Her study book had told her to remove herself from the area that she was usually distracted by. For Siobhan, that area was anywhere around the mansion. People were always coming and going from that place, and there was always something to do. Usually, that was great, because she could be an introvert and still find ways to get involved. But when she was trying to study, the swarms of people just made her life more difficult.

So, she was following the advice of a book on how to study. It had been an interesting read and it gave her lots of things to think about. Studying alone on her bed was also a bad option because she would just fall asleep, and then it would be harder to actually sleep when she needed to.

She needed to get to somewhere off campus. There were plenty of places around the mansion that were good, since they were in New York City, and it was hard to find something that wasn’t in NYC, but she had an idea as her bus passed Central Park. If she spent the day in the park, then she would get the benefits of the fresh air, and she could spend her study breaks exercising. That was, like, three birds with one stone. The perfect scenario!

With that in mind, she’d stepped off of the bus and parked herself on a picnic table. She was dressed for fall, it was rather quiet around her, and everything was peaceful. It was rather cliche, but the sun was shining and the birds were singing, so nothing could go wrong, obviously.

While she whistled a simple tune to herself, Siobhan cracked her first textbook. She skimmed over math equations lazily while her pen rested against an open notebook. It was so nice outside, and- OH DEAR GOD! Was that a gun?!?

Siobhan screamed ducked underneath the table just in time to see some sort of projectile fly past where her head had been a few seconds before. If she hadn't turned just a moment before to see something peeking out of one of the windows above her, and then looked to see a little red dot, she would have been dead.

Gum popped sassily before disappearing back in the sniper's mouth, jaw working lazily to chew to minty flavored piece as she lay on her belly propped up on her elbows. What Nyssa occupied herself with whilst waiting up in her perch varied wildly. She'd formerly had the horrible habit of eating, but she'd found gum supplied a similar satisfaction with much less negative fallout, so Nyssa had simply picked up a pack of gum on the way to the currently-empty office building she'd decided on for her job. The view was great, and Nyssa left the window all the way open since the weather was pretty nice. Her black t shirt and blue jeans was plenty to keep her warm and comfortable, hair pulled back into a messily-done ponytail. The ease everything was coming together with was almost enough to make up for the shoddy description the female had been given for her target. All verbal instructions, no picture...The woman had not been pleased. But a job was a job, and she was confident she could get 'er done.

Grey rings scanning the view of the park Nyssa had, she nibbled her bottom lip a bit before falling still. There, sitting at a bench. Nys could only see the rail-thin female's back but that'd have to be enough. She was pretty early, though, but since she hadn't received a picture for her target she assumed her employers had been off on the time. The woman shifted, moving and adjusting before flicking on the laser aiming system and settling her chin down to look through the scope. The female fit the description, reasonably well. Nyssa hadn't been given much to work with, after all. Her jaw stopped chewing the gum, nearly done anyway, as her breathing slowed and she focused on the shot.

Squeeze the trigger, smooth and slow. Suppress the gunshot waves when the gun fired. Focus on the shot. Remember to breath.

The target turned, but remained in Nys's sights, so it was fine. Fine until she spotted the muzzle of the firearm peeking out from the window. Oh no. Was all Nyssa's brain managed to think before her trigger finger pulled and the female screeched and flung herself under the park table. A soft curse slipped from the female's lips, sitting back from the window and lifting her rifle away from the window.

There was no way the girl was the right one. A look at her face told Nys she was too young. The apparent schoolbooks should have been enough to turn the assassin away, really, as well as the timing. Nys's hands moved swiftly, mostly of their own accord, packing up the rifle as Nyssa's heart nearly pounded out of her chest. The gun was safe here for now, and it would be better to leave it, but she wasn't leaving the assembled firearm out here in the open. Rather, she tossed the backpack underneath a desk and turned to race down the stairs out the back and circling around to the park and a few feet from the bench she'd fired on, eyes flicking about for the female she'd nearly killed...Where'd she go? Surely she wouldn't be gone already, with books still on the table.

Then again....Nyssa had, y'know, almost shot her. Did people randomly bolt when you almost shot them? She'd never almost shot the wrong person before.
WhatdoIdowhatdoIdowhatdoIdo?
"Um...Is everyone ok?" Not a lie, but probably best not to mention a gun. That'd certainly give Nys away. Nys had been the cause for the screaming but give her a break. "I heard screaming."
This was a bad idea, but the girl had screamed absolute bloody murder. Nys didn't think she'd hit her but if she had...She was not about to just ditch her!! Plus, there was sure to be some trauma from nearly getting shot. Better make sure the not-the-target person was safe and sound. Even if she had been trying to kill her, Nys hadn't really been trying to kill her, just someone who looked like her.
It was weird that Nyssa couldn't seem to find the girl though. She hadn't looked away but for a second, and now she was standing here talking to thin air in case the chick had somehow climbed a tree in that skirt or was hiding somewhere else.

