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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.”

How's this guy?

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.

The morning sun poured in through the window, warming the 10 year-old’s face. Shane opened his eyes only to snap them shut again immediately from the blindness the bright light brought with it. He remained lying there with his eyes squeezed tight hoping he could fall asleep again, but it was too late, he was up. Then an important piece of information popped into his mind: he was missing cartoons!

He opened his eyes to a narrow squint, focusing for a moment on the giant red dot floating in the center of his vision. He blinked excessively, but eventually got used to the sunlight. That’s when he noticed none of his posters or drawings were on any of the walls.

The room he was in was completely empty except for the bed he was on. There wasn’t a single piece of furniture and there were no decorations. It didn’t seem to be much different in size then his own room though, so his initial thought was that mom had come in while he was sleeping and cleaned it up. Cleaned it up a little too good. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been able to see the walls of his room beneath all the things he’d tacked up. He wasn’t happy about this, but he was calming down, which was good because the cartoons weren’t going to wait.

Excitedly he went to fling the blankets off, but something felt weird. His arm didn’t react as quickly as he wanted it to, and moving felt really strange, like running in water. He did manage to get the covers off though, only to want to scream once he did. He was looking back at what appeared to be an oil spill covering his entire body. He tried to roll around out of it, but no matter which way he moved the black goop seemed to stick to him. He was starting to feel like Br’er Rabbit caught in the tar trap. Shane tried to let out a scream to his mommy, but nothing but a choking cough came out.

The boy was in full-fledged panic mode now, rolling out of the bed and hitting the ground with a thump, landing on what should have been his shoulder. He was going to make a run for the door assuming someone would be outside that could help him clean off. He inched his way across the floor towards the closed door. Every once in while looking back to his bed (which didn’t look like his bed), only to be surprised that this oil wasn’t leaving any kind of trail behind it.

When he got within a few feet of the door, he started reach his arm out to grab the handle which was quite high up his current horizontal position. He stretched his arm up and strained to make it longer. To his surprise, his arm actually did stretch out. He grabbed the handle with ease, but he didn’t open it. Instead he just kept trying to stretch his arm out to see how high he could get it. It was no time before he was able to touch the ceiling.

“Cool...” he though to himself. The word still wouldn’t actually come out of his mouth (nothing but gurgling noises when he tried to speak). Was he a mutant now? Was this how mutations work? You just woke up as a blob one morning? He was going to get to the bottom of this. He grabbed the door handle again, opening it this time. Time to find his parents.

After a few moments of pen tapping alone in otherwise silence, the girl emerged again, shoving a yawning boy out through the curtain ahead of her. This kid looked even younger then the girl who led him out in the first place. He wore sunglasses, but they did little to hide the youth behind them. This whole place was really starting to seem a little bit like a scam the longer he was there.

“Sorry for the wait, this is the Oracle.” The girl said, gesturing towards the boy. He moved towards a table in the center of the room with a crystal ball on it, plopping down in one of the seats. He looked like he’d just rolled out of bed, and his body language backed that theory up. “Please, have a seat.” The girl said, pointing towards the table and proceeding to pull that chair out.

Shane dropped the pen and shuffled over to the table, dropping into the seat with a thud. He wasn’t horribly impressed, and it was showing. The boy, however, seemed to match Shane’s irritation with an equal amount of indifference. He stifled a yawn, finally making eye contact (Shane assumed) through his sunglasses. The girl dimmed the lights before disappearing behind the curtain again.

“What answer do you seek?” he asked, his voice carrying the monotonous tone of a line spoken far too many times. Shane was caught a bit off guard by the question though. He hadn’t expected to need a specific answer, just a general read. The Oracle’s head started to drift to the side and a look of impatience was already starting to develop on his face.

“I want to know what direction I need to be heading in life.” Shane asked. He realized this wasn’t much of an answer, but then again, he didn’t have much else to say. “I feel like I’m lost in the woods. I just want to find the path again.”

“Alright then,” the boy responded, his full attention on Shane now. “Let’s take a look.” He took his sunglasses off and the two of them locked eyes.

The next thing Shane knew, the two of them were flying through a tunnel of his own memories. It was exactly how he’d always conceptualized dying, having your life flashing before your eyes. He could see himself as a child playing with the other children, before his mutation had manifested itself. He could see how happy he was.

He could see his parents vividly. Two people he hadn’t see in years who had, and still did mean the world to him. He could see them tucking him in to bed and reading him stories until he fell asleep. It felt good.

He could see himself surrounded by people dressed in all black on a murky day. It wasn’t raining, but the clouds were threatening to start pouring down on them. Everyone seemed to have umbrellas, Shane did too, only his was open, concealing his face. His mutation had started to kick in. Most people were crying. The tombstone in front of him read: JAMES MARKSMITH. This was his father’s funeral.

He could see himself in the wilderness, defending the small shelter he’d built from armed men who’d come to attack him.

Then he started seeing images he’d never seen before. They seemed less focused and shorter glimpses.

He could see his mother again, only much older, himself sitting with her.

A shadowy man creeping through a house with a handgun.

Himself kneeling at his father’s tombstone, a new one beside it now reading: KATHLEEN MARKSMITH.

There was a clink of glass as he cheersed with Blood over a pint.

A man with a unicorn’s horn spoke to him in a soothing voice, but he couldn’t catch the words.

His body had grown to a larger size then he’d ever seen before, and he wasn’t alone in the room.

