What triggered the feeling of tension in the air, Raine had no idea. Some sound? Was it contagious? All she knew was for almost an hour the class had sat quietly in the most mind-numbingly historical History class and the quite suddenly, things went from sleeps-ville to people looking around.

People were looking around and then looking at the farthest exit.

The professor was trying to call order to the class, but over a hundred whispers weren't easily silenced. Raine felt a thrill of fear wash over her. Fear, and maybe a little excitement.

"What is it?" Her classmate shrugged and turned back toward the far door.

Meanwhile, the door behind Raine's section opened and shut, seemingly of its own accord. A creature with tar black feet and nimble steps snuck up beneath a veil of its own making, an invisible barrier that let it pass unnoticed even close enough to ruffle the hair of a student.

All of the students and even the professor were captivated by the excitement of nothing and drawn in exactly not his direction.

Impishly, he snuck around to the light switches at the ground-floor level. He drew his twin swords, Twinkle and Jolly, and dropped his veil just before he hit the lights so that someone might get a glimpse of him before the room was temporarily cloaked in darkness.

"Did you forget what happens to bad boys and girls?"

((OOC: this power brought to you by clicking the Random Power link on the Super Power Wikia.))

Trace had gotten more than his share of assignments recently. Being a SUPER agent in the city that never sleeps kept him super busy because there was never really a shortage of things to do. With nearly 8.5 million people in the city, there were always people trying to ruin the peace and quiet of everyday life.

The blonde girl sitting quietly (maybe asleep) in her history lecture was not typically the type of person that he’d have assumed was one of them. He’d been covertly observing her all day and he really didn’t know what the higher ups in SUPER were thinking with this assignment. She seemed like a normal college girl. Which meant that there wasn’t anything going on that required close attention. The dossier on her had actually had some information, that she’d had some reported contact with the X-Men and that she was a gravity manipulator. That power sounded pretty awesome to Trace, but it wasn’t like she was a suspected terrorist. Someone at HQ still must have been kind of mad about one of his past exploits. Who really knew. This assignment was turning out to be incredibly dull.

In fact, Trace had just started feeling he head start to droop when suddenly a fairly strange feeling swept through the room. That was odd. It was kind of the feeling that people got before natural disasters, an overwhelming sense that something wasn’t right in the world and it was about to hit nearby in an incredibly big way. Glancing around, Trace realized that he wasn’t the only one with this feeling. In fact, pretty much everyone’s eye had been drawn to a location at the opposite side of the room.

Actually, Trace’s attention had been drawn to that spot also. His eyes seemed to focus on that spot in particular. He couldn’t draw them away. Not even a little bit. Slowly, he moved his hand on the desk that he had chosen near the rear of the lecture hall and found that he was still able to move. With a tremendous amount of effort, he peeled his eyes away from that spot. But like raindrops rolling over a windshield, he just couldn’t stop moving his gaze until he was looking in a different direction. That’s probably fairly significant he thought.
The thought quickly became irrelevant as Trace thought he saw something out of the corner of his eye and the lights in the room were extinguished.

A horrifying voice rasped “Did you forget what happens to bad boys and girls?”

Yeah, that was a big serving of terror with a side of nope for Trace.

Before he even really knew what he was doing Trace had thrown himself to the side and rolled to a crouch in one of the side aisles of the classroom, a time bubble springing into existence around himself. He needed to think. He needed to observe.

In the dark, he really couldn’t tell much. He could see a bit by the red illumination of the emergency exit signs that all hell was breaking loose in the classroom. There were people in the process of trying to flee, but it looked as though many people were just frozen in terror. Which made sense. Because a creepy voice asking about bad boys and girls was incredibly cringey. And tacky.

Errant thoughts aside, Trace realized that he was fairly close to a set of light switches at the back of the room. That solved one problem: if a creepy, raspy thing out of a horror movie was going to shut off the lights, it was the appointed duty of the only SUPER agent in the room to turn them back on, wasn’t it?

