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Whoops. Trace had gotten himself into a bit of hot water with the ‘German’ comment. Apparently, that was a sore subject with Rianne? Who knew with women these days. Rianne’s thing was firearms. He’d dated a girl whose thing was shoes. He’d dated a girl whose thing was artsy pencils. It would not surprise him if Rianne’s thing was firearms. Apparently German firearms. If she’d been in an anime, she’d have grown kewpie eyes when she was talking about them. Texans…

He probably should be more worried about the encroaching snow storm. Right. Rianne made some kind of comment about his body not being a snowflake. That was ironic. “Sometime I have to wonder if there’s someone out there waiting for moments like this.” he said, surveying the conference hall. A lot of the vendors had pushed their wares back to the tents set up around the hall, trying to protect them from the snow.

“Yeah… we might want to move. as the snow started to pick up. He hadn’t ever been in a situation where the temperature had changed so rapidly. In fact, he’d have bet a significant amount of money that NOONE had been in this kind of situation. That included the windows. A sudden drop in temperature inside lead to a massive pressure unbalance. The safety-grade glass in the windows was not prepared for the shift and it began to bow inward. The groaning noise itself was becoming overwhelming.

Some other people in the hall had started panicking. The worst part of this was that there were large quantities of firearms in the room. Shouting and shoving ensued. People rushed for the doors.

“Any ideas here?” he asked, looking around.

As Trace dropped the bubble, the world suddenly sprang into normal motion, as if this had been a rehersal for a play and the director had said action. And action there was. Zero sprang into motion according to the plan. She had made some comment about Trace's branding. That probably meant she thought 'Trace' was a codename. Just as well. A shadowy government agent probably should keep em guessing, even when he was telling the truth.

Trace had learned recently that SUPER was rumored to have all that movie villain badness that the CIA tended to have in suspense thrillers. He hadn't yet had a chance to look into these claims, but he'd figured it was probably best to let people draw their own conclusions about his affiliation for now. Throw out the words 'federal agent' and most people pick their own letters out of the alphabet soup to assign to you.

Zero flicked her hands and Trace saw her power seize Beelzebub. The kid had chops. Maybe they wouldn't end up as demon goat-chow. The plan faltered a bit when Zero had to throw herself aside to avoid a sword blow. She had apparently thrown another grav-ball-thing and when it activated, one of goat boy's swords was ripped free from his hand. He had been in the process of a swing against an unarmored opponent so the sudden resistance must've been a surprise. That provided an opening, so Trace drew a bead on the goat demon with his weapon. The chaos around them, however, made the situation unsuitable for firing a shot. There was too much going on. He couldn't fire without a greater than zero chance of hitting a civilian. He quickly bolstered his weapon.

Before the goat demon had a chance to react, Trace closed the two or three steps he needed to be within striking range. This assault was unexpected and Trace scored a few body blows, including one under the goat's sword arm. Ever hit the bottom of your arm on a hard surface? It hurts. Even worse if the nerve is included in the blow. The blow likely would have disarmed a normal human.

But we're talking about goat boy here.

The body blows obviously had some effect because the return attack, rather than taking Trace's head off, was a tremendous backhanded blow that caught Trace across the chest. Air rushed from his lungs as he was flung backwards and away from the demon. Trace saw his feet pass through his field of vision and felt a burst of pain as he landed on the ground a few feet away from his previous location. Groaning, he picked himself up and looked at the wall. A red alarm marked 'fire' sat within arm's reach.

Humans (and mutants) at the end of the day are just big, clever animals. And animals can be trained. Teachers react to the bell sounding, kids are taught to run out as soon as they hear the ice cream man, soldiers are taught to do their duty above all else. But the one thing they all have in common is that they've all been through a fire drill. And if that bell sounds, no matter how terrified a person is, their instincts drive them outside. Perfect. Trace reached up and pulled the fire alarm. This sent the remaining bystanders scurrying for the exit. Anybody left in the room had a reason to be there. That meant no one left to get in the way.

