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The next break came a few minutes later, when they switched to a live reporter covering something or another out on the street. When the familiar ON AIR sign flicked off, Maxine slid down out of her seat and walked over to her boss. Not too close—he was tall, and she wasn't a fan of that awkward looking-up thing that you always had to do with adults. It made her feel like a little kid.

"Is there anything else you wanted me to do?" She asked.

"Nope," He took another long sip of coffee. "I'd say that about did it."

"All right. See you in ten years." She gave her most professional nod to her co-anchors, and walked back to the guy who'd brought her here. "They say they don't need me anymore," she said, with a casual flip of her hair. "So where was it you wanted to bring me?"

"Get that reel to editing," her boss quietly ordered the cameraman, behind them. "I want that re-running at five and seven."

"Oh god. It is her, isn't it?"

Was not the reaction she was expecting. Neither was:

"Who else needs more coffee to deal with this?" And the accompanying raise of hands. "Right. I'll be back."

Maxine... was beginning to get the impression that she was not MVP of the newsroom. On behalf of her older self, she lifted up her head and stalked forward. The anchor who'd gone to get coffee had the central seat at the news desk. It was a tall chair: the fancy leather high-backed kind that said I'm important, with the swivel and wheels at its base that said but I still sympathize with the little man. She set her hands on its seat, giving herself the little boost she needed to comfortably sit down, and fiddled with its knobs and levers until it lifted her up as high as the other two. Now at a proper elevation, she stared directly at the cameras. Because the guy to her right, hiding his face behind his hand as his shoulders shook with laughter? Not important. The woman to her left, her smile looking even faker than usual? Clearly just jealous of her youth.

Coffee guy was back, and he'd brought someone in an executive suit along with him. Maxine recognized the voice from the phone as she looked over and met his gaze.

"...I'm going to allow this," he said, after taking a long, slow sip from the cup he'd grabbed out of his employee's hand.

And with that, the cameraman declared: "We're live in three, two, one—"

"Let's see if I've got this straight," the redhead said down the length of the gun. "When you're in control, you get the loot and the girl. When I'm in control, I get to take my berries, my rifle, and 'go'? Why Sir, if I didn't know any better, I'd think you were being sexist."

Was she toying with the kid? Oh hells yes. But really, what else was there to do?

He'd as good as admitted that the first shot would kill him; that ruled out any mutational cockamimi she had to worry about. Oh, boohoo, his dog would attack her? Unless he'd died before, she'd say that was fifty/fifty—she was a controller mutant herself, and she couldn't say for sure whether her animations would keep going on the day someone finally offed her. Plus, with the big one in the house, the little one didn't look so bad. And holdup: the only reason she had to fear it was because she wouldn't be able to reload fast enough? So it could die from damage. Her eyes flicked to it briefly, then back to the kid.

Yeah. Yeah, a tin of coffee and a pair of boots said she could club his little dog to death before it could do any serious damage. Wouldn't be the first time. And, worst come to worst, she could still order her own dog back out here in a matter of seconds. Unless the townsies had acquired a speedster she didn't know about, that meant her escape was good to go, too. Even if her lovely ladies were doing such a poor job of entertaining that the town boys felt free to come over and dance.

Was she toying with the kid? Oh hells yes. But really, what else was there to do? She needed time to decide whether she would kill him or not.

"Let me be honest with you Mister Haxton, Miles Haxton," the Amazon said, "you're young, stupid, and a mutational pushover—that means I don't have to kill you. But I'd like a better reason than that. After all, young will change, stupid might, and pushover definitely will, if you want to live. I can't leave trash lying around that my girls might trip over later. So you tell me, and make it good: why shouldn't I kill you?"

And trust her: she didn't care about his friends, or his little dog, either. Hopefully her steady green eyes sighting down the barrel's length were making that clear enough. Be a shame if he wasted his last chance on threatening her again.

"Teleporting?" Skepticism: she had it. "Don't teleporters... teleport? Like, they start in one place, and them—bamf!—they're somewhere else?" Not to knock on his special kind of teleportation, but... "I didn't picture teleporting with so much walk—"

Wait.