Trace crouched, ready to spring as soon as the bubble collapsed. As far as he could tell, the thing was still at the front of the room by the switches. The red light seeping out of the exit sign gave everything a slightly bloody hue which definitely did not help the situation. It looked as though the thing at the front was holding two objects in its hands and by Trace’s estimation, it probably wasn’t a bouquet of flowers and a box of chocolates. It also kind of appeared like it had horns, but the red light waned very near to the things position, so he couldn’t really tell.

Trace let the bubble collapse and sprang forward. In the slightly dark room, however, he misjudged the height of the stair nearest his foot and clipped it. His momentum drove him into the stairs in front of him with a solid thud and the air was driven out of him in a grunt.

This was going to be a heck of a day.

Raine was edging one hand slowly into the hidden pouch of her bag. Any second now, she expected trouble to come shooting through that door so she wanted to be prepared. Donning just a domino mask was a sure-fire way to get her recognized by her classmates, but what else could she do? Always wear her spandex under her clothes?

It was lucky, then, that the bad guy turned off the lights.

Raine slapped on her mask and hoped that would be enough to change from Raine to Zero. She scooped up her phone and put it close enough to her mouth so that she could whisper the trigger command and "Lumos" to it. She wanted her flashlight, but also because it was flippin’ sweet to be able to toggle the camera flash LED on and off by wizard voice command.

In those seconds the villain moved forward and there was a whistle of air and a thick series of thuds. Raine wasn't the only one who'd thought to turn their phones into a flashlight, but the thin streams of light weren't enough to truly illuminate the horror of what was happening up front. The press of bodies made it hard to see between them. It made the lights inconsistent.

Students were screaming, standing, and running. Some had been close enough to be in the splash zone. Most of the phone lights went to focus on the horror of what had been done to their history teacher, but Zero was on her feet trying to find whodunnit.

She readied a tether in her palm and pushed through the fleeing crowd to run towards the trouble.

"Hiding who you are?" He didn't sound close. He sounded really close. Zero whipped her head around, blonde ponytail swinging. Where was he!?

Trace groaned from his spot on the floor. That was a smooth move, especially in a time of crisis. He rolled over and pushed himself up, looking at the mass chaos that was happening in front of him. All around, cell phone lights started coming on and little pockets of light sprang up all over the room. Trace felt as if his stomach was falling out through their feet. No! That’ll draw him right to you! he thought, but bit his tongue before he could shout. He wouldn’t do much good if he ended up skewered before he could stop this guy.

He heard someone nearby whisper something that sounded vaguely familiar and a light clicked on. Trace started as he saw someone with a mask with a flashlight phone on. The person really didn’t look like the thing he’d seen down by the light switches, but he couldn’t be one hundred percent sure.

Just then, a woosh of air went by and the professor went down. From where Trace was standing, he could tell that no human being could survive the damage. Unfortunately, the professor didn’t seem to be a mutant with a secret healing factor because he reacted as one would expect and crumpled on the floor. Students in the area scattered, running and screaming in the dark. With everyone moving away from the scene, it made it hard to stand.

The person with the mask was moving forward, cell phone light blazing in the darkness. A shadow moved behind the individual and realized that it wasn’t a humanoid shape. He heard the same raspy voice question the choice of the person to wear the mask. They swung around, searching for the source of the voice. Trace figured out what was going to happen a few seconds before it did. This time, he pushed to his feet and ran as fast as he could for the pinpoint of light.

“Get down!” he yelled, as he bodily threw himself at the person with the mask. He made contact, his weight carrying them both to the ground. They skidded a short distance and Trace raised a time bubble to cover them and give them a second to recover. “You okay?” he asked, laying on his side. Behind them, the villain was standing just outside the bubble, dual blades raised as if for a swing. That was close.

If she could just see enough, Zero would tether his butt to the ceiling twice and they'd all just be done with today.

Unfortunately, today had other ideas. Like shouting, flying through the air tackles by white knights in dark places.

They were on the stairs. They both went down the stairs. Zero tapped herself and threw a tether up, but without being able to see, she didn't actually manage to hit the ceiling. Rather than going up, she went down. Hard.

Zero coughed, adrenaline spiking as she scrambled to mentally catch up.

> “You okay?”

First thing was first. "Nox." She croaked at her phone and it complied by shutting off the light. Was she okay? Zero didn't know. From what she could see everything outside the bubble was stopped or... actually, it was just going really, really slow.

