She was probably right; after all, his other options were the spiders themselves were mutants, this was actually an alien race of spiders or spiders were evolving. A mutant controlling this situation would cause less nightmares than the other three choices. The difference was whether there was a mutant in control or the spider itself was somehow another mutant. Morally, this mattered; even if he could summon his shadow, there was a major difference between crushing a spider and crushing a person.

They were running out of time before the spider made up enough ground to reach them. He had to take a chance; if he could increase the angle their lights were hitting them, it might increase the size of his shadow enough to form a desperate attack. It also might leave him with no running momentum, standing defenseless in front of a spider. If that happened, the time it took to crush and consume him could give Maxine more time to escape.

He took his phone, finding the brightest screen he could set it to, (every little bonus he could get mattered at this point,) and placed it in Maxine's hand, holding the hand tightly. He shouted his plan, doing what he could to speak over the sounds of them running and the spider stampeding. "You have to trust me. I'm going to stop running." His plan was off to a solid start. "When I do that, I need you to take a few more steps and turn around. Do it quickly or I'll probably die. Point both phones at me. If it doesn't work, run." Who knows, maybe he could reason with the beast of nightmares.

Before she could object to his plan of illogical combat suicide, he shouted, "Wish me luck!" And turned to face his pursuer. Holy hell, it looks even bigger when I'm facing it.

Wish him--?

Maxine had not agreed to this plan. Really, her vote was still on running. Faster. A little late to discuss it at this point, though.

Three-four-five steps past him, Maxine wheeled back around and did what he’d asked. She held both screens pointed towards him: with the lights at his back, his shadow stretched out as far as it was going to go.

The angry truck spider came charging into his range.

Stephen felt the light against his back, sensing his shadow mass growing. It was not much, but he would take it. The charging spider was not going to be phased by a shadow punch, so he came up with his stalling tactic. He quickly stretched his shadow upward and outward, forming a wall just thick enough to be sturdy. He focused all his concentration toward reinforcing his wall, praying for stability.

The spider and all its momentum came crashing into the wall. The shadow broke, but not before halting the spider in its tracks, stunning it. He was not sure if it would still manage to walk or not and he had no intention to find out in this situation. He turned back around and grabbed Maxine's hand once more. "Should we be off again?"

“Why yes,” she said breathlessly, “yes we should.”

It wasn’t the kind of breathless she’d prefer, given the cute man holding her hand, but as long as the spider stayed stunned, she would live. They ran. Miraculously, they seemed to leave the spider behind them. In fact... from the way her paperclips were swimming, their paths unimpaired—

“I think we’re almost out of it.” The air even seemed to be clearing out, easing back from its ominous press on their shoulders; she could see morning sunlight up ahead, and what might have been the street. So whatever this was, it was only in Central Park.

They’d get out, tip off the police, and go laugh about this in a cozy little dinner where he’d fall madly in love with—

“Help! Someone help! It’s got my child!”

An unladylike phrase came out of Maxine’s mouth. The woman’s voice was, of course, screaming from the heart of the darkness. Of course.

The further they ran from the center of the park, the lighter everything felt. It seemed like they could have been lucky; well, not that the creepy crawlies of the darkness could not follow them, for all he knew, but at this point, at least he might have more access to his shadow or, preferably, assistance. He did not want to out himself as a mutant, but it would be better than dying. A dead thief is still the worse than a thief with a blown cover.

Yet, it was obvious now that nothing was supposed to work in his favor this morning. Maxine had to be a bad luck charm or something, because things were getting absurd. A woman and her freaking child? What were the odds? Still, Stephen was not heartless; he rationalized his thievery by never intentionally harming innocents, and this sounded like the plea of an innocent.

"Dammit, I should go back. There's no use in the both of us getting lost back in the darkness though, so keep going. Maybe find help? I don't even know who 'help' would be at this point." The situation was considerably outside the paygrade of most police officers.

In any other situation, Stephen would not be so brash, but there was a moderate to likely chance he was going to die, so he had little to lose. He pulled Maxine in by the waist and kissed her; not a long kiss, but one he would be fine with calling his last kiss. In a moment of quick thinking and desperation, he picked out an item he remembered seeing in her bag, slipping it into his pocket. With his last gambit safely in tucked away, he pulled away. "Good luck."

