"To whom it may concern," the note read. "Sam Johnson of the X-men has filed an official complaint regarding the Metabots working with the NYPD. Alongside him, it is noted, several other X-men have expressed similar concerns." The formal complaint went on, detailing names and dates of events concerning Metabot malfunctions and X-men or civilian involvement. She had done her research.

There had been incidents with several xmen as well as with civilians, to numerous to list. One event had happened outside the Sanctuary, but it had been smoothed over. She wouldn't have known of it if she hadn't heard a green skinned mutant complaining about the robots, and cornered him, pressing him with questions. The look on his face had been seething flames of hatred and concern like he had been made... but he'd merely been present, and defended mutants at the sanctuary when the robots assaulted the halfway house. It had not been a calculated attack by them, and the robots had been given no reason to enter the area, according to him. He said he'd merely kicked one and sent it tumbling.

The robots were all gone, so data of the event was unable to be found. Apparently they didn't send data back to a center via wireless, and merely communicated with radio? Or some robots had been interfered with by a mutant present who cancelled communications out... she couldn't find video feed of the event however it went down. She had let him go with a warning, telling the dumb kid to be more careful. All this information, she had compacted down into a reasonable length and detailed in her note of complaint.

Amelia had signed the note so it would not be anonymous, and sent it to appropriate parties so it would be heard. This, she had done early in the day. Now, she worked checking meters and assigning parking tickets. It was rookie work, and far too slow. That was, until chaos struck.

---

Chaos is such an overrated word. It sounds like it should be this huge thing, like fire and brimstone, dogs and cats, living together, yet simple disorder can be chaos too. One does not need a bomb to off itself in order to claim chaos. One does not need malfunctioning traffic lights, unleashed zoo animals, or hacked media in Times Square that suddenly portrays hardcore pornography rather than Coca Cola or the next big concert in the area. A little chaos can be as simple as removing one tiny thing from a square mile of Central Park for a brief time. In this case, gravity.

A mutant's power chose an inopportune time to activate. The police were called. Amelia was sent to respond, as people floated away.

Such a little thing, gravity. It's something you hardly think of in the day to day grind. Yet without it... things suddenly get a whole lot more real.

Time was all relative in the eyes of the young, impressionable fifteen year-old mutant. Even though it had only been a few short months since she had been to Central Park, it felt like a lifetime. All her time spent with Ragnarok meant that she didn’t need to rely on petty change from strangers by playing crowd-pleasing garbage.

So, walking around the concrete paths felt like going back to her old stomping grounds. She turned her nose up at the current buskers filling the park and walked straight forwards. She simply wished that the shortcut through the park wasn’t so alluring. She would have just flown, but it was getting harder to go out without being spotted by people who had heard of her misdeeds, and things were only made worse when she flew.

Valkyrie had just been expecting the walk to be annoying. She hadn’t expected it to be chaotic.

The click-clack of her heels on the pavement was abruptly interrupted, and Astrid found herself floating up and up into the air.

The young teen’s heart started to beat twice as fast as before. A panicked look covered her face, and she glanced around frantically, trying to figure out what was going on. It was somewhat of a relief to realize that everyone else was floating, but also… WHY THE **** WAS EVERYONE FLOATING?

The jewelry she had been wearing floated right off of her body and moved straight up into the air, and her shoes floated off of her feet. She was completely out of control of what happened to her body. She could move her arms, but differently than before. It was too fast, not enough resistance. Flapping her wings felt strange and foreign. She couldn’t get back down to the ground.

She furrowed her brow and tried to keep herself from screaming. She didn’t want to be terrified, but she was. She was so terrified.

It sounded like there were sirens coming in the distance, and for once in her life, she was excited to hear them. She actually hoped they would hurry up.

In the park, things were out of control.

A dog leash had saved a blonde woman's life. As her schnauzer, Spot, hiked up his leg to mark a tree, gravity had ceased to be. His resulting shock had been messy, but the leash had tangled with a low-hanging tree branch, and that, combined with the fact the leash had been firmly wrapped around her hand and wrist, had been a lifesaver. The dog's legs were wheeling in the air like a cartoon character's, moving nowhere, despite the effort put into the attempt. Gravity was letting her drift up and away from the ground, but the leash kept her and her dog safely in place ... others had not been so lucky.

The brown-haired man with the beer belly fought valiantly against floating off into space. His mutation was of some use. Ever see a jetpack? Ever imagine a mutant blowing air from his nostrils in order to emulate one? Yeah. It wasn't very effective, but he was giving it all he had.

Others were in similar dire straits. They weren't 20 feet in the air, or higher, like the man with the nostrils, but it was a close thing. One pair had formed a human chain. The man was the end of it, feet dangling, hopelessly pointed towards the moon. He had the woman by an ankle, and she, her arms firmly wrapped around the fountain. It sprayed water into her face, but that was of middling concern. More concerning was the wonder of how they were going to get down, as well as the idle thought, as her back end grew ever closer to the sun, that she wished she had not chosen to wear a skirt that day.