"Ohmigod we broke time." Zero was up to her feet in a scramble of panic. "Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod." She pranced in place with knees high while flapping her hands uselessly and the THING WITH THE SWORD! "There is also that." Yeah. No. Getting less and less good by the moment.

She readied a tether and started a baseball-style wind-up. He could kiss dirt.

Trace couldn’t help but chuckle a bit at the reaction of the – what turned out to be a panicked young girl – at the flying leap-tackle and sudden appearance of a time-bubble. She proceeded to have a freak out after recovering from the force of a twenty-something government agent turning himself into a human projectile. He looked around, knowing they only had a minute or two before the bubble popped and they got up close and personal with what appeared to be a cross between a goat and some sort of demon. That had to be an awkward family life.

Trace turned back to the girl with the mask and saw her arm cocked back and ready to throw… well, something, directly at goat-demon guy. He quickly reached out and grabbed her arm near her elbow. “Wait!” he said, cautioning. “If anything goes across that, then goat-boy there gets to kill us with that sword. We really don’t want to do that yet. This bubble will keep us safe for almost two minutes. We have to work quickly.”

He looked around the area quickly. The bubble was about four feet wide and the goat-demon was just outside the bubble. His swing was incredibly, incredibly slow, but it was still moving. It was always disorienting for Trace to see things like that at first, so he couldn’t really blame the girl for flipping out.

“What do I call you?” he asked, reaching down to his ankle and pulling a firearm out. Carrying on a campus was really frowned upon, but SUPER had an exclusion. Shadow-arms of the government tended to get some special treatment, especially when they were the last line of defense against threats like the one they were currently facing. Trace stood and moved back into the row they were nearest to. “And what was that thing you were going to throw at him?” Trace asked.

He grabbed her elbow and Zero let the tether die in hand after his explanation.

Oh. It was a bubble of safety. She looked around at the panic and chaos that was nearly but not quite frozen in time. It was weirdly like going to the art museum-- thought provoking, interesting to look at, and she wanted to leave.

Since he was so knowledgeable, Zero was guessing this was his 2 minute egg.

> “What do I call you?”

She turned away from the trainwreck that was whatever was happening out there and saw him getting out a piece.

"Jiminy Christmas! You can't just whip one out at school!" Zero reached out to put her hand on his arm and make sure it was pointed way, way at the ground.

In the dim lighting she searched his face. She'd assumed he was an ally, but no mutant she knew used a gun. That was, like, cheating. So that left... Gang? Too clean cut. Mafia? He totally could be one of those Syndicate guys! Though why a Syndicate would save her life, Zero didn't know. Probably to convince her that he was a good guy and then shoot her in the back later. He could be that government group Impact had tried to her to to look into, but... well, really. He just didn't look it with that cute little face.

She frowned at him and rolled her free hand to get a tether ready. "Zero. They call me Zero 'cause I do gravity." Zero swatted him, charged both hands that were touching him with tethers and then tossed the second ends down to the ground. It looked like she'd thrown nothing. It would feel like gravity doubled for Mr. I-have-a-gun.

Double gravity wasn't too bad. Just more effort. Her few second demonstration done, she let him go. "Could do zero G's if it wouldn't burst your bubble." Which reminded her... "What do I call you? Bubbles?" No mask. Was it dangerous that she could see his face?

Trace sighed as she reached out and made sure his gun was pointed firmly and quite awkwardly at the ground. "Look, I'm a federal agent. And while I was born at night, it was not last night!" he said, slightly impatient. They did not have time for this! This was an emergency situation and it certainly needed to be dealt with.

Then, all of the sudden, a massive amount of force was pulling him downward. It was as if the earth itself was trying to swallow him. He was able to resist the force and remain standing, but it was definitely much more difficult. So the kid had chops. That was good in this situation. The increase in pull coincided with the girl explaining that she did "gravity", whatever that meant.

