Wonderland (The Tech Spider and Austin)

Several blocks away from a particular comic book store, a certain speedster was comfortably cruising along as he looked for interesting...stuff. Enough food had been picked up to last him a month, tools and tech necessary for improving his stabilization rig weren't exactly commonplace, and he'd already popped into most of the places around here to see what the stores and establishments were all about.

Soon, he ran right up the side of a seven-story building, slowed near the top, reached a hand down and placed it on the edge, and finally nimbly rotated to land cross-legged on the edge of the roof. The smooth, featureless white helmet was then removed to make way for the big bag of chips he'd accidentally filched from a person's shopping cart five blocks back east.

Valentine Barrett craned his neck to ceaselessly scan the streets and surrounding area as he absentmindedly opened the bag of chips and began munching on them. The crisp slices were devoured in five seconds flat, and he crumpled up the bag and stuffed it into his pocket when he was done getting all the little crumbs out of it.

And still he could see nothing particularly exciting going on. Baltimore could be terribly boring, sometimes...

One hand drumming a random beat on the roof's cement edge, Valentine pursed his lips and slid off the roof. He idly pushed the helmet back onto his head as he fell, spun in the air, and planted a foot on the building's side. With that, he was off, speeding down and away.

...For about two seconds. He paused and slowed when he spotted two police cars with their sirens flashing. A little investigating showed that they were in pursuit of a station wagon. Inside were a few...hoodlums or gang members or something, but either way, they were fairly young and the station wagon definitely didn't look like it belonged to them.

Grand theft auto? Smuggling drugs? Kidnapping? Stolen for an escape? Borrowed their mom's car for a joyride went south? Filming a movie?

...Okay, yeah, it wasn't the movie option. There were no cameras around, for starters, and this section of the streets hadn't been cordoned off for a chase sequence.

Pity. It would've been fun to crash a set.

“Oh well.” Val grinned and raced after the car, easily catching up. He jumped, activated his stabilization rig, and shifted into an overlapping dimension.

Colors bled out and the world became unfocused as he vanished from sight. His feet passed through the roof of the car and the rest of him followed, only coming to a stop once he'd “landed” in the backseat of the station wagon. More like he'd willed himself to stop on the thing that wasn't-exactly-physically-present in this dimension, but regardless.

Valentine activated the rig again and shifted back to the material world. Sounds, color, focus, smells, and everything else came back in full focus.

Wearing an unseen smirk behind his helmet, Val crossed his legs and clasped his hands on his lap. “Whatcha doin'?”

Both of the kids--probably late teens or very early twenties--up front jumped and yelled various obscenities.

“What the fuck?! Who's this joker?! How'd he get in the car?!”

“I dunno! What do we do?!”

“Get rid of the fucker!”

The kid in the passenger seat pulled out a switchblade, popped it open, and stabbed it back at Valentine's chest.

The first thought to go through Val's head was somewhere along the lines of 'Wow, this guy doesn't know how to stab someone properly.' The angle was all wrong, he was holding the knife poorly, and the seatbelt was constraining him.  

The second thought was something like 'That's a nice knife. Think I'll keep it instead of breaking it.' And so he did.

The passenger-seat kid's empty fist thumped against Val's chest. His eyes widened in shock.

“Now now, you should only go for the shanking after you exchange pleasantries,” he chided the knife-happy kid.

That was when the driver grabbed his own pocket knife and twisted in his seat to wildly slash at Valentine's face. The way his other hand unconsciously turned the steering wheel plus the puddle the right side of the station wagon was going through resulted in a spin and sideways roll.

...And it was rolling directly into an intersection.

“...Oh dear.”

On cue, the world slowed drastically, but it didn't quite halt. Val casually plucked the pocket knife out of the driver's hand for his own, along with the cash in their wallets. With that, he opened the door, hopped out, and moved to open the front doors so he could whisk the kids out.

