It had taken some time, but June nodded and smiled and flashed a shiny new identification card at the border to the otherworld. SUPER had been a tough nut to crack and she'd had to accept a chip that would track her movements, but for now June was pretty sure that was alright. Because she was pretty much a free woman on World-02. (Of course, the other world called themselves something stupid like "World A." Inferiority complex.)

"Sank you." She picked up her backpack from the TSA-style conveyor belt and put herself back together, checking her ankle boots were zipped and that her pants were still starched. June was officially classified as Delta-17, one of their newest wave of recruits and one of the few who had walked in through their front doors voluntarily.

As far as SUPER knew, the Frenchwoman could sense mutants and actively cancel them one at a time. She firmly believed that mutants were too free, like walking unregulated weapons, and should be policed. Sure. She believed that to some degree. And telling the truth made some lies go down smoother. Her mental scan had been dicey, but with June copying the psychic, she'd been able to keep tabs on what they did and did not discover and she'd been able to keep them from the worst of it.

She wasn't an Adapted, but she was considered more valuable in some ways since she was able to spare any mutant partners. And she'd learned quite a lot from the induction process. Quite a lot. Like where to go in this world in order to get her tagging gun, what to do as far as secret handshakes, she even got a crash course in self-defense. She'd had to sweat. But she'd done it.

And now she was here. And she was out.

June was free from her old world, masquerading in the authority it gave her. She knew she wasn't fully trusted. Yet. But she also hadn't quite figured out her end goal. She could sell SUPER secrets to people like Max and his boss Poseidon. They'd paid well enough for the odd job. There were sides to play, if she could walk that line.

Her first point of order, though, was to find that place that made rainbow bagels and make sure she wasn't being tailed.

Bah. What a ****y day. If there was one thing that Roxie hated it was waking up on the wrong side of the wrong person. She didn’t know what she was doing going home with Brick last night. No way, she knew exactly what she was doing, she was trying to not think about her parents again. It wasn’t Brick’s fault, of course, but he was essentially caught in the line of fire. Roxie practically jumped at the opportunity to use him as a distraction but it didn’t make her feel any better about the morning after.

Bah again! She was going to go home -- but not before picking up some real breakfast. It was sweet that he wanted to make her breakfast, but Roxie had never really been in the whole ‘three-square-meals’ a day kind of thing. She never prepared for herself an impossibly huge breakfast filled with redundant carbs and tears. Rather she was more than fine with a black coffee and a doughnut. And it just so happened by she was passing by an establishment that specialized in both.

It didn’t take long for Roxie to procure the exact answer to her rumbling stomach. The selection was all fairly basic, but they were well made and not those overly sweet, gourmet doughnuts that hipsters all seem to crowd around. No, this little ring of heaven was basic, simple, and no frills, exactly the way that she liked things.

Purchasing a pair of doughnuts and a coffee, Roxie made for the door. This was where her day was going to get better. She knew it. Every good day that she had started with doughnuts and a nice, dark, bitter coffee. Maybe it was the whole Yin and Yang of it, the sweet doughnuts balancing out the bitter coffee, but whatever the reason, Roxie just had a notion that things would start looking up.

That was exactly her frame of mind when she stepped out the door of the ‘Eat More Hole Foods’ doughnut shop and stepped into the sidewalk -- directly into the path of another person.

What happened next was...actually hard to say. Street construction was going on so she knew her senses were already off. But what made the whole situation was was exactly how off-guard she was caught. When the person bumped into her unexpectedly, Roxie was already stepping awkwardly off the ground and the sudden addition of new weight utterly threw off her balance.

She stepped funny, twisted, her arm wrapped around the other person as they became a tangle of limbs, torsos, and curse words. Somehow they managed to twist themselves up so much that they rolled two times, once upon contact with the ground, and again when they rolled off the sidewalk. Honestly it should have stopped there but as Roxie tried to gain and understanding of what was happening and loosen himself from the other person, her movement caused the both of them to hitch, roll again, and stumble directly through an open ditch in the middle of the street that was being used to renovate the sewers down below.

Weightlessness followed -- before it was followed by the crushing embrace of gravity. Roxie had absolutely no idea what happened, only that where she was once standing out in broad daylight, she was now lying flat on her back, surrounded by the foulest of odors, and the oppressive weight of another lying directly on top of her. Not only that, but Roxie could feel hot, exasperating breathing, warming the space between her breasts.

She grunted as she lifted her head, wincing, and looking at the younger woman who was splayed, face down, atop her. Not only that, but Roxie could swear she could see the crumpled white bag that once held both her glazed twist and powdered sugar doughnut crushed firmly between them. If that wasn’t proof enough, the spray of white sugar across the other woman’s face was telling enough of her breakfast’s fate.

