So, apparently Lee Brooks wasn't nearly as in shape as she had always thought that she was. Well, maybe two years ago she was in terms of walking, but not even close to as in shape as she had thought she was for running. That, it seemed, had been completely her mutation, completely the energy she siphoned, and nothing more.

And Tarin was not going to find out about that, or she would never be able to tease him about being in such better shape than him again.

Jacen, meanwhile, had also stopped running and was making his way back to where she was crouching on the path. And offering to forget the wager that they had made. Lee simply shook her head, then waited a couple more moments to get a bit more of her breath back.

"Nah," she finally managed to say. "I knew I wasn't siphoning and still agreed. I still feel the energy I have, so I thought I was still going to be able to use it..."

Then she saw Jacen turn and start walking away without a word. Lee frowned, not knowing what had caused him to suddenly leave like that, but she was still too winded and tired to get up to follow, or to even call out to him.

Only for the man to stop once he got about ten feet away from her. Lee's frown intensified, though more in confusion at this point. "What's all that for?" She asked about his moving away as she finally managed to push herself back to her feet. Her legs felt rubbery and she was still breathing heavily, but she was feeling better than she had been when she'd stopped running.

And then Jacen started speaking again, asking about if Tarin ever went jogging with her. Her face flushing red again at the last part of his question, Lee dropped her eyes and shook her head. "No," she said, still not looking up at Jacen. "If I've got enough energy that I feel I need to go for a run, Tarin's passed out."

Well, it was true, though unfortunately not always because of activities that the two of them liked, merges sucked like that.

"With a little bit of experimentation I learned that apparently my power only extended somewhere between eight and ten feet." Jacen explained as he watched Lee slowly beginning to recover, "By stepping away I'm hopefully letting you recover a little bit quicker."

OK, so there were downsides to his ability as well as positives. Sure, certain women might like the idea of being able to step away from their powers for a few moments but other mutants wouldn't like the idea so much and for some others it might even be harmful. The way Lee was acting right now was proof that sometimes the bad came closer to overpowering the good in this particular situation.

At least she seemed to be starting to recover now that she was out of range. She still didn't look to hot... wrong wording. She looked hot but she obviously wasn't recovered even though she was starting to look a little better. "Do you and Tarin mainly hang out at bars or do you go to the occasional night club?" Jacen asked, doing his best to maintain some sort of conversation as she recovered. Whenever she was ready to leave or she wanted him to leave that would be fine but if she wanted to keep talking he'd stick around.

His power only extends about ten feet? That was curious, though as Lee thought about it, probably a good thing since that meant he wouldn't be able to effect all mutants just by necessarily being in the same room, building, city...

It was also interesting, and as she tried to catch her breath, Lee tried to reach out with her siphoning, tried to feel him standing there ten feet away from her. But the truth of the matter was that Lee honestly had no idea if her powers were working again; even though he was that far away, and even though Jacen said that he was far enough his powers wouldn't be effecting her any more, she still couldn't feel him. That was probably why she had literally run into him in the first place, because even though she was outside of his range, she couldn't feel him.

But the fact was that there was no one else around them, either, and without someone else nearby, Lee wasn't feeling any energy from anyone. So maybe her powers were back on, maybe they weren't, she couldn't tell. That was a considerate thing for Jacen to do, though.

But whether her powers were working again or not, whether that was the reason or not, Lee slowly managed to get her breath back enough to stand up and start very slowly walking toward Luke again.

"Bars," Lee said, coming to a stop a couple feet away from Jacen. "Well, really just one bar for the most part. It's not far from our place, and has pretty good bands playing fairly regularly. Plus, it's busy enough that I'm not falling asleep before the end of the night because of lack of energy, but not so huge and crowded that I'm bouncing off the walls within 20 minutes of getting there."

"Bars..." Jacen said with a slight nod as Lee began making her way back over toward him, "Makes sense I suppose though, maybe I should skip on meeting you two for drinks. I wouldn't want to be the cause of you falling asleep in your beer." The last of the comment was said in a teasing voice with an obvious but tired twinkle in the man's eyes. Sure, Jacen had trained his body to be athletic ever since being a teenager but his training regimen was not as intense as it had been while he was in the military.

"Note to self... bump up workouts." Jacen though to himself as he did his best to ignore the slight quiver in his leg muscles and the rapid beating in his chest. He refused to show any weakness even if his body was telling him that it needed a few moments to just slump and relax.