The pressure released and Trace straightened a bit. Well, they now had two mutants versus one goat boy. Those were better odds. "Okay, we have to be ready in a second. I'm saying we move out of head-chopping range and you put the whammy on him when I drop the bubble. I won't shoot him unless I don't have any other choice. If you can neutralize him, that won't be necessary, okay Zero?" he asked. Zero had to be a code name. Parents these days named their kids weird things, but hopefully not zero.

"You can call me Trace, by the way." he said, smiling in what he hoped was a reassuring manner.

Federal agent. The word clanged again and again in her head like a cheap cow bell. Federal agent. He was. Was he one of those guys? He said Federal agent, right? Like, just fessed up to it? Bubbles was so young. Raine bristled at the thought. People always thought she was too young to be an X. Why couldn't he be some weird clandestine stalker Big Brother man? He was older than she was...

Right! They had more pressing matters like the sword-wielding goat.

Zero turned toward the devil and got a reeeeeal good look. She looked up the trajectory of the sword, looked back at the bubble, and the ground, and looked around in the space that was clear as opposed to the parts of the world that were not clear.

She got two tethers ready in her hands-- invisible, intangible, but still very real-- and found a place out of what appeared to be strike range.

> "You can call me Trace, by the way."

Trace? What did Trace have to do with wibbly-wobbly bubbles of timey-wimey? "You really should work on your branding."

Their plan set, the bubble dropped. Everything went from red light to green light. The sword came down, goat-man's eyes widening. Zero was there, out of easy range and double throwing apparently nothing.

Goatman's sword stopped just short of hitting the ground. He rotated the handle and started to swing sideways at the closest targets, Trace and Zero.

The X-girl dropped the second half of the tethers and he stumbled under the new weight. Stumbled, but did not stop. He did have to adjust. She got a third and final gravitational pull ready and threw it at him. Did it hit him? Did it hit the sword? It was hard to say as Zero had to throw herself sideways to avoid the surprisingly long reach of the sword. But when she hit the ground, so did her hand. The last tether snapped an extra layer of gravity into place.

As Trace dropped the bubble, the world suddenly sprang into normal motion, as if this had been a rehersal for a play and the director had said action. And action there was. Zero sprang into motion according to the plan. She had made some comment about Trace's branding. That probably meant she thought 'Trace' was a codename. Just as well. A shadowy government agent probably should keep em guessing, even when he was telling the truth.

Trace had learned recently that SUPER was rumored to have all that movie villain badness that the CIA tended to have in suspense thrillers. He hadn't yet had a chance to look into these claims, but he'd figured it was probably best to let people draw their own conclusions about his affiliation for now. Throw out the words 'federal agent' and most people pick their own letters out of the alphabet soup to assign to you.

Zero flicked her hands and Trace saw her power seize Beelzebub. The kid had chops. Maybe they wouldn't end up as demon goat-chow. The plan faltered a bit when Zero had to throw herself aside to avoid a sword blow. She had apparently thrown another grav-ball-thing and when it activated, one of goat boy's swords was ripped free from his hand. He had been in the process of a swing against an unarmored opponent so the sudden resistance must've been a surprise. That provided an opening, so Trace drew a bead on the goat demon with his weapon. The chaos around them, however, made the situation unsuitable for firing a shot. There was too much going on. He couldn't fire without a greater than zero chance of hitting a civilian. He quickly bolstered his weapon.

Before the goat demon had a chance to react, Trace closed the two or three steps he needed to be within striking range. This assault was unexpected and Trace scored a few body blows, including one under the goat's sword arm. Ever hit the bottom of your arm on a hard surface? It hurts. Even worse if the nerve is included in the blow. The blow likely would have disarmed a normal human.

But we're talking about goat boy here.

The body blows obviously had some effect because the return attack, rather than taking Trace's head off, was a tremendous backhanded blow that caught Trace across the chest. Air rushed from his lungs as he was flung backwards and away from the demon. Trace saw his feet pass through his field of vision and felt a burst of pain as he landed on the ground a few feet away from his previous location. Groaning, he picked himself up and looked at the wall. A red alarm marked 'fire' sat within arm's reach.

