”So I’m off the hook if I tell you about this morning?

Rianne didn’t answer immediately. She was going to say yes, but she had a chance to make this girl stew a minute. ”Yes.” She didn’t tell the girl that she had five years to file on it. If she needed leverage she could drop that information. If the girl behaved herself she would exercise discretion.

She was still less than pleased with the girl, but for now she needed information from her more than she needed more paperwork. It did help when the girl offered the radio back. Rianne took it and with one hand returned it to her shoulder and the earpiece to her ear.

”What do you want to know?” The woman asked before testing the waters to turn around. Rianne let her, it was easier to have a conversation face to face. Besides, it wasn’t like she could get out of Rianne’s grip no matter which way she faced.

”What happened? What did Trace do? Why is he running?”

The woman began with the professor. Rianne head heard about it on the radio. The Baphomet wannabe sliced up the professor right in front of the class. ”What did Trace do?” And after a moment, ”What did you do? Why were you running?”

Finally she asked, ”And what is your name?”

Okay. For now, Ms AngryFace was settling down into information mode. Either she really knew Trace and really wanted to know what happened... or? Or she was just using Raine for information? The possibilities made her brain hurt.

> ”And what is your name?”

Should she say? Raine figured she was in as deep a hole as she could dig at this point. So what was the best way out? Did she have ID on her person? No phone. She'd left her bag wherever it'd been when she'd gotten up to stand against the goatman.

"I don't want to say." Raine admitted, deciding that honesty was going to be the best option she had here. The blonde glanced out at the people who were zipping by. Only those that stopped to look at them for a long while were still enough to see a face. Everything else was a blur. This was like the thing that happened at the drink table. How much time were they losing?

Eventually, she had to put her attention back on the woman who now held her fate in her hands. "I realize that you have the resources to figure it out eventually. Not saying would only buy me time right now. And. Y'know. Make you madder, so... it's Raine. Lorraine Beatrix Faust, if you have to look it up." She didn't want to get accused of lying just for using a nickname.

Raine tapped her foot as she thought it through. Ms. Cop had asked what had Trace Tanner done. She likely didn't care that Trace had made a bubble. Or that Raine had done some gravitational voodoo to trap the sword-goat. What the policewoman needed to care about was what an upstanding guy Trace had been. Not the mutant factor. Police never liked that.

"He saved my life today. Twice. At least." Yeah. Raine nodded because that was good. A good, dramatic lead in. "He helped with the... the goat man thing. And then when that was done, he tried to— uhm. So these guys in suits came?"

Here's where it went full on sci-fi and where Raine went from rookie X-man to scared little girl. Was she a known mutant, now? On some hate list on the internet? Was she going to be allowed to serve as an X-man anymore? Ugh. The lady was never going to believe this part.

"They took the goatman. Like, secret hush-hush don't talk about this to anyone. And I don't know what was happening exactly, but I was walking out with one in front and one behind me and the guy behind me, he started shooting and my ears are still ringing it was so close.

Trace started beating the everloving s*** out of- uh, sorry. He was beating him up. And he said to run and he made a phone call that said he quit. I don't know... I don't remember if he said they were going to get me or if I was just scared, but he said to run."

It seemed the woman wanted to start off on the wrong foot. Again. Not wanting to say what her name was. New York law didn’t require people to carry identification nor to identify themselves if requested, but it did allow officers to detain individuals until they could be identified.

Presently Rianne already had the woman detained. She couldn’t extra detain her.

Then the woman, Raine, came to her sense. A less mad officer is preferable and Raine seemed to realize that. Maybe it also meant she would be done fighting Rianne so Rianne could try to help Trace.

”Thank you, Riane.” Rianne said, Raine had made an effort to be civil. Rianne would return the favor, while maintaining her hold. Just because Raine was being pleasant now didn’t mean she wouldn’t float Rianne later.

Raine went into the story. Trace had saved her life, twice. Twice? First was the goat and second… Guys in suits? He saved her from SUPER? Why would SUPER have tried to kill her? What interest would they have in killing a college age girl, mutant or not.

When Raine swore during the telling Rianne’s eyebrow went up. She didn’t have a problem with it, but she wasn’t use to non-hoodrat women swearing to her face while she was in uniform. Raine must have noticed since she apologized.

The story done Rianne asked, ”They’re chasing him because he beat up one of the guys in suits and made a call saying he quit?”

Had Trace turned on SUPER? Why would he do that? Trace Tanner had been the reason she’d become the liaison officer between SUPER and NYPD. She needed to find him before SUPER did. Get his story. At the time though she was still stuck in the bubble. She'd settle for seeing if she could help the girl. If there were gunshots there might have been an attempt to shoot her. Perhaps it was the right call, perhaps it was to maintain operational security. The latter was a due process violation she wouldn't abide.

