It had been months. Months. Months of being cooped up in a cell, watched, and given strange tests. Some had been psychological. Some hadn't. This organization, S.U.P.E.R., had some really messed up kinks.

They'd kidnapped her. SUPER had taken her from her home, just when a tear in reality had opened up. Her self... her other self... was evil. She had been evil enough to take her and bring her here, and then leave her. She hadn't seen herself since. She probably looked terrible.

They had been careful. Incredibly careful. At first, they'd been wary to even give her clothes. Her powers could affect clothes. But they'd realized, after the second escape attempt, that lab techs simply couldn't go around naked. And neither could she. It was against some sort of Geneva convention code or something. Plus, she was clever enough to make even non-clothing into a weapon. A toilet paper hat eventually changed its mental identity to a hat, and a toilet paper scarf can strangle. A little feral, maybe, but she was furious about being imprisoned and experimented upon. Give her some credit. She hadn't attempted murder till way after Day One. Clothing was dangerous. She made absolutely certain that she was a danger to them. Even without clothing, she made certain that she was a threat. Eventually, they gave up on giving her new changes of clothing every few days, and letting her arms and legs go free. They swapped them out every now and then, but they figured out a better way to restrain her. They put Amelia in a straitjacket. That was when the fun began.

During the months of imprisonment, Amelia watched her captors. She plotted and she planned. It was important they were given false impressions. They needed to think one thing, so that when she flipped the table and changed everything, she had that precious moment of surprise. Amelia did not create psychic constructs without directing them in a special way. The woman made certain the lab techs beloved she had to move constructs with her hands. And while she fought and plotted, she practiced.

There had been an idea that Amelia had been hatching months prior. She'd discussed it with Serena. It was a coat that could survive bullets like it was made of body armor. A book had inspired the idea. It was a simple enough thought, and now that she was imprisoned, there was nothing to distract her from hashing out every little detail of the idea. The book had the main character working tirelessly over long periods of time. He laid the foundations of his clothing attachment again and again. He kept it up by constant maintenance. All the work put in to the article of clothing was crucial. Thinking of Magic reminded her of another book. The Wheel of Time. The female magic users in those books used "weaves" to lay magic onto the world. And so, Amelia used both books as inspirations and focused on learning to create threads of her will, and weave them together into long braided patterns, again. And again. It took her several days to figure out the trick to it, but with those days had come a problem.

Clothes are often changed. Lab technicians would come by every few days and take her dirty clothes, then give her new ones. That, of course, meant the delicate frameworks of her psychic weaves were USELESS! Because they took them, and replaced them with fresh shirts and pants. It was enough to make a grown woman wish her tyrannical, government-paid, Mengele-grade, bigot scientists were crueler, and just let her live in her filth. That was why she used the false impression to lead them into her trap. The straitjacket.

The nice thing about a straitjacket is that it covers you, and people aren't likely to take it off. It's a jacket. A painfully close fitting jacket. It is clothing. It is clothing one isn't likely to see taken away. They could swap out her dirty pants and t-shirt all they wanted, but her jacket? It stayed on her as long as she wasn't washing or going to the bathroom or changing. By the way, screw them for scheduled bathroom breaks. Holding it until they said so is just wrong.

Over the following months, she focused and she weaved. Her weaving project took hours and days and months. Over and over and over. Serena would have been proud. Hopefully Serena was going alright on the other side. There would be missing persons reports, and problems. But she couldn't dwell on those. Amelia worked.

The armor would work like Kevlar with one weave, and ceramic plates with another. Yet another inspiration from a book. One for ballistics, one for bashing and stabbing. She imprinted a little heat protection, ala ceramic plating, and willed the material to be more durable and long-lasting. It even had built-in stain protections. Once she'd turned her straitjacket into a weapon, she only had to wait for the right moment to strike. It came one day, when a lab tech wasn't fully attentive. They weren't using their A game. She was.

