A slurry of trash and leaves made sluggish progress down the street as Noel waited at the bus stop under the black dome of her umbrella. It had been raining since yesterday when Noel got the push notification to her phone. Panu had a mission for her and instead of asking, he'd simply modified her calendar appropriately.

This was a mission she would have turned down had she been offered the chance a week prior. But Panu communicated his fear over the matter and Noel had been spending a lot of time in the assassin Hades' memories. The lines of her jobs were starting to blur. Or maybe it was the company she was keeping.

The idea of pre-meditated murder just didn't trip her up like it might have once. Because that's what this was: murder. Noel agreed to slay Panu's nightmare fuel. This was an acceptable trade for the many services and friendship that Panu continued to provide.

His communication was flawless in Finnish, but Noel still didn't quite understand what she was getting into until she found the man who was, himself, an assassin.

Her target walked by Noel's anonymous figure. His black assassin chic passed beneath the brim of her umbrella, the physical presence of his passing. Noel had time to notice the bulge of a hidden weapon at his waistline and the small pack he carried before a wave of pain assaulted her. His proximity caused a rupture of pain in Noel's head that triggered her power. Or, under normal circumstances it would have triggered her power. Instead, she just got pain.

The memorymancer closed her eyes and tried to function past the blinding ache. She'd felt this before. There was a word for the people who shut down mutant powers. Adapted.

He was gone before she'd fully recovered, her first assassination opportunity missed.

She was almost certain that he hadn't noticed her since she hadn't made contact yet and she hadn't physically buckled when he walked by. The wake of his nullification aura ripped her mental blocks away and settled her memory deficits forcibly. The next time she crossed into his aura would be very different so long as she didn't use her power in the meantime.

Noel peeled away from the bus stop, irritated.

She would have to find the assassin again and she knew it'd be difficult since he was both competent at his work and on the job. She just hoped that she could get him before he finished his hunt. It was the best way she'd found to justify this to herself: by killing him, she could hypothetically save a life.

In something of a blah mood that matched the weather, Danica watched the rain outside, the only thing to break the silence was the stench of a New York cab's back seat. A mixture of stale piss, beer, and other odors that she didn't even care to identify, this nose wrenching vehicle was her only means of transportation at the moment. When Danica asked the cab driver if he ever cleaned up, the only response that came was a foreign language she didn't understand, though oddly she did realize it was Arabic. The whole atmosphere was dreary and bleak, though rather than depressed Danica was actually quite tired. Due to a poor night's sleep as the result of bad dreams, she tossed, turned, and woke up almost as tired as before.

The leather on the back seat was old, torn, and Danica had to scoot over a second time because of a spring poking her in the butt. It was a welcome relief when the cab pulled over to the curb and stopped at her destination. Quickly paying the driver she exited and took a deep breath of considerably fresher air. Normally she would have asked her parents for a ride, but her father was at work and her mother at friend's house for a bridge game. This left Danica with the only alternative being a cab ride she wished to quickly forget.

With a little bit of money in pocket and tired of being cooped up at home she wanted to get out for a while, even if the weather was dark and wet. It was only two in the afternoon, but from the heavily overcast sky, it almost appeared to be nightfall. Looking up into the sky for a moment as the rain fell in a continuous cascade, Danica could see nothing but clouds that were a mixture of gray and black. With a small pitter-patter tiny droplets of rain slid down her face. Despite all of this Danica's destination was only a few yards in front of her, it was a Waffle House, one of several in the city. Unlike many who bemoaned the quality of the food she actually liked it.

About to walk toward the building something caught Danica's attention out of the corner of one eye. At first it seemed like nothing more than a shadow, but when she looked in that direction it was, in fact, a figure. Clad in pure black it didn't move, and the clothing made it hard to determine anything aside from being slightly over six feet in height. Danica wasn't sure if the figure was looking at her or not, but either way it gave her the creeps. When the figure began to walk she decided to get out of the way and walked closer to the Waffle House. That was when Danica noticed the figure move to one side slightly so they were still parallel to one another. Now it was obvious she was the target of the figure's attention.

