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.

[Alex Kaine]

"No way... seriously?"

Alex dropped back into his seat with a look of ravenous interest.

"That's friggin' awesome! No, really--" He glanced over at the two girls and began gesturing again. "Think of everything that has to be involved with that. Changing your bone structure, rearranging your internal organs, pretty much restringing all your muscles and nerves and blood vessels... Stephanie Meyer can kiss your butt, right, Julian?"

He cracked open the bag of Doritos and set it on the table, shooting Julian a broad grin of appreciation.

[Aimee Connors]

Aimee shot Jen a glare at the other girl's flippant description of her, picking up the fallen soda and tapping it on the top before popping it open. And then of course Alex was fawning over the next greatest mutation to enter the House.

She studied Julian while his attention was on Alex. He didn't seem to know what to do with his hands, and had settled on holding his Coke with both of them, sniffing the carbonation before taking a sip. He looked out of place in the room, like it didn't fit him, or something.

"Hey," she said gently, "Are you okay? Don't mind Alex and Jen, they're overly enthusiastic sometimes." On a hunch she avoided looking directly into his eyes, settling for his chin instead.

[Julian Davitt]

Julian cocked his head to the side while the carbonated, syrupy mix settled in his stomach. He didn’t know who Stephanie Meyer was, or why she could kiss his butt. Neither did he understand nearly any of the other words the boy used, and when he did, the concepts they conveyed went over his head. He still thought about them though. And then Aimee spoke again.

He brought his eyes to her face that final time, noting her facial features and yellow eyes. Her voice sounded like she wanted to comfort him.

His eyes dropped to his can, where he could barely hear thousands of little bubbles popping tinnily within.

“They aren’t bothering me,” he said quietly, looking at the colored cards on the floor beside her leg. “My clothes itch and I can’t really smell anything.”

[Jennifer Cho]

"Turning into a wolf is pretty hard core," Jennifer said, shifting on the couch to sit with her back against the arm and her legs tucked up underneath her. She looked at Julian with new interest over the edge of her soda as she drank.

Noticing where he was looking she added, "Aimee wants to paint our room so she's looking for the perfect color."

"Yeah, and you don't care what it is, either." The other girl pushed her hair out of her eyes, yellow eyes flashing a bit. "So you'll just hafta live with whatever I pick."

"Ugh, as long as it isn't green. Makes me look sickly!" Jen good-naturedly threw a Dorito at her roomie, who batted it away. "Pick something vibrant."

[Aimee Connors]

"How about purple?" Aimee said dryly, holding up a bright violet paint sample as she delicately picked the Dorito from the rug. "You're getting nacho cheese everywhere!"

[Alex Kaine]

"How about blue?" Alex said, and he was speared by a pair of golden yellow eyes. He put up his hands in surrender. "Y'know, a darker blue."

He reached to snag a chip from the bag and leaned back into his easy chair with his attention back on Julian. Now that he thought of it, it wasn't too hard to imagine the kid as a wild animal shyly studying his surroundings.

"Is there anything you want to ask us, Julian?" he said. "We've all lived here a couple months, at least, so we pretty much know how things go around here."

[Julian Davitt]

The conversation turned to another topic, and Julian listened as they spoke. It was a lot different from the way the police man spoke. Even Aidan’s speech wasn’t so quick. Alex, he spoke more like the girls at times, his words spilling from his mouth like water down a fast stream, and then he’d speak more slowly. It was confusing and more than a little disconcerting. Julian knew they were speaking English, but he’d gone so long without saying a word - without the ability to even form words at all - that his speech was slow, and it seemed like they were speaking another language altogether.

They spoke phrases, sentences at a time, ideas and concepts conveyed by knowledge of each other and body language. Julian, when human, spoke a word at a time and knew no idioms or turns of phrase, nor what gestures really meant what. As a wolf, he could hear nuances in their speech, changes in their scents, which could tell him what he needed to know.

“Is there anything you want to ask us, Julian?” Alex asked. “We've all lived here a couple months, at least, so we pretty much know how things go around here.”

Julian’s attention turned from the back and forth between Jen and Aimee to Alex. There were lots of different things he wanted to know.

“Can I change?” he asked after a moment.

[Aimee Connors]

"Um, like... your clothes?" He had said they itched. Aimee looked up at Julian questioningly.

[Julian Davitt]

He fidgeted, and shook his head. “Ah, never mind.”

