The city moved around her like a dream. It was like a dream, in that it was entirely personal for each and every individual, and they weren't all that happy sharing it with strangers. Car horns blared, people made rude gestures or swore. They pushed against those around them in the hopes of getting a little bit more space, but for the most part it was a pipe dream. Traffic moved slowly, if it moved at all, and Lenna passed through the crowds of foot traffic, gaze unfocused but taking in everything.

She took in the man with quick fairy wings who walked just a centimeter too high off the ground. Took in the way he tried to hide it behind what someone who read too many urban fantasy books might call a glamour, but which anyone worth a crap would take as illusion. It was good. If she hadn't had a trained eye, she might have missed the minor inconsistencies or the way the sun was just a bit too bright behind his head. There were other mutants hiding with more success. Or less....

It was sad some mutants thought a simple hoodie and hunching low would conceal their physical mutations as good as camouflage or invisibility. Mutants were looked down upon, socially. Her organization was always on the lookout for the dangerous sort, but she wasn't as heavy-handed with the propaganda they spun. Lenna didn't believe it as much as the huddled masses. Mutants could be dangerous, sure, but so could a gun. It wasn't the gun that was dangerous though, not really. It was the people who failed to handle it properly. Therein lay the problem a lot of SUPER agents had with mutants. Proper usage of power. Read: working for them, rather than against. They were constantly on the lookout for mutants that had useful or dangerous powers, thus so was she... but she hadn't drank enough of the kool aid to think it was to help humanity at all. She was also lazy.

Work involved scouting mutants and protecting the public without getting public. Lenna carried her own weight-- didn't go out of the way to make big scores, just did the bare minimum. Work was involved and she was getting paid, but they weren't using her skills the best ways possible and her passions lay elsewhere. So she scouted... and noticed a shifty-eyed Asian in shades. She noticed him because he was too obvious in his attempts not to be noticed. He was looking over his shoulder and eying things with curiosity and just seemed too attentive to live. As a final note, a ring on his finger glowed. Lenna fell into step a ways behind him, and started to follow.

The meeting with Impact had gone well. They'd traded information, and he'd even clued Rebecca in on what he'd been dealing with regarding the mysterious stranger. Now, they we're off separately, looking around before they crossed back over to the other side.

He'd learned a little bit about that SUPER organization. Gee they were shifty. With their cloak and dagger government nonsense and that mutant kidnapping schtick. What was up with that? Did they mean to come off that creepy? For science? For shame! It all just struck him as history gearing up to repeat itself on a majestic scale. This side had also had a mutant registration act. No Romania, though. Which was something.

Shin walked, and as he did, he kept his head on a swivel. Looked around. Watched his back. His shades slipped for a moment on the bridge of his nose. He glanced around behind him, then fixed it. Crossed a crosswalk with a crowd. Scanned all the planes and angles for anything of note.

He felt a little off on this side of the rip, like there was a different energy. A different life. Maybe it was psychic, something residual from the displacement. Maybe it was just a nasty case of jet lag. Whatever it was... it felt off.

When the shades slipped, she saw it. Saw the eyes. Mutant. SUPER wanted her to tag mutants. Lenna sped up her step.

There had been something weird about the eyes. They'd been triangular. Triangular pupils. Glowing ring on his finger. He had a mutation, and it was active. It just wasn't apparent what said mutation was. It could have been anything, from laser eyes to making green fists shoot out of his ring. He could also just have a psychic mood ring, and be useless. She didn't know. She'd heard of someone with laser eyes. He wasn't her. He lacked the red hair and the hips for it. She'd just have to talk to him and find out how dangerous he was.

SUPER is supposed to operate sneakily. Part of her just wanted to walk up and rest a hand on his shoulder, pull him aside and talk. Just for the bold initiative of it all. But that simply wasn't how things are done. She watched. She waited. Contemplated her next move, and assessed his.

Was he a threat? Was he just some guy with a glowing ring? Was he worth the time? It had been a bit brash of her to follow a person just because they seemed shifty and had a nice mood ring. Sometimes, people accused her of being impetuous. She slowed her stride.

