Pressed against the too-clean alley wall, he finally took a few moments to catch his breath. It had been a hard run from the gym, back to just the clothes on his back the moment he saw the cruiser parked outside. Of course he hadn't been fool enough to run immediately, or to turn around and try to sneak back the way he'd come. No, he'd continued to the next light, and then turned as if that had been his intended route all along. Then he had run, cutting through alleys and willfully ignorant streets until his lungs burned the way they only did when he didn't stay in place. He stopped at a chain-link park rather than passing its fountain by, but pressed on again as soon as the worst of the summer heat was slicked from his face and neck.

He wasn't sure when the sirens had begun to pick up, or if they were even for him, but he had hurt that human pretty badly the night before. Logically, they would close in on him eventually. If that was now... well. He'd heard enough stories from mutants who had been imprisoned, falsely or technically legally. Or because they had actually done something unarguably morally wrong. It wasn't like he denied that mutants were individuals, and that some weren't such great people. That was because they were people, not because they were mutants. It didn't make them deserve to be harassed, assaulted, murdered.

He had plenty of proof that the law, and by extension the police, did not see that as just cause for his defence of other mutants. Unfortunately. Thus the whole running, and only resting once the sirens remained in the distance and his goal was nearby. See, it didn't make any sense to regularly test the law and not have any back up plans. This one was just a reality-warping gamble.

The... headache ahead was as blocked off and supervised as he'd seen before. The anomaly was still there, at least. All he had to do was get close, right? Get past the inner edge of defences, and then he'd be home free until he had to deal with the other side. They didn't seem inclined to let someone walk up and through, though. Powerful people thought it inappropriate to let people travel between realities and all that.

Well, if people were using it to evade his inequitably-applied laws, he'd want to stop them too. Too bad for them that they hadn't put up any barriers that would stop a gust of snow. Who thought about snow during the height of summer?

He'd need to prep first, though. Like resting enough that his recovery wasn't taken over by snow - he'd need to limit his downtime later, since there was no telling what he'd find on the other side - and then building up enough snow for a first phase shift. All without drawing attention from the seemingly bored-but-patient guards. Cops. Cops everywhere. Tch. Fat lot of good they ever did for the most vulnerable of the people they were supposed to protect. If they did their jobs properly, then people like Aiden wouldn't have to risk themselves to protect others.

Anyway, his heart felt like it was back down, his lungs weren't straining, and the heat wasn't making his head swim at all. Good. He checked his pockets quickly - wallet with cash and a library card, still not much else; phone that probably wouldn't work on the other side, but he'd probably be able to pawn before anyone realized why. He shot a quick text to a couple of people, intentionally vague but reassuring that he wasn't planning on getting arrested today (or any other day). Once everything was resecure, he drew a deep breath and settled into a neutral guard position.

Then he started moving, and filled the alley with snow.

The police were starting to look toward the alley by the time he felt ready, snow flecking from its mouth. They were too late, though, unless one of them could, oh, fill the sky with fire - but then they wouldn't be a police officer, now would they? He drew a slow breath, stilled himself,

and breathed himself into a hundred million unique shards, drifting on the wind.

His world shifted to a great deal of absence, rather than sense, purely aware of himself and the pinpricks of pain as his outermost snowflakes melted.

Gradually the pain resolved into an awareness of where he could not be, long panels running parallel with a maybe uneven plane between them. He could feel their ends in one direction, then end of the alley. It wasn't a straight shot from there to the guarded rift, but he remembered the angle well enough. Straight out, and then a bend to the right, less than forty five degrees but at least thirty-odd. He willed himself along the alley, and felt the places his self-flakes died grow smaller, and then vanish. Only the ground remained, spreading out until it was the only concrete sense of the world he had, no proof that he had turned the right amount or in the right direction.

Then there was the sharp pain of melting, hundreds and hundreds of points at a time, nearly overwhelming before it resolved into a moving shape. A person, a human, a cop. Waving arms, probably. He didn't have the detail to be sure, or the time or inclination to try.

Too little too late, on the officers' parts, however many there even were, because even when he couldn't tell what it was that was melting him - basically anything did, out in the baking heat like this all was - he was past them and moving and then

Hoarfrost was used to abrupt unconsciousness. This was infinitely worse.