Snack Break (Open)

(I'm assuming that my character's alright.... if it's not, let me know.)

Jake shut the fridge and sat down at the table. He took a hearty bite of his sandwich. Why bother catching your food when you can just walk to the fridge, grab whatever you want, and eat it there? No effort required. He took a gulp of soda. Another wonderful human thing.
He was taking a break from working on one of the cars in the garage. He probably spent more time there than the danger room.
Jake took another bite. With a mouth full of food and a sandwich in one hand, he pulled over a napkin and took a pen from his pocket. He started writing down what else he needed to do.

Layla had been in the backyard exploring and had hunted a mouse, but when she morphed back into a girl she didn't like the taste of rodent in her mouth. She decided she wanted a real snack to cover up the taste. The fact that she would eat prey as a cat, and only normal human food any other time was sort of a love-hate situation.

As she made her way towards the kitchen, Layla could smell another cat-like scent, one she wasn't familiar with yet. Walking into the kitchen she saw that there was a tall person, who very much resembled a tiger, eating a sandwich. "Hello," she said in a friendly voice.

Christopher walked casually into the kitchen, wearing his custom unitard under a pair of loose grey pajama pants. The unitard was about the only piece of clothing that Christopher rarely ever took off. Xavier had given it to him, and given a long, confusing explanation about how it was able to copy Christopher's DNA, and become an extension of his body. What this basically meant was that when Christopher transformed, the unitard melted into his animal forms, effectively disappearing, but would reappear when he transformed to a human, so he wasn't left naked after every transition. This didn't mean it was an outfit he wanted to walk around in everyday, as it resembled a woman's one-piece bathing suit, and left him feeling somewhat exposed. As a result, he often wore a pair of dark pajama pants with it, covering his lower half, but being easy to strip off if he needed to morph.

As it was now, he was spending the day lounging around the institute in his human form, and was feeling a bit thirsty. While he didn't enjoy much of the prepared and processed food that humans consumed, he found that many of their desserts, snacks, and drinks were addictive and delicious. Right now he was after a can of Coke, and hopefully a bag of potato chips.

As he entered the kitchen he saw another young man, who looked to be fairly close to Christopher's age. He sat at the table eating a sandwich, while scribbling something on a napkin. "Afternoon," Christopher said politely, giving a simple nod of a greeting. He moved to the fridge, and poked his head inside to find the drink he wanted. After a few moments he slammed the fridge closed, a little irritated, and holding a bottle of water. "Who keeps drinking all the Coke!?" he asked to no one in specific. It annoyed him sometimes, that the things he liked in this kitchen were the quickest to be consumed. He let out a sigh of disappointment, and grabbed an apple from the table. He didn't mind the human grown fruits either, but still preferred hunting and killing his own meat.

Another man had entered the kitchen, greeted the tiger, and became a little angry when he realized the Coke was gone. The tiny hairs on Layla's arms and the short fur on her ears and tail stood on end at the sound of the slamming fridge door. Her ears flicked and she winced slightly, feeling unsure whether she should greet him or not.

She hadn't had any Coke since she got here, so she simply kept silent for the moment and walked over to a cabinet in which she found some gummy fruit snacks. Opening the small individual package, she picked the watermelon flavored gummy and popped it into her mouth, letting the melon flavor blend with the taste of fresh mouse. Layla liked sucking on fruit gummies so the taste lasted longer.

(Right now, Jake's human. Sorry for not specifying: For future reference you can assume if I don't say what he is, he's normal.)

Jake raised the hand with the pen in it, indicating he took the last one.
"Sorry, Dude." He said with a mouth full of sandwich. "Gotta claim them fast before they're gone." Jake advised. He went back to writing, "Survival of the fittest and whatnot." He joked, not realizing the irony of the joke towards the people in the room.

