult.  Taking one more long glide, she spotted a small clearing and began to make her descent.  Spiraling slowly downward, she landed gracefully upon the ground.  To fly and to land were easy, to lift off into the sky was another matter.  She'd read that back in the Mesozoic era there had been more oxygen and thus lift was easier, as such it was always a challenge to free herself from the shackles of the earth.  Once aloft, however, the currents of the air did most of the work for her.

The clearing itself was small and surrounding her was a young forest.  She would have loved to have been able to experience a proper old growth forest, but those existed in very few places now days.  Even so, this would do nicely.  It took two changes to achieve the form she wanted, one into human and one into a deinychus.  The cold didn't affect her at all, given her undead nature.  While the price she paid for her amazing abilities was sometimes difficult to deal with, between her antithesis the sun and her zombie-like appearance, she could never regret the many gifts she possessed.  

Who didn't like dragons was, perhaps, a relevant question.  Probably those who happened upon misfortune of dragon enemies was probably the most relevant answer.  Well, she didn't really have to many enemies, excepting maybe those bigots who were so enraptured with the idea of disrupting her protests.  Those people sucked.  Big time.  This kind hearted stranger was not any such person as that.

"You are?  How delightful!  Do you have any powers?"  She hopped in place.  Not all mutants had powers and she didn't want to just assume.  How fortuitous to meet a fellow mutant.  Maybe that explained why he was so unfazed by the prospect of having a tiny dragon show up out of nowhere to steal his food.  Well, either that or the fact that she was plainly adorable and who could really take issue with that?