Humans (and mutants) at the end of the day are just big, clever animals. And animals can be trained. Teachers react to the bell sounding, kids are taught to run out as soon as they hear the ice cream man, soldiers are taught to do their duty above all else. But the one thing they all have in common is that they've all been through a fire drill. And if that bell sounds, no matter how terrified a person is, their instincts drive them outside. Perfect. Trace reached up and pulled the fire alarm. This sent the remaining bystanders scurrying for the exit. Anybody left in the room had a reason to be there. That meant no one left to get in the way.

She was okay until she realized that her sideways juke and stumble had landed her in a puddle of something warm and sticky. She knew what it was. Raine wasn't dumb, she could feel it seeping through her clothes and touching her. But she knew that if she stopped to think it through, she would freak out. So she didn't stop to think. She was not at all going to admit that she knew what it was. She was just going to get up, schluck a portion of it off, and turn her shaking hands back toward the fight.

Trace was in the thick of it when her brain finally caught up to what she was seeing. The goaty guy was tethered to the ground and as a result was struggling under the extra pressure of his own weight being doubled. He'd dropped the sword in favor of using his fists. That was terrifying because the creature appeared to be plenty strong, even sending Trace flying by the end of their exchange.

Zero gulped.

That meant she was up to bat.

Goatman took a lurching step toward her when the fire alarm went off.

Right. She had to do this. Zero dropped the current tethers and readied a fresh one. She threw it at his face, not that it really mattered where it hit no one ever seemed to be able to feel them. The other end, Zero hulked straight up at the ceiling, throwing harder in order to ensure she got a good stick this time.

The effect was immediate, He went from running toward Zero, hands out ready to choke or hit or hurt, to falling up. A ragged few claws scratched up her cheek and lifted her mask as he passed. She readied a second tether and pegged him before dropping to tap the ground. He stopped falling. In fact, he stopped moving and instead stretched suspended somewhere between the high ceilings and the industrially carpeted floors.

He roared and Zero fell back onto her behind.

Whoa. That'd been close.

With all of the bystanders out of the way, Trace drew his firearm from his ankle holster again. He swept his aim across the room quickly and sighted upon a rather interesting sight: The masked girl had thrown herself aside and was covered in blood. Based on her reaction to a little thing like time stopping suddenly around her, that wasn’t going to go over well.

Trace took aim and readied a shot because Goats McBoats was charging at Zero. He aimed at his target and nearly squeezed the trigger when she hurled something towards the ceiling. And up the goat thing went. Trace watched as a few claws raked at the girl’s flesh. Yeowch, that was going to leave a mark. The goat man kept falling… being pulled… something? Upwards. Mid-fall the girl hurled something else unseen at the goat man and touched the ground, it’s motion arresting mid-flight.

The girl fell back on her hindquarters while goat man roared. Trace stood and ran to the girl’s side, keeping an eye on the goat just in case he was able to get free from whatever she had done to it. He knelt next to the girl an examined the exposed portion of her face. She had a few score marks up the side and a bit of blond hair coming out the back. “That probably hurts now, but it shouldn’t leave a scar.” he said, nodding towards the wound on the side of her face.

“You’ll probably want to get that mask off. You won’t want it getting in the wound” he said, turning to look over his shoulder at the still-roaring but mostly neutered threat that was goat-man. “I don’t suppose you’ll take care of that the rest of the way?” he asked with a slight grin.

((omg Goats McBoats. xDD))

Her face stung and the scratches went all the way up into her hairline. Zero raised a hand to touch, but the thing she'd been ignoring was there. It was undeniable now, despite the dimness of the auditorium.

Her hands were covered in blood.

She was sitting in blood. Covered in it, actually, since she'd pretty much rolled around in it. She couldn't touch the stinging scrape on her face. She didn't know what to do with her hands.

Zero hugged her knees to her chest and tugged the mask off at a point far away from her scrape which painted a stripe of jus de professor on her clean cheek. It was hard to hear him over the screaming of the alarms. Everything was a bit tinny anyway.

"He's stuck so long as I'm in the building, pretty much." So she couldn't even leave and ditch the police. Raine was messing this all up.

"I'm... I was just trying to help. Am I going to get in trouble for this?"