The attack was brutal, violent, and short. She had to act fast. Cameras would have caught it. Amelia could only hope SUPER wouldn't respond fast as they were likely to respond. The lab tech lived. They would be tasting shoe off the cloth bootie she had torn off their covered foot for a while, but they would live. One foot had gone up and the rest of them had gone down in a crash. As she stormed out of her cell and down the hall, Amelia let her powers slither through the straitjacket. Straps snapped at a touch from Amelia's will. The long sleeves trailed behind her as Amelia cut a path through the complex's hallways, mouth taut in a malicious grin. Hopefully, the inside wasn't too much of a maze. She used the Tech's ID card to get through any door she encountered.

Someone tried to stop her on the third door. She strung them up by their shoe laces and moved on. Lightweight woman. Easy. She was just mad enough to do it, too. The third responder dated no better. They got sent off course with an aikido move, and stomped out.

Ugh...Paperwork. Sinclaire found himself at a desk, filling out stack after stack of the needless, stupid, pointless, tedious nonsense. Hell, half of these reports were for missions he'd completed forever ago. He started with the South America mission he'd recently completed with that Lenna chick. She probably already had hers turned in. Ugh...

He stared down at the six missions worth of paperwork; at least they were routine. Well...most of them. Of the six, there was that one incident in Chihuahua, Mexico...but he'd have to sort out details with that one. It'd be last.

He was interrupted when his phone went off. Pulling it out of his pocket, he answered the phone. "Sinclaire. I'm in the building, yeah. Paperwork. Lab disturbance, your guys couldn't handle it. I'm on it."

Hanging up, he stood up and nonchalantly vaulted over the desk, and out the door, shutting the door behind him. He was actually a little nicer than usual since he hadn't planned on any action today. But this was still a nice surprise. He made his way down the stairs and to the lab building, toward the holding area.

When he got there, it seemed quiet enough. He made his way down the hall, ready for anything.

She was on the warpath. Nobody could stand against her. If they tried, she took them down. With her wits, or with her powers. Tripping, slamming, choking. Amelia honestly didn't care who got hurt. If they did... good.

Her straitjacket sleeve snaked up over a lab technician's face, filled with her will. Be my hands. She thought, and clenched her fist. The surfer-looking lab tech made a garbled sound, or tried to, before he was smothered by the extended sleeve. Amelia tossed him aside and let him hit the floor. She looked up at the next doorway, then swept her stolen keycard past the lock. It clicked open. With a sigh, Amelia went through the door.

They were waiting for her on the other side. This place was like a maze. She'd doubled back and pushed forward several times, encountering trouble all the while. What she needed was an elevator, or a stairwell. A sign, maybe? The only sign she got was when she encountered guards. Generally, at least in video game cliches, that meant one was going the right way.

There were two of them, both holding guns. Her new power hadn't been tested yet. Now was as good a time as any, she supposed. Amelia reacted as fast as she could. Her body moved forward in a surge of motion. The extended straitjacket sleeve clamped down on the barrel of one of the men's guns. With a jerk, she tried to tear his arm to one side in a disarming move. The gun went off with a bark.

Had it worked?

Amelia looked down at the sleeve thoughtfully. Smoke drifted out near the barrel, where gun met cloth. The man holding the sidearm looked pale. She hadn't even flinched. Nothing there to injure, just cloth. Why would she let herself flinch? Casually, the sleeve kept tight around the gun and plucked it from the stunned man's grip. She held it up, examining it. The second man chose that moment to shoot at Amelia.

The bullet impacted against the right side of Amelia's chest, and this time her body jerked to one side at the impact and she flinched. The kinetic energy from the firearm had to go somewhere. It had gone into her, dulled. But dulled enough it hadn't killed her. Just like a bulletproof vest. As she straightened, a flattened bullet fell from where it had crushed itself against the jacket. The man who had just shot her took a frantic step back.

"What are you?!" He got out before she clobbered him with the butt end of the other man's handgun. He slumped against the hallway wall, out cold.