---

Gravitational anomaly. That was what they had told her, on the radio. Calls had come in about it. They hadn't specified a size. People were floating away. Lots of people. And there wasn't much she figured she could do about it, but she had been the first to reply to the radio message. The nearest in the area. One other squad car was coming. When she'd responded, she'd packed up what she was doing, slapped her lights on, and wailed on off towards Central Park.

Mutant Related Crimes seemed like it should have been the one responding to this call. Them, or the X-men. Not a new cop with less than a year of experience under her belt. She would do her best. There was probably a call for backup in her near future.

The image of a car floating off into the clouds was one she wanted to avoid, so Amelia parked a ways away from where the gravitational anomaly could be seen. She did not want to write THAT incident report. The second officer arrived shortly after her. Shortly after, but he had parked closer, so when she walked towards the scene of the gravitational disturbance, she caught sight of him as he parked by the park, and promptly lost control of his situation.

He pawed his seat belt open, and unceremoniously attempted to dump himself out the driver side door of the squad car as it started floating away from the ground. But gravity rendered that course of action fruitless. Amelia was enough out of the zone of influence that she hadn't started drifting. Her feet were firmly on the ground. So before he could float off, she created two blue hand constructs and hauled him back to safety. The two of them stared at the situation as his squad car prepared to enter orbit. His lip quivered.

"I liked that mug." He frowned.

She stared at him. The man was of average height, with a mop of light brown hair. Handsome, in a clean-shaven average sort of way. His uniform was clean and well-cared-for. He had a metallic right hand. The entire arm may have in fact been metal. He wasn't, though, which was a shame. How were they going to keep from flying away, if they couldn't stay close to the ground?

---

"Watch out!!!" A redheaded woman shouted at the girl with wings. The redhead was lanky and tall, with a violent spray of freckles around her nose. Her green eyes narrowed as she threw out the lasso of light energy in an attempt to wrap it around one of the winged girl's limbs. It was important to this woman that nobody die that day. Her other hand had snagged something on the ground, and was keeping her tethered. The fact she could toss the magical lariat at all in zero gravity put her in the same class of hero as Wonder Woman. Less Amazonian, and the lariat didn't force people to tell the truth, sure, but she was doing something to help people. And just like Wonder Woman, she didn't actually own a car.

---

"Okay, Officer Hobbes." Amelia said slowly. "We're moving..." Her brow was creased with the intensity of her focus. It was a boon for them that her psychic constructs didn't really obey physics. They could pull them down to earth, regardless of the effects of gravity on the pair of them. The downside was, it took all of her focus to do it, all of her strength, and she had to fight against the floating all the while. And move them. She wasn't using hands. Since she could only control two constructs, she had made them look like two giant car boots around their feet. Or like concrete shoes, ala mobster cliches. It took an effort to haul them forward in hops, and jerk them towards the ground every few steps. Her breathing came in huffs and puffs with the strain of it. But they had gotten 100 yards into the park already. Going was slow.

Hobbes was on the radio. "People are drifting. It looks like several of them were lucky enough to figure out ways to keep grounded, but-- hold on one minute." He stopped, then pulled his arm back like he was about to throw a punch. Amelia stared at him, then suddenly felt reality tear at her mind. The officer's right shoulder erupted as something tore through it in an explosion of shirt-shredding force. The guy's mutation, his metal arm, had some form of propulsion, it seemed. It launched him forwards so he could snag a man who was drifting. He grabbed the guy with his left hand, then altered his course with his arm's jet, or thruster, or crazy propeller (what the hell) again so he could correct it back towards something the man could hold on to. And all the while, he tore her focus on the construct WITH HIM from where her mind had said it should be, to where it was. The entire effect was incredibly off-putting, and it galled her. For a guy who had just lost a squad car, and for all intents and purposes ought to have been acting a bit humbler, the way he was operating was confident enough to suit a king. Amelia had no idea what to make of that. Instead, she merely muttered to herself about how he could have told her he had a freaking rocket punch hidden up his literal sleeve. But he didn't hear that.

They were within sight of the valkyrie, the redhead, and the other New Yorkers fighting the lack of gravity in the park... but within sight was about half a football field away, rather than a few feet. A slight boon in confidence, sure, but not the instant upswell of hope one might have hoped for in the situation.

She was still floating.

Astrid had started to panic. Really panic. She had thought that she was scared before, but the longer things went on, the less she could feel the ends of her appendages. Her heartbeat in her ears was all she could hear, and her vision was starting to blur.

Perhaps it was because she had been hanging upside down in the air for so long.

She stayed there for what felt like an eternity before her trance was broken. A bright lasso wrapped itself around her ankle and tugged. The girl had no idea what it was exactly, but she was eternally grateful for it. It stopped her ascent and began to pull her back to the earth where she belonged.

Normally, Astrid would have treated the redhead with as much disrespect as she could possibly muster, but in that moment, she could have kissed her. All she could think about was the fact that that strange woman had just stopped her from literally floating off of the earth. She hadn’t ever thought that something like that would be a possibility, but there it was. She was grateful to some cardboard cutout of a woman for keeping her from floating off of the planet.