“The hell is this loser's problem?” Danica said, still not sure how to react.

She tracked him through the city until the man found a shadow to make his home. Whatever he was waiting for, now Noel waited too. She pulled down her umbrella and shook out the accumulated water droplets before folding it away. The memorymancer stepped into a coffee shop across the street and debated if she had time to order something that would thaw out her chilled fingers.

Probably not. She didn't want to risk turning her back for so long.

Noel set up at the bench by the window and pulled out her phone. Dressed as she was in street clothes and tennis shoes, the memorymancer supposed she fit in well enough. Her hair, more than anything, would mark her as interesting.

Hades had learned to use shadows as his allies. It was hard to say whether Noel would have noticed him had she not borne witness their proper use. By comparison, this guy made blending in garish as the light of day.

And his quarry thought so too.

It was the obvious way she jerked in a double take that brought Noel's attention up from her phone. The dwarfish woman noticed him too.

Did he want to kill her specifically or kill her for noticing? Either way Noel was on her feet again, umbrella in hand.

He stalked the woman. Did he want information? He was certainly putting on a show of making her frightened. Noel cut in between the woman and the adapted, leading with the round of her umbrella in the assassin's face as she reached for the door of the building between the two like a woman on a mission.

"Oh!" The man boffed right into her umbrella and with a growl and a flash of silver, cut into it and shoved Noel's rain protection barrier away. Noel replaced that barrier with another by yanking the door she'd grabbed open. The hinged panel of wood was the only thing between the man, his knife, and the two women. Fat droplets of steady rain were working to soak her already.

Noel smiled more teeth than cheeks, already mentally drumming up for the fight.

"Run."

Things were getting weird for Danica, having come out to get something to eat she wasn't expecting to be accosted by a pair of strangers. The man in black bothered her more than the young woman, then when a blade appeared, light dancing off the metal, her eyes widened. With the umbrella in shambles she had a sinking feeling the man wanted her in the same condition. Why someone would want to kill her wasn't something Danica planned to stick around and try to figure out. While the other woman was distracting the individual in black she took off running at top speed, although her it wasn't quite as fast as other people. It was times like this that Danica hated being a dwarf.

After a short distance she looked back to see the dark figure in rapid pursuit. To put some distance between them Danica tried to channel a blast of energy through her legs. At first things began normally, the energy built up, but just before discharge there was a new sensation, one she'd never felt before. The energy began to fluctuate, then when the discharge came it was uneven, this literally threw Danica head over heels down the street. Being slammed down on the ground stunned her, but in light of the fear and danger present, she recovered quickly.

When Danica turned over the man was reaching down her. As a reaction she held a hand out of fire off a kinetic blast, yet nothing happened. Shocked by this turn of events she was lifted off the ground by the shirt collar. When the blade appeared a second time Danica knew it was time to defend herself the old fashioned way. Powers or no the little woman wasn't about to go down without a fight. Before the figure in black could strike she ejected a three inch blade from a wrist mount, despite something of this nature being highly illegal, and stabbed it into the offending arm.

The figure made a grunt and Danica was dropped, the sound giving the first hint the figure was in fact male. Once again she took off trying to run, but wasn't sure where to go of what to do. There was one last thing she could try, but that wasn't something Danica liked to do in public, it drew almost as much attention as an open display of mutant abilities.

She'd miscalculated.

First mistake? The short woman ran blindly down the street instead of into the nice and open doorway Noel had provided. It made sense that the lady probably didn’t want to be trapped, but the memorymancer had hoped she could slam the door after the dwarf and make it a one-on-one with her and the man with the knife.

Second mistake? She was on the same side of the door as the petite woman. So when the assassin slammed into the door to get past Noel and to his original target, he shoved Noel into the door frame and nearly closed her into the very place where she'd hoped to segregate attacker from attack-ee.

Her shoulder clipped the door frame, but it kept her from getting shut away inside the building she’d opened the way into. Noel smiled to the confused patrons inside and apologised on her way back out into the street.

