It was a strange thing, the thing they had. Sveta was not sure what the thing was, and from what she could tell, Matt was not sure either. But it was a thing, because she was at his apartment again, and two hangouts at one's apartment after a night of drinking definitely constituted a thing. A strange a messed up thing. But not necessarily a bad thing.

Sveta was sitting on the couch again. This time, she was not drinking alcohol (yet), but she was trying to find a way to get Matt to play some music again. She learned that she really liked his songs. Or maybe his singing. Same difference?

"Where is that damn pizza" she muttered instead, throwing a glare at the door. Matt had just gotten off a shift, she had worked all day, it was already dark outside, and a fancy dinner was in order. As in, cheesy pizza slices straight out of the box. Because no one wanted to be classy on an evening like this.

"I feel like I am getting the college experience I never had" she grinned at Matt. They were not roommates exactly, but the New York apartment and the takeout and the couch did have a distinctly American-sitcom feel to it.

Someone finally rang the doorbell.

Was codependence usually unhealthy? Yes, yes it was. Matt was certain that he and Svetlana weren’t at that point, though. He felt good about calling her a friend by now, but he still wasn’t sure where that actually left them in terms of, well, everything. It wasn’t difficult sitting there, though, in his living room again. Neither of them were drinking this time, but a good meal was definitely in the picture. They had both worked all day, and as such, it was nice to have a moment to relax. The air was already lighter and the sky was dark. It was just too bad that it was so hard to see the stars in the city. He thought Sveta might like the stars.

“They’re probably just stuck in traffic,” he said with a smirk, glancing over toward her from his spot in the chair. It wasn’t unheard of for someone to be late in New York city, even if they were coming on foot. It was funny how angry she got over something as small as that.

"I feel like I am getting the college experience I never had"

Matt grinned at her and shook his head. “How is this the college experience? Don’t tell me you’ve never ordered a pizza before.” He knew that she could be a bit of a shut-in sometimes, but that seemed like it would be a bit overboard.

Finally, the doorbell rang. Matt stood up and made a point of stretching out his shoulders and walking slowly toward the door, just to annoy Svetlana. Eventually, he did make it there. He pulled the door open, letting whoever was behind it see right inside. Whoever it was would have perfect clarity of the whole apartment. He wasn’t exactly paranoid about his own doorstep.

“What the ****?”

>>“They’re probably just stuck in traffic,”

Sveta tended to get hangry when she did not get her food on time. It might have had something to do with her constant energy boost, except right now the buzz was comfortably off, and she still felt like she would hit someone for a pizza. Not Matt, though. It was not his fault.

>>“How is this the college experience? Don’t tell me you’ve never ordered a pizza before.”

"I never said that" Sveta smirked, just as the doorbell rang. Matt made a show of getting to it really slowly, which earned him a glare. He was kind of a jerk when he was in a good mood. Not that it wasn't endearing. Unable to wait patiently for the pizza, Sveta got up too and followed him to the door, bouncing on the balls of her feet as she peered over his shoulder.

Which is why she saw what he did not.

It was the look on the pizza guy's face the moment before he lunged. She had opened her door to delivery people of all kinds before, but she had also been in enough fights to recognize when someone was about to go for her throat. The rest was all instinct; before the pizza box even hit the floor, she had grabbed Matt's shoulder to yank him back out of the way.

>>“What the ****?”

"Watch out!"

If it had been a gun, or a knife, it could have been any sort of run-of-the-mill robbery. But this guy (he had to be about Sveta's age, tops) was holding something else. Something eerily familiar. The next moment, the tranquilizer gun hit the wall by the door as she aimed a kick at the guy's wrist, and then another one straight between his legs. There was shouting, and a commotion in the background. He had not come alone.

The moment the SUPER agent stumbled back over the threshold, Sveta slammed the door shut. It was not going to hold, but they needed a moment to breathe.

"SH*T!"

Matt felt his shoulder be yanked backward as the scene unfolded. Having been back in civilian life for nearly ten years, Matt wasn’t accustomed to being on his guard all the time. In fact, he usually let his guard down quite a bit when he was at home, and physically, he was pretty much open for fire if someone wanted to. That was the thing, though - no one really cared that he existed when he was simply living his life has a New York civilian. Sure, there was an occasional drunk person who wanted to chuck a bottle at his head, but other than that, he was in the clear.