As he walked, Shin pondered. He hadn't found himself in a phonebook. A google search would have been nice, if he'd had a network with which to connect. He'd had all these plans for investigating the area, but he'd done what he worried he would, and now he was wandering.

AV Kealey... he wondered if she'd be the same. When he'd first met the woman, she'd had her troubles with her mutation. He'd never met his wife at her lowest... though apparently, he'd gotten close. He remembered the bruised face in the book store. He hadn't found her in the book, either.

As if someone had sensed the Asian's thoughts and said "hey, about that", Shin noticed a woman ahead of him about Kealey's height, with curly blonde hair. He paused for a moment, felt like a creep, and started to follow.

There was very little likelihood he would have encountered the alternate version of his wife on a walkabout, but Shin rarely looked at odds. He didn't believe in coincidences, either.

Unfortunately, coincidences do exist and as he stepped into an alley, the woman ahead of him turned around and shot him a red-eyed glare. It wasn't her.

Embarrassed, Shin opened his mouth to make an excuse. A streak of red light passing close to the right side of his face cut the Asian off. The red eyes steamed. Nervously, Shin glanced over his shoulder at the nearby brick wall. It had a scorch mark, where the beam had hit.

"What the hell do you want?!" The blonde woman snapped at him. He could see now that she was wearing clothes Kealey would never have worn. A dark band t-shirt and leather jacket. There were several rings in one ear lobe, and in her pierced brows. He'd seen height and curls, and been blinded. He'd been wrong.

Her eyes glowed brighter at his silence. In his shock, he hadn't spoken. So, she took it as guilt and attacked.

He followed a blonde-haired woman into an alley, and then-- then she trailed behind, within sight. Lenna watched. She felt like a stalker stalking a stalker.

The woman shouted at the Asian, and he didn't react fast enough. Maybe he was scared, maybe he was confused. Maybe he didn't speak English? Maybe he was just a creep. Regardless of what he was, maybe he should have reacted faster. She shot a laser beam at him, with her eyes. This woman didn't have red hair, did she? Lenna did a quick doubletake. Nope. Curly blonde hair. She looked more punk than cute. Lenna distinctly remembered one S.U.P.E.R. agent having described the redheaded laser eye woman as cute. It had seemed wholly unprofessional, but who was she to judge that?

The Asian backpedaled several steps, and brought up his arms defensively. It almost looked like he was falling into a dance as he sidestepped and weaved around her. Lenna would have pictured it playing out more like an Old Western scene where the black-hatted outlaw made the poor town man dance. Shot at his feet, and made him do a jig. There was no jig, here. The Asian just evaded with a calculated grace, as if he were judging angles and predicting her attacks as he went. Then, the ring came off his finger and shot out at her.

Lenna expected something like a bullet. She took a step forward, expecting to see the Asian standing over a body with a hole in the chest where the ring had gone through. That seemed like a wholly offensive power. But... it was circling her, like a bee. Buzzing around, without the buzz. He said something that she didn't quite catch. It almost sounded like he was pleading with her to stand down.

Lenna eyed the various charred holes burned into the concrete of the city block around him. It didn't seem unbalanced, now. They both had their skills. But he'd appeared more finesse-oriented, while the curly-haired blonde was brute force. Maybe she'd take them both in?

He was focused. So focused, Shin never realized that he was being watched by more than just the woman he'd thought looked like his wife. The calculations had been done rapidly, something he'd never really relied on. It had been more intuition and reaction to her movement than reliance on his power. It had come naturally. He'd danced around the angles as they came to him, and anticipated the woman's attacks before they came. If he hadn't, he wouldn't have lasted a minute. One can't dodge a beam moving as the speed of light. And he had realized this, and drummed up a strategy on the fly.

His ring flying 'round her was more defense than attack. If she looked at it, she wasn't looking at him. He wouldn't have to dodge out of the way of predicted angles and vertices of attacks. If he had to hit her, so be it, but hopefully he'd be able to talk his way out of the situation. Then nobody would get hurt.

