Lydia Renard darted along the back alleyways of New York City, taking what she hoped was a shortcut to the Sanctuary. In her hand was a warm cup of good coffee that she occasionally took sips from during her walk. The sun was just beginning to set, taking the warmth with it, so she scurried a little faster.

At first, she ignored the voices she heard coming a nearby alley. She figured they were just some rowdy guys doing guy business, until she heard one say, “What’s the matter mutie? Chicken?” followed by derisive laughter and the smack of a fist. Lyd narrowed her eyes and changed course towards the voices. She was being stupid, she should’ve just walked away, but she was completely sick and tired of lousy humans persecuting defenseless mutants.

When she turned the corner, she saw four men surrounding a man who looked somewhat bird-like, his hawk eyes and the feather sprouting up from random places on his body being the largest indication. He looked rather frail, really, and the purple bruise forming on his cheek sent Lydia careening into the situation.

“Can you douchebags just stop‽” She yelled, darting in between the hawk mutant and his tormentors.

“And who are you b****?” The man who asked was awarded with a shot to the face, courtesy of the girl’s fist.

Lyd shifted her stance in anticipation of a fight, hoping she would be able to remember some of the things she'd learned from Aura so long ago.

Wandering around large cities at night by herself was not, Allison knew, a smart thing to do. It was, however, apparently becoming a habit.

Allison has spent most of the day bored, and as a result, what had originally been just a pattern of black swirls and waves had eventually turned into solid black ink with red and silver lines, waves and swirls through it. When she’d finally started considering the practicality of absorbing ink into her hair to dye it, she decided she clearly didn’t have enough to do and left to walk. By that point, of course, the sun was setting.

A few hours of wandering left Allison... somewhere, that she was relatively sure she knew her way back from. Probably. She knew the general direction, anyway, and could fine-tune where she was going when she got back to stuff she recognized. A few blocks and a turn later, and she was heading back toward at least the general vicinity of her apartment.

“Can you douchebags just stop‽”

Allison stopped and blinked at the yell, turning to glance down an alley. Arguments, that sounded like they were about to be fights, were really not what she should be getting involved in. She was not a physical fighter, either by mutation or by training, and she was only even a verbal fighter when her sense of humor (or irony, or any of a number of other forms of ‘whim’) wasn’t getting the better of her.

A bit more, indistinguishable, speech sent her running in the direction it had come from, not nearly sprinting but faster than a jog, while the more rational part of her mind set about kicking all other parts, yelling about self preservation and the ignorance thereof.

Allison really needed to work on that. If she was going to be charging into dangerous situations all the time, she ought to at least shut up the voices in her head about it. The distraction was hardly helpful.

It didn’t take a full minute for Allison to reach a... fairly confusing group of people. A boy with scattered feathers, looking scared and surprised, surrounded by four other boys, who were being attacked by a girl who was for some reason holding onto a cup of coffee as she did so. Allison paused a moment to admire the apparent quality of coffee that was worth hanging onto like that, and inform the still-grumbling logical part of her mind that at least she didn’t occupy one of her hands with a drink that could be thrown at enemies when she fought. It was not appeased in the least.

Allison took a few steps closer to the group and pitched her voice so it was, if not a yell, loud enough to hear. “So who’s picking on who now, and for what imbecilic reason this time?”

She had at least been able to take the head honcho by surprise, and he was positively furious about it. Lydia almost grinned at how much she had pissed him off. He seemed to be preparing to strike her, and she was preparing to avoid it, when a female voice interrupted them both.

>> “So who’s picking on who now, and for what imbecilic reason this time?”

“Who the f*** are you?” One of the humans demanded. Yeah, who are you? Here to help me or help them? She wasn’t sure if she cared which. The new woman didn’t look like too much of a threat, so she hoped it wouldn’t be too difficult to face her. At the same time, Lyd wasn’t sure how much help she’d be if she was on the mutants’ side.

“These jerks are messing with this kid—who should be running away now—just because he’s a mutant.” The hawk mutant complied and started hobbling away, his strangely shaped bones and joints impairing his movement. It seemed he had been mid-shift when the brutes ganged up on him.