Siobhan sucked in quick, shallow breaths as she watched her body disappear from view. She was, naturally, going invisible to hide from her attacker. She was unable to move herself from underneath the picnic table, but at least she couldn’t be seen there. If she was visible, it would have been the absolute worst hiding spot. So out in the open and close to her original position.

There was a real issue at hand, though. Why the hell was someone shooting at her? Had she done something wrong? Pissed someone off? She couldn’t remember doing anything like that. She mostly stuck to her own circles, and while high school kids could be cruel, she couldn’t imagine anyone shooting off a sniper rifle to target her specifically. Sure, there were people that thought she was weird, but that was extreme!

And how had they known that she would be there that day, sitting on the picnic table? She hadn’t told anyone other than her roommate that she was even going there, and she hadn’t said anything about where in the park she would be. It was just all so insane. She could barely comprehend that it was even happening.

Warm tears fell down her cheeks as she drew her knees to her chest. She clamped a hand over her mouth to stop herself from making any noise, but it was getting more and more difficult. As the reality of what was happening set in, the more she felt the need to cry. Her hands were shaking and the rest of her body was quickly following suit, but she could not let herself cry and give away her position. The ability to hide in plain sight was absolutely useless if she couldn’t employ it in the most crucial of moments.

There was a woman’s voice just up ahead that seemed to be asking around about the screaming. Oh man, why had she been stupid enough to let out a scream? Now everyone would know where she was! If her attacker was looking to try again, they only needed to do a thorough sweep of the little area. Dammit. Now she really had to keep quiet.

Oh, but she so just wanted to cry and call her sister.

Siobhan pressed her hand to her mouth with a little more pressure than before, accidentally letting out the smallest burst of a sob. If someone had been listening, it would have been heard easily.

No answer. Great. Still a little shaky from the adrenaline, Nys ran a hand from her bangs, biting her bottom lip, gum long since stuck on the side of a building before slowly releasing a long breath. Now what? The distinct lack of blood anywhere was comforting, but the also distinct lack of people, including the girl, was not. Nyssa was glad she hadn't hit the woman, but she couldn't just let her bolt off wherever thoroughly traumatized without knowing how much she'd seen and put together. How much she knew.

Nyssa certainly wasn't going to flat out murder her, but she couldn't just let the girl run off to the police with God knows how much detail and information. Nyssa didn't plan on ditching town yet, I mean, she'd just gotten settled in, grabbed an easy job and officially screwed it up.

Oopsie daisy? Though her mind was reeling with the very real possibility the not-target could bring down Nys's entire operation, she still heard the sob. The sniper stiffened, straightening and dropping her hand as she tried to zero in on the soft little hiccup-cry noise she'd picked up. Then she realized that snapping her head around like a pointer onto a grouse was probably not how best to approach the person she'd nearly killed.

Relax the shoulders, try to be non threatening or whatever. The older teen took a couple steps forward toward the picnic bench, head tilted and grey eyes searching the bench for the producer of the sound. Was she, like, tiny or something? Why could Nyssa not see her? Nyssa was sure the sob had come from the table. Was the girl an illusionist, making Nyssa see nothing where there was something? She had seen the girl dive under the table (a commendable action, it had been smart.) and sensed the noise coming from here. "I'm...Not going to...Like...Stab you, y'know." Just to clear that up, and maybe make the girl willing to...reveal herself? Nys was not so sure about this whole 'can't see the person you know is there' thing. Could make her life verrrry difficult very easily should the person she'd almost shot decide to take revenge or just plain react aggressively. "That, ah, probably did not help, did it." Now she really hoped she had not somehow ingested marijuana gum or something and was actually talking to an invisible person, not a hallucination. Ok, ok, try again. "I'm Nyssa." Yes, definitely more helpful! With some practice Nys should be amazing at this!

The sob had given her away. She really had to work on that; it was always her downfall. Maybe there was someone at the mansion who could help her get her emotions and fear in check for the next time that something bad happened that she had to hide from.

It was not the time to be planning out how she would do that, though. She needed to keep her mouth shut and hope that everyone would go away so she could run off in the other direction with her books. She was not about to leave her textbooks there and have to pay to replace them if she could help it. The shooter would not do that to her; she was broke enough as it was.