Not hesitating for a second, he ran them over to a nearby sidewalk and hung each of them by the pants and underwear atop a lamppost, just a few store fronts over from a certain comic book store. They'd be able to get themselves down given time, but with the police already in pursuit, the two young men would likely be cuffed before long.

“Now for the main event...” Valentine's eyes narrowed as he scrutinized the station wagon and it's roll.

...Well, first he should shut the doors. That was obvious. Next...hm. He could pull everyone in the intersection out of their cars as well, but overall that would cause a lot of property damage. As much as that tickled his more mischievous side, he had a better idea. An amusing idea.

...Hopefully no one would be hurt in the process.

To the rest of the world, the speeding station wagon swerved, skidded, and began to roll into the intersection and directly at an oncoming SUV. Even as the driver slammed on the brakes and cut hard to the right, something...weird happened. The station wagon jerked several times as it rose into the air and started cartwheeling over the intersection.

Essentially, Valentine used his combined inhuman speed and strength to juggle the station wagon over the cars in its way. He ran up to it, jumped, pushed off of it with either his feet or hands, landed, and zipped away to gain some more speed before making another pass. He had to do it so much that onlookers were actually able to see his blurred form at times.

As time went on, he exerted less and less upward force on the station wagon, as he intended to bring it back down to the street and “park” it somewhere safely. After leveling it out relative to the ground on the other side of the intersection, Val grabbed a brick from a nearby alleyway, set it on the breaks, and continued to guide the station wagon to street level.

It landed hard, but not as hard as it could've, and skidded towards a parked pickup. Val appeared in front of it and thrust both hands out onto the front bumpers, making the station wagon rock as it came to a definitive stop. And in a free parking spot, no less!

Sure, it had some steam drifting up from under the hood, most of the windows were cracked, there were several dents all over it, and the pine tree air freshener had snapped off of the rear view mirror, but it hadn't been totaled. So it was probably salvageable if anyone was able to pay for it.

Valentine straightened and stretched his back a bit. “Who knew juggling juggling cars could be hard on your back,” he mused nonchalantly under his breath. Still, he'd be fine. It wasn't like his physiology was completely human anymore, anyway.

...He also realized that there were numerous people nearby who were staring at him, and alternately taking pictures and filming using their phones.

“Oh. Right.” Valentine hiked a foot up, planted it on the battered roof of the station wagon, and threw his arms out wide as if to show off himself and his latest feat.

Which is exactly what he was doing.

And just like that, Valentine vanished.

Well, more like he ran to grab an overcoat to conceal his rig and stash his helmet somewhere before returning to the outskirts of the scene as a newcoming bystander, but you get the point.

Rafael paced along the busy streets as the breeze of the bay swept against his face. His arms were tucked snugly into his coat pockets and his hat was pulled as far down on his head as the fabric would allow. Was it to keep a low profile? No. The Dominican sailor just didn't enjoy the foggy, chilled air. It was obvious that he would never set foot in this part of America if he didn't have important business to deal with. He couldn't even fathom why anyone would willingly chose to live here.

"Una bahía fría... I feel bad for the fisherman that work in this." he thought to himself. As he was about to pull out his phone (some old nokia, a throwaway to protect his identity) The sound of metal impact dissonated through the murky afternoon.

Not long after, a crowd of voices picked up. The sound of police sirens closing in from a distance finally convinced him to investigate.

Adjusting his hat and opening his coat, he ran through a nearby alleyway, finally exiting the path between some dinky comic-book shop and meat-and-three restaurant. Rafael's jaw dropped.

" Qué coño?", he murmured to himself in a grovel. Being greeted by a demolished automobile and two punks suffering from an all mighty wedgy wouldn't have happened back in his home town. Then again, He severely doubted that this was normal anywhere, even someplace as unpredictable as the United States.  "Maybe though, this is what I need...:

Rafael thought back to the letter in his coat pocket:
"There has been a rise in possible meta-human activity in the Northeastern US, particularly in big cities. Our data predicts that this rise in chaotic activity may interrupt the Baltimore branch of the syndicate. There is a recognized threat to our operation, thus regardless of affiliation, the problem must be found and stopped."