What he wasn’t accounting for was that he was with Svetlana, the woman who judged the status of a week by how many times she was attacked. Everyone wanted her on their side; whether it was for her powers or otherwise. This paranoia that came with the territory gave her a bit of a leg up when it came to reacting, so when Matt was pushed to the side, she was moving to disarm the “pizza guy”.

If it had just been a gun that was in his hand, then he might’ve assumed that it was a regular old robbery. Or if he was with something else. His mind, instead, went immediately to what it likely was. Someone was after her.

Matt let Sveta take charge as she slammed the door in the face of the man. From the sounds of it, the guy wasn’t alone. They had a minute, but there was no way that a simple door was going to stop them. He ran his hands through his hair as he tried to process what was happening. As best he could, he tried to access the side of himself that had been used to being in the army. He was not completely inexperienced in something like that.

“What’d you see out there? Did you get a visual of how many there were? Do you know who this is?” he drilled, his eyes already steeled in his usual style. He was stepping away from the door, a clear direction in mind as he thought through how they could get through this. There was the fire escape, but there was a chance that there would be people parked out on the street. They needed a plan that would give them both a fighting chance and a way to get out.

The voices outside were getting louder. They had a minute at best. Matt walked into his room and grabbed something from his bedside table and from his closet. Two glocks. It just so happened that he had two. He held one out by the handle toward Svetlana and then held his carefully. They were nothing like the weapons that he’d carried when he was in the military, but he hadn’t exactly stocked up for a home invasion. They would have to do. “We can get out through the fire escape, but I don’t know how much good that’s going to do.”

Over the surprise of the attack and the adrenaline shooting through her veins from the sight of a SUPER agent, Svetlana was feeling an overwhelming sense of anger. She was furious. She was furious to have her suspicion confirmed that she was never going to be rid of SUPER. And even worse than that, she was furious for Matt. He did not deserve evil government agents from another dimension knocking down his door. Matt had been through enough. And his a**holes picked his apartment, out of all places, to try to take her.

At least she managed to yank him out of the way before he got tranquilized. Now that the door was shut and bolted, she picked the gun up and checked it. They had never given one to her when she was in training, for obvious reasons, but the general mechanics were not all that complicated.

>>“What’d you see out there? Did you get a visual of how many there were? Do you know who this is?”

Matt sounded different. Right down to business. That had to be the military training kicking in. It made Sveta want to kick herself even more. Once they got through this, there was going to be one hell of a mental mess to clean up.

"SUPER agents. None that I recognize. I'd say three at the door." Not Karlson or Sabine, thank god. They would already have been inside the apartment. The pizza guy seemed younger, and judging from the way she could kick his weapon away, he was not very well prepared either. "He should have shot right when he had the chance."

Matt returned from the bedroom with two actual guns, and handed one to Sveta. She took it without an argument.

>>“We can get out through the fire escape, but I don’t know how much good that’s going to do.”

"This guy was either a distraction, or the whole team sucks, but I don't think they suck that much" she sighed, walking over to peer out the back window. "If they followed me all the way here, they probably know who you are too. Maybe even what you are. They'll want to take you too." she frowned deeply. SUPER would be on the lookout for new Kappa agents. Matt really, really did not need to get dragged into this. "I can put up a fight here, and you can go. They'll let you run if they have a chance to get me."

Usual thoughts were pushed aside as Matt entered an alternate state of mind. Nothing else mattered for the moment; the rest of their evening was forgotten. It didn’t matter what they had been doing before. All that mattered was that there was a threat outside that was trying to come in. There was no time to figure out tactics or a specific plan of action, either. It was all based on whether they could be smart enough to get out of it without getting captured or killed.

“SUPER?” he muttered questioningly back to her, his brow furrowed. He hadn’t heard of them before. Whatever. “It doesn’t matter. They know what you do?” Of course they did. He was clarifying. Why else would they show up at his doorstep if not for Svetlana? Adapteds couldn’t be rare enough to warrant a public capturing display.

