Someone, somewhere, was always ready for a kiss.

Sveta could tell the man was trouble the moment she turned down the alley. It was one of those rare times she still broke out the crimson vigilante costume; there had been news of disappearances in the neighborhood - and while that was not exactly surprising in this part of town, there was also a distinctly strange quality about them: Instead of the weak, the mysterious kidnapper seemed to go for the strongest. Which just... smelled wrong. Sveta felt personally responsible for this part of town, having patrolled it for over a year, and while she was mostly retired now, given her new ties to Haven, the whole thing was fishy enough to merit a return of Red. None of the disappeared men and women were mutants, as far as she could tell. And none were confirmed dead.

The moment she turned into the alley, he could see the guy, dead ahead. He was not large, or bulky... in fact, he was on the scrawny side, with shaggy pale hair, the kind that said more "psycho" and less "thug." Sveta pulled a gun anyway. The former could be more dangerous.

"Ah, there ya are" the man grinned with a crooked set of teeth "I was wond'rin if ya go the invitation. Guess 'tis true, you gotta work hard for the Muse to appear..."

"What. The hell are you talking about?" Sveta snapped, feeling increasingly uncomfortable. The ice cube down her spine told her something was terribly wrong.

"Ya're a collector's item, dollface." the man grinned. Stomping his foot, suddenly there were two of him... Sveta's eyes narrowed. Body double? Illusions?... No, the second one was tall and blonde, but not the same face, the same build... her eyes widened with sudden realization. She knew that face. From the missing persons files.

The man stomped again. Another body appeared. Then another one. And another. All tall, bulky, hand-picked from the most threatening thugs on the block. All staring into space with eyes glazed over.

"And ya're gonna raise my collection to a whole new level..."

"Screw you." Sveta swore in Russian, before she aimed the first shot at the creep.

One of the men moved, as if jerked by invisible threads, and stood in front of him. Catching the bullet in his chest, he went down. The creep clicked his tongue, stomped, and another body popped up.

"So cheap. Second grade meat. Pity. Once I got the kiss of inspiration from ya, baby, I'm gonna collect prime, first-grade mutants only... now c'mere and pucker up."

Sveta's stomach turned with disgust. She swore, and put the gun away. The people, from what she could tell, were still alive, just under some kind of mind control... she was not about to shoot a bunch of civilians.
Fist fight it was.

All of them came at her at once - none of the Hollywood movie bs of standing in a circle and waiting their turn. Sveta kicked, and punched, and struggled, and when they grabbed a hold of her, she bit and clawed as well - but in the ends, she was outnumbered and overpowered. Feeling like she was caught in the middle of an unrelenting crowd, she heard the creep chuckling as he moved closer, his puppets giving way to him...

It was a rare day off for Jude. Well, he had a few minutes unaccounted for and he'd taken the opportunity to slip away. And a few minutes turned into a few hours. He'd needed to think things over. How much was this job worth to him? How much freedom was this, really?

Ragnarok was not a rich guy kink thing, as it turned out. It was a disorganized chaos cult. Okay, okay. So the disorganization shouldn't have surprised him. It was a chaos cult, after all.

He hadn't changed faces because he hadn't planned to be gone all that long and he hadn't planned to go all that far. And yet here he was. When Jude looked up from his brooding it was the dark and dusky evening and he'd wandered into the most reliable place he'd been able to catch sight of Svetty after their breakup: her favorite neighborhood patrol haunt.

There were musicals about this kind of crap.

He'd just wanted to catch a glimpse of her. The way things ended up between them last time... it was like an open wound. He hadn't dated anybody else. He wasn't really moving on until now. Even now felt like "not yet."

But if he saw her... maybe he could do something.

Or even if he heard her sweet, angelic...

>"Screw you." Sveta swore in Russian.

Jude was able to confirm that, yes. He could pick that phrase out of a crowd. Because, weirdly enough, there was a crowd when he followed the sound.

Yes! A fight! Jude pulled his jacket off and draped it neatly over someone bicycle before he flared his mostly useless wings and roared. This was what he'd needed to clear his head! Whether Svetty was the one at the bottom of the heap or not, Jude was diving in.

There was a... roar?... as someone new joined the fight. Sveta was not sure if it was another one of the puppets, or a whole separate entity, and honestly, right now she did not even care. The Puppetmaster seemed to know how her powers worked, and looked intent on going in straight for a kiss. Which, on top of making her feel like throwing up, was also a tremendously bad idea. If this guy went haywire, he could merge half the block into his collection... Sveta kicked one of the puppets. She still felt bad about hurting civilians, but less so than allowing a whole army of them to be zombified.

