She, like everyone else, waited patiently for the scene to get set up so the officers could take their statements on the matter at hand. Still, Ashley crossed her arms and look upon the scene dispassionately, trying to look as intimidating and unsociable as possible. That wasn't too hard to do, really, as she simply adorned her usual scowl and narrowed gray eyes, body language screaming 'go away!' in the loudest possible manner it could. It was to no avail, however, as the officer that approached Ashley seemed to be a veteran, gruff in manner and was equally disinterested in the scene around him. Ashley got the 'just another day on the job' vibe from him, and she mentally nodded, appreciative of the demeanor. It was, after all, just another day on the job for him, and he had no problem letting everyone know.

“A'ight kid, tell me what happened. From the top, eh?” he took out his pad and clicked a pen, looking at Ashley expectantly. “Better start with your name and all that. You know the drill, am I right?”

Ashley did, in fact, know the drill. Though she knew that the veteran officer was implying that she knew from experience, and not from the fact that she watched a lot of crime dramas. Whatever the case, Ashley didn't appreciate being lumped in with common criminals (despite knowing that she was, in fact, a common criminal in most cases), and looked away from the cop with a sniff of distaste. It wasn't like she HAD to speak, after all, and it wasn't like she did anything wrong. She merely watched a woman get mugged, contemplated not helping her, then knocked out the accomplice of the mugger that was running at her after he was scared off by the Pretty Lady. So she stood there with quite the haughty look on he face (she could pull it off when she wanted to) and said nothing as the cops eyebrows stitched together for a moment before he got an exasperated look on his face.

“Come on kid, let's make this easy, huh?” he almost pleaded, trying to catch Ashley's eye but failing. “Don't gimmie the silent treatment, aight? I know you didn't do nuttin' wrong, you ain't in cuffs or in one of the cars...so tell me what happened, mmmkay? Start with your name though, in case we need to get a hold of ya again.”

Ashley shook her head and started at the officer again for a moment. She did appreciate his honesty and bluntness. They were personality traits she had herself, having no real time for beating around the bush or talking in circles or anything of that nature. She watched as he rolled his eyes and signaled for another office to come, this one a female. She recalled that some cops used this tactic, just in case a female they were speaking with was more comfortable in talking with a member of their own gender. Ashley sighed.

“Seems to be the problem Hardy?” the blond woman asked as she walked up, her jaw going up and down as she chewed what Ashley assumed was gum. “Won't talk?”

“Naw, figured you might open her up...I mean, you know...to talk.” he stumbled a bit on his words before he looked away, having the common decency to look slightly abashed as the young blond laughed at him. “Hey, can it O'Grady, just talk to the kid. She won't tell me jack, eh?”

“Sure thing, you Canadian Jackass.” she punched out at his shoulder in good humor and he simply swatted her aside as he walked away, muttering to himself the whole way. She watched him go before she turned back to Ashley, who had her head tilted slightly as she watched the exchange, slightly confused. “Heh, tell your partner you're battin' for the other team and suddenly they walk on eggshells. Silly bastard. Anyways, what's your name kid?”

Ashley sighed again, keeping her arms crossed as she looked at the new officer up and down. Despite being thinner she was a full head taller then her partner (Hardy, she remembered), standing at almost six feet tall. She wasn't skinny but looked like she could hang with the best of them. Ashley nodded. This officer, O'Grady, didn't look like she COULDN'T fight, and that was something she could appreciate. Hardy, though big, didn't look like he could fight worth a damn.

“Rhythm.” Ashley ushered out, her voice gruff. “You?”

O'Grady didn't say anything to the name given and simply wrote it down on the pad she had. She looked the redhead over for a moment before nodding. “Janus O'Grady, named after the Greek God Janus, or Gyanes, the god of gates, doors, doorways, beginnings, ending and...well, so on. So...Rhythm, eh? You part of a gang Rhythm?”

Ashley shook her head, raising an eyebrow at the question before she looked down at herself. When she looked up she threw Officer O'Grady a questioning look, one that said 'Why would you even ask something like that', a look that, much to Ashley's surprise, she had no problem interpreting.

