New place, New face (Open)

[evelyn]

Arbella.
When the SPECTER agents had informed her she would be moved to a new town, Eve did not exactly picture this. The area was wet and humid- Nothing like her parched and dry Arizona. The scenery was breathtaking! Beautiful trees and flowers everywhere, surrounding the humongous buildings that shadowed much of the area. This was all new to the recently-changed animorph. Especially what she was looking at now over the balcony- The ocean in the distance. Such large bodies of water were new to Evelyn, and the presence of one so near had the usually calm brunette excited. She longed to swim through it. As a human, with a new morph, either way she was rearing to go. She had been wandering the house for about a half hour, glimpsing through closed doors though politely keeping a distance. She had no clue what to do in this place! It seemed almost deserted, which meant either everyone was gone... or they were all 'in morph' somewhere. Or 'in morph' and gone? This whole business had Evyy confused. It was a pleasant confusion though, and she loved the fact she could be in on the secret of SPECTER and its...employees. Glancing around with a timid and nervous smile, the girl started into her gila morph. Might as well see what it could sense in this place....

The first thing to change was her skin. It's pallid shade turned to intricate splotches of orange and black that ran up and down her arms. Her body was forced onto all fours as her arms and legs shrunk. She was shaking as her eyes shifted and focused on the snout that was forming where her nose had been. The chubby tail sprouted from her lizard body with a sharp crrk of moving bones, too quick for her to watch, though that was fine... or she would have made herself sick. The shrinking sensation she had accustomed with the Gila came on slower than it had her first time; She was about three feet and decreasing about as fast as molasses runs down a bottle. Suddenly something shifted inside her and she shrank fully down as Eva had expected, becoming a bit woozy from her quickly growing environment. She was a full Gila now, her dress and other clothing articles laying around the black and orange lizard. As long as she did not have to demorph when anyone returned she was fine. If she could get to a bathroom and there were others there by then, she would also be fine. But if she were to demorph now.... Evelyn would be completely butt-naked. SPECTER had mentioned nothing of a 'morphing suit'. It didn't matter though; She could easily make it to the open bathroom door. Pushing the clothing into the restroom with her blunt snout, the Gila-girl smiled as much as a lizard could. She found herself very clever... or amusing at the least. With a flick of the Gila's dark purple tongue, Eve set off across the floor. Anything she wouldn't have seen from her human height, she would surely see on this level... A fact she realized when a piece of popcorn the size of her eye was snuffed out from beneath the couch.

[Rox]

Rox jingled her keys in the lock absentmindedly as she looked over the mail in her other hand. A couple credit card offers, some lame magazines, a bill. Nothing interesting. She opened the door and headed over to drop the stuff off on the coffee table in front of the TV.

"Ahh!" Rox saw something move out of the corner of her eye. Out of reflex, she threw the mail in it's direction. Only too late did she realize that it might actually be one of her roommates.

"If that's you, Johnny, I swear you deserved whatever you just got." Rox wasn't sure she had even hit whatever it was because she had moved to a position where it wasn't in her direct line of sight. But now she was curious and moved closer to see just what the situation was.

[evelyn]

She heard the footsteps but her eyes had not spotted the girl coming in. Nor did she spy the mail that was thrown on top of her until it was too late. Wiggling out from beneath a magazine colored as brightly orange as her spots, Evelyn tilted her head up toward the person who had just come...home.

<< I'm not...er... Johnny >> The thought-speech came instantly in reply. The lizard practically leaped twenty feet in the air when she heard her own echo- She could talk. With her mind. This was just plain weird... not that Eve couldn't take it. Turning her head to read the splayed-out magazine, the Gila monster appeared to chuckle. "Toys R Us" didn't sound like the kind of reading material to be delivered to Animorphs; But who was she to know. Eve climbed across the other magazine, scanning its cover with cold reptilian eyes. <<What, no National Geographic...?>> Her voice was shakily teasing, but even in morph it sounded nervous. Hard to lose that really.

[Rox]

Rox raised her eyebrow when she heard the unfamiliar voice and saw that it was coming from what she considered to be an ugly lizard. She may not know who's morph it was, but at least it was a morph. She wasn't sure what she would do if they had a lizard infestation in the apartment.

"So... who exactly are you?" Rox asked, ignoring the magazine question. It was obvious that this feminine-voiced lizard was a person in morph. And that implied that SPECTER had sent them a new member. The only problem was that nobody had bothered to tell Rox that someone new was arriving.

Or if they did tell here, she was tuning them out at that moment. A very real possibility.

"Oh, and just so you know, I wasn't scared when I saw you. I was just startled is all." Rox didn't need her reputation ruined just because she had screamed when she saw a lizard on the floor.

[evelyn]

<< I'm Evelyn. >> She muttered, providing no further explanation than that. The other girl could as if she was really that curious. Weren't the others notified a new one was to join their ranks? She had no clue, and Eve decided not to ask for fear of snappish reaction. Crawling beneath the couch once more, the Gila form gave a hiss as an ant crawled past in a straight line, followed by three of its brethren. Sh squished them with clawed toes and kicked their strange alien-like carcasses aside before snuffling out from beneath the couch once more and turning her scaly head in Rox's direction.

