Tires squealed! Rubber burned! The car changed lanes and slid between traffic by the barest of inches. Blue and red lights trailed behind it. Sirens sang the song of their people. Wee ooo wee ooo weee.

On the rooftop, Cheshire was watching the city. He sat, resting his elbows on his knees by the edge of the roof. Lamp light glinted off the bottom of his jet black motorcycle helmet, just enough to illuminate the bottom corner of a jagged monster of a smile.

White, white teeth, sharp as pins. Big red tongue. His roommate had made it for him before he’d died... he’d only found it buried in a closet once he’d started packing up Benji’s old things. There had been a post-it note with October 31 written on it in red pen. His birthday. Red eyes were painted on the upper half of the helmet, dark enough there were hard to see in the low light. They were almond-shaped and angled down the helmet in an Alien-like point. Black pants and a black leather jacket rounded out the outfit, alongside a black utility belt. Black, black, black. For when you want to blend in with darkness and go with everything. Or when you want to make criminals pee a little when you jump at then from out of the shadows.

A small handheld police scanner broadcast low behind him. Elliott had been listening to the car chase play by play for a while. Some mutant had robbed a bank. Big guy. Looked kind of gunmetal gray. Probably a mutant. When he’d left... he’d become his own Getaway car. Something sleek and expensive. Police were chasing. Some bright guy had called the X-men for advice. Cheshire, AKA Elliott, was going to stop him. Why? Good question.

Morality was always ambiguous to him. Murder, bad, yes. But robbery, less so... except when it gets violent. And there were deeper nuances to it, too. He’d talked at great lengths about that stuff when they’d been rooming together, but now— Basically, he was angry enough to want to kick a mutant cars ass. He didn’t want to go any deeper than that. Criminals pissed him off. Constructive uses of anger were good. Maybe he could paint someone a picture some time to explain.

Below in the street, an engine roared. He could hear the sound of sirens trailing in the distance now. He’d listened to the streets on the radio, and guessed at the nearest point on the map the car would pass. He snapped off the police scanner and strapped it to his utility belt. Then, he took a running lead and leaped off the building, towards the street below.

Cheshire landed on the bank of a police cruiser several cars back from the mutant vehicle. All that planning, all that smart guess work, exploded outwards in a torrent of noxious profanity. The helmet smiled it’s sharp smile. Elliott got in position and prepared to jump from squad car to squad car in pursuit. Maybe they’d figure out how to corner the car and he could catch up. Or maybe something big and noisy would distract it long enough for him to Frogger his way into a fight. Hopefully that X-man, whenever they arrived, would provide a much needed speed bump distraction, and they could all move on...that was a terrible thing to think, but there it was.

Did an X-Man arrive at that point in time?

You bet your green !@# one did!

How?

Only the coolest @#$^in way EVER! The Masochist fell from the GODDAM SKY and landed in the middle of the road silently, barely even flexing his legs at the landing from what had to be terminal velocity. How the @#$^ did he even get up there?! No one knew! In truth, he spent like, an hour hitting himself with a crow bar over and over, but they didn't need to know that, they just needed to see the cool stuff!

They also didn't know that he'd listened in on the scanner wrong the first time and landed first in front of an old granny driving down the street at five miles a day. Scared her so hard she spit her dentures out the window. He'd had to wipe them off real quick and hand them to her, all while she was moving the same speed.

One jump later though, he made his cool entrance, dressed from neck to toes in spandex and looking like a slightly beat up boss with a long crowbar in his hand, standing and waiting for the car to come to him. The Superhero cracked his neck and pointed at the car with his crowbar, standing still in the middle of the street.

It was a nice car, he had to admit. Especially because he'd ridden a freaking bike here after a giant cat golem had crushed his car because gingers are bad luck. Odd that it didn't seem to have a driver, but he'd seen stranger.

The car slowed for a moment, and then seemly decided to go for it, revving up and bolting at him. huh... Was this gonna hurt?

Had he really? Yeah, he’d really.

The car recovered from the sudden surprise. People don’t fall from the sky every day, right in front of a speeding car. The vehicle’s grill almost seemed to smile as it revved it’s engine, and powered towards the man in spandex.

“Gordon Freeman called,” a mechanical voice purred as it approached the crunching point. “He wants his crowbar back.”

Wham! The crunching point was reached! And, passed. “Broken leg detected,” the rumbling engine voice sang lazily. “Administering morphine!”

Elliott watched from his police car perch as the X-man took the car crash on the side, thumped, and tumbled on the road. Behind the black visor of the helmet, he blinked several times. Then, he sighed and sprang off the squad car as it passed the man, landing in roll several feet away from the supposed spandex roadkill.

He reached down to his utility belt for the objects dangling by his hip. Cautiously, he approached the X-man and prodded him in the side with one of his black metal Escrima sticks.

“Hey X man. You alive?” He said, voice a deeply faked growl. Unbeknownst to Cheshire, he’d just poked the guy on whatever side absorbed energy.

Sirens wailed as another cop car passed them, veering to one side to avoid running over the people in the middle of the street.

Everything had been going according to the plan he'd thought up, which included striking a pretty cool pose, digging his long crowbar into the cement at his feet, and allowing the car to hit the obstacle while bracing for the secondary impact long enough to, I dunno, punch the car until it gave up.

In actuality, as the car neared, he was distracted by the sight of a creature with a giant @#$^ing smile for a head on top of an approaching cop car. That half second of distraction was enough to make it so he wasn't able to deploy the crowbar in time, and instead he was rammed into by the wide-cracking motor vehicle.