"Mutant. You tool. Seriously." Where the hell did he think he worked? Amelia glanced at the man she had disarmed. How strange it was, her being bulletproof had caused them both to lose their nerve. Must have been a power thing. Emasculated men, losing their will to fight. A semi-visible hand shimmered into being by his right ankle. It hovered in their air like a blue heat haze, fingers wiggling idly. Then they snaked around the ankle and hauled the man back. He clipped his chin on the floor. He hadn't been expecting that.

Amelia strode past the man on the ground, down the hall. The blue hand kept a grip on the ankle as she walked, towing him along in her wake.

As it so happened, this was the same hall Sinclaire had just entered. Around a corner, at the hall's bend. He hadn't heard anything when he'd entered, because they hadn't shot at Amelia yet. Then they had. Amelia rounded the bend in the hallway, and a guy in a blue denim shirt and gray beanie was in her path.

The guy she was dragging was scrawny. Light enough she could have picked him up for a moment, and tossed him. Wimpy lab tech type. Easy to drag. She still had the gun in her hand, but not in a shooting grip. The long sleeve made getting it situated in her real hand a real hassle. She would need to switch grips and transfer it to the other arm, then use her will to fill the sleeve and form it snugly around the pistol grip and the trigger. That took longer than the second of reaction time she had when she saw the man in the beanie. Amelia used the only other weapon she had. She threw the lab tech at him, hard.

The man flew at gut level. There was something wrong with his leg. The motion of yanking him up off the ground and swinging him like a rag doll towards Sinclaire must have twisted or broken something. As he flew, she quickly focused on switching grips so she could fire the gun. The flying man screamed.

The psychic hand hovered at ground level, ready for action once its command to throw was spent. Momentarily ignored.

Sinclaire heard the commotion as he made his way down the hall. Sounded like gunfire. And voices. From what he could tell, the commotion was very close. Just down the hall as he opened the door and briskly made his way down the hall as the big man reached for the gun on his--

Crap. He left his gun back in the office, so all he had on him were his phone and a tactical knife. But he was still a badass in a beanie, so that was going for him, right? He drew the knife, luckily it was weighted enough so he could throw it if need be. Made for range or hand-to-hand.

When he rounded the corner, he saw a small woman, but he didn't have time to take in the sight as there was suddenly a man flying right at gut level. He reacted quickly, but not quickly enough as he moved to catch it. The man hit his midsection, but aside from staggering back a little thanks to physics, he didn't flinch. She may have been some sort of psychic, but he had an edge of his own. It would really be an instance of mind versus matter.

He had managed to grip the man after impact, but he merely tossed him aside, his body impacting against the wall with a sickening thud as Sinclaire pulled the tactical knife from his belt and took a stance. He saw the gun, but he quickly rushed in, attempting to tackle her before she could fire the gun. Even still...his arm had just recently healed from the last time he'd taken a bullet.

Hell, he probably had to maintain a bullet wound at all times, considering how on his paperwork, almost every form included some type of wound he'd sustained.

All powers have drawbacks. The trick is understanding them, so you can be aware. Do you can take advantage of an opponent's hidden weakness, or try and protect yourself from your own. Some people have small weaknesses they don't see. A person with no sense of pain, for instance, might not notice they're bleeding to death until its already too late. A person with super strength may not have super durability. These are things one wouldn't immediately consider. Then there are the things one knows all too well. For instance, Amelia could only hold two psychic constructs at a damn time. And the guy was rushing her. He hadn't reacted how any decent human being ought to react when slammed in the belly by a buffoon. Ass... he put her in a tough place. Or as Serena might have said (but wouldn't), this was a sticky wicket.

She could try and drop the psychic flow in the sleeve that held the gun, but that would cause it to go limp and drop the gun. The gun could go off and send a violent ricochet through the hallway at close quarters. It could hit anyone. Or, she could try and close with him and hit him with the gun. Or grapple, without hands. Difficult. She could shoot him... but he was moving much too quickly towards her. She might miss. She might not kill on the first shot. She might hit herself with a ricochet. Or, she might kill him. So far she'd been brutal, but she hadn't killed anyone. She'd been trained as a cop to take the shot when it all came down to it, but... there were more subtle ways to win. As the people of the dragon might have said in the Wheel of Time books, there is greatest honor in defeating a foe without touching them. And she had her ways.

