As the two goons that were on the ground crawled away to get the hell out of there, Xavia’s hold on the mutation weakened quickly. The tree bits fell off with cracks and pops, and an exhausted woman fell to hands and knees, surrounded by the pieces of broken concrete and flora. Panting heavily, she plopped onto the ground on her belly, a large piece of bark covering from her lower back to her ankles, angled in just a way that one leg was more uncovered than the other. Lucky for her. She gave a groan as her head pounded, and relaxed herself for the moment while she sought to gain her breath again. Aside from various bruises and scrapes, and the exhaustion from the chase itself and the mutating, she was in good health.

The scarred thug went down when something flew from above and went unconscious for the time being, his gun skidding under a dumpster and out of sight. He would be out for quite some time and wake up with a nasty lump the next day. Shin got him pretty good. Somewhere down the street was the sound of peeling tires as the other two thugs sped off without their ringleader, retreating like the cowards they were.

The wail of sirens called through the late afternoon, muffled by the rain as it fell like cats and dogs, thunder drumming overhead like tom-toms during a war.

>>"We were just passing on the roadside, and ..."

Reluctantly pulling her gaze away from the barrel of the gun, Kiska's eyes widened for what might've been the billionth time in the past 42 hours. It was him -- the him from before, that she'd stuttered at on the sidewalk before all of this (whatever this was) had even started. He was incredibly ... well, brave. But this didn't seem to have much effect on the man with the gun, as he turned to him with a gruff shout. She frowned, pulling in an apprehensive breath of air. What was she going to do? She had to do something! Her legs, of course, said run, but was she really going to just leave him here, to take the fall for the mess she'd managed to get herself into? Was that who she was? Her more reasonable side pulled her back. Less melodramatic questions, more actions besides just standing here uselessly. Right.

(... Ahhh! Why was this happening?!)

Fingers carefully twisting the air between them again, she quickly tried to pull more light together, only to find the clouds overhead obscuring the sunglight almost entirely. She let off a soft glow, but only for a moment before her mind wavered; she was using too much, and she definitely wouldn't be any help if she were to pass out! He looked at her, nodding his head toward the open street behind her and she took a hesitant step backward in response, locking her gaze on him for an extra second as she scrambled for a next step. Would it be a terrible idea to try and hurl the lid of a trash bin beside her at the armed man? ... Probably. Okay, yes.

Something big, glowy, and triangle-shaped promptly crashed down atop the man's head, his gun sliding out of reach, and suddenly the one who she'd seen fighting back moments earlier was telling both of them to make a run for it. Another? Kitska had barely had time to be puzzled nor finally take the advice she'd gotten twice now before the sound of fearful, gruff words and a screech of tires in the distance reached her. They were ... gone? Just like that. She hadn't even needed to run away.

Well, this was definitely different. She found the time to shiver at the rain that had soaked her clothes, rubbing the shoulder she'd fell on earlier.

"Th- ... thank you," she made her best effort at raising her voice so she could be heard over the pounding rain and offered a small smile at the two of them. The feeling panic was still slowly ebbing away. Once again, she searched for something else to say, and was turning up empty handed. On the upside, the storm managed to help hide the embarrassed tint making its way across her cheekbones.

She glanced down the alley the way she'd come for a moment, almost to reassure herself that the other men really had fled. Squinting through the falling droplets, she brushed a soaking strand of hair out of her eyes and made out that they were gone, but in their place was a woman -- the one from earlier -- lying on the broken concrete. Her frame suddenly grew tense, and she moved towards her hesitantly at first, then broke into a short run until she reached her. There were a million things she wanted to ask her, wanted to ask all of them, and one made its way out first: "Are you alright?"