You Can Hide, But You Can't Run

[Tom Harriman]

"We're sorry, Doctor Harriman: we will not be renewing your contract for the coming academic year."

With that one sentence, everything fell apart. Tom had sat in stunned silence, unable to respond to the announcement that the school's Principal had made. At the time, all he'd felt was emptiness and shock. By now, it had been able to boil down to a constant, frustrated rage, that slammed out of his knuckles every time they made contact with the punch-bag.

"Why?"

It had been a stupid question: as if he didn't already know the answer. A new flurry of angered punches volleyed out at his imaginary target, the frustration aimed at himself more than anyone else. "It's because you registered," he grunted at himself, keeping his guard up as he pressed his attack.

"In all honesty, we are concerned that the presence of a Level Three mutant on the staff presents a safety risk to the students."

Level Three. Part of the fantastic new grading system to let the world know how dangerous the California state government thought you were. Which sort of made sense, from a certain point of view: particularly in the super-paranoid political climate that the United States had cultivated lately.

But it was more than just about abilities - more than just about how much damage you could potentially do. They'd decided to be subjective about it: profile the people who they thought might be more inclined to use their powers for nefarious means. A couple of black spots on your criminal record, and suddenly everyone started acting as if there was a ticking time bomb strapped to your chest.

"Oh, that?" he muttered to himself as he continued to box, voice thickly laiden with sarcasm. "My powers are harmless - I'm only rated so high because I used to beat the crap out of criminals as a hobby."

His jaw clenched and he punched again, his emotions swelling into a wave that rippled down his biceps and surged out through his knuckles, his abilities exploding into action. The punch-bag swung violently, the sheer force of the mutant-enhanced blow rending a great tear through the reinforced fabric, the chains that suspended the bag groaning at having to contend with stresses they weren't designed for.

Tom gathered up the remainder of his frustration, and forced it out in a steady, controlled breath. A sigh followed shortly after, as he grabbed for the towel he'd left abandoned a few paces away. "Maybe I am dangerous," he muttered, burying his face in the fabric, mopping his brow. "Maybe they have every right to be afraid."

Tossing the towel aside, Tom paced to the bathroom, peeling his sweat-sodden t-shirt off as he went. His first attempt to take hold of the light cord missed, and sent the weighted string dancing around his snatching fingers. With a clunk the light eventually came to life - a dull, hardly-worth-it glow that was all the energy saving bulb could muster until it warmed up - and he stared at himself in the mirror, eyes straying to pair of scarred bullet holes in his chest.

Almost a year ago, he'd had a run in with a mutant jewel thief. A pyrokinetic, the first shot had come when a costumed Harriman had arrived to thwart his crime. Tom's powers had been enough to deflect a fatal hit into a survivable glancing blow; but the mutant had lost his nerve, and lashed out with his abilities. Tom suffered extensive burns; as he lay dying, the second shot had been a mercy kill, that Tom had barely managed to deflect.

Left for dead, everything went hazy from there; the morphine that dulled the pain had also dulled his senses. Despite the efforts of the NYPD to protect the captive vigilante, the story had leaked to the press - and why his identity remained secret, anyone that knew him had been able to put two and two together. His employers had certainly done so. The only small blessing had come when a mutant had snuck past security, and used their healing powers to repair the worst of the damage. The burns had gone without a trace, but the scars still lingered.

It should have been a lesson: and in a way it was. When the British Army had found out who - or rather, what he was - he'd left that life behind, and had run away to New York. When the university had found out what he was, he'd run away to Los Angeles. Now, they knew it here too. He could have hidden - lied - but there had been enough running already. So he'd stepped up, registered, and told the world - or the state, at least - what he was.

"Condemn me for being a mutant if you want, California," he muttered to his reflection. "But that isn't all I am."

His hand gripped the chord and killed the light; he crossed the appartment in easy strides, pulling open the drawer beneath his wardrobe, and lifting out the false bottom. Beneath, a carry-all held all he needed. A kevlar vest - lesson learned - was pulled over his torso; gloves were pulled over his hands to mask any prints. Leather armour and bracers covered his body and arms; a deep hood and dark glasses were the only concession to hiding his face.

Other hidden places were opened, from which he withdrew what other equipment he would need. In New York it had been a game: he'd dressed up, played the part, and had the toys to match. This time, he wasn't playing at being a hero: this time it was more than a mere hobby. With most of his former equipment sealed away in an NYPD evidence lock-up, he'd kept things simple for LA: a bow and arrows, and his own two hands would be all the weapons he'd need.

Dressed and ready, he caught a faded reflection of himself in the window; a mysterious man in black stared back. "You can hide who you are," he said aloud, speaking the words like a mantra. "But you can't run from it anymore."

Without another word, LA's newest vigilante - Orion - opened his window, and climbed out into the night.

[Tom Harriman]

Army Boots: $100

From the shadows, the steady alternating beat of bootsteps sounded, echoing down the backstreets that wove through one of Los Angeles' seedier districts. The sound was disembodied, stalking through the night without sight: hunting in the darkness to prey with fear upon the first innocent soul it could find. The victim it found was young, peroxide blonde curls cascading across the shoulders of the ice-white raincoat she had wrapped tight around her. As the sound reached her ears, her body tensed, and her pace quickened.

Hooded sweatshirt: $50

As the hunted hurned the corner, her eyes darted left and right, searching the shadows, and risking furtive glances over her shoulder. A gasp stifled a scream of fright as a figure - hooded, and clad in black - appeared around the corner behind her. Her pace quickened, and yet she seemed to gain no ground on her attacker: his steady, rhythmic strides seemed to chew up the distance between them.

Flip-out knife: $30

The victim broke into a run, and the hunter finally quickened his pace to keep up. His stalking had transformed into a full-on pursuit, and his advance was relentless. Her mind seemed scattered and scrambled - it barely took any effort at all to herd her into a dead end. Pulling a knife, the hunter advanced; the only physical feature visible beneath his hood was his menacing grin, teeth gleaming to match the way the knife blade glinted in the streetlamp light.

Seeing the fear in your victim's eyes: Priceless

"Don't worry," he said, his voice a chillingly calm purr. Advancing in steps now, he backed his victim into a corner, trapping her between him and the wall. As he drew closer, she began to pick out more from beneath that hood: the look in his eyes made her terror transform into dread. "It will all be over soon."

