It was meant to be a lunch date, studio funded, do whatever, just a normal date, be natural they told them, please, it was on them, the rewards of their new careers. They had failed to mention the media would be there. Plus, the way they said it made it sound like they were already a couple or something. Still, they had to do it. Paparazzi or no paparazzi. "So, you drink much coffee? There's a nice place somewhere around here. Though, it is Manhattan, there's a nice place on every corner." He was making sure to try and smile naturally, and wear his hat.It disguised the colour of his hair perfectly, by covering it, with the exact same colour. Logic.

Life isn't gonna be as simple any more is it?

The place he was talking about, though, had a particularly aromatic blend, or so the critiques had said. To him, it was just nice tasting coffee, they had pretty decent baked goods too. He had in mind a coffee, stroll through Central Park, and then lunch at one of the stupidly priced restraunty cafe things that actually open for lunch. The stars told him they were good.

Though if she goes for it is another thing entirely. S'pose, reservation was listed with the studio.

He now knew exactly why the studio had insisted on doing hair and putting him into some supposedly fashionable clothes. He would have preferred the suity thing he was wearing had a tie, but they had said no tie, no buttons done up, undershirt from some brand place and jeans on the bottom. Cafas didn't pretend he knew what was going on in the fashion world.

Allison was somewhat familiar with the style she’d been ordered into, if mostly abstractly, and a now definitely outdated version of it. A jean skirt that fell in folds that would allow her to move if she wanted, flat shoes with three copies of their brand logo scattered over them, a black shirt with pink stitching and a fake leather jacket with more pink stitching and a much more feminine cut than she would have picked. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and tattoos banned from her face, though she had plenty swirling up her hands and arms (starting pink and quickly being overwhelmed by black) instead. It wasn’t a style she’d ever have picked for herself, but not a lot of what she wore was before she got to New York, so she didn’t do more than roll her eyes as she humored the various people who’d been introduced far too quickly for her to remember, and then seemed to multiply.

The media hadn’t quite been expected, but then, what was the point of a publicity date without media? Mostly small time and gossip media, but still media. It wasn’t like she or (to her knowledge, anyway) Cafas would be recognized by anyone on their own. So she spared them a glance before ignoring them and smiling at Cafas. “Hey. Having fun yet?” The smile was friendly and cheerful, the tone was similar. The thought was a bit more cynical than the movie people probably intended her to express, but really, if they didn’t want any cynicism, they shouldn’t have picked a rebellious style.

Or maybe they just shouldn’t have picked Allison. But that detail, they probably weren’t aware of. Oh well; Allison would just have to work around them. Playing off the contrast between what they obviously pushed for an what she actually did appeared to be a valid strategy for stars anyway, no reason she shouldn’t be able to reproduce that.

The coffee place they were at wasn’t one that Allison knew, but the smells were familiar enough to recognize, even if it was a bit more expensive place than where she worked. And lacking the books, too, which made it inherently inferior in her opinion, no matter how nice it looked. She was sure the coffee and food was good… but books were more important.

Hm. She should see if she could convince the movie people to send them on a date to a bookstore. They could sit next to each other while they read, or something, and the media could take pictures of that. She could push the uniqueness as a possible source of attention and maybe convince them that way….

Cafas did his best to look completely at ease despite the cameras right outside the window of the cafe. Well, at least they weren't coming in. "Heaps of fun, I haven't been on a date in a while. Well, not one with a girl, I guess." He was trying to keep his voice from carrying to far beyond them, while maintaining the appearance of speaking normally, he wasn't sure it was working for him. Still, he was inside, the media was outside, it couldn't leak that far right?

Bet it could, maybe think before you speak.

They were next at the counter. They ordered and Cafas, as he had been told to, made a show of paying, with the studio's cash, and tipping quite well. Well enough that the barista couldn't hide the shock on his face, though he made a good effort. Cappuccino for Cafas, double shot, not that silly decaf stuff and none of the sugary sweeteners. It tasted better this way anyway. He refrained from getting any food, he needed a free hand, what if something were to happen?

