He got the call... Another one. Elke had been a busy girl. This time the call came from Doc Prof of all people. She'd been spotted down town trying to enact a sort of social justice. A student, that goodie two-shoes type kid that wanted to be one of the X-Men had been F#$%ING STABBED by her. That's right. Shanked in the kidney. There she was, that was the kid he knew. "F$%^s sake..." He muttered as he stepped out of his car.

He'd made his way to the business district that the girl had last been spotted in after rushing to secure Colin for Babysitting, and learning everything he could from the good doctor. He'd seen the whole thing. They'd stumbled on some sorta mob operation, and taken it down together, before the oaf of a kid turned his back on her. What an idiot.

The older Mutant sighed and rubbed a hand across his recently shaven stubble before taking a good look around. It wasn't like she'd just be running about willy nilly. She was smarter than that. He would have to get some elevation... Spy her out. It was going to be a long night. He sighed, and spied a coffee shop. Better start there. Not for any good reason, he just needed some @#$%ing coffee.

Learning that your best friend and probably the reincarnation of Jesus himself had been stabbed was... new territory for Juniper. It had been bad enough when Blue had shown up in the middle of her brushing her teeth with a stab wound of his own, but now Xavier too? What was it with her friends and getting stabbed? Was April gonna call her up next with a stab wound of her own? Zaid? @#$% was bonkers.

She'd left work early with Cora's blessing after explaining.. things... and driven herself over to the school for the first time ever. The Doctor who had called her, the one she was terrified of cuz of the rumors surrounding him, had explained that Adonis was fine over the phone... but, she wasn't gonna believe it until she saw it with her own eyes. Almost losing Blue had seriously cranked up her anxiety to another level, and this wasn't currently helping.

After popping in long enough to make sure he was alive and question him a bit about it, she pried a description out of someone and then turned to leave again without a whole lot of a goodbye. Maybe she should have stayed? She wasn't sure. Xavier probably would have considering he'd hunkered down for the long haul when she had ended up in the hospital, but Juniper was different.

Juniper wanted to find this girl. Nobody just got to get away with stabbing her best friend in the back without her at least trying to find them and... something.

She still wasn't sure what she was gonna do if she did find her. Blue had been to tight lipped about who stabbed him for her to really investigate a whole lot, so she was not going to waste this opportunity!

She spent a good hour walking around asking various New Yorker's if they had ever seen a girl who looked like her, which was surprisingly helpful. Many of the people running stores around the city had indeed seen her, recently too, and were able to somewhat point her in a direction. Turns out the girl was really active in whatever she got up to. Juniper hadn't cared enough to ask how the stabbing had happened, just whether her bestie was fine and who had done it.

Eventually, she was led to a little coffee shop, where she popped in to ask someone behind the counter if they had seen the little girl.

"hmm, who?" The barista making someone's order pursed his lips.

"A little girl, about yey tall, longish hair, tan, brown eyes. May or may not be with a few kids who look exactly like her."

"Oh! Yeah, that sounds familiar. A kid ran in here yesterday and stole all of our cake pops right off the counter."

Cake pops. Of course she did. "Do you happen to know which way she ran after that?"

"I can do you one better, sweetheart." Juniper cringed at the nickname but got the feeling he wasn't using it to be creepy. "She's seen pretty often a few blocks down from here. There's a boarded-up building on the corner we think she might be using as a temporary home or something. People have seen her going in and coming out." He didn't seem to be cross about her apparent theft.

"We've called the cops before to check it out, but every time they look she's gone." He shrugged as he finished the drink, scooted it down the counter, and called out the customers name.

"Thanks! That's actually super helpful."

Now, she just needed to check the place out and see if the girl was really using it as a place to stay. Juniper didn't know much about this area of town, so she'd have to play it by eye.

"Oh, honey, I wouldn't go in there though if you're looking for her. That place if condemned and waiting to be torn down. There have been a few deaths in there from people poking around and falling through rotten floors."

"Thanks for the warning, but I think I'll be fine. Bye!"

She turned to leave, tucking away that information for later use.

Elke really felt like she'd scored a big one when she'd found a boarded-up place with five stories to have all to herself. Sure, the floors were rotted through in some places and if a strong wind blew bits of the roof would come crashing down... but in the grand scheme of things, it was perfect for her. Not many dared to venture up above the second floor, not even cops, so it made for an excellent hideout when her other spot was a bit too inconvenient.

She'd had her clones steal an assortment of things to make it a bit more like home, set up shop on the fifth floor and life was good! She was small enough that her weight didn't disturb much of the crumbling environment, and after that one time where one of her clones had been horsing around and had fallen to her death from the fifth floor, her dumb@$$ duplicated had been more careful than ever when navigating the place themselves.