Her head slumped back and Roxie stared up at the massive hole in the ceiling above the sewers. Staring, she could only utter one thing. ”What the ****?!”

June was a little bit underwhelmed. World 2 was supposed to be like the wild west of mutants. They could sing, they could dance, they could make romance. They could even, purportedly, use their mutations in broad daylight. Except, June didn't actually see any of that happening. She hated looking like a tourist, but her head was on a swivel. June could feel them, of course. But not with a whole lot of accuracy.

The line moved and they were actually moving enough so that she could get through the door, June noted from behind her Ray Bans, and so she took a step forward into a brick wall.

The brick wall turned out to actually be a woman that was holding a doughnut. June tried to step back, but the woman tried to step around, her arm was in the wrong place, there was the door frame, and the threshold, and maybe it was a mutant? Who knew? No matter what June tried to do, it only seemed to make things worse. The bag of confections that was trying to worm its way down the shirt was especially irritating. The fall back onto her tuchus was embarrassing.

June tried to shove the other woman off of her and she was only getting shoves back. They ended up mean girl, cat fight sort-of rolling across the sidewalk since neither one of them was willing to give up their pride and just stop. June's ire was rising. She hadn't even had a rainbow bagel yet! She opened her mouth to say something catty, but all that came out was a surprised yelp when they seemed to run out of ground.

Down they went. And June was determined to come out on top. So determined that she didn't account for the actual landing which jarred her into collapsing her arms and falling face first onto the other woman. A perfect poof of what looked like cocaine puffed out of the bag that was crushed between them and coated the lower half of June's face. If it hadn't tasted like powdered sugar, she might have been worried.

June pushed herself up and something squished under her hand.

> ”What the ****?!”

Throwing up would NOT make this situation better, but it was tempting. June shuddered all the way from her shoulders down to her tailbone as the French girl pulled her hand up to look at... asphalt? On her palm?

The other woman was a mutant. She could feel it now.

"You- I- can NOT believe..." Oh no. June could taste it every time she opened her mouth. She thought the smell was bad, but the taste was WORSE. "We gotta get out of here." She attempted to find her feet and scramble away, but it was like she was a freshly born deer over a thick icy pond. Her ankles wobbled with the moisture that had seeped through the material of her shoes and EVERYTHING SHE TOUCHED SQUISHED!

Truly, Roxie had NO idea what had happened. What started as a simple tangle up had immediately descended into some slapstick comedy, complete with cursing, rolling, and the inevitable plunge into the dark, dankness of the sewers of New York City. Even though Roxie knew everything that happened, she was still trying to process all of it. Mentally she rolled back into her mind what had occurred, argued how feasible it was to blame the person on top of her, and how necessary it was to smack her around for dirtying up her clothing with sewer water.

Ugh! The sewer! She was in a goddamn sewer! Normally Roxie didn’t mind, as she was always willing to get her hands dirty in the name of fighting the good fight, but she wasn’t down here chasing drug dealers or looking for a lost kid, she was here purely because the woman on top of her didn’t watch where the **** she was going.

So now, here she was, lying on her back, staring at a canopy of stone, broken light, and foulness the likes of which she certainly wasn’t prepared for. What else could she do but let out a curse of disbelief? And apparently, she wasn’t the only one.

>>"You- I- can NOT believe...We gotta get out of here."

The younger woman was beginning to panic. She squirmed off of Roxie, clothes wet, shaky, and face covered in powder. It was a look that Roxie was familiar with, having seen it in crack addicts that she would come across during patrols. For the briefest of moments she thought that was what was happening here, but the red-stained, crushed bag still sticking to the woman’s chest was enough to paint a different story; a far more tragic one. Her doughnuts. They were not lost to the world. Ugh the humanity!

”Just...relax,” Roxie grumbled.

The woman looked like she was on the verge of panicking, unable to get her footing for more than a few seconds as every step was met with a slick-sounding squiiish. The sound obviously unnerved the other as she kept trying to regain her balance but not allowing herself the chance to solidify her footing due to whatever slime and gunk she was stepping in.

When she managed to wiggle away from her, Roxie moved her heavy boots onto the ground. Pushing the sounds out of her head, she sighed as she straightened up, brushing slime off the arms of her leather jacket and then flicking her fingers off to the side in an attempt to further dislodge it. Sadly the gunk seemed to be rather rank and sticky, not the best of combinations. With a sigh and acceptance that she would have to shower the rest of the day, and burn her clothing, she refocused on the other.