Suddenly the hunter recoiled; it took a few moments for both his victim and he to realise why. A gaping rend had opened in the sleeve of his sweater: a ragged tear through which a bleeding slice in his upper arm could be seen.

His mouth barely had time to form the words "What the hell?" before the knife lept from his hand, a streak of black racing past. He turned to follow it's path, and his eyes widened as they settled on two arrows, quivvering and impaled in the wall behind.

His gaze spanned around, searching for whence the projectiles had come. They climbed upwards, searching the horizon, and settled on a shadowy figure upon the rooftop opposite, framed in moonlight as he prepared to fire again.

Fear gripped the criminal as he suddenly transformed from hunter to hunted, and without a moment's hesitation he ran, scampering as close to the walls as he could in some vain quest for cover. It was for naught: in a single bound the new hunter lept from his perch, seeming to somehow slow in mid-air enough to land in an effortless crouch. He rose to his feet and advanced: the hunted's escape was blocked.

Trapped, the criminal turned to his only option: attempting to fight his way out. He charged full-speed as his attacker, hoping to close the distance and make William Tell's archaic choice of weapon as useless as possible. To his dismay, the archer sidestepped and struck, a precision kick added to send the hunted staggering forward. The criminal turned, flailing wildly, blows from gym-conditioned biceps meeting nothing but thin air and perfect blocks. While on the defensive, the hunter was untouchable.

And then he struck.

It took two blows. The first - a quick close-range elbow strike to the side of the hunted's head - was enough to startle him, and halt the flail of his arms for just a moment. The second wasn't even a real hit: palm flat, it slammed into the hunted's ribcage, and suddenly a freight train of unexpected force surged into the criminal, and hurled him airborne across the street. Spine and skull struck against the masonry; dazed and concussed, the hunted slumped into a heap on the pavement.

Straightening, Tom let out the faintest of sighs. He hadn't even had long enough - or got a decent enough look at Captain Wears-a-Hood - to come up with an appropriate derogatory nickname. That was disappointing. But at least the young woman he'd been pursuing was safe.

He turned back towards where she had been cowering, just in time to see her scampering off into the night as fast as her inappropriately high heels would carry her. "You're welcome!" he shouted after her, a note of frustration in his voice. Another sigh came, with more force this time. "An ungreatful American," he muttered under his breath, reaching into his costume to pull out a cell phone. "How incredibly unusual."

Punching in 9-1-1, he augmented the phone with an add-on - a small piece of tech that turned his voice from it's usual, faintly Scottish tone into something deep, rumbling and distorted, as befit his new monicker as a giant of Greek myth. His eyes scanned his surroundings briefly as the cell phone dialled, refreshing his current position within Los Angeles' tangled geography.

"Alley of 25th and Raymond. Perp is alive, but unconscious. That's two you owe me."

Not allowing even a fraction of a second more for a trace or a vocal ID, Tom killed the call, opened up the cell phone's case, and tossed the sim.

There was only one thing left to do. Sighting on the unconscious criminal once again, he plucked another arrow from the quivver over his shoulder. As he knocked it onto the bow string, seven small markings in gold glinted from the black carbon composite of the arrow's shaft: seven small markings mapping out the constellation whose name he'd appropriated.

The arrow loosed, and buried itself into the wall beside Wears-a-Hood's head; a calling card, just to get the point across. "Best Regards, Orion," he added under his breath, before the bow was slung back across his back. Then, summoning up his abilities into a mighty burst that pushed the ground away, he hurled himself back up towards the rooftops, and returned to his patrol.

[Tom Harriman]

The sky was glowing - or at least, it was trying to. And it wasn't the muted, golden glow of light polution that so royally screwed up his attentions to get a little casual astronomy done: it was the faint glow of inky black slowly turning into inky blue. Dawn was on it's way, and that meant the shadows he was hiding in were soon to disappear.

He checked for where the glow was brightest. That way's east, he musted, scanning the rooftops upon which he stood. Home is this way.

Vaulting over the raised rim where the wall protruded a little above the roof, he dropped like a stone into the alley below, powers pushing the air molecules around his hand downward at high speed, a cushion of wind forming beneath him to slow his descent. His landing was graceful, almost cat-like; and with the slow and meaningful motions of a similar feline predator, he rose to his feet and advanced with purpose down the dimly lit roadway, eyes ever-watchful for signs of movement around him.

His route was circuitous, sticking to the backstreets that ran parallel to the major roads, vaulting abandoned debris, dumpsters, and chain-link fences where necessary to avoid having to walk around in more open areas where his risk of being seen was far higher. A car passed by the end of an alleyway, and he pressed his back against the nearest wall, heart rate quickening for just a second. He shook his head and sighed - sneaking around at night had been far easier in the much taller and denser urban sprawl of New York.

Diverting a little further from the main road just in case, he ducked behind a large multi-story building - a department store, if his vague local knowledge was on the money. He moved slowly, skirting close around the building's edge, turning his breaths slow and shallow while he strained to hear any sounds of movement or activity. He heard nothing, and saw nothing of the sort either; he did however find a side door unexpectedly ajar, the lock showing signs of forced entry.

This won't end well, his subconscious protested, and Tom could hardly disagree with it's logic.

"My curiosity is going to get me killed," he muttered to himself, pushing open the door, and stepping inside.

[José Luis Flores]

He’d hit paydirt when he’d found the storage room in the back of the Aeropostale shop. It was difficult to find the mannequins with movable limbs around, and the three he’d managed to find here would work perfectly as the centerpiece of the scene.

He yawned, and was reminded that it was close to dawn. Thankfully he didn’t have to worry about school, and what with his newfound abilities, he’d not really need a job for more than a cover. This whole mutant thing was turning out to be better than he’d thought it would be.

He grunted a bit as he settled ‘Paula’ (as he’d started thinking of her) under his arm, shifted his hooded jacket (couldn’t let the cameras get a look at his face after all, and he’d stolen the jacket, and wore a pair of gloves on top of that so as little of his body was showing as possible) and remembered where he’d set everything up. He concentrated, and the world around him blurred, shifting and changing like the background of Munch’s The Scream, and found himself in the middle of the bottom floor, mannequins sprawled all over the place. José grinned, surveying the scene for little imperfections or flaws that could be fixed, and shifted into the open space set aside for Paula.

