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Something nice to add to her profile. After this aired? Oh yes, Kealey would be quite the stand-out candidate.

It wasn’t a malicious thought. Any press was good press, as they say: there were aspiring fashion design hopefuls who would kill to get national press coverage. The red head was going to jump start Kealey’s career, right along with her own.

>> “I get to help the people I care about stay safe while they’re helping others. No matter how unique that is…I can’t think of anything better.”

“That’s such a sweet philosophy,” Maxine sighed. She couldn’t help but be a little envious: clearly, the designer’s world didn’t revolve around back-stabbing and climbing the corpses to reach the top. The same could not be said of broadcast journalism…

“Would you mind showing me some of your designs, now?” She asked, her eyes straying to the pictures and samples she’d spied set up across the room. These, she couldn’t wait to see.

When he blushed like that, he matched her hair. Though the ‘Maya’ thing? Not helping his case for the ‘just me’, and the ‘don’t have split personalities.’ This, she would have to see to believe.

Maxine rolled her pen between her knuckles as she stared the Prince and his pick-up lines down. Or as close to rolling as a girl could come, when the pen was sentient enough to think it was a game: a bit more hopping than usual resulted.

She had questions, of course. Like, And when, exactly, do you tell the girls this?

She smiled ever so sweetly, took a breath, and…. let him off the hook. For now. Full-time women knew how to bide their time.

“Well. Now that that’s all cleared up.” Smile, smile. “You mentioned some sort of code—did you see any hint of that, in this?”

She sensed the store coming, of course. An office supply depot was to Maxine what a spontaneously formed tornado was to Zephyr: it hit her senses like a flashing neon sign. Thankfully, the back to school supplies were at the front of the shop: that didn’t include printer paper. Small blessings. That did include a tidy little stack of paperclips, though. Those palm-sized boxes of a hundred didn’t look like much, until thirty of them burst into the air. The traditional silver ones flashed through the air like a large school of minnows; the gap under the door was plenty big enough for them to find their freedom, once a little mental nudge tipped off the leaders that it was there. A smaller group of colored clips, like tropical fish, came close behind. They swam a wide loop around Maxine; she offered a shameless shrug to the people who stopped to stare. Given that they were on a crowded New York street… she took off her sunglasses, and smiled for the tourist cameras.

“Maxine Rawls, Wolf News. Every Friday at 9/10 Central time.” She pulled out a business card; one of the minnows, under her command, clipped it up and struggled to stay aloft on its way back to the store. There were directions on where to send the bill in the fine print.

When a girl didn’t have an ‘off’ switch on her power, she had to get creative. Especially when most stores would rather that she didn’t come in to pay.

With a last little grin, and a thorough working of that My Little Pony shirt for a Japanese couple with an old-school film camera, she tipped her gaze to the roof of a certain building.

About three and a half pounds of paperclips wasn’t a game changer. But it sure gave a gal that special little confidence boost.

The red head flicked out another card, and called down Zim for some actual writing. The scribbling was quick; then the card was tucked under its cap, and the green pen was sent flying back as her ambassador to where the elemental stood.

Coffee?

The green writing offered, as the red head smirked a challenge upwards.

Had he just… taken her pen hostage? Poe and Zim, black and green, came racing back down to her: she didn’t need to see them to know which pen was still up there, though. Right up there, directly above, and just at the edge of her range. He’d used his powers to bully their flight trajectories, just like the other time she’d crossed paths with him. And he’d gotten onto the rooftop in the time it took her to get to the door.

Not teleportation, not flight, and not a super jumper. Wind or telekinesis?

Given the hot air that tickled at her ear, she was willing to bet wind. As it turns out, she had nothing much in her arsenal to counter a wind user.

Yeah. And what power couldn’t she say that for?

With nothing new there, Maxine accepted his challenge. First order of business: she ducked inside the shop, and paid for her sunglasses. Then she stepped back out on the well-lit, well-traveled side of these buildings.

In the air above, the man was still holding Polly. He was out of her range now. But it didn’t take a specific range for Poe to see a guy hopping around rooftops with his flock mate in tow. Poe followed Polly, Zim followed Poe, and Maxine bought a Hello Kitty pen at a shop down the street to stay in her range and keep tabs on Zim.

What, had he expected her to try climbing up after him? Chase him through back alleyways?

The red head kept up her stroll through Chinatown, a pair of Channel shades on her face. The Gucchi logo on the side really made them.

Chinatown? Really? What was this, a spy movie? Was she going to trail him to a secret meeting of the Chinese Godfather? Bleh. She liked to keep the clichés off her show. She could always glam it up later.

He better not just be here for the dumplings, though.

