So... She really would have thought that, by now, the apparent hit on her head would have... expired or something? Like a coupon maybe. 'One free ticket to kill this girl', but you have to use it within a week or it's trash. Instead it was apparently more like one of those coupons you gave your mom, or a lover, without really intending to do any of the meaningful things inside, but they last for @#%ing ever. Five years from now she'd be walking down a street and someone would toss a 'do the dishes' paper in her face and she could say literal @#$% all about it. RIght?

This sucked.

"GET BACK HERE!"

Nope. Not happening. She was under no circumstances going to go back there. For one, she was sprinting and if she stopped now it'd probably end up with her face on the pavement. For another, there was a literal clown car full of dudes careening after her, and she didn't think a single one of them had any good intentions.  

She sprinted herself right through a building, planning an escape route on the fly as she went. She could only hold a full phase for so long and they were cheating by driving a van at her. It wasn't fair! So what if nine of their guys had died on the previous attempts?! 

Thankfully it wasn't too crowded out at the moment, so when the van came screeching around the corner behind her and over a curb to get back on her tail, she wasn't too horribly worried about pedestrians getting in the way.

... a little worried, maybe.

@#$% @%$#! She could run for a long time, sure, but this was getting out of hand pretty quick. Maybe she needed to pick a place and try to stand her ground? Wait, no, that was probably a pretty stupid idea. They had a mutation nullifying guy crammed into that van with the rest of them. That was the whole reason she was currently sweating bullets and testing whether or not her lungs still worked at full capacity. 

The large van swerved back onto the road, taking out a stop sign in the process, and she heard the engine rev as it sped back up. 
 
She... might have squealed a little bit in panic. Just a tiny one, and then launched herself to the side and into a building and the van slammed on the breaks and stopped where she had just been standing. 

To the roof it was! 

It was a beautiful day in the neighborhood. The smog filtered the sunlight just enough to add excitement to otherwise drab, boring lighting and the fumes of the cars, restaurants, masses of people, etcetera were practically a heady cologne. And the sounds of the city were an orchestra of honks, shouts, chattering, laughing, emergency vehicle sirens, screams (probably of fun), and screeching wheels.

Take that back. It really wasn’t a beautiful day in the neighborhood.

But Zek could still enjoy it nonetheless. Especially from his vantage point.

He was sitting on the little ledge around the flat roof of a six story little brick building. His feet were dangling over the side and occasionally kicking empty air. He liked the building and came up to the roof to think every once in a while. It was a decently quiet street and the building itself never seemed to have much activity around it. He was strongly suspicious that it was abandoned or just used by squatters, but he didn’t really care. He always got to the roof from the building beside it, separated by a lovely alley big enough for a truck to go through. He had a lovely hobo bridge made out of several planks of wood that covered the expanse and connected the similarly-tall buildings. The other building had an elevator with great music so he preferred coming up that way.

Zek could also enjoy the day because he had ice cream. Specifically, he had two double scoop waffle cones, with four flavors. Meese tracks and butterscotch and then cookie dough and strawberry. That one was staying in an orb, though, because he was focusing on the meese tracks one first and didn’t want the other to melt.

There was always some kind of drama to see from his seat on the building. IT was one of the two tallest buildings on the street so you had a lot of range to see. Last time he’d been up here, he’d enjoyed watching and listening to a matronly woman berate a young man very loudly and publicly for hanging out with a local gang of youths. It was very embarrassing for the dude. That’s why Zek had ice cream now, in case something similar happened.

And you know what? It looked like something was about to start up, if the screeching of tires and the arrival of a rapidly moving van careening around a street corner and heading straight toward Zek’s building was any indicator. “Poor stop sign,” he said, lamenting the demise of the object of justice and safety.

But it looked like the van was chasing someone and the person went into the building. Huh, didn’t think there was a door there. THe person gave the impression of distress. THe van even almost hit her.

THen it opened up and a whole bunch of burly guys bustled out of it and there was suddenly a lot of yelling, but it was too far below for Zek to really make anything out (and none of them had the lung capacity of the woman from the week before anyways). The angle was bad too - he could only lean forward so much without falling.

