Trace Tanner

Tonight was one of those nights where Tulla Kanehsatake was actively looking for trouble. Earlier that day she had sat in one a court hearing. The guy has charged with second-degree murder but had gotten off. Tulla didn't have to be a telepath to know that he was guilty.  Almost all of them were guilty and just happened to have a damn good lawyer. She was able to get information about who the criminal was a friend of her that works at the court house as a prosecutor. A damn good prosecutor. Though before she headed out to track the criminal, Tulla slipped on her outfit. It was a beautiful costume that made her feel even more powerful. In just a matter of seconds, the physician's assistant went from Tulla to Hummingbird. 

She decided to take her car and drive to where Marcus Irdis usually went --- a sport's bar. She parked a few powers away and decided to walk the way there. The fabric in front and behind her gently flapped in the wind as she turned the corner. Hummingbird was about to turn the corner when a force hit her in the back of the head. With a grunt, she fell forward and quickly flipped onto her back to see that it was a group of mutant hatters that had possibly seen her get out of her car. There was maybe five of them, a couple of bats as weapons. Great. 

Hummingbird quickly got herself up and narrowed her eyes at the one that hit her. A pair of hummingbird-like psi-wings appeared on Hummingbird's face in readiness. With a growl, she let loose a psionic damage bolt that caused the man to stumble back and curse. There was now a thin lavender glow around his head that only she could see. 

"You want to mess with me? Great, my mind needs a good exercise." Before another one could attack, she wrapped her arms around the back of his head and slammed his face into her knee. Hummingbird then did a back flip away from the ground and stretched her arms around toward them. The psi-wings on her face flapped faster as she released a psionic blast. The bullies yelled in pain as their hands rested on the either side of their heads. The man that got hit with the psionic bolt felt a bit more pain than the other four. 

Trace was still in the process of adjusting to this new world he'd found himself in. It was... the same... but it was also different. Very strange. Kind of unsettling, but he was really starting to get used to it.

A horn sounded loudly as someone in traffic did something that someone else didn't like. Although it was an act of aggression, it was somewhat comforting. Apparently, no matter what universe you were in, New York was always, always New York. The cab driver that had been honked at gestured rudely out the window and the driver behind him and some words in a couple of dialects were exchanged. Man, it was really starting to feel like home here!

Trace walked a bit further down the road, taking in some of the sights and sounds. There was a Sports bar nearby that he'd been to earlier in the week and he'd really enjoyed the burger he'd had. It was delicious. He had to have another. Approaching the joint on foot, Trace encountered a particularly odd scene.

On one side, there was a woman, arms extended doing... Something?... To a group of men that were holding their heads with obvious signs of pain. Apparently, she was the source of the affliction which didn't look to be relenting in any way. Trace didn't much like people picking on others. It wasn't something he ever really let slide. It especially got to him when mutants set themselves against humans. Humans just weren't capable of the feats that mutants were. It simply wasn't fair.

Trace's training kicked in and he flattened himself on the wall just out of sight around a corner. He reached for his firearm and- It wasn't there. Trace was no longer an agent. He didn't have a duty weapon anymore. It wasn't a thing. Sighing, Trace decided he'd have to do this the old fashioned way.

Trace softened his steps so that he wouldn't be heard. He sped up his cadence until he was at a weird half-crouch run. As he got behind the woman, he pushed a time bubble into place and swept his leg at the woman's hoping to take her down without getting whammied. Hopefully he could pull it off.

Hummingbird could feel her power stared to to drain. These guys weren't about to attack her and get away with it. That was her thing. The Native American mutant was just about to retract her power when she felt herself slam onto the sidewalk by an unseen force behind her. For some reason, her hitting the ground was faster than the first time she did it. Thankfully she didn't hit her head or anything like that. Of course fhensmack would leave a bit of bruising on the thigh she landed on. This had stopped her psionic blast abruptly, but thankfully the pain from the blast lingered a couple of seconds.

Almost immediately the mutant haters recovered (the one who was hit with the psionic bolt earlier had a temporary headache for the rest of the night).

"Yo, thanks, man! This f****** mutant b**** was messin' wit our minds!" One yelled.

"She gave me a headache, man! Stupid ass costume!" Another shouted, kicking her in gut. Hummingbird folded in on herself at the pain with a grunt of pain. This was not how she has planned her might.

"Let's get this b--!" The one with the bat started to say as a lavender stun bolt shot from Himmingbird's frontal lube. The man with the bat immediately dropped it and fell to his knees with a shocked look on his face. That was one she didn't have to worry about for a while.

With another grunt, Hummingbird turned to look over her shoulder to see who it was that attacked her from behind. Her face became angry and the psi-wings on her face bested faster similar to a hummingbird's.

"What are you doing?! They attacked me, you idiot!" She snapped, putting her index and middle finger together and touching her right temple. For some reason, she perceived time. Way was everything happening so quickly? "What did you do to me?!"

As soon as the time bubble he'd initially used to disrupt the woman's assault faded, Trace began hearing anti-mutant epithets. Uh oh. That wasn't generally good.

To her credit, the woman didn't allow Trace's intervention to keep her down for long. The thug with the bat began approaching to further assault her and was driven down with a somewhat stunning use of the woman's power. He was incapacitated. Down for the count, not getting up. So that left four.

As the others began to advance, the woman rounded (as much as she could from the ground) on Trace and began accosting him. Trace reddened because the verbal assault was well deserved. He'd actually misread the situation from stem to stern and had, in fact, just committed something that could be considered a hate crime. Well, that wasn't a great way for his day to go. Time to do the hero (who caused his own dire situation) thing.

Trace stepped forward between the woman and the thugs and put up a new time bubble, wide enough to encompass the woman and himself, but not the thugs outside it.

The wonderful thing about his bubbles, when used as such, was that to the person inside the bubble, time outside the bubble stopped. It didn't actually stop, but the progression of time inside the bubble sped up miraculously. Inside the bubble, days could pass in a mere moment. Well, that would be the case if someone other than Trace had his powers. The most he'd ever been able to muster was a couple of minutes. But it's not how long the bubble lasted that was important to Trace, but how he used it. At least that's what he told himself.

In the relative safety, Trace turned back and plastered a sheepish grin on his face. She was going to try to kill him. He was sure of it. But, he kind of deserved that, didn't he?

"SO... I might have misread that situation a bit. I'm Trace." He said, offering a hand to help her up. "I thought you were some deranged killer." he said, his embarrassment showing through his posture and his words. Yeah, she was going to take his ass off and hand it to him.

Hummingbird still had her power locked and ready even when she saw the look on the man's face. She had half the mind to stun this guy, too but decided that it would be smarter just to watch him instead. The vigilante observed the man step between her and the thugs that had decided to attack her and insult her custom-made costume. Was he putting up another one of those bubble-like constructs that seemed to mess with time? Hummingbird wasn't liking that too much even though she wasn't being harmed this time. Once again, the thugs slowed down so much that it seemed as if time had stopped.

"SO... I might have misread that situation a bit. I'm Trace...I thought you were some deranged killer."

Out of reflex, Hummingbird slapped Trace's hand away and stood up on her own. She brushed off her pants and glared at Trace.

"What would make you think that, huh?" She hissed out. Her arms were folded over her chest defiantly with her psi-wings still flipping on her face. "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't drop an anvil's worth of psi-energy on your f****** on your brain?" Though she couldn't quite do that yet. Though, she could shape psi-energy into forms that she felt appropriate.