She reacted on instinct. All of this mental calculus happened in an instant. Her gut told her shooting him or throwing the gun aside would lead to bad things. As would letting him get close. And shooting him had the potential for ricochet or bad news. Her mind snapped to aikido, a close range grappling based martial art, but again, with that knife and with his tackle, she didn't want him to get close. A mental compromise was reached. The blue "ghost hand" hovering behind her shifted in a moment, from hand-shaped to a psychic wedge like the blade of a snow shovel. The color vanished from the construct, leaving a subtle blurring of the air that wasn't quite invisible. It was sort of like the heat coming off the concrete on a stifling day. When Sinclaire was about a foot and a half away from her, Amelia hit him with the snow shovel blade-sized wedge construct. It swung in on his right side, pressing against his shirt in a heavy shove. The shove was angled with the wedge, to use his speed and force against him and slam him into the wall. It wasn't quite ranged aikido. No real grapple, just concept. He'd just have to deal with settling for second best.

Amelia trained the gun on him and snapped "Stand down! I will shoot." Her voice was cold. In the extended straitjacket sleeve, the gun was held out much further than a normal human arm could stretch.

Sinclaire hadn't planned on any action today. But he couldn't actually complain that he'd gotten dragged away from paperwork, could he? This was an emergency, after all. Ah shit...there was going to be paperwork on this little incident, wasn't there? His thought was interrupted when he realized he'd never actually made it to her. He never felt a thing, but there was a dull thud that rang down the hall as two-hundred sixty pounds of mutant slammed into the wall.

It was an odd sensation, being tossed around when you felt nothing. Only the knowledge of moving, knowing you were momentarily not in control of your own body was what remained. He should have known this was a powerful mutant--well, he figured, considering the trouble she was causing. But there was no time to research it. He just had to fly by the seat of his pants. And for a brief moment, that was very literal.

He slumped against the floor, but quickly hopped to his feet, knife still in hand. He heard her say stand down, but his gears had been turning since he saw her. This was a confined hallway; ricochet was a very dangerous possibility. But there was a problem with guns. The main reason he didn't like them.

He'd heard her say stand down, but he was already in motion, lunging not at her, but attempting to wrestle the gun free. He didn't know how trained she was, but he was going to make it hard for her to focus on firing. Would she risk merely injuring him? Having a deadly game of pinball? Who knew?

But the thing was, Sinclaire was a man who took a lot of risks, thanks to his power. The question was...how much of a gambler was she?

The guy had been heavy. Thank god for aikido practices teaching her to use physics to help curb that advantage. He was also either extremely durable, or else immune or resilient to pain. The slam into the wall should have rattled him, or else shaken his confidence. He was clearly trained not to let little things like psychic women in straitjackets bother him. What the hell was this crazy place? And why was it full of crazy people?!

He was rushing her. Again. The gun went off as she reacted. The shot went wide, a little to his right. One might be a great shot, at the shooting range. It takes a lot of training to shoot to kill. To train the brain not to hesitate before pulling the trigger. Combine that with worrying about enclosed environments and recoil and ricochets, plus a very bulky man charging you in an attempt to gut you or get the gun from you, and you have a recipe for missed shots. Her shot had been rushed, and as a consequence, it hadn't hit him. The shot ricocheted dangerously down the hall-- away from them, thankfully. It didn't rebound into anyone's back sides. Then, they were entangled in a fight for dominance.