Paula was special. She’d be the highest placed figure in the panorama, and it would be Antonio who’d the honor of having her sit on his face. It took a second to make sure he was properly balanced on top of the bench before he went about settling Paula on top of him.

Danielle and Michelle (the other two), would flank the triumphant image of Paula’s orgasm by being on their knees in front of Xavier and Hector, who sat on either end of the bench Paula was proudly displayed on. Xavier looked a bit vain, what with his hand always by his hair as if to keep it from becoming too fluttered by Danielle’s oral ministrations, and Hector looked as if he were paralyzed due to the awkward placement of his arms, but an artist had to work with the tools and materials they were given. The Orgy (Paula’s Orgasm) would be José’s entrance onto the scene of Mannequin Art, and the scope of the scene was enough to make the teen realize why exactly he’d been up all night.

There were nearly fifty mannequins all set up in the main foyer of the mall, most laying down in a tangled mass of unmoving arms and legs and forgotten clothing. The sight of it made José’s slacker heart swell with pride, as he got the thrill of putting forth effort in the pursuit of something that wasn’t actually work, getting the best of both worlds at once.

“Lessee here,” José murmured to himself, placing his thumb and index finger on his chin and studying his ‘work’. “Anything missing? Other than Danielle and Michelle, that is.”

[Tom Harriman]

"What. The. Hell?"

There were no other words that Tom could use in response to the sight he was presented with. The broad atrium that led into the shopping complex had been transformed into some strange spectacle - a series of dioramas, many of which Tom was at a loss to describe. For a moment, he wondered if the Nestine Consciousness had finally lost it's sanity: any moment, the four dozen or so plastic figures could suddenly spring to life and advance, in a wall of machine gun fingered fury.

However, this wasn't Doctor Who - though he could certainly be forgiven for thinking so, given one popular culture reference he glimpsed in the distance. This was... well, at the moment he wasn't entirely sure. Then his eyes settled on the only thing moving - a hooded figure, their identity heavily veiled.

Tom watched with morbid fascination as another piece of the puzzle was mounted into place. He struggled to fathom what warped and twisted mind could concieve such a spectacle; of all the things to do with such a power and such access to a place such as this, it struck him as inconcievably odd - though admittedly creative.

Fortunately for Tom, discerning the motive wasn't his responsibility - the LAPD and their criminal psychologists could unravel that to their heart's content once the man responsible was in custody. Fingers plucking reaching for the quiver at his back, he retrieved and nocked an arrow, drawing the bowstring as far back as he dared. Sighting down the carbon fibre shaft, he set his aim on the most recent addition to the ensemble, and fired.

Roughly a second later and fifty yards away, the mannequin toppled backwards from her mounted poise, an arrow buried deep in her forehead.

[José Luis Flores]

José frowned a bit, lack of sleep and the sheer weirdness of an arrow in Paula’s forehead keeping him from reacting as quickly as he would have otherwise. Then it percolated through his mind that an arrow had just lodged itself in Paula’s forehead.

He spun, looking behind him first, wondering who the hell would want to stop him from his artistic endeavour via bow-shot, and saw someone who fit the bill perfectly for the Grim Reaper’s Big Gay Day Out. Sleeveless leather, a hood, a bow still in his hands, and shadows all around the dude... José wasn’t sure if the guy was awesome or just ridiculous to the point of hilarity.

“Aw, come on, man!” he cried before shifting out of the lobby, the world’s colors once more running as if they’d become waterlogged. He reappeared off to the side of the Atrium, in the shadows of a cell-phone booth. “You know how long it took me to set that up?”

[Tom Harriman]

That was... new.

Tom blinked - he wasn't entirely sure that his eyes were functioning correctly, or if he was in the middle of some kind of anurism enduced by a caffeine overdose. Unless he was very much mistaken, Mister Modern Art had just vanished into thin air and reappeared somewhere completely different.

Either that, the scientist in his brain countered, Or he moved faster than your eyes could percieve. Which, was pretty damn fast. Tom had already come to suspend a little disbelief wrapping his head around his own abilities - once you accepted the basic premise, his mutant power seemed to more or less obey a simple set of basic science-compliant rules. But quantum teleportation, or superspeed? Those would take an entire bridges-worth of suspension.

With moves like that, Tom didn't doubt that the crook - who, from the sound of his puberty-addled voice and something else that Tom couldn't quite put his finger on, had to be somewhere in his teens - would be able to move before an arrow had a chance to hit him. Not that actually shooting criminals was exactly his style, anyway. I really need a way to shoot people without killing them, he mused, not for the first time.

However, while Speedy there would be able to dodge his fire, there were fourty or so others who didn't have that luxury. "Cry to someone who cares, Kid Flash," he called back, nocking another arrow, and loosing it towards another mannequin target.

[José Luis Flores]

Another arrow whistled through the air and smashed straight through Xavier’s head; now the hand by his hair didn’t look vain so much as if he’d been really shot and killed.

“Damn it!” he swore, and looked around for anything he’d be able to get his hands on to do something about this wrecker of his artistic endeavours. He couldn’t find a thing, either, and it was starting to frustrate him more than anything had in a while.

“Hey hey hey,” he called again, wondering if he could somehow get a voice-changer like Ghost-face from the Scream movies. “You’re problem’s with me, not with them!”

He tore off through the atrium, cutting through the tangled mess of unmoving bodies and jumping over Xavier’s remains. He wouldn’t know the joy of having Danielle’s face near his non-existent package now.

‘Your sacrifice won’t have been in vain, Xavier,’ he swore to himself, and pulled a sharp right down the movie theater section.

[Tom Harriman]

Tom watched as a blur raced out of sight, disappearing into the multiplex cinema that the mall boasted. Running after the excaping speedster as fast as his legs would carry him, he came to a skidding halt just outside the all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet - not now, stomach! - and stared in vain after his quarry. His brain, and the unshakeable sensation that there was something incredibly obvious that he was missing, urged him to continue his pursuit. His legs protested angrily, and drew Tom's attention to the number of screens - and thus hiding places - that the theatre boasted. The brute force pursuit approach clearly wasn't going to work.

