The brunette stumbled over a crack in the sidewalk again. It was frustrating and caused the woman to growl beneath her breath. She'd enjoyed that date with Venus. At least until she'd used her powers in an attempt to finish that last minute job and had ended up blind for it. Now she was starting to get hints of something else. A new way of using her power. It came slowly though. Painfully slowly. In the meantime she was left blinded and struggling to learn to interact with the world again. It frustrated Mina to no end. She was a woman that was used to being active. The loss of sight hampered that more than she cared to admit.

The only upside being that now that she had to focus on other senses to compensate she noticed more. While Cosmina doubted that she would ever meet those ridiculous levels of ability that let one 'see without seeing', she did hear more now. Not because her hearing felt like it had gotten sharper, no. More that she was now paying even closer attention to the sounds that were her domain than before. So she heard the steps around her. The steps that, at this hour were improbable. It was late when she went out. Mina had wanted to minimize the confusion she faced as much as possible.

So a group of footsteps near her, surrounding her, was more than a little suspicious. Fighting blind was never something she'd wished to do. She could hear the footsteps and gauge to some degree where they were. But it was not enough for a decisive strike. For once Mina wasn't quite sure what to do. She hadn't quite expected to have to handle herself in a fight. She had a small gun on her person but without the ability to see to aim it it would do no good. She'd included it by habit as a comfort rather than as a weapon.

The Masochist'd had a long day. The little sticky face mask(Think Robin, or the green lantern) he'd started to adopt in his X-man guise was beginning to bug him, and he had to consciously stop himself from reaching up to scratch it a few times. Still, it stayed on pretty well, even if it was a pain to remove at the end of the day. The good thing, was that the day was pretty much over. Well, more than over. It was damn late.

Crime didn't sleep, though, so what right did a crime fighter have to? Most of his greatest work took place after midnight; when the real nasty criminals were out and about. The costume clad super hero grinned to himself, and looked back to the empty energy shot on the roof of the building he'd perched himself upon. He would be concerned at how this stuff affected his health if he wasn't pretty damned sure he was going to die in a hail of bullets any day now. That was how it worked, though. A man who makes a decision to spend his life saving the lives of others better be ready to spend that life quick; if he made it past 30 he was sure he'd be one of the lucky ones.

Just before he was about to pack up the sound of a shoe catching sidewalk echoed up from the streets and drew his attention. His eyes wandered down to catch sight of what looked to be a woman.. possibly inebriated from the odd way she carried herself. Great, another person he might have to carry home. That was one of the down sides to this job, though. Sometimes it ended up feeling more like community service. He decided to keep an eye on her; maybe she could make it home without a hand.

Soon his eyes caught something much more sinister, though. A group of men, walking together in a crowd, wearing hoodies with the hoods up, concealing their heads. By the builds he guessed that they were all young men, early to mid twenties, travelling in a pack in the middle of the night, completely silent; his immediate conclusion was that this was an organised group that was up to no good. Vandals? No, vandals were loud. These guys were almost eerily silent. To make things worse, they were headed right for the girl.

His fists slowly clenched... He had a feeling he knew what was going on here. The lowest form of scum on the street were the kind that had long since learned how to pinpoint the vulnerable, and take advantage of them; In this case that meant surrounding a poor, unwitting drunk woman, steering her to a dark place, mugging her, and then... well... he didn't even want to think of the possibilities.

The woman would feel something contact her back, though it would be hard to tell what it was, and then a low voice would mumble. "You're gonna keep walking, and you're gonna go where I tell you to go... If you do that, we don't kill you."

The masochist watched closely... Now wasn't the time to intervene. The men were all tense, and had hands in the large baggy pockets their hoodies provided... He had to assume they all had weapons.

With a simple expenditure of some stored energy from earlier in the day, the Masochist leaped from his current rooftop to another one that allowed him a better vantage point... They were steering her toward a small alleyway... Someplace they could go about their grim business uninterrupted.