Then you would drop your coffee and make attempts at heroics. Just Sayin'...

A sip of the coffee later he was out the door, the media now close enough to harass them for a comment on being plucked from obscurity. Cafas gave them the old "Right place, right time." explanation for himself, Let Allison tell her own story. He didn't know how big the movie was going to be, but he knew enough to keep his tongue under control, he didn't want to end up a huge success having said something so stupid so early on to mar his reputation. "Now if you guys don't mind, kinda got a lunch date here."

Is that the right term for this?

Allison’s smile grew amused at Cafas’ response. “Not one with a girl? I foresee disappointed fangirls already.” The first sentence was kept low, though laughter threaded through the tone, but the second sentence was closer to a normal volume. Why he’d felt the need to be quiet about his comment Allison had no idea, but she could humor him. Of course, she could make any number of guesses about why, but some of them she didn’t like and the rest were silly so she ignored them and had no idea.

Allison ordered after Cafas; a smoothie (small, because they were supposed to be eating later, even if the smoothie sounded really good and she’d have preferred to just drink endless smoothies instead of eat, at least for the next several hours) and a cookie (because even though she didn’t want it, she knew this book and movie were aimed at the demographic known as “impressionable girls,” and running made her appearance problematic enough without her looking like she might possibly be dieting, or limiting what she ate in any way).

Allison was being a very good little possible future celebrity. She even made a point of looking away from any windows so no cameras could see when she rolled her eyes at the show Cafas made of paying, and the barista’s reaction. Not that she expected to keep the obedience up for too long… but it seemed wiser to let the studio invest some time and money in her first, before she obviously went against them.

Not that she was sure why she would go against them, really. Allison had been raised to construct and watch her persona, after all. She timed it so that when they left the coffee shop she was just biting into the cookie, looking up at the cameras with wide eyes, the sound effect ‘nom!’ bouncing in the back of her head, and an expression just awkward enough to not seem completely deliberate. “Hm?” She swallowed the bit of cookie while Cafas answered, then grinned at the cameras. “Mostly surprising! I still have no idea who even took that picture, or how, but it’s definitely me.” She… wasn’t sure she remembered the boy’s name. But that wasn’t really something to admit to any cameras.

Allison leaned, just barely, toward Cafas at his mention of a date; really more a shift in weight than truly leaning, and waved at the cameras with the last three fingers of the hand holding the cookie and its paper bag. Bye now, you’re not needed, peace and privacy please. Not that she expected them to actually go away, but they should at least leave some breathing room. And there weren’t that many of them; if they just backed up a bit they’d be easy to ignore.

They gave their answers to the slightly bored looking reporters, Allison waved her cookie handed goodbye to them. Cafas proceeded to grab that hand and abuse a gap in traffic to get to the park side of the road. The reporters following behind them slightly unenthusiastically. He sipped at his coffee as they strolled into the largest wooded area in the city. "I tell you what, I'm not gonna get used to that if this thing goes big." sunlight filtered through the leaves of the trees as they made their way further into Central Park. Gotta love Manhattan, you could almost smell the money in on the wind.

Well, I've been asked to do worse than this, quite enjoyable so far.

Thinking too soon is really an attribute he needed to work on removing from his repertoire. The park was nice, the cameras were out of sight, the birds seemed to not care about the human presence nor the constant drone of traffic, one could not have asked for a more perfect situation... To be interrupted by some people that didn't strike Cafas as particularly friendly.

Oh goody, what's this then?

A man had stepped out in front of them with a baseball bat in hand. The scowl on his face suggested that they were not looking for one more player to make up a team. Somewhere behind them reporters jumped behind trees. Not that Cafas noticed, he was a bit more concerned with the idiot in his path, and the circle of cronies that was forming around him and his date. Was it a date? the word still seemed wrong, but the studio had used it. "Hey, how can I help you?" The man didn't seem to like that either. "You can leave and never show your face again mutie bastards."

