"Be better when we're gone." She growled the words and cleared away the water and loose strands of hair that were plastered to her face.

"Oh thank unicorn." Noel grabbed up the gun from Ty since her sword was lost somewhere out in the open.

The case next to them exploded in toward them in a rain of glass, but that was okay. Two shots chambered in a shotgun, right? Unless it was one of those semi-automatic pump bolt kinds? Yeah. She didn't think of that until she was already over the glass case using it to steady her shot.

One for Terry. Lucky jerk caught it in the hip.

She turned. BLAM. BLAM. Two in the chest of the next person who moved and she was back down, checking the ammunition and how many shots she had left. Something zipped through the air where she had just been and made a loud smack sound against the wall behind them.

Gods she hurt. "Back door." The growling helped. It really did. "You first, I'll cover. And Ty?" She would have caught his shirt or something if she had the strength to spare. With her hands shaking as they were, she didn't risk it. "Terry's in there. I got 'em, but... kick him in the teeth for me?"

Ty heaved a sigh, wiping the mix of sweat, blood, and water from his brow. He ducked behind the case as she started shooting, proving she very well was a better shot than he was. Thank God for that one...[/color]"

The redhead nodded as Noel spoke, planning to do much more than kick him in the teeth. Though that was a good start. He took off towards the back door, as instructed, making his way towards Terry with all the strength that he could muster. The first thing he did was aim a sharp kick toward the man's hip, using the bloodstain as a target. Ty grabbed the jerk by his collar, overcome by rage as his free hand flipped out his knife, holding it at the man's throat.

"You like huntin' mutants, do ya?" he hissed, his Georgia accent bleeding through prominently. "How's it feel being on the other end?" He gave a sick grin. "Be careful though...I don't need too much excuse to slice you open..."

He went. She was sort of hoping for a breather and to maybe get a bead on somebody, but Opie was steamed. Fine. Noel stood and shot some of the halogen flood lights, sending down a shower of sparks in the general direction she'd guessed their last enemies to be.

Noel clapped her hand across her burning side and walked through the open employee door. She nudged the dead guy with her foot until he slid far enough into the hallway to let the door close all the way. The water helped. She locked the door and then went to deal with the over dramatic post-cog and Terry.

"Cool it, Ty." Her voice was getting more reedy than growl-y now. Adrenaline covered a multitude of sins, but her go juice was running low now that the threat of imminent death had been downgraded.

"We need—" She gasped, "—answers." Was it getting harder to draw a full breath?

"I won't give you nothin'." Brave words, especially since they were spoken around a blade.

"Ty." She huffed, never letting her eyes waver from Terry. If anyone could get information from him without his permission, it was a pair of psychometrics. "Start us a car."

Ty clenched his teeth tight, his knuckles turning whiter than his usual complexion around the handle of his knife. With a sigh, he pocketed his knife, still shaking with rage as he shoved Terry away from him.

"You owe her your life," Ty said as he turned to leave. "Because I was a bat of an eyelash..." he let the sentence hang as he headed into the parking lot, scoping out cars. He didn't know why he didn't just knife the guy. Maybe he had a respect for Noel. That had to be it, because if either man had so much as sneezed, Terry would be dead. Then again...Noel did have the gun. Whatever.

He found himself walking toward a red sports car. Something sleek, yet powerful. It was unlocked, but...no keys. Pulling the screwdriver out of his pocket, he got to work, opening the panel, and hot-wiring, which...was a second nature to him, practically. Soon, the car fired right up, and he revved the engine a bit, sitting back in the seat and gathering himself, taking deep breaths.

Terry waited until Ty was out the door before smiling at Noel. "I always did believe in the kindness of strange-" She cut him off with a punch and then a follow up kiss.

They started off small. Just normal humans. Then moved up to ones with a little more of a chance. An ex-cop, mall security... still small fries until today. They were testing themselves against their first mutants. They'd done this before, elsewhere and gotten all the way up to mutant ex-military.

Terry make a happy noise deep down in his throat that turned the direction of Noel's probing to other things, things she wished she'd never see about Terry. She broke contact and looked him in the eyes.

Forget. The world shook and went dark around the edges.

She made him forget who his allies were. Forget their faces, their names, their jobs, how they met, anything and everything about his friends. Then she made him forget who he had been hunting.

As usual, Noel recovered faster. She'd just used her power, she knew that much. She took stock of the situation and what she remembered. Someone had been shooting at her. She was hurt, but she had a gun in her hand and was intimately close to this... very short, very not her type man. The same man she'd used her power on.