”Hey! Sweetheart!” she clapped her hands, hard, in order focus her attention on her. ”Look at me, you have to to calm down. I can get us out of here, but you need to tell me, are you hurt?”

What a day. She was now regretting her decision to not stay with Brick for breakfast.

Relax? Relax!? There was doughnut down her shirt, they were wallowing around in actual, literal sh*t, and worst of all...

"It's my first day at a new job and not only do I smell like sh*t, I look like I've been snorting cocaine off of your lovely breasts. While, that would have be a treat, this is not the kind of first impression I was shooting for!" June scrubbed at her face and realized she was only making it worse with what was on her hand and that her bag was no longer on her back.

Oh. Oh no. June looked around for her backpack which had all her possessions that she could fit from the other side of the rift stuffed into it: stolen designer goods, mostly. The kinds of things that would not at all benefit from being mucked around in a sewer. And all the while, June's shoes continued to squeeze her uncomfortably which made walking officially the worst. Were they shrinking? Wouldn't that just be the cherry on top? Real leather shrinking so tight that she bound her own feet?

Maybe the panic over her bag was a bit too obvious. The hooker June had snorted powdered sugar from did her best to calm her. Or maybe shock and then calm was a better description.

June tried to wipe her face on her shoulder.

"No." That was surprising considering the drop. "Wait. No. You were- I landed on you. Your head must have hit hard." Sometimes it was hard to get her words out in English when they stacked up in her brain in French first, but now that she was thinking about it, June was absolutely not going to complain about the shoes if this woman was offering to get them out AND was working through a concussion.

Some scraping above was distracting, but the other woman may have been hurt and that was the most important thing for now.

"Let me take you to hospital to have you- augh!"

Some chunks of asphalt broke free under the foot of a worker that was peeking down and thwacked June on the shoulder and back of the neck. It may have been worse if she hadn't raised an arm to deflect the rest. And immediately, June was set alight inside with righteous ire. It didn't matter that the woman in front of her had gotten them down there. She'd shown remorse and was trying to make things right. THAT GUY was the real MORON.

"You ladies alright down there?" A man in a hardhat called down as he knocked a smaller, second set of pebbles down.

Roxie was not about it today. Normally she wasn’t butterscotch and chocolate type; she didn’t sugar coat anything. She was a ballbuster on her best days. However, as irritated, and confused, as she was to have found herself in this situation, the ex-dancer was not going to let loose a stream of obscenities at anyone unless she was damn sure that they deserved it. At the moment she wasn’t sure if the young woman across from her actually deserved said treatment and, even if that were the case, right now she looked so damn pathetic that Roxie could hardly stay mad at her.

Besides, they both took part in a rather harsh fall. Roxie knew that she would be fine, the area around this part of New York was pretty well-kept so her abilities more than protected her. It was the other woman that she was more concerned about. Aside from looking like a crackhead-zombie standing for the first time, Roxie had an underlining care for other people.

>>"It's my first day at a new job and not only do I smell like sh*t, I look like I've been snorting cocaine off of your lovely breasts. While, that would have be a treat, this is not the kind of first impression I was shooting for!"

She winced and bit back her tongue. She needed to remember that it was not out of line for the woman to be upset. After all, it was no one’s hopes and dreams to fall into a trench in the middle of the road, directly into the goddamn sewer. Still, she could feel that small bit of heat rising to her cheeks. As much as she would have liked to have smacked her back with some sass, she choked it down. It was painful too.

”I would imagine not,” she grumbled.

>> "Wait. No. You were- I landed on you. Your head must have hit hard."

At least the the French girl wasn’t trying to completely blame the debacle on her. Rather she looked almost concerned after the fall that they both took. There was something almost endearing about it -- almost. She shook her head to try and quell her fears. ”No, no. I’m fine. I swear.”

>>"Let me take you to hospital to have you- augh!"

>>"You ladies alright down there?"

Roxie blinked as she took an instinctive step back and snapped her attention up to the cracked ceiling. There above her she could see that one of the workers was trying to lean in to check on them. While it was nice he “cared” the fact was that his actions were causing more asphalt to spill down on top of them. That was the last thing that they really needed to feel when already sitting underneath a city street.

”Not if you keep dropping the city on us like that!!” she shouted back in annoyance. She shook her head, attention drifting back to the young French girl. She held out her hand to her. ”Come on. I can get us out of here.”