The red-head seemed to have some sort of personal mission to save everyone that she possibly could. Anyone in her general vicinity soon found themselves tethered to the freckled woman by bright light constructs. People that normally would have shuddered at the thought of accepting help from a mutant found themselves rambling long strings of thank you’s to the woman who had just save their lives.

Astrid had calmed down a little after her was stopped from floating away entirely, but she still wasn’t in a good state. Her hands were shaking, and her eyes were locked on the red-headed woman, terrified that she would lose her grip or focus and cause the lot of them to continue on their way into the atmosphere.

In the farthest reach of her peripheral vision, Astrid spotted two… things that appeared to be cops. Even they weren’t normal in that setting. Rather than walking, the two of them appeared to be hopping very slowly along the path using what looked to be some kind of constructs. Astrid was too jumbled in that moment to really consider what they might be, or the fact that if she got out of her predicament, they would likely place her under arrest.

The teen reached out a pale arm and stretched her fingers out toward the two cops. Her mind didn’t even consider the repercussions of her actions. All she could think about was the fact that there was someone there in charge, and they would be able to do something.

They would be able to do something, wouldn’t they?

It was horrifying. No. That wasn't the right word. It was mortifying. No. Disheartening? No. Epic? Nah. Too obvious. They expect words like that, and the second they start predicting what will happen next, you might as well walk out and leave them hanging, because they certainly wouldn't expect that. Exhilarating. That was the word. No... Too mainstream. Finally, she had it! Exquisite. There. That was a great describer for the end of the world.

Tina had not imagined it being quite like this. She had imagined storms raging in the skies, the dead rising, weapons turning against their masters, and plagues of insects that were spewed forth from innocent bystanders. Metal turning to slush, and people spontaneously igniting into blue-white funeral pyres. The seasons turning wrong, and food spoiling unpredictably. Cats and dogs, living together. Mass hysteria. Instead, her stomach had revolted against her and the ground had decided it wanted to issue a restraining order. That left Tina feeling like she needed a pepto, and maybe an aspirin for her headache, while also wondering what the hell she had done to make the ground want some distance?

It wasn't like she had known she was a mutant before the day had begun. And in point of fact, she did not realize it, even as she started sailing away. At the start of the day, Tina had been focused on her career as a writer. Pulp fiction. Amateur fantasy. And also, on the side... music. Ballads. Like some sort of modern day Bard. No, for Tina Merrilin, the situation was far from expected, and far from normal. It was the sort of situation she would want to dismiss, curse at and send off to "Go juggle something."

Somehow, it had come to her that she could control it slightly. Aimless drifting was lame. Bad writing. As was inexplicable rules that broke physics, like how something in zero G could somehow be expected to perform like something under the effects of a greater pull of gravity and start floating off from Earth, towards the moon... rather than, you know, floating in place, or moving if motion is applied. So, she had made the rules flimsy, because if reality had decided the world would end, then fine! She would just ignore reality, and impose her own will onto the scope of it. And that is where things got dangerously out of control.

The drifting in the sometimes Zero-G, sometimes not, world let some people float without worry, while others left the ground far below. Some people held on for dear life. Some small children enjoyed the weightless feeling, and told mommy how great everything was. And altogether, everything was just a bit funky. The strange thing was, Tina was starting to get a feel for what her Godlike powers suddenly could and couldn't do. Because at the ten minute mark, she had realized it was her that was doing it, and first and foremost in her realizations was the discovery that currently, she had no clue if she could turn it off. That was right about when the police arrived on the scene. Right when she was doing loop-de-loops, and racing donuts on the park lawn in midair. Those damn police. She didn't want to lose this feeling... even if she couldn't stop it. Because, as she quickly realized, she was going on a power trip. And little 20-something Tina, with the curly blonde hair and the button nose, enjoyed playing God. She sent a quick bubble of intense gravity their way, and prayed for pancakes.

And as Astrid stretched her hand out towards the two cops that hopefully could do something to aid them all in this predicament, Officer Amelia and Officer Hobbes suddenly felt a force slightly stronger than Earth's natural gravity, in a confined area the size of a house. Twice as strong, if we're being specific. Amelia had just grounded Hobbes and herself, after he'd rescued the people and zip-tied them to tree branches. And the fact that she had brought them down to Earth saved their lives. Instead of falling with a sickening, bone crunching, crush, they stayed on the grass... and felt the weight press down on them like diving too deep into the sea. They were alive. For now. But like a can at deep sea levels, it was probably only a matter of time before the extra pressure compacted them dead.

There was another person, Tina noted, as she tore her focus away from the dead-cops-walking. A person with whips that looked like they were made of light. HOW DARE SHE. How dare she protect people, when the resident God was working? As power kept inflating her head, Tina decided that she was a vengeful god! Not a friendly, caring, happy sunshine and friendly trees and miracles, God. Pillars of salt, dammit. And 30 days and 30 nights of rain. We are talking Old Testement. She would have to do something about the soulless ginger interfering with her non-existant, yet-suddenly-important, plans. And just like that, the Bad Guy of the day arrived. Her name was Tina. And she was a God.