"Did you just say that if you let go, I'll be trapped in someone's mirror?" Her green eyes went as big as dinner plates; her other hand leapt up to grip his arm. Him let go of her? Not going to happen. Also, for the record, it wasn't fretting to take basic precautions against being trapped in someone's mirror for all of eternity. Could you grow old in a mirror and die? Did your body fall out or did you just sort of stay propped up, and the people had to explain to everyone who came over, "oh yes, that's the girl in our mirror, she's been there since my grandmother lived in his house—" Did you have to eat? Drink? Breathe?

If possible, her eyes got even wider. "What are we breathing?"

It was a very good thing that the rectangle in front of them read "SWEN FLOW." On the other side was a respectable lobby, for a respectable news organization.

"Better at wha—?" The girl started to ask. But she was cut off rather abruptly, as they left the world behind. "Whoa."

They were in a dark hallway, punctuated by panes of light like windows into their own distinct worlds. Just ahead, framed by a tasteful oval, she could see the back of a white cat, where it sat curled up next to the back of clocks and picture frames. Its head was raised and its ears begrudgingly flipped forwards, as if it had just been woken up by some ungodly noise. Opposite that, and a few feet closer, was a window out to the street—she recognized the same dingy view as from her own bedroom window. She glanced over her shoulder, and found her bathroom still behind them, oddly distant in its own rectangle.

Her hand tightened around the man's. Not that she was scared, not even startled: after all, of course he had some kind of... power... thing. How else had he gotten into her apartment? It was just like her mom always said: When transported to an alternate reality by a mutant, always remain in contact with them, so they can't leave you behind. And don't forget to—

Maxine. Maxine, are you even listening to me? Turn off that TV, and—

...Right. So, hand in vise-grip, check. She'd just have to figure out the rest on her own.

"What happens if I touch one of the pictures?" She suddenly asked. "Wait, never mind, you probably just end up wherever that is, right?" Stupid question. Only little kids asked stupid questions. "But what happens if you touch one of the walls? Do you, like, fall into some dark dimension of black nothing? How do you get out? Are these all mirrors? Are they, like, in order? Is the distance between them the same as in the real world? Can they see us?"

And, most importantly:

"What are we standing on?"

Maxine could see her feet just fine—her still-in-socks feet. But the floor? That was just as fall into some dark dimension of black nothing as everything else.

This wasn't like a Wile E. Coyote skit, was it? Where if you realized you were standing over nothing, you fell?

Her hand tightened another notch. Circulation: hopefully, his hand didn't need it.

The whole bag? Really? What a greedy little kid. It was almost like no one had been feeding him well for... oh, the past three years.

She let the dog take the bag, and quietly kept her own dog from tearing up its pretty little coal-black hide. Coal-black hide, red eyes as bright as an old world halogen lamp, and just a wee bit of preternatural intelligence. Or was he commanding the pooch mentally?

Not that li'l ol' Kitra would know anything about controlling animations.

The teal dog's hackles raised to new heights as that runt took food right out of the hands of its pack leader. The papers that made up its maw gaped wider than any true dog's ever could as it—

Sit, she commanded it, without so much as batting her ginger eyelashes in its direction.

It sat. But it was not happy about it.

In any case, this gangly young man had been considerate enough to leave her with her own palmful of berries. She plopped another in her mouth and gave him her best I'm listening eyelashes bat as he spoke. Being a lady, she made sure to chew and swallow before she replied.

"You know what? You're completely right. I'm a terrible person, making all you civilized folk tremble in your..."

Her eyes strayed down to his feet, of their own accord. Disappointment awaited her there. They'd have been a little big—but a little big, she could have worked with. Tennis shoes, though? Tennis shoes, with an emphasis on the plural? A grey pair would have been fine, and a black pair would have been fine, but one of each? She'd pass.

"...your tennis shoes," she continued, after an almost imperceptible sigh. "Good thing that big strong men like you are around to get me pointed on the path to reformation, one rifle threat at a time. So tell me, what's my first step for getting back on the straight and narrow, Mister...?"

Fill in the blank, kid. Kitra really wanted to know.