Really, they had gotten lucky that it was some untrained sucker behind the door and not a full agent. Had it been for looks that they had chosen him? The most like a delivery boy? Or perhaps it had been a diversion. Whatever it was, it was a poor choice on their part, but it gave them a minute to figure things out. A minute was a blessing in a time like that.

He had returned from his bedroom with two guns, one for each of them. It was nowhere near enough firepower to get them though much of anything, but it was something. If worse came to worst, then they both knew how to throw a punch. Not incredibly effective against tranq guns, but it would have to do. He was just glad that she didn’t argue when he handed her the second firearm; she knew the situation as well as he did. Probably better.

The team was getting their s*** together, though. They had limited time before they descended upon them with a new kind of hellstorm, at which point they would be screwed. They would both be screwed, though. “No way in hell am I turning tail,” he said with a quick shake of his head. It was out of the question completely and it would be near impossible to change his mind. “We’re both in this now, alright? And I have to make sure you don’t destroy-”

Too late. The door had come crashing down and soon enough, the room was flooded by armed guards. Yeah, the first guy had been a mistake.

They only had seconds to regroup before the agents would come through the door. Sveta was not naive enough to think the fire escape was safe either.

>>“SUPER? It doesn’t matter. They know what you do?”

Sveta nodded shortly.

"Government from the other side. They're the ones that tried to train me as an agent."

With any luck, her training just made her all the more dangerous against them. She hoped it would be just enough, paired with the guns, to fight them off. Like hell she was going back to SUPER, and like hell she was going to let them take Matt too.

>>“No way in hell am I turning tail,”

Sveta opened her mouth to tell Matt not to try to be a knight in shining armor.

>>“We’re both in this now, alright? And I have to make sure you don’t destroy-”

The door broke down. It had never been designed to withstand a bunch of government agents. Sveta ducked away from the window and took cover. They were not going to use guns, which was an advantage, but some did had the tranquilizers, and she could also see a taser or two. The one that got close enough got hit with the tranq gun she took earlier. The effect was not instant, but it did put a stop to his momentum, slowing down the others behind him. This was going to be all close quarters now. Sveta swore profusely in Russian as she used the tranq gun to hit the next guy in the face.

It only took a minute for the little apartment to become the stomping grounds of an angry government operation. It wasn’t a large place, but it seemed to be even smaller with that many people sharing one space. More just seemed to keep coming, too. They had definitely decided to pack heat. Matt stood with his back toward Svetlana as he took on the oncoming people.

Over his shoulder, he could hear Svetlana putting up a struggle. He had seen her in a fight before, so he knew that she would be just fine fighting on her own. Besides, he had enough to focus on without trying to save her at the same time. There would be no shining knights that day.

He was keeping up, sort of. He had managed to avoid being hit with a taser, and he had just barely dodged a shot from a tranq gun, which went right into the floor. F***, he was going to have to pay for that. And the door, too. It was going to be expensive. To make himself feel better, he had hit one guy over the head with the butt of his gun, and had disarmed another. The armour that they were wearing made it hard to get a shot in, but he managed to shoot one guy in the leg where there was little padding.

He was getting into the swing of things, now. It felt like he was back somewhere, fighting for a cause again. This time, the cause was not to be taken by some sort of government operation. How f***ed up was that? He nearly felt like waving his dog tags around and reminding the assholes in front of him that he was a veteran. Usually that got some sort of respect.

They likely already knew that, though. Besides, it didn’t really matter. He was busy by that point, trying to wrangle a gun out of the hand of his next attacker. It wasn’t working to do hand-to-hand combat with all the armour that the guy was wearing, so Matt took a step back and loaded his gun instead. In a quick motion, he fired at the man’s leg, just to wound him. He wasn’t shooting to kill, but he had drawn the first real blood. He was going to have to get the stain out of the floor later, though. The man tumbled to the floor, clutching his new injury.

