He was waving goodbye. He was watching her little face scrunch up into tiny OLD wrinkles and her tiny OLD lips for tiny little bad words.

Jude snortled at the crowd's reaction to her. It was just delicious.

She handled the crowd with tiny OLD fingers and grabbed him. He was watching all that, walking backwards and maintaining his prom queen smile and go **** yourself wave.
He really wasn't watching traffic. Which was a shame, considering the fact that he'd just gotten hit by a car and now they were walking backwards into the street again.

> "Alright, ***hat. Where'd you put my stuff?"

He slapped her arm upwards to break her grip on his shoulder, but the girl had guts and not a shred of shame. He instead kept moving back toward the burning building and hopefully away from the crowd.

"Where'd you put mine?" He countered. Because, clearly, he had nothing on him and she had CLOTHES on her tiny wrinkled old harridan body.

"How does this work for you? You just teleport out of your clothes? Heal on the way? I know you're a mutANT!" He'd stepped on something sharp which made him jerk back and off balance. He used the opportunity to grab the front of the woman's shirt to steady himself. Except he didn't get her shirt. He'd forgotten that she was tiny. His flailing hand slapped and grabbed at her face. Hard.

Where had she put his stuff? Oh, okay. Yeah, now she was really pissed. There was no way that she was letting him do all that and then leave.

>>"How does this work for you? You just teleport out of your clothes? Heal on the way? I know you're a mutANT!"

”What?” Charlie asked in disbelief. She’d never gotten that response before. How did that work? Was he a power copier, or something? If so, that explained why he had been able to survive being burned alive. It didn’t explain why he was mad at her, though. ”I didn’t steal any of your stuff, a**hole. If you are what I think you are, then you got a little taste of what it feels like to come back to- ARG!”

She didn’t get to finish her sentence as she was slapped part way through. Yes, slapped. Like someone on Grey. It damn hurt, too. She staggered backwards, caught off guard by the sudden act of violence, before turning a fiery glare on the kid.

Oh, he was so dead. She was going to make him wish that he had died in that fire instead.

With fire in her eyes, Charlie charged forward, her arm raised, and let a return slap free on the kid. There was nothing accidental about that slap; no, it was charged with all the anger that she had pent up inside, and her aim was sure. The kid ****ing deserved it.

He had tried and failed to save a life.
He had tried and failed to be a hero.
He had been in an ambulance, sure that today was the day he was going to die.

And then... poof. Teleported into the most socially awkward literal car wreck of a situation that Jude could imagine. He'd been slammed against a windshield, oogled by a crowd, shouted at, accused, he'd stepped on some glass, and gotten into a verbal fight, and now he was slapped. On purpose. Hard. On the face. Like... like a kid. Like a scorned lover. Like someone who didn't matter and who wasn't insecure, naked, hormonal, angry, and alone.

His head snapped to the side with the force of the blow and his eyes opened wide.

The world stopped to take a collective breath as his jaw clenched, body tensed, and fists balled.

404: Logical thinking not found.

Jude launched himself at her not minding in the least that he was naked anymore. She was at fault here. This whole situation was her doing. He used his momentum to take them both to the ground. He didn't really have a plan beyond making her as hurt and embarrassed as he was.

((OOC: God-modded with permission from Sen.))

Her slap made contact, making the boy's head twist to the side upon impact. It felt good to see him hurt like that. Charlie wasn't exactly a masochist, but sometimes, people needed to be taught lessons, and she didn't mind doing the teaching.

She took her hand back and shook it out, figuring that the fight would be over after that. The kid was taller than she was, but he didn't look particularly robust, so she figured that he wasn't about to get himself into something he wouldn't be able to handle. He'd already died that day, after all, and he couldn't possibly be as stupid as he looked.

She was wrong.

The air was forced from Charlie's lungs as she was tackled to the ground. She fell with a thunk, doing her best to hold her head off of the ground as she made contact. It was hardly her first time being tackled.

It was, however, her first time being tackled by a naked hormonal teen. That was a new experience. She squirmed underneath him, attempting to free herself, or at least get the upper hand. Most of all, she was trying to avoid his important bits. She wasn't really looking for that kind of tackle.

After a good amount of flailing, Charlie had made her way out from under him. As soon as her arms were free, she grabbed his shoulders and forced him off. On the way down, she grabbed his hair and slammed his head against the pavement. Warm, sticky blood began to flow freely from the wound that was blocked from her vision. She hadn't meant for things to get quite that violent, but she'd been caught up in the moment. It was just as shame that he had turned out to be so stupid. 