Maybe her hissy fit was just a little much. June regretted her snip when the other woman winced. June went to clean her face a bit on the inside of her suit jacket and moved out from under the trickle of pebbles that the man CONTINUED to not realize he was nudging over the edge. June was sure she would feel so much better if she weren't affected head to toe, even just cleaning her face of muck and powder helped calm her ire.

She would 100% threaten to set that construction worker on fire, if given the chance, though.

June got most of it off her face and ended up just letting the now yucky inside of her jacket lay flat against her shirt. The shirt was already ruined. There was no point in trying to spare it.

> ”Come on. I can get us out of here.”

The woman held out her hand, palm up. Blackened palm up.

Hesitantly June put her own asphalt-like hand onto the hand of the other mutant.

"I'm June, by the way." Maybe she wouldn't notice. Maybe the other woman would show off her powers so June could figure out what she had. "Seems like, if we've seen as much sh*t together as we have, we should at least know each other's names."

Ugh. the guy upstairs was beginning to get on her nerves. The amount of debris he kept dropping on their heads was obnoxious and proved to be more annoying by the second; on top of which, there wasn’t a more foreboding moment when you were stuck under the city. It was time to make their exit. Roxie didn’t always care to display her powers in front of others, especially casually, but this could hardly be considered a “casual encounter”; they were trapped and they needed to leave -- nuff said. She offered her hand and she waited for the other to decide if she would trust her, or not.

June took a second to wipe the gunk from her face, trying to make herself as presentable as possible given her current state. It was an improvement, barely; either way, these clothes were going to be need to be destroyed -- a lot. Roxie doubted there was enough detergent in the world to make these acceptable again. Pity, she liked this jacket.

A hand slipped into her’s and Roxie pulled her a little closer.

>>"I'm June, by the way...Seems like, if we've seen as much sh*t together as we have, we should at least know each other's names."

The city-mutant smirked and then dipped her head in acknowledgement. ”Good point, June,” she said, repeating the woman’s name. ”Name’s Roxie.” She then pulled the woman a bit closer and held onto her tightly, not noticing in the slightest the asphalt covered hands the other sported. ”Hold tight,” she commanded.

Only when June’s grip was tight did Roxie move, aligning herself under the gap that they had both fallen through. The construction worker was still there, eyeing them curiously. A few stern words and a single-fingered gesture later and the man moved out of the way. With a shake of her, Roxie, reached down, scooping June against her body. A quick hop later and Roxie easily cleared the gap, only just clipping her shoulder but ensured that June wasn’t struck in any way. And, like that, her landed back on top of the street, amid the gawking looks of workers and curious passer-bys.

Roxie hated attention, it was a fact that was doubly so considering that she was covered in foulness. Still, she did her best to ignore them as she set June down on her own two feet. ”You okay?”

Roxie didn't notice. There was still time for that, but no point in June trying to swap her power away. Not while she was getting pulled close. Lord, they both stank. The frenchwoman pressed her lips together, but she could swear she could taste it as well. Could the other woman not smell it? Ugh. She was so unruffled and cool. June should be equally composed.

June held tight as instructed, but there was nowhere clean. She muttered an apology for that because she had some inkling of what was gonna happen. There was no ladder. The only way out was up. Still, it was always surprising to take flight... oooor have an inhuman sized jump. June grabbed even tighter when they clumsily scraped through the opening. Even though the opening had been getting bigger, it still wasn't the biggest target.

Okay. June's feet probably were bursting out of her shoes because of whatever gave this girl her jump. That was good to know.

> ”You okay?”

"I... You aren't hurt?" Actually, despite getting clocked on the head, June wasn't all that hurt. She reached back to the back of her own head, half expecting it to have sprouted something or something. What in the world was this woman's power?

Right. June had to let go at some point.

"I'm- I was supposed to be at work." She checked her watch, but it was covered in... June shuddered and instead looked around for her backpack. "I just came over from the other side of the rift. I don't even have a place to shower." Ah! There it was, flattened by their tumble across the sidewalk and in the hands of a baffled construction worker. June marched up and yoinked it back with a glare. And then, of course, the bag was getting dirty just by merit of June touching it.

Deep breaths from the power copier.

She was so. Gross.

"You're going to help me clean up." June didn't mind looping her arm into Roxie's with false cheer. They were both gross. And it was both their faults. And they both had to clean up.

Roxie landed with a thud but she barely registered any discomfort from it. She was too used to leaping high and landing hard, it was as familiar to her as one of the many dance moves that she practiced back when she was a teenager. However now it wasn’t near as elegant and sweet as it used to be. Now it was something with power behind it. She was unharmed by the motion and therefore easily set the young woman on the ground, much to her bewilderment.