At his command, the woman stopped moving. Shin took in a calming breath. That was better.

"I never meant to scare you," He said, loud enough the two of them could hear. Not loud enough it would draw attention from outside the alley, and bring people coming in with the wrong idea. "I'm from across the dimensional rip in space. From behind, you looked like my wife and I thought maybe you were an alternate world version of her. I was more curious than anything. I'm sorry I scared you. From this angle, you and her look nothing alike."

To the Asian, this explanation made perfect sense. It wasn't weird. It didn't sound insane. It built upon the recent development of the rip, a development not many outside those in the know would have information about. He hadn't thought of that. Her face, however, was incredulous.

The woman swore at him. "People in New York are crazy. What. So I look like your wife and you want to pick me up? How demented are you?"

This was ridiculous. Why couldn't she understand? He didn't want to fight. He wanted to leave! The ring stopped rotating around the woman, and flew back to land on his ring finger. She sneered at him.

"--and you attacked me with a wedding ring. Are you insane?!"

She didn't wait for an answer. The woman attacked. There aren't many things faster than light. Thought can be one of them. Shin didn't mean to, but he didn't have time to step back. Before he could bring a hand up to block the red laser, before he could dodge to the right or retreat, a reflective triangle appeared in the air in front of him, quick as a thought. It was forest green. It caught the laser on its surface. It was angled just right. Shin hadn't spared a thought on the angle when it had happened. It had just happened. There must have been some subconscious tactician at work. When the triangle caught the laser, the reflective surface redirected the beam of light back at its creator.

That was all she'd needed to see. A dangerous mutant had struck, and an even more dangerous mutant had retaliated. The woman with the laser eyes smoldered on the concrete, either dead or unconscious. The man stood, stunned. SUPER commands weren't always clear. Stay secretive, yet protect. Handle hostile mutants. Kidnap dangerous or useful mutations. Tag and monitor potential threats. Constant vigilance. But here, she had two dangerous mutants. One was injured, one had caused the injury. They needed to be brought in to be processed. Her job was clear. Lenna surged forward, and got to work.

The Asian turned as she caught his arm. The handcuff was so very blunt and obvious. CLEARLY some form of law enforcement. And she was in plain clothes, so she wasn't an apparent cop. Yet he didn't fight back. He just stared at the metal band on his wrist with those weird eyes, behind the shades.

"I'm taking you in," Lenna told him. Under what jurisdiction? This was still new to her, and she didn't know the spiel. "You're a danger, to yourself and others. I'm taking you in."

"Is she alright?" the Asian asked Lenna. Lenna glanced at the woman on the alley floor, then finished cuffing the Asian's arms behind his back. Whatever that triangle that had reflected the beam had been, it was gone now. The darting ring was on his hand.

Lenna didn't sigh. "We're taking her in, too. She'll get medical help. I'm sure some people will want to talk to you."

She turned her mind to wrapping the unconscious woman in a flow of telekinesis. The woman was outlined orange in Lenna's mind. She needed to call for backup. Transport for two people in broad daylight was going to be sticky.

"You're with MRC, then?" the Asian asked. "With the police?" He sounded distant, as if he were still processing what he had done.

"I'm with the government, actually." Lenna slipped. She paused to frisk him, and found some sort of communication device in his pocket. She pocketed it, without a thought.

All of a sudden, Shin got very cold.

He didn't fight her. He didn't talk. Weird. Lenna would have thought he'd talk.

---

The transport the woman had called came after several minutes. This was stupid. This was wrong. He should have forced his was out, but for some reason he just couldn't bring himself to do it. He'd hurt the woman with the laser eyes, the one he'd thought had looked like his wife from behind. Just hurt her. And his mind had summoned a reflective triangle to do it. After he'd had so much trouble summoning them up until now. What the hell was going on?!