Although…

Zek noticed one of the guys appeared to be bald. And he wasn’t moving around as much, kinda like a leader-like person. Zek smiled. “Eh, I have another cone anyways.” And he tipped his cone forward until he was suddenly holding just a butterscotch ice cream cone.

And Baldy now had something protecting him from sunburn.

Zek fell backwards off the short ledge as the laughter overtook him.

The roof. She chose... the roof. Another poor decision to throw in an already overflowing bucket, right alongside 'yeah, I'll kiss a mob boss for a blackmail picture for 1500$.' Super smart. Way to go, Juniper!

She wasn't sure how long she had before a small army of pursuers found a way inside, but she wasn't gonna wait around for it. She headed for the stairs immediately and began the long, arduous process of hoofing it up six flights of stairs.

Outside, the occupants of the van piled out in a hurry, comically in a pile. A few had small firearms already drawn, but most were empty-handed still. They split up into a few groups to try and surround the building from the bottom, while a handful of others headed around the side for a boarded-up entrance. It didn't take long to kick the door in since one of them had enhanced strength.

The driver stayed with the van but got out, lifting a walkie talkie to bark orders into it as he kept up with how the job was going.

"She's still inside! I can hear her on the stairwell." Chimed in one of his boys. Good. Goood. They'd trapped the slippery little thing finally!

"Great, don't let her out of your sight."

SPLAT

"@#$%@?!" He was under the impression that the biggest, most vengeful pigeon in the city had just nuked him from the air, until he registered that it was cold, and...

"...@#$#? Is that Meesetracks??" Equal parts confused and pissed, the short, stout, bald man looked up and squinted. Ah, but his eyesight was just a tad bad these days. He shuffled around behind the driver's seat for a second and then pulled out a scoped rifle.

There we go, now he could see well.

".. We've got an interloper on the top, apparently. Someone push him off for me." He lowered the rifle again and tucked the walkie into his pocket shirt. Two critters to eradicate, then. He set about wiping off his bald head with a handful of napkins. "Great, now i'm @#$%in all sticky!"

Up on the roof, Juniper had made it to the top in record time and flew through the closed roof access door, where she promptly collapsed into a red-faced, sweaty, and pretty sure that she was going to die either from the stairs, or the people coming up after them. Christ, her legs felt like jello!

She spent a good bit panting dramatically, complaining under her breath, and then actually looked up and spotted that, oh, hey.. she wasn't alone.

...great.

Cue awkward staredown with a random guy enjoying an ice cream on the roof.

"Uh.... Hi?"

“Ha hah ah haha ha,” Zek chortled as he laid on his back. He’d just barely remembered his butterscotch cone in time to save it from gaining asphalt sprinkles.

Because those were disgusting.

Zek pulled himself together and maneuvered around until he could get to his feet without dropping his ice cream. Once standing, he critically examined his cone. Good. No extra toppings. Oh no, some of it was dripping!

A lick later, Zek was kneeling by the ledge and peering over it, checking the results of his dessert bomb. Well, it look like a lot of the people had already gone inside, but Baldy and his new hair tonic were still there. And looked like he was angry and trying to look up and see Zek and--

“Crapthat’sagun!” Zek said and jerked himself and his ice cream well away from the edge. It was just occurring to him that maybe, just maybe, things were going to be a bit more serious this time than a woman yelling at a teenager.

He grinned.

He was debating on whether or not he should peek over the edge again and risk getting shot, or possibly dropping things over edge and seeing what he could hit when he heard a loud metallic clanging and banging coming from behind him. He frowned. Either I’m about to encounter Ironclad Santa and his Flying Metal Reindeer or there’s someone coming up the stairs.

He’d just turned around when the rooftop exit for the stairwell burst open and a woman appeared, all heaving and breathing hard and such. He briefly glanced at the skin of his left wrist. Huh, that was fast. Assuming she was the person who’d entered the building on the run from the van, she’d made it up the stairs really quick. Zek was impressed. He watched her in silence for a few moments to give her a chance to collect herself. It also gave him a chance to eat some more of his ice cream, none of which managed to drip on his shirt. She finally seemed to notice him, though, and spoke first. (Zek was a gentlemen and let the lady go first, or at least that would be his excuse if asked).