Mina straightened as she felt the object press against the small of her back. She'd been right about the feet that had been surrounding her. The low mumbling voice would have been somewhat difficult to pick out if she hadn't been listening to her environment as intently as she was. Dumb punk. Before she'd gone blind Mina had cleaned up idiots like this with ease. The only thing that had kept her from reacting before now was not having a clear idea of the distance between her and any of the thugs. Now that she knew where one of them was it was possible for her to strike. Being unaware of the weapon that was being held to her back was something of an issue but she could manage. Even if it was a gun she could survive a bullet wound provided it struck nothing vital.

She spun on her heel with her hand at the level of the weapon, knocking it and the hand holding it to the side in one quick gesture. This she quickly followed up with a knee to the groin. With him temporarily disabled Mina moved back.

"Thought you'd pick on a poor innocent lady out on her own huh? How about one with a little bite?"

Mina raised her eyebrows and quickly let them fall. She was bluffing. That would have been transparent to anyone with half a brain. But there was no way that she was going to besmirch her reputation by getting taken down by a bunch of two bit, no account thugs. Not without giving them as much fight as she reasonably could.

From his perch above the scene of the would-be crime, the Masochist could survey the situation in great detail. This particular situation rang some bells... There had been an escalated number of reported... incidents over the last few months. All of them late at night, with women walking home from bars. No witnesses. No evidence. No suspects. Who ever did it was good; to successfully commit a crime and get away with it took a certain level of skill, or luck... To do so over and over again for months took luck out of the running.

One of them pulled out a small knife, betrayed by a glint against the streetlight, and placed it against the woman's back. She froze. It was a typical action; Many people froze under pr- The woman moved fast, knocking the bladed hand to the side, and sending a knee to the man's groin.

It was a calculated move, a little too calculated for some random drunk woman. Part of him thought his mind might have just been playing tricks on him, but it didn't really matter in the long run. The man who had been kneed let out an "OOF!" And stumbled back, holding himself. The rest of the men each took a step back; many pulled knives, a couple pulled out guns and chambered rounds.

"Thought you'd pick on a poor innocent lady out on her own huh? How about one with a little bite?" from the point of view of the group of men, the woman spoke and waggled her eyebrows as if she were talking to someone... but, she was aiming her eyes at a gap in the group. The two men on either side of the gap looked behind them, and then at each other, shrugging, and then looking to the man nursing his family jewels, who finally stood straight again. "You little B@$@$... You'll be kissing it better soon! Now get into the F#$%ing alley before I slit your throat myself!"

One of the thugs stepped forward suddenly and moved to shove the woman harshly into the alleyway. Saph knew the time to jump in was near; the woman hadn't help the situation by trying to be brave, but he honestly couldn't blame her. If everyone fought back there might not be so many criminals out there; then again, there might be a lot more dead victims. Sometimes fighting back only pissed them off.

The success of her previous action was evident sound her opponent had let out. Heh, even blind she could manage in a fight well enough it seemed. Then again, these were just street thugs. Thugs that likely had a nefarious agenda but thugs none the less. To a woman who had faced tougher and who had spent almost half of her life fighting they were as nothing. The only reason they were a threat at all was their numbers and her blindness. Once she became accustomed to her blindness that would no longer matter. When the man she'd struck addressed her Mina frowned. She'd thought perhaps something along the lines of robbery but that? At least she knew what sort of weapon he held now. That and the fact that he talked let her know his general location.

Before she could respond to his, frankly vulgar, statement Cosmina noticed another sound. Someone moving from one side. Being more attentive to the sounds in one's surroundings did have it's upsides. Unaware of what sort of strike the man would take Mina decided her best option was to move. So she did, she moved to one side and so the shove only caught her partially. Mina quickly regained her balance and lashed out with a vicious kick to what should have been the man's midsection. Unwilling to bring herself closer to his reach she neglected any follow up strikes in favor of going back into stance and speaking in the direction of the man who'd spoken before the attack.

"You know, I hate scum like you. Killing is one thing but that? That is purely vile and I'll be taking the cost of you even thinking about doing that to me out of your worthless stinking carcasses."

Mina was confident she could do it too. If only she wasn't blind she'd have ended this already with several well placed, entirely silent gunshots. As it was she would have to manage with hand to hand and ignore the admittedly minuscule voice in the back of her head telling her that she'd never survive this on her own.