He sat in the strange van. It had tinted windows. It was plain. Government van. Government group. Was this the SUPER Alt Rebecca had spoken to them about? Part of his silent compliance had to do with his mind being full of the questions. Part of it was morbid curiosity. And not just about SUPER. Where had he heard the woman before...?

---

He was just sitting there, staring. Thinking? The other person was in the back with another agent. Why had he attacked her? Lenna didn't get it. Well, whatever. They drove.

---

He closed his eyes and focused on memories. Where. Where had he heard her voice before? Shin should have been watching the passing scenery to take note of where the government location was. But he figured if he'd tried, he would have found the passenger area windows blacked out on their side worse than the tint that blocked them from the view of the general public.

He glanced at her again. She certainly didn't look like anyone he remembered...

Time passed as he sat there, racking his mind. Five minutes. Ten minutes. New York traffic was as it was. Progress was slow. A quarter of an hour later, the woman stopped them on a random street corner. She turned to him and smiled, then reached into a compartment and pulled out something made of fabric. It was a hood.

She told him to put it on. “To hide the location,” she told Shin. It was that that did it, made him remember.

When he’d first met the woman, he’d lacked his sight. Depriving him of the sense had helped him dive into that sensory memory of the voice. And with it, he recalled a blur at a distance and a fogged mind. It had been hard to think. Stupid Adaptoid. ... but she wasn’t an Adapted now. This was another world’s version of the woman. What had her name been?

—-

”Lenna,” the Asian said.

Lenna’s jaw tightened. How had the hooded bastard learned her name? Nobody had said it: was he psychic, in addition to the other stuff with the ring and the triangle? Could he read her mind? Not that it mattered much. Having the name wouldn’t do much for him. Not where he was going.

Lenna said nothing. Let him have the dumb name. Let him wonder if it was the right one. Let him rot in the hole. She didn’t like people knowing things about her when she knew nothing about them. She’d tell the lab techs he was potentially psychic. SUPER liked psychics.

The next few hours were a haze. He didn’t get the hood removed until he was locked up tight in a cell. He’d passed a few adaptoids in transit, but he’d stumbled through alright. The woman hadn’t acknowledged he’d spoken when he said her name so maybe that hadn’t been her name. Not in this reality. He hadn’t really spent much time with the real Lenna, so his feelings weren’t all that hurt. He was far, far more concerned about being put in a cell.

The cell brought back bad memories he’d thought he’d repressed. Memories of Romania and the mutant registration camp. When he’d been locked up and collared, his own power had turned against him, causing him to be shocked every time he opened his eyes. Years later, it had turned against him again. Then it had left him. What the hell was going on now?

He’d deflected the laser blast. He’d used a shard. He hadn’t meant to. It had just happened. And before that, he’d summoned the triangle to save the guy who had appeared injured on their balcony. This SUPER organization... he thought the man was a part of that. They were interested in mutants, wanted to experiment on them, wanted to contain them, wanted to make everything crap.

Romania had been terrible. He was freaked out. He was angry. He was not going to let anyone put him in a cell again.

They say the best time to escape a kidnapper is during the first few hours of being kidnapped. That’s when you still have your strength, and when your mind’s in its best shape. After that, the chance of breaking free goes down.

He didn’t want to make Kealey worry. He didn’t want to make the other x-men worry. He wanted to get the hell out of the cell. He wanted to do it now. His new power was going to help him... however it worked.

Shin was certain there was something there. His powers were coming back. The shard generation. But something else was happening, something new. What he needed to do was repeatedly bash his head against the barrier that was his mental block, until he figured out what that something was, and how best he could utilize his shifting set of skills. And so Shin began to bash...

24 hours. That was how long it took for Shin to figure himself out. It took going through every process and permutation of every use of his ability, methodically, in his mind. It took him gauging the feedback, and the summoning aspects of his power, to see what worked and what caused more problems than it was worth. And when that didn’t pan out, he tried meditation.