A shocked gasp sounded from the watching crowd behind them as Charlie got to her feet. She lifted her arms in exasperation at them. What was she supposed to do if not that? Whatever. They didn't understand anyway.

"Yeah? Well **** you too!" she cursed at them, looking straight at their cameras. Great. It was going to take her forever to live that one down.

The kid was still alive, it seemed. That was a shame. She didn't really want to see him live on with brain damage, and she was still feeling petty. Charlie huffed and grabbed him by the scruff of his neck. Aggressively, she dragged him forward, closer to the heat that radiated from the building, and tossed him as hard as she could into the flames. It didn't send him very far, but the flames licked at his skin and caught the shirt that he was wearing.

There. That was a lesson if she'd ever seen one. 

They were a scramble of arms and legs. Jude couldn't seem to get her pinned down, but he did at least get another good rage-induced slap in. The woman was slippery and... Jude was distracted by the flash of sunlight reflected off of a phone. Was someone recording? Hell in a handbasket! Did they have no shame? He was naked from the waist down!

He knew not to look away, but Jude was aghast at the crowd's behavior. AGAIN. It was said that life held no constants, but humanity was sure shaping up to be the most consistent disappointment.

The blonde wrestled him off and took a hold of his hair so that she could slam his anguished, angry face into the asphalt. His forehead hit hard enough that he thought he might have felt the insides of his skull slosh back and forth. His jaw clicked shut behind the impact and his shoulders and body weren't far behind. That was the second forcible hit to the head he'd taken in the last few minutes, the first being delivered express via moving car. Jude saw nothing but a haze of dark gray while his eyes tried to catch up to whatever his body was and was not doing.

He seemed to be... moving. Dragged. The lady was stronger than she looked. How unfair was that?

She kind of pushed him or threw him. Jude was almost but not quite on his feet, but that only made him stumble back further since he never actually had any balance. He fell against something hard with his back first. Something hard. And hot.

He screamed, piteous and feral. The screaming made his head hurt worse, but how could he not? He was on fire for the second time today.

It went on longer than it should have. No one came to help. Eventually he lost the strength to roll or attempt to pat himself out and the screams died down to a whimper.

Power. Her power. There was something important he needed to remember...

---

Blonde women were the worst.

Jude, wholly naked, took two giant steps out and away from the fire. GAH! He stepped on a glass Fanta bottle and nearly biffed in his hurry to get away. He stumbled, but caught himself on his hands and knees.

He felt jittery and strangely horrified. He needed a hug, and... he turned his face to see the bottle better. There was a reflection. A woman. Walking away. Blonde.

A seething depth of hatred like Jude had never before experienced surged up through his core and before he knew it, Jude had picked up the glass bottle and hurled it at the back of her head.

Charlie dusted her hands off as she watched the flames lick at the boy. He was screaming and she was pretending not to notice. He would be fine… probably.

She ignored the cameras, screams, and yells of terror behind her as the onlookers watched in horror. Yeah, she realized that it was likely a little terrifying to watch someone be burned semi-alive, but they didn’t understand the bigger picture. It was all for a reason. The kid had to be taught a lesson, or he would keep going around, blaming all his problems on random people who passed through. Who knew! Maybe she had even saved him from actually killing someone else!

She was in the right there. It was that thought that kept her walking away, shaking her head as she abandoned the scene. He would understand eventually, and the media would die down at some point. She knew for a fact that there wasn’t much that they could do to build a case against her if the kid was still walking around the streets of New York.

Maybe she would get a drink, or-

GRAH!

There was something sticking out painfully from the back of her neck. It was sharp and surrounded by warm, sticky blood. When she pulled her hand away from the fresh wound, her fingers were covered in it. Damn.

She shot one last murderous glance back before she fell to the ground. "You're s_{o dea...}" God dammit, she should have never turned her back on him. Her body disappeared, leaving her clothes and a small puddle of blood behind.

---

Motherf*****!

Charlie sat up with a start, her face twisted in anger. There was no haze when she woke up that time. Her memory from the last life was perfectly intact, and she was pissed. She hadn’t replaced her clothes after her last death, so there was nothing for her to put on except for an old shirt from the bar that hadn’t been unwrapped from the plastic yet.

She put it on, the XL shirt hanging just over her knees as she trudged up the stairs. She took a shot off of a waitress’s tray and downed it quickly before looking out the window. The street was still as she had left it a few minutes before, and she could even see the nude little idiot running away down the street. There was no use chasing him at that point.

If she ever saw him again, though… he was going to die for real.

[END]