Her will around the sleeve holding the gun stayed taut, but twisted the sleeve in on itself as she closed her hand into a fist within the straitjacket arm. How that looked to an outside observer was this: Amelia's arm bent at the elbow, and the hand stayed closed in a fist within the "elbow" joint of the extended sleeve. The extra bit of sleeve at the end stayed straight and solid as if it were full of arm. It swung in towards the man's head, to try and pistol whip him, even as he attempted to strip the gun from her grip. So her arm had a joint... and a joint. And a fully functional fist at the second joint, just waiting to be used to slug the guy in the face. Her other arm surged upwards in a similar way, as the sleeve was filled by the will stolen from her previous psychic construct. The one she had just dismissed. All in all, it was an entirely convoluted abstract tangle of real limbs and fake limbs. "Clothing manipulation" at its finest.

Amelia brought up the arm not holding the gun between herself and the man's knife arm. As her mind worked at a mile a minute, she started considering her next move. Her eyes flicked up towards his ridiculous beanie, then back down to his face.

"What the hell kind of freaking lab experimentation shady ass government-run murder house is this?" She said, through clenched teeth.

Okay so this girl could do some really neat things with clothes. Kinky.

Though Sinclaire really didn't have time to think about that, did he? He'd struck with the knife, hoping to harm her just enough to incapacitate her, but to no avail. The straightjacket had blocked the knife, and in that instant he found himself jarred just a little as the pistol hit him right across the face. If he could feel, he probably would have been done, between the pistol whip and being slammed against the wall earlier. But it merely staggered him for a moment.

"If you think down here's bad, you should see my office," he said dryly as he let the knife hit the floor with a clang. New plan. The big guy dropped low, taking a low stance and attempting to wrap his arms around her, just at her thighs before slamming his weight into her. Classic take down.

From a distance, she had the advantage; her straight-jacket had a longer reach, and had the means to keep him away. But if he could stay in close, not give her room to breathe...he could take the advantage. Basic physics.

I better get a raise for this ****....

The sleeve had stopped the knife, and not gotten cut into ribbons in the process. That part of her psychic weave has worked too. Good. She had not been certain that all of her item enhancements would impart the benefits she'd intended to enchant them with. It had been a science experiment as much as it had been a matter of life and death.

The guy's sarcastic response was too stable, too composed, with zero inflection to show that he'd just been thrown into a wall and smashed in the face by a gun. A feeling started brewing in the pit of her stomach. Could this man not feel pain? Amelia didn't spend time on the thought, mainly because there was none. She heard a metallic clatter, and the next thing she knew, the big lug had dropped low to barrel into her legs. His arms grappled, and they were too close for her to turn him aside, either by martial arts, or through psychic means. Amelia hadn't expected him to surge into the move, and her plans would have to evolve. They connected, and he brought her to the floor. The gun spun out of her psychic grip. Sheer luck would only go so far. It hadn't gone off earlier. This time, it hit the floor beyond them and the gun went off. The shot careened off a wall in a ricochet that sprayed the area with a fine dusting of plaster and concrete.

As they fell, Amelia brought up her arms in front of her body, interposing them between him and her. He had a size advantage. He had a weight advantage. He was using both. Typical male. And he was talking about his showing her something while he squashed her into the ground.

Amelia sneered at him. "That sounds like a come on." Immediately after the comment, she drove the first long sleeve up at the man's chin. The second one shoved against his chest. Her arm pushed through the side of the sleeve as her will snaked out from the straitjacket arm, into the clothes on his chest.

She could not knee him, not with his weight pinning by her down in the god damned painful takedown, but she could do him one better. As she distracted him with repeated blows from the remaining empowered straitjacket arm, Amelia moved her will. It transferred through his clothing, down his body from article to article. From jacket and shirt to pants.

It didn't roam, didn't explore, because that, would be icky. But her will did flow down to groin level, front and center, and smashed inwards with squashing force! There was no tangible feel of a construct. It was weird. Just pants, attacking. Over and over. Much in the way that pants do not. He should have considered himself lucky that Amelia hadn't chosen to assault him with an angry zipper. Yet through all of it, he didn't react to the pain. Didn't even acknowledge it. He might have even laughed.