The woman, June, seemed confused for the most part. She eyed Roxie suspiciously before she worked out a far more important detail -- she wasn’t harmed.

>>"I... You aren't hurt?"

Roxie shook her head. ”Nope.”

Crossing her arms over her chest, she kept her eye on June for a moment, wondering how the other was going to process all this. Was she new to the city? Even so, mutants were pretty much common knowledge these days, nothing to be overly surprised about. But, as she observed the woman, Roxie could tell that she wasn’t all together normal herself. Her hands. The asphalt. It was an image she was too used to seeing -- but usually only on herself. What was that all about?

>>"I'm- I was supposed to be at work. I just came over from the other side of the rift. I don't even have a place to shower."

The rift. That had been making the headlines recently. A hole in spacetime that lead to another world. Really it sounded like something out of a TV show; a cheesy one at that. But it was happening, everyday. People coming through checkpoints as if they were flying in from another town. In a way they were -- only the town was from a completely different universe. Talk about freaky.

As Roxie mused on this, she didn’t expect the other girl to get so...friendly. Already their clothes were ruined so there was no need to be upset by it. Still, it wasn’t high up on her bucket list to hug another sewage-covered woman.

>>"You're going to help me clean up."

Roxie snorted. ”You make it sound like I don’t have a choice.” She sighed, eyed her for a second, and then just shrugged her shoulders. ”Come on.” She guessed it was the least she could do to show hospitality for her side of the mishap. So, trudging along, she led the way back to her shotty apartment, each step resounding with a greasy and foul-smelling squish, squish, squish.

> ”You make it sound like I don’t have a choice.”

"It was nice of you to offer." June quipped, knowing full well that the other woman had, in fact, not offered at all. She made a show of grabbing up her bag with a wrinkled nose of disapproval for the construction worker who'd come to "help" them as she passed. June returned ready with expectation and a smear of something that should not be named smeared across her face.

> ”Come on.”

It... worked? June had been bluffing and hoping and it f*cking worked. She was going to get a shower!

Her hopes were low for today if just getting a shower could send her soaring, but dammit June was elated. The tight heels and stench and squelch of she was not going to even think about it made June a bit slow, but she did her best to not slow Roxie down. She carried her own weekend bag that was heavy with work-appropriate clothes and didn't complain. There was a time and place for complaints and that would be after the situation was better under control.

If June's track record held, that would be some time next July.

Roxie didn't seem to care one way or another if they ever spoke again. For the most part, June was okay with that. Breathing made her taste what she could smell and that was awful. But the otherworlder couldn't let the silence drag on. It wasn't in her nature.

"So, what do you do, Roxie?" That was normal get-to-know you stuff to ask about jobs.

Roxie didn’t really have to accept. She could have left the wayward woman from another world behind, hopped a few rooftops, and ran towards home so she could bath for the rest of her natural born life. But that also wasn’t right. It was neither June nor Roxie’s fault what happened today. It was clearly a mistake. They bumped into one another and, in a scene that could only be described by the workings of some maliciously omnipotent beings pulling the strings for comedic purposes, the two of them ended up down in the sewers. Really, it was madness. But, it would have been crappy (pun not intended) to just abandon her. The least she could offer was a shower.

So she led the way. Carrying on back towards her apartment building, Roxie ignored the squish of whatever was still between her toes and made a beeline for her home. The sooner she got in and under the water, the better. She certainly wasn’t going to allow herself to spend longer than she needed to in this state. That would be maddening in and of itself.

She was fine with just letting there be no further words between them until they got back to her apartment, but it apparently wasn’t satisfactory for June. They started off well enough in silence but beforelong, the deafening silence seemingly overtook her companion’s patience and she spoke in what had to be one of the most basic and simplest ways to begin a conversation.

>>"So, what do you do, Roxie?

It would have been rude to sigh, but lord how she wanted to sigh. Now really wasn’t the best time for conversation, though, maybe it was; anything to keep from thinking about what she felt wet one her lower back. Still, Roxie hadn’t been the most chatty of people to begin with (unless a tip depended on it), while she wasn’t the most comfortable conversing, it was better than wondering what she rolled about in. So, with a defeated breath, she spoke.

”Depends,” she answered. ”I bartend part-time…” she started. ”But I also work as a freelance bouncer whenever I feel like it.” ‘Feel like it’ actually meant whenever she was dirt poor and needed the extra cash. Plus there was something therapeutic about setting time aside to rough people up. And though she would have been fine not anything further, again, she didn’t want to be rude. ”You? You said you were here on a job interview?”

She was from the other side, right? Why was she here looking for a job?