Welcome to Gaia! ::

A buzzer sounded and the door to the B Block cafeteria opened. With a weary sigh, Abigale pushed her chair away from her desk and stood, stretching. Bending backwards, she was rewarded with the satisfying sound of her back cracking in a number of places. Standing upright again, Abby's shoulders fell in a slight slouch as she shuffled through the door into the cafeteria space, her hands stuffed into her sweatshirt pockets. The door closed behind her with a solid thud and a click. The people here were very careful about not letting more than one mutant in a cell, monitoring the doors and only opening them when absolutely necessary. She'd tried not going to the cafeteria on her first day there, too frightened and too tired to want to move, and the result had been a visit by an orderly threatening to feed her intravenously if she didn't move her a**. Needless to say, she'd stepped out into the communal space and made a couple of 'friends.' She didn't dare think of them in any long-term fashion. She'd already noticed that one or two of their number had disappeared over her time there already, and they never appeared again. Nobody wanted to talk about that.

Abby stepped into line and picked up a tray, holding it out so that the food staff could ladle spaghetti and meatballs onto its surface. Next came the mixed vegetables, and Abby grabbed a piece of bread from the waiting basket on her way by. The food on her tray was joined by a carton of chocolate milk, a pair of chocolate chip cookies, and plastic eating utensils. It was like standard high school fare all over again, except she didn't have to pay for it, and it was actually better than typical high school food. This place was just full of pluses and minuses. Sitting down at her usual table, she waited to start eating until she was joined by Lena and Jared, her two closest 'friends.' Lena cried acid, which was really cool, if you thought about it. Her skin was tough enough to withstand it and everything, though clothing wasn't. As Abigale understood it, the authorities in this place were taking special care to keep Lena from crying. Anything from extra knick-knacks in her room to heavy sedatives. One time, Lena hadn't shown up for lunch - Abby feared the worst - but she showed up to dinner mumbling something about them working on a pair of goggles for her that would keep any accidental tears from falling. They had needed samples of her blood and skin to see if they could find exactly why her skin could withstand the acid. Abby's other eating buddy, Jared, shed his skin like a reptile. It was a nearly constant thing, with bits of him flaking off like snakeskin almost all the time. They had joked about it, saying that maybe his mutation was turning him into some kind of LizardMan, but when Jared had sat down at the table one day with one eye looking distinctly reptilian, the joke hadn't seemed quite so funny. At least Jared seemed pretty good-natured about everything. He was wondering when he'd be able to start flicking his tongue out to smell things, or if his tongue would turn blue. Abby wasn't sure that that's how it all worked, but she left him to his daydreams. At least someone enjoyed their mutation.

"Heya, Abs. How's it hangin'?" Jared, with his stupid spikey brown hair, one blue eye and one reptilian green eye, plopped down across from Abigale at the table, followed shortly be Lena. Lena was usually pretty quiet, focused on staying calm. Every now and then, she'd offer commentary or ask a question, but Jared usually did most of the talking at the table. Lena's hair was a light auburn color and reached most of the way down her back.
"Could be worse," Abby admitted, moving the meatballs around on her plate without much intention of eating. "I didn't sleep well last night, but that's nothing new. How about you?" Abby looked between her two companions. Lena was picking at her food too, while Jared stuff his face. Maybe shedding his skin took a lot of energy.

"I slept alright," Lena offered, giving Abby a small smile. "It was the first time since I got here that I didn't dream of the homes." Lena had been orphaned at the age of four, her parents the victim of a drunk driving incident, and she'd been shuffled from foster home to foster home all her life. Some had been alright, some had not. It was at her last not-good home that her powers had manifested. She had been thirteen. Her older foster brother had tormented her, and her foster parents didn't notice until Lena walked downstairs to dinner with burn holes in her clothes. They thought that their son had done that to her and had her given her up, presuming it was for her own safety. It marked the start of her mutation's manifestation. She continued to baffle foster families for the next few months until she was given up to the state, and whoever ran this prison-y place had taken her from there. She'd been in this place for a few months now. Jared had only been there about a month. His family had never had much money and had been more than happy to kick him out when he showed signs of being a "freak" by the age of thirteen. He'd been living off the streets for the past few years, so this place was actually worlds better than what he was used to. Compared to the lives of her 'friends,' Abigale had lived a mostly happy life, so she didn't like complaining to them. Abby was the oldest of the three at the age of eighteen. Jared was fifteen and Lena was fourteen.

"I slept like a baby" Jared said through a mouthful of spaghetti. "Seriously, this place might not be so bad. Minus the collars. Damn thing's itchy." To illustrate his point, he started fiddling with it, trying to rub at the skin underneath.
Lena slapped his hand away, whispering, "Don't touch it! Remember what the people said when they brought you in? They said not to mess with the collars or bad things would happen!"

Jared just shrugged, but he let go of the collar, his fingers still twitching. It took a lot of willpower for Abby not to reach up and fiddle with her own collar. Instead, she played with the moon-and-star pendant that still hung around her neck. When they saw how much she panicked without it, they'd generously let her keep it. She looked around at her fellow inmates, the food on her plate ignored. The ages of the other mutants around them ranged above and below them, with mutations as different and distinct as each of their faces. Whereas the cells, equipment and clothing were all dull gray, the cafeteria was a riot of color as some of the more vibrant mutations played out across people's skin. There was one woman whose skin was deep red in color. Abby didn't know if that was the extent of her mutation or not, but she looked awesome. There was another younger boy with patches of fur on his face and a monkey's tail. There was a girl who apparently had power over plants and another boy with power over fire. The more control over their power they had, the more freedom they seemed to be given, although considering this was the Cell Block for mutants with little-to-no control over their powers, there were only one or two mutants who were afforded some wiggle room. Abby wasn't one of them. She'd been told right off the bat that if her powers got out of hand, she'd be sedated through her collar. That hadn't exactly gone any way towards calming her, but the fear of feeling that pinprick of a needle on her neck effectively kept her in check.







((OOC:…))