Where's Meld when you need her?

"Look, you wanna leave this till there isn't a lady pres..." No warning, the bat was coming at them, it looked like it was aimed at Allison too. Cafas' hand shot out. The metal bat fell in a puddle on the ground as the rest of the group moved in. There were at least seven. "Tell me you can fight Allison, please." Left, right. uppercut, elbow, leg sweep. The man hit the ground hard. He wasn't down for the count though. Something hit Cafas in the back. It felt metallic, but his clothes stopped him doing anything about it. "Oof" Winded, he hit the ground, making a point to drop and elbow into the downed attackers ribs.

Damn that hurts.

Cafas rolled, and narrowly avoided taking a blow to the head from what looked like a crowbar. He couldn't see Allison, his face felt like he'd hit the concrete pretty hard, and he was certain his back was going to bruise. Cafas pushed his way to his feet, and the survivor in him took over. "Fine, have it your way."

Allison squeaked as Cafas stole her hand, then laughed as they ran across the street. She was tempted to look back and see if the reporters had followed, but that seemed a bit too obvious. And they’d probably be perfectly visible soon anyway.

“I don’t know about cameras, but it’s not too hard to get used to being self conscious all the time.” Allison glanced around the park as she tried the smoothie. Not the best, but not bad either. So pretty normal, for having come from a coffee shop. “Not very fun, actually, but it doesn’t take long.”

The group that approached them were eyed with a mix of curiosity, suspicion, anticipation and suppressed rage. Allison couldn’t prove why they were approaching, yet, but she had a few suspicions, and did not approve of them at all. The familiarity of the scenario didn’t do anything to improve her mood, either.

Cafas’ cut off suggestion would have gotten at least a raised eyebrow, if Allison hadn’t been busy automatically ducking away from the bat. The cookie fell, followed by the smoothie’s lid, and the smoothie itself flew at the face of one of the group. “Not with my mutation….” Allison kind of wished Cafas hadn’t… melted the bat? Or whatever he’d done, she could have caught it and tried to get it, getting hit on the arm wouldn’t have hurt much… unless it broke a bone, which she had no idea how capable of that it would be, so probably best he had. She ducked again, moving away from Cafas. She had no idea how he fought, and would be vaguely disturbed if he knew how she did, and she was pretty sure that meant it would be best for them to at least not get in each others’ way. Why hadn’t she brought at least a knife with her? Or Megan’s stun gun. That would have been really nice to have.

It was much easier, now, to fall into the bullet point mindset than it had been. Allison backed away, probably allowed to go as they focused on Cafas and assumed she wouldn’t do anything, except by a woman who’d been splashed with the smoothie. She came after Allison, snarling, Allison kept backing and ducking away in a circle around the group, until she saw someone hit Cafas out of the corner of her eye. She turned and took two steps to slam her shoulder into them, and the woman caught her hair. Allison probably yelped, or something, as the woman pulled her back by it, and spun to grab the woman’s arms, digging her nails in and holding the woman’s hands close to her head until her grip loosened enough for Allison to let go and jump away, letting a few still caught strands of hair pull out onto the woman’s fingers. It wasn’t really noticeable, compared to being dragged around by all of her hair at once.

This clearly wasn’t working, though. She could deal with one person, or maybe two, but that still left Cafas with five or six and that was assuming none of them had guns. And that the weapons they did have weren’t a factor. Allison lunged forward, ignoring the woman’s shocked yell to kick her shin, grab an arm and the woman’s hair--vengeful triumph surged--to drag her down onto the ground, turn and nearly jump away to throw herself into the back of another of the group, jump away again and get out of reach before she could tell if it had worked, step to the side and jump forward and kick the back of someone’s knee.

There was clearly no way Allison was going to be able to actually fight enough of the group to be helpful; she didn’t have the strength, training or weapons for that. So instead she’d keep them all as distracted and off balance as possible.