Rianne let Raine go. ”Did he say who the men in suits were? Did they identify themselves at all? Anything distinctive?” She needed to know what the girl knew. Top secret agencies didn’t like when college students knew about them.

"Maybe saying that he quit is a bit too tame. He pretty much actually... No. He literally taunted them. 'Catch me if you can.' I think is what he said." Raine appreciated that the woman released her vice grip on her arm, but Raine was having issues keeping her hair out of her eyes. That had been intentional, to keep the oozing gouge from her run in with Goats McBoats hidden, but now that the jig was up Raine would have preferred to see with both eyes. She tried to flip her hair out of the way using just her neck since that's all she had available to her.

> ”Did he say who the men in suits were? Did they identify themselves at all? Anything distinctive?”

"No, but they weren't best friends either, that's for sure." Raine tried really hard to think back. She'd been concerned about looking pathetic at the time so her eyes had mostly been lowered. She hadn't been terribly observant. She'd still been winding down from the fight.

"They didn't want me to leak to the press. Uhm. At the start Trace showed them his- uh, I didn't actually see? His ID? I guess? He told them I was 'vanilla' despite knowing that he was lying to their faces when he said it."

Oh. ****. Was this all her fault? All because of that one lie?

And now here she was... caught.

"Please. I really don't want to go to the labs where they keep mutants." She was in a rush to beg here and not even a little ashamed about it. The labs had been bad. One of the worst experiences of her life, easily, and that was after thousands of hours volunteering at a hospital. "You don't know what it's like down there. Please. Please."

Trace taunting them. Rianne had heard that much over the radio. Raine had confirmed that Trace had put down the two agents his radio call had identified. This was all a giant mess. A mess where she was now technically supposed to apprehend Trace if she found him.

Whatever had prompted him to run, must have been major.

”I heard his call over the radio.” Rianne said.

Raine was having trouble with her hair getting in her eyes. At that point Rianne could have uncuffed Raine, she was cooperating and Rianne want going to take her in. But Raine had stolen her radio, did she could deal with it for a while. It was punitive and Rianne was okay with a little de minimus punishment.

The SUPER agents hadn’t identified themselves as SUPER where Raine could hear. This was good. Hopefully there wasn’t information on who she was out there and she could just disappear for a while and let it blow over. She would likely still get rolled up when she surfaced again, but it would likely go better not in the heat of a search for Trace.

And Trace identified her a vanilla. He had lied about Raine being a mutant, some kind of make people float mutant. A very annoying mutation.

What Raine said next surprised Rianne. She didn't want to go to the labs. The labs? She knew SUPER held mutants, but that was in jail like facilities. Holding mutants while they were processed, not a lab which implied experimentation. Right?

Raine seemed certain of them, and based on her pleading, they were awful. ”What do you mean labs? And how what do you know about these agents?” Rianne asked. If Raine was associating them with labs she at least thought she knew who they were.

How was this woman involved with these people? Every time Raine thought she was helping, the policewoman already seemed to know. And now talking about the labs, which she thought was a give-in, the woman looked shocked.

"I don't know anything about them except that they're pitiless and... and funded." The papers the other team had recovered had certain implications that a police officer would not appreciate, Raine was sure. The funding came from way up the line. Way over this woman's paygrade, apparently. "I have been there. I'm not making this up. I guarantee that's where they took Totes McGoats, I mean. Maybe not the same one. But I really, really cannot go back. That... it's..." Raine was running out of words in the cloud of yet another build up of panic. Her knees wobbled and she wanted to just shake the woman until she understood that she could not play nice with these people.

"I don't get it. I don't know how all the pieces fit together. I don't know if it's the same people, if Trace was one of those people..." Come to think of it... why had Trace been there in the first place? Had he been tracking the Goatman? Did he know he was going to go supernova in a room full of sophomores?

And Raine was not going to cry again. Nope. Nopenopenope. She would fight it until she couldn't any more.

"I tried my best to help people avoid getting cut to pieces and I don't want to go to mutant prison or the labs or anything just because I helped a rogue officer agent man." God, why hadn't she run? If she could do it all over again, this time she might. "I am tired. I am gross. I just want to go home and be safe."

Pitiless and funded. Sounded like a description of Federal agents. Especially from the perspective of someone running from them. Them having labs also sounded normal, the FBI maintained crime labs, it made sense SUPER might have some that were more specialized. The issue is with taking mutants that were apprehended to the labs, a lab where you detained someone was more Mengele than Locard.