"YOU!!!!" Tina shouted at the red-headed woman. She slammed her down suddenly, and jarringly. The woman landed on the grass with a thump and a groan of pain. Nothing was broken, but she would have nasty bruises. She must not have slammed her down HARD enough. Maybe it was time for round two? But first. "DO NOT. INTERFERE. IN THE WHIMS OF A GOD."

Anyone connected to the light whips the woman had thrown had likely gone down with her, or been released to tumble skywards as focus waned. But Tina's focus was solely on the hag saving people. Not the people themselves. So whatever happened to those tethered to the redhead was beyond her concern.

Slowly, creeping, the two officers pressed onwards against the excess gravity. It was hard-going, but they were law enforcement professionals, and something as small as gravity being or not being was not going to keep them from their jobs. Amelia's attention snapped to the blond as she started shouting. It seemed like, in addition to the gravity, her mutation had suddenly given her one hell of a set of pipes. Her voice carried loud enough for them to hear. ...Though really, that could just have been because she had drawn everyone's eyes and ears by making herself one giant target. In her periphery, Amelia saw women and men react to the pronouncement. A god? So was SHE doing this? Why was she doing this? The questions came out faster than when asked by a small child in the stage of development where they questioned Everything! Why hadn't she stopped? One black woman noted that There was just one God, and it certainly wasn't her. An elderly white man with a cane that he had hooked against a tree branch managed to cross his arms and agree with her. Somehow, even in Zero-Gs, or drifting towards the moon, humans could still find ways to act upset over little issues like claiming to be God. It was silly, really. When the world was ending, you really needed to hang on to something as a life raft in order to survive. For her, it had been her Godhood. Not Goddess-hood. That's stupid. But Godhood. And for them? Needless stupidity, Tina decided. She drew her hand back to strike at the red-head again with four times the gravitation force of the first blow-- a shout from somewhere nearby made her pause. Those damned cops. One had pulled out a Megaphone.

Why was Hobbes carrying a megaphone? It was no matter. He had one. And he had told the blonde woman to freeze. As Amelia had drawn her gun... fighting against powerful gravity to steady her aim. If they had to, they would do it.

"Let everyone down gently, then release your hold on your power." Officer Hobbes commanded earnestly. "We can resolve this peacefully. Your mutation just activated, and I know you're scared, but--"

"SCARED?" Tina boomed. "I. AM. A. GOD!"

The tethering force of the light whip disappeared in the same quick fashion that it had first appeared in. Astrid felt the tug on her ankle loosen and then stop altogether, freeing her body to float right up into the atmosphere.

The teen began to flail again, blocking out the noise of the mutant screaming about her ascent to godhood off in the distance. All she could really hear was the sound of her heartbeat, which was going at a speed that would not be sustainable for very long.

Her eyes fell on the redhead as she floated upwards. She was knocked out; useless. Her limp form travelled right up with the rest of the suckers that had been in the park without any form of defence.

Astrid stretched out her arms as she went higher in the sky, trying her best to catch the end of a tree branch on her ascent. She caught it with her fingertips and managed to bring herself closer toward it. Doing so managed to settle her pulse a little, but not much. She was still terrified, and it didn’t help to have to see so many other people floating hundreds of feet above the ground.

She used the tree branches to pull herself closer to the ground. It was difficult, but she was managing to do it. Somehow, after a few minutes, she had managed her way down the majority of the tree. Her hands were raw from the bark, but it was worth it. She wouldn’t be forced off the planet by some insane gravity mutant.

""DO NOT. INTERFERE. IN THE WHIMS OF A GOD."

Astrid heard the woman’s voice over all the other screaming in the surrounding area. Even through her fear, she managed to roll her eyes. The woman was not a god, she was just some blonde bimbo that needed to be taken out. Soon.

Astrid took a reinvigorated approach to her travelling. She needed to get down to the ground. If she could do that, then maybe she could do something else. She shifted her wings, hoping that the added weight on her back would help her out in some way.

By the time she’d made it down the tree, she’d figured out a way to use some of the longer crystals to dig into the ground and pull herself along the grass. It wasn’t super efficient, but she’d made her way to the blonde woman.

"I. AM. A. GOD!"

Okay, this ***** was going down. Astrid jumped the last few feet over toward the woman and latched onto her back. She wrapped her uncovered feet around the woman’s knees and plucked a crystal from her left wing.

Astrid shoved the crystal into the woman’s shoulder, very close to her neck. It wasn’t a shot intended to kill her, just maim for the moment. She would get more afterward.

Tina screamed in pain and began to thrash even more, causing the gravity to go even more haywire. Astrid could feel herself being thrown off, but she held on as tightly as she possibly could. Tina was going down.

'Tina was going down', someone might have thought. Not true. Wrong. An easy mistake, really. While she was injured, in great pain, and quite possibly might be dead or dying in the next several minutes, should the winged girl's aggressions go unchecked, she was not 'going down.' She was going up. The exact opposite direction from down.