Still, the woman that she had heard before seemed to be persistent. She hadn’t even been deterred by the fact that she was speaking to no one under a table. Was she crazy? Sure, there had been a sob there, but there was no reason for her to assume that there would also be a person!

But she seemed nice enough, and if she was being honest, Siobhan needed a little help. If the woman wasn’t going to hurt her, then she needed to help her. Either help her get away or figure out why someone had just been shooting at her. That wasn’t a big task to ask, was it?

”Did you see what happened?” Siobhan asked quietly. If ‘Nyssa’ couldn’t hear her or understand her accent, then maybe it was a sign that she needed to just help herself. If she could, then maybe that was a sign too.

The sob had quieted, but now that Nyssa was focused on the sound waves coming from that point under the table it was easier to find the others still coming from the person. Still, maybe the sob could help Nys figure out if the target-yet-not was injured. Sobs meant...sadness, right? Or fright, or pain. The latter two were far more likely, she decided.

Silence still continued, though, and the sniper shifted nervously before scanning the area for any spectators. She did NOT need more people here right now. She needed to deal with this major problem by herself. Innocent bystanders would be such an obstacle to Nys's needs. She'd say plan but that was the opposite of what she had right now. The woman was seriously winging it.

Finally her extra sense alerted her to new, much louder sound waves coming from the invisible (Nyssa assumed. There were few other explanations for what seemed to be going on) person. Too quiet for her to quite hear though, so she amplified it slightly hoping the noise was not another sob. Nyssa didn't need nor want to make that sound any louder. It was a reminder she'd caused this, as if everything going on wasn't enough of one pounding this mistake of many into the woman's skull. The strange accent did not help Nys's understanding, unfortunately, and she 'turned up the volume' a little extra to get the full sentence.
She took a few seemingly agonizingly long seconds to decode the accent and ponder her response, fingers tapping a nervous nonsensical tune on her right thigh.
'Did you see what happened?'
Um, yes. In excellent clarity and full detail. Heh. No, that wouldn't do. Instead, she shook her head slightly. Any apology in it was absent, though. She was not very good at lying with her body language, admittedly. No emotion, sure, Nys could nail that, but faking apology in the shake of her head while she was torn between running away and spilling her guts was neither something that would occur to Nyssa nor would she have ease putting into practice should it. "I didn't see much, I was over thataway." Vague as far as direction, of course, merely a tilt of her brown-haired head and shrug of one shoulder in said direction. "I heard a scream and figured someone was in trouble. It wasn't one of those 'having fun at the park' screams, y'know?" Ok, a little more ease into the conversation. And sticking to her original story. A shoddy alibi so far though. "Are you injured? I can't..." She couldn't see the person she was questioning so that made it hard to check for external injuries. "I seem to be having difficulty...finding...you. Did someone attack you?" There, better ask that question too. Magically knowing someone had shot at the not-target would ruin her. Sure, the question was tacked on to the end of her statement but she was doing her best, ok?

God, this was hard. Every word thought out, every sentence and tidbit of information weighed before it crossed her lips. Nyssa was rapidly learning why she didn't make conversation with her targets and usually just shot them nice and far away. A soft, long exhale followed her nigh-monologue, not quite a sigh. Telling herself At least she wasn't dead didn't offer a ton of consolation to the assassin, and certainly didn't help her pull the right words out of thin air.

Siobhan watched the woman try to find her under the table with wide eyes. She slid back ever so slightly so that she would be out of arm's reach if she attempted to feel her out. Siobhan wanted to be alone and somewhere else in that moment, and she definitely didn’t want to be hiding under the table from some random woman. Sure, she was blocking the target for the shooter and she seemed nice enough, but she was also stopping Siobhan from getting out of there.

To make things worse, she hadn’t even seen what happened. She’d just heard the screaming. Siobhan big her lip as she considered her options. On one hand, the woman seemed like she might be able to help her, but on the other, Siobhan just wanted her to go away. Still, something inside her told her that she probably wouldn’t be able to make it all the way out of the park by herself without a panic attack.

”Someone shot at me,” the girl admitted quietly, still in utter shock that someone would do something like that to her, ”and I don’t know why!” That second fact made her start to sob again. She covered her mouth with her hand to try to quiet it, but it didn’t do much good. She started to shake and hiccup with each breath that she tried to take in.

Siobhan had forgotten for just a second that the girl wouldn’t be able to see her. That was likely a little unsettling for her, though probably not nearly as unsettling as being shot at. She attempted to slow her breathing enough to get a few words out, but it took a minute. ”I-I’m, um, h-hiding. Do… do you see anyone… out… there?” She gestured in front of her to where the shot had come from before she realize that Nyssa wouldn’t be able to see her do so.