<< I know you weren't... 'scared'. Th....This tongue seems to sense pretty much.... everything. >>
She said this as if amazed; The senses of her tongue /were/ pretty amazing. She saw what could be depicted as what a snake mapped out on its heat-sensing tongue, though distorted into different shades. It picked up different smells and forms, a pretty interesting thing in Evelyn's opinion. << Is morphing always so weird? >> This question was more to herself than to the other girl, but she uttered it anyway. She hadn't expected the senses, just the body and eyesight from what she knew of the sausage-shaped lizards. It really was weird.

[Rox]

Now that Rox was reassured that this new animorph, Evelyn, didn't think she was a jumpy girl afraid of lizards, Rox could focus on more important things. Like why Evelyn went under the couch. Rox got down on her hands and knees to see what the lizard-girl was up to under there.

"Yeah, morphing is usually pretty weird," Rox said in response to Evelyn's question. "You should try being a bug sometime. Now THAT is a weird experience." Rox shuddered slightly as she remembered being a pillbug. Not an experience she wanted to repeat any time soon.

"So, why are you a lizard? Did you drop something under there?" Rox couldn't see anything under the couch worth retrieving so she doubted that was the reason.

[evelyn]

<< I'm no lizard. I'm a Gila monster.>> Her response was snappish, unusual for the flighty girl. She seemed to freeze, as if frightened of her own response, but her lizard body waddled out from the couches depths to stand beside Rox's lowered head. << No, I didn't drop anything. I wanted to... morph again. I...err... sort of like it. >> She really had no other explanation.... Or at least not one that would make sense. After a moment of thinking, Evelyn frowned, a peculiar image on the mouth of a reptile.

<< So you know who I am; What's your name? >> She hadn't asked before, and the girl hadn't told her. Blinking, Eve tacked another question onto the end of her sentence. << Where are all the others that ....live... here? >> There were more, the majority of the rooms looked occupied when she had peeked into them before.

[Rox]

"Lizard. Gila monster. Whatever," Rox muttered under her breath. She couldn't tell the difference, didn't know if there was a difference, and didn't care if there was a difference. They were the same thing in her mind.

But she did find it interesting that Evelyn actually liked morphing. To Rox morphing was more like a chore. She would take out the garbage even though she didn't particularly like to, and morphing was the same way.

"You can call me Rox," she said in response to Evelyn's questions. Rox was sitting on her heels now that the lizard had crawled out further. "And I have no clue where the others are. Work, the mall, in their rooms? I just got back to the apartment so your guess is as good as mine. You'll meet them eventually though." Rox could have called one of their cellphones and found out where they were, but Rox found it to be... bothersome, to call her roommates for non-emergencies.

Then Rox saw a pile of clothes on the floor out of the corner of her eye. She let out a chuckle. "I take it you aren't wearing a morphing suit?" For some reason Rox found that thought amusing. A typical rookie move. Although admittedly Rox still occasionally morphed without a suit on. Sometimes it just couldn't be helped.

[evelyn]

<<A morphing suit. I suppose that makes sense; can't r-really go around morphing and unmorphing naked....>> The lizard glanced back at her clothes embarrassedly and let out what seemed to be a sigh. Crawling toward the pile of clothes, Evelyn got her nose under them and nudged the garments toward the nearest open door. << I'll just......demorph then? >> It was more of a question muttered to herself than to Rox, but she 'spoke' it anyways.

She scooted behind the door with the clothes and glanced around. Demorph. Right. She had done this once before.... but how? What had the SPECTER people said? 'Picture yourself back in human form?' Thinking of her scrawny human self, the change started.

The first thing that happened was she grew. Was this always the first? She was about five feet long when it stopped and the second change began. Her lizard legs and arms turned into human ones- Long spindly limbs that she couldn't keep her now-massive lizard body up with. The next was her head- She felt it meld out of the Gila head, and watched her nose appear right between her eyes. Next was her body- The lizard torso slowly melted into her human one. The last to go seemed to be the tail- It basically just disappeared back into her body. Tugging on the clothes, Evelyn smiled, feeling pretty good about herself.

"I... I think I s-survived that. Kind of disgusting watching parts of the gila change though." She shuddered and wrung her hands. Something caught her attention though- They were still patterned black and orange! She nearly screamed had it not have disappeared a moment later. This business was very... unpredictable.

[Rox]

"Yeah, it's pretty much always disgusting. You just have to get used to it." While Evelyn was demorphing, Rox had been flipping through TV channels. She didn't want to have to watch the girl become human, especially if she wasn't wearing a morphing suit. Nobody wanted to see something like that.

But now that Evelyn was human again, Rox muted the TV and went to go see what the new roommate looked like. Presumably she wouldn't be nearly as scaly as when Rox first met her.