"So, if you don't mind my asking, what do you and Tarin do? Oh no... let me guess. You're a personal trainer for the celebrities, right?"

Teasing. Lee was more than used to that sort of teasing tone in someone's voice thanks to Tarin. And thanks to how much she teased him, too.

So Lee simply rolled her eyes at Jacen, though the action might not have had its full effect because of the darkness they were both standing in. "I'll have you know, I have never once fallen asleep in my beer, and I don't intend on starting, even if you are there," Lee informed Jacen.

Shaking her head at Jacen for even thinking she'd do something like that, Lee started back down the path, going at a slow walk as they went, her feet unconsciously turning down the paths that would end up leading out of the park as they came to forks, to the exit that would be closest to the apartment.

Only for Jacen to ask what she and Tarin did. How did she explain that. Well, she knew how, but how did she do it so it made the most sense and didn't sound bad?

"Actually, we own a little shop," Lee ended up telling him. "Just a few blocks away, actually." Here, Lee paused. She could leave it there, but that would probably just have Jacen asking what they did in the shop, and she'd have to explain anyway.

"He's a medium, so we have a lot of people coming in, wanting to talk to people who've died. I run the books, and have actually added stuff like books in the front of the shop for sale.

"What about you?"

Why did people always do that? Jacen really needed to quit asking people what their profession was because they always turned the question back around on him. Sure, being a medium was a little crazy sounding but for some reason people always thought that being a cop was even worse. Although, with all the mutants that had been persecuted by the police, it made sense that they would look down on the profession.

"A medium would be a neat job." Jacen offered, as he tried to think of a good way to comment about his own job, "Coming up with some sort of story to make people happy and give them closure would be challenging I'm sure. Does he Google search the person's name to find out information?"

It hadn't even entered in Jacen's mind that Tarin might be a mutant with an ability to see dead people. Nope, that was the furthest thing from his mind. He was to busy trying to think about how to describe his own job.

"And me... well... I work in law enforcement. Specialty work though. Very hush hush... top secret. That kind of thing."

Oh... now that had sounded corny.

Lee blinked at what she head Jacen say, then turned her head to look over at him, only to blink again. "You think being a medium is neat?" Lee asked, her voice almost unbelieving. "Challenging, every day, but I don't think he'd ever call it neat.

"And really, Google?" Lee asked, her voice growing even more sceptical. Lee shook her head as she turned to the right down a fork in the path. "Even if he needed to do something like that, he wouldn't have time to."

Jacen seemed to be taking his time figuring out what to say about what he did for a living. Longer than Lee would have expected, actually. It couldn't really be that hard, right? Unless, of course, he did something that he didn't actually want her to know about, and was trying to come up with a lie.

Except when he actually opened his mouth, though he did seem hesitant, it didn't really sound bad, just...vague. Then she stopped and looked directly at Jacen. "You're a cop?" She asked, more shocked than she had previously been when he said that being a medium must be interesting. "You are a cop?"

For a full minute, Lee simply stood there staring at Jacen. He was just so different than Rupert, so extremely different. Finally, she just shook her head with a bit of a laugh and started walking once more. "Wow," she said under her breath.

"Why in the world does everyone have that reaction?" Jacen asked, just a tinge of annoyance in his voice. "You tell me your husband is a practicing Medium and you run the books for his business but then you're shocked and surprised that someone works in law enforcement?"

People made no sense at times. You would think that people would appreciate the cops that tried to protect them but more often than not, even normal humans thought it was wierd for someone to voluntarily put themselves in harms way in order to protect someone else.

"I don't patrol a normal beat or anything like that." Jacen offered, trying to clear up the situation, "I'm a former Ranger remember? Special forces was my thing which means that S.W.A.T. is a better fit than patrol work."

As soon as Jacen said the words he began to rethink whether he should have said it. If Lee thought being a cop was strange then she had to think that people in S.W.A.T. were absolute nut jobs. Yeah... the whole getting together for drinks think might just have been canceled.

"Can I assume you're not a fan of big bad lawmen?"

Jacen did not seem happy with how she had reacted to him saying he was a cop. Apparently, a lot of people seemed to react like that. But, he seemed to think that she was surprised simply because someone would choose to be a cop. It wasn't the cop comment that had surprised her so much, it was the fact that Jacen himself was a cop.

