A rough day and a few chance meetings (Private Flashback)

Stein had been sitting on the sidewalk for the third day in a row. He had found some rough looking clothes in a Good Will store. His shapeshifting powers helped because he looked drastically different than what he normally did. He had long grey, curly hair. Dark brown eyes sunken into their sockets. A long grey and black peppered beard. He sat with a dirty and beat up piece of cardboard on his lap and an empty fast food cup next to him. The cardboard had scraggy writing on it which read "Homeless, please help". It was a nice bright day. No clouds in the sky and the streets were bustling with life. Most people looked at Stein and walked away in a hurry while others actually dropped a few coins into his cup. Suddenly two men walked up to him, both in suits. Stein could feel his gut drop. He recognized one of them from the lab he had been in while he was experimented on.

The man he recognized smiled, "Well, well Project Yōkai. We finally found you. You would have been better off not looking like our janitor." Stein said nothing and felt cornered. But he was not going to be going back to that Lab. He stood up, nodded and after his skin transformed back into what he looked like regularly. He transformed his right hand to become harder than a rock. He struck the man who was accompanying the man who recognized him with enough force to knock him out, and Stein ran as fast as he could. As he came up to an alleyway, Stein hopped back and forth on both walls to get high enough to get onto the fire exit stairway. He then took them up to the roof and ran from roof top to roof top until he was sure that he was far enough from his single pursuing target. Panting Stein climbed down and sat in the alley he had arrived in. He was going to rest here and he hoped that his past would stay away from him for the rest of the day. Especially now since he had to leave the money he had gathered from the streets behind to get away.