“Well, it's an alias. Don't wanna tell me? Fine. You ain't being questioned, so whatever.” she gave a small shrug. “Just need your statement. What were you doing down here?”

Ashley looked nervous for a moment before shrugging. Might as well go with a half truth. “Nowhere else to go.”

At this Janus stopped writing for a full second, an action that didn’t go by Ashley, who prided herself in being perceptive...well, when the time called for it. She wrote something else down before nodding. “And you saw the young lady over there being mugged? What happened next?”

“Stopped. Watched. Ummm...didn't wanna get involved.” Ashley blushed and looked away form the piercing green eyes Janus sported. “But...he ran at me. So I...well.”

“Knocked him flat on his ass?” Janus nodded, continuing to write. She appreciated the girls' honesty. After all, the ones that jumped in to be heroes were the ones that were usually the trouble makers in the first place. She took a moment to shoot the Detective on the scene a rueful, playful glance before going back to the redhead. “And that's it?”

Ashley nodded quickly, getting a bit more uncomfortable at the scene. She looked over to the mugger who had held onto the Leaf Lady and followed his line of sight. She noted it went straight for the woman he tried to mug. She frowned, not liking how he was looking but not really understanding why. Still, her face must have looked distressed because she felt a hand on her shoulder, an action that made her jump back a bit, startled, eyes wide as she held her hands up defensively. She let loose a growl.

“No touching.” she said.

Officer Janus held up her hands and looked back to the other officers, who were all staring at the scene with mild interest, or in Hardy's case with the intention of helping her should the kid get out of control. She didn't have to say anything, only put her hands down, one hand on her hip as she gave Ashley a disarming smile. She'd seen that kind of reaction in a lot of people in her years on the force, and it was almost never a good thing.

“Hey, relax. You look upset so I just wanted to...you know, make sure you were okay.” Janus looked to the mugger that was cuffed and in the car and then back to Ashley. “Dirtbags like that wanna make an impression, you know? He wants that young lady to remember him. Piece of garbage wouldn't see the light of day if it were up to me. Sadly, he'll probably be let off after a slap on the wrist compared to what he should really get.”

She stopped when she noticed amused gray eyes watching her and felt herself flush a bit before looking back down at her notepad. She realized she probably said more then she should have but, what the hell, right? The girl in front of her was practically mute and wouldn't tell anyone what she said. She gave the girl called Rhythm an exaggerated wink, an action that earned slightly wide eyes and a blush. She smirked and held up the pad so the girl could see before she popped her pen a few times, purely out of habit.

“You got no place, then? Like, at all?”

Ashley shrugged. “Kinda. Apartment, pay to live there. Not much.” She didn't want to care enough that her abode was actually a rather dirty rat hole but she did, and her blush on the matter didn't disappear like she wanted. “Roof over my head. Enough.”

Officer O'Grady nodded as she wrote down the address Rhythm gave her. “Welp, I think that's about enough. I'll go tell the Detective you were cooperative...kinda.” Another wink, and the reaction was much the same, much to Janus' amusement. “Stay here for a second, and...hmm...” she seemed to think a moment before pulling out a wallet and opening it up. She pulled out a card and wrote something on it before handing it to Rhythm. “That's a shelter you can go to. My call number is on there if you need anything, okay?”

Ashley nodded absentmindedly as she pocketed the card, not noticing if anyone else saw the action or not. She didn’t think it off that an officer of the law would give her their number, and was only thinking that if she somehow befriended this person she might be able to find out more about the mutant that ruined her life. Her mind was already whirring with ideas on how to do this, but she forced herself to calm down.

Maybe this whole experience wasn't so bad after all.

"I was... was at a function... Um.. I am a singer... You see? So I have to go to... to those stupid parties and make appearances... and perform sometimes... I was at the Marriot in one of their ballrooms..." She didn't realize it, but her voice was soft and barely audible as she spoke to Santa--- Jorge... "I had a head ache... I... I get them so much... I just wanted to come out for air and walk for a little while... And..." Heavy breath puffed from her lips, her eyes blinked a few times and she focused on the man in the squad car again. He gave her an odd grin, and then it looked as if he ducked his head and pressed on his ear. She craned her head to get a closer look over the detective's shoulder, and was barely able to see lip movement.. Xavia trailed off.