Saph was knocked off of his feet, cursing in surprise as he rolled to the side a bit, and ended face down aiming to climb quickly to his feet. His eyes became more alert as he felt a figure land at a great speed at the edge of his sense... He opted to stay in place to assess if this was a danger while it approached... Maybe it was the smiley headed thing? He hadn't seen it clearly at the time, but he was starting to wonder if he'd just been seeing things... Maybe he was getting too old for this @#$^, like in that one cop movie, where the guy kept saying he was too told for this @#$^.

He felt something poke at him, and was up on his feet in a flash, crowbar brandished at the toothy maw of the beast, which was totally just a guy wearing a motorcycle helmet, who was asking him if he was okay in a dark, gritty voice. "What the @#$^ are you, then?"

He looked off in the direction of the car, which had sped off saying something smart-ass about the whole thing. Great.

"Look, I'd love to stay and chat, but I gotta get myself up to the rooftops looking for the next good placed to get ahead of this guy." He turned and looked up, looking to his buzzing arm for a moment. It wasn't quite enough to get up to the nearest roottop. "Damnit... Howm I gonna get up there..."

Elliott took a step back as the dead man sprang back up to life. Not so dead, after all. Well that was good. Except for the crowbar that had nearly taken off his head.

‘What the truck are you, then,’ the guy had asked. And then glanced off and watched the quickly escaping car fiend go.

“Cheshire, the @#$^ am I,” Elliott growled. The helmet kept smiling, though, because that %^*& was painted on.

The man had chasing cars on his mind, like some sort of spandex dog person. Already dismissing him, the X man stared off into the distance and came to the conclusion that, somehow, he was screwed.

“What’s your power, then?” Elliott asked in a dry, somewhat tired drawl, momentarily dropping the gravel voice. “I take it that it isn’t jumping, or getting hit by cars. Though you did that last one nicely. How’d you get up there in the first place?”

Elliott glanced up towards where he assumed the X-man had been, before he’d fallen from grace. Quietly, he added “If you need me to, I’ll kick you back up there myself.” His eyes fell back on the hero, and Elliott realized maybe he hadn’t been as quiet as he had thought.

Saph's expression turned from confused to slightly suspicious as he proclaimed he was... Cheshire? Like... the cat in the one movie. He gave the strange man a quick once over, and then shrugged. His getup screamed homebrew vigilante. Technically, that #$^& was illegal, but he'd never faulted anyone for taking the law into their own hands; he did the same on an almost twice weekly basis.

He glanced back for a second when the man asked him what his powers were. Typically, he wasn't very open about it to strangers, but if the guy had the internet he could always just look up what his powers were. Them folk on the nerd forums had actually done a pretty good job piecing things together, though they thought he absorbed and attacked on both sides, and he wasn't about to correct them.

"I soak up attacks and spit em out harder. Low on energy after that, though. Accidentally let some out after he surprised me." He pointed to the ground, which revealed a pretty large crack in the pavement where he'd landed.

The man then offered to... kick him back up? He gave him another once over... That's right, he'd felt the guy fling himself over!

"Alright... Yeah I can use that... How hard can you- Nah, @$%& it, hit me with everything you got, we're gonna make some @#$^ happen."

With some energy at his fingertips, he would fling himself up to the rooftops, and they could start the chase again fresh. That is, if he was up for it, and wasn't too thrown off when his attack suddenly had all of the force drained from it.

So the man was a damage sponge that took in punches and spewed them out his face hole. Elliott knew that probably wasn’t how it really worked, but the mental imagery inspired by the phrasing of “soak up attacks and spit them out, harder” had been too good to pass up. And if he was able to soak up those attacks and spit them out like watermelon seeds, then what was a swift kick in the butt between friends?

The man... accepted the offer. Oddly enough, he accepted the offer. “Hit me!” He’d said. Elliott could certainly do that.

“Sure.” He said. “Okay. You stand there and get ready. I’m going to get a running start.”

Elliott matched action to words. He stashed his weapons in their holsters, then ran back several feet. Elliott put everything he had into rushing at the man. Got there, and kicked him. Hard. He put everything he had into the flying kick, because honestly, how often does an X-man freaking ask you to kick them across the map?

Now, a super kick was one of Elliott’s most powerful moves. Given time and space, he could use a running start to launch a kick that would strike as hard as a giant battering ram. Powerful enough to break down doors, push cars, and send people flying. So when he ran at the mutant man with the intention of kicking him hard enough to send him flying across the map, he’d fully meant to do it. He was capable. That kind of kick would hit with bone-breaking force. It’d be up to Mr ‘Make some @#$^ happen’ to soak up the attack, and figure out a way to use it. And if the attack sent the fantastic Mr Sponge flying, like he hoped it would, Elliott was fully ready to follow up the attack by springing after the guy, to launch himself 20 feet into the air for a follow up kick that would help keep Sponge airborne long enough to reach a roof. Or splatter in a flashy impact against the side of the building, if he didn’t put enough English on the kick. Which ever.

Little did Elliott or Sponge-Saph X-Man know, the motorized mutant had pulled a U-turn and was driving back towards their block, at speed. He’d hit a road block, and weaved around the squad cars chasing him. Pesky gnats. As he’d passed them, he’d briefly turned into a giant robot and skated towards them on ankle wheels to lash out at them each in turn with a slashing tire iron mace. They’d spun off the road, into street signs or store fronts. The last of the three cars got the broadside of his passenger door shield as he’d sideswiped it. The police car crashed into a fire hydrant, which exploded in a fountain of water that rained down on NYPD Lieutenant McNasty’s blue hood. But that wasn’t the one explosion in the title of this thread.

The black and chrome robo-mutant sprang into the air as he’d shifted back to car form with a ratcheting machine sound and electronic groans. Tires squealed against the road as it did a burn out. And back towards an unsuspecting pair of vigilantes, it went!