A Stray No Longer

[Julian Davitt]

The ride from the Park Rangers’ station was quiet; Julian felt the slight desire to enter the familiar lupine form he’d lived in for as long as he cared to remember. He stifled it, and chanced a glance at Aidan.

He took some time to form the words as he looked out the window.

“W... where do you live?”

[Aidan Fox]

Aidan had been careful not to overwhelm Julian with human socialization habits - the events of the day were probably overwhelming enough. It would be better to let the other kids at the House welcome him in. Aidan had already called ahead and asked Anna to warn everyone that the newcomer was very shy.

"It's a place called Redención House," he said. "It's a big house in Los Santos. We take in young mutants who don't have anywhere else to go, and we look out for each other. We're going to look out for you, too."

He swung the truck onto Banyon Street and passed into a neighborhood of mostly lower-class homes. The summer heat was keeping most people indoors, but there were a couple pre-teens jockeying around a portable basketball hoop, and a little further on several young men were laying shingles on a shimmering roof.

Another block down, there was a loud metallic clatter as a 140-pound Rottweiler jumped up against its chain link fence and barked uproariously at the passing truck.

[Julian Davitt]

We’re going to look out for you too.

Julian didn’t respond to that, only keeping his eyes on the dashboard and glancing up out of the windows to glimpse the places they were passing.

He felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise slightly as the dog barked loudly at their passing. The moment was too brief, and his senses too numb in his human form, to adequately parse the meaning behind the aggressive action.

The scenery alongside the road passed by in a blur, like most of his memories. They made another turn, and he glanced up. An open window held the face a small child, and it passed by just like the others.

He shifted a bit in his jeans, a gift from Manuel, who had taken them, along with a shirt with Iron Maiden emblazoned on it in stylized letters, out of a garbage bag the back of his truck filled with clothes.

‘They’re going to the Salvation Army anyway,’ he’d said. ‘They might be a bit tight, but better than those old things, hey?’

The truck slowed, and he saw they were drawing closer to a large house. He glanced over at Aidan and back, wondering if this was the place.

[Aidan Fox]

"Here we are," Aidan said. The truck's tires crackled over the uneven pavement of the driveway and past the house to the free-standing garage in the back, where he pulled in next to a heavily-used Dodge B-series van. Aidan piled out and, finding Julian still passively seated in the passenger seat, looped around the hood to open his door. "Come on, take a look at the place."

Behind the house was a half-acre lawn whose grass had done surprisingly well during the last drought and still had patches of honest green among the yellow. Opposite the garage was a spacious vegetable garden bursting with tomatoes, peppers, and peas. If it were afternoon, someone would almost certainly be out picking the ripe tomatoes off the vines for supper, but the backyard was empty, and the gaps in the bike rack against the side of the garage meant some of the kids were probably off at their summer jobs.

The whole yard was surrounded by the tall, wooden fence that Apollos and Jake had put up in the spring, and Anna had found space in the budget to add a few palmettos at the edges of the property. It gave the place a sense of sanctity and security. You could almost forget you were in a crowded suburban neighborhood, which Aidan figured would make things easier on Julian.

"How are you feeling?" Aidan asked. "You feel ready to go in?"

[Julian Davitt]

Julian stepped out of the truck and smelled the familiar but almost forgotten odours of oil, grease, and fuel. There was a slight hint of paint as well, and he felt a bit more at ease for the familiarity of the scents. When he stepped out of the garage and saw the backyard, he smiled, though it was a canine sort of smile, with his mouth slightly open and his teeth mostly hidden. He took deep breaths through his nose.

Julian ignored the itchiness of his clothing and how uncomfortable it was to wear them again, especially jeans, and half glanced at Aidan. His smile dimmed almost to nothing, and he looked at the house, a big, imposing structure, and when he looked back to Aidan, his eyes were brimming with curiosity. He stepped up to the back door, and gazed in through the screen, feeling a slight ache in the back of his head from all the visual stimuli he was receiving. He hadn’t used his eyes as his primary sense for an extended period of time for almost two years.