Okay. The woman was on the ground and Noel had totally missed how it’d happened. She put a burst of speed on, not sure what she was going to do when she got there. Not being the target of this attack did give Noel a certain amount of leeway.

By the time Noel had caught up to the two, the man in black was dropping the smaller woman with an audible grunt. This time they both had naked blades.

Huh. Noel hadn't stopped to wonder if the assassin’s target actually deserved death or not. She'd never been one to do the deliverance of justice, just the one to start the process. She typically tried to stop the bad guy, avoided getting killed, and maybe turned them over to the police… or the mob… or the highest bidder.

She couldn't afford to second guess this. Not at this juncture.

He was hurt, but still armed. The two hadn't garnered too much attention yet despite not exactly being hidden. This was sloppy on more than one front.

Noel reached out and grabbed at the Adapted’s hood and wrenched him after her as she kept running. She didn’t expect to get much mileage out of the move, but at least she might get this party moved out of the open.

Yeah. Picking up the woman might be a better way to get her away, but she had a naked blade and a healthy distrust of strangers. Noel would have rather hugged a cactus.

More than anything Danica was shocked that someone would attack in public like this, it was open and highly visible. It took a moment to realize what was going on and that Noel might well be trying to help her, or at least get a good shot at dark and scary. With her new abilities and a healthy distrust of strangers in general, she didn't like either, but the woman appeared to be the least threatening of the two in that she hadn't tried to kill Danica yet. While there was only a split second to react, it did give her enough time to dash down an alley.

This would take the fight off the streets so there would at least not be cop cars coming from every direction to arrest and/or shoot all of them. Danica also sheathed the wrist blade to keep others from seeing it and getting a little dodgy about what was going on. There were already people beginning to take notice of them, right now they all needed to get out of the public eye. Around the corner she peeked out to see Noel trying to distract the man and draw his attention. The move seemed to work for a moment and she ducked back around the corner trying to think of what to do next.

None of this made any sense to Danica because even before gaining powers she never ran in circles anywhere close to this. Most of her days at work were filled with taking dictation, filing paperwork, and getting coffee, not trying to avoid being killed by the man in black. Danica's personal time was filled with mostly arts and crafts, watching television, and other mundane activities no one would have thought anything about. Before this her life had been quite normal, so why all this aggression, did the man have a beef with dwarfs.

That's when it dawned on Danica, not dwarfs, mutants. However that lead to another unsettling question, if he knew that she was a mutant, how had the man come across this information. It was her most carefully guarded secret. About half way down the alley she turned and waited for the would-be assassin, the object now was to figure out a way to set up some sort of ambush that would catch him off-guard, that was likely the only way she would come out of this in one piece, as he didn't seem the type to just give up and go home. When the man came around the corner, Danica flipped him off and ran around another corner, hoping Noel would still be in pursuit.

The assassin wrenched out of her hand in an impressive turn that ended with Noel throwing her weight suddenly out of the way of an oncoming hit.

He was mad. She could see it in the cold burning of his eyes as he launched himself at Noel. The brunette was off balance already starting off on the wrong foot and so ended up only dancing back, only barely out of his reach.

"Stay out of my way!" He growled and turned back to pursue his quarry. Noel should have shot him in his back, but by the time she'd thought to grab her gun out from it's inner-pants holster, he'd dodged around a corner.

This wasn't a game. She needed to stop messing around and just get it over with.

He was probably thinking the same thing.

Noel jogged to catch up, hesitating only long enough to actually recover her weapon. If she aimed for the head or upper chest, the woman wouldn't even be an issue for cross fire, right?

The entire situation with spiraling out of control. The only thing the Danica wanted to do in the first place was get something to eat. Now she was being chased down an alley by a would-be assassin, and some strange woman never seen before. The next thing Danica knew shots rang out. Never a fighter to begin with she decided to take advantage of the distraction and continued to run down the alley.

