He'd be lying to himself if he couldn't admit the creepers running through his skin.. muscle.. metal.. Whatever. Things were weird, but he wasn't going to trip up about them; he couldn't dwell on them either, because, as he took a moment to just sit in the apartment by himself, he knew what was happening to his body when he'd volunteered to be Hazmat's replacement. Pain wasn't something he could remember too well, but he damn well remembered what it felt like to have every cell in his body start separating. That light he saw? From the Tesseract? It was a blessing, a moment of freedom and while he wanted to fight it, wanted to stay back and see that his friends were safe and that this Arcade bugger was taken out... Well, he was doing his best not to think about that. Funny how the last thing he now felt was an excruciating pain, and yet, it was the most beautiful feeling in the world.
He didn't believe the SHIELD folks at first, but he wasn't going to start flipping out and attacking them. Play nice, let them think you're okay with everything and then they'd send you on your way. Which is exactly what they did. Flashy new home to himself, some money in the bank, and now he knew his friends were here? Maybe things weren't so bad after all. Hell, they weren't bad at all. Even if this was fake, even if this was hell or heaven, even if this was the goddamn Matrix, this was life and although he couldn't suck in air to expand his lungs and have that little rush of oxygenated high, boy did it feel good to be alive.
The apartment was kind of lame as far as his taste went, but he wasn't really ready to get fully settled. It's not like he had anything other than his suit with him which SHIELD took the time to clean while he was down to a hospital gown for that physical. Unless they had adamantium or anti-metal tools, Mettle felt pretty comfortable that they couldn't know everything about his biology, true thought or not. The first thing he did once he found his way around was hop online and find the people that the agents told him would be around. While he still held reserves, seeing Lightspeed and Reptil was going to help settle his anxieties about being in this "realm" or whatever the technical term for it. If people like Finesse and X-23 seemed to be moving on with their lives too, well, he had nothing to worry about, right?
Heading out from his room, Mettle opted to take the stairs instead of the elevator. He was on the 17th floor, his friends on the 19th. It would take a hundred hours to get an elevator. As he headed up, that's when he saw the rainbow streak down a few flights as he peered over the railing. "Hey girl," he offered, his hollowed voice booming from the acoustics of the stairwell. "Beat you there, slow poke!" If he could smile, he would have, but his facial expression was utterly void of everything human, but he knew she'd handle his humor well enough as he started bounding up the steps several at a time to try and beat her out the door and her place. Big or not, she was fast as hell. "Damn, looks like I owe you a hand with those pizzas."