Raine was claiming to have been there, and what’s worse is she looked sincere. As far as Rianne could tell, Raine believed what she was saying. And what she believed about SUPER shook her something fierce.

”Totes… McGoats?” Rianne repeated quietly. That was certainly a name. It was wild enough to derail Rianne’s thoughts for a moment. That quiet comment aside, Rianne let Raine finish answering her questions.

As she finished, Raine was clearly trying not to cry. Rianne took pity on her, she’d had an incredibly rough day. Her history professor was butchered in front of her, she was likely still recovering from hearing gunfire, and she had been chased by the police and arrested. The last one she earned.

”Once we get out of this time bubble I’ll check if there is a BOLO on you. If not, I’ll take you home.” Rianne could exercise officer discretion. She could ignore the crimes against herself, and not report she found Raine. If there was a BOLO she might have to take her in.

There was a weird sensation as the edge of the ripple passed Rianne. The world slowed down from hyperspeed and it was clear something was happening in the park. It sounded like a fight. Her radio also came back to intelligible life. Across a crowd of people she heard, “HE HAS A KNIFE!”

Rianne’s hand shot to her sidearm and she moved to stand between Raine and the crowd. ”Stay behind me.” She said returning to her authoritative cop voice. She couldn’t see who what was happening but when knives came out people bled.

Nothing about the park was coming over her radio. Just the usual radio traffic mixed in with a couple reports on the search for Trace.

That was it. The last straw. Ms. Cop was willing to take her home if she had no BOLO? WHAT THE HECKING HECK WAS A BOLO? Something tickled Raine's memory from a Bendiana Tones movie. Wasn't that a rope tripping thing?

"But I don't have a weapon." She pleaded.

Some part of Raine realized that this was nice and probably the best she was going to get. The other part wanted to throw it back in the other woman's face. Today was done. Over. No more. Raine was punching her time card and clocking out now.

Today had a different opinion on how things would go.

First, the bubble. It didn't burst, it got sucked away leaving a trail of confusion in its wake. As soon as it had moved and Raine and the officer had not, they were back in real time.

There was shouting about a knife and Raine was more than glad to hop out of the line of fire, but she sure as heck wasn't about to get stabbed to death without putting her hands between herself and the bad guy. Raine rolled her shoulders back and looped her hands under her butt in order to pull one leg through the loop of her cuffed arms.

A shadow passed over the crowd and there were awed murmurs and more shouts to look up, get your protective glasses on, and see the eclipse. Raine hopped and swapped legs. Success! She had her hands still in cuffs, but they were far more useable in front of her!

> ”TANNER!!!!”

Raine was torn between looking at the fight and looking up and so she ended up not really looking anywhere important when it happened.

And boy, did it happen.

It felt like a rip tide or a helicopter landing too close. One moment Raine was standing and the next moment she and all of the crowd around them had been blown over like match sticks.

Except they weren't just bowled over, this close to the event, they were knocked prone and jerked toward a confusing mix of darkness and glowing. The cop had fallen across Raine's lower body and hands and Raine scrabbled for a hold. Because the cop was in charge. This was an emergency and she was a cop and she was going to need to be in charge now.

Raine tethered herself to the woman, but she also held on for dear life.

It seemed Rianne’s olive branch wasn’t enough. Raine was now pleading which didn’t help her. Rianne was already doing what she felt was more than generous given the situation. Not to mention she could only exercise so much discretion without violating policy.

After the yell about a knife, people began to move. Most away from where the yell came from. Rianne could hear the handcuff chain jingling behind her. Raine was doing something. It didn’t sound like she was running away. Rianne looked back and saw Raine working to get her arms in front of her. She didn’t think Raine could manage to do anything from behind her that she couldn’t overcome if she needed to. Hopefully the girl was smart enough not to use the opportunity to assault Rianne again. She looked back to where the yell had come from.

“TANNER!!!!”

A moment later the world seemed to end. It was as if a bomb went off. Rianne was knocked from her feet and landed on Raine. She felt Raine take hold of her as they were sucked toward the source of whatever was happening. She didn’t know what it was but it couldn’t be good.

As they shot toward whatever it was, Rianne reached out and caught hold of a pole.

”Hold on!” Rianne said to Raine. She had the pole by one hand, and was reaching with the other. Raine seemed to have a secure enough hold. Whatever was happening was holding them as a pair of human flags off the pole. Rianne pulled them in toward the pole against the force. Her power increased her strength to fight against it.

Her power couldn’t boost the pole. It was a breakaway pole and they hit the threshold. It separated from its base and sent the pair of women hurtling toward whatever it was there. A few heartbeats and they had passed through a tear in reality.