...Assuming none of them decided to chase her. That would be more of a problem. She pushed ink out of her right arm, letting it collect in her hand, and letting go of control of it when she got the hand over the eyes of another of the attackers. Most people found it difficult to fight blind.

The odds really weren't on the side of Cafas, or, for that matter Allison, who seemed to be serving more as a distraction than an active force in the fight. Cafas just wasn't used to this many people attacking him at once. Normally in this scenario he would have a weapon. The danger room simulations could only get him so far, time to think on his feet.

Smack!

That was going to bruise.

Ooof...

Yup, breathing was gonna be an issue for a little bit.

Thwack!

Right, this wasn't getting him anywhere.

Pow!

Did they have something in particular against his jaw?

Ka-pow!

Now that one had just been rude. One guy was flailing with his eyes, another had just dropped to his knees. Good, an opportunity. Cafas dodged a punch,

Crunch!

It connected with another in the group, light out. Cafas placed a foot on the shoulder of the kneeling man, and pushed off.

Alley-oop

The back-flip was flawless, perfectly executed, the landing could not be faulted, and with that, he was outside the circle.

CRASH!

A boot to the back pushed on assailant into all the others. They fell like pins at the bowling alley. He missed two. Damn, he'd have to settle for a spare.

Thump!

Cafas pivoted, his heel made contact with one of the standing men's face. His nose was not ever going to be the same.

CRIKEY!

Jump, scissor, heel drop. One of the skittles had been trying to regain his footing, no such luck, out cold.

CLANG!

That bat had passed very close, and Cafas didn't like the force it had come in with.

Whoosh.

Fist by his ear.

Blamo!

Fist to his nose, yup, that was broken. Cafas' eyes filled with tears but he kept his focus.

Grab!

Offending arm held tight, fist cocked.

Snap!

The man doubled over in pain, Cafas released the human's now useless arm. That had been unpleasant for both of them.

Headcount!

Four still standing, Allison seemed okay.

Huh?

What was that guy...

Yikes!

S**t got real, one of the attackers leveled a gun at Allison's head. Cafas was easily four steps away from him, there were two others in the way.

Pray.

Cafas was… actually pretty cool, fighting the bigot group. Allison was perfectly aware that the middle of what was at least a potential hospitalization fight, if not life or death, was not the time to be admiring her not-date, who looked kind of viciously gleeful, but still. Jumping off one of the bigots to escape, and then kicking another into the circle to knock them all over? There was no way Allison couldn’t admire that.

And envy it, a little. And maybe, a tiny bit, resent that yet another person could do what she wished so much she could do. But still. Cafas had managed to establish himself as cool in Allison’s mind.

And speaking of her not-date, where exactly were those camera people? They could have at least protested.

Allison’s rather poorly timed half distraction was abruptly cut off when a gun appeared. And aimed at her, because of course, pointing the gun at the helpless, weak one of your enemies makes a lot of sense. Allison froze. Bullet (ha!) points.

Cafas could probably melt the gun like he’d melted the bat.

Probably had to be near the gun or he would have already.

Cafas wasn’t close enough. There were bigots in the way.

The gun guy was too focused and too angry. Distractions wouldn’t work. He was two steps away; close enough for Allison to make out letters on the gun.

Fine. Fine, okay. Gun. Okay. Allison could handle this. It was good that the guy with the gun had focused on her. Fists, knives, bats, Allison couldn’t handle. But guns? Guns she could handle.

...In theory.

She’d learned how. Been taught how, anyway. Lectures. She hadn’t ever tried anything, but she’d been told, and that was more than most people had and probably more than Cafas had. So she could do this. Had to be able to. Could because she had to.

(If someone points a gun at you, and you can, run. Zigzag and run curves; if they don’t know where you’ll be, they can’t aim, and even if they do hit you, most of the time it’s not immediately lethal.)