“Hi there,” Zek said nonchalantly. Oh you know, just another Tuesday. Even if it wasn’t a Tuesday. “Nice timing with the staircase sprint. I’m impressed. By the way, some angry guys with at least one gun are following you. You know anything about that?” He kept his eye contact the whole time.

He licked his ice cream again. Then smacked himself on the forehead with his right hand. “Oh, sorry. Where are my manners?” He held out his hand and a glowing red orb appearing there for a moment before being replaced with a burst of a light by the cookie dough and strawberry ice cream cone, which he swiftly caught before it could so much as wobble.

He held it out to her. “You want some ice cream?”

Staircase... sprint. She might have laughed since her impeccable time had been due to cheating away almost all of her weight as she ran, but. Guys with guns. Right. Murder squad. Was it too late to call the cops now that she had a chance to breathe? Eh, they probably wouldn't wanna haul themselves to the roof just to save her hide anyway.

Oooh! Icecream!

"Unfortunately... very aware." Her lungs started to calm the heck down so she turned to make sure the door was shut, reached through to lock it, and then took the turnbutton from the deadbolt back with her. Good luck getting that open without kicking the door down!

On slightly wobbly legs, she went on over while tossing the now useless chunk of metal over her shoulder, and against her better judgment (who listened to that anyway?) she took that ice cream cone and plopped herself down on the ledge a respectable distance from him so she didn't have to bask in her post-sprint-stank.

"Thanks!" Icecream was ice cream, and generally, bad guys didn't offer you delicious frozen treats before showing you to your doom... right? Right.

Sure. "Holy @#$% I haven't had strawberry ice cream in forever."

Oh, right.. ice cream dude was still there. She glanced over as she started to cool back down.

"I like your shirt." Axolotl.. hehe. "And that was a cool, uh... light ball thing you did."

She could hear slightly distant shouting from below, presumably from baldy being pissed about his own gifted ice cream still, and that his subordinates were taking too long clinging the stairs. Poor unfortunate slobs.

"Do.. you come here often?" @#$%, how did you break the ice in a situation like this. Or, had the ice cream already been an ice breaker? If it was, it worked brilliantly because she hardly ever turned down junk food.

She took a big bite and almost immediately choked when a thundering came up from behind the closed door, and then the whole thing burst off if its hinges. Enhanced Strength Man was there, just as red in the face and sweaty as she had been, but his whole body was practically bulging. He'd sprinted up the steps with his actual muscles and you could tell by how many veins were trying to escape from his head, neck, and exposed arms.

"... Don't suppose you have any more ice cream to offer...?" She muttered and was definitely attempting to hide behind her own cone.

“Don’t mention it,” Zek said dismissively. Ice cream was just another kind of thrill, brain freeze just another kind of excitement. And he just nodded and raised his ice cream momentarily in a “cheers” fashion to acknowledge her compliments, but inside he was exuberant. Ahahaha! She likes my shirt! And the ice cream! And my orb. Zek decided she was Kewl. Also, she could stick her hands through solid objects. That was also points in her favor.

She seemed rather shaky, though. Course, with all that running, potential fleeing, and now a sugar rush, Zek didn’t blame her. With the backdrop of yelling and cursing and faint metallic stomping, Zek stepped back and sat on the edge of the edge a ways down from her. Enough space for him to ward off a flying hug, in case that happened. One could never be too careful.

“Oh, I’ve been coming here off and on over the past month or so,” Zek said in between licks. He was really going through his butterscotch! “Good place to think, nice ambiance, always something going on.” He indicated her with his ice cream. He was going to say more, but the intensity of clanging footsteps increased drastically and suddenly the door burst open again.

They really should just put a revolving door there.

Zek looked the guy over. MAssive? Check. Muscley? Check. Strong? Oh definitely. Troublesome? Bring it. His bouncer instincts were tingling so he only took a quick moment to quip to his fellow ice cream connoisseur, “Nope, all out. Oh wait, here’s something!”

Zek made another orb and yelled to the guy,“Hey! Catch!” He snapped his wrist and flung the orb underhandedly. It flew the dozen or so feet and hit the guy in his chest just as he was starting to barrel forward in a bullrush.

Suddenly, there was no more orb or Bulgy Muscles-Man.