Next thing Rianne knew she was laying on top of Raine in an alley. Somewhere.

She was disoriented. Her head was swimming from what had just happened. She struggled her way to her feet, feeling like she was hauling up another person of dead weight. She looked down. Raine was attached to her.

”You can let go now.”

Hold on? HOLD ON!? WHAT DID SHE THINK RAINE WAS DOING!? If Raine dared to let go, she might just triple down on tethering herself to the ground or something, but she didn't dare. She didn't dare at all.

She also made the mistake of looking down, or, for Raine at least it felt like down despite her tether being attached to the policewoman. That meant it had some serious pull.

The thing was an angry, hungry maw. And they were falling sideways through it. And despite being accustomed to falling in all manner of directions, this was terrifying because she hadn't decided to fall sideways, but she was doing it anyways.

The darkness made it all the more confusing. They were airborne. Raine made a tether and flung it as hard and as far as she could. This was New York. The buildings were close together. If she could get the timing right, she could catch them both in a zero gravity area.

The problem was that they were going too fast.

Raine's tether caught and turned their trajectory, but before she had time to ready another she was forced to let go of the first. They were coming in too hot. She tried once more to tether to a point up high on the closest building and it jerked their momentum to a momentary halt while they tried to swap directionalities.

She let that tether go and then the two women were just one big heap in a dirty, New York alleyway in the dark of night, sometime before sunset.

Raine took a moment to re-learn how to breathe which was harder than it should have been considering the vested policewoman on top of her.

That was a new experience.

"Let's never do that again." She wheezed. How bad would it be if she just curled up into a ball and went to sleep right here?

Policelady stood and the tether pulled Raine up along for the ride. The other woman was Raine's ground. If the ground moved, so did Raine.

Noooo. She didn't want to get up.

> ”You can let go now.”

Raine used the other woman for balance to get her feet underneath her and dropped the pull between them.

Standing was exactly as terrible as Raine imagined it would feel. She'd been the bottom of the pile twice in the last few minutes. Add that to everything else that happened today and the girl was hurting.

"Now can I go home?"

How Raine had initially been situated didn’t line up with gravity. It was more like she had been laying on Rianne than holding on. Raine must be able to do more than float people. Some kind of gravity manipulation? Didn’t matter.

Once the pair had separated Rianne fiddled with her radio. She was getting silence. That was odd, anywhere in the city she should be able to pick up something.

"Now can I go home?”

Rianne looked at Raine. The girl had been through hell already, and now they had been flung across the city by… Something. She could always just not report that she found Raine if there was a BOLO on her. That, or she could say she lost her in whatever it was that just happened. What mattered was what her report said. And if it was just for questioning she could always take her home and stop by the next day.

”Yeah. Let’s get you home.” Rianne finally said. Then she keyed her mic and said, ”1744 show 10-7.”

After a few moment of nothing she repeated, ”1744 show 10-7.” Again, no reply. She switched channels and found more nothing. She took a few steps toward the end of the alley, still finding her sea legs. Her radio wasn’t giving her anything. No static. It was as if there was absolutely zero chatter on the channel.

She switched channels again and found voices. Rianne sighed in relief and radioed again, ”1744 show 10-7.”

Voices carried on a few seconds then dispatch cut through. Her badge number wasn’t a badge number in service? ”10-5, dispatch.” Again the dispatch stated her badge number wasn’t a number in service. That didn’t make sense. She couldn’t have been gone that long.

This didn’t affect her getting a ride. If she wanted to keep running into Raine on the down low she needed to not have a car brought to her. ”Let’s get a cab.” Rianne said turning back to Raine, putting on a poker face, and fishing out her handcuff key. Raine didn’t need to know about her having issues.

Was home safe? Raine was beyond caring right this second and that was bad. She needed to care. So the blonde waited patiently while Ms. Cop worked the radio. Raine was afraid she'd messed with the wrong dials or something, but there really was nothing she could do to make it better. She still didn't know how the thing actually worked.

But she did know people.

Ms. Cop had... nerves. Or maybe someone on the other side of her radio was giving her crap. Raine watched without comment and tried to commit every line and curve of how the officer stood to memory. Someday, Raine could star in a procedural. No experience should go to waste. Even sh*tty ones.

> ”Let’s get a cab.”

It was remarkable that a few minutes ago they'd gotten chewed up and spit out by something and now the world was just going on like normal. Mutants made for some weird apocalyptic feeling events in New York. New Yorker's on the whole had learned to just keep swimming.

It was weird. Yeah. But what could they do about it?