[Aidan Fox]

Aidan gave Julian some space to explore his new surroundings. It wasn't hard to spot the canine mannerisms - the boy could've been a rescue from the SPCA shelter over in Hawthorne.

Aidan approached behind him and pulled open the screen door into the kitchen. Voices echoed down the hallway from the family room. "Let's go on in and see who's home."

[Aimee Connors]

Aimee fanned out the stack of paint chips on the coffee table, looking at the different colors. Anna would let you repaint your room after you'd been living at the House successfully for three months, but you and your roommate/s all had to agree on the color. And do it together.

Jennifer had said she didn't care, and she didn't want to help either, but Aimee was sure she'd be able to change her mind. The pale blue had to go! Something in green, maybe. She scattered paint chips over the carpet, trying to arrange them in order of best to worst, Alex's voice droning on while Jen listened with rapt attention. The girl was boy crazy!

The screen door in the kitchen opened, and Aimee looked up, able to see down the front hall from where she sat on the living room floor. "Hey, Aidan! Oh... new guy?"

[Alex Kaine]

"...so maybe we're still headed toward Kurzweil's technological singularity. But what he couldn't have predicted was that humanity would also be facing a biological singularity that would be just as powerful!"

Alex sat on the edge of the easy chair, catercorner to Jennifer on the edge of the couch with a laminated hardcover library book balanced precariously on his knee. The teenager grabbed and slashed at the air as he spoke if he were pulling his ideas from the ether and shaping them with his long hands before committing them to his fascinated audience.

"Mutation is, like, humanity's defense mechanism against being absorbed by its own technology. If anyone can stand up to the machine, it's us. But what do mundanes use to try to control us? Technology! It's like they want to go extinct! And the more they try to control us, the more technology spins out of their control--"

He was interrupted by a pointed cough from the hallway. Alex turned and glared at Aidan for disrupting his flow.

[Aidan Fox]

Aidan ignored the armchair philosopher and jerked a thumb toward Julian. "Hey, guys, this is Julian. He'll be staying here for a while."

That was the usual euphemism for just about anything around the House. A while could be the next few days, the rest of the summer, or the rest of the foreseeable future. The kids all understood - their situations and personal histories were as diverse as their mutations. They all had the tact to avoid prying into painful memories.

Well, except maybe Alex.

"Julian, this is Aimee, Jen, and Alex," Aidan said. "I'll let you get acquainted. Oh, want anything from the kitchen?"

"Uh, a couple Dos Equis?" Alex said.

Aidan rolled his eyes. "Dream on."

[Julian Davitt]

The house smelled of people. Julian had been in old, abandoned houses, and those old places held a stale odour that sometimes reminded him of memories. This house had no such staleness about it though, it was lived in, and the house itself seemed to be alive in a sense that even Julian himself couldn’t even conceptualize. The sound of voices directed his attention down into another room.

A boy was speaking enthusiastically about something Julian couldn’t understand. A girl with purple skin and black hair was looking up curiously from her seat on the floor, where she was surrounded by small cards of various colours, and another girl whose attention seemed to be mostly on the boy.

Aidan introduced him, and Julian fought the urge to change, mostly out of the knowledge that it would be difficult to get out of the jeans once the change was complete. The boy - Alex - seemed to dismiss him completely. The two girls were more of a mystery. Julian sniffed the room, and detected slight hints of perfume and soap.

“Yes,” Julian said, looking a bit more animated at the prospect of food.

[Jennifer Cho]

"Hi," Jennifer waved at Julian and Aidan. "You'll like it here," she added, noticing the new guy sniffing the air.

Pushing up from the couch she looked at Alex, and then Aidan. "I'll get some snacks." She smiled, brushing past Julian toward the kitchen. "Cokes for everyone?"

[Aidan Fox]

Aidan stepped aside to let Jennifer through. "You can go ahead and grab those. I'll be working on my bike if you need me."

