Xavier blinked a few times and rubbed his face. Did... Did he have something on it? He turned a little red as he still tried to shake off the sleepiness. He lost to a long yawn as she went on about a bunny?

No, a bunny man. Who... couldn't hold his liquor? Hey, she wasn't old enough to drink! His neighbor was a delinquent?! Oh, wait, he already knew that.

His eyes widened, and his face went a little red when she mentioned it was a swingers event. What was Juni in to?! Oh wait, he pretty much knew that as well.

A moment later, he came to the conclusion that all of this wasn't actually very surprising. He was awake, now. Awake enough, at least. He had to get her safe in bed. She was... way out of it.

"I dunno where your shoes are, Juni. Why don't we get you to bed, huh?" His eyes widened as she mentioned fighting the stairs. She WON?! What did the stairs look like?

He was pulled from his thoughts as he was poked in the face. He looked to a small mirror he used to fit his super hero costume. Yup. Big pink heart. Great. Would it was out? 

Wait! The card! Where was it? 

She stared at him blankly, like he had just said the dumbest thing she had ever heard.

"But I don't wanna go to bed. I already napped!" She hopped up onto her feet and threw her arms in the air. "The sky is awake, so i'm awake! It's time to plaaay!"

She jumped at him, but phased completely through him last second and ended up on the other side. She was at his desk where he had been crafting a moment later, poking at cut out hearts and holding a sparkly one up while giggling.

"You were making a card!" The expression she leveled at him was devious at best. Cheeks red, tips of her ears too. She smacked the heart onto her own face and it stuck. "You liiiiike somebody!"

She zoomed back over, poking insistently. "Who is it?! Is it that goth girl in math? Or, of the hot blonde one? Oh! The redhead!"

Her mind was whirling around hazily at the possibilities. He hadn't ever struck her as the type. Always more focused on other things. Or... gay, maybe? Who knew!

"You gotta be safe though, yes you do." She nodded sagely. He was a giant baby bird in her mind, who had never attempted flight. She'd been flying for quite a few years.

"I can teach you how to kiss if you want! Girls, and guys, reallly like it if you-" She hiccuped, and lost her train of thought instantly.

... What had she been talking about again?

Oh boy, she was gonna be squirrely, wasn't she? Greaaat. He could manage a normal person, but if Juniper didn't want to be caught, she wasn't going to get caught.

His face went a little red when she said she liked somebody. "I-it's not like that Jun-" She started coming at him and asking who it was. Goth girl? Megan? No, she was in a relationship with Agnes. Serena? She was practically a teacher! Becca?! She WAS a teacher. What in the world was she on about?!

His embarrassed look turned incredulous as she started preaching about safety. She mentioned teaching him how to kiss, and he went red again. Okay, this needed to stop.

"Juni! Juni, Juni. Look, it's not like that. uhhh, See?" He walked over to the table, and dug around a bit, fishing out a hand made card that said in elegant scrawl. 'To my best friend, Juniper' Space: 'Happy Valentines day!'

"It's for you!"

He was blushing! That was proof enough for her! She circled back around to the topic at hand as he defended himself, while red in the face no less.

haha, so adorkable!

"Huh?"

He dug out the card in question, and her eyes widened slightly as she made out what the handwriting on it said.

"For... me?"

Her face screwed up in a way like she wanted to question it, but she also reached out to grab it with a small hand, bringing it closer to inspect since it was hard to focus at a long distance.

Best friend? He considered her his best friend?

"Oh @#$%."

The color drained from her face a little because this was... kinda serious. Her last best friend had up and died on her years ago and she'd never bothered to try and seek out a new one. But... even then she'd also never been given a hand made card before, let alone a valentines day card.

This was new.

This was scary.

"I've... never gotten one of these before. Valentines day was always just a day for companies to pressure people into buying all the things to impress people they wanted to sleep with. We never celebrated it at my house."

Her friends and her hadn't celebrated it either. Who needed cards or flowers when there was alcohol and an assortment of other illicit things to pass the time with?

"I don't understand."

She edged backward until the back of her legs hit the couch, and promptly sat. She was in a daze, honestly. Trying to figure out what all of the emotions swirling around inside meant?

He handed her the card, and her thought train hit the breaks. "For you." He stated firmly, yet kindly. As she read it, he watched her expression carefully. Underneath the surface there was always that fear doing something like this, that the other person didn't view you in the same way.