Despite the way things appeared Danica wasn't running away, just trying to draw the man to a more secluded area of the city. What she was worried about more than anything is if you could find her here I might be able to find her somewhere else. This is a situation that needed to be taken care of. More than anything she was concerned with how he even knew about her in the first place. If tje man could somehow be disabled without being killed, she could question him.

The situation became really interesting when Danica was able to draw a considerable distance away from the man. Trying to figure out what to do next a small arc of orange energy crackled down her arm. Still not entirely sure what was going on she decided to take advantage of the situation. Danica may not have been the sharpest knife in the drawer but she was still able to put two and two together. Although she couldn't explain exactly why the inability to access her powers seem to have something to do with the proximity to this strange man.

Near the wall of the alley there was an old metal rod, upon seeing this an idea came to mind. Taking the makeshift weapon in hand Danica unleashed a burst of energy from her legs. She launched into the air just as the man came around the corner, the metal rod struck the man in the head. To the sound of metal on metal the weapon struck a helmet or at least some sort of protective headgear. The man wasn't killed but the blow seemed to stun him. For her part Danica hit the ground dropping the weapon, her arms hurting from the vibrations caused by the impact. What really seemed to rattle her was when the hood came down, there was no sort of protective headgear. The only thing that Danica could imagine was that the man had a metal skull.

As soon as she was able, Noel took a knee and lined up her shot. She squeezed off two rounds aiming for his head, but didn't get the response she'd been expecting.

He didn't go down. Granted he was moving, but he wasn't trying to dodge or anything. Her target was only getting smaller instead of just plain being dead.

Noel scrambled to her feet and bolted after him again.

Divine intervention? Or had she really missed both shots?

Noel was closing in on the pair when the short woman blasted herself up on a trail of orange and clocked the guy full on the face. Noel paused a moment in appreciation of the leap. The girl had some skill, judging the angles and power, since her sparks had died halfway to her target.

The man looked dazed. Still not down.

Noel took aim, two hands on her weapon and this time aimed for the chest plugging away until the enemy did finally crumple. He fell, but she had to check him. She had to be sure he was actually dead, that Panu would be satisfied with the outcome. She approached with caution, weapon trained on the Adapted.

"You okay up there?"

She tried to keep an ear out for the woman, but the tension in her shoulders was all for the heap of black cloth at her feet. She nudged him over and kept her weapon trained tight on his bloodied eye. He seemed to have a metal plate in his head. Which... was weird. She risked further inspection and when he didn't breathe or move or do anything but bleed for the span of a few breaths, then she knelt to take a pulse.

Dead.

She took a moment to appreciate that. She'd ended a man. She wasn't sure what she was supposed to feel. Right now she just felt... annoyed. Maybe that was a hardening from Hades' experience.

Noel stopped to look for the woman. The memorymancer needed to find something on his person to lift memories. Find out where the creep originated. Make sure no more were coming. She clicked the safety on and jimmied the gun back into place in her innerpants holster. It wasn't pretty, but at least it was discrete. She held up her hands. "Not here to hurt you. I'd appreciate the same from you." Whoever she was. Maybe there were clues there too.

Now that the would be assassin was dead, Danica looked at the other woman who wasn't very far away from her. Still not sure what to make of the whole situation she looked at both hands and summoned just enough energy to send small arcs crackling across her hands. This only confirmed that the man was the source of the initial problems with her abilities. Still rather pissed off over the whole situation Danica looked over at Noel, let the energy fade, then held her hands palms out, to show she wasn't hostile. The situation was still tense for her as this was the first time someone had ever tried to outright kill her in such a manner. Although with Noel putting her gun away, it was obvious she meant no harm either.

Still in something of a defensive mood she walked around Noel one good time checking her out, then looked down at the assassin again. It was obvious that they needed to find out some sort of clue as to who this man worked for, if someone knew about Danica it was likely that they would try again, not an idea that she was particularly thrilled about. The assassin was as dead as they came so she was no longer worried about that. “Name's Danica, thanks for the assist by the way, whoever you are.” The response was a little curt, but under the circumstances Danica was focused on the situation. Now determined to get to the bottom of what was going on she began to search her attacker for clues.