Currently, she was sprawled out on a sleeping bag, chowing down on cake pops while reading the latest Adolescent Monthly magazine. She'd taped up a few stolen posters on some walls and spray-painted things on others. Open beside her was a notebook with scribbles of plans she was still drawing up. Places to break into, things to try and set fire to, people she wanted to target and reap vengeance on somehow at some point. She was a very busy girl.

"Hey... boss?" One of her clones spoke up from across the room, where she was sat with a knife in her hands carving out the handle for another knife. "... Can I have a popcake too?"

"No-can-do." The short, ill-tempered girl replied around the stick in her mouth, "Cakepops are for leaders, not peons."

"Aw, but i'm huuuungry!" The clone complained loudly and started carving again.

"Eat your sister, then."

The cloned looked over to another clone, who looked up from what she was doing in alarm.

"I dunwanna! She probably tastes like trash! I want cake!"

"Hey! I don't taste like trash! YOU taste like trash!" The clone fired back.

They got into a physical squabble as Elke went on chewing on her cake pop stick and reading about all of the newest boys being spotlighted in Adolescent Monthly.

"Hold up." His coffee was ready. That hardly mattered. He'd sat and watched as a familiar face walked in, and started describing his daughter to the barista. What. The. @#$%. She was investigating, and she was getting answers. He hadn't even had his #@$%ing coffee yet. He would have been impressed if it wasn't this particular student asking around.

"You ain't goin a damn place." He saddled on up to the counter, and grabbed his coffee... A shot in the dark. The X-Man stared at her with tired eyes and completed the thought. "Until you tell me why you are looking for that girl..."

He tested his coffee, it was too hot. Damn. He was going to need it to cool down real quick for this conversation. It was good that he'd gotten that information without having to put effort into it, though. Now, to find out why she was here. Had Elke stolen from her? A student at the school? What were the odds? Well, in his world, they weren't actually too bad. The universe seemd obsessed with ruining his day, after all.

She paused because that was what normal people did when someone asked them to hold up. Once she saw who it was who had asked, she scolded herself for paying attention to the little voice in her head that usually dictated what she was gonna do.

It was him. IDSnappymcjerkface. The assassin of joy.

"Stabbed my best friend." She stated simply. He wanted an answer, he got an answer.

She turned right back around and continued on her way, regardless of what he wanted. Didn't even bother using the door like a normal person, instead simply walking right through it, just to inconvenience him a bit more. She didn't know why he wanted to know why she wanted to find the girl and didn't care to find out either.

Apparently this place was a few blocks down, on a corner. Hm... The guy hadn't said which way, but she'd come from one direction and couldn't recall seeing a crappy old building on the way. So.... the other way it was!

She headed off at a lazy pace. In her mind there wasn't much of a need to hurry; the kid was either there, or not there. If this place ended up being a dead-end, she'd try to find another trail somewhere else.

Stabbed her best friend. Oh for crying out- Wait, he knew who she'd stabbed. Had she stabbed more than one person? Was she just out here prison shanking people? No... That would be harder to hush up, like Doc Prof had.

She was best friends with goodie two shoes tallboy boyscout guy? Wow. She was leaving. What an ass. Hadn't he just said she wasn't going anywhere? Wait, he'd said until she told him... still! You don't just walk away from a conversation. He grump faced, and nodded to the barista, tossing a dollar in the tip jar before walking out after her. He knew the house the man had been talking about... people had been caught for posession outside of it many times before. Wasn't a good part of the neighborhood.

"Where you goin, kid... It's to the left." Probably should have just let her walk off in the wrong direction, but he was seriously confused about her as this point. "What you thinkin you're gonna do when you find her, huh?" Maybe he would have to stop her. Let's hope it didn't come to that. There was time to talk her down, though, if she was planning anything nasty.

"I'm going to be bringing her in... She's a student. I can't have you hurting her."

To... To the left.

Of course, she'd... um... known that.

Juniper turned on her heel to head in the other direction, squinting at him slightly as she neared him. "I dunno yet." Another simple reply, but an honest one at least. She really had no clue what she wanted to do. Inflicting an equal pain on a child just... didn't sit well. Still, if there was something she could do to make her friend feel better, somehow, she was gonna at least try.

Lord @#$%in knows the big doof would just shrug and say 'I'm fine! No harm done!'

"Oh, so you're going to hand her over to the police for stabbing another student in the back? What is that, attempted murder?" She didn't bother moving out of the way of people or things. Just phased through everything in her path.

Yeah, she was still angry. Didn't know what to do with that anger, but it was there.

"I don't think I'd hurt a kid, but I can sure as hell can grab her to the closest police department if I find her."