The Puppetmaster was distracted by the roar, and turned away from the dogpile to see who had shown up. He looked vaguely surprised.

"You?... What the hell are ya doin' here, hm? This ain't a good neighborhood for the likes o' ya... an' if you wanna join the collection, get in line. Gotta deal w'my date first..."

Jacket safely stowed, Jude smirked his way right up to the pile and grabbed one of the three men by his shoulder. Jude wasn't super strong. These guys weren't super strong. But they were realistically stronger than he was and more than motivated to keep the wriggling blond down.

But once he'd felt that caffeine kick along with the outfit and the hair, all Jude could see was red, anger red over Red the vigilante.

He wrenched with all this body's might and managed to dislodge one brute enough to slug him across the jaw. He kicked into the knee of the next, but when he went to reach down to Svetty, another strong man caught one of his wings and pulled him just out of reach. The wings slapped back.

Jude realized that this was not a winning strategy when he took a jab to the gut that threatened to wind him. Satisfying to go through a slug-fest, maybe, but not winning.

"Hell of a date you're having." He growled and yanked a man away from Svetlana. They were playing some strange game of mutual keep away, only Jude didn't have as many bodies as the bad guy did. He grabbed the latest man to put his hands on her and kicked him back toward the man who'd spoken.

This was sick on so many levels.

The winged man seemed intent on saving the day. Sveta kicked and struggled herself as the grip of one of the many bodies loosened on her. The guy was not much help, but he might just provide an opening long enough for her to get away... and she needed to get away. Her powers, mixed with the puppet dude's, would have been catastrophic, and possibly permanent. If it meant leaving Wing Dude to deal with the dogpile by himself... she would just have to do that for the greater good.

>>"Hell of a date you're having."

"Tis not a date... tis attempted kidnapping" Sveta clarified with a grunt as she managed to tear her arm free and dish out a punch to a mean-looking woman. The puppetmaster began to say something, but he was hit with the body the winged guy threw at him. It staggered him for a moment, but then the body got reabsorbed... and another took its place. "DAMN there's so many of him..."

The momentary off-balance was just enough for the man to lose his grip on his puppets for a second. It allowed Sveta to slip form the middle of the pile, and break mostly free, before the puppets turned to follow. She could kick and punch more freely now, but her escape routes were still blocked.

"Hey! Got any powers other than the wings?..."

"You don't look like a kid to me." And that was a crying shame. She'd been cute at 16. But then, ladynapping just didn't have the same ring to it.

Huh. That absorption trick was, on a scale of cool to creepy, sitting somewhere in the middle. It'd be cooler if he could do it too. A quick duck under a punch and Jude noticed Svetty squirting out from between the scrum. No. He couldn't just go copying powers now. That'd give him away.

If things got desperate? Maybe. For now, he was really just letting off steam and making sure that little miss "I'm an adult and I do what I want" wasn't hauled off to Timbuktu.

Jude swung around and used the momentum to toss yet another baddie, this time a grabby woman, into the puppet man. He wasn't sure if that made things worse or better for them since another had popped right back out last time, but for a brief moment at least there were fewer of them.

> "Hey! Got any powers other than the wings?..."

Well that deserved a look.

"Yes." And he smiled the kind of smile that made the undergarments of men and women alike combust; the kind of smile that deserved to be slapped off his face. Madeline had praised him for how quickly he'd picked that habit up.

Jude caught a punch and used his free hand to hit the attacker in a specific way to bruise or potentially even dislocate the enemy's shoulder. Yes. This was the way: a brutal break down of his useable parts. It cost him a solid hit to the ribs, but he repeated the process on the one that'd hit him.

These were arms that had tried to hurt her.

>>"You don't look like a kid to me."

Sveta rolled her eyes as she struggled to get free. Humor. Great. Dude thought he was good-looking AND funny. Leave it to her to get an annoying Knight in Shining Armor. Not that she had any place to complain.

"Less jokes, more punching."

The puppermaster was definitely not backing away from the fight. Even with two people against him, he had more than enough bodies to throw around. Sveta was getting out of breath, and her only hope of getting away was for her sudden rescuer to have a power that was more useful than charms. Did he?...

>>"Yes."