When first she had started, Tina had maintained some control over herself and her own personal gravity (at the easy expense of meaningless others). The attack on her person had shaken whatever meager control she had maintained into splinters, and then dashed them against the rocks.

She was BLEEDING- she didn't much like that. Away. She had to get away. Up, down, left, right, away away away. Which direction she went was unimportant as long at the thing clinging to her stopped doing that, and she put some distance between them both. Of course, the thing that clung clung tightly, and rightly went with her when she went up and to the right, then leftwards, then okay, briefly down, but then back up to an ascent of thirty feet.

The police watched the wicked tango foxtrot of it all, uncertain if they should shoot, or let the heroic mutant girl with the wings do their job for them. Sometimes, situations like this one resolved themselves without police involvement, and though this was technically assault, maybe the greater good would be served by looking the other way. But still, they had to do something.

"I just realized something," the brown-haired man stared down the body of his gun at the frantically moving target. "If I shoot, will the bullet fly straight forward like usual, or will it veer off jankily into space, and maybe clip an airplane on its way there?"

Amelia grimaced as she aimed her own handgun. "Shut up, Hobbes." So far, their every interaction had failed to impress her. He'd caused a scene at a mall, and hadn't announced himself until long after she'd operated on the false idea that he was a mall shooter, and before that, before they'd ever met, he'd apparently had to gun down the woman's boyfriend. The one who had attacked him to start off the incident in the mall. And just then, he'd lost a squad car into the same place he worried his bullet would go -- space. He was a bit of a space cadet, himself, so it stood to reason he'd be obsessed. "Just don't shoot. You might hit the girl." She left the 'and kill another person' from the end of her statement unsaid.

"Got it." He said. "So what, get close and peel them apart? Slap mutant power cancelling cuffs on them both and sort them out?"

"Best plan I can think of," Amelia said dryly.

Tina bashed at the girl with one fist as they struggled across the sky. She was disoriented from blood loss as well as pain, and blind bashing was the best she could do.

They didn't need to fight the weightlessness. Amelia let go. Her constructs vanished as they floated up towards the dueling mutants. She'd given herself and Hobbes a flick in the right direction and hung her hopes on that old law of physics. An object in motion stays in motion. It held true. Swiftly, they approached the pair on a diagonal vector from below. 20 feet separated. 10... soon they'd clash. But not yet. T- minus 20 seconds, and counting. Enough time for a Valkyrie to put up an epic struggle without police getting in the way. If that was her desire.

Meanwhile, the redhead drifted limply away from the ground. Her rag doll form outlined itself against the sun.

Astrid was being thrown. Back, forth, up, down. Finally, they were going up again. Far up. The ground was starting to disappear.

The teen's stomach churned as she did her best to hang on for dear life. The woman was getting even more violent, and she knew that if she let go, then there wouldn't be much hope for her. She'd be a goner, just like everyone else. Floating away into the atmosphere. It was entirely up to her to make sure that didn't happen. Clearly, the police were as useless as she'd always assumed.

The crystal in the woman's shoulder seemed to be doing its job. It was lodged in there pretty darn good, and it was just about the only thing that Astrid could count on to hold onto. Her legs had been wrapped around the woman's waist, but she'd lost her grip pretty soon after the shaking started. After that, they hung limply below her, flopping around in the wind as the pair of them flew through the air.

Astrid was not one to get airsick. That had never been a thing for her before. That was, it had never been a thing for her with her kind of flying. The jerky, uneven thing that the woman was doing was a different story. She had to briefly turn her head to hurl. It was probably the most disgusting thing that she had ever seen, her lunch flying up in the air like that.

Thankfully, she didn't have to look at it for long. Tina brought her back to the present with the one-fisted punching she was attempting. It didn't hurt a ton, but it wasn't exactly pleasant, either. Astrid was just glad that the woman clearly didn't punch things often enough to be any good at it.

With her free hand, Astrid grabbed at the woman's face. She used her nails to claw at her rather than hit her. She knew that doing so would be useless. Besides, she needed something else to grip with. The woman's face worked rather well.

Since she had successfully distracted the woman enough to stop her from being able to do anything more with her powers than keep them afloat, Astrid was able to swing her legs back up and latch onto the woman again. She pulled the crystal that she'd been holding out of the woman's shoulder, brought it up into the air, and then brought it down again. The second time, it went into the woman's neck. She must've hit something important, she realized, because there was a large amount of blood coming from the wound.

The issue nobody had considered, the glaring issue, the white elephant in the room, kind of resolved itself. If Tina had been cuffed, her powers would have stopped. Anyone airborne would return to their original levels of gravity. What goes up must come down. And hard. But if she lost consciousness gradually, due to blood loss, or went into shock? A more gradual descent was occurring as everyone watched.

The first to be affected were Astrid and Tina. The duo dropped dutifully to within arms reach of the police. Amelia drifted up close enough to make a grab at the winged girl, while Hobbes flung himself towards the other side and the other woman with a quick jet of air from the shoulder of his metallic right arm. Then, they were the second to be affected. They started drifting down with Tina and Astrid. Everyone else who wasn't already in orbit shortly followed.

