Doing research on the bizarre de-aging phenomenon, Stephanie and Malia were not the only ones affected; not by a long shot. Examples of the problem were popping up across this New York, which, after some research into “The Rift” incident, Steph finally realized was not her own, which was its own insanity to wrap her head around.

Some incidents were examples of individuals or small groups being de-aged, much like what happened to the single mother and her daughter. In other cases, large areas were impacted. In one case, an apartment building knowing for having a higher mutant residency mysteriously succumbed to the process.

This resulted in a building full of teenagers, many of whom were mutants, who were living in apartments they would struggle to afford without the trained skills required to work whatever jobs they had before the event. The landlord, Preston D. Wentworth, was doing everything in his power to evict his tenants to get people into the building who would cause him less problems and pay him the rates he wanted to charge for the well-located housing.

The newly de-aged teenagers did what teenagers did: they rebelled. Protests had been occurring outside the lavish manor of the greedy landlord. It was not unheard of in New York for special exemptions or government aid to be provided when unexplained phenomena occurred, and they were petitioning for the landlord to grant leniency while the issue was explored and hopefully resolved. Failing that, they hoped enough attention would lead to government intervention.

Stephanie felt for the protestors. Whoever Steph was here, she had a modest apartment, and her last job helped her keep that place her own. Of course, thanks to minor damage to the sculpture and the process of laundering money over time, funds were not as relaxed as Stephanie would prefer.

And so, why not take advantage of a little chaos?

Amidst the crowd of tenants and the supporters who had amassed at the front gate of the manor, the thief discreetly made her way to the edge of the group, adjusting her glasses. This was one of those rare times she got to ask a babysitter for assistance while the sun was still out, which was much easier to explain.

Escaping the crowd, Steph made it to the west wall of the fence, ducking out of sight enough to shift into shadows just long enough to slip through the bars and into a bush. This was important because today, she was dressed to keep a low profile. Coat, hat, shaded glasses, and all those things came off when she was a shadow, so she took a moment to readjust. Thankfully, her top was form-fitting and she wore leggings, so she was not risking being caught on some rich asshole’s property half-naked.

Once she was adjusted, she carefully kept to the manicured hedges, heading toward the manor.

The last few weeks had been a waking nightmare for Juliette.

She had woken up in a bed that wasn’t hers in a single bedroom apartment in a city that was thousands of miles from the last place she remembered living. Things were foggy in her head, but she clearly remembered her last house and going to bed one evening, and none of that lined up with the life that she found.

There were other people experiencing the strange phenomenon, many of which were living in the same building as her. Several of them had emerged from their apartments, bleary-eyed and confused, and there they compared notes. Over the course of a few days, she pieced together that the apartment was actually hers, and that when she had gone to bed the night before, she had been a twenty-seven-year-old nurse whose life looked very different from the one that current-day Juliette remembered.

It wasn’t exactly the life that she had pictured for herself ten years in the future.

What was worse than waking up to find that you were living a stranger’s life and learning that the family you remembered was long passed was learning that you were living under threat of being evicted from that very apartment. She had gotten a phone call a few days in from her boss, wondering why she had skipped so many shifts, and Juliette was certain that it wouldn’t be long before she was fired, especially since she couldn’t exactly just show up and do a job she had no qualifications for.

It was only a matter of time before she couldn’t pay the bills that came in (especially since she had no idea how to actually do that), and the landlord of the building knew that better than anyone.

It was some rich, old, white man asshole, of course. Of course that would be the case - it was hardly anything new to anyone. A group of them had gathered outside his home, cold, tired, and scared of living in a giant city with nowhere real to call home. Juliette had bundled tightly, unused to the New York cold after her last memories had been of living in Georgia. She had been standing in the same spot for at least an hour, her black coat, striped scarf and hat only doing so much to help her unengaged protesting.

The whole thing seemed to be going nowhere, and she was about to turn and leave when someone brushed past her. A girl with dark hair and tight clothing breezed past the crowd, seeming to know where to go. It was the most deliberate movement that Juliette had seen in ages, and it stood out from the pack like a sore thumb.

With her hands buried deep within her jacket pockets, Juliette trudged after the woman, her eyes locked on her prize.

“Hey!” she half-whispered-half-hissed toward her so as not to distract the entire crowd. “Where are you going? Do you know something the rest of us don’t?”