While searching he man she noticed there was a patch on his arm, one that was covered up by a second black patch, obviously meant to conceal the first. Reaching up she tore it away to the sound of a small rip. In that instant Danica let out a loud gasp, fell to the ground, and crawled backwards as if she'd just seen the devil himself. Eyes wide at first she hit the back wall of the alley, then quickly closed them, to the point of near hyperventilation now she was trying to calm down. For the moment she wasn't succeeding. The patch on the man's arm was that of a golden diamond outline with the number seven in the middle.

She said her name, but Danica was probably too busy flipping out to have heard it. Noel moved to look at the patch. It didn't look special. Maybe a little like the biker gang 1%ers, but who would take pride in being #7? The only thing good she could think of was that it was lucky. Judging by the dwarf's reaction... maybe not so much.

"Okay. Deep breaths. I'm going through his pockets and then we're getting out of here even if I have to carry you." They didn't have time for this kind of wasteful display. Noel knelt, careful not to disturb the spreading blood and rummaged around.

She took the wallet —it only held cash— and palmed a swiss army knife looking thing from one of his pockets. She left the knife he'd been using to swipe at Danica, but pulled off his gloves. Gloves went through lots of things. Noel muttered about how she could probably get a worthwhile memory from those.

And the patch... Noel used her own knife to help rip that free.

Sirens sounded ever closer.

Yep. Time to go.

Noel stood and approached Danica. If she didn't get her feet, the brunette was serious about her threat to carry the other woman off like a sack of potatoes.

The sound of the sirens seemed to snap Danica out of her mental haze, but the sudden panic attack had yet to relent. The only thing on her mind at this point was getting as far away from this place as possible, and doing it post haste. Now with a large dose of adrenaline coursing through her veins and the urge for flight over fight, she took off running toward the entrance to the alleyway they'd ducked into. It turned into a short run as a police car pulled up and Danica stopped short as they'd yet to see her. A quick about face brought a quick dash around the corner to the other end of the alley.

Once again she was faced with another police car that had stopped close to the scene of the incident. The first thing to go through her mind is that they were trapped. Now the panic was starting to turn into anger, being trapped was something Danica would never allow herself to be again if possible. They couldn't go forward, or backward, then it would seem that brains finally managed to overcome fear. If they couldn't go forward or back, the only option left was straight up. One of the buildings was only two story meaning that Danica could easily reach the roof.

About to do that she stopped and looked over at Noel. Regardless of her possibly being human or mutant, the young woman had risked her life for Danica. Now to leave this potential new ally to fend for herself was something the short woman was prepared to do, yet it also presented a problem. Danica had never tried to jump jet with another person before so she had no idea how much of an affect the additional weight would have. Unknowns aside there was only one course of action left to take, and Danica decided it was time to act.

Without much warning she ran up behind Noel and wrapped both arms around her legs. ”Going up!” With that she put maximum effort into their escape attempt and channeled energy into her legs. A moment later there was a low thumping sound as the two shot into the air at a slight angle. The blast barely brought the two level with the lip of the roof and Danica could see this. “Aw crap.” They were barely out of arm's reach when almost on instinct Danica fired off a second blast that pushed them even higher, and over the top of the roof.

She let go of Noel after that so the woman could try to stick a decent landing while she barely managed to touch down without falling over. The use of her abilities was still fairly unrefined and this had to have been one of the craziest things she'd tried to date.

To say that she was surprised was a bit of an understatement. Noel had seen the other woman propel herself. That wasn't outside the realm of possibility in Noel's head. It was the fact that Noel had been planning how best to walk them out of the alley.

What words could she say that were not lies? What memories could she take that would assure their freedom? What did Noel need to tell herself in order to not give them away after a wipe? She pulled a sharpie from her pocket and had it uncapped and poised to write on the inside of her arm when something— someone knee checked her from behind and sent them both airborne.