The look on the girl’s face was just about enough to break Trace inside. She looked equal shares disgusted, exhausted, terrified and overwhelmed. She had curled up into a near fetal position and had accidentally smeared something Trace didn’t really want to think about across her face. She answered his question with some trepidation in her voice. It really had been a rough day. In the heat of the action, Trace hadn’t considered that the girl was likely in this class. Like as a student. That had been her professor. The other wounded had probably been her friends.

And the screwed-up world they lived in had demanded that someone probably a little bit too young put all of that aside and act out of self-preservation. Hell, Trace still had problems with that himself, but he wasn’t really much older than the girl who was practically reduced to a ball in front of him. He’d joined the agency at a pretty young age, recruited right out of college and had been drafted directly into service. SUPER had been keeping tabs on him, much like he’d been sent to keep tabs on this girl.

Was he really ready to put someone else into the life that he had lived? Especially with all the rumors flying around of mutants disappearing into the abyss under what seemed to be a neon sign proclaiming ‘SUPER was here, but don’t ask us how?’

The girl’s next question was oddly on point. She stammered out that she was just trying to help. And Trace’s guts turned to ice when she managed to ask if she was going to get in trouble for this. “There is no way I’m going to let someone that just saved my life get in trouble for anything.” he said, grabbing a nearby discarded sweatshirt from the floor and offering it to the girl.

It sounded like first responders might be approaching the door from outside. It was hard to tell what anything sounded like with that blasted fire alarm going off. Trace put up a time bubble to tie up a few loose ends. He holstered his sidearm and pulled out his SUPER credentials. The letters ‘CIA’ were emblazoned upon them next to his picture and his agency serial number. His badge had the SUPER logo and would serve as a get-out-of-jail free and listen-to-me-or-else pass in lots of situations.

“Try to wipe yourself off. Put that on, then look kind of dazed. Act confused if they ask you anything. Let me do most of the talking. Don’t worry. I’m going to make sure everything is okay.” he said, releasing the bubble.

His face twisted up and Raine was no longer worried. He couldn't be one of the bad guys. Not with that face.

Raine inherited a sweater from the floor and was told to wipe off. Trace said the magic word. Act. Oh. It was a personal challenge now.

And now that she had a task, Raine made herself move. She started slow at first and picked up speed as the sound of a first responder team put some fear in her. Thankfully, Trace put up a bubble. That did really odd things to the continuous siren sound. Things that made Raine want to hold her ears and cry.

Instead, she stuffed her mask into her pocket and pulled her ponytail out of its I mean business scrunchy. She let the hair just be as bad as it wanted. The idea was to look a bit out of it, right? How dumb had she looked with just a mask on anyway. It wasn't like her clothes or hair had changed. People probably would have recognized her. But she also couldn't have not acted to protect others.

The sweater got used to sponge off the worst of the ichor. It smelled like funky BO. Now it smelled like funky BO and meat. She threw it far, far away and went back to holding herself.

There was a moment when she considered using her last tether to take herself up the the ceiling. She could have shucked her shoes so she wouldn't leave bloody footprints and perhaps hidden in the rafters.

Raine flicked her eyes to Trace. He said she'd be okay. She trusted him to see that through. So that meant it was time to act. Acting for Raine meant thinking it through.

Was she going to get in trouble? No. Trace said no. But if he hadn't been here... she would have been one of these people who'd been cut in half. If he wasn't here, the real bad people would come in and take her away. Raine had seen the labs. She'd been one of the ones raiding the place not too long ago. She let the horror of what she'd seen, the horror of what could be, and the horror of what almost was swell up inside her.

The goatman roared and flailed and spun in between the pulls of her tethers and that startled Raine out of her frightful imaginings. Trace must have dropped the bubble because time was moving normally again. A single officer spilled in through the doorway and he shouted for both of them to put their hands up.

Raine was hesitant to comply, but she did. More people came through the doors and almost everyone in the room flinched when the villain started shouting about seeing them, seeing their bad deeds, knowing who they really were. Spittle flew from his lips. It was easy kindling to keep her looking pale and scared and out of it.

She was glad that her power didn't ever seem to come from within her or whatever mystical stuff other mutants tried to say about strength and power. Raine's power just worked. She could have gone to sleep and it still would have worked.