Zek breathed out suddenly. Yikes, he was a big ‘un. He’d taken a little more effort than expected. Zek glanced over at the woman. “Sorry ‘bout that,” he apologized. Again, just another Tuesday. “Where were we? Oh, right. So….do you come up here often, or just when you’re getting chased by the Mafia’s bodybuilding contingent?”

He could hear more rattling of metal stairs, so they probably didn’t have too much time before others showed up. Super Steroid Man was just probably in better shape than the other folks. Or had stair-climbing powers. You never knew.

He licked his ice cream again.

"Hah!" He was funny! That was great because her life was currently severely lacking in funny stuff. "You can say that again. This place doesn't seem to know how to take a fricken break."

She got to relish in the feeling of needing to panic eat something really quick as one of her beefy pursuers appeared, and suddenly knew exactly what her cat Clyde was feeling whenever she caught him licking the butter. Was speed licking a thing? If it was, she'd probably be a pretty serious contender.

But, before she had to figure out how exactly she was going to try and take care of Mr. Roid over there, her new ice cream buddy tossed one of his nifty balls of light at him and... he poofed? Vanished. Her eyes just about bugged out of her head.

"Woah!"

She blinked a few times too many as she refocused on the guy, and resumed licking her cone... with maybe just a slight bit of hesitancy. Was muscles dead? Had she just witnessed the most anticlimatic murder of her life? Eh, questions for another time maybe. Juniper snorted at his joke.

"Unfortunately just when the Mafia calls. I was actually out to get groceries when they so rudely interrupted." She glanced at the door.

Ah, but... there were more of them coming up, weren't there? She started kicking off her shoes.

"I dunno if you can do that cool, um, vanishing act again, but I know they've got at least one guy who nullifies powers, so..." She spotted the little bridge from one roof to the other. They had a few options, then.

"If need be, are you a fan of jumping off tall buildings?"

... Why didn't she ever get to ask normal questions to cute people? She leaned over the ledge to peek at the street below and spotted the van, and bald driver, still parked there. Oh, he had a- The crack of a rifle firing split the air for a moment, but the bullet passed harmlessly through her.

"What a wanker." The people on the ground definitely knew she was on the roof already then. Muscles probably told them.

“They interrupted a grocery run? Those tomato sniffers!” Zek said scornfully. What matter of craven villainy were they dealing with here? Also, was he using “craven” right? He was never really sure and kept forgetting to ask someone or to look it up.

Zek took out his frustrations with an angry lick of his ice cream. SOME people. Ugh.

But then he noticed the sudden unshoeing. He didn’t say anything, but he blatantly stared. Was she about to start dancing? Was she expecting a dance battle. “Yeah, no sweat, Footloose,” he said. “I can do that a few more times.” Unless some mutant can cancel out my powers. Zek left that part out. He forced a vague smile though, squelching the slight panic. Forget about the no sweat, actually. He was now extra glad he was wearing deodorant.

Then Zek just kinda stopped and stared at his cohort. “I’m sorry,” he blinked. “Did you just ask me to jump off a tall building with you?” He blinked again. “Well it’s not a bridge, but dang! Mom was almost on the mark!” Props to parental prescience!

“I’d rather avoid that option if possible,” Zek said as he leaned forward to stand up. “I mean, it’s cool that you can do ghost stuff or whatever, but I don’t wanna become a ghost. You get me?” He eyed his cone as he talked. He still had a decent amount of his scoop left. He was debating storing it away or keeping it out, but then got distracted by a bullet.

“I believe l mentioned they had at least one gun?” he said offhandedly.

He decided to keep his ice cream out. “Well, I imagine the rest of your pals are almost here, judging by the noise from the stairs, so why don’t we finish our little ice cream social elsewhere, m’kay?” He started walking towards his wooden hobo bridge. “And it just so happens that I know a nearby roof that is so much more empty than this one is gonna by.”

He stuck out his elbow, the one that wasn’t supporting his ice cream hand. “Shall we go?”

Tomato sniffers? That was a new one. She'd need to hang onto it since it sounded like something Xavier would say. 

She did stare at him in a puzzled way over the footloose thing. It rang a bell, but she couldn't put a finger on why. Eh, whatever. Probably just another reference she hadn't figured out yet... or, was it literal? Her feet were certainly loose now.