Ridley spoke to the groggy Tina, the traditional "you're under arrest and here are your rights" speech. He had her in his hands. He was applying pressure to her wounds. It wasn't clear if she could even hear him.

Ridley was trying to pull the woman away from the winged girl.

"Are you an X-man?" Amelia asked. There was a grimace on her face. If so, she was the worst x man Amelia had ever seen. She didn't wait for an answer, continuing on. "Either way. Im going to have to ask you to go down --" Vomit falling from the sky onto Tina's hair cut Amelia off. Again. What goes up, must, ahem, come down. Even lost lunch.

"Ewwww," Hobbes complained. Tina hadn't monopolized the sickness, it seemed.

Below came the sounds of ambulances. Someone had called 911.

The two women were floating back down to the safety of the earth. Astrid took an easy breath as she felt herself begin to sink. She would be safe soon. Well, relatively, anyway. She was still surrounded by cops. Overall, she had not enjoyed the experience. 10/10 would not recommend.

The crazy woman seemed to have fainted in Astrid's arms. Wonderful. She let go of her, not wanting to be covered in any more blood than she already was. She left the crystal in the woman's next, just for good measure. Maybe she could keep it as a souvenir or something.

The male detective grabbed the woman before she fell to the ground and began to apply pressure to her wounds. Astrid pouted a little. Why did the woman get to be saved? She wasn't worth it! 

Something else quickly drew her attention away, though. She was being grabbed. Astrid whipped around to face the female cop. As quickly as she possibly could, she attempted to shake off the grasp. She did not like to be touched, especially by dirty, useless cops.

"Ai am no!" She screeched in response to the question of her being a member of the X's. Those filthy do-gooders who tended to get in the way of things. How on earth could they think that she was one of them? She was chaotic! Powerful! She wasn't stupid and weak like they were. 

Astrid, thankfully, had enough sense to not announce that she was a member of an illegal chaos organization. Instead, she opened her mouth to argue being taken into the station. However, something stopped the woman before she could.

Falling vomit.

Her falling vomit.

It fell on the crazy woman and the male cop. Good, Astrid thought cruelly, they deserve it. 

Astrid snickered and plugged her nose with her free hand. That was disgusting. "Ai am not goeng wiv you. Yous are sméll," she informed the cops. That was probably as polite as she was going to get.

Sirens sounded closer to them. Astrid swore under her breath and tried once again to shake the grip on her arm. She did not want to still be around when they arrived. If they figured out who she was, then... well... she wouldn't be able to get away very easily. She was actually kind of amazed (and a little offended) that they hadn't recognized her yet.

The winged girl fought when she attempted to hold her, even though the holding was more to keep the group together than to detain. Safety in numbers applied to skydiving and this had been as close as she was likely ever to get. That should have been the first clue that the girl was not an X-man, but still, Amelia had asked.

The broken English had a Frenchy accent, though she almost missed it, what with how strident the screeching denial had been over her followup question. Amelia had meant the x-man question to be rhetorical, to leave no space for a reply, but the girl had felt very passionate about distancing herself from what amounted to super heroes in this day and age.

Not a helpful super hero, then. Was she a super villain? That thought had initially started out as a joke, in the back of her mind, but as the sick hit the fan, er, well, officer Hobbes and The woman, the girl's reaction had made her seriously consider it. She had been asking the girl to come with them to the police station, but the falling vomit had caused her to pause.

Amelia returned her focus to Frenchy. The girl had tried several times to shake free. Amelia had not released her grip, in spite of the attempts.

"Stop struggling," Amelia muttered through clenched teeth. "Please. We're nearly to the ground."

The ground was 5 feet from their 8 feet, 4 feet, 3. The crystal in Tina's neck had staunched some of the bleeding. The fact the girl had not removed it might ironically save the woman's life. If the blood loss didn't negate it before medical took a look at her. Ridley Hobbes had ripped his attention from his own sick-covered state back to the woman's, and resumed his harried first aid on Tina. He'd torn a piece of his sleeve off for a makeshift bandage on the woman's shoulder. He was covered in vomit and blood, but he was keeping his composure well enough despite it.

Their feet touched down on the ground, and Amelia prepared for the escape attempt the winged girl was likely to attempt now that they were on terra firma. Especially once she told the woman she was under arrest. Police have to do that, when they see attempted murder. Even if, in her own way, the winged girl was trying to help everyone out. Her own bratty ridiculous way. And now that she was looking at her, the face seemed somehow familiar. It clicked. She was on posters back at the precinct. Wanted posters. That settled it. Amelia focused on summoning a pair of spectral see through blue psychic constructs that were shaped like hands.

The hands moved forward in an attempt to try and hold onto the winged girl's sides as Amelia told her "You are under arrest."

At the same time as Amelia spoke to the girl, Hobbes called out. "Over here!" EMTs in the distance heard him, and saw him waving his arms. A couple started heading toward the group, with all their gear.

((OOC: this post was controlled with permission from Amelia's player.))