His eyes swept his surroundings, and settled upon the reception desk, preceeded by a zig-zag path marked out by those irritating joined-together-by-seatbelts poles, that seemed to serve no actual purpose aside from making you feel like an idiot when you turned up with no queue, and yet still felt compelled to meander through them. In a moment of rebellion he dodged around the side, skirting the marked path and ducking behind the desk. "Awesome power you've got there, kid," he shouted, keeping up the pretence that he was still in pursuit. "If I ever need someone to run away like a coward, I'll definately know who to call."

His taunts may have seen weak and half-hearted, but that was because his mind was distracted, focussing on the task of breaking through the password on the computer that linked to the cinema's security cameras. It took a good few minutes, and several techniques that definately hadn't been on the syllabus at university before he'd hacked his way in; skimming through the directories, he pulled up the recording on the foyer cameras for the last ten minutes. He cycled various camera angles, playing the few moments before he'd come into shot frame by frame; the camera only managed to catch a single blurry glimpse of his quarry, the rest occurring too fast for it's framerate to process.

Tom squinted, brain trying to piece together all the components: the voice, the attitude, the blurry face -

The squint turned rapidly into a disbelieving frown. He peered closer, not at all convinced by what his mind was suggesting. He glanced down the corridor where the speedster had disappeared, and then back to the screen once again.

"José?"

[José Luis Flores]

"If I ever need someone to run away like a coward, I'll definitely know who to call."

Was this guy serious? José stopped by the doors to The Hangover, wondering if he’d gotten any closer - not likely, given his sore loser whiney remark about being a coward.

The voice though was getting more familiar by the second. He wracked his brain for the name he was sure he knew. His watch beeped, the alarm telling him that he’d pulled an all-nighter.

“Forget this,” he murmured. He concentrated for a moment, and was back in the lobby/foyer, or whatever the hell the place was called. He pulled the arrows out of Xavier and repositioned him, as well as Paula, back up, dumping them into a potted plant nearby. The arrow through her forehead seemed out of place and didn’t work with the rest of the scene, but it was evidence that would point away from him. And if the Big Gay Archer (he was already coming up with names to needle the guy with, his favorite being the Birdcager, though going from archer to bird cager was a bit convoluted), was smart enough to come back and pick up his arrow...

José pulled one arrow from plant and looked around. Finally, he smiled, and shifted (as he'd started to think of it) to the jewelry place to the corner, and placed the arrow on the display case like some prize diamond ring or whatever. He shifted back into the lobby.

That’s what you get for fucking with my shit, guy.

He dusted his hands off and saluted Paula.

Give ‘em hell! He snickered at the thought of the guards’ faces when they saw this, and disappeared from the scene.

[Tom Harriman]

Tom felt something breeze past him, but it was too fast for him to react. Not that it mattered; he knew what it was, and he could probably guess where it was going.

He didn't run; it was more of a stalk as he advanced back towards the lobby. Lo and behold, the strange assortment of mannequins that Tom had previously disassembled had rapidly been reconstructed, with a half-hearted effort made to remove Tom's contributions to the supposedly artistic display. He shook his head slowly, and sighed. "You need a girlfriend, kid," he muttered under his breath.

José disappeared, and returned again in the blink of an eye; a quick gesture of farewell later, he disappeared once again. Tom cursed under his breath; Though the wayward kid was now a former pupil of his, he still felt somehow responsible for keeping the idiot out of trouble. Despite his vast knowledge of current cult television, he somehow doubted that any lessons learned from CSI would be enough to thwart real forensics specialists: superspeed or not, it only required one mistake for th boy to land himself in a very serious amount of trouble.

"José!" he called, shouting in the direction of where Tom - and presumably José as well - had entered. His voice mutated, taking on the stern, commanding edge that he had previously reserved for only the most dire classroom situations. "José Luis Flores: I know it's you. Get back here. Now."

[José Luis Flores]

"Ah shit."

He recognized that voice. Even if the guy was one of the cooler teachers, he'd still hated physics. Like most kids, he didn't care how things worked, only that they did. He stopped, midway between turning and getting his ass out of there and watching the dude standing there with his mannequin art diorama still artfully set up all around him.

Unfortunately, his curiosity got the better of him, and he shifted back, facing the older man, making sure his face was still hidden. Even if Mr Harriman knew who he was now, he wasn't stupid enough to give the cameras any indication of who he really was.

"No fucking way," he said, laughter brimming in his tone. "Mr Harriman? What's with the gay club get-up? You're in the wrong place for that shit, man."

[Tom Harriman]

"Really?" Beneath the hood and above his sunglasses, Tom's eyebrow arched. "The guy rocking teenage delinquent chic, who spent his night building a plastic orgy because he can't find real girls to hang out with, is trying to bust out the homosexuality and fashion cards?"

Tom shook his head, his arm raising to train the ready-knocked arrow squarely on his former pupil's chest. "I may look like S&M Robin Hood -" The bow creaked as the string was drawn back to tension. "- but you do not want to piss me off when I'm one finger-slip away from shooting you."

He paused; his shoulders remained perfectly still, his face doing the shrugging for him. "Or go for it - see if I care. Shooting at lowlifes is kinda my MO, and unlike you I haven't spent the last few hours super-speeding about the place dropping forensic evidence everywhere. So go ahead." The corner of his mouth tugged up into a hint of a smile. "Make my day."

[José Luis Flores]

Despite the fact that his face was still mostly hidden by the hood and shadows, José positively radiated humor and amusment, as if the emotions were heat and light and he were some jolly young sun. Sure, it was intimidating to have a teacher point an arrow at you, but by this time José was exhausted, and the surreality of the surrounding area lent itself to the increasingly dream-like vibe of this whole thing.

Even if José seriously thought the guy would shoot, he knew his reaction time was pretty damn bad at the moment. Speed and Teleportation (Speeleportation?) he could do, but his reaction time was all the normal human being's. No matter what, he'd be dead, and then it wouldn't really matter, would it?

"Uhh, dude? I am a teenage delinquent," he answered, one hand gesturing to himself and the other waving out to his work of art... or at least work of creative self-expression. That qualified as art, too, didn't it?

"So I figure you don't want murder or whatever on your record, right? So what, you gonna make me clean this up? Start scrubbing the walls so the cops won't find out I did this? Pfffft!" He scoffed. "This whole delinquent thing's got its ups, man. Ain't no hair layin' around. No finger prints."

He lifted one hand to show the tag still hanging off one glove by the plastic loop.