The shot had distracted the man, but there were still countless others in the apartment. With how distracted he had been, Matt hadn’t been watching his own back. He wasn’t expecting it, but he could definitely feel the taser be thrust into his back. It was a high voltage, for sure. It wasn’t the first time that he had had that done to him, but it wasn’t any less painful. He dropped to his knees, the experience hitting him at full blast. He glanced up, finally realizing the situation that they were actually in. There would have been no chance for them to get out, anyway, given how many people were swarming around them. He just hoped that Svetlana was doing better than he was.

There were entire too many of them. So many, in fact, that they were getting in each other's way, which was just another sign that they were not fully trained, or maybe fully stupid. What was this, Class of Losers 2018? But even so, her inner sarcasm had no time to linger. A bunch of losers could still overpower her and Matt, and make them feel even sh*ttier about it. As far as she could tell, none of them was a mutant either. Or maybe Matt was blocking whatever they were trying to do.

A shot went off, and one of the agents dropped. It was not hard to aim well this close to them, and Matt had taken his leg out, which was what Sveta was resolved to do, unless she was forced to do otherwise. They were getting blood all over his apartment, which was bad, but she would have to worry about that later.

Sveta hit the guy again with the empty tranq gun, and then again, as he was trying to push her back against the wall. Eventually he staggered back as she felt a crack on impact; she had probably broken his nose. Sveta kicked him in the gut, and the staggering turned into a fall - but the next one was already behind to continue the assault. Sveta switched the tranq gun to the real one, and shot him in the leg. It hit, although it made her feel uneasy to be shooting this close to Matt, since she could barely see where he was in the commotion.
Someone should have called the cops by now, right?

SUPER had to know they had a short window of time. Instead of lining up, the next round of them all came at Sveta at the same time; she aimed, but the gun was knocked out of her had by the mass of four agents all lunging at her. So she kicked instead, and from the sound, she hit one of them between the legs. Good.

And then there was another sound, and Matt went down from a taser.

"F*** leave him alone!" Sveta snapped, elbowing an agent in the face with renewed force.

This was not going well.

The taser had gone right through his body, the electricity making his muscles spasm. Matt’s face contorted as he struggled to regain control against it, but it was useless. The signals from his brain had been temporarily interrupted, and it was getting hard to fix. His already bad hands were lost to him as he tried his best to grip the gun. To grip anything.

He managed to lift the gun a little, but the taser was still in his back. Somewhere beyond the countless agents (what the hell were they thinking?), he heard Svetlana’s voice calling out. He probably looked like s***. Great, now he was in dept and he looked like a total loser, having been taken out by the agency’s D-team. Some veteran he was.

Another shot from the taser brought him down completely. He couldn’t hold up his body anymore. A noise came from his lips as he tried to break his own short fall, but failed to move his arms properly. He felt himself be yanked back up a second later, and the gun was taken right from his grasp. He was held up by the back of his shirt, unable to fight back as he tried to retain consciousness. It had been a very high voltage.

An agent stepped out of the crowd and a few of the others stepped back, filling into the hallway to make space. They had very little time left before the police would arrive. “Alright, sweetheart,” the agent said, her face visible beneath the plastic visor on the helmet that she was wearing. “We’re going to take this nice and easy. It was so nice of you to make a friend so we could find you here.”

The agent accepted the gun from the man standing next to her and held it up to Matt’s temple. “He’s a nice man, isn’t he? Got a nice face. He’d be useful, sure, but blowing it off really isn’t out of the question. What do you say we all take a little stroll together?”

Sveta managed to do some damage. She was not willing to give up just yet. There were too many of the agents, sure, but they were also amateurs, compared to other enemies she had faced. She was keeping up the rhythm of the fight until she heard another voice.

>>“Alright, sweetheart. We’re going to take this nice and easy. It was so nice of you to make a friend so we could find you here.”

"F**ing cartoon villain" Sveta snarled as she paused at the sight of a gun being aimed at Matt's head. That was not SUPER protocol. That was someone's tiny ego running away with them in search of a pat on the head. Damn.

>>“He’s a nice man, isn’t he? Got a nice face. He’d be useful, sure, but blowing it off really isn’t out of the question. What do you say we all take a little stroll together?”

"You don't need him." Sveta said, trying to make the best of a bad situation "We just drink together. Let him be. I'll go with you."