She did flat out laugh at his reaction to possibly jumping off a building, though. Priceless! "S'fine with me. It's just an easy escape route." Also, a terrifying one, but... ya don't look a gift horse in the mouth right?

"I assume they probably have more than the one. Always armed to the teeth nowadays." 

He offered his own version of an escape, across the bridge, apparently, and, well, she couldn't refute it? It was certainly less scary than a six story fall. "Ooh, are we going to start roof hopping and force them into exhaustion from stair climbing?" Huh. It was a 'we' think now. Mostly because he'd given her ice cream and had fun taste in clothing.

... She spared a momentary thought about running off with his t-shirt, before shooting it right now. No thieving from ice cream givers! She stooped to pick up her shoes and stood.

She also stared at the offered elbow for maybe a moment too long, before taking it. Her therapist had said that she should try to come out of her shell a bit more when comfortable, and this was as comfortable as she had been in a few blocks. 

"Lead the way." She paused for another lick, and then added. "I'm Juniper, by the way. Nice to be roof top buddies with you."

“Well that’s one way to do it,” Zek agreed. Although he was thinking less about exhausting the nameless and unknown thugs with a rooftop chase and more about getting to a building with an elevator that he knew wasn’t crawling with musclebound beat-em-ups.

Anywho, after a long moment in which Zek was seriously worried he had a weird stain on his elbow, she finally took it. So now it appeared that she was carrying her shoes, ice cream, and now his hopefully stainless elbow. And he thought he had the power to carry a lot of extra things! Good thing he was there to lead her across the bridge!

Of course, it seemed like she was fine with jumping off bridges so his offer might’ve been unnecessary. Pretty metal, actually.

“Nice to meetcha, Juniper,” he said with a smile as he started leading her across the bridge. “Call me Zek. It’s a pleasure to be sharing these rooftops with you. And it’s such a nice day for a stroll, don’t you agree?” He made a big show of looking around, apparently unbothered by the creaking and groanings of the bridge. Although halfway across he realized that he’d never tested the weight of two people on it, so it was very likely Juniper was going to get to fall six stories anyways.

But at last they made it to the other side, and even better, so did all the ice cream!

“At last, we made it! Just one more thing to do,” he said. Zek passed his cone to his offhand, the one with the Juniper grafted to it, and dropped a golden orb behind them. The bridge vanished and he had that strange feeling of something getting filled. He turned an over the top grin to Juniper. “It’s not exactly burning bridges, but it’s the closest I could do on the fly.”

And just a few seconds after that, people started pouring out onto the other roof.

She was really starting to like his relaxed attitude about everything. It helped calm her down when the other people she was around weren't also foaming at the mouths in a blind panic.

Also, now she had a name to call him. Zek. Zek with the glowing balls. Ah, @#$&, straight into the gutter again. She shot him a sidelong glance, barely withheld a snicker, and said nothing.

She did look over the side casually as they walked over what she assumed was the bridge he had built. "Could be better, but I'm not about to complain too much since I've found myself in good company." With his brightly colored ba- @#^& @%$#@%, stop it! Bad brain!

She phased the majority of her body away to lessen the weight put on the "bridge" and thus not send them hurtling into the very fall she had offered before, albeit unintentionally. She kept her arm solid for the most part since it was hanging around his, and kept her ice cream and the hand holding it solid as well. Her shoes were fused slightly with a pinky to make sure she didn't lose said shoes- which would have been the third pair in a week. Her wallet would cry... or the shoe place down the street would mysteriously be missing a pair again.

Zek made their bridge vanish once they were on the other side, and gosh, that sure was a neat power! Where did the things go? Wherever the roid guy had gone, right? Was there just like, a filing cabinet somewhere with a bunch of random stuff in it?

"That sure is handy, wish I could-"

A bunch of dudes reached the roof on the other side. She didn't wait for permission to phase Zek and herself almost completely, with just a few things solid to keep them on the cement. Seven guys lined up and whipped out guns of varying sizes, which she could normally handle while phased... but someone in the group could cancel out her power and she didn't specifically know who. She would also only hold a full phase for so long, and they had an unknown number of clips on them. She didn't feel like standing around and waiting to end up as people shaped swiss cheese.

