"Ah, of course--what do you know?"

"I can, um, do a thing, and I went hiking in the woods where Serafin lives, and he ran into me, and we--talked--and I asked if he was the same as me and if he knew what we were and he said that there was someone who knew a lot of people like us and he could take me there. And I took him up on it."

"What can you do?"

"Um, blood--my blood--I can control it--and I heal." By way of demonstration she mists about a cup of blood out of her arm, lets the resulting bruise fade to nothing, and lets the resulting blood undulate in a solid blob.

"Gross," says the blonde boy, sounding kind of impressed.

Serafin smiles at Lacey.

"So who's Shaw?"

"Sebastian Shaw is a former Nazi concentration camp doctor who is attempting to bring about nuclear war in the mistaken belief that mutants and only mutants will survive it."

"What."

"You didn't mention what he was doing or why! That's impressively stupid."

"We didn't know when we last spoke to you. Erik and I were trying to hunt Shaw down in Russia when he attacked the others here, but Emma Frost was there and I was able to get his plans from her."

"Exciting. Are you sure I can't eat him?"

"I think he would give you a very bad case of indigestion. Sebastian Shaw is an energy manipulator, and that includes kinetic energy."

"Eh. I bet he'd come off worse than me."

"If you managed to get that far," the brunet young man in the glasses says.

Shrug.

"What's your mutation, anyway?" he asks. "I assume it has something to do with your stated ability to, uh, eat someone."

"I suppose you could call me a shapeshifter."

"Really?" asked the blonde girl with interest.

"Yes. I'd demonstrate but I only just got these clothes."

Her skin--ripples--and then it's blue, and her hair is red and much shorter. It ripples again, and she's a perfect duplicate of Lacey. "You can't change shape without damaging your clothes?"

"I wouldn't want to chance it. Most of the other shapes I can be are bigger than this. Well -"

He turns his eyes green-gold again, and turns his fingernails to claws and his skin to blood-red scales and his teeth to fangs; and then the claws are shorter and the scales are midnight blue; and then he returns to human form and lets his eyes fade back to hazel.

"But I don't want to do too much of that in case I accidentally grow to ten feet tall."

"Groovy," she says.

"I bet I could figure out a textile that would stretch enough," Hank muses.

"For ten feet, maybe. Not for twenty, or thirty, or dragon."