Hunger was nothing new to Sledgehammer. His mum and da worked everyday to do their best to provide, and Charlie had carried his weight before he got married and moved out. Still there were plenty of days growing up when Sledge would have only one meal to eat, and it wasn't necessarily the most filling. He could deal with hunger, especially if he wasn't seasick. You get use to ignoring that gnawing pit in your stomach. As long as you don't bother to think of food, the lack of it isn't as big a deal. Yes, hunger was an old familiar friend of Sledge's, one that he could deal with.

He had money, considerably more than he had upon arriving in America. New York City was as full of gulible sods as Bradford. Actually it was better here, people were less willing to accept a loss, and their losses tended to be substantially larger. There were things that he easily obtained with his new currency. More clothing, meals at Mickey D's, a few bribes... yet what he wanted the most he could not buy. Sledge wanted a meal that didn't come in a paper bag, something that wasn't ladden with grease or came with a serving of chips.

Homecooked meals weren't possible to make in hotel rooms.

This was Sledge's least favorite scam. Unless he timed things perfectly he could very well end up in hospital or worse, dead. He'd only ever attempted it twice before, with mixed results. The one time it worked he got a tidy amount of hush money which he put into a savings account back in England. On the other hand the time that it went wrong he wound up in hospital needing stitches in his head and with his side badly bruised.

He watched the traffic carefully, seeking out a car approaching the red light just a touch too quickly. The key was to go for a driver who looked only slightly distracted. Find one that is enraptured in their cell phone conversation and you get the failed attempt. You need one who is glancing up at their mirror, checking for something. Someone who is aware of the red light and is stopping, their attention on what is going on either directly above them There, he thought, not giving himself a chance to think things through.

To the driver it seemed as though they had suddenly hit a man with their car. They felt the seat belt tighten as the car did a small lurch. They heard the sound of impact. They saw the man collapse against the roof. What they missed was the man had purposely stepped in front of the car once it had stopped. Sledge had bent himself over, throwing a powerful punch into the bumper, and allowing the momentum from his punch to let him collapse on the hood. His arm that hadn't been used to punch was used to catch the fall. It worked. Two out of three wasn't half bad.

What he hadn't anticipated was the driver to move his car after he had successfully damaged it. "Wanker!" he shouted as the car went off. What he hadn't counted on was the rudeness of New York drivers. Having failed Sledge was left standing half on the curb and rubbing his knuckles.

Alister could be kinda unnerving, with that whole future-telling thing he could do. Earlier today, he gave Kaitlyn a detailed set of instructions, much of it having to do with people who she'd never met before, in places she'd never visited before. He even gave her a few quick acting lessons. The Oracle assured her that she would know when she saw who she needed to see, and that everything would work out the way it needed to if she followed his advice.

A little after 1PM that day, she was supposed to stand at a particular intersection, and wait for a British guy to get hit by a car. And it would be better if she didn't eat lunch beforehand, so Alister would be taking that paper bag before she went out, thank you very much. Kaitlyn's stomach let out an angry growl. It wasn't very happy with Mr. Future Sight at the moment, and neither was its owner.

She checked her watch. 1PM had come and gone already. In the grip of her impatience, she almost began to doubt that the Oracle's visions were even real. And as if to quell her disbelief just as it was budding, she heard the screech of tires, followed by a dull thud directly in front of her. That guy just got hit by a car!

...But was he British?

>>"Wanker!"

Yes. Yes, he was. This was Kaitlyn's cue. The little girl walked over and looked up at him with huge, hazel eyes. "Hey, Mister, are you okay?"

A small girl was staring at Sledge and asking if he were alright. Something about this struck him as queer. Was it that of all the people who had been around to bare witness to what had to look like a car accident, she, this little thing, had been the only one to question why he was still standing? No. It was the fact that he was facing a little girl in the early afternoon that was unattended. "Shouldn't you be at your studies?" he asked the little girl. Her question was being ignored on purpose. It was easier to convince a little kid that they did not see something than it was to explain how a man can crash into a car and be able to flip off the driver afterwords. "Or with your mum and da?"

What time is it? Sledge wondered, glancing at his watch, Do they let out kids at this hour?. Kaitlyn being alone didn't bother him in the parental sense, nor did the fact that she might very well be missing school. He learned more important lessons about life than he ever did in a structured building. The information that is printed up in books was meant to be drilled into your memory only long enough to spout it off at exams. Let the little girl learn how to survive on the sidewalks of New York City.

He frowned and stopped rubbing his knuckles. The punch hadn't been nearly as damaging as it could have been, but the cold of the car had not been the most pleasing sensation on his bare knuckles. This was a little girl, and he really couldn't just leave her alone. "Just sounded bad is all. No 'arm done."