The knife hadn't done anything against the jacket. It didn't take long to see why SUPER had taken an interest in her. Though most of her power was lost on him; since he wasn't actually feeling her assault, he wasn't even aware of it.

"If you should be so lucky," he said with a smirk in regards to the-come on comment. He was on top of her, giving him even more of an advantage than he already had. But he didn't want to hurt her. That wasn't the directive here, he gathered. She seemed to be of far more value alive, otherwise she'd have likely been dead already. Or at least unable to escape the way she had. But...that itself was an interesting conundrum.

What he attempted to do, was wrap his arms around her in a bear hug, effectively restraining her so he could pick her up and carry her back to...wherever the hell it was he needed to take her. That was his goal, anyway.

How well this would go remained to be seen.

It didn’t take much not to reply to the man’s barb. Speaking of barbs... the fact he wasn’t responding to all the various and sundry painful things she was doing to him told Amelia that Mr. “You-should-be-so-lucky couldn’t feel pain. He couldn’t feel much at all. Her will gave one final jab at him to drive home some unsaid point. Calling him out on his Ken-doll nature, or how such behaviors would be wasted on him seemed childish, and also, in direct opposition to the first sentiment... way too adult.

Her will vanished from all the clothes she’d focused on, and Amelia redirected it to double down on her defenses before he got her in the crushing hug he oh-so-wanted to give. Two semi-transparent blue glove-like hands appeared on either side of her, transposed between his arms. They came with a sudden bulge of psychic energy that pushed clothes away from clothes, creating a cushion between them both. Amelia moved them in a circular motion, aimed to shift his force aside. Then she slapped out with the constructs with all the strength of a 21 year old woman of moderate fitness. Her own arms moved at the same time, scraping their way between them and shoving out at his chest as best she could. One strike, two.

She wanted to create space to break the grapple. Amelia put all her effort into pushing the arms back and away, into forcing the man in the beanie off of her, to rid herself of the weight. He hadn’t hit her. He wanted to contain her. She wanted to contain his strength, and use it against him. It was a crying shame his weight and size gave him an advantage. Well. She could try and use weight against the man just as well.

As Amelia fought desperately against the man’s weight and size with her arms and her psychic hands, she pushed and turned with her freed legs. If she could get the rocking going at the right movement and with the right timing, she might be able to roll them onto one side. Amelia fought. She tried to push his arms away, and to force him away, while levering and rocking herself with her free legs to roll them in the hall. As she did, she noted that she had the unintended side effect with her power.

Her constructs fought with the same strength levels as her. She pushed and shoved and rolled with the same strength levels of her. It wasn’t a strength divided. It was a focus divided. With all her focus directed in multiple routes of escape, her strengths were compounded so that it was as if two women were fighting for freedom. One woman, wiry, trying time get out from under a much larger man. One set of hands, fighting against stronger arms in an attempt to create space. All while she used her whole body to hammer and push and rock, in a vain attempt to change her circumstances. The sad thing was, though she fought as if she were many people, Amelia still fought against a size, weight, and strength disadvantage. The guy had more leverage, and although Amelia could valiantly fight against the inevitable, at the end of the day it was still inevitable. She would lose, true enough. Unless, of course, she turned the whole situation on it’s head... which she did. And Everything rushed up at Sinclaire to become more abstract.

One of her blue hands vanished, while the other one hauled on the arm it held furiously. At the same time, both her own arms tore at that same arm through straitjacket sleeves, moving in the same direction... All while a salmon pink crowbar of psychic energy levered underneath them in a makeshift fulcrum, pushing them in the same direction everything else was moving as she rolled with every fiber of her being. Amelia came out on top.

Not one to stop in the middle of a multi hit combo, Amelia stripped the will from her constructs and shoved it hastily into the sleeves of her straitjacket. With both psychic force and main, she reached up, seized the sides of stupid beanie man’s head, and slammed him down in a Coup de gras. It was meant to be a dazing blow. Amelia didn’t wait I see if it worked. Quick as a blink, she rose off the “pinned” man’s chest, turned, and ran like hell.