"No shoe prints either. That's the great thing about what I do. 'Sides, you think the cops are gonna be goin' all out on this shit? Feh. I didn't even steal name brand. They've got better things to worry about than some kid runnin' around making mannequin dioramas."

[Tom Harriman]

"Maybe you're right."

Tom's fingers twitched, and the bow string surged forward, the nocked arrow hurled at lightning speed through the air. It sailed on an almost laser-straight course, racing towards José. It missed, barely, part of the three-bladed arrowhead tearing into the loose fabric of José's hood before continuing onwards to impale itself in the wall beyond him.

A fresh arrow was nocked and ready before the first had even finished it's flight. "But hair and fingerprints aren't the only kinds of forensics, dumbass. You've spent all night providing the LAPD with irrefutable proof that there is a speedster committing felonies in this part of Los Angeles, all captured on CCTV for their viewing pleasure. Maybe no one is going to give a damn about some kid screwing around with mannequins in a shopping mall. But a kid who can move faster than the eye can see? I'm sure the Mutant Crimes Unit or the US government would find one of those very interesting."

He offered another facial shrug. "Maybe I don't want a murder on my conscience. Maybe the next arrow nicks an arm, and picks up a little DNA evidence for the cops to find when they get here. Maybe it hits your leg before you get the chance to run away."

His voice turned a little colder. "Or maybe I'm a former member of the British Parachute Regiment, trained to kill without remorse. Maybe I fight crime the way America fights the war on terror, and you're just an unfortunate casualty for the greater good."

He drew the string back a little further, even more tension added, ready to fire. "You gonna drop the bullshit now, or are you gonna keep mouthing off until we find out which maybe comes true?"

[José Luis Flores]

Well, he hadn't thought about the government and cops getting their panties in a bunch cause he could teleport or whatever the hell he did. Dude had a point there. He almost scared him with the whole killing without remorse spiel, but that last line broke it in José's opinion. What he'd done tonight might not even count as a misdemeanor (they couldn't pin him for breaking and entering and he'd stolen nothing from the mall itself, leaving little in the way of an actual offense), much less anything really punishable other than by a small fine and some community service - if they caught him in the first place, that is. And if making a diorama that could be cleaned up faster and more cheaply than it had been to make it in the first place qualified him as a criminal - well, fuck that shit.

He disappeared, and reappeared behind and to the left of the bow wielding vigilante. Harriman seemed to be pretty quick on the uptake, spinning around to put him back in line of fire once he realized where the teen was.

"Listen, I don't know whether all that killing without remorse shit is real or not, but dude, tone it down a notch. Whose example am I gonna follow? Yours? Oh yeah, that'll get me off the government watch list real fast." José snorted, the conversation and movement giving him a boost of energy that wouldn't last long, but long enough. "I sure as hell ain't cooperating with the cops either. That'll get me killed sure as shit either by the gangs in the street, or the gangs in the cells when the cops run outta uses for me."

[Tom Harriman]

Tom let the bow string fall slack and dipped his aim, though not enough to completely remove the threat. "And those are your only two options?" he asked, his head slightly shaking.

"You're a good kid, José. More importantly, you're a smart kid. You could do a hell of a lot with your life; but instead, you do -" He waved his hand around him. "- this."

A frown crossed the former teacher's features, struggling to process what was happening. How could a kid with so much potential wind up a few simple mistakes short of throwing his life away? This wasn't about stealing anything, breaking anything, or any of the stuff that normally motivated crimes. This was just some kid flipping the v's at authority, in the most outrageously dumb way possible.

"What are you trying to prove?" Harriman asked. "Seriously - explain it to me, because I don't know what to think."

He paused for a beat. "But I do know what the press will think. And what the public will think. They won't see some idiot kid joking around. They'll see a mutant powerful enough to break past security in the dead of night without a trace, just to screw around. That's even scarier to them than gangs of mutants roaming the streets, becuase crime is nothing new; nothing mysterious. But this? No one will understand this, and that's damned scary."

He sighed. "Stunts like this are why innocent people whove done nothing wrong have to get a licence just to live their lives. It's why those people are losing their jobs, and are being bullied out of their homes."

"You're a mutant, José. And in a few years, this shit is going to fly back and smack you in the face, too." Harriman shrugged. "In the long run, all you're doing is kicking yourself in the balls."

[José Luis Flores]

"Are you done lecturing me, dad?" he asked, crossing his arms. He could see his father saying something similar, and just as similarly José would ignore his message too.

José turned to look at his handiwork and rubbed his eyes, trying to keep them open. He was running on fumes, and wouldn't last much longer.

"So, you gonna take me in?" he asked, turning back to Harriman and dropping an arrow at the older man's feet. "Or can I leave?"

Harriman may have had a point, but José wasn't about to give the guy any satisfaction. If he was going to take him in, the teen might run, but if the former teacher wanted to, he could tell the cops anyway, and that would make things difficult for his mom and sister. It was probably better to simply just let Harriman decide.

[Tom Harriman]

Tom sighed, lowing the bow completely. "I'm not prepared to give up on you just yet, José."

Returning the arrow to his quiver, he turned his attention instead to one of the pouches on his belt. A moment of fumbling retrieved a power bar, which Tom tossed in the teen's direction. It wasn't much, but it was something. "Eat that before you fall over," he added with a grunt, suddenly feeling his own exhaustion creeping up on him, and niggling at the bunched muscles in his shoulders.

His eyes fell towards the nearest collection of "artwork" that José had constructed, and for a moment he indulged in a little quiet contemplation. The place was a mess, and time was short; there was no way he'd be able to cover up José's antics in time. At least, not on his own.

"I'm make you a deal," he said, finally. "If you clean up your little dioramas, I'll take care of the security cameras. We'll fake a little petty vandalism, and hope that the cops just shrug it off when they find out nothing has been stolen."

"This stays between us," he added, with an intense glare. "This time."

[José Luis Flores]

"How about we don't take this down and say we did?" he asked, and grimaced when Harriman shot him a stern look. "I don't remember where half this shit came from, man. How the hell 'm I gonna put it all away, and before this place opens?"

He remembered where the moveable mannequins came from, but there were so many different ones from so many different stores, he couldn't even use the ones he left clothing on to make educated guesses about the others.