As soon as her feet touched the ground, Astrid knew that above all things, she had to get away. That notion was further cemented by the fact that the cop turned around and announced that Astrid was going to be under arrest.

Nope, that just wouldn't do. Astrid narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips. Her wings shifted without her looking at them, and she plucked a shorter crystal from one of the tops rows. Rather than just trying to struggle her way away from the female cop, Astrid simply raised the crystal and brought it down on the woman's arm. It wouldn't do any major damage, but it would definitely leave a scar.

While the woman was distracted, Astrid broke free of her grasp. She was finally free to do what she wanted. What did she want to do, exactly? Cause pain, of course!

She lifted the crystal that she'd just use away and threw it in the direction of Tina and Hobbes. She didn't particularly care which one of them it hit, if it hit either of them, that was. 

After that, she whipped around, shooting crystals off at anyone and everyone near her. She hit a few people as she passed, but stopped short when she saw the limp form of the redhead. There wasn't anything to indicate that she was still alive, but Astrid still stopped. Why did she stop? The teen grappled with her own guilt. She was a do good-er. Not someone worth saving. For some reason, though, Astrid just couldn't hurt her. 

Pain. Sudden piercing pain. The psychic constructs vanished as her focus shattered like a crystal struck at just the right point. Speaking of freaking crystals there was a crystal sticking through her arm!! Amelia let out a single guttural f-bomb, and bit off the rest of the torrent before it overflowed and she lost control. Blood gushed from the wound the way it does when you get stabbed in a vital area full of veins. It wasn't the fleshy part, dammit. It was the forearm. The bitch had stabbed her forearm. Where people BLEED. The rest of what was going on escaped her as her whole world sucked itself into a tiny circle of sensations.

Hobbes saw it happen. As the girl turned towards him and the unconscious woman, his eyes focused on the winged girl's face and recognition hit him. As usual, it came too late. The crystal flew at him and it was all he could do to bring his right arm up to shield his body. The crystal clattered against the metal arm and bounced off to land with a couple jumping thumps on the grass nearby.

The winged girl's name was Valkyrie. At least, that's what she went by. Her poster was up at the precinct. He wasn't sure what her real name was.

Valkyrie threw more crystals. She threw them at everyone nearby that she could manage. One hit an EMT in the shoulder, and the woman spun to land painfully on the ground. Another EMT in yellow scrubs sucked behind a tree and managed to evade a crystal. It jutted out of the bark on the other side of the tree, buried an inch. He tugged his man braid and cursed vehemently, then looked around the trunk and dove to land next to his partner EMT, the one who had been injured.

His partner had reddish gold hair, slightly curled and down to her shoulders. She had queenly features, and wore green scrubs. He tore the crystal out of the woman's shoulder, and placed his hands on the sides of her head. There was no flash of light that anyone could see, but the woman felt like she had been doused in cold water from a mountain stream. She let it a hiss of air. There was blood on her clothes and around the shoulder, but the wound was gone. He looked around him, taking note of the situation.

The EMT's name was Al. Al Meera. And he was furious. Not only had his partner, Elayne, been injured, but so had several people in the nearby periphery. One man had a crystal sticking out of the left side of his chest. He was still moving, on the ground, but breathing. Incredibly lucky that the crystal hadn't punctured a lung. But the woman next to him, who looked to have been his wife, was not so lucky. Damn damn damn. And the police were injured. He didn't have time for this. And the damned girl was still there, staring at a red headed woman lying on the ground. What. Did she now have remorse for just one person she had probably killed?

Al rushed to heal the man, ordering his partner to see to the police. A torrent of swears escaped him as he laid hands on the man. The man stiffened, as if frozen, and then relaxed. He'd be hungry soon. The healing took from the person it was used it almost as much as it took from the healer himself. Drew from their bodies own personal stores.

Al placed a hand on the woman. She was middle aged, like the man, with dark brown hair with traces of gray. She was probably someone's aunt. Was. There was nothing he could do for her. His delving had shown him that. He looked to the girl who had done it. He'd sworn an oath, but at that moment, he really wanted to break it so he could do harm.

Elayne was at Amelia's side. Amelia could see the name tag. It said Elayne. But aside from that, she couldn't do much. She was in so much pain. There are things one can do to prepare for pain, but it never really goes away. She had not adequately prepared for this. "See to the woman," Amelia said through gritted teeth. "She's worse off than me. Shoulder. Neck. She's been bleeding. This is just... a flesh wound."

The lady EMT went to do what she could for the injured woman. Her partner, Al, came to help her. He wanted to do something, anything, to get even with the winged girl for all the pain and chaos she had caused. But no one was going to thank him if he went over to bother her and got himself killed. Maybe he could get even by minimizing her effect. 'What do we say to the god of death?' He thought to himself. Al Meera slapped a hand down on the injured woman's face, hard. "Not. Today!" Her breath exploded from her, like she'd dove headfirst into a frigid mountain lake. Tina took a shuddering breath. Ridley was no longer by her side. Where was the man who had been helping her? She had felt a presence, felt someone putting pressure on her, before she had gone under, but-- one of the EMTs moved away from her to help the female cop.