…What she’d learned was useless. But in the moment that--at least to her--everything froze, she could translate the maybe-truth into a few ideas to use.

Don’t stay in front of the gun. The shooter has to aim before they can hit you.

Most people who get shot live, so it’s worth the risk.

And get it right the first time, because guns don’t give second chances.

(…Those last two seemed to disagree.)

(It doesn’t matter.)

Allison breathed in, ducked, and jumped forward to ram her head into the man’s gut. She didn’t hear anything like a shot but her ears hurt and her leg hurt a lot so it probably had. Look up--or not, ow, there was a chin there, and arm flails up to push the guy’s arm with the gun anywhere else, because her left leg was not working so she was stuck leaning (bleeding) on him and not getting anywhere away. Allison shifted, put weight on the hurt leg for the fraction of a second it took to get both hands on the arm with the gun and half lunge, mostly fall, and take the arm with her. She hit the ground at about the same time the pain from her leg took over her brain too much for her to do anything. Including see, or hear, or otherwise feel.

...Allison was never wearing a skirt again. They should have just run. Stupid Cafas not trying to run, stupid skirt making her look like she couldn’t run, stupid pain.

There was some confusion, Allison charged the man, head first. The gun had gone off. Red, red was quite prominent. Ted Hughes came to mind. Cafas had never been shot, at least, the bullet had never actually damaged him, his instincts always made sure of that. Allison had no such luck. Damn.

He had, of course, sprung into action the second Allison moved, he made his observations on the fly, the shot still ringing in his ears. No exit wound, the bullet had stopped somewhere in her, he didn't fancy the chance of the reason being a bone.

There was a struggle, the gun was dropped, Allison passed out. Cafas took a knee to the gut as he made to get to her. He flipped over the new-found object in his stomach and lay winded for only a millisecond. He rolled and avoided having his face caved in by a boot.

The shooter shoved Allison off of him. Cafas was running off instinct and rage, the honour in this battle was lost, it was now no holds barred. He spun his feet under his body like a break-dancer, grabbed the gun that had clattered to a halt next to his foot, stood fully, and pressed the barrel into the advancing man's forehead.

"I should kill you. You fight like a coward. An honourless death is well deserved. So give me one good reason why I don't pull this trigger. Your blood for hers." The man collapsed, the fight left his face as fear took over. Cafas' eyes were a deep purple, his vision clouded with pain and rage, as if he was viewing everything through smoke over water.

A whimper escaped the bigots lips. "Please, I have a family." Without any firm knowledge of whether what he was saying was true, Cafas' response ripped from his throat and echoed above the traffic. "SO DOES SHE!" He was trembling now, emotion flooding his mind, he was struggling not to squeeze the trigger.

"WE ALL HAVE FAMILIES! WE ALL HAVE FRIENDS! WHY THEN IS IT ALRIGHT TO SHOOT AND KILL US, BUT NOT YOU!" Tears were practically streaming down his face, washing away blood and dirt with hot rage.

Sirens in the distance, red and blue reflected off the glass sides of buildings. Cafas stared down at the helpless man in front of him, and, for once in his life, did what he knew he had to, not what his emotions told him he should do. The weapon melted in his hand, bullets and small plastic parts fell to the ground with the puddle of metal. It pooled around the shooter's knees. "Remember this, you bigoted bastard, Judgement is for gods, and only gods. When your time comes, well, you'd better hope they feel generous."

With that police and medics were on the scene, rushing to aid the injured. Paramedics surrounded Allison, the attackers were led away in handcuffs. Cafas gave his account, flashed his X-men badge and was left to accompany Allison to the hospital. He would be have to make a report when he got to the mansion. He wasn't thinking about that though. All that occupied his mind was the rage of seeing Allison shot, and the self loathing that he could do nothing to stop it.

For the first time he could remember, Cafas Johnson genuinely bowed his head and prayed, prayed for Allison, prayed for the mutant struggle, prayed for peace.