Perhaps it's an idea that would have worked if Tom were merely that one form, instead of wended to the entire forest itself. He walks his way slowly towards them, face turned towards them, but he takes in their presence through more than his dark-socketed eyes and the ear-like knots at the side of his head. He feels them in the grass below their feet, senses their vibrations in every fluttering leaf on the wind.

He leaves this body to collapse, and so it does, stopping dead and then dropping with a clatter and wet thud into a bundle of boughs and half-rotted leaves. He travels through the roots under the earth, appearing again as another doppelganger wrenches itself free from the tree trunk nearest Kurt and Gary. The beacon travels to his new body.

"My my, what do I have here?" A vine whips out to try and catch Gary's ankles. "An X-Man and his friend? What a treat."