School. Parents. These were things that a 28-year-old doctor didn't have to worry about. Kaitlyn needed to get into character now. How would Dr. Catherine Lewis react to those questions?

What Kaitlyn was doing right now wasn't what Dr. Lewis would do. She was looking at him like she was a kid caught in the act doing something she wasn't supposed to be doing. Which was the truth, kinda, but it wasn't what she was supposed to be doing. "Catherine" would be used to things like this, and she would set everything straight pretty quickly. And she would be confident. Alister threw that word at her a lot earlier today. Confidence was something she needed to work on, so they could all stop the world from ending.

"Um..."

No, that wasn't right. 'Um' wasn't the right thing for her to say. Catherine wasn't 11, she was 28, and in spite of what that age-shifting mutant had done to her, she was still a confident adult. Kaitlyn needed to start being Catherine now. She could do this. Her hand dove into her pocket.

"Actually..."

Kaitlyn's hand returned with a driver's license. It said that she was born in 1983, and that her name was Catherine Lewis.

"I'm 28. It's a long story." One that she couldn't remember all of the details to. She needed to make those up sometime. Why hadn't she made those up, yet?

A driver's license was produced and shown to him. What a load of cobblers. He pinched the bridge of his nose. Sledge didn't know what a proper United States license looked like, having not been in a situation where one would be presented to him, nor having the equivalent piece of plastic for England. Certainly the photo matched the person who held it, and the eye colour and hair colour matched the little girl's. Catherine Lewis might very well exist, but she was certainly not the girl standing in front of him. "That's rubbish and you know it," he told Kaitlyn flatly.

Whatever reasons the girl might have for pretending that she was twenty eight she could keep to herself. Honesty was vastly overrated in Sledge's opinion. Let her skip school, or run away from home, whatever the case was. Just if you are going to lie do it right. "First off, the more eager you are to show me your documentation the more I'm going to suspect that you aren't the age it says you are. If you 'ave to present it, do so with a touch of reluctance. The only time people show that off as easily as you just did is when it's snide, or they recently learned 'ow to drive."

Having had pointed out where she went wrong it was time to offer the way she should have gone. "What you should have gone with is something more believable for your appearance. Could 'ave gone with home schooled, or a half day. Given that you are clearly talking to someone not from the States you could even 'ave said holiday," Sledge held up his pointer fingers to ward off any interruptions, "Next, if you are going to claim to be twenty eight, don't call your peers something that you would use for someone much older. Don't hesitate either. The con stands for confidence. You believe what you say and it is easier for others to follow along. It's eighty percent 'ow you sound, fifteen percent how you look, and five percent what you say."

Kaitlyn put the license back in her pocket. That sure didn't work.

Alister didn't warn her about this. She'd spent months successfully masquerading as Catherine, and then this guy not only figured her lie out in ten seconds, but started coaching her on how to lie better. And it was good advice. Though she rarely ever had to talk to anyone as Dr. Lewis that whole time, she always thought she could kinda pull it off, until now.

When he was done, there was an awkward moment when Kaitlyn was trying to figure out what to do from here.

"Alright, you got me," she admitted. It would be silly for her to keep trying to play this trick on him, now. But she had other tricks up her sleeve, yet. "But..." she grinned, "The license is still pretty useful. You could probably use one like it, or you might get shipped out of the country."

Where did this confidence come from? She could have used it earlier.

There were moments when Sledge had to admit that he lost control of the situation. These moments quite often were right before he ended up in a prison cell, waiting until he could call Charlie to bail him out. Right now he was getting that sinking feeling that he was going to end up sitting on yet another hard 'bed' before getting shipped back to England. As much as the thought unsettled him, even frightened him, Sledge would not let himself look intimidated by an anklebitter. Calling her bluff wasn't a good idea. It would just confirm her accusation. "And who exactly do you think you can report me to? Your bit of plastic there might say you're twenty eight, but sadly, nobody will believe you."

He was trying to get her to say who had told her about him. Just because someone has an accent doesn't mean that they are illegal, especially if it's in a city like New York which was bustling with nearly every possible nationality and dialect. Surely if she lived here she knew that. Besides, who ever heard of an illegal British alien? England had already lost the war for America, why would they want it now? The little girl was displaying the confidence that she needed earlier, and he wondered, or maybe rather hoped, that she was trying to pressure him into a slip up.