Lydia turned her attention away from the stranger and back to the guy she had smacked in the nose, two seconds before he took a swing at her. He grazed her cheek as she backed away, and she winced a little. The other started for her as well. “Are you gonna help or not?” She asked as she popped off the cap of her coffee cup and threw its blistering contents at the man.

Allison raised an eyebrow at the demand, and then the other at the girl’s so-very-obvious-it-wasn’t-even-a-hint-anymore that the feathered boy leave, followed by his immediate, if awkward, movement away from the fight. Did it... really take that for him to realize he should leave? She shrugged. “A variety of names. You can use Lily, I think, at this point.”

She hesitated another moment, then shrugged and grabbed for a few chips of broken brick as the girl yelled at her, flinging them at one of the attackers’ heads as another got attacked by coffee. Allison gave a brief second’s paused to mourn her respect for the (apparently not) most amazing coffee in existence, then grabbed the arm of an attacker and yanked him partway around while she moved to the side, aiming a punch for his gut.

Fighting was not in any vague way Allison’s forte, or really even a more than (possibly) mediocre skill. But she also wasn’t crippled, and if coffee girl thought she could take on the four attackers protecting an already beat up, and apparently helpless, feathered boy, Allison would at least not require to be protected, and could distract one or maybe two of the attackers. She tilted her head so the (admittedly dim) moonlight would reflect off the silver and hopefully the red lines, and grinned. “And I happen to also be a mutant.”

>> “A variety of names. You can use Lily, I think, at this point.”

She had no idea what that was supposed to mean, but she was a bit too occupied to think about it at the moment. She grinned when the woman made her choice and threw some brick bits at the men. The one Lydia had thrown coffee at was still yelling about it and rubbing his eyes, his hands and face an angry red color. She took advantage of his state to slam her foot into his stomach as hard as she could (which wasn’t very hard), sending him stumbling into the man behind him.

When Lyd felt the blow to the side of her head, she belatedly realized that she and the stranger woman were outnumbered. Doubled, in fact. The hawk-kid was obviously going to be of no help, as he further changed into a bird and creeped away at a painfully slow pace. The girl cursed inwardly and swung wildly at whoever had hit her, predictably missing.

What the hell was she doing?

>> “And I happen to also be a mutant.”

Oh yeah. She was fighting for her kind. Even if she didn’t have amazing skills, or any skills at all, really, she wanted to make hateful humans pay. And apparently so did Lily, or whatever her name was. Lydia grinned and renewed her strikes, smacking the one who had struck her.

Allison ducked under the return punch, spun, and kicked. That had much more effect, sending the attacker stumbling sideways a few steps, so she continued, targeting the two attackers who weren’t focused on coffee girl, throwing her arms in front of any incoming punches to catch them while she kicked to attack, switching between the two every chance she got. It wasn’t enough to actually do anything to, say, beat the pair, but it kept them occupied and Allison wasn’t getting hit too hard. Too often.

...Apart from that one, which left her half sitting half laying at the bottom of a wall with her skull stabbing at her brain and no real certainty of how she got there. She blinked several times, and registered one of the attackers standing in front of her in time to duck away, jump up, and tackle the other attacker she’d been distracting as he headed toward coffee girl. They fell and Allison took an instant to try and make her eyes refocus--or the sharpened pain go away--before rolling off him and standing back up, between the attackers and coffee girl. She took advantage of the pause as one attacker hesitated and the other climbed back to his feet to check the back of her head, and found blood.

...Okay, so maybe the rational part of her mind had a point about reckless ideas and getting herself killed. Still, though, it wasn’t much blood, and she certainly wasn’t going to leave coffee girl by herself, not once she’d gotten involved already. So, back into the fight it was.

Even if she was stuck with a skull full of pain pulses, vision that randomly went unfocused, itchy blood creeping down the back of her head, and not quite the best balance she’d ever had.

Maybe trying to focus on just avoiding any more hits would be a good idea to try for a while.