Maxine skirted around a newspaper stand, in writing she couldn’t read—

--and leapt behind a pile of boxes as a twine-bundled stack of the morning edition rustled quietly next to her leg. She’d have kicked it, but that might have attracted attention. More attention than a red head in Chinatown, glaring down a stack of paper. She smiled at the shop owner with irradiating levels of brightness, and peered around the boxes. Had Little Boy Brit noticed?

No, ladies and gentleman, he had not. Still dodging the rest of humanity like a nimble little mountain goat, he turned a street into Chinatown proper. She gave him a few seconds lead, and followed.

Of course, that was plenty of time to loose him. Lovely. Well she couldn’t just stand in the middle of the street and stare around. The red head casually took herself out of the mainstream, slipping in at a sunglasses rack outside of a gritty little second-hand clothes place. She slipped her own rose colored lenses off, and tucked them into the neckline of her shirt. Between a pair of sunglasses and the dingy mirror on this rack, a sweet little tourist gal like herself had plenty of reason to turn her head this way and that. These were actually kind of cute. Also, she didn’t see him on the street. Had he already ducked in somewhere? Boo.

So: run around like an idiot, giving herself away to a potentially dangerous mutant criminal in an area that no one knew she’d gone? Or go inside, pay for her purchase, and hit the streets for some calm question-asking later tonight? Or maybe set up camp at a cafe out on the main street, and hope to spot him on his way out. Maxine plucked another pair off the rack: they were two for five. Special! Only today!

A little bell chimed over her head as she stepped inside, her eyes casually scanning the racks. A girl could pick up some cute things, at these places.

A flash of red hair bobbed across the street.

It couldn’t be.

It was tied up in a loose ponytail in deference to the usual New York urban heat; a few loose strands had been left artistically loose to curl at the sides of her freckled face. She wasn’t really a fan of the freckles, but she wasn’t going anywhere important enough to try and cover them with makeup. At least, she hadn’t been.

The bob of hair crossed the street, just another member of the city’s multitude.

No way.

She hadn’t been planning to meet anyone, either. Besides her brother: they’d had lunch. B.T.Dubs: lunch with your thirty-something brother, down the street from his paper supply company, did not warrant dressing up. The opposite, in fact. Oh, Clark. Why must your department be full of men older than you, and even less socially adept? Where, pray tell, where the sweet young interns?

Maybe.

She was wearing rose-colored glasses in round gold frames; just glass, of course. A My Little Pony T-shirt, and a pair of jeans. Her purse was eccentrically covered in a paperclip mesh, and her sandals had fake jewels on the straps. They were very comfortable, thank you, and made for quiet walking. Not that the gentleman she’d stopped seemed to be noticing much of anyone, or that he would have noticed one set of footsteps over the city’s hubbub, anyway.

Not that anyone was worth much notice, to this particular gentleman. Or had he reserved that attitude for her? So hard to tell.

Turns out that brown-haired, blue-eyed Brits weren’t all that easy to track down. Especially without a photo (hotel security had been awfully unobliging, thanks), or a name (he himself and ego had been the unobliging ones, there).

Really, she’d gotten used to the idea of never knowing who he was. Other fish in the sea, bigger fish to fry, and all that. Until she’d caught a glimpse in the crowd from across the street, and something had snagged her attention.

It wasn’t the hair. As soft and finger-inviting as that looked, it was pretty standard. It wasn’t the eyes. She couldn’t even see them from that distance, never mind that he had them glued on his little gadget, there, oblivious to the rest of humanity. No. It was more… more…

More the way that he differed from his path for other walkers without looking up, but with just the slightest hint—a sprinkle, a dash—of inconvenience.

More the way his shoulders were confident they were the best shoulders in the world; they hadn’t even thought about it, because there wasn’t any question.

More… him.

The red head had a good memory for men, happenings in hotel rooms, and dirty deeds. Wrap all three together, and she had a very clear recollection the eloquent twat who’d managed to get the singer Lauren Olos framed for drug use. And rather excessive drug use, at that.

She could have told the police what she’d seen that night, made them look at the tapes a bit harder. Could have.

But it was her story. The public would love Ms. Olos even more, if a new witness (Maxine, of course, had to keep her sources anonymous) came forward, along with evidence that she’d been their innocent idol all along. And if a certain newly minted reporter were to bask in the reflected good will, well… she would make sure to look humble in her photos.

All she had needed was a whisper; a hint. A trail that she could follow to a major break: the key suspect.

Maxine Rawls, Wolf News. Currently stalking a Brit. Good thing he was the only one in the world: it made it that much less likely that he’d notice her speck of existence, trailing an innocuous few yards behind.