[Tom Harriman]

Tom folded his arms across his chest: stern, and somehow teacherly. His words came out as a subtle challenge, though there was plenty of healthy derision in his tone too.

"You tell me," he said with a faint shrug. "You're the one whose been dicking around with his powers all night; are you quick enough to get this done in time? Is that just laziness doing the talking, as usual?"

He let the accusation hang in the air for just a moment, shaking his head ever so slightly. "If you can't be arsed to clean this up, then other people are going to have to. People who haven't ever done anything to you, and don't deserve to be cleaning up your mess."

His eyebrows rose, adding to his disapproval and accusation. "And how do you think they're going to work out what store all this stuff belongs to? What kind of clue might, I don't know, label which store they came from?"

[José Luis Flores]

"Dude, I took the clothes off of most of them. And switched some around on others. I went through half the damn stores in this place to find them all."

He bit into the power bar and chewed, hungry and tired enough to not care that the thing had the consistency of wet chalk.

"I promise man, I won't do it again. I mean, if you see this sorta thing again, you'll know it was me, right, and I'll have a bunch of shit to deal with that I just don't wanna deal with. Let's just leave this and get outta here."

[Tom Harriman]

Tom wasn't giving up that easily.

"Then I suggest you put some of that apparent creativity and imagination of yours to work," he said with a shrug, dismissing José's concerns entirely. "Otherwise -"

A little threat crept into his voice. "Otherwise, maybe I can't be bothered to deal with the security tape. I know for a fact that I've done a better job of obscuring my identity than you have. Plus -" He pointed off over his shoulder. "- that camera up there must've got a pretty good shot of your face by now."

Sarcasm danced around on his tongue. "You do know how to erase the recordings on closed-circuit cameras, don't you?"

[José Luis Flores]

"Pfffffffft," José responded. "I ain't stupid. Dumb sometimes, reckless, lazy and whatever, but not stupid. It hasn't gotten anything on me."

He crossed his arms. The mall, the cops, no one had anything on him. Except Harriman, and the dude wasn't budging. If his mom found out, there'd not be much she could do, but he didn't want to get kicked out.

"They're gonna find out anyway, man," he said, picking up a mannequin and disappearing. He reappeared and turned back. "Some of 'em will be in the wrong places, wrong clothes and shit, it doesn't make no difference."

He grumbled and disappeared again with two mannequins and some clothing. The power bar had helped, but what he really needed was a Red Bull or energy drink.

[Tom Harriman]

As José shot around the room faster than Tom's eyes or brain could process, the former teacher allowed himself a faint ghost of a smile. José had been right most of the way along: someone would probably notice that things had been rearranged, or the odd bit of damage; they'd almost certainly notice that the security cameras were wiped, which would almost definately get the police involved.

He was also right that they didn't have enough on him to make a positive ID - contrary to what television attested, local forensics teams seldom had the kind of software and budget for high-tech facial recognition. Even if they did, malls like this didn't have the budget for security cameras with enough detail for it to be a worry. Worst case, there'd be some blurry images or sketchy photo-fits circulating around the place; not enough to land either of them in trouble.

But that wasn't what the exercise had been about. Shaking José enough to rattle out that promise; kicking him in the ass enough to get him to start clearing up his own mess; that was what Tom had really been after. So, the self-satisfied smile was allowed to stay.

Wordlessly he turned, and clomped off on booted feet towards the security office to keep up his end of the bargain.

[José Luis Flores]

José ended up being lazy, as time wore on. A mannequin wearing an Old Navy sweater ended up in the Aeropostale entranceway; the mannequin that had been Hector was dumped unceremoniously in a corner in JC Penny's, a pair of panties hanging off the male mannequin's arm.

He reappeared in the foyer with only a few minutes to spare.

"Happy?" he asked, entering into his third wind, the point where he had passed the point of exhaustion without passing out and was now able to think and process things. He gestured around the now neater foyer.

The first thing he'd thought was that he should have booked it as soon as the arrow had flown. Even if Harriman had destroyed the diorama, he had neither the ability nor the time to put all of them back. A lesser victory, but at least he would have gotten a good night's sleep and remained anonymous. Now his high school physics teacher had blackmail on him.

[Tom Harriman]

"Not particularly," Tom grunted, his arms folding across his chest.

It certainly looked less like an army of Autons had descended upon the place, that was for sure. Things were a long way from being as they should, but at least it looked like the hijinks had been performed by 'normal' youths screwing around, rather than the temporally impossible display from before that rather loudly screamed: "Mutant!"

He let out a sigh. "Come on," he muttered, nodding his head towards the side entrance that they'd both used. "Lets get the hell out of here."

[José Luis Flores]

"Yeah," the teen replied, studiously ignoring the scene around him. He looked around, and stuck his hands in his pockets, frowning and feeling the bags under his eyes get heavier. Once more, he allowed Tom to lead the way.

"So what's up with the whole patrolling the streets thing?" he asked, barely restraining himself from making another comment about his former teacher's get-up. "Heroes don't really exist, man."

[Tom Harriman]

Tom arched an eyebrow as they escaped into the sidestreet. "What a very un-American thing to say," he countered with a sidelong glance.

His attention briefly turned to the doorway that José had busted his way through. Unfortunately it had been opened with brute force rather than intelligence - Tom shouldn't have been so surprised, really - and there wasn't much he could do about it with his limited time and paltry carpentry skills.

Returning to his feet, his gaze swept the rooftops, regaining his bearings. The sky above was uncomfortably light; no convenient shadows for him to lurk in, or overhead darkness to disguise his leaping from building to building. Logic pointed out that he should have snatched a couple of souvenirs from the mall to help him look a little more normal for the journey home; but that would have defeated the point of his anti-crime lecture somewhat.

His attention turned back to José. "Listen -"

He sighed. "I know you're not big on asking for help, José. Or on thinking you need it, for that matter. But despite what you may think, whole world isn't against you. Not all of it, anyway."

He tried to offer a look that was understanding and encouraging, but not pushy. That turned out to be a much harder mix of emotions to convey than he had expected. "I work for a company downtown called Treadstone Industries. We're studying the powers of mutants like you and me; trying to work out what they're doing, and how they actually work."

He shrugged. "If you ever want to test your limits, or suss out how it is that you do what you do in an environment that is a little less... felonous? You know where to find me."

