"Hey, seriously, I don't want any trouble. At all. I'm just passing through."

Six men had cornered Danny in an alleyway after a meeting with one of his informants - Danny needed to keep up-to-date on some things, such as what the X-Men and the Sanctuary had been up to, and whether they would affect him. After receiving the good news that he was safe, he'd left the shady bar and took a shortcut to get back to a less creepy part of New York. As it turns out, shortcuts were stupid and he never should've taken this one, because this was apparently gang territory.

"In that case, kid, what are you doing here, huh? Everyone knows that this is gang turf." The biggest of the men was leering over the smaller teenager, flipping a switchblade open and closed threateningly.

"I didn't know, okay? I usually don't go this way, I just -"

And then he lashed out. He grabbed the man's arm - the one with the switchblade - and followed up with a sharp kick to the man's left kneecap that knocked him down, and Danny drew his own knife, slashing it out against another man's throat. He collapsed with a gurgle, and Danny swung around, burying his knife in another one of his assailants' gut. As that one collapsed, he snapped the fingers on his left hand, and the gauntlet exploded with electricity. All it took was grabbing one of the other men's hands when he tried to throw a punch to knock him out. Four down, two to go, and the odds were looking a little better than before. Ducking a wide swing from one of the remaining attackers, Danny dropped to the ground and tugged his knife out of one of the bodies, wiping in and tucking it back in his jacket - he could take the last two without it. And as he grabbed the second-to-last man's exposed ankle, his gauntlet took care of that, and he deactivated it with a snap of his fingers.

And of course the last man had a gun.

As Danny straightened up and turned around, he realized that with a jolt, as he was now staring down the barrel of a pistol.

"Oh. Heh," Danny said, giving a small, awkward and humorless laugh. "Would you look at that. I have no clue how that happened. But if it makes you feel better, it wasn't me. I think it was some vigilante or something who looked suspiciously like me who swooped in - "

"Shut up, punk!" the man shouted, and fired.

Thank god headshots were almost entirely painless. Almost. The wave of fire burst out almost instantly in that brief moment of searing pain before the cool darkness of a rebirth, and Danny just had time to gleefully see the man get incinerated (not completely, but enough to heavily incapacitate him) before his vision went black.

Damn it. Now he'd have to put out a bunch of fires when he woke up, too. No biggie - it's not like anybody would miss the half-cremated bodies of a bunch of gangsters.

Some teenager wandered into gang territory again.
Maya crouched on the roof, peering over into the alley down below. She was wearing the X-men uniform, out on official patrol. More new mutants had been popping up lately, and most of them were not experienced with New York enough to know where they should not go.
Like this one right there.

Maya lowered herself onto the fire escape and then merged into the reflection in a nearby window, slipping several stories lower towards the alley undetected. A couple of floors above the teen and the thugs she stepped out onto the fire escape again, readying an arrow to help the kid.

She didn't need to.

The young X-man watched with fascination as the kid took out several of the thugs, with apparent ease and practice. Whoever he was, he was trained. She was not sure if the electricity was his power or just a gadget, but he definitely knew how to handle himself.

Until the last man standing pulled a gun.

"Sh*t." Maya muttered, drawing her bow.

Several things happened at once. Maya loosed the arrow. The guy pulled the trigger. Maya saw the kid go down with a head shot. By the time the arrow was about to hit the thug's arm, a sudden blast of fire incinerated everything around the dead kid in the alley, and several things caught fire. Maya covered her face with her arm and flattened herself against the wall. Once the bast was over, she leaned over the railing again to look. No survivors apparent.

"Sh*t!" she said again, this time a lot louder. She started lowering herself down the fire escape, slipping into a window again to go faster "Sh*t ***ing dammit..."

Danny woke up, gradually becoming aware of the crackling of flames. He had fallen slumped against a wall, and unconsciously moved a hand to his forehead. There was still some drying blood, and he wiped it off with an expression of disgust. He stood up, brushing off his clothes, and glanced around to survey the destruction. In close quarters, the blast was apparently much more dangerous than in an open space, because it didn't look like any of the gangsters were still alive. That was something to keep in mind later.

Then he realized that his shooter was on the ground, presumably dead, with an arrow, of all things, protruding from his gun arm. Still disoriented, he whipped around, staggering a little bit and nearly falling over. He caught himself by propping his arm up on the wall, and then became aware that somebody else was there with him. To his surprise, there was a girl just a little older than him (physically) in... the window? He glanced behind him. There was nobody there. He glanced back at the window.

She was still there.

Danny's vision blurred for a moment and he stumbled, grabbing back onto the wall again. Post-rebirth coordination usually wasn't this bad - maybe it'd been the fact that his had been unusually quick, and a headshot.