He went into a deep state of introspection. He focused on himself, and how he’d felt when the summoning aspect of his power had stopped working. Over all the years, it had stayed blocked, regardless of changes in attitude or mood. He hadn’t lost the joy behind his power, and it hadn’t been psychosomatic. Something had simply changed with how he tapped into the mutation. Those few times it had worked recently... what had been different? Need, sure, but also something else. Something small, with huge ramifications. He’d pictured the finished product in his head, even if it had been by instinct, rather than conscious thought. It had been an accident, but maybe, just maybe, he’d stumbled onto the one little change in his ability that had caused all his old methods to become outdated.

It was a mental thing. In the past, he’d had detailed mental blueprints of constructs but he had formed them piece by piece, slipping shards into place over time. It had been like working with Lego. With the platform, he’d imagined the finished product and waited... and it had formed after a set amount of time. Could it really be so simple? Shin tried the theory out.

Cameras were tuned to the interior of the cell, so he didn’t do anything obvious. He placed his palm facing down on the floor, and imagined that palm entirely covered with a thin layer of diamond armor. Out of sight of the cameras, his object of focus snapped into place. It didn’t happen instantly, at least, not the very second Shin imagined it. The entire thought process WAS different... but after about five seconds, the armored palm came into place. He flexed his hand, then dismissed it and tried again.

Hours passed. Shin experimented some more. He learned that more detailed designs took more time, while simple things like a square he’d hidden in his clenched fist were almost instant. With nothing else to occupy him in the cell, and nobody to interrupt him, he figured out various limits. His anger at SUPER and all things like it fueled the efforts.

Shin learned that he could only snap a handful of instant constructs into place at a time, and that while he focused on creating them, he couldn’t summon other shards. He learned that he could, in fact, summon shards the old way. It came back naturally over time as he worked. He could summon them afterwards, but not during... and maybe he could summon fewer? He wouldn’t know until he was out and could experiment on his own. The big thing was the speed, though. A finger-sized version of the katana he had always wanted to create took about ten heartbeats, or ten seconds... depending on how one wanted to describe the timing of the process. It was just as detailed as a normal shard blade. He could do armor, too, though he’d had to be incredibly discrete about what it looked like. Basically, he’d had to create a blueprint that looked exactly like his skin on his hands... and make gloves for that. And the barest fraction of a breath sheathed his shirt in non-reflective shards of the same color. It wasn’t perfect, sure, but it was close enough to fool a casual observer looking down at him through an old security camera that didn’t have as many pixels as your modern smart phone. At least, he hoped. Right about when he’d hit the 24 hour mark, that was when Tetsuya Shinbo decided to make his move.

His move was all about timing. Shin waited until they finally decided to come and move him, so they could interrogate him. The construct was held tightly in his mind’s eye, ready to snap into place. It was not an old construct. It was fairly new. While locked away, he’d had plenty of time on his hands to practice, and while he had not had all the time he would have needed to create an amazing cosplay transformation, Shin had been given enough time to create the mental framework of his brand new shard armor. He hadn’t had time to actually summon it and practice moving around. So he’d have one go to get it right.

It wasn’t based off any of the TV shows he’d always thought to model shard armor on. There was no bulletproof tuxedo or flowing white coat. He wasn’t going to don Golden lion armor like the eponymous fencer of gold, GARO, nor would he be dazzling them all with his Kamen Rider Kabuto costume (or any rider kicks!). No, Shin had wanted something more original. His own creation. When he left, he was leaving in style. Of course, he’d still use the famous phrase that prefaced every Kamen Rider transformation when he snapped the armor into place.

The time came. A sly smile spread over the Asian’s face. ”Henshin!” Translator’s note: Henshin means transform in Japanese!

There wasn’t actually a vibrant white flash when the armor snapped into place. There was no actual music that accompanied the transformation. The overhead lights did glint off the newly created armor suddenly, which did dazzle some people. If music had accompanied the transformation, it would have probably been something from JAM project.