[José Luis Flores]

"Man, as awesome as teleporting or whatever the hell it is I do is, I'd rather not even have it," the seventeen year old said, wondering how the door had gotten busted. Harriman looked serious. José shifted on his feet and nodded.

"Yeah, sure," he said, taking the man's last words as a dismissal. "Maybe."

He disappeared, concentrating on his room in his home. The room formed itself out of the watercolors that surrounded him whenever he used whatever freaking mutation he'd gotten, and he barely had time to take off his sweater and gloves before he collapsed on his bed into sweet, sweet oblivion.

[Orcus]

From the shadows a few paces further inside the building, a black-clad figure watched in silence. Like the Archer he had been drawn into the mall by curiosity; but unlike him, there was no benevolence in his intentions towards the Boy.

Alas, there was no familiarity either - all he had to work with was a name that was painfully common in this part of the world. The Archer's efforts to erase the security footage would no doubt complicate matters as well - that could have proven quite useful in determining the identity of the mysterious prankster who moved with such haste.

He watched wordlessly while the Boy disappeared, and as the Archer drudged away, trying his utmost to remain concealed in an outfit that was clearly designed at night. That was an objective with which the man in black could empathise; but he didn't sympathise. It was an obstacle that he had through effort and training overcome; there was no excuse for the Archer not to do the same.

For an idle moment, he considered following the Archer, but a sound behind him made him turn.

Wide-eyed, the security guard stared at the figure he stumbled upon. He continued to stare as the smoothly-drawn katana impaled itself through his chest, and as he fell backwards onto the floor, a steadily growing pool of his own blood forming beneath him.

Orcus sighed, dropping into a crouch and tugging out a corner of the guard's shirt with a gloved hand to wipe clean his blade. It was such a shame to have to resort to such things - littering was such a terrible affliction that had stricken the world of late. He could only hope that the Archer and the Boy were as meticulous about leaving no trace behind as he was.

[Shield]

"Well... at least this one's a lot cleaner than the last one."

Detective Lorrance Duquesne crouched beside the security guard's body, just to the side of the darkening smear of blood that was now dried and caked at the edges. The alley was already cordoned off at both ends by strips of yellow crime tape and cruisers with flashing lights, but the investigation was only minutes old. With both anti-mutant hate crimes and mutant supremacist bullshit at an all-time high, the MCU was getting stretched thin these days, and ordinarily the LAPD waited until there was material evidence of mutant involvement, or as the Chief said, "genuinely real freaky shit," before calling in Captain Stern's special squad. But after the last crime scene (http://www.sw-fans.net/forum/showthread.php?t=21787) involving a medieval weapon, Duke had received the call immediately.

A kid whose face Duquesne didn't recognize stepped up with a clipboard in hand. "I can tell you what we've got, sir, but it's not much," he said. "Victim's name is Quintin Escovito. Twenty-nine, works six AM to four. His manager went looking for him when he hadn't clocked in this morning."

Duke nodded and, with a hand wrapped in a latex glove, gently pulled the edge of the guard's shirt from the blood wound. "What do we have on the security cameras?"

The kid shook his head. "Nothing, sir."

"There's no cameras covering this alley?"

"No, sir, I mean there's nothing. The video's been wiped. Out here and in the store. We're pulling up other sources in the mall to see if we can get anything."

Duke sighed. "Nothing's ever easy in this job. This was a sword all right. One wound, a stabbing motion through the front of the chest, straight through the heart, and out the back. It takes experience to know how to miss the sternum and the ribcage like that."

He looked up at the kid, who was scribbling more notes on his clipboard. "Is there any genetic record on Mr. Escovito?"

"Uh - well, he's not a registered mutant, sir."

"I want you to check his blood for the X-gene." Duke ran a hand over the dome of his head, which was already prickling with sweat in the early morning heat. "I've got a feeling he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, but it doesn't hurt to be thorough."

[John Jackson]

While Duquesne investigated the body by the side-street fire escape, Detective John Jackson had made his way into the mall itself, where clusters of uniformed police drifted about, careful to avoid the areas that dustsuit-clad forensics specialists had cordoned off. It was strange here in LA; while the new streets and new locales were a refreshing change from the familiar old haunts of New York City, it just seemed damned peculiar seeing Uniforms wandering around in shirts that weren't blue.

He flashed his badge at the officer guarding the entrance, who nodded in approval and lifted the police tape to let them through. Jackson ducked under, the bespectacled and camera-wielding Jo Holloway following close on his heels.

He threw a brief glance in her direction. "Have a look around, see if you can find anything the Uniforms missed," he said, his tone making it more of a suggestion than an instruction.

His eyes searched the flocks of police officers, picking out one who was either important enough to be supervising, or enough at a loose end to be standing around doing little. He strode over, a subtle glance picking up his name without it seeming like he'd looked. "Officer Harding?" he asked, flashing his badge again. "Detective Jackson, MCU."

He paused for a moment, hands settling on his hips and surveying the scene. "What have we got?"

[Jo Holloway]

Jo nodded nervously at Det. Jackson, and clutched her camera in both hands as she looked over the crime scene. Well, the body was outside, but someone in the know had picked up on the fact that things were off inside the mall as well. She chewed her lower lip and awkwardly showed her clip on ID to one of the beat cops that approached her.

He raised an eyebrow. "MCU CSU?"

"I'm sure they could slap some more initials on me if they really tried. I'm just here to take some pictures..." Her voice trailed off. "Not that CSU isn't doing a great job!" The crime scene unit had arrived before she had, and were well into their work of picking up fibers and all that. Jo snapped a picture of the team at their work.

The uniform smiled. "So, you have x-ray vision or something?"

"Uh, no." Jo looked sideways at him and sidled away, hanging her camera from it's strap around her neck. People always assumed that a lab tech from MCU must have a power that augmented normal CSU duties. But no, she'd been to school for forensics and was actually, gasp, qualified!

She looked up and frowned. "Anyone else see that arrow?" Jo pointed above the sign for EXPRESS, and then frowned, picking up her camera and taking pictures of the storefront. Most of the mannequins inside were featureless grey, but there was one just behind the display window that was white.

[Shield]

"What the hell..."

Duke was just stepping inside to look over the other half of the equation when he followed Jo's pointing finger to the arrow buried in the wall near up near the ceiling. Judging from how deeply sunk past the drywall, it had been fired pretty hard.