Step one of unwieldy flying: don't flop around in a panic.

That was a little hard to do when Noel could see the side of a building fast approaching and not who'd gotten her airborne, but she did have time to put it together. Flight plus escape probably equaled Danica. They got a second boost and that made Noel feel a lot better about the side of the building that was fast falling away.

Step two of unwieldy flying: when flying becomes falling, don't flop around in a panic.

Noel had done pretty well when Danica was holding her and steering the operation. When Danica was quite suddenly found to no longer be providing those services, the flopping happened.

She windmilled her arms around and, now with her legs free, they sprawled out as if they might find some steady, safe surface to touch that was not fast approaching with the help of gravity.

Oh God. Gravity. She hadn't been that far up, but it was way more distance than she liked to fall down.

Step one of unwieldy landing: feet go on the ground. Since she'd been busy flopping around in a panic, Noel just couldn't get her feet in place in time. She did, however, manage to tuck and roll. She slapped the ground to try and stop her momentum, but it wasn't until she was covered in little tar pebbles and on the far side of the roof before she managed it.

"I... that... ugh." She flopped onto her back and took a moment to catch her breath.

Ugh.

"What is your brilliant plan now? That wasn't exactly discreet." And part of that had to be her own fault what with the flopping and the panic.

In what started out as a panic Danica had called attention to the two of them by trying to get away. It was a gut reaction and not born of forethought or planning. However what came next was. As Danica paced back and forth trying to think of what to do next, the sound of footsteps could be heard running up the stairwell leading to the roof of the old abandon building. From the sound of things there were either three or four people, then the door opened and a trio of police officer spilled out with their guns drawn. They weren't pointing them, but they were definitely ready for action. Instead of fleeing or attacking, she took a completely different approach... and began wailing.

“Thank god you're here, I thought that thing was going to kill us!” Danica said, running toward the officers.

“Ma'am, please calm down. What happened?” the first officer said.

“I don't know, it all happened so fast. My friend and I came up here to relax and just get away from things for a while, then we heard some sort of fight in the alley. I peeked over the edge and there was this big horrible spiky mutant attacking some guy, then it flew up here and took off. It was awful!” Danica said.

“Which way did it go?” the first officer said.

“That way, jumping along the rooftops,” Danica said, pointing behind them.

“Ma'am, I think it best if you and your friend leave the area,” the first officer said. The man began speaking into his shoulder radio and they moved back down the stairwell.

“My thoughts exactly... sucker,” Danica said, then turned to Noel and waved her toward the stairs. It didn't take long for the little woman to beat a hasty retreat through the crowd before anyone may have recognized either of them. Once they were away from the scene of the incident and things finally started to calm down, Danica started to lose it again. This time she didn't freak out and blow herself onto a rooftop. It was a case of nerves so bad she began to visibly shake.

“I'm really sorry about what happened back there, it's just... I never thought... god... Sector Seven again?” Danica said.

Well that was... new. Noel brushed herself off and got to her feet. Mostly she had a few small scrapes. Nothing huge.

She jumped when Danica wailed, unprepared. Again, Noel was planning to go a drastically less dramatic way when Danica took the lead. And lied. It was a month old slurry at the bottom of a commercial kitchen's food waste garbage bin kind of lie and left a lingering disgust in Noel's mouth.

The memorymancer held her tongue until after the men had cleared away. She wasn't sure what she'd leant to the situation --slightly bedraggled, wide-eyed, and silent-- but they didn't bother to question her or the situation. Which was good since they'd just killed a guy and wanted to get away with it.

>"...sucker."

Noel sighed. It was hard to tell if her apology was a lie or not. There was just so much residual lie taste in her mouth. She needed a drink. Diet coke or lots and lots of ice in some water. She had to clear out the lies and reset her pallet.

"Tell me about Section 7 or Sector 7 or whatever it is. Not here, though." Noel pushed the flyaways back from her face while she pulled up the memories she'd gathered from Hades. "There's a safehouse not too far." He wouldn't mind. Probably.