The world suddenly spun into a blinding smear of colors and lights. Lights streaked the air around her, spinning dizzyingly. Sterling found herself strangely detached as she spun and fell, her mind marveling at the way everything around her suddenly resembled a horrible carousel ride she once rode when she was younger. She hadn’t liked the carousel and had been promptly sick upon getting off. Pain bolted through her from all directions jolting her of her daze. She tried to cry out, but a sharp pain speared her insides as she inhaled causing her to choke on a moan. Her whole body, especially her back and leg, throbbed and burned almost as if someone had spilled liquid fire down her shirt. Agony practically flowed down her back and dripped into the backs of her legs. There were loud obnoxious sounds all around her but she was too disoriented to really hear them. She carefully reached up to touch her head and started when she came in contact with the now roughed up plastic of her helmet—everything that had just happened came back to her in a flash.

“The race!” she gasped looking around franticly, only partially relieved to find that she had some how made it out across the finish line and was now on her back, under Dragon fly behind a dumpster. She didn’t really notice the people frantically running in an away direction from the warehouse and race site in general, or the several cop cars that had pulled up not too far away. A good number of people were already sitting on the curb, their hands cuffed behind their backs.

‘I have to walk away from this,’ she thought, her mind still ringing and struggling to catch up with reality, ‘If I don’t walk away, I’m disqualified. If I’m caught, I’m disqualified, If my vehicle—‘

“Dragon-fly!” She gasped, suddenly remember her motorcycle. << Dragon-fly! Are you OK? >> She pawed at the machine atop her with hands shaking from a mixture of pain and adrenaline.

<< Nnng. Do I look OK to you?? >> Came the irritated and shaken reply. << My PAINT! >>

Sterling actually took a moment to really look at the motorcycle and couldn’t help but wince. Its paint was the least of its worries. Pieces of the bike and other unrecognizable pieces of twisted metal scattered the road around a dark scrape that marked their fall and skid behind the dumpsters. Luckily they had made it over the finish line before the accident actually happened.

<< I don’t think we’ll be disqualified. We made it over the finish line before you were incapacitated. >>

<< Meh, >> It responded with the electronic version of a cough, << I’m not down just yet. Get on, I can still run. >>

<< Dragon-fly, >>

<< Shut up and get on! >>

Sterling moved to get up and gasped, sinking back down as a wave of pain shot up her leg. “Crap!”” she hissed, “Ah!”

<< Damn it! I think my leg…my leg might be… >>

<< Human, you better get over whatever is wrong with you because we REALLY need to get out of here! Look around you! >>

Startled, Sterling finally seemed to realize the imitate danger around her. More cops were arriving and all were, weapons drawn, grabbing and cuffing any party goers who happened to be within reach. The direction of the fleeing people had changed once they realized the danger of the area and Sterling realized she would be soon discovered if she didn’t move out soon. Biting back her pain, she forced herself to her feet, hauled Dragon-fly up and, leaning heavily on the motorcycle, began to limp her way between two near by buildings.

<< Hey! I said get on me! >> Dragon-fly groused.

<< I can’t mount you, much less hold on. We’re just gonna have to limp out of here. >>

A guy wearing leather and girl with blond pig-tails fled past her without a backwards glance.

She seriously hoped no one who cared saw her because she really didn’t think she would be able to out run anyone in her current condition.

Slade passed the finish line, neck and neck with a motorcyclist. His adversary was good, very good in fact. Slade relaxed for that fatal split second as he crossed the line, then everything went wrong. He didn't know whose fault it was or how it happened but feeling a jolting crack the motorcyclist rocketed into his side. He felt the bike slip from under the cyclist as it bounced violently off Slade's chassis. He swerved loudly as he tried desperately to regain control of his steering, the wheels spinning and smoking with an ear shattering screech as he shot off course into a side street. Slade braced himself before the whiteness blasted him from his senses. The diminuitive alley wasn't built for a car crash, neither was Slade. A lifetime seemed to pass in a moment, searing white dots filled his vision and blotched accumulatively with the pain that grew parallel.

Slade wasn't sure how long passed but he knew it couldn't have been long. The cops were still closing in, people were still fleeing. He transformed groggily, noone would be watching now even the big wigs would be running for their own safety from the pigs in pursuit. Everything hurt, and not everything was clicking happily into place. His right arm was out of place and his chest burned with the agony. Car crashes were not Slade's forte, and he wasn't going to risk driving out of here. He quickly tried to slip his right arm back into its proper shape, while the matter replication would deal with his other injuries in time this would require some attention, the transformation had not been easy and something wasn't connecting in the usual way. At least he could still move it, he was lucky considering the impact.