"It's alright. I shouldn't be drinking that fake syrupy shit anyway," the 19 year old said with an obvious sigh, "The hummingbird loves the sugar in it... but that's about it... and the wolf can't stand soda. Messes with the nasals too much for its liking," he rambled, referring to two of the animal forms he could take on. it was actually a bit peculiar, even to Christopher, how his mind worked after taking on a new animal form. While he was transformed he could feel the instincts and thought patterns of that animal, and it reverberated like a loud hum in his head, blocking out everything save for his human thought and speech. While in human form, each of those animal "minds" seemed to shrink into a smaller piece of his brain. At any given time he could listen and hear each animal's thoughts and feelings on what he was doing, but none so loudly as a wolf. After spending so long in that form, is was as if the wolf mind, its instincts and feelings, had grown to be almost as powerful as his human side. many decisions he made had to take this wolf mind into consideration, while the rest simply provided a commentary on his actions, with little to no pull or sway. Some days he wondered what it would be like to be rid of all the animal minds hidden inside his own, but he worried that the silence would be too much to bare.

After his few moments of inner reflection, Christopher realized how rude he was being to the two in the room. He had hardly noticed the girl, until she was visibly startled by him slamming the fridge door, and aside from complaining about the missing coke, he had hardly spoken to the other boy either. "Hey, I don't think we've met before. I'm Christopher Takacs." he said, awkwardly offering his hand for a handshake. He didn't really like or get the odd greeting, but it was the polite thing to do when meeting someone, so he did it. "Professor X says I'm a shapeshifter... I can take on the form of any animal I ever touched. I've been here for almost a year now. How bout you guys?"

As she let the gummies melt very slowly in her mouth, Layla watched as the 2nd guy to enter the room offered his hand in greeting to the other. Then he mentioned he was a shapeshifter. "Nice to meet you Christopher, I'm Layla Cambers," she introduced herself to both the young men. "I just arrived here, and haven't met many people yet. I guess you could say I'm a shapeshifter too, but just cats." She smiled and pointed to her cat ears and waved her tail back and forth.

Jake put down his pen and swallowed the bite of food. He shook Christopher's hand with his right.
"I'm Jake." He leaned back some. "I've been here a while. You probably haven't seen me because I'm usually in the garage." He thought for a moment. "Or my room. Or just away." He shrugged. Then he smiled.
"Heh, a room full of shapeshifters? What are the odds?"

I'm a shapeshifter too, but just cats. the girl said, introducing herself next. She pointed to a pair of ears and a tail of a cat, quite similar to Cale's wolfen features, but apparently this girl could transform where Cale could not. "Nothing wrong with cats... I've met a few in my day who were quite tasty actually," Christopher joked, letting out a deep chuckle.

"I'm Jake. I've been here a while. You probably haven't seen me because I'm usually in the garage...Or my room. Or just away." the other boy said introducing himself, "Heh, a room full of shapeshifters? What are the odds?" he added, signifying that obviously he was a shape shifter as well.

"Well judging by the fact we're all here now.. I'm gonna say the odds aren't that bad," Christopher laughed, pulling up a chair beside Jake as he took another bite of his apple. "Didn't even know we had a garage though. Cars are dumb, but ever since I came back to "civilization", " he began, making airquotes as he said the last word, " I thought it'd be cool to learn how to ride a motorcycle. They seem like fun."

Christopher was silent for a moment, finishing his apple in one last large bite, and tossing the core across the room into the garbage. "Three points!" he joked, raising his hands in the air in a fake show of victory. "So what you working on there? Is it your hit list? I'm not on it am I? " he teased. Christopher was being uncharacteristically talkative with the two in the kitchen. it wasn't that he was distant, or mean, or didn't like people, its just he often didn't go out of his way to socialize because most people found him brash and a little off-putting. Some of his animal behavior tended to make people uncomfortable. he didn't know if it was because they were shapeshifters and something about them was a bit more "wild" and called to his animal side, but he found himself liking these two people almost instantly, and for only the second time since coming to the institute, wanted to make friends.

(I guess I'll post then....)

Jake grinned. "Not yet, seeing as I don't really know you." He laughed.
"Motorcycles are very fun." Jake agreed. "I haven't been able to ride one since I was eleven, though." He took a bite out of his sub. After he swallowed he moved on. "I'm normally tinkering with something, I'm in the middle of upgrading one of the cars down there. Soon it'll have a red-line of 8000 rpm, 650 horsepower, and a compression ratio of 12:1." He took another bite, obviously forgetting that no one else knew what he was talking about.