"I like this form." Lilith murmured to herself, forming a few, thin arms and extending them in a 360-degree circle around her. Eyes sprouted every so often through the arms, allowing her to observe her new creation.

It was a combination that had come about as a result of a sudden epiphany while she was doing what she did best: lazing around on her phone. The end result was a nightmarish mixture between a serpent and a skeleton, resulting in what was essentially a walking, snake-like mass of bones filled with teeth and sharp edges. It felt weird not to have any actual flesh, but other than that, she was perfectly fine transforming into undead creatures.

It had been three days since their meeting, and the only human contact she'd been in during that time had been through a short call from the lean man, John, rebuking her for acting so uncivilized while also thanking her for making the metahuman so productive, then ending on a short note informing her that, by the end of the week, she would be called to begin training.

Lilith highly suspected that their idea of 'training' revolved more around them learning as much they could about her powers, but she was fine with that. As long as they helped her through some of the issues she'd been having problems with, she had little issue allowing them to study her. After all, knowing something did not mean having a counter to it.

She knew it might be foolish of her to think like that, but honestly, she was fairly sure that, if she wanted, she could easily just transform into a several kilometers tall titan made entirely of muscle and hardened flesh, capable of punching mountains off of the face of the Earth.

She'd just love to see a counter to that. Besides, she doubted it'd resort to that. The U.S government wanted her to remain with them, and they probably weren't dumb enough to fuck that up.

If all else failed, she'd just flee to China or Russia. It'd be annoying to have to learn a new language, but at least she was fairly sure they'd accept her. After all, she was confident in her ability to be of use, and they'd be fools to deny her.

Sighing, she tore herself away from her own thought, returning to her human form. Creaking her neck, she walked over to the sofa, dropping down onto it.

Staring up at the perfectly blank and white ceiling, Lilith silently wondered what she should do now. Bringing her arm before her eyes, she willed it to transform.

Her flesh distorted, splitting and growing until ten snakes formed, all attached to her body through her shoulder. It was still an extremely weird feeling to have to look through more eyes than two, but she'd grown accustomed to it.

This was what had been bothering her the most. She knew she could make some kind of poison, but every time she tried to will herself to do so, she'd failed. Frowning, she theorized about what she could be doing wrong. For the most part, shapeshifting was a mostly instinctive process, at least for her, with bits and pieces of logic and biological knowledge thrown in. Theoretically, she should be capable of producing glans that could make poison, no?

Humming, she frowned deeply, feeling like the answer was just within arms reach. After wracking her brain... Scratch that, actually. She'd made herself basically empty on the inside, with no internal organs, so... She wracked whatever allowed her to think for around an hour, she finally had an idea.

One of the snakes opened its mouth, sharp fangs springing out. Then, it moved like lightning, sinking said fangs deep into Lilith's neck.

Focusing, she created some blood directly in the fangs, before injecting it into herself through them. The blood flowed in, ready to cause havoc inside her body.

"This could work..." She murmured, a smile growing on her face. She'd already confirmed that she was able to move her own body parts independently of her 'main' body, so, she figured, she really didn't need any venom when her own blood was easily hundreds of times more dangerous.

Just as she was about to begin celebrating, she heard the distinctive sounds of clicks going off. Turning around, she stared at the metallic doors as they slowly opened.

Deciding to mess a bit with whoever had finally deigned themselves to come to visit her, she didn't immediately absorb the snakes back, instead leaving them where they were. After all, she was really starting to enjoy creeping people out.

When the doors finally opened, two men entered. The muscular general stood slightly behind a glasses-wearing guy that looked a bit too... normal... to be in this place.

The newcomer blinked, staring at Lilith's transformed hand. The general smirked before coughing slightly, "Good afternoon, Ms. Lilith. Would you please retract those?" He asked, lazily pointing at the snakes with his eyes alone. She smirked back, allowing the snakes to crawl and intertwine back together into a proper human arm.