He would have waited for her to say something, but another scream pierced the moment. He turned and ran back toward the sound, deeply wishing he was a terrible person.

((ooc: Tell me if you need any edits. ))

Find help. It made sense. Her powers were useless for combat; even if he was working at a fraction of his usual strength, he could still—

Wrap his arm around her waist, draw her in close, and kiss her. His stubble scratched lightly against her cheeks, his lips were warm and—

>> “Good luck.”

“Yeah,” she said breathlessly. “You too.” But he was already running away. Maxine turned, and ran too: the other direction.

Find help. It made sense. Yeah. Her powers were useless for combat, and her head was suddenly a little fuzzy. She didn’t even notice that she still had both of the cell phones in her hands.

Fortunately for Nate, the spiders along the way seemed rather distracted. From rat-sized to his-sized, they scurried around in a state that could almost be described as panic.

The woman, on the other hand, was simply hysterical. “It’s taking Caligo! My baby!”

The baby in question seemed somewhat less hysterical, if entirely more surreal. He was about a year old, with fuzzy black hair and golden eyes that glimmered clearly in the darkness that surrounded him like a baby blanket. A mass of cat-sized spiders skittered frantically around him, their legs picking ineffectively at something wrapped tightly about the babe.

Something metallic, and writhing. Something that was methodically dragging little Caligo off into the bushes. The baby giggled, and slapped its pudgy hands against the paperclip tentacles. A bright light came out of its palms, lighting up the paperclip mesh like a Christmas tree for a flash: then the darkness returned, thicker than ever.

“Get it off!” The mother screamed, a spider dripping off the tip of her pointing finger, and scurrying into the fray. By the time it reached its brethren, it was the size of a fat tomcat. It tried grabbing at a paperclip tentacle with its mandibles... but the tentacle grabbed back, and wrapped around it.

Soon, the paperclip monster was dragging both baby and spider off. Caligo giggled and set off another happy flash of light chasing dark. The spider made—if spiders can so make—arachnid wibble eyes at Nate.

Drag. Drag. Drag.

Nate had found Rex. Rex was taking its new toys home.

Stephen never thought in his life that he would feel bad for a spider, but there was an inescapable feeling that the spider was at the mercy of what was obviously Rex and what was obviously Rex's tentacley strength. Still, he was here for the baby, who was not what he had expected either. Every couple of seconds, the child (who was much more calm in the situation than he should have been) kept creating flashes of light from his palms. What a weird freaking morning. "I'll save your baby from the... the..." Alright, what the hell. What. The. Hell.

Everything about his day was beginning to make sense. This mother was a mutant who was able to materialize spiders. Sure, that makes sense enough. The largest spider thought Stephen and Maxine were threats or possibly could help so it chased them. Fantastic. The baby seemed to make light, so it was possible the baby made the Park sink into darkness. Why not? So the spiders were not causing the problem or threatening the baby. Which meant that the real threat here was...

Yup. Rex. Maxine's pet was the cause of their hell. Fan. Freaking. Tastic. Stephen fought the urge to groan in annoyance. At this point, the spiders were not even phasing him. "I'm real sorry miss, I'll try to fix this."

Stephen ran over to the office supply cephalopod and its victims, waiting for his moment. He was going to use the flash of the camera he stole from Maxine to make a brief shadow, but it seemed pointless now that he found an infant lightbulb. Sure enough, the child began spouting light, returning Stephen's shadow. Unsure of how long the light would last, he worked quickly, sending his shadow to Rex. Two hands emerged from the sentient darkness, prying tentacles away from the baby.

Stephen dived forward, grabbing the child as carefully as he could from Rex's grasp, turning his back to the octopus, defending the child. The spider would have to fend for itself; Stephen was already sacrificing him for a cause. Praying hopelessly that Rex was actually training, Stephen shouted, "Down Rex! Bad Rex!"

“Caligo!” The woman gasped, rushing towards Nate to scoop the baby from his arms and hug it close. The baby squirmed and stretched its hands towards the ground, where the octoclip was writhing in what might have been confusion. Its tentacles tentatively poked in the air, searching for the mysterious force that had pried them loose of the babe. “Oh thank you, thank you!”