Oh, but she had a sinking suspicion that their night was just begining. She didn't know what was going on exactly, but she had the feeling that this was no mugging they were dealing with. And then the man looked at her and gave the most nasty looking grin, pressing his face closer to the window with the tight space that he had available in the back of that car. She looked to the other car, then, and saw that the second man was doing the same as the first. The singer flattened herself against the cool brick and began to shiver, half from the wind that was starting to pick up and causing welts to form upon contact, and half from apprehension. She needed to get out of this alley and into the warmth, and she also needed to get away from those men because they were scaring the crap out of her.

"I have to go..." she said on a whisper... She started to edge toward the street from which she came, feeling as if the buildings were squeezing in around her. Red lines formed almost instantly upon her bare flesh, and she lifted her arms to cover her face and sheild it from the biting cold that interupted the mild night. She didn't walk away just yet, because she didn't know where she could go. Shops were closing, as it was getting close to that hour, and the only place she could go was a long walk. She didn't want to go back to the hotel she came from, she would get too many questions from those who adored her as Layla.

Her eyes fell to the ground and she refused to look up again, because it meant that she was going to look at the man who kept smirking at her in a specific way. Did the others hear the low buzz that started to sound off in her ears? (No, just her.) It was something she hadn't heard before and it was making her dizzy. It was sort of like the noise of an electric current, but a much lower frequency, mixed with the static sound of white noise. By this point, she couldn't even hear her own voice as she shouted, "I have to go!" Her alto became almost soprano as she yelled, forgetting the welts on her face and clapping her hands over her ears to try and stifle the sound. If one looked into the squad car of the "dumber" crook, he seemed to be looking with a lot of intensity at the cowering woman. But one would miss it if they were distracted by the seemingly mad actions of the plant mutant.

She wasn't going mad at all, she was under attack. The others weren't going to be affected by this. Xavia must have been looking like a crazed person, standing there as her eyes watered from the pain of the cold wind touching her delicate skin, coincidentally happening while she was getting this awful sound that threw her off balance. She ended up crouching to the ground and nearly rolling herself into a ball, rocking and whimpering as the sound seemed to increase! No matter how tightly her hands clamped over her ears, the sound wouldn't stop, and it was causing pain to radiate through her entire body, starting with her head and going down all the way to her toes.

And then, if one was watching the villain and not her, they would be able to see a shift in his concentration as he looked away. This coincided with the sudden departure of said noise. By that point, her forehead was covered in a film of sweat, and she felt like she was going to lose what little dinner that she consumed before this night started getting worse. Puffs of cloudy breath came rushing passed her lips, she was almost at a state of hyperventalation, shaken and pale. To someone who was just a normal passerby, she might seem like she belonged in a padded room. This kind of thing had never happened to her before, though, and she had never had any sort of anxiety issues that were this severe. It left her confused and shivering, her teeth clacking together rapidly.

Her eyes were wide as saucers, her pupils dialated, her caramels kind of coffee colored with this happening, well, what was visible of the color, anyways. She stared off in confusion, her collar tightening visibly to show she was in distress. The trickle of blood she had staunched earlier seemed to glisten a little as the wound opened back up, but she didn't bleed very heavily. "Take me out of here," she begged Santa Cop. She too seemed to be chalking her episode to anxiety, not thinking twice about what just happened even though it was out of the norm.

Xavia finally lifted her eyes and gazed around her, but did not look at the cruisers again. Instead, she tried to focus on the two women that had helped her, looking back and forth between them and forcing herself to breathe. While this was happening, the "dumb" one was in the cruiser, head bent as he talked into the hidden microphone. "She's the one alright." The guy looked around to make sure an officer didn't enter the car as he spoke. "Looks like she has a bunch of saviors with her, but they'll be dealt with. I gotta go, boss, the cops are comin back to the car."

He feigned a coughing fit and miserable mumbling as the cop sat in the front seat.