Trace sighed as she reached out and made sure his gun was pointed firmly and quite awkwardly at the ground. "Look, I'm a federal agent. And while I was born at night, it was not last night!" he said, slightly impatient. They did not have time for this! This was an emergency situation and it certainly needed to be dealt with.

Then, all of the sudden, a massive amount of force was pulling him downward. It was as if the earth itself was trying to swallow him. He was able to resist the force and remain standing, but it was definitely much more difficult. So the kid had chops. That was good in this situation. The increase in pull coincided with the girl explaining that she did "gravity", whatever that meant.

The pressure released and Trace straightened a bit. Well, they now had two mutants versus one goat boy. Those were better odds. "Okay, we have to be ready in a second. I'm saying we move out of head-chopping range and you put the whammy on him when I drop the bubble. I won't shoot him unless I don't have any other choice. If you can neutralize him, that won't be necessary, okay Zero?" he asked. Zero had to be a code name. Parents these days named their kids weird things, but hopefully not zero.

"You can call me Trace, by the way." he said, smiling in what he hoped was a reassuring manner.

Tarin started… Laughing? Really? Trace thought back about what he said and could not for the life of him figure out what he’d said that could be construed as funny. He’d just given a serious pitch about a serious opportunity to do something in the world and this guy was laughing?! That was almost more than Trace could handle. ¬This was clearly becoming a lost cause faster than Trace could scramble to put it all back together. The only question was, would he attempt to follow the other part of his assignment?

Then Tarin started wheezing out an explanation about why he was laughing. The Miss Cleo bit, huh? Well, that was better than having him laugh at the prospect of Trace being able to handle himself. A challenge like that might not have been able to slide by un-answered so easily. And, apparently, the woman that Trace had grown up believing to be a two-bit fraud was actually legit. Who would’ve thought that a person could diminish their true abilities like that by trying to monetize themselves.

“I really don’t want it to come to that, Tarin.” Trace said in response to the man’s comments about not knowing exactly what he could do and not wanting to get into a measuring contest. At least both of them were pretty much on the same page as far as all that went. He really didn’t want to see this turn into some kind of fight. That wasn’t the objective of the mission and it really wasn’t something that Trace would find acceptable. Which pretty much made up his mind on whether or not he was going to try and tag the mutant.

“I’ve done my share of looking. There are accidents and there are mistakes. But I’ve seen the damage that some of these people have done first hand. It’s not as clear cut as you think and there are way more people out there who can’t protect themselves or do anything about it. I think that those of us who can, should. I’m sticking to that.” Trace said, pulling a business card holder out of his pocket.

From the holder, he fished out a personal business card. The phone number on the card would get the caller directly to Trace, on a line that had not been provided by SUPER. It had been made evident that Tarin was not going to accept the offer set before him today, but that didn’t mean that he’d refuse it outright.
“At least think about what I’ve said. There’s always a chance to do good.” Trace said, placing the card on a nearby table. “That number will get you to me. Not SUPER, not a switchboard or anything of the sort. Contact me if you need to.” Trace said, seriously.

Trace groaned from his spot on the floor. That was a smooth move, especially in a time of crisis. He rolled over and pushed himself up, looking at the mass chaos that was happening in front of him. All around, cell phone lights started coming on and little pockets of light sprang up all over the room. Trace felt as if his stomach was falling out through their feet. No! That’ll draw him right to you! he thought, but bit his tongue before he could shout. He wouldn’t do much good if he ended up skewered before he could stop this guy.

He heard someone nearby whisper something that sounded vaguely familiar and a light clicked on. Trace started as he saw someone with a mask with a flashlight phone on. The person really didn’t look like the thing he’d seen down by the light switches, but he couldn’t be one hundred percent sure.

Just then, a woosh of air went by and the professor went down. From where Trace was standing, he could tell that no human being could survive the damage. Unfortunately, the professor didn’t seem to be a mutant with a secret healing factor because he reacted as one would expect and crumpled on the floor. Students in the area scattered, running and screaming in the dark. With everyone moving away from the scene, it made it hard to stand.