She was grumpy. Fair. Her friend had been stabbed. He would be, too. This was different, though. This was a child that had spent most of her life being dragged down the wrong path, disappointed again and again by way of neglect and avoidance. She just needed the right guide. He knew that. He'd done it, for christ sake. And here he was again. Older. Life even more hectic. Preparing to do it all over again if he needed to.

He wasn't going to let this young woman get in the way of that. "Would your friend want that? Or would he want to give her a fighting chance at a normal life?" He made his way behind her, having trouble keeping up due to the hobble. She was fast... and he could feel her... blinking out of existence. Carefully dropping the physicality of body parts as people passed, but keeping something solid the whole time.

It was strange, but it was starting to make sense. She could go incorporeal, but not her whole body at a time... Interesting. "She needs help, not a prison cell. I am going to give her that help. Besides... I'm pretty sure she's too much for you to handle."

"If I'm being honest, I don't give a @#$% what he wants." She stopped at a no walk signal, if only because walking out into the moving stream, of traffic would certainly cause some sort of accident. She was mad, but not like, mad enough to lose all sense of reason.

"My friend is... too much sometimes. Too forgiving. I'm not." She glanced at the taller man, sniffed, and turned her eyes away again.

"There are some things people don't deserve help for. Yeah, I get that this is a kid who did it, but..." Ah, and that was where the complicated feelings came into play, wasn't it? "I don't care. I don't care if it's selfish. She tried to take someone I care about away from me, so I'm gonna try and fix it before she actually murders someone next time."

Somehow. Hopefully, the police would actually be helpful for once. Her interactions with them when someone tried to shoot her to death in her apartment hadn't been terrible. She just needed to remind herself that this wasn't Ohio. This wasn't her home town.

"If you're going to give her that, why is she out here stabbing people in the first place?" The light turned green and she started walking again.

Could she handle a child? "Won't know until I try, dude. Someone's gotta do something."

Damnit... She was set on this. She wasn't sure what she was set on, but what ever she was going to do, she was going to do it. It reminded him of him when he'd knocked on the golden doors of the sanctuary. It was an unsafe way to be. It got people hurt. It could get Elke hurt. "I agree about your friend... but in this case. Look, she was deaged. You know, like the news reports say. It took her back to a time when she was... volatile. But that don't mean she's gonna stay like that. She grew past that before, and she can do it again."

He frowned a bit as he looked about... They weren't far from the house. "Listen to me... If she wanted him dead, he would be dead... I know enough about her to know that. She stabbed him with a pocket knife. She has bigger knives. Used to be her way of escaping a conversation she didn't want to be in. The old shank and run, she called it." Did he sound... fond?

"Got me a couple times back then. Uh, but she eh, grew out of it." He wasn't helping his case, was he?

He grimaced a little as they neared the next intersection. "Right." It wasn't right. It was left. He needed to sort this out before they actually ran into Elke... Maybe he could ditch her and get there first?

"Why d'ya think I'm here, eh? I'm here to get her. Bring her back to the mansion. Make sure everyone is safe. Including her."

De-aged? Huh. Well, that sounded like a moral dilemma she wanted no part of. Her face screwed up in thought, but she didn't comment right away. Apparently, he wasn't done talking, anyway.

The 19-year-old jerked to a stop the moment the older man told her that the kid didn't intend to kill someone by stabbing them in the back. Juni turned to face him and the incredulous shift in her expression should have spoken volumes about how she felt about that. It didn't help her case against him when he recalled events with a hint of affection laced in his words, either.

He gave a direction and she crossed her arms and stared at him. She wasn't about to budge until she saw which way he was going first.

"I don't believe you. It's pretty obvious you've got a personal stake in all of this." But, past that, it was just so... surreal.

"None of what you just said sounds normal. None of this is normal! Like, at all. Kids aren't supposed to @#$@ing stab their... whatever you are to her. They aren't supposed to be running around stabbing teenagers from behind, either."

It was honestly mind-boggling... like, she'd seen some $%&@ since coming to this city, but having someone try and justify somehow? Just... what?

"So what punishment is she going to get at the school, huh? And why exactly is an x-man and teacher actively trying to cover up... what is it X always calls it... Aggravated assault!... instead of letting proper authorities deal with it?"

Wait... why the hell did she care to know any of this?

Blinking, Juniper doubled down on her refusal to move and stared up at him. "... Whatever, I don't care. I'm not leaving until I know nobody else is going to get kidney stabbed anytime soon."

Yeah, it sounded... Bonkers as #@$%, he couldn't really deny that, but Elke really didn't work in ways that made sense to many people. If you gave her a gold watch she was likely to trade it for a comic book the next day. If you did something she considered wrong in front of her, she was going to shank you. If she liked you, she wasn't going to shank you as bad.