"Great." Sveta ducked, and willingly took a few hits to get closer to him "Might be about time to use them. Need a hand?"

Hopefully, they were actually useful in a fight.

Her panties had not combusted. It was understandable considering the life-or-deathness (though, honestly, this didn't seem that serious), but Jude couldn't say that he wasn't disappointed. There was even a part of him that was sad that she hadn't immediately called him out despite the different face, despite the different voice.

Someone caught his wings and yanked hard enough that Jude was nearly pulled off his feet. He saw Svetty take a hit and keep moving toward him, her only ally in the alley. Jude wrested his poor wings out of the wing-puller's hands and gave them the attention and head smacking against the wall that they deserved.

There seemed an endless supply of them. Or maybe it was the fact that hits seemed to affect Jude and Svetlana worse. The puppet people didn't mind an unusable arm or blood in their eyes. They kept getting back up. They kept coming.

The good guys needed to get out of this alley. But the wall behind them appeared to be a building face rather than a scaleable fence. They had long since passed the fire escape. The walls were brick. Not even the crumbling mortar looked good for a hand hold in order to go up.

Their only option was through. And they hadn't yet figured out how to do that. Jude ducked under a punch thrown with all the attacker's might and dumped the baddie behind them.

So. If he copied the puppetmaster... Would this one become his?

His eyes darted to Svetty. As usual, his power was doing the invisible equivalent of waving and pointing at her. That was the power it wanted. If he let his power off the hook, it'd try to grab hers. So Jude had to go touch the puppetmaster if he wanted to guarantee that was the power he grabbed.

He crouched like a runner and sprang forward. Just one touch. That's what he needed.

They had fought themselves into a corner. There was only a brick wall behind them, and a constant stream of puppet bodies in front of them, grasping and punching and struggling. Sveta could hear the puppetmaster cackle, which was almost a cliché thing to do for a villain at this point. The guy by her side, wings or not, was not proving to be very useful... other than giving an extra pair of hands for holding off the bodies, but they both knew they could not do so indefinitely.
He declined her offer of a hand, which was no surprise, really, since she had neglected to tell him what exactly she was offering. They got distracted by the brawl again, and once she was done beating down the latest opponent, she was about to explain what she meant...

... but the guy lunged forward instead, apparently determined to get to the source itself.

It was a desperate move, and potentially dangerous too. Sveta assumed from the puppetmaster's hints that he could not absorb mutants, but she could not know for sure, and neither did her new ally. But he was also right - if they were going to end this, they had to take out the mutant, and she could not get near him without giving him exactly what he wanted. So instead, Sveta moved to she side, drawing most of the bodies with her (since she was the main target), allowing an opening for the winged man even as she was bogged down by another dogpile.

Better make it quick...

The puppetmaster frowned as the winged man lunged for him, and attempted to bring up more puppets for his own defense... but between the sudden attack, and many of them still going for Sveta, he was not quite fast enough.

Success! Jude wrapped his hand around the man's ankle just before he hit the ground and let his power loose. His power loved certain powers more than others, but it would never pass up whatever was closest. He felt it like an invisible tongue, reach up and disappear into the man.

Yes! His power was now Jude's power. Now the copycat just had to figure out how to use it...

The puppetmaster looked down at Jude, confused at the triumphant look on his face since nothing seemed terribly different. He motioned with his head for some of his puppets to pry Jude off of his leg and they obeyed.

"I'll take you too. Can always use more bodies."

Meanwhile, the other puppeted people had closed in on Svetlana. They had gone from both being bodily free (but trapped in the alleyway) to both being directly manhandled by bloodied and bruised people.

Jude tried to... what? Absorb one? But it was like fiddling with a cypher he'd never tried before. He had the pieces, but nothing lined up right to make these people his people.

Oh man. These were people. Like, people-people! Jude hadn't actually thought about it until he could feel them breathing on him. Were they still in there? Trapped? Feeling every hurt they put on them?

The winged guy managed to lunge for the puppermaster and... touch him? That was... not very impressive at all, and earned a groan from Sveta as he got hit by one of the puppets, having been distracted by her would-be savior's heroic attempts. She continued to struggle, of course, but things were not looking very good...

"Get off me!" the puppetmaster snarled, kicking out in the man's direction. The puppets seemed momentarily confused. Instead of one, now there were two possible wills giving them instructions on what to do... and it made them sluggish in following either. As the winged person reach out to one of them, it allowed itself to be reabsorbed with almost visible relief.