He didn't exactly take that the way Kaitlyn had hoped. She already knew that he wasn't supposed to be in the US. If Alister was right about a British guy getting hit by a car right there and then, he would probably be right about this part, too. Kaitlyn didn't even know that illegal British immigrants existed until Alister told her she had to talk to one. "I'm not gonna report you," she assured him. If he got on her bad side, getting reported would be the least of his worries. "But do you wanna have a license like mine?" The girl started walking towards a part of the sidewalk that was slightly less heavily populated, and gestured for him to follow.

Now, how would she introduce an invitation to the Order? "...I know some people who could make you one, if you work for them. And they'd pay you a lot for the work, too." She watched the man carefully to see how he was reacting so far.

The cars in America were all on the wrong side of the road. Did he want to have a license to drive in that madness? Hell no. Clearly the Yanks had no problem with hitting someone with their car and driving on. Probably would claim that they had a run in with a deer, if there were deer in New York City. Still, if the fake license was good enough he should probably get one, or even better, a false visa, passport, and green card as well. "Tempting," he told her, mulling over the thought.

Kaitlyn claimed that she wasn't going to turn him in to the authorities, but she had just tried to lie to him about her age. Trust was critical with Sledgehammer. A scam only worked if you could get the mark to trust you, and the best way to have that happen was to trust them a little. It's easier to believe someone you trust will fool you than it is to believe that someone who trusts you will hurt you. A baby trusts its parents, and when was the last time you heard of a parent getting hurt by a baby? She hadn't proven herself trustworthy with his secret yet, but as he pointed out she was just a kid. What she told people could be brushed off as childhood fancy.

The problem was that she hadn't said how she knew he wasn't suppose to be in the country. Sledge had a sinking suspicion that the ones who informed her were the same people that could offer him a job. Steady pay was well and good, but he didn't want to be trapped working everyday like his mum and da. "Let me guess, I say no to this opening and your lips don't stay sealed. I say yes and me secret keeps tucked away?"

How the hell did he end up in this position? He was being blackmailed by a girl who probably still wanted the trainers that lit up with each step and had Velcro straps. Nothing nearly as humiliating as this ever happened in Bradford, and he had to dress as a woman once.

>>"Let me guess, I say no to this opening and your lips don't stay sealed. I say yes and me secret keeps tucked away?"

That wasn't where Kaitlyn was going with this, at first. She wasn't trying to blackmail him; she just knew that he didn't have any ID, and wouldn't it be great if she could get him a forged one? But now that the conman mentioned it, blackmail seemed like a pretty good way to handle him. "Yeah, pretty much," she affirmed.

What time was it? She checked her bright red, digital watch again, then pulled a scrap of paper out of her pocket. The scrap of paper said "1:37, brown hair, thick glasses, green hoodie" It was 1:36; they didn't have much time! This whole thing was going by really fast!

"Before you can work with us, though," she said, keeping her voice down, "I have to see you punch someone. So I can see your mutation. See that guy with the green sweater?" She pointed at a sandy-hairred, bespectacled college student just ahead of them on the sidewalk, enjoying the November air, completely oblivious to the red-headed girl and her new accomplice. "You need to punch him so hard in the face that he forgets who he is. Then we need to run into the subway. Alright?"

Kaitlyn had him blackmailed, so he had to do it, no matter how crazy it seemed. Right?

Probably. She hoped so.

Everything was going pear shaped. All Sledge had wanted when he risked his neck to hit the car was a home cooked meal, something that wasn't prepared in a microwave, not a little girl who was wrapping him around her minuscule finger. He hated being manipulated. At this point he couldn't pretend that he was legally in the country. Even when that moment was available, it would have been ill advised. She had been told, more or less, that a denial straight away was a confirmation. To say that he wasn't a foreigner would have been just as good as turning himself in to the police. "Don't 'ave much of a choice then do I?" he asked, not really caring to hear the answer.

Though he did have to question why she wanted him to punch somebody. There was no way that someone could be hit by a car and walk fine like he had just done, and she knew enough about him to be able to peg him as someone without a passport. How extensive was the information that was being fed to this little girl and who held the spoon? "What are you babbling on about?" Sledge asked her, shocked that she wanted him to do that in broad daylight. "You don't just punch a bloke on the sidewalk. There's a thing called assault."

Sledge knew that he could punch that hard. He could punch the poor sod hard enough to warrant calling police in to direct people away from that particular area of the sidewalk. The problem was that green sweater had done nothing, and from his appearance, had nothing that held interest to Sledge. "What did he do? Give Barbie a butch 'aircut?" Not that all little girls played with Barbie dolls. It was hard to think of witty remarks for someone who probably still was told to eat their vegetables. "Besides, can't guarantee that the results are age appropriate for you."