"Thank you. Now, this gentleman here will be the one in charge of you for the foreseeable future and has just arrived from... far away. I apologize on behalf of the staff for making you wait so much, but there was no other choice. Now, both of you, follow me." He ordered, turning on his heel and walking off.

Lilith glanced at the glasses-man, who looked just about ready to cry for some reason before lazily falling into step behind the large general, not even trying to disguise her gaze as she practically leered at him.

"Anyways... Would you introduce yourself, please? It would save me an awful lot of trouble." The general asked after a short few moments of silence. The other man gulped before doing as asked.

"Y-yeah... Uh, my name is Rick. Doctor Rick, if you will. I specialize in the biology of all kinds of things, and before coming here, I used to work on--"

He was quickly and rudely interrupted by the general. "Now, now. Doctor Rick, need I remind you that that information is classified?" He pointed out quickly, his voice jovial, but his eyes spoke of another, darker story.

Rick gulped, looking away. "R-right. Yeah. Uh, I did... Stuff. Anyways, I was ordered to come and try and learn about your 'power'..." He said. The general sighed, running a hand down his face.

"Doctor... You're here to 'instruct' her. Remember?" He said, his voice sounding so resigned that Lilith couldn't help but chuckle.

"What? Oh, yeah, that too, but they told me to focus on--"

"Just shut up, will you? We're almost at your assigned lab, and when we get there, you can fuck up and anger our mutant friend here all you want when I'm a nice, safe distance away, alright?" The general finally snapped. Rick's mouth closed, looking quite embarrassed.

"... Well, aren't you two the best of friends. I don't know if I should feel honored or offended that you think me so dangerous, but whatever. I'm Lilith, shapeshifter extraordinaire, because apparently that's the only thing that matters about me nowadays. I hope we can work together." Lilith finally spoke after a minute or so of silence. Rick smiled hesitantly in response, the poor man looking so out of his depth it wasn't even funny.

"Y-yeah... Me too?" He asked. Lilith rolled her eyes inwardly before turning to the general. "So, what happened to the rest of the gang? They got their own little watchdogs assigned to them?"

The general blinked in confusion for a few seconds before realization came over him. He huffed in amusement before responding. "Somewhat. Psion, the Japanese kid, is too young to really induct into the military like we hope to do with you, so the people on top are still trying to decide what to do. If you ask me, he should just be allowed to go back to his parents, but unfortunately, my rank isn't high enough to really influence that kind of thing." He looked a bit wistful as he spoke, staring straight ahead and yet his eyes looked a bit unfocused for some reason.

Lilith guessed it might have been caused by his desire for a higher rank, but she wasn't really sure.

"Anyways, Fireman, that's the guy with the flaming hair, in case you didn't get it," He smirked when Lilith scowled at him, "I don't really know what happened to him since I'm scheduled to return to duty in a week. Then, I'll either never see any of you again. Sure would be nice." He chuckled good-naturedly. Lilith let out a huff as she shook her head. Fist, he berates the other guy for 'angering her' and then goes off to insult her.

Finally, after a few more minutes of companionable silence, they arrived. The 'lab' was... impressive. It had several machines that looked so high-tech that Lilith barely understood what their purpose was. There was a gym area, or at least what she assumed the area full of training equipment to be, as well as several closed doors leading to God knows where.

After they entered the place, the general waved his goodbyes wordlessly before happily skedaddling out of there, leaving the shapeshifter and her 'trainer' behind.

Rick shuffled nervously for a bit before cautiously going over to inspect the equipment in place. After a few minutes, Lilith finally decided to start the conversation.

"So... You do know what we're supposed to do, right?" She asked. To her disappointment, Rick just turned to her and chuckled nervously, rubbing the back of his head.

"Wait... Please tell me you've at least been here before. You know, to test the equipment?" She practically begged. Rick just looked away.

Lilith let out a deep, depressed sigh, suddenly feeling very regretful at not having just immediately broken her way out of here and run off to fuck-all-land.