She shot him in the foot and pushed her way outside before he could get his mitts on that shotgun.

A car revved its engine and Noel swiveled her head around until she could level her gun at it. Was it signalling her? Was that... her ride?

She tapped the passenger window with the weapon. "Going back to town?" If she could just breathe and take a moment to think she could figure this out, but she knew staying here was not an option. If this red head made an aggressive move that identified him as one of the people who had been shooting at her, he was about to find himself carjacked.

Ty unlocked the door, leaning over and opening it. He didn't know what went on back there between Noel and Terry, but he didn't care. He felt like crap warmed over and they both needed to get out of here.

"That's the only place I know to go. I just know we need to get away from here." He rubbed his temples, waiting for her to get in and shut the door before he buckled his seat belt and put the car in gear.

He drove slower than usual, but then again this was the one time that wasn't technically a joy ride. And his head felt terrible. "Anywhere you'd prefer to be dropped off?" he asked. "And would you mind putting that gun away? Please? After what we just went through, it's really making me nervous..."

He opened the door for her. Ah. Okay. Guess he was her ride. Noel tried to be casual about it since clearly this man seemed to know her. Crap on a stick. She must have lost who he was when she did what she did in there. And they did need to get away from here.

She got in and buckled up.

> "Anywhere you'd prefer to be dropped off?"

The hospital? Nah, she had... someone... at home...? Noel fumbled around until she decided the memories were just plain gone. She would just have to see when she got there. Noel gave the red-head some cross streets not too far from where she lived. They had plenty of time. It had been a freaking long trip to get out there in the first place.

Noel settled back into the bucket seat and focused on breathing.

He mentioned the gun. She didn't realize that she still had it in hand and casually pointed toward the driver. It was sort of a comfort thing.

"Yeah. Sorry." She put the safety on, decided that wasn't enough and pulled the jacket out, removed the slide and spring and then dumped the whole mess onto the ground in front of her. Then she went about assessing her wounds. "You okay?" Pal? Friend? Yeah. Didn't want to tip him off to the fact that she'd forgotten who the heck he was.

Goosebumps marched under her wet clothes in response to the air conditioning. The mirror on the back of her sun visor showed Noel that she had a few minor cuts on her cheek and neck and touching her ribs gave her a coughing wheeze fit, but all in all she seemed pretty okay.

"Crap, my sword." She only just remembered when she felt the scabbard along her spine, but they were well on their way and that was not a situation she was willing to walk back into. "Guess that's a gonner."

Something about her seemed...off. He couldn't put his finger on what, exactly was wrong, but she seemed sort of...out there. Disconnected.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Headache's finally gone, for the most part. Getting some of my energy back now that the excitement's all over. Sucks about the sword though..." He sighed, turning down a street, thus beginning the incredibly long journey back to the city.

"You sure you're okay? I mean...what happened back there?" he asked, concerned. He wasn't sure he'd call her a friend, but...well they'd only met that morning, but since then they did kind of save each other's lives...

Was she okay? That was up for debate. What happened was a little bit easier to answer. Noel made a comprehensive study of Ty's wet clothes and spattering of scrapes. He had been there for at least some of her injuries since they were in similar states. Still... he had been in the car before she got there so they had at some point split up. He must have wanted to know what happened while he was outside.

"I made him forget." She knew that much. Noel made herself lay back against the seat and relax to stave off the shivers. She closed her eyes as she thought through things. "It's my ability. Memory. I made him forget his friends and forget us." That was probably right since she couldn't remember them. "Then I shot him in the foot and left him with a shotgun." Which painted a pretty grim picture once she thought it out. Leaving a man maimed and armed and without knowledge of who was friend or foe? He was likely to shoot his own friends.

Noel chewed her lip. She had to trust that they deserved that. All her little aches and pains made her hopeful that it was.

"Serves him right," Ty muttered bitterly as he drove. "I gotta thank you though. For stopping me back there. I woulda killed him...not thought twice. Something tells me now, that's the last thing we'd have needed."

He let out a long sigh, focusing on the open road as he made the drive out to the city. "Sad to say, today was more or less a waste of our time. We made it out alive, but who would have known an innocent job ad would set us up for a live hunt?"

Country road eventually turned into the crowded streets of the city, as Ty spent the better part of the remainder of the ride in silence. Thinking. Before long, he made it to the street she'd named, and he pulled the car over to the curb. "Well...I guess this is it. Eventually I need to get rid of this car, I suppose. I'd say it's been fun, but...hey maybe if we meet again it won't be such a crap-fest and a bloodbath, eh?"