Truth be told Sledge wasn't sure if he could keep the punch from ending in disaster. It wasn't that he had qualms with hurting someone, it was the risk of what happens when a punch that can break through a wall meets something as fragile as a human head. "You want me to hit him, fine, but not here on the street. I'll 'azard that he's an easy mark. Isolate him first," he told Kaitlyn, letting the student get a little ahead of them before falling into step behind.

>>"You don't just punch a bloke on the sidewalk. There's a thing called assault. "

"You still have to do it," she urged. Well, she already knew that he was going to do it, really. Alister was unusually involved in planning this whole thing out. Or, at least, the other kids told her that it was unusual.

A butch haircut? Kaitlyn wasn't entirely sure what that even meant, but she was almost certain that comment was condescending, so she decided not to ask him about it. It would be better to just look like she was frustrated with him and pretend she understood all of it. Though she was a little frustrated with him, with all his complaining about 'assault,' and 'broad daylight,' and 'age appropriate.' Was he stalling for time? The sooner this was all over with, she was sure, the sooner she would get to eat something. "I can't tell you why. Just do it."

It looked like the conman had a plan. Kaitlyn was content to trail behind and watch.

Not even ten minutes into being blackmailed by the anklebitter and she was already giving him orders. Bril, just bloody bril. What’s more was that she wouldn’t tell him why he had to punch green sweater, or who had told her about him in the first place. Sledge was irked, to say the least, by the situation. “Could you just pipe it down?” he asked of Kaitlyn. She was going to draw attention to them if she kept talking so loudly. “I’ll do it, but the conditions aren’t right this moment.”

How best to isolate green sweater? “You know, I’d be more inspired to strike him in the street if you told me why.” Scams, cons, and breaking things was Sledge’s specialty, but the breaking didn’t involve random acts of violence. Normally it was buildings or cars that he punched, not people. Things would be different if green sweater was defending himself, or attacking Sledge. A brawl was a perfectly acceptable time to punch a man in the head.

“He seem like the sort to ‘elp a little girl?” Sledge asked Kaitlyn. There was a little nook up ahead where Sledge could attack green sweater in isolation. Obviously the little girl knew something of the man that he was suppose to give amnesia to. Such information could be useful to him. After that first day when he discovered he was a mutant Sledge had decided that it was best to learn about those that he was going to do the big scams on. Smaller things he was willing to risk. Not everyone is friends with the police and usually the money taken from such small scams wasn’t enough to warrant much attention. “Because I’m thinking I dash ahead to that spot there, you tell him some sob story how I nicked your wallet or purse, and lure him there. Make sure only he goes after me. Then keep your eyes open once I’ve got him where we need ‘im.”

A reason to punch the guy out? That was a pretty reasonable thing to ask for. Kaitlyn figured it couldn't hurt to tell him the truth. "If you don't knock him out, he'll help somebody end the world." It was a pretty good reason to punch a guy out, in her opinion.

Would he help a little girl? She didn't know Hal well enough to answer that question. But she answered it anyway. "I guess so. Sure." It seemed like a safe bet. Whether or not she could manage to trick him into going to a secluded area was another issue entirely. But she didn't want to say "no." That would make her feel less like she was in control of this whole situation. She was starting to like that feeling.

"I can handle that," she said.

Sometimes the things that children said left Sledge confused. If you were to look at them they seemed to be fully developed little humans, simply small. Once they open their mouth though utter nonsense comes tumbling out. He couldn't help but look at Kaitlyn as though she had lobsters crawling out of her ears. Just looking at green sweater put serious doubts in Sledge's mind that the end of the world was at risk here. Was the girl just being over dramatic? "Right, well that's a good reason," he said, nodding his head once in disbelief.

If his plan was going to work, it all depended upon the quality of green sweater's character. If he was a complete jerk it wouldn't matter to him if a little girl was upset. Such a person may possibly cause some devastation, though not likely end of the world. In a way it would almost be easier to punch the guy's lights out if he were to turn Kaitlyn away. Kaitlyn's response didn't exactly fill Sledge with a vote of confidence. She wanted him to hit a man that she wasn't entirely familiar with. "What did I tell you about confidence?" Sledge reminded her. Worst day ever.

He examined her briefly. She would need an advantage to make it seem more likely that she had just had something stolen. Quickly he ruffled her hair. "Remember, get only his attention. I don't need any police or other do gooders to come after me." He studied her a little more closely, "Jump up and down a bit, make your clothes a little less tidy looking."

One hand slid up behind his head and tilted the fedora down slightly. Never underestimate the usefulness of a hat. "Showtime," he muttered to himself before taking off at a brisk pace, not quite a full out run, for that would surely draw unwanted attention to himself, and purposefully bumped into green sweater.