'Someone shot at me,' The voice from under the table claimed. Nys's right hand darted up from her thigh to run her fingers once through her bangs, eyes hardening from panicked and frantically trying to gain control of the massively problematic situation to sharper rings-Nys had shot at the not-target under the table, but certainly couldn't tell her that. Still, she was beginning to formulate a plan.
Not that whatever happened next would go to plan but she was trying. Hard.

"That's weird." Such eloquence. "Perhaps it was a stray shot or some other fluke. You don't hear many stories of random shootings in parks, hm? In any case, you're hiding which makes it hard to be shot at, and I'm standing here so there'd be witnesses. Not a good situation for...shooting people. If that helps. At all."

Oh no, she was crying now, oh no, this was not good. "Er...There there, it'll...Be...ok. Um. I don't think you're gonna get shot at anymore? Like...I feel like it would have happened by now, y'know?"
World class comforting skills here, guys. Still, she looked up from staring at the top of the picnic table to scan the surrounding area swiftly at the upset girl's request. Since she couldn't see Siobhan's gesture, she scanned the whole 360 around Nyssa herself.
No witnesses, good. "Uhm. Do you have a car or someplace safe you'd like me to help you get to? Any family or someone else you need to call?"
Don't say the cops. Don't say the cops. Do not say the police department or anything legal related.
Sure, Nys could cover her tracks, but it required way more effort. It'd also make finishing the job she'd botched here today harder if she had police sniffing her trail.

It was probably a fluke. Yeah, it was probably a fluke. That made sense. There had probably been something going on a ways away and a stray bullet had travelled in her direction. That made sense, right? She was by no means a physics student, so she couldn’t get into the science of it, but her brain seemed to rationalize it. It just hadn’t run into anything in its path and nothing had hindered its travel. Sure, there were trees in its way, but it made some sense. It was the only thing thing did make sense, really. She didn’t want to have to think about the possibility of it being anything else.

Nyssa was right. She probably wasn’t going to be shot at again. That eased her breathing a little, but she was still too scared to become visible. Maybe it all those people weren’t standing there… then again, those people were the ones stopping anyone from getting to her.

>>"Uhm. Do you have a car or someplace safe you'd like me to help you get to? Any family or someone else you need to call?"

Siobhan sniffled and tried to get a hold on her voice again. Who was it that she had to call? Sybil. Sybil was supposed to watch out for her. ”M-my sister. You can call my sis-” she stopped suddenly. That wasn’t going to work. ”No, no you can’t. She’s out today.”

Sybil was out with someone, which meant that she wouldn’t be available to help her. Siobhan was sure that, if she asked, her sister would drop everything to come help her, but she had sounded excited about her plans, so Siobhan didn’t want to both her and ruin them. She was going to be a good sister and deal with her stuff by herself.

”I just need to get to a bus stop. I live at a boarding school so I need to get back there.” She would be safe back at Xavier’s. The teachers, students, and training were dangerous there, but it was safe from outside concerns. Plus, she had learned to deal with all the perils there. It was better than being shot at in a park.

The second her not-mark's voice rang out with her next words, Nyssa had her phone whipped out, finger hovering over the screen. Her eagerness was soon shot down, though, as the invisible girl retracted her statement. Did she only have a sister she could lean on, and not even now? Sure, Nyssa was in a similar boat, but she was significantly more confident in her ability to handle herself than she was in anyone else's, particularly someone she'd nearly shot and was hiding under a picnic table sniffling.

No offense, kid.

The phone was pocketed and her hands slid into her pockets now, clearly relaxing slightly as she let the not-mark think it over. If Nyssa had it her way, she'd buy her coffee or something to make up for nearly shooting her whilst apologizing profusely, but that was sort of out of the question.
A bus stop, however, Nyssa could do. She lived at a boarding school, apparently (Nyssa had almost shot a promising young scholar, even better), which would make her difficult to watch for a few days to ensure she didn't go to the cops. The hiding woman seemed to buy the fluke story, though. "Ok. Ok, cool. You want me to walk you to the bus stop or would you rather strike out on your own? I mean, either way is fine. I just...if you would feel safer with someone escorting you." She offered, awkwardly closing an open textbook. She already decided to give her not-mark her number, in case something happened to her. With only a sister who couldn't be called after the invisible woman was nearly shot, Nyssa figured it was the least she could do to pay the debt she owed without coming out and telling the girl the truth.