Maybe she had an “in”.

Steph was getting into the headspace, ready to sneak around the property with the best of them. Ideally, she did not want Silhouette tied to whatever she was doing here, which meant posing as an anonymous protestor. She would run if she had to, because this was not a life-or-death kind of job, so the key was staying lowkey and hard to identify.

> ”Hey! Where are you going? Do you know something the rest of us don’t?”

The hairs on the back of Steph’s neck raised and her body tensed as she looked over her shoulder to notice a young woman with curly dark hair and a stunning amount of freckles watching her. Steph assumed she had slipped far enough away from the group to escape notice; she was unfortunately wrong in that assumption.

She was a protestor, not security or press or something dangerous. She was too young to be some kind of plant in the crowd, though Steph would stay on her guard in case she was wrong.

For now, the thief would smirk. ”Not really. I just know if I’m sneaky enough, I can get in there and cause some trouble for this jackass. I don’t want to get the rest in trouble if this goes wrong, though.” She shrugged a shoulder casually. ”Probably best if you head back to the group unless you can get yourself through the fence; I can’t really help you there, sugar.”

The girl would have been stunning if she didn't look so smug standing on the other side of the fence. Juliette had been entirely caught up in the fact that she seemed to know what this girl was doing that she had barely registered the fact that this girl had clearly used some sort of mutation to slip through the fence that was keeping them apart. The bars were too thin for anyone to slip through, even if they had been living off of the last few boxes of mac and cheese like Juliette had for the last few days.

”Probably best if you head back to the group unless you can get yourself through the fence; I can’t really help you there, sugar.”

Smug and unapologetic. She had a better handle on this than anyone that Juliette had met up until that point, though, and she did say that she was going to wreck havoc on the man who was about to kick her out of her apartment, which meant that she had something that Juliette wanted: a plan. More than anyone else standing out there, anyway.

The girl was obviously a mutant from the way that she moved, but that definitely didn't mean that the situation was safe for Juliette to give herself away. Her power wasn't exactly subtle, and each time she did something flashy, she had to spend more time looking for energy sources afterward. She had no idea where they were going or if it would be safe once they got there.

But her options were to follow, turn back to the crowd, or go home. Only the first sounded like it would do anything at all.

Juliette stood with her arms crossed for a minute, contemplating whether or not to follow. Before long, she had made the only clear decision, and without moving, she let her powers do the work of turning her into her light form before breaking apart into specks of light that easily let her slip through the bars, only to reform on the other side of the fence, next to where the girl was standing.

"What's your plan, then?"

Stephanie assumed the young woman would accept her lot on the other side of the fence. There was no love lost between the landlord and his tenants so she doubted this woman would give her much trouble. Either she would return to the crowd, or Steph was wrong and she would alert the guards. Maybe she should not underestimate a slumlord might pay off a teenager to spy for him in the crowd.

Of course, there was a third option, and it was turning into shimmering light and passing through the bars of the fence unimpeded. Even as someone who prided herself on rolling with whatever came her way, that display made Stephanie go wide-eyed.

”Well, dang,” she whispered at her new accomplice, ”that was impressive. Really wasn’t expecting you to join me.” Then again, she could do worse than working alongside a woman who could turn into light. Hell, their partnership was thematically appropriate, even if the curly-haired girl did not know it yet.

Shrugging, Stephanie kept low to keep her head below the flat top of the hedges, leading and assuming this new girl would walk with her. Standing still while trespassing was a bad idea. ”Well, just know if we get busted, it’s every woman for herself. The long and short of it? This guy is meeting with the mayor right now—because he clearly cares f*ck all about the actual protestors.” He would try to use his influence to keep the government from interfering with his intentions, naturally. ”We’ve got security and staff, but some security probably went with him. So I figured an entitled rich man is going to be an easy target to steal something from. Bonds, art, cartoonish palates of gold bars.”

Looking around the corner of the hedge, Steph saw an opening between there and the corner of the manor building with no one in sight. She ran over, hoping her potential partner-in-crime would keep up. ”The way I see it, a guy like him screws over a nice gal like you. Doesn’t he deserve some comeuppance?” She lowered her glasses to meet this woman’s eyes. ”Don’t you deserve some payback?”