((ooc: Set slightly before the Defenders arrive. I'll be sneaking off from the main brawl to give lonesome little Miles some company. Defenders, please don't pursue. Screams mean he likes it~))

Maxine stayed in the doorway, even as the lure of fresh bread tried to draw her in. John, Jane, and little Susie there told her that inside the closed space, Syn's powers were in full swing. And what a party that swing was bringing. The Amazon Queen grinned from dimple to dimple as the three farmers went troddling off to war. For a good cause, of course: because the Lady Syn had asked them to. Nicely, she was sure.

>> “I hear we have the wannabe Texas Rangers coming with backup? I think I’ll add a little extra fun to their visit.”

"Always so considerate, Syn." She said.

From a distance, she felt one of her dogs—was it Kaitlyn's? Or Muse's, maybe? No—Muse's was right there. She had trouble telling the subordinate dogs apart, in that part of her mind that felt where their every piece of paper was; only the Alpha stood out. It was more something; more solid, more together, more there. It had the same texture in her mind that Rex had. From a distance, she felt Kaitlyn's dog suddenly lurching, as if on the attack—it didn't take a genius to know that Puddles & Co. were nearly here.

"Syn, why don't you take my dog and the others back? I'll take part of the supplies and head a different route, just in case they try to get cute about reclaiming all these generous donations."

Maxine plucked a full pack out of the hands of one of Kaitlyn's charming volunteers, and slung it over the back of Katrina's teal dog; she swung herself up after it, and left her girls with some words of wisdom.

"Be home in time for supper, ladies. We're having food."

Real food. If that wasn't a war cry, she didn't know what was.

With a last wave, she urged the teal dog into a swift trot, quickly clearing herself out of the line of sight from the farm. Not a hard task: even though this area was settled—well, as settled as places got—the ruins New York's former glory still abounded. If a plot of land didn't belong to someone, they didn't bother with cleaning it: that's the way the world had always worked, even before its end. The apocalypse had just made things like that more... noticeable.

She was quickly out of the farm's line of sight: she ust as quickly let the teal dog slow its gait to a meandering walk. A fact about her power that she didn't much advertise: most of her animations couldn't live if they got over a mile from her. With the red dog off giving their visitors a front line surprise, she was effectively trapped in the area. Didn't mean she had to advertise the fact. She'd just find a nice, quiet...

...Farm house. Bingo. The place looked decently well tended; they had a nice vegetable garden out front. Nothing stupendous: nothing that a mutant with a genetically green thumb could have done. But it was clear that the place wasn't just another ruin.

All in all, the quaint little house had an air of holding its breath; of closing shutters and peeking out through cracks, waiting for things to work themselves out, and let this little overlooked place mind its own business.

Too bad for them: she needed someplace to sit, and they had a rocking chair on their porch. Honest to god, a rocking chair. Maxine slipped off the teal dog's back, and made no particular effort to be subtle in her approach: she tromped up their steps like she was their little red-headed niece back from a hard day at work, plopped down in that chair, and snuck a handful of strawberries out of the backpack she'd brought along. The teal dog stood a few feet away, the papers in its nose shifting and sliding as if it were scenting the air. She slipped a ripe red berry in her mouth, and closed her eyes as it hit her tongue.

This. This was the life. Eating strawberries on some schmuck's porch, while they cowered inside.

Nearly a mile away, the red dog was proving that paper beat rock: it tore itself free of the spikes, seemingly unconcerned that it was shredding itself in the process. In fact, a careful observer might have noted that where its sheets were torn into pieces, they actually moved faster: the red war dog coalesced from the tornado of its parts, its maw agape. It lunged for Zelek's throat.

If certain illusionists hadn't already moved on, she might have seen the irony in that.


((OOC note to Syn: Once you hit the one mile mark from Maxine's location, the Alpha will absorb the other four dogs' paper into itself, and get a bit more solid—it will be able to carry the weight of our lovely groceries and a rider, but if anyone else comes with you, they'll probably have to hoof it the rest of the way back to the fortress. Alpha will obey your orders, unless you'd like to RP it otherwise.))