The spiders gathered around her, protective and pleased. Some of them sat adoringly on Nate’s running shoes, or leaned against his legs like cats. From behind came the coup de grace: a truck-sized bro hug, from the spider that had chased him and Maxine. Its mandibles clacked affectionately above his hair.

With a bit more fussing, involving more arms than Nate was probably used to, the woman set off. Clearly, it was time for her to leave this nightmare of a park. The light returned as she took the baby away; the spiders trailed after her, like happy dogs.

All except for one.

Rex was still on the ground. To be specific: it was on Nate’s shadow, puzzling out a way to wrathfully wrap itself around an object that currently had no graspable dimensions. Tied up in two of its tentacles, making distressed clicking noises, was its new pet spider.

The spider stretched one hairy leg after the woman’s back, its eyes many and soulful.

“Nate? Nate!” Maxine called, from not far off. “Where are you? I found a cop! Nate?”

The light was back, the spiders were gone, discounting the one Rex claimed as a trophy, and the morning was still quiet and overcast. Stephen did not bother standing up; rather, he sat, one knee propped up, in defeat. He sighed, looking over at the spider who was less than comfortable with its new fate. He had been manhandled and affectionately bombarded with giant spiders, but he was past the point of being scared. His skin was covered in goosebumps, but he was unable to muster the energy or will to be upset.

In the close distance, he heard Maxine calling out that she found a cop. As attractive as this girl was, Stephen was very unsure if seeing her again was a good idea. Ignoring the fact that she indirectly caused this nightmare, (which was not easy to ignore in the first place,) she was a high-profile mutant and she was bringing an officer of the law to him. Well, he told her to get help, so he could not blame her for the last part, but it was certainly the icing on a crap-tastic day. "I'm over here, Maxine!" In a "business as usual" voice, he continued, "Rex was stealing someone's baby, that caused the problems, so I took the baby back, everything's better and your pet owns a spider now." Honestly, what would a date with this girl bring? A hostage situation?

Rex had been stealing a baby. That’s exactly what Maxine wanted to hear. She winced, and followed Nate’s voice.

He looked worse for wear. He was down on the ground, covered in gooseflesh, somewhat glassy-eyed... The adrenaline was clearly wearing off.

Rex had a spider.

Nate had her camera.

The officer had questions. They took awhile. But with no victim around to file a report, no intent for crime by any involved parties that a court would consider sentient, and no harm done by any measurable account, there was nothing much for the man to do. He left them alone, that headshake as he stalked away clearly saying that it was too early in the morning for this level of mutant shenanigans.

Maxine finger-combed her hair back into place, and smoothed down her shirt with both hands.

“So, umm. Can I have my camera back?” She asked, after a pause. “...You can keep the spider.”

Such a generous offer.

The officer came and went, with Stephen offering as little information as he could. With the intensity of the moment winding down, he now had to explain why he had her camera without using the phrases, "pickpocketed," "stole" or "took while I was kissing you." He looked at the camera in his hand and laughed. "So this is yours? I found it on the ground when I ran back. I was going to desperately try working with the flash to see what I could do." He handed the camera back to its owner, quickly ready to change the subject. "The weirdest thing about the whole darn thing was how useless the camera was since the kid was a mutant who actually made light!" Seriously though, all things considered, what were the odds of that coincidence?

"...You can keep the spider."

Stephen looked at the cat-sized spider, biting his own lip in thought. After everything that he had dealt with, and after watching the poor creature plead for escape from the real antagonist, he was incapable of seeing the beast as intimidating. "You know what? Sounds fine. This little guy probably wouldn't survive very long with Rex anyway."

He knelt down and hoped a mutant spider might hear his words and commands well enough to understand him. "Want to come with me?" He looked over at Rex and his anticipatory tentacles. "Away from the silver guy?" Sure enough, the spider immediately crawled up his leg toward his shoulder. He did not fear the spider anymore, but that did not calm the involuntary shudder at the touch of it's legs.

With a new pet in tow, he turned to the redhead. "So after a first date like this, should I even bother calling or should I spare you the trouble of giving me a fake number?" he asked, half-joking. After all that happened, he was a bit surprised she had not taken off in the other direction at mutant-esque speeds. Despite her early track record as a bad omen, he would probably still take her out if she wanted to; she was still gorgeous, after all, and sometimes that was worth suffering hell (to a man, at least.)