Maxine took only a moment to think about that. The same amount of time as it took her to draw back, her face in a scowl. “Hell no,” she agreed. It was creepy enough that these tags existed, and a similar kind was already starting to be wide spread among pets; the last thing a reporting intern worth her copy wanted was a Fed-sponsored tracking device under her skin.

“Hell no,” she said again, for good measure.

Under her heel, the stack of paper rustled its sheets in a growl.

"Fair enough." Noel reached out quick as wink and tapped the front of the pen against any skin she could get the contraption to touch on Maxine. All that was left was to erase their entire encounter. The hand with the subdermal pen reached out to catch Maxine's chin.

This would take eye contact and more than a little will power.

Forget the last 30 minutes of your life.

Time wipes were so much easier.

The night was as black as Maxine's intentions.

The streetlight cast pale florescent light down on them, in their very own patch of man-made moonlight.

The red head's heels gave staccato clicks, marking her place in the dark space between street lights. On a normal night, she'd be going to the subway, catching one of the late trains home.

She was sitting; they both were. She became aware of Rex on the ground, the two pens nearby, and a stack of disoriented paper under one heel.

Maxine's legs and arms were covered in small cuts. Judging by her growing migraine and the increasingly violent struggles from the bag, Maxine guessed the paper understood just how serious she was about taking it for a swim in the river.

The pounding in her head hadn’t gone away, only changed: now her brain felt like a hollowed-out pumpkin, raw and knifed at the edges with a vacant space where its guts should have been. The little cuts on her arms and legs had been joined with scrapes and bruises; a new pin prick itch on her upper arm was overlooked as the nerve feed from her abused nose kicked in.

The bushes rustled. Then—

She was sitting on a bench, gazing deeply into a stranger’s eyes. Said stranger’s warm hand was cupped under her chin; they both seemed tired, and... sweaty.

The intern’s hand reached its own conclusions. If and when the open-handed slap hit, the woman’s cheek would be as red as Maxine’s hair.

It was a lot like waking up with a slap.

Noel's head turned with the force of it and her hand fell from holding the other woman's chin. She was looking down with a curtain of hair for privacy. In the memorymancer's hand was the fat pen shape of the subdermal tracking injector. She knew it by touch. That meant this was the tail end of a tag. In her lap was a notebook with some notes and some notes blackened out.

And boy did it hurt. The pooling moisture in her eyes wasn't for effect.

The brunette shoved her hair back and touched her hot, stinging cheek with her hand. "What the heck?" She didn't have the strength to be truly angry when she was so tired and she knew herself to be in the wrong. Or... she'd thought she was in the wrong.

"You've got head trauma." Hopefully before the redhead had another chance to take a swing Noel held up the notebook between them. The notes were abbreviated, most of the slander blackened out but the first sentence established that her head was getting smashed through the ground when Noel arrived. It was the memorymancer's one shield. She believed in Christian forgiveness, but would prefer to not have to turn the other cheek in this instance.

Head trauma?

Lame. The red head was pretty sure she’d remember getting... head... trauma. Okay. So even if she didn’t—remember recent events, that was—she was still pretty sure that head trauma would leave a... pounding reminder in her skull, a raw scrape on her forehead, and a squished nose.

No. No no no.

She squinted at the woman’s note-shield, trying to find the lies behind it. The can opener had attacked her. This woman had intervened. Her assailant had fled. It was like reading cliff notes on someone else’s nightmare. Maxine vaguely recognized where they were: it was only a short way from Wolf News. This was just the end of her shift, like any other day. She’d been on her way home, minus a little detour. There wasn’t room in that for... this. Things like this happened to other people: then she reported on it. That was the natural order of things. Maxine seized on the only clear lie she could find, and hugged it close.

“I am not slanderous,” she protested, sitting up straight to glare over the pad at the woman. The motion triggered a small, warm drop to trail over her lip from her nose. She wiped at it, and stared at the red on her fingers. Blood had such a strange color. Thick. It didn’t look as real on her hand as it did in the movies.

“...Did you call an ambulance?” She asked wobbly. “I think I have head trauma. And memory loss.”