That was hard to explain to... most people who were reasonable. She stopped in place, and stated he had a stake in things. "Well, yeah. I know her. Known her since she was... not too far off from how old she is again now. She came from a rough place, and was put through some terrible things. This is how she learned to deal with that. I know it ain't normal but it is what it is."

She asked about punishment. "Well... She would be on house arrest. Watched by people who can actually make sure she doesn't go anywhere or hurt anyone. Otherwise, she goes to Juvi... shanks a few people there, end up in prison, shanks people there, and well... I don't want that." That was a very real possibility, honestly.

"The X-Men have taken in people like her before... Turned their lives around. Turned mine around. This is another chance to do that. I know you can't see that now, but it's what we stand for. Redemption. Growth. The betterment of all. Your boy is a damned fool, but I bet he gets it."

He turned and walked toward the house in the opposite direction. "Don't follow me if you ain't on board. I don't want to have to stop you." Techincally, he would be in his right to. She was acting as a vigilante. He was an officer.

... She shouldn't have opened her mouth and asked... really, she shouldn't have. She was already sympathizing by the time he finished explaining the first bit. She... knew was it was like coming from a place that skewed what normal was in a whole different direction.

The confused, vengeful wind had already been knocked out of her sails slightly by the time he was explaining how he/they were going to control her afterward. Juniper had no idea what Juvi was like. Regardless of how many times she, or people she had known, had broken various laws, she had never even come close to feeling threatened by it. Maybe it was due to being a girl and very white, or from the fact that pretty much everyone in the city she grew up in had skeletons in their closets.

She did have a very real fear of prison, and ending up there for the rest of her life... however long that was supposed to last.

He managed to draw her attention back by spouting off the same crap Xavier had about the school. Redemption. Rehabilitation. Whatever they were trying to paint it as currently. It was curious hearing it from a second person, but... still very outlandish and hard to believe.

Also, slightly terrifying. They had that much power? They could just tell the government to @#$& off with their private prisons and keep all the criminals for themselves?

Ah, wait. No, of course not. That was probably only reserved for whoever managed to get on some sort of list. Probably from knowing someone, like this kid did with the Masochist.

She was still silent as he turned in one direction and started walking; all the words bottled up inside as she mulled over how to respond. Before she followed him, she slipped out of her shoes and stooped to pick them up.

"I know it will sound pig-headed, but I don't know if you actually could stop me if I really wanted to do something." Honestly. She had only encountered a few scenarios so far that made her doubt herself, and so far he wasn't on her list.

"...But, I'm not going to argue. We can do this your way... that's fine. I just want this to be over."

Really, she just wanted to feel like she'd been able to do something this time. Standing around while her friends got hurt was getting really, really old.

He made his way confidently toward the abandoned house, hobbling slightly as he went. He didn't know her well enough to know if his words were getting through to her, but he knew he was getting some sort of reaction. He could see her deflate a little bit.

He paused and looked back as he felt her feet become corporeal long enough for her to stop and slide her shoes off. Interesting. It came hand in hand with a boast, though. "... Word to the wise." He paused for a second, and pointed at her left hand. The part he felt was solid when it moved right now. "Don't say something like that when you are dealing with someone whose powers you don't understand." If she shifted to another body part, his hand would move to point to it instead.

He nodded as she conceded to doing things his way, and pointed at the building next to them. "Good. We're here." He turned at looked at the old building. She would be up high. "She likes to have a vantage point... to see anyone coming. You got a way to climb up, or do you need help?"

A brow arched as he turned and pointed at her. Ah, a retort about her comment from before. That made sense, she supposed... she was still new to the world of powers after all, even if she had been around them since she was a kid. The city certainly a melting pot of all sorts-

Wait... Was he pointing at her hand? Her solid hand?

Experimentally, she made a leg solid to see how he would react. When he shifted his finger to point at that instead, immediately, her other brow rose to join it's sister and they both nearly lept off the top of her forehead.

What?! How could he tell?! The 19 year old squinted at him, but made no comment. His message had gotten through just fine.

They stopped in front of a very broken down, dilapitated building. "That... sounds very paranoid." Juniper muttered, setting her sneakers on the ground beside the building.

... They probably wouldn't be there when she got back, but dragging them around with her would be a pain. "I mean... I was just going to take the stairs like a normal person?" She looked up. It was five stories to the top... which was higher than the climbing wall at work.

"I guess if I have to I can just...uh... climb up the wall." Really, she'd rather use the stairs though. It wouldn't look nearly as silly as trying to spider monkey her way up the outside of a building.

"I can get us in pretty easy, and we don't really have to worrk too much about the extra weight on the floors and stuff. Things I phase don't weight anything at all."