She cursed. He blinked a few times as she went pale. He stayed quiet as she spoke, and then smiled. "I would make a card for my mom every Valentines day. My dad would help me." he nodded as she said she didn't understand, and backed away slowly.

Was she going to run? No, She sat

"Juni, if we aren't best friends, what are we? I see you almost every day. We hang out all of the time. We help each other. I'm happy when I see you, and you seem happy around me. We're buddies. Best friends." He nodded, his signature smile shining bright.

"I've got your back through anything, and you've got mine too!"

Oh no...

Oh nonononon!

"Stooop, you're gonna make me cryyy!" You bet she was clutching that darn card to her chest as tightly as possible, while rubbing furiously at her face with the back of the other hand. It was just so sweet, and... and... so nice.

Who did that!? Who did those kinds of things for her?

"I haven't had a b-best friend for a long time..." Crap, tears had gotten through. Big soggy ones. Her bottom lip wibbled.

In the morning she was going to murder herself to try and not face the embarrassment. But! That was a future Juniper's problem.

"... I wish I had parents like you did." She snuffled, tracing some of the hearts on the card with her finger tips as she curled into his couch further. "Mine never did things like that with me." Hic! "... I just got to run around and... do whatever I wanted."

Crying made her eyes itch. Which made her want to close them for a while until it stopped.

"Why are you so nice? It's like... impossible to keep up with." She sniffled again.

Uh oh. Was she going to-"Stooop, you're gonna make me cryyy!"

His hands went up as if to calm a wild beast as the tears made their way out. He was making he cry. Oh god he'd upset her! What now? "Juni i'm s-"

"I haven't had a b-best friend for a long time..." Instantly his slightly panicked expression softened into a sort of adoration. "oh... Well, you've got one now! If you want."

His smile went a little more distant when she said she wanted parents like his. He missed his mom... their relationship hadn't been the best, but there had been some good moments... He didn't really have much to say to that, though.

"Why are you so nice? It's like... impossible to keep up with." The comment caught him off guard, and he went a little red, scratching the back of his head. "ah, well, you know... Im just me. No reason not to be, right?"

People told him he was nice all the time. He supposed they were right, but was it really so nice to just... always want to do the right thing? Apparently that was exactly it.

"Of course I wanna be best friends!" She flopped over on her side, curling up and hugging the card. "We will be the best BFF's in the city. Or... BCFF's. Best.. crime fighting friends."

She yawned and blinked a few times.

"Well I like you being nice like you are. Its... nice. Other people should be nice like that too, and then everyone would be happier."

Another yawn, and she closed her itchy, wet eyes and huffed.

"CBFE's... HBFF.... " She muttered a few more acronyms sleepily, and then she was out. Passed out on his couch with her first ever valentines card protectively clutched to her.

He smiled widely when she said she wanted to be best friends. Wait, she was drunk, though... could she properly consent to that? The moral questions! He blinked when she mentioned being a best crime fighting friend. What? Was she going to be a hero?! His eyes widened.

Man, that would be so cool. She had probably the most amazing power he'd ever seen, and she was just a good person over all! She'd made a great hero!

His wide smile turned into a softer one when she talked about niceness. "People are nice when they are treated nice... the nicer you are, the nicer everyone around you gets. It has to start somewhere." She was sleepy. He could tell from all the yawning. She was about to pass out. Heck, she was just spouting out random letters now... aaaaand.

Out.

He walked over to the closet to open it up and grab a spare blanket. Quietly and gently he draped it over her, and started to get ready for the day.

It was going to be a good one, he could tell.

Some time passed, and Juniper didn't speak at all about the events that had transpired the night she had come home from partying with a bunny. She could remember fuzzy bits here and there, like accusing him of having a crush on someone and him giving her the best neighbor card, but other things were... grey. The whole even was as embarrassing as it was hilarious. She had woken up with a glittery heart super glued to her face, after all.

Her terribly taste in a painting was replaced with that card he had given her, because frankly that was the kind of art she could really get behind. She hadn't asked him, or expected him, to make it. They were buddies, nothing more. So... it was extra special to her.... and in a kind of way she wasn't familiar with. She put it up on the wall where her cat couldn't get to it, because the moment she had showed the ridiculous feline the card he had immediately tried to eat it.

That bastard.

This particular day she was home, considering it was a Saturday afternoon. There was some homework laying out and open that she was willfully ignoring in favor of sitting under her window with it cracked, so that Clyde could smell the outside world, with her guitar in her lap. She was idly strumming some song she had heard the other day and humming along to the tune, since she didn't know what the lyrics were yet... when there came a knock at her door.