"Hello," he said slowly, partly because this was most likely another mutant (armed with a bow and arrow for some reason) and partly because his mental faculties weren't really agreeing with him and he had a seriously horrible migraine. He remembered hearing swearing after his blast went off, but he had assumed it was one of the thugs. Thinking back on it, it had sounded more feminine, so this reflection-person could most likely speak. "Um." He wasn't really sure what to say. 'Oh, hello, I just died but I'm fine now, and why are you in a window?' Too blunt even for him. So he just left it at that, pounding headache that was far too similar to a horrific hangover not letting him come up with something better.

The kid got up.
He got shot point blank in the head, he blew up in a fiery inferno, and then he got better.
Yup, definitely a mutant.

>>"Hello. Um."

Maya stared, her mouth hanging slightly open, from the window at the guy now bracing himself against the wall. He looked a little wobbly, but hey, who wouldn't be after coming back from the dead?!

Maya was most definitely freaked out.

"We gotta **** get out of here." she finally managed, acting on instinct rather than coherent thought, reaching out of the reflection and offering a hand to the guy "Trust me, this'd be really **** hard to explain to the cops. C'mon, move it."

The girl in the mirror looked slightly unnerved, but Danny couldn't particularly bring himself to care, because it was actually a lot more unnerving than one would expect to see a reflection without a person in the real world. It brought uncomfortable memories from when he had discovered Netflix, and then watched an episode of a television show starring somebody called Bloody Mary. Needless to say, this was rather creepy.

"We gotta **** get out of here," she said, sticking a hand out of the frickin' mirror and extending it to him. "Trust me, this'd be really **** hard to explain to the cops. C'mon, move it."

"You think I don't know that?" Danny muttered, reaching out his hand to grab hers. But at the last moment, he froze, and drew his hand back. "Two questions first. One, are you an X-Man?" He'd broken into their mansion recently and sincerely didn't want to get dragged into a mirror by one, especially not knowing if she knew of the break-I'm or not. "Two, you don't have any intention of dragging me in there and then clawing my eyes out, do you?"

What? It never hurt to be safe.

>>"You think I don't know that?"

Okay, so he was either very quick on the uptake, or he was used to being shot in the head and brought back to life. Either way, this was not the time or the place to discuss the details.

>>"Two questions first. One, are you an X-Man?"

Maya arched an eyebrow. She was wearing a uniform with the X-men symbol on it, and she held up her hands to show it clearly.

"Nope, I'm an X-woman. Next question."

>>"Two, you don't have any intention of dragging me in there and then clawing my eyes out, do you?"

"Not unless you try to eat my brains, dead boy" she deadpanned, holding her hand out again "You comin' or not?"

"Nope, I'm an X-woman. Next question." One of the X-Men, then. He felt like a bit of an idiot for not noticing the logo, but what could he do? Now he was seriously in trouble, because if she knew...then damn. The X-Men didn't take kindly to intruders, as he had learned.

He barely refrained from rolling his eyes at her response to his second question. His concerns weren't unfounded. Also, phoenix. Not zombie, but a phoenix. Nobody seemed to pick that up even when he went out in a blast of fiery destruction. But she held out her hand again, and Danny considered his choices. One - go with her and sincerely hope that she had no knowledge of the break-in, which was unlikely. Two - make a tactical retreat that may or may not involve running.

He chose two.

In a single movement, he lunged for the dead man's pistol, landing and sliding on his back as he fired at the window. He didn't stop to see if the shot had hit, instead scrambling up and bolting in a very dignified manner.

"Have fun with the police!" he shouted as he ran off. Presumably, destroying the reflective surface would destroy her.

He really hoped that TV show had been right about that.

Maya had very well developed instincts when it came to dangerous objects being pointed at the mirrors she was in. She dropped out of the reflecting surface just in time to land on her feet as the glass shattered over her head, sending down a shower of shards.

"Aww, damn. Seriously?!"

>>"Have fun with the police!"

"You little ****" Maya growled, picking herself up and slinging the bow over her shoulder as she bolted after the kid. She took a moment to turn on the X-comm in her ear.

"Steel, it's Mirror, if you hear from the cops about a mutant related blast downtown, tell them to stand down. I've got this." she said before the turned the comm off again. Whatever the kid was, he was dangerous, but in this case not at fault. The last thing she wanted was the cops to show and make it worse. Also, he clearly recognized the X-men uniform, and decided to shoot at it. That needed some investigation.

Maya was a quick runner, being light and also well trained, and she had the advantage of being able to jump in and out of mirrors.
The guy, on the other hand, had the advantage of holding a gun.

The plan was easy: Chase him and herd him into a place where they would be unobserved and he would be cornered. In other words, probably another alley.

Okay, running away from an X-Man? That turned out to not be the best idea he'd ever had. It seemed that firing at a window and then running away screamed of guilt, and while that hadn't been what he had been going for, it kind of seemed to be the result anyway. Maybe it was his quip back that did it, but now he was being chased by an irritated bow-wielding Bloody Mary through the alleyways of New York.

...when had his life come to this.