That wasn’t good. Was it? Cue hyperventilation.

> “I am not slanderous”

"I can fix that." She'd obviously started fixing it already since some of the slander was marked out already. It was no skin off her cheek to mark out a few words. That was the hope anyway.

>“...Did you call an ambulance?”

"I don't think so." She looked up from her note fixing/reading to see a bit of blood seeping out of Maxine's nose. Maxine saw it too. "Whoa, whoa. Hey. Breathe. You were fine just a minute ago." Fine and slapping. It wasn't that Noel didn't think to slap Maxine out of it, it somehow seemed a bit inappropriate considering that the girl was panicking. Noel pulled out her phone. The sharpie words 'wipe them both' flashed by as she pulled the rectangular device up to her ear.

"I need an ambulance at..." suddenly she realized that she wasn't entirely sure of where she was nor was she aware of how she had gotten there. She would have to ride along in the ambulance if for no other reason than the fact that she needed a ride. "huh? Oh. Central Park."

She glanced over the notes "Near the Wolf News building. No. Head trauma. She's loosing time. No. No blackouts, right?"

As soon as she was done with her phone Noel went fishing in her little ankle pouch. "I think I have some gauze." She returned with a little medically sealed piece for the red head's nose bleed.

Breathing. Breathing was harder then it seemed, if she thought about it too much. Air in, air out. Should her breathes sound so ragged? Was her heart supposed to hammer against her windpipe like that?

>> “No blackouts, right?"

“I,” Maxine said, after inhaling deeply, “don’t remember.” Exhale.

The ambulance. It would make everything better. And the hospital. She’d never wished more for an ocean of bland florescent lights. The street light cast only a puddle of safety. All around, the night pressed in.

Gauze. Gauze was a start to everything being better. She accepted it gratefully, and tucked it under her leaking nose.

“Thank you. For scaring her off.” Also, for the gauze. Priorities, though. “What’s your name?”

It was probably something she’d asked before. Maybe she should get the answer written down, this time.

> “Thank you. For scaring her off.”

The memorymancer wiped her hand on her pants in an attempt to slough off the 'wipe them both' message. She got it. They were both wiped now. "I wasn't about to stand by and watch." Even if she didn't remember the incident, she knew that much. The idea of what might have happened turned Noel's stomach. If the can opener had hurt Maxine this much...

> “What’s your name?”

She heard the sirens before she saw the lights. "Noel Gage." The agent put her foot on the bench next to Maxine so that she could stuff her map and other various odds and ends back in to her ankle pouch properly. "I'll bring them here. Just wait." And don't get jumped by any lurking can openers.

Noel jogged out to the street some ten or so feet away from the lamp, sidewalk and bench. She waved her arms and the meat wagon turned in her direction. "Over here!" She waved again and then went to sit down when the EMTs came pouring in. This standing up business really was overrated.

Of course there was someone to talk to. Noel had her notes to relay and... She squinted her eyes when they flashed a pin light in them. "Hey, sickie is over there." Though Maxine seemed to be having her own good time with a pin light and team of paramedics. "I'm fine."

It wasn't her fault that she couldn't tell them what day of the week it was.

The map was tucked away, heavy black scribblings waiting to be re-discovered another day. On the ground by its side, the marker lay abandoned.

Maxine protested the sudden EMT attention like a kid squirming as her mother’s care after a scrapped knee. The poking and prodding and blinding penlight in her eyes demanded fidgeting; the sudden feeling of safety, of being in the hands of people who knew how to make everything better, made it well worth enduring. She’d never appreciated how well lit the back of ambulances were until she was seated in the back of one, a black pen tucked over one ear and an angry pile of paper and a homicidal murderer left out in the night.

The ambulance’s red light flashed over dark windows, solitary streetlights, and empty benches. They briefly glittered over something crawling on the sidewalk, dragging a heavy burden behind it. Rex came to a stop at the curb. It sat on top of Maxine’s purse, tentacles silently waving, as the ambulance pulled away.

((ooc: Side thread: Homeward Rex.))