It didn't need the work, but then the kids didn't need an adult listening in. Aidan had found that the best thing for making mutant teens feel accepted was other mutant teens. He headed out through the kitchen door.

[Aimee Connors]

"Uh, yeah. Sounds good." Aimee shuffled the paint chips into a haphazard pile and scooted over so Julian could enter the room without stepping on her. She peered up at him, her black hair falling into her bright yellow eyes, but she looked down before their eyes could meet.

[Alex Kaine]

Alex looked around. Jen was playing hostess, Aimee was acting shy, and Aidan was bowing out to do his grease monkey thing, so it looked like it was up to him to be friendly. He set his book on the coffee table and crossed toward Julian with a hand extended.

"Hey, Julian, welcome to the freakshow. Come on, make yourself at home."

[Julian Davitt]

Once more the hairs on the back of neck rose, but Julian forced himself to remain still. Maybe it’s like sniffing, he thought to himself. Alex’s extended hand drew closer. It remained there for a moment, and Alex’s expression was turning to slight confusion. Julian pulled his hand out and, imitating the other, extended his hand as well. Alex took it and shook, further solidifying Julian’s assumption the gesture was like a greeting, though falling short of an exploratory smell.

“Ah, okay,” he said, unsure of himself in this situation.

[Alex Kaine]

Alex watched, bemused, as Julian aped the handshake as if he'd never seen one before. Hell, he looked like he'd never seen a living room before. "Sheltered" probably didn't begin to cover this one.

With a lopsided smile, Alex gestured toward the couch. "Come on, take a seat. Nobody here bites. Well, that I know of, anyway."

[Aimee Connors]

Aimee watched the exchange between Julian and Alex silently. Faced with creating conversation with a stranger, she was more than happy to let Alex take the lead. But the new guy seemed unsure of himself, perhaps even more uncomfortable around new people than she was.

And he hadn't stared at her. Well, any more than he was staring at everything.

She mentally grabbed a hold of some of her street kid swagger and sat up straighter, her back against one of the armchairs facing the sofa. "No biters here," she said, summoning a smile.

[Julian Davitt]

Julian’s face remained mostly impassive through Alex’s bemusement, though a flash of a memory had run through his head after the fact.

“No biters here,” the purple-hued girl - Aimee - said with a smile. The turn of phrase was slightly lost on the newest resident of Redencion, though the meaning wasn’t too difficult to grasp. Julian smiled (in the same canine fashion he’d done in the backyard), and made his way to the sofa where he sat, looking at everything in the room with curiosity, still mostly quiet.

[Jennifer Cho]

"I got some chips and sodas," Jen announced, an unopened bag of nacho cheese Doritos under her arm and four Cokes clutched between her hands. She sat down on the other end of the couch from Julian and tried not to dump the sodas on the coffee table. One fell over anyway, rolling off and onto the floor beside Aimee. "Shit! I mean, oops."

Jennifer tossed Alex the bag of chips, and handed Julian a sweaty can of Coke. "So, what're you in here for?" At his blank expression she amended, "Your mutation. I'm a mimic," she pointed her thumb at Alex, "He's sparky, and Aimee's purple. So, what's yours?"

She cracked open her soda, and then added in a perfect replication of Aidan's voice, "You'll be staying here a while, might as well own up now!"

[Julian Davitt]

Julian was still confused by the word ‘mutation’, and only understood what the girl was talking about when she’d described Aimee as being purple. Mutation was what made him different. Aidan called it a gift. His eyes regarded Aimee for a moment and turned back to Jennifer, taking the proffered can of Coke and setting it down on the table.

“I, uh... I change,” he said. What was it the Rangers had called him again? “I turn into a wolf.”

He opened the can, and sniffed it lightly as he brought it up to take a sip. Another memory, though this one was happier and more lucid than most of his others. A man offered him a plastic bottle, with Dr Pepper printed on the wrapping.