"y-yes please... I'm... Sel... Selina..." Selina gulps but is ready to follow the four inside. They seemed okay... and she wasn't having any bad feelings about them. Hopefully she'd be okay now, finally okay.
You follow the kids inside the house, where it is fortunately a bit warmer, and much more furnished than Konicek's place. One of the boys pulls off a cover from a couch in the cozy living room and hands it to you silently - it's made of wool and kind of itchy, not to mention quite dusty, but you accept it nevertheless, and wrap yourself up, still shivering a bit. Four of you set up in the living room, which is in a slight state of disorder, while one of the teenagers - a young girl with dark, braided hair, walks off deeper into the house, probably looking for something.
"So, uh, what happened to you?" the younger boy asks. In the better-lit interior of the house, you notice he's kind of androgynous, with long blond hair and a less-than-manly face.
"Yeah, uh, seems like you've run afoul of something pretty fucked up," the older girl, probably seventeen or so, a ginger with quite a lot of freckles and small brown eyes, says as well.
"Did somebody, uh... you know?" the older boy asks, somewhere around sixteen, you'd say, with quite a wealth of peach fuzz on his doughy face complemented by matted dark hair and an air of uncleanness. He seems intensely apologetic as he looks at you, his face locked in a pained wince.
Carrie checks her surroundings every few seconds as she begins to flee her father. She knows that he knows that she can flash step, so she uses that at every possible intersection where no one is looking at her. She checks windows doors and around corners, she also makes certain that she is only moving at right angles, no reason to test to see what happens if she goes through solid objects yet, though she doubted that they would fare better than the handcuffs did.
You promptly step out of your body, and check every angle. Nobody aside from your father is observing you directly, you think, and so you step back into your body and sprint right ahead, your body catching up with you within seconds in a slightly disorienting manner. You jump back out, back in, sprint ahead, then disappear around a corner. Then you run down an alleyway, hoping to better lose your father in this manner, and continue your series of flash steps, the lead you obtain over him increasing with every moment. Through two alleyways and across three streets, you believe you've lost the old man.
And then, just as you begin to breathe a bit more confidently, something seizes you from above, two arms grabbing you by the shoulders and lifting you off the ground, then turning you around.
Holding you by the arms, as you notice, is a man in a dirty gray winged bodysuit, staring at you sharply with his head tilted as he examines your face. His look is a questioning, perplexed one. Birdbrain.
You have to admit, you didn't quite look up at the skies, since you found an occurrence like this rather unlikely. But here you are now.
Considering a few different courses of action Steven estimates the viability of simply looting the truck instead of stealing it, phoning in a bomb threat and then rolling a police vehicle en route, buying a police scanner then tagging along to "assist" and helping himself to police equipment while they are busy restraining the subject.
He also estimates the viability of using his powers to accurately launch a manhole cover into a trucks engine bay at high velocity, towards this end he also goes out in costume and steals a manhole cover.
The coherence of your plan is suspect without further explanation, and so you hold off on considering it. Particularly the bit where there'd be restraining of any subject other than you. In other words, what? As for looting the truck, sure, that's really more your own business than anyone else's.
And accurately launching a manhole cover into a truck's engine bay at high velocity, well, you're not sure. Depends on the engine bay, the manhole cover and the specific use of your power. Really, there's only one way to find out. And it may hurt a lot, depending on how you choose to do it.
Also, that manhole never saw your daring theft coming, you are fairly certain, and it probably will not be able to identify you later due to your clever disguise, either. A grand success to kick off a grand plan.
Kyle sighs after that ordeal and decides to go organise his knives.
Your knife collection is splendid as ever, you notice. More splendid than ever, really.
Hm. Unusually splendid, you would have to say. You remember having at least one shitty knife in here, though what it is, you can't... quite...
... wait, didn't you look at a knife a short while ago? You remember it being distinctly shitty, and also a switchblade? Was that right? You quickly check your pockets. Not there, seems like. But where could it have gone? You remember looking at it, and then...
Hold on a second, you think you're still holding it, actually. In your left hand.
How'd you not notice that? This is like the TV remote all over again, geez.
Jake smiles to himself. This mask was exactly what he had been looking for. He pulls the credit card his father gave him out of his wallet. Sure, it was only for emergencies, but this was an emergency. How was he supposed to do any cape stuff without a mask to hide his identity and maybe protect his face a bit? Truly, passing on this mask would be a travesty. After ordering the mask/novel, he browses the internet for info on Project Ed.
You purchase the mask, no doubt giving some aspiring writer hope for the future. No doubt it will arrive soonish!
And then you promptly browse the photo gallery of Project Ed's site. You manage to find a picture of Dissent, garbed in her "uniform" - a dark blue army helmet and a tinted visor, and the rest is casual clothes, pretty much. She seems to be having a lot of fun, dancing along with some other Eddite guy, though she probably can't see much out of that helmet of hers.
Other stuff there is their newsletters, but those are hideously old, so you give the site a rest for now and instead search for info elsewhere - parahuman forums prove largely unhelpful, although you do get the tip that Project Ed seems to be pretty liberal about who they let join their group, mostly, and share a lot of information pretty freely if you just ask.
Alex would look around, attempting to find a cab and call it over.
Unfortunately for you, no cabs are around presently. Well, one drives by, but it seems to have no intention of picking you up for whatever reason. You get a slight tingling in the back of your head as you consider its driver, who you managed to eyeball for a good moment.