He remembered that he held a can of Coke in his hands. He took a drink from it, and sighed.

“I don’t know what to say,” he said finally. “I’m pretty sure they won’t let me be a wolf anymore.”

[Alex Kaine]

"Wait, you mean change into a wolf?"

Julian's eyes were as inscrutable as ever, but Alex knew instinctively he'd guessed right. "What do you mean they won't let you anymore? It's your mutation. As long as you're not hurting anybody, you can do what you want with it."

[Julian Davitt]

Julian cocked his head again, curious as to how he’d been misunderstood.

“I m... meant that before, but now I don’t mean change,” he said, looking down into the small mouth of the Coke can once more. His throat was starting to hurt from speaking so much. "I mean be a wolf. They want me to be like this from now on.”

He looked at his hands, and down at the faded lettering on his shirt. He took a mouthful of Coke and swallowed it. He felt self-conscious now, and slightly regretted speaking at all. He'd been a boy, who had become a wolf. Now it seemed like they wanted, or expected, him to be a boy who turned into a wolf.

[Jennifer Cho]

"Like Mowgli!" blurted Jen. "I think I understand what you're saying. Or... Tarzan, maybe."

She grabbed another chip and added, "So, you want to stay a wolf, then?"

[Julian Davitt]

Julian would have shrugged, if he remembered how. He did remember the Jungle Book from his childhood. He felt a sense of bemusement at how different nature actually was from that early idealized cartoon.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe. It was hard. I was hungry a lot. I think it’ll be hard to stay a wolf here.”

He’d almost said that he’d stay until he had to go, but he kept it in. Dominic had told him that people wouldn’t be too happy to hear that he didn’t belong with them; it would make them think he didn’t like them.

[Alex Kaine]

This was getting heavy, even by mutant standards - Mowgli? As in, raised by wolves? Could that even happen? Alex decided he couldn't count anything out at this point, and, really, that could even explain a lot of Julian's mannerisms. He took a deep breath to air out his thoughts.

"Well," he said hesitantly, "maybe it will. Hell, it's hard enough just being a mutant. We've all had trouble fitting in, one way or another." His eyes flickered over the girls to include them. "That's why we're here. There wasn't anywhere else we could go."

[Julian Davitt]

Julian looked at the three of them: Jennifer, Aimee, and Alex. They were all in something of the same situation, though the details were different. All of them were, in a sense, homeless. At the very least they had that in common.

“How many more people live here?” He asked, changing the subject, though unaware that it might seem as being evasive.

[Jennifer Cho]

"Well," said Jen, and she began ticking off names on her fingers. "There's Ronnie and Scott, and Jim, who's Alex's roommate, and then Jamie's the youngest here, so that's all the kids living here right now. You already met Aidan, and there's also Tess, who graduated, but she's back this summer, and Anna is like the house mom, and then there's her brother Jake."

She saw the exertion on Julian's face trying to keep up, and she gave a shrug of apology. "You don't need to remember all the names now. But, you know, they're all pretty cool in a crazy, dysfunctional sort of way. We're just one big, happy pack of misfits."

[Julian Davitt]

Julian smiled again, and drank some more Coke. He looked down at the cards by Aimee’s legs, and back around the room.

Turquoise, or so the small text at the bottom of a card read, flashed by his eyes and he saw a small stream, framed by mountains and tall pine trees; he could still smell the thick scent of sap in the air. Turquoise hadn’t been the color of the water though; it had been the color of the sky.

His stomach growled slightly, and Julian’s gaze lifted to the door into the kitchen.

[Aimee Connors]

"Dinner isn't for a few hours," supplied Aimee, tracking his gaze. "But if you don't like chips we can find something else to snack on." Snausages?

She pushed up to her feet, straightening her black yoga pants and curling her bare toes into the thick rug. "C'mon, you're going to have pick out what you want." Aimee beckoned the Julian to follow her, and heard Jennifer coming off the couch as well as they walked the short distance to the kitchen.

[Julian Davitt]

Julian got up and followed the girl into the kitchen, his eyes roving all over the room; the prospect of food was making him even hungrier. The fact that he wouldn’t have to scavenge it or hunt it down was even more appealing.

“When do you have dinner?” he asked.