"Right, time to go!"

Goodbye ice cream and shoes, it was nice having you for a bit! She ditched both of them (after one final big bite) grabbed Zek with both hands and literally hefted him above her head like he didn't weigh a damn thing. She was going to jump them straight off the roof and beat everyone to the ground below, and hopefully Zek wouldn't put up too much of a fight. You know, do it first, ask forgiveness later or however it went.

"Don't let go or I can't keep you ghosted with me!" It didn't take many strides to get to the edge, and then one neat little hop over it, all while the guys on the other roof opened fire and bullets rained through the both of them.

And then it was just a matter of free falling for a bit, making up some sort of plan for landing on the fly, and then hoping she didn't break both her ankles while doing it. The only other times she'd fallen from about this high up someone else had been able to land.

She couldn't quite ignore the thrill of falling while she was at it, and really needed to make a mental note to try sky diving at some point in the future. She also tried to pay attention to what she was doing though because Zek was there and if she screwed up he was going to end up a mutant pancake and that would be a serious shame. To combat this, she fused her hand into his arm to keep herself linked to him no matter what and then focused on keeping everything but the bottoms of her bare feet intangible.

They landed in on the sidewalk below, between a fire hydrant and parked car. Her feet stung like she had never felt before, and would probably bruise, but hey, they lived! She was also really proud that she hadn't landed on her butt this time, and had managed to stay standing.

"Wooo!" Juniper made sure Zek was back on his feet and not half trapped in the sidewalk, and then celebrated her success for a moment. "Landed it! Yeah!"

Oh, right, they probably still needed to run though, right?

SCREEEE the sound of tires screeching popped up suddenly and the van that had originally been chasing her reappeared. Baldy was behind the wheel, apparently solo, and looked super peeved.

“Wha-? Whoa, you’re strong!” Zek said in a rush as he was suddenly lifted up like a sack of potato--no, like a small sack of flour and good grief how strong was Juniper?!

Also it was kinda nice to be the one getting swept off the feet.

But then bullets were flying around and Zek was not too manly to admit that he’d definitely let out at least one girlish shriek. And while he was trying to wrap his head around that, Juniper said something quick and he almost missed.

“Don’t let go? What do you FUUUUUDGECIIIIICLLLLLLES!” he yelled all the way down to the ground. Forget that, he was never letting go of this girl ever again!

And honestly Zek couldn’t tell you what happened next. It was all a hazy blur. He just knew he ended up next to Juniper and his heart pounding like a drumline. As soon as she let go, he startled stumbling, whether from shock, impact, or whatever. She seemed happy and joyous. Zek was just making sure that he, too, was alive. And he still had his ice cream.

He pulled himself together and turned to his deathseeking almost-murderer and was opening his mouth when the van reappeared. Mr. Ice Cream Toupee was there and looked ready to run them down, if his sudden acceleration was any indication. Zek suddenly had better things to do than to complain about his spontaneous introduction to BASE jumping.

“Not today, Satan!” he declared. A golden ball appeared in his hand and he stopped shaking. This wasn’t a thrill-seeking building dive. This was throwing a ball. “I don’t have time for this nonsense!” he said and as the van began to close the distance, Zek pivoted, placing his left side facing the van and pulled the orb back before flinging it straight into the oncoming van.

In a bigger flash of light, the van...well, vanished.

And Mr. Mudstain-for-brains was suddenly driving an invisible and intangible vehicle at the same speed and momentum as before. And then reality ensued.

The world suddenly swam before Zek’s eyes and pounding began in his head. He stumbled to the side and....well, let’s just say the ice cream was good the second time around, too.

Oop, stuff was moving too fast! They lived, Van was coming, Juniper didn't know whether to try and attack the van or dive for Zek again. Zek apparently had a plan because one of those glorious, glowing balls appeared and it hurled it like a baseball at the van. It hit, and then the vehicle was suddenly absent, and Mr. Clean was still there. Only, gravity was also still there, and the two of them had a very swift, painful meeting.

Juniper phased herself as the large bald man met pavement probably going about 30 or 40 mph, bounced and started spinning, and eventually rolled speedily through her. He came to a stop a few feet away and just remained lying there, and she didn't really wanna be the one to go over and check him. Other people got paid for that, right?