The person with the mask was moving forward, cell phone light blazing in the darkness. A shadow moved behind the individual and realized that it wasn’t a humanoid shape. He heard the same raspy voice question the choice of the person to wear the mask. They swung around, searching for the source of the voice. Trace figured out what was going to happen a few seconds before it did. This time, he pushed to his feet and ran as fast as he could for the pinpoint of light.

“Get down!” he yelled, as he bodily threw himself at the person with the mask. He made contact, his weight carrying them both to the ground. They skidded a short distance and Trace raised a time bubble to cover them and give them a second to recover. “You okay?” he asked, laying on his side. Behind them, the villain was standing just outside the bubble, dual blades raised as if for a swing. That was close.

Trace had gotten more than his share of assignments recently. Being a SUPER agent in the city that never sleeps kept him super busy because there was never really a shortage of things to do. With nearly 8.5 million people in the city, there were always people trying to ruin the peace and quiet of everyday life.

The blonde girl sitting quietly (maybe asleep) in her history lecture was not typically the type of person that he’d have assumed was one of them. He’d been covertly observing her all day and he really didn’t know what the higher ups in SUPER were thinking with this assignment. She seemed like a normal college girl. Which meant that there wasn’t anything going on that required close attention. The dossier on her had actually had some information, that she’d had some reported contact with the X-Men and that she was a gravity manipulator. That power sounded pretty awesome to Trace, but it wasn’t like she was a suspected terrorist. Someone at HQ still must have been kind of mad about one of his past exploits. Who really knew. This assignment was turning out to be incredibly dull.

In fact, Trace had just started feeling he head start to droop when suddenly a fairly strange feeling swept through the room. That was odd. It was kind of the feeling that people got before natural disasters, an overwhelming sense that something wasn’t right in the world and it was about to hit nearby in an incredibly big way. Glancing around, Trace realized that he wasn’t the only one with this feeling. In fact, pretty much everyone’s eye had been drawn to a location at the opposite side of the room.

Actually, Trace’s attention had been drawn to that spot also. His eyes seemed to focus on that spot in particular. He couldn’t draw them away. Not even a little bit. Slowly, he moved his hand on the desk that he had chosen near the rear of the lecture hall and found that he was still able to move. With a tremendous amount of effort, he peeled his eyes away from that spot. But like raindrops rolling over a windshield, he just couldn’t stop moving his gaze until he was looking in a different direction. That’s probably fairly significant he thought.
The thought quickly became irrelevant as Trace thought he saw something out of the corner of his eye and the lights in the room were extinguished.

A horrifying voice rasped “Did you forget what happens to bad boys and girls?”

Yeah, that was a big serving of terror with a side of nope for Trace.

Before he even really knew what he was doing Trace had thrown himself to the side and rolled to a crouch in one of the side aisles of the classroom, a time bubble springing into existence around himself. He needed to think. He needed to observe.

In the dark, he really couldn’t tell much. He could see a bit by the red illumination of the emergency exit signs that all hell was breaking loose in the classroom. There were people in the process of trying to flee, but it looked as though many people were just frozen in terror. Which made sense. Because a creepy voice asking about bad boys and girls was incredibly cringey. And tacky.

Errant thoughts aside, Trace realized that he was fairly close to a set of light switches at the back of the room. That solved one problem: if a creepy, raspy thing out of a horror movie was going to shut off the lights, it was the appointed duty of the only SUPER agent in the room to turn them back on, wasn’t it?

Trace crouched, ready to spring as soon as the bubble collapsed. As far as he could tell, the thing was still at the front of the room by the switches. The red light seeping out of the exit sign gave everything a slightly bloody hue which definitely did not help the situation. It looked as though the thing at the front was holding two objects in its hands and by Trace’s estimation, it probably wasn’t a bouquet of flowers and a box of chocolates. It also kind of appeared like it had horns, but the red light waned very near to the things position, so he couldn’t really tell.

Trace let the bubble collapse and sprang forward. In the slightly dark room, however, he misjudged the height of the stair nearest his foot and clipped it. His momentum drove him into the stairs in front of him with a solid thud and the air was driven out of him in a grunt.

This was going to be a heck of a day.