Noel watched the red head for a moment to measure his reactions. They seemed legit. "Most people freak about the whole memory wiping stuff." Did that mean he already knew? Or he'd seen it happen before? They were familiar, but... just how familiar were they?

Was he in her phone? Noel fished around in her pockets until she found it (Oh no it was wet! Heart attack! Heart attack!) and flipped through the numbers with photos. Nope. Nope. He could be one of the numbers she had without a photo. Should she try out the name? See if he responded?

John? Arnie? Yeah. No. He didn't even look like a Arnie. This was stupid. She wasn't going to make a fool of herself.

"You're not in here, are you?" Noel waggled her phone at him. "I mean..." She made a slightly strangled noise in frustration. "Okay, look. A side effect of what I did is that I don't exactly know who you are. So. Thanks for the ride. Glad you're not dead or a murderer." Please let me make out with you so I can figure out what the heck just happened back there? Yeah. Too soon.

She opened the car door and unhooked her seat belt. Yep. Time to make a super not smooth exit!

"I understand," he said. "People tend to flip when they find out I can touch something and find out where it's been."

He blinked when she started acting weird, then she explained why. Okay, that actually made sense. And then she started unhooking her seatbelt and making motions to leave. "Wait, don't go just yet." Did that sound like he was begging? Or being clingy? He didn't mean it that strongly, he just did not want another awkward parting. He was actually starting to grow tired of those.

"I'm honestly just some guy you met on the bus this morning. Three of us answered a job ad looking for mutants who could see into the past, and we thought we'd make a few extra bucks. In a nutshell, it was a trap, and we became hunted. Sadly...only the two of us made it out." He sighed. "Anyway, my number is xxx-xxx-xxxx. Ty Fisher."

He asked her to wait and she did, hand on the car door handle, eyes on the sidewalk and freedom beyond.

She didn't expect him to mean it. She certainly didn't expect him to fill her in on what had happened. Truthfully, too. Every word was like a fresh filtered drop of water. Noel sat for a while as her headache congealed into something like a brain freeze. The more things clicked into place, the more she could remember, the worse the headache.

A car honked behind them. Apparently they were sticking out too far or taking too long somehow. Noel put her seatbelt back on and told Ty her real address so she would have less of a walk. As he pulled back out into traffic, she got out her phone and asked for his number again. She even snapped a photo to go with it.

"How far back can you see?" The question was timid, unlike most of their interactions thus far. "And how much do you charge per hour?" She had never thought to hire someone with her power to help her, but the more she thought about it, the better it sounded. She might even be able to read him and get a second hand version of events in her life she had long forgotten. "Uh. It's okay if you don't want to today." All she wanted to do was be home and crash. "It would just be nice to have somebody who could remember things."

Ty smiled as she fastened her seatbelt again and told him her real address, and in exchange he repeated his number as he put the little sports car back into gear and pulled out onto the street. "When I use my power, it's like the entire life of the object I touch is crammed into my brain. What it saw, I see, over the course of a few minutes. Its memories become mine. As far as charging..." His voice trailed off a bit.

"Well, usually I just end up finding things by accident, and doing it for money seems to come back to bite me, heh. But I tell you what." He looked at her out of the corner of his eye. "For you, I'd do it for nothing. Though I'd at least need a nap first if you don't want want me passed out on your couch or something, heh. I'd also need some belongings of yours that you had at the time you need me to remember," the young man explained.

"Yeah. You're the only mutant I've met that has a mutation remotely like mine. It's neat. Besides...after what I've been through recently, I could use the company." He turned onto another street, nearing the address she told him.

Free made her frown because free was never free even when it was supposed to be. The thought was so incredibly true that it even rhymed. "I'll just have to owe you one, I guess." Which also rankled. "Yeah. Later. It's no big." What was another day or month when she was looking for things years old? It could wait. She wouldn't mind a nap either in any case.

She fiddled with her phone as the car rolled to a stop. "Hey, I'm texting you so you have my number. If you need anything. Seriously. I'm going to owe you big time anyway."

This time when she swung the door open, Ty wouldn't bother to stop her. But she did stop with her hand on the door for one last question. "You uh... you know how to ditch this crap, right?" The partially disassembled gun with her prints on it? The car that was obviously stolen since it had a screwdriver hanging out of the ignition? She hoped he did because Noel had nooooo clue.