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>> ”Sure, you can dip something in, but you gotta answer a question first,”

"Oh, okay," Chase agreed readily. He was a smart kid. He figured Locke was going to throw a math question at him, or something. Older people liked to do that-- randomly quiz kids with math or spelling, just because they felt like it. Chase put his hands in his lap to show that he was ready for whatever question Locke threw his way.

>> ”Are you sure it was your candy sense and not a grilled cheese sandwich craving in disguise?”

Chase grinned at the inquiry. He wasn't of the sort that mindset where candy to precedence over food of actual sustenance. He liked to be fed, and wasn't too particular about what he ate.

"I was just hungry," Chase answered genuinely, "But if I get candy to eat, all the better."

Chase hadn't the time to react. One moment, they spoke of new coats, and the next there was a car heading straight towards them. Breath hitched, adrenaline burst, and time slowed. Chase's small form tensed preemptively with fear. The two cars attempted evasion-- the other hopped the curb, they were in the clear-- but the hope was short-lived. The other car caught an immovable object, sending its back-end swinging towards the passengers' side.

Impact. Then silence.

Chase blinked, a familiar, fearful black dominant in his gaze. He looked around, head swimming, trapped in by a wall and the car. The tremors ensued with dull realization of what had just happened, and shortly thereafter came the pain. His arm had gone up as if to shield Chase from the impact. Either his elbow or the collision had shattered the window and broken skin, and Chase couldn't bend his arm. Everything else was sore, maybe bruised... he couldn't move his neck very well.

>> "Chase?... Chase!... Chase? It's okay baby, it's gonna be okay. We are fine. I am going to... make a call..."

Chase looked at his mother with fear-blackened eyes, shakily regarding the smoke that lingered from the deployed airbag, to the nonexistent window through which the fumes filtered, and Chase started to cry silently. He was scared and in-shock, didn't know what to make of the situation.

"Mama, I think I broke the window," he mourned. It was a small damage compared to everything else, "I'm bleeding."

He looked into the other car, because the two vehicles were now essentially parallel.

"That guy l-l-looks like H-Hokee."

A steady crowd was accumulating around the cars, people shouting to call 9-1-1 and inquiries of, "Are you alright?"

"Mama, I want to get out of the car," Chase whined, "I think that's Hokee."

Already Chase was scrambling to unbuckle his seatbelt, but when his injured arm wouldn't bend to unfasten him, Chase resorted to his free hand. He had to get out of the car and make sure Hokee was okay. He didn't know how, or why, he just had to.

The Doppelganger watched as Hokee ate, grabbing its own breakfast burritos and setting them on the dash with its free hand, whilst the other still held onto the shoe in-question. Just throw the shoe one the dashboard? Certainly. The Doppelganger did as it was instructed, and set the shoe in the center of the dashboard lightly. As soon as it released the shoe, the form quickly unraveled, as if it were a rope that was unraveling after being tightly woven. It unshifted fluidly, without stopping in the natural form at all, but reverting to the human-Chase. Chase blinked, his face looking a little flushed, and he wordlessly grabbed his first breakfast burrito. He peeled the foil back, and began to eat quietly, still looking embarrassed.

>> "Whatchathinkofdriving? Goohuh?"

Chase looked over at Hokee, and shook his blond head adamently in contradiction to the inquiry. He hadn't liked it. He had to turn into Hokee just to reach the pedals, and that necessitated that he return to his form with someone looking at him. Not Chase's idea of fun.

"It was scary," Chase confessed, taking another bite of the burrito, "The only reason I drove is because you were busy and the people behind us were getting mad."

Chase sat sideways in the seat, his legs bunched up to his chest (a feat that was now possible because he was once again petite, as opposed to Hokee-sized) and facing Hokee. Except his gaze, rather than being on the other boy, just skirted the tops of Chases' knees. Chase was blatantly bashful over having shifted in front of someone, particularly someone like Hokee. Hokee was cool, in the eight-year-old's book-- like an older brother that Chase had never had. Shapeshifting was weird, and probably made Chase seem a lot less cool in the eyes of the older boy. This was a notion that disappointed Chase, though it couldn't have been more contrary to the truth of what Hokee thought of him.

It would figure that the shy boy was the one who was sent to find people. Chase only knew Sam, and knew that he knew Sam by the physical description of him. He wasn't too sure he'd be able to even address the other two aforementioned people coherently, if he was faced with them. The eight-year-old still legitimately looked for them, but after covering the Mansion from top-to-bottom, he still turned up at the rendezvous-point empty-handed. Why they were going to the basement, of all places, was beyond him. He gave Katrina a bashful and apologetic smile, and shrugged as he admitted that he hadn't found anyone.

Katrina led Chase down into the basement, and into a hanger which Chase had never expected to be beneath a school. With wide eyes, he surveyed the cavernous room, before amazed eyes zeroed-in on the jet. Chase gaped openly. Katrina was a pilot?! That was so cool. Chase followed Katrina into the jet in awe.

They boarded the plane, and went up into the cockpit. Chase even got to sit in the copilot's seat, and the entire time, he was grinning like an idiot and looking around with wide eyes.

>> "Ready for take off?"

"Yeah."



It was a quiet ride over, and the whole time, Chase was wrapped in a slient wonder. There was jet parked under the school, and now they were flying the jet into Maine. The two of them began their descent, and Chase sat up taller, peeking out the window. He expected to see an airport, but what he saw instead surprised him. The plane was planting itself down on an unocuppied stretch of road in the middle of suburbia. Chase looked at the paper that was unfolded in his grasp, checking the address, before looking towards the house. This was it. Chase folded the paper up again, and tucked it into his jeans pocket.