"Detective Duquesne!" One of the uniformed cops came jogging from the women's underwear section hooking a thumb over his shoulder. "You might want to take a look at this."

Duke deadpanned back at him. "Well, why don't you tell me what you've found, and I can make that determination for you."

"Oh! Um..." The young officer's thumb froze in place, and then he sheepishly pulled it down. "It's a mannequin with an arrow stuck in its head."

Okay, Duke had to admit he had him there. "Really."

The mannequin was standing on a pedestal next to a shoe display. She wasn't wearing any pants, and her blouse had buttons in the wrong holes, but that was secondary to the hunting arrow sunk five inches into the center of her forehead.

Duquesne reached up with a gloved hand and tugged on the carbon composite shaft. It was stuck fast.

He narrowed his eyes and ran his finger back to the tiny constellation of gold pinpoints halfway to the fletching. "I've seen these arrows before."

[James Harding]

"Ah, about time you guys showed up. We've got all sorts of weird in here, sir," Harding responded, barely looking up from the papers he was holding in his hand. "Arrows, mannequins moving to different stores, open storefronts. But nothing stolen."

James shook his head, looking at the detective with something akin to incredulity.

"Lots of activity going on in the foyer... lobby... whatever the hell you wanna call it. Shoe prints all over, but they're all solid. All we're getting is a potential size. And get this. There's almost no walking prints. See?"

He pointed over to one section of the lobby, covered with forensics people doing whatever it was they did.

"We get a print over there, and then another set five feet away, but there are no prints showing whoever it was moved at all. The guy might have jumped."

It was a testament to how much things had changed that James said the last without a hint of being anything less than serious.

[Jo Holloway]

Jo looked sideways at the CSU technicians and caught one of the staring at her. They turned to one of their friends and said something, and then the two of them laughed. Jo looked away, pointing her camera at the ground and clicking blindly.

She walked back toward the center of the courtyard, looking up at the promenade. Don't do it. Don't do it!

They don't respect me!

Jo gritted her teeth and used her power. A sensation like holding in a sneeze swept over her and her eyes watered. She looked down at her feet, and then bent over, procuring tweezers and an evidence bag. Picking up a hair from the tile floor she popped it into the plastic bag and straightend up. "Look, sir, droids!"

Oh God, she was such a nerd. "That is, ah, evidence. Sir."

[John Jackson]

He might have jumped.

Jackson was certainly looking forward to passing on that fantastic bit of police work to his superiors. No doubt they'd be blown away by the insight, and would call the DA immediately; charges would be filed before the end of the day.

He sighed, and immediately regretted having given up smoking. It was times like this when the soothing burst of nicotine would have come in quite handy.

"You keep up with those iron-clad speculations there, Officer," he muttered, shaking his head. "And make sure CSU checks every inch of this place for more prints; this Jumper of yours must have leapt to somewhere, so maybe there'll be more clues wherever he landed."

He thought about escaping - there was a store on the corner that was bound to have cigarettes in stock; just one would be all it would take to tide him over - but young Jo's cult reference grabbed his attention. He wasn't sure where it was from - the droids bit sounded vaguely Star Trek - but the follow-up mention of evidence was much easier to decipher.

He waved a hand, beckoning for her to follow him as he walked over to regroup with Detective Duquesne. He considered asking aloud what Duke had found; but as he drew nearer, it became somewhat obvious. Arrows. Jumpers. Droids. He pinched at the bridge of his nose, and winced hard into his fingers. Some days, this job was a pain in the ass.

"That symbol mean anything to you?" he asked the group, gesturing at the way that Duke held the arrow with the star points on display.

[James Harding]

James grinned at the Star Wars reference the photographer had doled out. It was eerily fitting in this situation, but all he could do was grin in her direction and hope she caught it before the detective showed everyone an arrow.

"I'm not a detective, and I don't want to be one," he replied. "Have at it and enjoy your day."

He squinted at the arrow (arrows? Jesus, where they in the 21st or 11th century?), and shook his head, turning back to the clipboard in his hands and continuing to jot down notes.

God forbid he ever had a day without paperwork.

[Shield]

"I've seen those!" said the young, fresh-faced officer hovering over Duke's shoulder. "They're left behind by that vigilante guy who always calls in, what does he call himself, the Onion!"

"Orion." Duke turned the mannequin to give Jackson a better view. "These points are patterned after the constellation. Orion was a mythical hunter. He shot his game with a bow, but he also carried a sword."

He released the mannequin and let it wobble on its stand. "Our friend Orion's been attacking lone victims late at night. Nothing lethal so far. He uses his bow and arrows to scare them and then beats them into submission with blunt-force trauma. Then he calls the paramedics and leaves us an arrow as a calling card. As far as we know, he thinks he's doing us a service, taking down criminals for us to arrest."

Duke rubbed his forehead and glanced toward the back door where techs in hazard vests and gloves were moving Mr. Escovito into a body bag.

"He may have just changed his MO."

[John Jackson]

John frowned heavily. Vigilante's were a nightmare - hell in paperwork alone, not to mention a bitch to catch. The costumes they so often wore weren't just for show: they had the bonus advantage of masking appearance enough to screw over any kind of visual ID from references, and they were sometimes even good enough to avoid leaving some of the more common forensic clues.

"I dunno, Duke," he countered, puzzling over the strange clue. "If your guy was in here popping off arrows, why'd he kill our vic out by the fire escape? And if he killed him in there, why go to all the trouble of wiping the cameras for the entire building? There's no way that the one pointing at the door would've got a decent shot of him."

He scrubbed a hand across his face, remembering a vigilante case he'd worked back in New York. The idiot had tried to foil a jewellery store heist, and had wound up with on the wrong side of a pyrokinetic and a 9mm. He'd survived somehow; some miraculous mutant healing mojo, no doubt.

His frown-shaded eyes swept across the crime scene once more. A hand waved vaguely in no direction in particular. "And what about these... jumping footprints things? Something doesn't add up here."

[Jo Holloway]

"Good thing we got some DNA," Jo muttered, completely ignored as she documented where she'd found the hair. She could almost hear the dice rolling in her head. Twenty-four hours and backlash at any time. Way to gamble, Roulette. It's just an actual investigation your bad luck is going to harpoon.

She refused to look over at the detectives as she walked over to input the hair into the evidence the rest of CSU was gathering.