"Not a fan of certain lawmen," Lee said. Rupert, for example, she was definitely not a fan of. And the cops who had captured her before she had been put in the camps, even though she couldn't actually remember their faces because she had been too worried about the Stalker.

"I've met my share of cops, and you're nothing like them whatsoever," Lee continued. It was true, based on all the other police she had met before, not just in New York, but her whole life, she never would have pegged Jacen for a cop too. "So that really surprised me, especially since you're...

"Ohhh..." Lee's voice trailed off as realization hit her. That was what he had meant when he'd been talking about all the changes and how everything was being turned upside down for him now that he'd discovered his powers. Because if the rest of the force was like Rupert, if the rest was even a fraction of what Rupert was like, Lee was sure that things would not bode well for Jacen.

"Do the rest of them know yet?"

Listening to Lee ramble on, trying to explain her reaction was at least a touch amusing. Sure there were bad apples in the law profession just like there were bad apples in the medium profession but she hadn't heard him making comments about crackpot liars that will say anything to get a buck, now had she?! Maybe it had something to do with the fact that policemen were supposed to be public servants... yeah that was probably it. Since everyone's tax dollars paid the policemen's salaries they figure they had the right to complain and gripe about anyone who had that job.

"No... the rest of them don't know yet." Jacen replied quietly when Lee finally got around to asking some sort of question, "But that won't last for long. As soon as I have my physical and blood work they'll find out. It's starting to become standard policy to check for the X-Gene. Supposedly to keep any mutant spies from infiltrating the force."

It was deffinately time to get home. Jacen was tired and he didn't particularly feel like discussing his current work situation. In fact, he was even willing to forget that he'd won the bet to show Lee what it was like to touch someone when you weren't draining energy from them if that's what she wanted.

"I'm parked over that way." Jacen said as he nodded toward the left branch of an upcoming fork. If Lee was on that same path she was welcome to follow but if not then this would be the perfect time to part ways.

Jacen didn't think that it would take long before everyone else found out that he was a mutant. Apparently the NYPD now did regular testing of its officers to see if any of them were mutants. That was interesting.

Then Jacen pointed out where he was parked, which was in the opposite direction of where her apartment was. Well, technically going down the path wouldn't put her too far out of her way, just another couple of blocks to walk, backtracking to the apartment, but the right fork put her so much closer.

"Actually, I'm this way," Lee said, indicating the right side of the fork. "I really probably should get home at some point. But, I do still want to find out what it's like to be in a bar and not be siphoning. If you don't mind going at some point, of course."

A phone number would make things the easiest, Lee knew that, but she had come out without her purse. Without even her cell phone, actually. So her only way of getting his phone number would be to try and remember it until she got back to the apartment where she could write it down. And, looking at Jacen, it didn't exactly look like he had a pen and paper on him, either. So how were they going to do this, then?

"Why don't you stop by the shop some time?" Lee asked, then gave a bit of a smile and a shrug. "Unless you've got a pen on you right now." Pausing just a moment, Lee gave Jacen the address of the shop, and the nearest main intersection which wasn't too far from where they currently were. "Or we could always just run in to each other again getting coffee or something here.

"It was nice to meet you, Jacen," Lee said with a sincere smile before turning and making her way down the path to the right.

Other than the keys in his pocket and the small radio strapped to his arm, Jacen had chosen to leave everything that might weigh him down while running back in the truck. Cell phone, pen, paper, and anythign else for recording information was stored within that dark blue vehicle.

"No pen, but I can probably remember an address." Jacen said with a touch of a smile. Listening he carefully he automatically catagorized the area by the landmarks and shops that he either frequented or noticed while driving by. It was really the busiest section of New York City that Lee was describing but at least it was a recognizable part.

"I'll drop by sometime. It'd be interesting to meet your husband." Jacen said with a nod as he reached up and took hold of his earbuds, preparing to once again drown himself in the sounds of soft rock.

"Nice to meet you too Lee. Night."

As the music once again flooded his ear canals, Jacen turned and began to jog back toward his vehicle.

"Who the hell makes plans to get together for drinks with a married woman and her husband?" Jacen mentally berated himself as he and Lee both dissapeared into their respective path's shadows, "What am I thinking?"