"WHAT!" the puppetmaster yelled, staring incredulously as one of his bodies was absorbed by someone else "NO!"

Realizing what had happened - although not sure how - he began struggling in Svetlana's direction. "Bring her to me!"

If he was going to keep his puppets, if he was going to defeat this... this thief who was using his own powers, he needed to get to the Russian girl first. Sveta knew this too, but she was surrounded. And momentarily surprised too. This guy was... what, another mimic?... Go figure...

Judebrose narrowly avoided taking a boot to his face as he was manhandled to his feet. He was working hard to find a way to free these people, but it wasn't happening fast enough. Even when he did somehow manage to grab one, it was almost like the puppet wanted to be absorbed rather than Jude actually figuring it out.

The man bellowed about bringing Svetty to him and Jude managed to take on the other puppet who was at his shoulder. On purpose!

He smirked, one step closer to figuring out this power.

Except he was smirking at a puckered set of lips and his girl slow motion approaching one another. (Well, not slow motion, slow motion. Svetty was fighting hard enough to make him proud.)

He wasn't close enough to stop it.

He couldn't figure out how to push the puppets out of his body like the puppet man did. He'd just gotten them in there!

He was already moving, but it felt like his power was already there. Because he'd copied the man? Because it always wanted Svetty? He couldn't be sure. And he wasn't sure what he could do with it so he... tried.

He gave that imaginary line of his power a tug and pulled what felt like another imaginary line out of the puppet man.

Now there was only one will controlling the group of puppets. And Jude didn't want Svetty anywhere near him.

sveta struggles as she was dragged forward, almost within reach of the puppermaster now. The situation was ten kinds of messed up. The guy was disgusting to begin with, and the whole forced-kiss scenario made Sveta's stomach turn; but even worse than that, if he did manage to amplify his own powers and absorb her, he would have an endless supply of power to collect people and wreak havoc on the city. Sveta swore loudly in Russian, making the puppets work for every inch forward, but even she could tell that it was a losing fight, and that her ally was not going to make it in time to intervene.

Except, he didn't need to.

Sveta's body jerked forward as the puppets froze. She could feel the tension in the hands holding her as one will took over another - and then she was being moved away, a lot faster as she had been moved forward, until she was against the brick wall of the alley, with a wall of bodies between her and the (former) puppetmaster.

Well, at least the mimic was a fast learner...

"NO!" the guy yelled again, turning to the winged man who stole his powers, and blindly throwing fists and kicks at him, seething with rage. Sveta shook the last hands off of herself, and considered running for it. Her being in the alley was a recipe for disaster... and yet, she was not quite done yet.

This time, using a gun was totally fair game.

The bullet hit the puppetmaster in the knee, and he crumpled to the ground, still yelling. The puppets didn't move. Sveta was now standing in-between them, looking down at the jerk on the ground.

"Give up." she growled, gun still in one hand, and phone in the other "Let's call the MRC, shall we?..."

Judebrose had landed on his knees and now he couldn't move. Or open his eyes. Or risk anything beyond putting his arms and hands between himself and the puppetless puppetmaster despite the abuse he was taking. Jude was busy.

His world had focused down to one thing.

The string of power that he pulled away from the puppetman was like wrestling an eel. It didn't want to be out of his body. It kept slipping and sliding away. It kept not wanting to be there.

And then there was a gun rapport close enough that he was half deafened and hit with the barest sprinkle of blowback blood from the puppetman's knee.

He was so shocked that he let go of the power.

The puppets that were left in play all started screaming and grabbing their knees. Ah. They didn't feel their own pain, but they did feel his.

Jude was realizing that Ambrose's handsome nose had been smashed. His cheeks and arms hurt, but his anger had mostly been ineffective at actually damaging him. He was feeling more than a little light headed, though. She- she just shot him.

"You're gonna call the cops after you shot him?" He wiped his face and wrestled his power and his will and the puppets as he got to his... actually he sat down. Dirty alleyway. Covered in sweat and blood? Yeah. He was a little bit beyond caring at this moment and beyond ignoring anything that the puppetmaster had to say about anything.

"Let me just take his power away instead."

He starting to think... maybe... Svetty wasn't a nice person.

Judebrose closed his eyes and tried to do the thing that he'd done, but on purpose. His power pulled the man's power out of his person. It didn't want to go. He pulled at it. It wouldn't detach.