The sailor blinked, furrowing his brow. He knew that the crowd would be no use, giving a million different stories about what happened, so he walked up to the two "hanged men". Still, he wondered what could have caused such a spectacle. Even the people around were scared to help the two out.

" Oy, caballeros! What the fuck happened to you?"

He shuttered, noting both the look on their faces and the prick of his medical arm band.

Valentine peered through and over the heads of the crowd to get a better look at the scene, his position somewhere near the back of the largest congregation of people. Ooh, and there was another metahuman there! A floating girl who could conjure things, apparently. Fascinating. Maybe that other guy near her and the two punks was one, too. He whipped out a phone of his own (which he'd appropriated a couple days prior) and took some pictures of the two for posterity's sake.

“Hey, what happened?,” he asked one of the onlookers who'd been there since the beginning. “That meta stop those guys or somethin'?”

“Nah, there was one before that...'stopped' the car. I think.” The man brought up a surprisingly decent picture of Valentine posing for the cameras. “Gave those two the atomic wedgie of the century.”

Val whistled. “And what d'you think of that?” He waggled a finger at the picture.

“Don't know.” The man shrugged noncommittally before going back to taking pictures of the current scene. “That meta seems like a...strange guy. He'd have to be, given what he did to those two.”

“Mm.” Valentine gave a sage nod and began drifting away. “You have no idea~,” he murmured under his breath, mouth twisted into a small smirk. He stuffed his hands into his pockets and realized that he'd stolen the man's keys.

'Damn sticky fingers.' He sighed and cringed, then darted back and returned the keys to the man's pocket. Sans the little shiny charm on it--not exactly the keychain, but same principle. It would be a nice souvenir, and it did sort of satisfy his magpie-like desire for new (possibly shiny) stuff.

...Although, the guy's scarf did look rather nice...

'No, no, just keep walking...there's more interesting stuff here. More fun stuff here.'

So, a tad reluctantly, the speedster focused on the scene at hand. A couple policemen had approached the two(?) metahumans, probably involving something about taking the two wayward youths in themselves. There wasn't the threat of a runaway car or anything like that, so the metas could go on their way and let the police deal with those kids.

The real curiosity is what the two(?) other metahumans were like. The girl, at first blush, seemed like a good guy. More or less. The guy, on the other hand, just seemed like he'd been passing through and found himself in the middle of that whole scene, so he might not exactly be a superhero, per se. Assuming he even had powers.

Time would tell what they were really like. And given the lack of encounters with other metahumans thus far, Valentine was exceedingly interested in finding out...

Rafael was a bit amazed at the purple heroine. It was almost as if she was blessed will all of the meta powers. He knew it wouldn't be very wise to mess with her, but he doubted very seriously she was his target, as she arrived on the scene a tad too late.

"Damn. Flight, conjuration, and telequinesia? Nobody told me these came in a value pack", he thought

After the two youths had been stabilized, he backed out for the police as they asked. The technicolored girl floating beside him didn't seem too pleased to be pushed aside.

" Hey, señorita, were you the one that, uh...got that runaway car off the road? I was too late to see what went on."

Perhaps it was fear or paranoia, but Raf had a feeling that this scene hadn't completely came to a close. None of pieces of the picture seemed to fit in. The sailor pondered and pondered, scratching his chin

"If she really had such control over her powers,why did she just let it crash? Why not just lift it up?".

He looked towards the two handcuffs boys again, now restrained and being taken in by the cops.

"Nah, they don't have powers, just idiotez."

While he puzzled and puzzled, he felt heat radiating from his legs. Looking down to figure out what was going on, he saw his lower body glowing a faint orange. This immediately scrambled him back to reality.

"Urk, I focused too hard. Damnit! I cant give myself away just yet. It was just a little bit though, maybe no one noticed..."

Rafael pretended nothing happened and paced around, pretending to still be thinking and walking the remaining energy off.