They were never going to say yes to that. But she was trying to buy some time. The shots were bound to have summoned the police, and no one knew what exactly would happen when the NYPD had to face down operatives from another dimension.
Hopefully, chaos.

"Oh, and he just happens to be a Kappa?" grinned the leader clicking his tongue "I thought you were a better liar, Iota-9. You are both coming with us."

She could hear the greed behind his words. Two important assets in one go. He had done everything wrong, but he still thought he could get a promotion out of it. Moron. Sabine would hand him his a** faster than he could blink for breaking protocol.

"Alright, alright." she held up her hands, and stepped towards Matt. The agents moved instinctively.

"This is not a honeymoon, sweetheart. Go that way." the leader nodded towards the door, completely unaware that he was doing exactly what Sveta wanted him to do. They sent her out first, surrounded by a bunch of agents, and waited until she disappeared in the hallway before taking the gun out of Matt's face.
Which meant she was also out of his aura now.

The world was all a little… hazy. Matt could feel his body straining against the electricity that had been sent through his muscles. It took him a minute to figure out what was happening as he lifted his head to watch. Svetlana was giving herself up. The smartest decision for the guards would be to have her stand next to Matt and get the two of them out of there as quickly as possible. It was just too bad that they were, in fact, the D-Team.

Even through his groggy state, Matt could make sense of things. The woman standing behind him was trying oh so hard and doing very little. They were taking Svetlana out into the hallway, which was a poor choice on their part. It would mean that his radius would end and she would be able to use her powers. That was good. Very good.

He was still stuck in his apartment, though. The gun had been moved away from his head, and his arms still hadn’t been tied back at all. In fact, no one was really paying much mind to him other than the fact that they figured he would be out for the count. If he had decided to give up, then he would be, too. Really, he should’ve been, but he wasn’t ready. As best he could, he made his feet move beneath him as he stood up. He balled his fists and tackled the woman behind him. Well, it wasn’t really a tackle as much as sort of falling onto her, but it had done the trick. He had weight on her and she wasn’t standing square.

“Get off me!” she yelled, squirming beneath him. Up close, he could see how young she was. She was very, very young. What kind of agency was this? Unfortunately for Matt, despite her age, she still knew how to shoot the gun that was in her hands. She raised it beneath him and shot just once, through Matt’s side. It was off to the side, missing any potential internal organs, but it still hurt like a b****.

“F*** off,” he yelled, leaning over to place his arm over the woman’s windpipe. While he did that, he reached down and grabbed the gun from her. It wasn’t difficult, really. She was distracted by the arm over her throat, which was constricting her breathing. She was barely even trained. As best he could, Matt stood up, wobbling on his feet just a little. The other agents just looked confused. The whole operation was a complete bust. Outside, there were sirens going off and feet coming up the stairs.

Matt turned around and fired a shot toward the woman on the floor. It missed her by several inches and went through the floor instead. “S***,” Matt muttered. He was going to have to pay for that, too. He tried again, this time hitting her thigh. That would keep her down for a while. Then, he turned toward the other two agents. They had just been standing there the whole time, not shooting him.

“Look, please don’t make me shoot you. My aim is s*** and the cops are coming up the stairs right now,” Matt said. He was tired and done. And he was bleeding now, too. That sucked. His free hand clutched the wound, trying to stop the bleeding as much as possible. At least she hadn’t hit an artery.

“What are you doing? F***ing shoot him already!” The woman on the floor shouted, gripping her leg. The two men simply looked between each other, setting their weapons down.

“I really don’t think this was a good idea,” the first one said. He looked like he might wet himself.

Sveta walked out to the hallway, surrounded by agents. They were getting antsy now, ushering her towards the stairs faster. There were sirens in the distance. They needed to get to whatever vehicle they came in, before the cops showed to ask questions.

Behind them, another shot went off. Sveta froze for a moment, and someone pushed her from the back. Another shot followed, and she drew a breath. If they had shot Matt, there would have only been one.

And then there was yelling.

Some of the agents were confused. The elevator whirred to life. There were echoing shouts from street level, which meant the cops were coming in with full force. If there was ever a moment of chaos to be taken advantage of, this one was it.