As Slade stood shakily, his head pounding in ways that did nothing to appease the pain in the rest of his body, he remembered the cause of his untimely accident. He needed to find the other racer before the pigs did, he couldn't condemn another racer to their hands. Slade had never entirely respected the police, their treatment of mutants as automatic criminals and their usage of the law as a shield for their own means. Either way he had to find the racer and get out of here, as he staggered out from the battered alleyway he lurched towards where he remembered the cyclist had been heading before he blacked out. The scene was chaos, at least one other crash had occurred with a remarkably more fatal consequence, the burning charnel husk of what had been a car was scattered across the finishline, with spectators, racers and innocent bystanders fleeing for their lives. The very air was thick with panic, pain and fear.

Slade desperately looked around, the sirens were close and were locked on target. He didn't have long, he saw a few cop cars had already made the scene and were apprehending anyone they could. He felt it would be unwise to try and utilise his auto pistol with his right arm in its state, not that he couldn't handle a few pigs without it. As he looked away from the police, who were leaving him alone at least until the support arrived, he saw a woman limping away with a torn up bike. If that wasn't his charge then there wasn't anything he could do more. He moved quickly towards her, the pigs hadn't noticed her yet but if she didn't pick up pace they would. As he reached her side he leant in, and whispered urgently in her ear,
"Look, I don't know how our little crash happened and I don't care if you're pissed but we've got to get out of here and by the looks of things you need to visit a hospital lady. Let's get out of here before the pigs get on our tails yeah?"
Slade sensed something about this woman, like a connection he couldn't explain, either way there'd be time to fathom gut feelings later. They needed to escape.

So intent she was on getting out of the area, Sterling didn’t notice the figure approaching her until he spoke into her ear. Startled, she whipped around to come face to face with…something she had never seen before. She blinked. The voice had been masculine, and the silhouette was human, but, unless the lights from the cop cars were playing tricks on her still crash-fogged mind, there was no way the figure could be human. Her first thought was that he (she assumed the figure was male) was wearing some sort of high-tech armor but the way individual segments of his armor moved within him as he shifted his weight…It struck her that he wasn’t wearing armor, he was the armor. A machine. She found herself suddenly without her voice, a bit awestruck. He might have said something else to her, but Sterling’s mind was somewhere else, far away. The flashing lights reflected across his body, highlighting the subtle contours of his frame in rivulets of red and blue that slid across his features as the lights rotated. He looked to have been silver, possibly gray, but with the dark and refection of the colors made it hard to be certain.

‘What a beautifully crafted piece of machinery,’ she thought to herself, her need for haste forgotten, absolutely fascinated, her expert eye drawn to every intricate part of him. ‘Whoever made this…this android must have been unbelievably brilliant!’ And then a wave of infatuated delight washed over her. ‘I would kill to get my hands inside this thing, to even take it just a section of it apart…’

She couldn't help but reach out to him with her mind, to inquisitively Touch his mechanical energy. She came out of her thoughts suddenly when she realized he seemed to be waiting for some sort of response from her.

“Ah,” she quickly tried to reorient herself, “I’m sorry, who…what are you exactly?”

Slade glanced around nervously as he waited for her to get over the shock of seeing him. Considering she'd just been in a crash he wouldn't have been surprosed if she'd thought she was hallucinating. This reaction was amusing at times but presently he needed her to get over it, he saw more and more cops pouring into the scene and it if they say Slade they'd make a beeline. The corrupt majority of the pigs in NYC always took the mutants first, rather a mutant than their own kind any day...

As he finished checking the area for anyone taking unwanted attention in them he felt something niggling at the back of his mind. As he focused on it he felt a shiver tremor through his body, that feeling... it was difficult to locate just how it felt, invasive and unnatural while strangely exciting. He felt a curiosity and interest behind it that made him tingle uneasily. As she replied he felt the sensations dissipate suddenly, the warm comforting feeling of normality returned and he shook his head to clear the worry that had spawned. He needed to get her out of here, and answering wuestions would slow them down.

"Look we haven't got time to answer twenty questions, long story short I'm the car you crashed into at the finish and we need to get the hell out of here!"
On this Slade offered to give her a hand, her leg looked pretty busted up and Slade winced as he saw the bike, as a mechanical engineer he knew if that came within reach of him he'd have a field day repairing that!
"Let me give you a hand, we need to get you to a hospital..."
As long as the pigs didn't kick up a fuss Slade could get her out of here without incident...