The male cop stood behind the Valkyrie. His face was like stone. His voice, soft as cold steel is soft. She was staring at a woman. He was staring at her. What was she even doing? "You," officer Ridley Hobbes told the girl. "Are under arrest."

((OOC stab him hurt him knock him away, do whatever you please other than killing him, feel free to have the NPC try and punch you or try and aim a gun at you, knock it out if his hands, whatever. Enjoy yourself. Feel free to control Hobbes while Amelia is out of the fight getting healed. Nobody else is going to stop Astrid. He's the last cop in the area on his feet. He's not going to just let Astrid go. So you get to have Astrid be a badass and beat him down. Or run away in a flurry of feathers. Full permission given to control the situation so Astrid gets away. Have fun. I don't want to mess up your timeline but Hobbes wouldn't let her get away without a confrontation so this is that. ))

"Am no!" Astrid shouted at the cop. She was most certainly not going to be arrested. Nope, not going to happen. That was not going to fly. She sure would, but the situation wouldn't. 

There was a gun being pointed at her. Astrid narrowed her eyes and walked up to the cop. Did he really think that he, the only cop still doing anything, was going to convince her to go with him with just a gun? Fat chance of that happening.

She walked right up to the barrel of his gun, to the point where she was nearly touching it. Some small part of her was terrified that he would shoot and rip a hole through her abdomen, but she also knew that that was incredibly unlikely. 

The cop looked her in the eye, clearly terrified too. He repositioned his grasp on the trigger, licked his lips, and stood his ground. "You're under arrest," he repeated, far less certain than the first time.

Astrid scoffed and slapped the gun from his hand. It hit the pavement and shot off in the direction of the other cop and the woman. She didn't get a good look at where the bullet hit. 

The cop then looked at her, defenceless. He looked truly pathetic to Astrid. She thought about stabbing him, but it seemed too easy. It wouldn't be hard. Instead, she shook her head at him and took off into the trees. She was out. No more sticking around to call their bluff.

Astrid would not be arrested that day.

Ridley Hobbes seethed. This was stupid. He was stupid. All he'd thought when the winged girl had approached him was "oh no not again". He hadn't been terrified of her. She was a murderer, true, but that hadn't been why he'd hesitated in fear. Once before, he'd gotten into a situation where he had been forced to shoot someone, to end a life to protect others. It was entirely possible the dumb girl had triggered a flash of PTSD.

He should have shot her, should have blown a hole in her chest big enough to drive an ice cream truck through. But he had not. He had stared her in the eye, and done nothing. He'd let her knock his gun from his hand like a chump. Without the gun, he could have flown at her on a jet of air from his shoulder, delivered a brutal metal uppercut that would have sent her to the ground after a brief trip into the air. He could have grabbed her, blocked her stabbing crystals with a metal hand and overpowered her, stopped her in her tracks. He even had the mutant restraining cuffs. There were so many things he could have done. Coulda, shoulda, woulda. Instead, Hobbes had just froze.

The officer felt an icy chill run through him, and it wasn't the wind.

---

The EMT stepped away from the woman who had caused it all. He had healed her. He'd tugged his braid and cursed at the world for letting bratty winged girl's go around leaving scars, (and who did they think they were?), but he'd done it. The healing had drained him. He hadn't been able to fully heal the cop. She would have a scar on her arm from the crystal. At least she'd live. He'd gone around healing people after that. One woman had narrowly avoided being hit by a bullet as the cop's gun had been knocked aside. The bullet had embedded itself in the trunk of a tree. Thank the light.

---

The scar was small, a little diamond-shaped thug on her inner arm from where the crystal had stabbed into her. The skin of the diamond was the pink of freshly grown flesh, the diamond a white outline separating new skin from old. She called it a diamond. The EMT had called it a box scar. Amelia had felt that to sound too much like she had a train car on her arm. So, it was a diamond scar, left by a crystal. And that was that.

Amelia had kept the crystal. It could get a lot of use as a souvenir paper weight, but maybe it would help them track the girl down. They'd just have to find a way to make it useful.

---

The entire situation had resolved simply enough once further help had started to arrive. Police and ambulances had gathered up witnesses, offered aid, and helped cat women mutants out of trees.

The gravity manipulator had been arrested. She'd pulled through. Didn't feel very godly, now. They'd slapped power cancelling cuffs on her and shouldered her into the back of a squad car once they'd read her the Miranda rights again. She'd been unconscious. Never a bad idea to make certain they're read. Into the squad car, she went. Not Ridley's car. That had landed gently on the street again, in near-perfect shape... upside-down. He had loved that. Speaking of...

He'd let the girl get away and wouldn't say much about it. Amelia felt like there was something there, but... it was none of her business. Maybe he'd see someone about it, or get a talking to from Internal Affairs? She had no idea.

As far as things went, they'd resolved the gravity situation, and the criminal guilty of attempted murder and the assault of two police officers had gotten away. Her reputation had only grown. They would get that Valkyrie girl someday. Some day.

((End))