Sveta moved fast. She dodged to the side, tacking one of the young agents; his head bounced off the wall. She pushed an elbow into his heck, and he gasped for breath long enough that she could knee him between the legs while he was struggling. The others were on her now, but Sveta was not about to get taken down twice.

She was furious, for so many things. She did not want to do this s**t over and over again, and yet here she was. And Matt was caught in the middle of it. And the cops were going to come and ask questions. And there had been too many shots. And she really, really wanted pizza.

Someone's shoulder cracked, closely followed by their nose. Sveta swore in Russian as she yanked a taser away from someone and immediately turned it against them. There was trampling and yelling and confusion, and she used her momentum to knock out the agents as she made her way back towards the apartment. When the last one standing blocked her way, she kissed him.

It could have been an explosion. That was definitely in the cards, but in that moment, a part of Sveta did not care, and a part of her held on to the belief that even she could not be so unlucky. This time, the gamble worked. The guy stared at her for a long moment after the kiss, and then promptly turned into a cloud of iridescent smoke.

Freaking amateurs.

"Matt!" Sveta ran down the rest of the hallway to the broken door of the apartment. She saw more people down, and two standing with their backs to her; it only took a few moves to knock them both out cold. She was not pulling punches anymore.

There was dark red liquid trickling down Matt's side. The sight was enough to make Sveta go pale. "What happened?"

Matt didn’t feel like fighting anymore. Actually, he felt like lying down for the next forever and calling it a day. Nay, calling it a year. He was so completely done.

Thankfully, the female agent was down for the count and the two others were absolutely useless. They didn’t even stop him as he moved to sit down on the couch in the corner. They just stood there, staring at each other, their weapons on the floor. He probably should have gone to make sure that Svetlana was alright, but he was too tired. Plus, his aura was disrupt her whole thing. He’d probably only make it worse and the little burst of adrenaline that had kept him going up until that point had all but worn off.

God, he could go for a beer.

He leaned back slightly and put his arm on his forehead as he drowned out the noise. It wasn’t difficult, really. His head was absolutely swimming. He lost consciousness for a brief second, and the next time he opened his eyes, Svetlana was in the room and the two guys had been knocked out. It served them right. Down the hallway, he could hear the police rapidly approaching. He just hoped that they would get the right idea about what was going on and that he wouldn’t have to spend the night in jail. They always went for the latino guy if there wasn’t a black guy around.

Hopefully there would be some sort of insurance claim, too. He was bleeding on his couch.

"What happened?"

“Oh, you know,” Matt replied breezily, his voice hoarse from being electrocuted and the blood loss. “I’m really into the whole penetration thing…” His joke was quickly punctuated by a cough that made his injury bleed just a little harder. “I vote that we don’t make this into a drinking game.”

The police quickly joined them in the room, fully dressed in S.W.A.T. gear as they looked around. Apparently, whatever tip they had received had told them how bad the situation actually was. It was just too bad that they had gotten there so late. “Which one of you owns this apartment?” a cop said, standing up from his attack position.

“That’d be this poor f*** here,” Matt said, pointing to himself with his pointer finger.

Matt was sitting on the couch, apparently in and out of consciousness, and bleeding profusely. Sveta hurried over, looking for something to put pressure on the wound. It seemed like in and out, the way it was bleeding, but it probably hurt like hell.

>>“Oh, you know. I’m really into the whole penetration thing… I vote that we don’t make this into a drinking game.”

"I vote that you shut up and focus on not bleeding." Sveta frowned, grabbing a towel from the bathroom for lack of a better option. By the time she got it to him, the police was also on sight. They probably read the situation as they did not start screaming at her as she tried to help Matt.

>>“Which one of you owns this apartment?”

>>“That’d be this poor f*** here,”

Sveta groaned. Explaining all of this... was going to be difficult. They had people down, people bleeding, and someone who was a cloud. SUPER agents were probably trained on what to do if they ran into NY police, but she was not sure they remembered their training very well.

"Business from the other side of the rip" she sighed finally "If I were you I'd bundle them all back over there, and have their police deal with it. They probably mistook us from our doppelgangers." A weak excuse, but a good way out "Also, this man needs medical attention. Is there an ambulance downstairs?"