His pursuer was really fast, actually, and she was still hopping in and out of mirrors, which meant that the distance between them was rapidly closing. The chase was cut short when he turned a corner and found himself facing a wall. He whirled around, seeing no exit except past his pursuer. Damn it.

"Okay, I didn't realize you guys would get so pissed, alright?" he said. "Honestly. All I wanted was some information."

Maya managed to corner the kid and skidded to a halt, not too close to him, but making sure to block his way out. She still had the bow on her shoulder, and no intention to hurt him unless he really asked for it.

>>"Okay, I didn't realize you guys would get so pissed, alright? Honestly. All I wanted was some information."

Whut?

"Dud, what the hell are you t... Oh." Maya, catching her breath, finally caught up as the pieces fell into place "... you're the one that broke into the Mansion aren't ya."

She remembered Eve bringing her up to speed on the details, and also remembered kind of being distracted at the time. This is why having your girlfriend brief you has never been a good idea.

"Oh, that's just great." she sighed.

"Dude, what the hell are you t... Oh."

Damn. It seems that she actually hadn't known about the break-in until he brought it up.

"... you're the one that broke into the Mansion aren't ya. Oh, that's just great."

"Maybe. Okay, yes. But I swear, the forest fire wasn't my fault. You saw what happened in the alleyway - I can't help it, it just happens!" He was a little bit frantic now - he really didn't like how that other woman had coldheartedly tranquilized him from a distance, and especially hadn't enjoyed having to ride home on his motorcycle while sopping wet. At least they were now on neutral turf, where he wouldn't get shot in the back by some automated thing.

>>"Maybe. Okay, yes. But I swear, the forest fire wasn't my fault. You saw what happened in the alleyway - I can't help it, it just happens!"

"Yeah I got that." Maya relaxed a bit, now that the guy was not immediately threatening her "Chill the hell out man, I'm not here to arrest you."

The bow and quiver still slung over her shoulder, she held up her hands to show him she was not trying to harm him.

"So, how about you put the gun down, and whatever that thing is on your hand that took out those guys, and then we'll a better place to talk. I'm not here to hunt you down I promise, but maybe I can help."

"Yeah I got that. Chill the hell out man, I'm not here to arrest you."

Oh. Well, that didn't mean much, considering that the X-Men didn't seem particularly find of plain arrests, but when she raised her hands, he relaxed a little bit.

"So, how about you put the gun down, and whatever that thing is on your hand that took out those guys, and then we'll a better place to talk. I'm not here to hunt you down I promise, but maybe I can help."

No hunting down. He could work with that. He glanced down, only realizing then that he was still holding the gun, and tossed it to the woman gently. And the gauntlet? He wasn't taking off the gauntlet.

"This thing?" he said, motioning to the black material on his hand. "Sorry, no can do. I haven't taken it off in years, and I don't intend to now." Actually, at this point, he was even sure he could take it off. He'd used some serious chemicals to make sure that the gauntlet wouldn't slip off or something, and he wouldn't have put it past himself to have screwed up so badly that taking off the gauntlet also took off all the skin on his hand.

The guy relaxed too, and gave up the gun without a fuss. Maya emptied it from bullets and tucked in the back of her belt. She'll hand it over to Sam later.
The gauntlet thing was not going to be that easy.

>>"This thing? Sorry, no can do. I haven't taken it off in years, and I don't intend to now."

Whoa. Years. That was... a loaded statement.

"You'll have to tell me about that later" Maya sighed "Can you at least, dunno, power it down and keep it where I can see it? We really need to find a better place to talk."

There were sirens in the distance. They were probably not going to come straight to them, but if they started canvassing the area, she would have all the paperwork to deal with. Not to mention this kid being taken in.

"You'll have to tell me about that later. Can you at least, dunno, power it down and keep it where I can see it? We really need to find a better place to talk."

Talk. He really didn't like talks. While he wasn't about to flee like that again, especially since his one exit was blocked, he was still pretty uncomfortable with the situation, because what was there to talk about? All the deaths in the alley were justified (in his eyes, at least). Breaking into the X-Mansion - okay, maybe, but he was always one to avoid tricky topics.

"Uh, powering down?" Danny said. "Doesn't exactly work that way. It's off, if that makes you feel better." He almost told her the on switch - snapping his fingers - but decided against it. Why, he wasn't sure, but there was no harm in being paranoid. "And, uh, I can walk in front, I guess?" Anything, really, to avoid pissing off yet another X-Man.

Then he heard the sirens, and realized that, yes, they should at least go somewhere with less police in the area. They'd find the carnage soon, and though he wasn't in any database ever, he knew that somewhere somebody would eventually piece together all the strange fire-related deaths over the years, before or after being dispatched by a ninja of some sort. (He'd heard a police officer talking about one of his scenes once. The guy actually said ninja.)

"Yeah, let's go," Danny said, glancing around. "Any ideas?"