Chase waited for the plane to land before unbuckling himself from the copilot's seat. As he stood hesitantly, Chase looked out the window, and spied an angry man stalking out into the yard. Chase looked towards the house, surveying the number that was displayed upon its front, and realized that this was the house. That meant that this was probably the father. Chase felt a roiling of nerves in his stomach. The man didn't look like his old father, but... the similarities were striking. Chase awaited Katrina's instruction, frowning speculatively.

Should he grab one of those fancy coats, and disguise himself as someone older? Or different? The angry man in the front yard might take him more seriously if he didn't look like an eight-year-old... No. Chase was the one who had wanted to come there. It had to be Chase, in the flesh, who came.

"You ready for this?" Chase murmured quietly, giving Katrina a hesitant half-smile. The two of them trailed out of the jet, and were greeted by an angry-looking man. Chase could feel his heart do an anxious stutter-- what on Earth was an eight-year-old doing in Maine trying to rescue another kid on a whim? Chase had just expected to sneak in, find the other boy and sneak out. But now, with a confrontation of sorts on their hands... he wasn't feeling so brave.

>> “You better not be some…some damned mutants comin here to kill all us non-mutants. We don’t like your kind in this town.”

Chase looked at Katrina. Well... what were they supposed to say? They were mutants, but did either of them look like killing sorts? Chase didn't think so. The eight-year-old rolled his lips together hesitantly. The man reminded him of Mr. Townsend. Glimmers of annoyed orange and angered red flickered over fear-blackened irises, but Chase remained silent. He couldn't bring himself to speak, despite the fact that he'd been the one to initiate the mission. Hopefully Katrina was better at handling belligerent fathers.

Chase enjoyed running errands with Miss Gemma. They could talk, and it was just him and her, and none of the other students. Just him and miss Gemma, and no one else-- sure, there were downfalls, because shopping with Gemma meant shopping in his natural face, but Chase still enjoyed the quality time regardless. He just kept his eyes down and kept close to his mother, and hoped that nobody looked to closely at him.

Today they were not only running the typical errands (which were largely Mansion-oriented, entailing supermarkets and bulk foods), but were also dropping by a few department stores, to see if they could find Chase some new clothes. Chase was in need of clothes that were better-equipped to take on the winter elements, and since his mutation made him sensitive to genetic residues left on recycled clothes from other people, this necessitated that Chase wear new clothes. At least until he got better control over his mutation.

"So where are we going next?" Chase inquired from the back seat, looking up from the Etch-a-Sketch upon his lap. He sat behind the passenger's seat, within Gemma's line of vision if she were to look in the rear-view mirror, or to look over her shoulder from the driver's seat. Chase shifted between doodling on the Etch-a-Sketch, and speaking intermittently. Chase glanced down at his drawing, which consisted of a bunch of overlapping squares-- had anyone asked, he was drawing New York City, but all it really looked like was a bunch of squares, so far.

The inquiry was code for, "Are we going to JC Penney's next?" because Chase was anxious to get some warm clothes. Chase had adopted an unabashed excitement over getting new clothes-- it still felt like a novelty, to him, to get new clothes that were to be his and his alone, as opposed to getting hand-me-downs.

The Doppelganger smirked at Hokee's reaction, eyes glimmering with emerald-green amusement behind sleepy eyelids. So, even with kids as cool as Hokee, people still did double-takes when faced with their twin they never knew that they had. Priceless. Absolutely priceless.

>> "What the he--"

"I couldn't reach the gas pedal," the Doppelganger said with a shrug and an air of nonchalance, "You should see your face, Hokee. It's priceless."

With that, the Doppelganger looked back towards the window, as the attendant returned bearing breakfast. Hokee had drifted into a most-uncommon silence, but seemed to have enough wits about him to pull a twenty out of his wallet and pass it up to him.

>> "Didn't say we were stealing the food."

"You didn't have to," the Doppelganger hummed absently, taking the twenty-dollar bill from Hokee with a brief murmur of thanks. The window slid open, and Chase passed the twenty to the attendant, who passed them the food. She looked into the back, towards Hokee, and then back at Hokee's doppelganger, and said nothing as the girl retrieved change for them. She returned with change for the twenty, and napkins, and wished the two a nice day.

"You too," the Doppelganger said with a smile. He pressed on the brake again, and shifted back into drive and rolled away from the window. As soon as they were gone from the window, his expression shifted into that of discontent, and faint annoyance, and he rolled out of the drive-thru, towards the first available parking place, and managed to park the car without any difficulties. He put the car into park once again, put on the emergency brake, and undid the seatbelt. It was awkward, moving around with such long, unwieldy legs, but with minor fidgeting faux-Hokee managed to clamber back into the passengers' seat. He passed Hokee the change, first, turning to his twin with a wry look upon its face.

Chase hated shifting in front of people, and wanted to drop the form as soon as possible. The Doppelganger relished Hokee's dumbfounded expression. The Doppelganger won, and it was decided that for just a moment longer, the shoe would belong to the Doppelganger, unless the real-Hokee wanted it back.

"I told you my power was human-shifting," the Doppelganger chastised, mild condescension in its tone and a smirk upon its lips. Its eyes still boasted an emerald-green amusement, "Did ya think I only changed how my hair looked?"