Saph shrugged as he ran, and she explained her reasoning behind running. He guessed it made a little sense; it would be difficult to explain to the police that he was just taking a nice little jog in his shiny spandex costume on this incredibly hot day, and he'd just happened to see a damsel in distress, and thus helped them.

If superheroing was really so taboo as this woman suggested, he may get in a little bit of trouble... The mutant gave a sigh... He was really gonna have to change that if he was gonna be a masked do-gooder. He was sure he would be fine if he could somehow get the general public to like him.

She suddenly stepped out of the path, and he skid to a stop before getting back into her little crazy bubble of death she had going on. "So, eh... what exactly is your mutation, huh? I haven't seen anything like it before. It's like you just shut down half of my body..." He grinned. "It was pretty impressive, now that I think about it... Can you do that on command, or do people just fall over when they get close to you?" He nodded as she pointed to the tree, and he walked on over to lean against it. "So... what went wrong, then? I thought it went pretty well until you attacked me... just sayin."

It made sense he'd have a lot of questions. There was a lot to talk about. Everything that had gone wrong...

First off, he was a mutant whose power she affected in such a way he tripped over himself like an idiot. Like an idiot?

That was kind of lame.

Secondly, he thought she was mutant.

And third, since when had she attacked him?

So many misunderstandings. One could almost write a book.

"My name's Molly," She lied, as she slid up against another tree nearby. She faced him, beyond her range. "My power weakens mutations. It's thoroughly unavoidable, and I can't shut it off." She didn't correct him on the 'human' side. There was no telling what his response would be to that, and not worth jumping through all the explanation hoops that'd surely follow. "If I had to define it, I'd say I'm really... lucky."

Lucky. Right. That was the lie, now. Wasn't it?

"Power does whatever it needs to influence situations to my benefit. No matter what."

"As for what went wrong... well... what didn't?" She gave him a hard look, slumping forward slightly. She let an arm dangle over a bent leg. "In the future, you might want to think about just being yourself. If you stop a mugger or help someone out on the street out of the goodness of your heart, don't wear a mask." She glowered. "And better yet, don't do it. If it's unavoidable, don't charge."

"You want to explain to me what you were trying to accomplish with this 'masked hero' deal? You don't strike me as the 'larger than life' type, the mythic individual, or the cowboy... certainly not the hardboiled detective..." Blah blah blah. What was he up to? And why'd it involve disgracing himself when he could get by just fine in a t-shirt and jeans?

Wait, so she didn't do what she did to him on purpose? Huh... That was odd... She didn't have some awesome body freezing power, but rather just got in the way of other peoples powers, it seemed. It was kinda disappointing. Here, he was thinking she was a complete and total BA, but instead she was just... a leech.

He frowned a little, happy his mask was on to hide his full disappointment. "Lucky? How so? What if you were fighting someone without a power?" He looked over to her and tilted his head. Sure, from the way she schooled that punk earlier, she could handle herself in a fight against riffraff. Oh well. It wasn't like she would be fisticuffing with a championship boxer any time soon, was it? He wasn't so sure, actually; she seemed the type to get herself into trouble.

"Anyways, Molly, huh? Nice to meet you. I'd shake, but, well..." He notioned to the distance between them, his tone hinting that he wanted it to stay that way.

She ranted at him, and he sighed. "What if this is me? What if I genuinely want to go out every day and fight crime? I am the kinda person who sees injustice, and charges in head first, cause otherwise people will just let it happen. I want this to be a city in which some punk takes a step towards snatching someone's purse, but then thinks twice because I could be watching. So what if I ain't graceful or larger than life. It doesn't take that to do what's right."

He seemed so firm and passionate in his conviction; it was as if he believed in this with every fiber of his being. "If you are bad, you'll fear me, if you are good, you'll love me, and if you are in the middle, you won't give a damn, and I'm just fine with that. The point is, people need something to look up to, some measure of hope that the crooked won't win out in the end. I want to be that hope. You can't be that hope in every day clothes. You gotta be unreal."

>>"Lucky? How so? What if you were fighting someone without a power?"

"Oh, I'd totally get beaten up, now wouldn't I?" She deadpanned. Looked him in the eye, looked away. "Or maybe I'd win. I do that. I'm good in a fight." She added quietly. It wasn't a brag, just casual fact.

Anyways.

She swung her eyes back to him as he didn't introduce himself.

No name? She thought.

After all that he'd done wrong,maybe it made sense he'd want to keep that little gem a secret.

Or maybe, he didn't feel like sharing because she was ranting like somebody's mother. Maybe.

He sighed.

>>"What if this is me?"

What if he was a team-player? A save-the-day superhero? She hated people like that.

Lenna let him rant. An eyebrow arched at 'larger-than-life'.

"You finished?" She asked. "Words are great, but can you actually do any of that? What can you even do? And can you do it without the attitude, or the asking women you help for a handout? That's kind of messed-up."

"You know, I wouldn't be worried if you didn't seem the type that got into trouble, but... You got that look about you... That attitude, like you were born to raise hell... I don't like it." He had seen that look way too many times in his life... It never ended well. "Take my advice... Don't do anything dangerous with your life... I know it sounds odd, but you are likely to get yourself hurt more than you know."

He could see as he spoke about wanting to do good things; she didn't approve.

She didn't understand... Saph had noticed long ago that a general want to do good things was looked at as odd. Why was that? He would have to work to change it. If everyone tried to do good things the world would be just fine, right? He supposed not; different people had different definitions of what was good. He had heard of people that thought killing mutant babies was for the good of all; and obviously he didn't see eye to eye with them.

He let out a long sigh "You really wanna see what I can do? Fine." He then proceeded to start beating the crap out of himself.

He was doing it to gather force, and it didn't hurt him, of course ,but it sure would look funny.

Was he lecturing her? Wonders never ceased. It was a little too late for his words of 'wisdom' to help, though. 300 and counting...

Lenna didn't respond.

The man wanted to be a hero, and he told her to keep out of trouble, yet he was rushing headfirst into the same thing. He was a hypocrite in a ski mask who didn't want to share his name. How dumb could one get?

And then, he started beating himself up about his stupidity. Lenna blinked. She'd seen many things in her career, but that... was a first.

"Just who are you...?" She muttered.

Saph didn't respond, either... At least not right away. When he was finally done beating himself, he stood slowly, picking up a rock on the way up. He held the rock in his hands for a moment, as if to study it, and then looked thoughtfully over to a stop sign.there was a meek, get gentle simplicity to the way he moved; like a monkey solving a puzzle it had practiced a million times. That was probably a bad way to say that, because he didn't look lacking of intelligence, or skill... he just didn't have time to waste with finesse...

He held the rock out in his left hand, between his index finger and thumb, not bothering to wind up, and then sent all of his gathered force into it.

With a loud TCHING-thuck!, the rock shot from his hand, through the stop sign, and into a tree behind it. The stop sign vibrated turbulently for a moment, and then went still, a noticeable hole in it's octagonal form.

He looked over to the woman once more, and stated plainly. "I'm the Masochist." He then turned, and walked off.

((Splendid RPing with you, as always!))