Besides, Zek was over there redecorating the sidewalk, and she honestly felt worse for him than she did the other guy. Zek hadn't tried to murder her, yet.

"Oof, you okay?" She could hear sirens in the distance. @#$%in finally! It only took a dramatic fall off of a building to get them to show up, apparently! Never mind trying to run her over for 5 blocks and all the gunfire. Nooo. This part of town royally sucked.

"Hey, so, are you a fan of police? Cuz I'm not for various reasons so I kinda wanna skadoodle before they get here and the rest of my day is spent trying to awkwardly recount this whole crap show."

She for certain wasn't gonna stick around long enough for anyone to get her name and info, let alone allow herself to be put in cuffs, or zip ties, or whatever they used these days.

But, she also didn't wanna just abandon the guy who'd helped her out so far if she didn't need too, either.

"I can hoist you up again if you want... but only for like, ten minutes at a time." Was she a bit antsy now, standing around in her no-shoes with her hands in the pocket of her hoodie? Yeah, and obviously so to anyone looking for it.

Zek was seriously regretting not grabbing napkins as he wiped his mouth off with the back of his arm. Gross, but what could you do? He stared at his ice cream for a moment and then just decided he was done with it. His fingers opened and the delicacy that had been through so much with him fell, fell, fell to the alley ground.

“Yeah, I’m okay,” he lied. But he’d been through worse and this would probably pass in...half an hour? So that was basically the same thing as being okay. Although he really felt like just sitting down for a minute. It’d probably take longer than that for the thug-a-palooza to show up, right?

But that suddenly didn’t seem like an option because the cops were on their way. “Right now, I’d rather not deal with the thin blue line either.” And only partially because he was worried there was a chance that hitting things with his orbs would count as abduction or theft. He could probably argue self defense, especially since nothing would get hurt, but yeah. He just didn’t want to put up with that.

But the world was still shifting around him, like a boat on the ocean. He took a step and his head started dipping sideways before he caught himself. He then shook his head and instantly regretted it. “No, as fun as you are when you’re grabbing, I can manage,” he said. “But if you don’t mind, I’m just gonna grab your arm because nothing has stopped spinning since I, you know, saved our lives from Ice Cream Headache over here.”

He spared a glance at the guy. Ouch. Zek promised to wince later at the sight.

“Your turn to lead the way, Junie,” he said. “Besides, those other guys will probably be here before the cops and I don’t have the balls for all of them.”

Ah, was it because he'd used his power? Well, now she'd feel really bad if she ditched him and ran off on her own.

She thought about offering her arm, but... well she still had that whole don't-touch-the-arms thing she was struggling with, so she reached out and snagged his hand with one of hers instead. Hand holding was fine, right? She'd done it a few times now without dissolving into fits of panic! It was a sign of progress!

"I got you, bro. I'm good at running!" She focused on phasing away a good portion of herself, and then a good portion of him as well. She wasn't sure what exactly that might do when it came to interaction with the wobble he had going on right now but hoped it helped. Then, it was just maintaining that concentration as she turned and started running, dragging him with her as they formed a path of escape on the fly.

Out the alley, down a side street, across a big road between cars, through the middle of a busy restaurant kitchen. She stopped when they were a few blocks away and broke contact, dropping the partial phase on both of them so she could plop onto her butt on the ground and take a breather.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she wondered if Xavier was secretly setting up all of these attempts of her life just to get her to stop being lazy and exercise more. Didn't seem like his usual MO, but hey, the guy was a fitness freak so she wasn't willing to abandon that particular conspiracy theory.

"Are- Gasp- you- wheez- okay??"

How.. how on earth did those people from the mansion be super active all the time and still manage to maintain composure!? How were they not always red and sweaty and gross looking after thwarting bank robberies and such? There was some backwards ass physics going on there for sure.

By then the police had already shown up and started arresting the various gang members who were slowly trailing out of the building, as well as peeling the bossman up off of the pavement with help from EMT's. He'd survive, but with some gnarly road burn scars to look back on and fondly remember the day he decided to quit the mob and become a humble bread maker off in a different wing of the city.