There was a girl in front of him, hands on hips giving him a very stern look of disapproval.

He could see a church. He didn’t know the location, but it’s image lingered longer then any other, and it stayed with him.

Then the images faded away, leaving Shane breathing heavily, trying to remember where he was. The Oracle replaced his glasses, yawning again, but still remaining focused on the client. One image had stuck out for Shane, and that was his mother. He hadn’t seen her since his early teen years, so seeing her so vividly was an intense image.

He may have been skeptical before, but after that experience he had little doubt of the authenticity of that “reading.” He was quite literally left speechless. He sat in silence, his eyes rapidly moving around the room, not actually looking at anything, but trying to help him remember. It was like waking up from a wonderful dream and trying to remember all of the details before they vanish forever. He didn’t know if they’d vanish on him or not, but he didn’t want to take any chances.

“Th… Thank you.” He finally managed to let a few words leave his lips. He stood up from the table, only half paying attention to where he was, still partially living in his dream world in his head. As he turned to head for the door, he was whispering to himself about the vision, “church, mom, Blood, gun…”

He knew what he needed to do now. He needed to find his mother.

Shane looked around the shop, unsure of the procedure. It was rare that he ever ventured into a store of any kind, let alone one of the supernatural variety. The purple room he stepped into wasn’t much like any other shop he’d visited, looking instead like a residential apartment, or at least an apartment designed for group meetings, anything but a more traditional retail store. He wasn’t really sure why he was expecting different, but surprise was written all over his face as he looked around.

There was no one in the room, but there were signs that people had been around recently scattered across the tables and floor, the most obvious being a still-hot cup of tea steaming on a table near what appeared to be a cash register. Cash register, excellent. At least now he knew he was in the right place. He looked around to see if he could find a sign somewhere with the hours listed. He let out a faint “Hello?” in the midst of the search.

A young girl, no older then 15, popped out from behind a purple curtain, shooting a smile in Shane’s direction while heading straight for the tea. “Well hello there,” the girl said with mild enthusiasm as she brought the cup to her lips. She looked him up and down as she quietly sipped the warm drink. “What can I help you with today?” Shane resisted the urge to say something along the lines of “Shouldn’t you already know? You are a psychic.” Things went smoother when he didn’t try to make jokes.

“I’m here to find out my future.” He said with minimal confidence. “I am in the right place, right?” The young girl nodded, moving behind the desk, positioning herself by the register. There was one more sip of the tea before she set it back down again, replacing it in her hand with a pen.

“This is the place.” She answered cheerfully. “We do need payment upfront though.”

Damn, he thought to himself. He’d never really had much money; again, shopping wasn’t really something he did often. He reached down into his pockets and pulled out the mess of crumpled bills and change that were stashed away. The girl was tapping her pen on the desk, counting the money in her head and it piled up on the counter.

“Hopefully this is enough,” Shane said, confident there was nothing else buried any deeper. It wasn’t a very impressive pile, but he was surprised by how much he had accumulated. The girl mouth out numbers as she added it up in her head. Then she smiled, popping the register open.

“I think that should be enough.” She put the pen back down and started putting the money into the various slots of the machine, the slammed it shut, grabbing her tea again. “I’ll be right back with the oracle.”

Then she disappeared behind the curtain again. Shane grabbed the pen and started tapping it on the desk himself.

Shane had found himself in a bit of a rut. He’d recently moved into the Sanctuary, but despite the kindness from most of the mutants he’d met there - and there were few that he socialized with – he couldn’t help but feel like it wasn’t where he belonged.

Although he’d spent the first few years of his life with a normal family, he’d spent the majority of that life alone in the woods, and now the woods were what really felt like home to him. Most people craved a roof over their head, but for him, that roof just felt like a cage.

He wasn’t ready to leave for his trees again just yet though. It had only been a few months since he’d first arrived in New York and he wanted to make it work if he could find a way. It was only recently that a conversation with a young boy helped give him some sort of plan. Or rather, a plan that would lead him to an actual plan. The boy had told him about a mutant that could predict the future, and an authentic prediction that could help him figure out what direction he needed to be heading in seemed like just the thing he was looking for.

He didn’t, however, have much information about where to find this psychic, so he was amazed at how quickly he was able to track the place down. There was fairly minimal advertising for the little shop, but he’d managed to rummage together little bits of gossip and hearsay to at least set him up in the right direction. Shane was anything but social at the Sanctuary, but he was a good listener, and quite skilled at leaving people unaware that he was doing it. He’d stumbled upon a conversation on the very subject in the hallways and soaked up all the details (the few there were) from what they’d spoken about.

The info had gotten him this far though: the general area where the shop was supposed to be located. And sure enough, a little rooftop scouting brought him a visual of the little shore, just as Chase had implied it would look like. It was a rather unassuming looking building, not drawing any attention to itself. "Future Sight" the sign read. It would be easy to miss if you weren’t looking for it, though it did look a little beat up at the moment, like renovations had recently been done. Shane started to get worried that the shop might not be opened.

He climbed down from his rooftop perch carefully, as always with the goal of keeping off everyone else’s radar. Although he’d improved, he still felt uncomfortable walking around with his mutation visible for everyone to see. The street outside the shop wasn’t too busy though, and with his oversized jacket he was fine being out in the exposed intersection. Tentatively he approached the shop, taking a deep breath before pushing the door open.