"Ah, so you are a girl," Rox joked. In Rox's opinion she looked pretty average. Maybe a little skinny and maybe on the prettier side, but still fairly average. "So, is that your only morph? 'Cause I hate to break it to you, but I doubt just a lizard morph is going to help you fight the bad guys. Like, literally fight the bad guys. Of course you should always hope that you never have to fight anyone, but SPECTER hired us for a reason."

Rox wasn't sure why she was bringing up such a serious subject with the new girl so soon, but it seemed like she should. If this Evelyn girl was going to shy away from trouble when it arrived, Rox wanted to find out now.

[evelyn]

"It is my only morph... And it could do quite a bit of damage if it... bit you." she said, defensive toward the first critter she had acquired. Listening intently to Rox talking about bad guys and SPECTER, she frowned. Was this girl trying to scare her? She knew what she was in for when she said yes to the agents; She knew what that 'yes' had entitled. True, she probably wasn't quite ready for fighting with only her Gila morph, but a least she had something in her arsenal.

"I'll go 'hunting' for something else soon." Walking back to the balcony and staring out around the new town, Evelyn spotted several places she could probably acquire morphs from. Turning her head toward the beach in the distance, Eve grinned. "Maybe I'll go wrestle a saltwater croc or something." She was joking. ....Sort of. She glanced the other direction, toward the tops of incredibly tall trees. "Or I could just go traipse through the forest to touch a bear. That would be some n-nice firepower, and probably a nice story."

[Johnny]

Johnny turned his iPod off as he got to the door of the highrise apartment where he lived with the other PHANTOM-Animorphs. He didn't do it to be polite to anyone. He just didn't want the battery to totally die out. He pulled out his set a keys (most of which he had no clue where he'd gotten them or what they were for) and picked the one that unlocked the door to the apartment. Then, after locking and unlocking the door, Johnny realized it had been unlocked form the start and walked in.

So somebody was home. That worked for him. Maybe they could take out the trash instead of him, despite it being his turn and all. He kicked the door shut behind him and yelled through the apartment, "HONEEEEY! I'M HOOOOME! Wait! I forgot. I'M NOT MAAA-RRRRIED!" He chuckled to himself slightly as he walked into the living room to see what was on the TV.

He noticed the pile of papers on the floor, looking very suspicious since mail normally appeared in the mailbox or on a coffee table. He'd never heard of it spontaneously appearing on the floor before. It didn't matter though. He bent over and picked through it, seeing if anything interested him. Sports Illustrated, but that was about it. He picked the magazine up and left the rest of the pile on the floor. He walked over and sat down on the couch, observing the muted television and mainly eavesdropping on the two female voices not too far away.

[Rox]

"Fair enough," Rox conceded to Evelyn. Then she heard the door open with a guy's voice soon following. "Ugh, Johnny is home. Be prepared to be annoyed beyond belief." Rox still wasn't sure what it was, but for some reason she and Johnny were like mortal enemies. Although it probably didn't help that Rox once gave him a nasty shark bite...

Once Johnny sat down on the couch and it became obvious that he wasn't going to say hello, Rox walked up behind him and tussled his hair roughly. "What's the matter twerp? You too good to say hello to our newest animorph? Evelyn, this... couch potato, is what some people call a Johnny."

[evelyn]

"HONEEEEY! I'M HOOOOME! Wait! I forgot. I'M NOT MAAA-RRRRIED!"

Eva heard the yell go out through the apartment and tipped her head. Hmm. She wasn't exactly.... expecting that. "Annoyed b-beyond relief. Right..." murmured Evelyn, eyebrows furrowed, following Rox over to the couch. She raised a hand meekly and waved to the blond guy whose hair Rox was ruffling. "Er... h...hello Johnny. I'm Evelyn." she laughed slightly at Rox's teasing of the boy, calling him couch potato and twerp. Nice to know people were tight in this place. Her hand dropped and she just stood, nervously smiling.

/I wonder what morphs he has..../ Evelyn thought, face blank. Come to think of it... Hm. /I wonder what Rox has too. I didn't ask..../ She thought she had... ah well, she'd ask later perhaps. Morphs. You could be pretty much anything with such a power, right? She would be sure to acquire something new later. Maybe something with feathers...? Eva had always wanted to fly; Now she actually could.

[Johnny]

The voices came into the room and Johnny smiled despite his now-messed up hair. "Gee, Rox. I'm touched. I had no idea you felt that way about me." He placed a hand over his heart and sniffed, like he was fighting back tears. He kept the face for a few more seconds before a grin broke through and he waved Rox's hand away.

Twisting around on the couch, he said to Evelyn, "Hi Evelyn. I would've greated you, but I assumed that nobody of importance was here and that Rox was just talking to herself. And also," Johnny stood up and gave a grand bow to Evelyn, "don't take me as a representative of my race of fellow couch-potatos. I'm sorry to say I'm much better looker and smarter than the rest." He shoke his head softly like it was a grave matter.

"But that's enough about me, what's up with you? Got any cool morphs yet?" That was always the fun part about GHOST. Morphing and other people morphing. Besides, newbies were normally lots of fun.