Or, well, not just a knock. A series of loud, heavy sounding thumps.

She paused in her music playing, peering at her front door from where she sat. That... didn't sound like anyone she knew. Xavier certainly didn't knock like that, nor did Blue. Maybe it was a different neighbor? Wait! It was probably Saul. Maybe he was finally going to fix her shower head?

"Coming!"

Setting the instrument to the side, she pushed herself up and tugged her baggy t-shirt back down. It was long enough to reach her thighs and covered up the loose shorts she was wearing, but... whatever. Saul was a jerk in some ways, but he had never been creepy around her. She didn't feel the need to dig out pants. Unlocking the seven deadbolts on her door, she pulled it wide open and shooed Clyde away.

The face that greeted her was distinctly not her apartment manager, nor anyone she could ever remember having met before.

He had a cruel little smirk on his lips and immediately lifted up a little picture he had in one hand. A picture of her, as it turned out, while she had been kissing someone. His boss, as it were.

"I finally found you.""

Juniper blinked, but her sense of danger wasn't tingling yet. The guy was in his thirties, maybe, with dark eyes that matched the cruelness in his smile to a degree. He didn't look necessarily threatening standing on her doorstep in a fairly nice looking suit, with a light jacket on and a trendy hat on his head.

"...uh...sorry? Who are you?"

Her danger senses certainly started tingling when he reached into his nice jacket and pulled out a very shiny, chrome Glock 19 pistol and pointed it at her.

Oh sh*t who had she pissed off now!?

"Lorenzo sends his regards." The man said, and fired point blank at her chest. Had Juniper not been given the chance to see the gun he had first, he very well would have offed her right then and then. Thankfully for her sake bad guys still liked to be dramatic, so she had plenty of time to phase herself out of harms way.

The wall behind her didn't fare so well, seeing as it had a brand new hole in it.

Juniper wasn't, um, really sure what to do at that point. Like... what did you normally do in retaliation after someone fails to kill you? She was pretty sure the awkward staring contest the two of them were now locked in was not the proper course of action.

"The @#$%?!"" He fired off three more shots wildly and that was enough to spur her into action. She slammed the door directly in his face, and then reached through it to grab him by the collar and jerk him bodily into the metal door.

"Jesus @#$%, you could have shot my cat you asshole!"

That probably sounded funny being shouted from behind a closed door, but, whatever. The guy cursed and ignored his sore nose in favor of trying to kick her door in.

She'd been paid!

Everything went off without a hitch, and she'd been given more time to find more dirt to dig up on the other crime factions in the area. That meant more money, and maybe even a prospect for long time employment with Haven. L sipped her mocha frappe honcka chonka latte with 3 pumps of vanilla, skim milk and three sleeves. She was very particular about her dranks.

She was also feeling guilty. She'd left that little taterthot out in the cold when she'd been the star of the 'getting this job' show. She sorta felt like she owed her. Because she did. She absolutely did. She owed her 1500 dollars. Which she had. In an envelope. It was surprisingly small. Like, when you pictured 1500 dollars in your head you never really pictured 15 bills in a tiny lil stack.

Aaaanyway. It had taken her a little bit to track the girl down. You know, like about the time it might take a hit man to do it. That was a standard measurment, right? L stood inside the enclosure to the apartment complex, looking at the mail slots for the last name she'd dug up... brown, broooooown, brown... ah... okay, 3-26. One short elevator ride, she was stepping out onto the third floor when

BAM!.....

BAM BAM BAM.

"@#$%%!" Right, standard measurments and all. The little blonde girl in a grey dress with buttons fished out a stun gun from her purse and charged into the hall, screaming out a battle cry as she turned the corner into a man trying to force his way into a metal door.

She closed her eyes, held down the zapper, and waved it like mad as she launched her little body at the man.

So. This was embarrassing. Long story short, Xavier was naked. He'd been out fighting crime, like, you know, his patrols, when this supervillain had appeared. He could manipulate beans. It had been one heckuva fight, and he'd ended up having to... you know... explode.

The bean man had ended up in jail where he belonged, but Xavier had ended up naked as the day he was born.

To make things worse, he'd forgotten his spare clothes, so he'd been forced to hoof it with only a tiny scrap of cape to call clothes. He'd been on his way into the complex when he'd heard the gunshots.

Was that... three floors up? "Oh no!"