It was as if white diamonds had crusted over his body. They coalesced around his him, sweeping over his form in seamless, form-fitting lines that obscured underlying clothing. The triangles that coated him were so small, they almost looked like glitter in certain patches, if you looked at them up close. From afar, it was all smoothed out in the ambient white glow of the diamond motif. Two long crystals jutted from Shin’s right shoulder, facing up and slightly towards his back like icicles. At the joints of his arms and legs, the ends of simple armored boots and gauntlets cut out in sharp-looking points. His chest was housed in a subtle breastplate, that wasn’t overly wrought to look like medieval armor. More like a bulletproof vest. As a final touch, Shin let a creeping patch of triangular shards cup his right cheek like skin. For an armor that looked like it was made from white diamonds, it honestly wasn’t intended to look ostentatious. Functional, yes. Ostentatious, no. That was just the nature of his power. Even functional things got glammed up.

To their credit, the two men holding the Asian didn’t step back when he transformed. He turned to look at one of them, and the first “icicle spear” shard on his right shoulder snapped off and flew into the man’s shoulder. That caused him to step back... and momentarily get pinned to a wall. He’d been imprisoned for 24 hours. They’d made him remember the mutant concentration camps. Shin wasn’t playing around. The man slid down to his knees as the Asian mentally tore that spear of shards free, and spun on the second guard. The spear hovered dangerously in the man’s face, tip red.

”Handcuff keys,” Shin said, voice terse. His arms were locked into place behind his back.

The guard’s brown eyes narrowed. “No.” He said.

Shin blew a stray hair out of his eyes. Then, a second shard spear detached from his right shoulder.

”I insist.”

The super agent on the ground went for his gun, hand straying towards his side. One of the icicles shot down and batted the hand away from the holster, golf style, with its blunted base. It would have been far too easy to stab the hand, but Shin just didn’t feel like it. He’d already hurt the guy enough. He didn’t want any deaths by blood loss on his hands.

While he was distracted by the first, the second man took the opportunity to go for his own sidearm. The Asian didn’t react in time to stop this one. In the space of a second, the man squeezed off two shots in quick succession from a few feet away. They impacted on one side of Shin’s body, and he staggered back several feet. Small cracks spread from the spot the bullet had hit, and he’d have a nice bruise to show Kealey later... but the shard armor had protected him from the attack. It had hurt like hell, and sent him reeling, but he’d survived. Shin shot the man a dirty look.

”Really?” He said, through gritted teeth.

The man paled, and his sidearm lowered by the slightest of degrees in uncertainty.

Carefully, almost daintily, the shard spear dropped to slide into the space between the trigger and the trigger’s guard. Then, he lifted the gun out of the stunned man’s hands. The placement of the construct had prevented him from pulling the trigger. He’d been nice enough to keep the area clear, through good trigger discipline, but he was obviously too emotionally compromised to be holding a gun. Shin lowered it down far away from them all, careful not to drop it, lest it go off by accident.

They’d been surprised by the armor, and the dangerous spears. He felt almost like he’d gone God Mode. Which was silly. They were just dumb and dumbfounded. The situation easily could have gone the other way. It still could. The pain from being shot was still a very real thing. He’d just shuffled it into the background for the moment. Shin decided maybe getting his hands free was going to cost him too much, in the long run. Fine then.

The spears jabbed at the two men, close to their faces, forcing them to go on the defensive and keep back from the threatening flurry of points. While they were occupied by the thought of not becoming pincushions, Shin ran.

He ran. Perhaps, ran isn’t strong enough. Shin ran like his life depended on it. He stole an ID, got past secured areas, and mentally censored his own violence whenever he came to it.

Security was good. He was better. Once he was free, he flew. Flew to the rip, flew to freedom, and only glanced back like a hundred times to make sure he wasn’t being tailed.

This felt like the thing one would mention to the X-men. But they knew. They knew about super and their abductions. They knew. His own personal experience really didn’t need to be shared in detail. Maybe later. He didn’t feel like sharing. He felt like glancing over details and repressing. So Shin went home to the Empath he WOULD share things with, and didn’t call the X-men about his couple of days in the SUPER can.