"Thank you." For the cab offer and for the hand cuff removal. Raine rubbed at her wrists which felt remarkably free by comparison. She could now smooth the hair back from her eyes and pluck the bits out of her cut that had been drying there.

"So, is it safe to go back to the dorms?" Raine was re-reworking her ponytail, now that she likely didn't have to hide the oozing cut on the side of her head. "'Cause, I'm pretty sure that's the high line back there, but I don't really know where we are other than that." Of course, the high line went a long way through town...

Rianne removed the cuffs and Raine thanked her. Rianne returned the cuffs to her belt while Raine went through the standard wrist checking. While she tended to her hair, Raine asked whether it was safe to go back to the dorms.

A look to the high line as Raine indicated it got Rianne wondering where they were in the city and how they got there. More importantly what did the part of the city they were in look like now? ”Half the city didn’t blow up.” She pointed to her earpiece, ”It is almost business as usual, a few calls to rescue people stuck in trees and EMS for people run over. Whatever happened wasn’t so bad that it would have destroyed much. And you weren’t being looked for by name, just description. They were more interested in Trace. I’m also not hearing anything about you.”

None of that meant there still wasn’t a search for her, she’d need to get to a computer in a squad car to know for sure.”We can head that way and I’ll check it out. If they know who you are and still want you, your dorm will be under surveillance.”

As for knowing where they were. All they needed to do was go to an intersection… or get in a cab. Cabbies don’t wander aimlessly and get lost. Normally.

They could take a cab to campus, she could jump in her squad car and run a search for Raine. If nothing came back she was clear to go to her dorm. Otherwise, she would need to find another place to hole up. Rianne adjusted her cap as nervous tic, she was uncomfortable with possibly aiding  someone to avoid law enforcement. The whole situation was a mess, but she had told Raine she would take her home. Besides, when due process is being violated it is her job to not follow procedure.

Raine choked on nothing in particular when the officer told her that the city hadn't blown up. Sure, she indicated where the information was coming from, her ear pieces and the mysterious code it espoused, but the thought that the world really might have broken this time was totally out of left field. Raine took a few steps out toward the street and shaded her eyes against a sun that just wasn't there. No stars either, but that was hardly new for all the light pollution.

"I wasn't aware that apocalypse was an option." Raine pat her pockets before remembering her phone was lost in the wind. "It's not supposed to be dark, is it? I mean, it wasn't even dinner time... but we were in that time bubble." Raine rubbed her forehead to ward off an impending headache. The area around them was unfamiliar, but then Raine didn't go west of the park usually.

It was possible that Raine trying to keep them from slamming into the ground pulled them farther away, but other people had been lobbed into trees so the pair would have ended up elsewhere anyway.

Raine felt the day dragging at her. She wanted nothing more than to just go home and pass out. Hunter, as the policewoman's vest read, seemed to have no concrete answers until they both went back to campus.

One huge sigh later, Raine had agreed and they'd even managed to flag down a cab. Raine was putting her trust in the law and in a stranger who applied that law, for a second time today. She believed in the goodness of people despite the nasty faces they sometimes wore.

"I really am sorry about the radio, Officer Hunter. It's been a really weird day."

Wasn’t aware apocalypse was an option? ”We got sucked into… thin air. Then we ended up somewhere else in the city, what I can only guess is hours later. I thought if nothing else, the park would be gone.” Rianne checked her watch, it was incredibly off after the time bubble they were in earlier. It showed only a little past noon. She fished out her cellphone from a pocket under her vest. It would update off a tower.

No signal.

Whatever they had gone through must have fried it somehow. She returned it to the pocket. That could be dealt with later. Until then Rianne would stick to her plan. Especially now that Raine had agreed. Getting a cab hadn’t been hard. It was New York City, stand by the road a couple minutes and one will head by.

Rianne provided an address a block away from where she had left her squad car. It wouldn’t do to have them pile out and Raine get picked up immediately. The cabbie did give Rianne a couple odd looks as he tried to puzzle out why an officer in tactical gear was getting a cab ride with a young woman in workout attire. Rianne glared back until he decided to it was better to not upset the officer.

Raine broke the silence in the cab with an apology. Rianne wanted to snap at her and say that she should be sorry, or something similar to that. She didn’t, the girl was stressed out and she was apologizing. Biting her head off wouldn’t accomplish anything.

”Thank you.” She said. ”Next time though, maybe let the officer ask a question before making them an astronaut and stealing their radio... I can’t fault you too much though. Knowing what happened.”

”Just don’t steal my radio again. Find someone you can outrun.” She said attempting a little humor. It had been a stressful day for both of them, even if it had been half as long as it should have been.