He bolted up the stairs, as the elevator wasn't on the ground level. By the time he rounded the corner to their hall he'd found the source of the gunshots.

Jesus! Some poor man was being relentlessly tazed in the taint by a 12 year old girl with clear ill intent in her eyes. He rushed over to try and get a handle on the situation. "WOAH WOAH WOAH everyone calmdown!" He grabbed the girl by the shoulders, who was still mid comanche scream as she jabbed again with the stungun.

If Juniper opened her door right this second she would see a naked man pulling a rabid 12 year old off of her hit man, who would be screaming and clutching his smoking no no zone.

Juniper did not know that a very angry woman trapped in a child's body had come running presumably to her rescue, or that her well meaning neighbor had shown up and gotten involved.

She was too busy scrambling about trying to grab her fat, but stupidly agile cat so that she could throw him into the safety of her bedroom and shut the door, all while swearing up a storm about how she was never going to get her safety deposit back! THe stupid idiot had apparently come prepared to try and murder her, but couldn't figure out how a door knob worked?! If he left any dents in her door, so help her she would--!

Something. Whatever, she was bad at thinking on her feet!

Once her cat was secure, she grabbed a heavy frying pan from her sink and headed back for the door.

...Was... was that screaming she was hearing?

Throwing the door open led to her discovering a, um, spectacular sight. For one, the guy who had shot at her was down, and also te one currently screaming in a rather nice falsetto. She skipped over the small girl entirely first because Xavier was there and--

"Holy@#%^ you're naked, dude!" She wasted no time in dropping the pan, reaching out to snag both him and the girl, and dragging the both of them through her door with relative ease. She snuck back out after shoving the naked man inside to grab her attacker by the foot and drag him in as well, while he wept and cried and clutched at his ruined crotch.

She thought to go back and kick the gun he had dropped inside as well as an after though, in case any more nosy neighbors thought to snoop around.

Honestly she didn't know what the hell to do now. An attempted murderer was in her apartment writhing in pain, with her naked best friend and--

"You!"

That brat from the alley who'd split on her! "What the hell are you doing here?!" Mr. Murderface tried to get up, so she put a foot on his arm and phased it into the floor. He was now effectively trapped until she decided otherwise.

"Xavier, for the love of god cover yourself with a blanket or something, there are children present."

He'd assassinated Taterthot! That girl was her blackmail buddy! His taint had to be tazed! She was gonna taze that taint like she was an angry Elijah Wood! Her foe had dropped quickly with the first surprise taze, dropping his gun. From there he was easy prey!

ZZZAP! "AIIIIEYYY" ZZAAAAAP! "OOOhAAAAAA" GZZZZT "EEEEHAAAAAAWHYYYYY"

Her fun was suddenly interrupted when brawny arms grabbed her and started trying to pull her off. "Let me go! I must avenge that wonderful hoe!"

From there the door suddenly opened to reveal a very alive Juniper. Oh. She grabbed both her and whoever was holding her, and they were suddenly in a small apartment. There, L finally got a chance to see who had grabbed her.

As if from a cartoon, she went red starting at her feet and working her way to her face. Holy hot viking strippers batman, it was a @#$^ing chipndale dancer minus the cuffs. L stared. He shied away, as if realizing the depth of the situation.

Suddenly the man was back inside as well, and Juniper was yelling at her. "What? I came here to pay you! And to, uh, talk about more business opportunities... Is, uh, Rocky here safe to talk around? Also, is he your naked manservant or something? Can I have one?" She eyed Xavier up and down once more, reaching down to taze the downed man in the nether once more.

Things just... sort of happened. And... Went off the rails. So quick. First off, Juniper opened the door, and quickly pointed out he was naked. He looked down, and clutched the small piece of cape to cover his shame when suddenly they were dragged inside.

The next thing he knew, a little girl was staring at him like the prime cut of meet. He just stood there, looking around awkardly, a little red cape scrap clutched in place of a fig leaf.

His eyes darted around like a panicked bush man suddenly introduced into the New York City streets. People were saying things, things were happening, people were getting tazed in very uncomfortable places. Why? What? Who? When? Where?

His shocked face jerked to juniper when she told him to cover himself. He looked around helplessly. "I- I am SO CONFUSED." The man stirred, and Juni phased him into the floor, which was promptly followed by a zap, and a wail.

"WHY ARE YOU TAZING THAT POOR MAN IN THE CHODE?!" The little girl cackled like a witch and tazed again. What the hell?! What little girl acted like that?

My god... New York really did need saving.