[Jennifer Cho]

Jennifer made a beeline to the refrigerator. "Usually six, six-thirty," she said. "I think Anna's making a big taco salad. Oh, do you like salad? You might not. Let's see, there's some bologna, there's a bowl of leftover chili, ummm this looks like tuna salad, and oh! There's a couple chicken thighs."

She set an assortment of plastic-wrapped plates and bowls on the counter and disappeared back into the fridge.

[Julian Davitt]

His nose brought him to the chicken first. He tore open the plastic-wrap and, taking one in his hand, tore into it immediately. The first bite seemed to make him notice how hungry he actually was. He stopped a moment when he felt eyes on him. Both Aimee and Jennifer were looking at him strangely, he blinked, puzzled, and then his eyes lit up with understanding.

“Hunph,” he said, pushing the plate with the other leg on it towards them. He’d meant to say here, but it was hard to speak with his mouth full. At the very least, he’d kept his mouth mostly shut. He swallowed, and nodded at the leg.

“I’ve never had salad before,” he said, polishing off the meat from the bone.

[Aimee Connors]

"Oh, no, its okay," Aimee said. "You can have that one too." She nodded encouragingly, though the fervor with which he dispatched the chicken leg was a little surprising.

"Salad is good... helps... uh... helps the human body digest all that meat. You might... get a tummy ache if you're not used to... this body?" Aimee was floundering and she knew it. She looked to Jen for help, but the other girl just shrugged and held out a steak from the freezer, still in its plastic wrap.

"We can thaw this in the microwave if you're still hungry," Jennifer said, watching Julian with fascination that bordered on rudeness.

[Julian Davitt]

He kept a steady gaze on Aimee as she spoke and floundered in her words. He wasn’t used to his human body any more than a toddler was used to walking. Still, he took her words to mean that he’d get sick if he didn’t eat salad. It was funny, because as a wolf, he’d eat plants to make himself vomit if he was feeling sick. Maybe it was the same way? If his stomach started hurting, he could eat some salad, and puke out all the stuff that was making him feel bad.

“Maybe I will have some salad,” he said.

Jennifer pulled out a slab of meat that made his eyes widen. His eyes drifted up to her face, and back down to the meat. She was offering it to him, but as he finished off the second chicken leg, he began to feel wary. There’d been a couple of close calls back when he’d been wandering through towns. People generally didn’t waste food on him unless they were trying to capture him (while he was already captured, the reaction was still ingrained) or kill him. Farmers and ranchers of various kinds were the most hostile. He’d learned, like most wild animals, a certain shyness of having humans watching him eat.

“I, uh...” he paused and pulled the chicken bone from his mouth. He’d started gnawing on it, but human teeth weren’t made for getting to the marrow. That’s why humans had hands. “I am still kinda hungry.”

[Alex Kaine]

"I think you might want to actually cook that steak before you feed it to him," Alex suggested, leaning against the entrance to the hallway. "You might want some fruit, too. Here."

Alex walked over to the kitchen table, which had a wooden fruit bowl in the middle, and grabbed an apple. He rolled it across the counter island toward the pile of food Jennifer had already assembled.

"You're not used to this, are you?" he said. "Being human."

[Scott Green]

"Hey awesome you guys are - oh." Scott tried to catch the screen door before it slammed, but missed, and stood awkwardly in the kitchen. "Oh hey. Aloha, dude." He waved at the new guy, and shuffled a little further into the room.

"You're not Hawaiian," Jennifer rolled her eyes as she put something into the microwave that clonked. "Give the poser lingo a rest."

"What! I mean... Whatever." He looked at the new guy and said, "I'm Scott, and she's a bitch. Later dudes, gotta change for work." Scott jogged out of the kitchen, away from the weird energy, and upstairs.

[Julian Davitt]

Julian’s response was cut off due to the entrance of Scott. To the three other teens in the room, if he had hackles, Scott’s sudden appearance would have had them up. The chicken bone in his hand dropped to the floor. It took him a moment to settle down, and he bent over and picked up the chicken bone, and put it on the plate next to the other one. He’d forgotten Alex’s observation.

[Aimee Connors]

The silence following Scott's exit was growing stifiling, and Aimee shifted slightly, her small frame leaning against the counter. "Um, well, if we're waiting on the steak, maybe we should figure out where you're going to sleep."

She smiled hopefully, and then added, "Anna would have final say - oh you still have to meet Anna! She owns the house. But she's cool. Really nice."