Saph had seen enough. The situation wasn't ideal; the group would have been easier to ambush in the alley, where the confined spaces would have made it easier to encounter them one on one, and the lack of streetlights would have made it easier to take advantage of confusion. Still, this girl was a fighter, and he had to respect that. Even now she managed to sidestep most of one of the criminal's shoves, which was good, because otherwise a hidden knife would have found its way into her kidney. The man stumbled a bit as he corrected himself, turning to face her with his knife in his hand. He didn't expect the kick to the midsection, but slashed his knife at the woman's calf as he was kicked back. The attempt to draw blood wouldn't be very effective, as he dropped the knife while it happened. It might still follow through, though.

The man cursed up a storm as he fell down onto the ground, and took a while to get back up. The others had clearly had enough of this, though; no one had put up this much of a fight before. both of the two gun men looked to each other, one nodded, and the aimed their guns at the woman as the others quickly got out of the way to avoid the bullets that would soon rip into the woman.

The leader, who was stepping back as well spoke in a smug tone. "Look, babe, we gave you a chance to do it our way... Don't matter much to me if you ain't moving. Jay... Shoot the b*tch" CRACK!

"... Jay?"

Normally he would have come up with a plan, but seeing these... monsters preying on the innocent like this made it hard to think past 'hit the closest one'. So he jumped from the top of the building, carefully aiming himself right at the closest of pistol holding perp.

Poor Jay never saw it coming. Saph was careful to land on his right foot, right on the guy's head. It alone would not hurt the man, as the right side of his body couldn't apply force, only absorb. Saph fixed that by placing his other foot right beside it, and applying all of the force from the fall.

In short. Masochist lands on man, man goes down, Masochist does back up, man stays down, Masochist lands again.

"An X!" The other gunman aimed his weapon right at Saph's head and pulled the trigger, point blank, but the vigilante saw it coming, and flipped a switch in his head, which stopped the bullet in mid air, sending its energy to him. He quickly slapped the bullet right back into the would-be murderer's face before it dropped to the ground, applying just as much force as it had when it was flying at him. "GIKGH!"

The rest of the men paused for a moment, and looked at each other, as if unsure what to do. "Get him you idiots!" The man screamed as the X-man jumped back to the woman. "Are you alright, citizen?" He said in the most super-heroic tone he could manage. It maybe sounded a little bit too valiant.

As he spoke the men regrouped, and prepared to close in once more, knifes in hand.

Her kick connected but as she was withdrawing her leg to move back into position Mina felt a short sharp pain in her calf. A knife? Whoever and whatever it was they weren't much good with it. Even without eyes she could tell the wound was short and shallow. Mina noted the clatter of something metallic to the ground and assumed she'd been right. The man that had shoved her had been holding a knife. While she was listening that one fall Mina heard the shuffling and footfalls that she could only assume meant some movement. Something was about to happen. She tensed for a moment and then relaxed into a ready stance. The smug tones of the lead thug's voice reached her.

Guns, how fitting. The thing she relied on to accomplish most of her missions turned against her when she could do next to nothing against them. She could see to shoot back or tell where the bullets were going to come from until too late. The bullet she was expecting was late in coming and was that a crack she'd heard? Interference from a well meaning third party? Well, at least in this she was the victim so on the off chance that cops ended up involved she could easily escape notice. The lead thug didn't sound quite so smug when he queried this Jay about why he hadn't shot when told to. The exclamation that followed the brief silence finally put things together for her. This was an X-Man. Sam maybe? Mina doubted that, there were other X's after all. So they worked for Sam. Well, at least the fight was looking up. At least it had been until the gunshot.

Well there went her back up. Oh well, Mina had survived on her own for this long. It wasn't as though she couldn't handle this on her own. Even if she was blind. There was another flurry of movement and the sound of the lead thug urging his minions to 'Get him!' confused her for a moment. She had clearly heard a gunshot and the sound of someone being hit by a gunshot. Had the interloper redirected it somehow? Her question was answered with a question from a voice so ridiculously heroic that Mina nearly fell down laughing despite the situation. Her lips curved in a smirk.

"Oh I'm fine. Cut on the leg but otherwise fine. So, my valiant hero, shall we teach them not to pick on women in this city?"