Something had gone down the other night. Emphasis his, because Luke wasn't actually sure what.

He'd been out jogging and heard a whole mess of bad sounds in the distance. Loud, crazy driving and, possibly, gunshots? He'd moved in the direction, but the distance had been more than expected, and he had no idea what had actually happened, or where.

But the next day he was out again, a slightly brisk but sunny afternoon. Luke was breaking his personal motto and wearing a hooded jacket and a baseball cap; normally, he skipped the crap. He was kiiinda wandering off into possible danger on his own, though. He wasn't going to be inconspicuous anyway, but it was worth a try right?

This was a crummy district of the city, with the kind of people who watched you like predators across the street. It wasn't exactly his favorite place; he wasn't worried personally, really, but the bad side of town made him feel guilty. He wanted to help people, like, that's why he was here and not back in Maine. This wasn't the place or the time, though.

One mixed blessing was that other visibly-mutants...mutants had a bigger representation, so he didn't stick out so much. Yay? Luke stopped on a corner and crossed his arms, surveying the surroundings. He closed his eyes and retraced his memory, shifting in place. He'd been near here last night when the squealing brakes and crashing and all had happened. What direction...? North?

Opening his eyes again, Luke looked north. Ugh, crap. Maybe? That wasn't exactly his most confident response. He grimaced and tried to refocus, but the street stank of strong smoke and broken-up buildings. Like, musty and old. It threw him off and made him irritable, like any unpleasant smell would, especially when he was trying to do something.

It also, as it turned out, distracted him from the rest of his surroundings.

Last night had been... ugh. She didn't even want to think about it.

June brushed her wet hair while she shimmied into her pants. She should have been out there hours ago. A quick glance in the hotel mirror showed that her eyes were still too wide and the mark on her shoulder was purpling. The swelling was minimal, probably because she'd called it quits to rest, but knowing that thing was still out there gave her the willies. She buttoned her shirt in double time. June had a job to do.

She hadn't wrecked it completely, but management wasn't going to be happy if they found out.

Emphasis on the "if."

One lobby coffee and set of sunglasses later, June was retracing her steps from the previous evening. She made her way carefully through the intersection where she'd been tossed into a car and picked her way carefully over the glass. The Weapon she'd been tasked with following could get aggressive, for sure. She'd gotten too close and paid the price for raising the creature's suspicion. Now there were gaps in her monitoring logs. Gaps she intended to fill in starting with the place where she'd lost contact.

June slurped her coffee as she inspected the area. There was no way it was still around, but just in case June let her power roam. 8 feet wasn't a lot of warning, especially where mutants were concerned, but it would be better than no warning at all.

Ugh, his nose was running now. Someone nearby was smoking, and that was just the worst for Luke. He swallowed and cleared his throat, then started moving on again.

It took another few minutes of walking in the vague direction of north, but since he wasn't even sure that he was on the right track there, it was a little hard for Luke to be optimistic. The surroundings were a little more bustling and crowded, though. If anything, that seemed like a bad sign. Craziness in a well-traveled area would draw a lot of attention, right?

Also, it was getting a good bit warmer. Taking off his cap and fanning his face with it--this did not help much--Luke stopped and noticed that there was a pretty smashed-up car off a nearby intersection. Looked like something had crashed into the side of it. Luke stopped across the street from it, appraising it as best he could.

Well, that was about how cars looked in the DR when he got thrown into them, so it didn't seem too out there for it to be a person-sourced dent. Also, a girl in sunglasses around his age was standing near it with a coffee. He wasn't sure what to make of that, but she didn't look like someone from the school. She was probably not like, a secret agent or the FBI or something. It might just be her car that got smashed.

As he crossed the street, Luke stopped next to the car and looked down at the mystery girl. "Got in a little fender bender?" He asked in a lighthearted tone. He wasn't trying to come off intimidating or anything, so hopefully she didn't get uncomfortable having him just go up to her. Sometimes he still forgot that he tended to put people off doing that.

Where to go from here? June was tapping her chin against the lid of her coffee cup as a small group walked by. She stared at the smashed up car waiting for whatever hints it hid to jump out at her. Another car passed. This was hardly the most active intersection, but it wasn't completely deserted. Nothing in New York ever would be.

Something tugged at her power like a fly in a web. June flicked her eyes over to a passerby with anthropomorphic features, the obvious reason why her power was waving its hands at her.

At first, she'd thought it was her Weapon back at the scene. They had a sort-of resemblance. Or maybe they didn't. On first look, most animal-human hybrids looked rather similar to June. She pushed up her sunglasses and tried to look more in charge than she felt.

> "Got in a little fender bender?"

She had to resist the urge to rub at her sore shoulder and ribs as she looked at the newcomer. There really was... something...

"You should have seen the other guy." June joked, but she did hope the driver made it to the hospital. Just because SHE hadn't bothered to make herself visible to the authorities didn't mean that the driver shouldn't get medical care. Beside, they might have kept her and she was busy. There was no time to waste.

She'd chugged some ibuprofen and considered that the best medical care she was going to get until she could find the SUPER HQ. Which she didn't want to do until she found the Weapon S she was supposed to be keeping tabs on.

"I don't suppose you live around here? Or know someone who might give a statement? For insurance, you know?" June was fishing. If he'd seen the accident, or knew someone who had, maybe she could get a clue from them on where her target went? The car was really a dead end since she'd been the one thrown into it. And, unhelpfully, the Weapon S who'd told her to bug off didn't leave her a note or claw marks on the walls... But this was the last place she'd seen him so she'd figured it was the best place to start.

Luke nodded as the young woman spoke, but was quickly growing suspicious. Now that he was closer, she faintly smelled of blood, and her comment sounded like this was her car. But if this car had been smashed with a person's body, and it was her car...well, correlation isn't causation, but that was a weird connection, right?

"Sorry, I'm just passing through." He stepped a bit back from her, gaze drifting to the seemingly-unaware pedestrians; he wasn't really interrogating her or anything, but if she was threatened by asking questions, at least he wouldn't be physically menacing her.

"So just to be clear, this is your car, then?" Luke glanced down at the dent once more, now even more confident it was a person-shaped impact. "What exactly-"

Mid-sentence, Luke heard a voice hiss a bit of foul language, and instinctively turned to look. He froze as his eyes fell on the hooded young man across the street; for a brief, dizzying second, he felt that he was looking at himself, as he'd been before his mutation.

The hell...? Still in shock, Luke barely registered the doppelganger's own look of shock, only becoming aware as an eager, toothy grin split the boy's lips and he moved. The newcomer's hood fell back, revealing pointy ears and pointy projections from his hair, and his baggy-sleeved right arm whipped upward, knuckles outward.

Instinctively, Luke raised his forearms in front of his face, lunging forward between the young man and the woman. A stinging pain suddenly erupted across his arms and lower torso, followed by the intense smell of ozone, followed by a much more pronounced pain as his muscles tensed involuntarily, making him double over momentarily.

Gasping for a moment, Luke raised his head and watched the guy look from him to the girl, back to him, and then start running away in the direction Luke had come from. Once the initial pain had subsided, Luke looked down at himself, finding that about a dozen little brown needles, like porcupine quills, were embedded in him. Stepping back from the girl and the car, Luke looked at her wordlessly, then started pulling some of the needles out, wincing each time as an electric jolt seemed to run through him when he grabbed one.