Just another day [Closed to Agent Reaper]

A faint tapping sound filled the darkened alley. Shadows permeated all which lay within, filing every crack and crevice, obscuring the lone masculine figure who stood with his back to the wall. The weak light of the burning cigarette in the figure's mouth being the only thing to stand out in the darkness. The soft, uneven thumping of his foot against the ground the only sign of the being's current frustration. A break in the silence came from the rushed footsteps of an incoming individual. Inhaling the smoke deeply one final time, the figure let out a plume of smoke and crushed the butt beneath his boot.

"Hey there Dick, sorry I'm late." The newcomer said between his panting. 'Dick' turned to the slightly smaller man behind him. "It's Rich, not Dick. Did you bring everything, Billy?" In response Billy lifted the bag in his right hand and smiled broadly. Richard shook his head with his head tilted to the ground. How did he get stuck with this guy again?

"Let's just get this over with." Now, seemingly all business, Billy dropped the bag lightly and zipped it open. Rummaging through the contents, both of them took their items and prepared for what came next. Each of them now adorned a black ski-mask and had armed themselves with a handgun. With Billy having hefted the empty bag over his shoulder, Rich made a dash out of the alley and towards the convenience store across the street, Billy following shortly behind him. The lights of the store were clearly highlighting it's presence in the otherwise dark neighborhood and within it's walls lay rows and rows of shelves stacking various items. During the day it received a great deal of business, but right now it was undoubtedly empty with the exception of the bored looking store clerk who stood with her arms folded, leaning on the counter.

The tranquility of the store ended abruptly as the doors were violently kicked in and Rich, with his tag-along, rushed in front of the counter. The girl had no time to react before Rich, and to a lesser extent Billy, had his gun primed to take her down. "Money in the bag. Now." His voice spoke with no room for compromise and with panic the clerk obeyed the command. Opening the register, she started dumping the cash onto the counter. With an indignant grunt, Rich stared at his partner expectantly, never having moved his aim away from the woman. Before Rich could bear holes into him with his stare, Billy realized what he was supposed to do and moved ahead to gather the money into the bag. Once the task was complete, Rich turned to make his leave. He had expected the whole business to be over with already, but no, for he had Billy along with him this time. Half way to the door he could hear shuffling behind him. Turning, he saw Billy stuffing the bag with more 'loot'.

"What do you think you're doing, lets go!" Seeing exactly what he had been shoveling into the bag, Rich growled lowly. "Put the lottery tickets down and lets get out of here! NOW!" Anger clearly seeped into his voice. In his haste to follow his more experienced partner's commands, Billy hastily zipped the bag up and tried to make for an exit, only to knock over a sunglasses stand and almost fall in the process. Both panicked and angry at the situation, Rich stepped forward to take the bag from Billy before he could mess up further. However, this action was interrupted by a gunshot and a very feminine scream. Billy's shaking hands gripped his gun unsteadily, his aim vaguely at the clerk's position. The newby had evidently taken a shot at the girl...and missed completely. "What the hell!?"

"She moved, Dick!" Forgetting his ever increasing anger at the mention of his name, especially Billy's take on it, Rich turned attention towards the clerk who appeared frozen in fear and was now sobbing heavily. Billy was saved Rich's pent up rage by the sudden appearance of a new character to this mess of what should have been a fairly standard hold up. A rather overweight man, garbed in the store's standard employee uniform, burst through the door to the backroom. He was holding a shotgun. Without any time to react, the man let out his first shot. Rich's memory of Billy would forever be marred with the visage of his head being turned into a red mist by a near point-blank shot from a double barrel. Adrenalin pumping, Rich hopped the counter and roughly pulled the girl to his chest. With the teary and haggard sight of his fellow co-worker, the man hesitated. Rich didn't. The 9mm round made short work of the man's chest cavity and to Rich's relief, he fell to the ground like a ragdoll. Heart still pumping a mile a minute, Rich held the now screaming girl firmly with his free hand.

Frozen in place, his arm being put under slight strain in trying to keep the now struggling girl still, Rich stared down at the corpse of the man he'd just killed in cold blood. It wasn't some sense of remorse over his victim or any regret that he may have felt over the death of his partner, but a the realization of just how badly things had gone. They should have been in and out of here in a seconds, minutes and the most. They should have been able to get this done without anyone getting hurt. They should have been able to leave safely and go their separate ways, Rich not having to put up with the idiot ever again. On that last thought his eyes trailed to the nearly headless corpse of the younger man. The gory scene was almost enough for him to retch. Almost. He'd seen some pretty messed up stuff in his life and granted this was probably the worst thing he'd seen so far, it wasn't by that much. Fighting his stomach's natural reaction, he remembered the reason he brought the clumsy moron along with him in the first place. This was indeed going to be biting him in the ass later.

A rational mind would have been able to discern that the best course of action at this point would have been to cut his losses, grab the money and get the hell out of there. However, as it was, Rich was not in a rational state of mind. Over-thinking the situation, he was trying to decide what to do with the girl. She'd heard his name from Billy, a fact that made him wish he could bring Billy back only to blow his brains out all over again. Even if it was Billy's hateful take on it, it didn't take a genius to realize 'Dick' was short for 'Richard'...but then again, it didn't take a genius to know that there were cameras perched all over the store, recording even now. Nor did it dawn on him that the longer he stuck around, the higher his chances of being identified were. Again, he wasn't exactly thinking rationally. Briefly, he considered putting a bullet in her head. To him, getting done for this would pretty much be the end of his life. Armed robbery and second degree murder? That would probably get him life, if not the needle.

Shaking his head, he cleared up his scattered thoughts some. While he may have had no qualms about killing a guy pointing a shotgun his direction, he wasn't really up for killing an innocent girl simply because he was panicked. He was about to let the girl go and make a break for it when he caught sight of a woman walking through the door. His gun was swiftly prepped for unloading its remaining rounds into her skull, or so he thought. Hey, it's not like he knew she was a bulletproof freak of nature or anything. All he knew was that there was now a young, pale skinned girl playing witness to his crime. His eyes followed the woman's movement closely and imagine his surprise when he saw her go straight for the ice cream, seemingly unfazed by the two corpses on the ground, the apparent hostage situation or the large pool of blood and brain-matter creeping its way across the tiled flooring. Blinking a few times to make sure he was seeing this right, he focused on the girl's features. What immediately drew his attention was her extremely pale skin and red eyes. He could have sworn there was a word for that, but for the life of him he couldn't think of it. She was most certainly not your average young woman and not just because of her evident lack of sense.

Had she done the expected reaction of screaming and running away he'd have already ran for it, or maybe if she didn't just act like business was usual and go about her shopping he would have done something other than stand there in stunned silence. It didn't exactly get any less weird when she approached the counter and attempted to pay for her dairy treat."You...you're not serious. Are you?" He managed. But the way she said it sounded so serious, so casual, that he couldn't help but believe she was indeed sincere. "You are...Wow. Well, consider it on the house." It should be noted that during all this his captive was getting more and more difficult to manage. She tried to scream when the other woman entered, but was quickly silenced when Rich's hand was slapped over her mouth. Unfortunately for the masked criminal, he failed to see the fatal flaw to this plan and so the woman's teeth soon found themselves buried into his gloved hand. A pained scream forced its way out of his system and his body tensed. This, rather unluckily, meant the gun he still had pointed at the pale lady across the counter, fired off another round.

For a single moment, time stood still. Richard had just shot, SHOT, this woman. Normally this meant that her pretty face would have been turned inside out and her pretty little brains would have joined the rest of the mess on the floor. This however was not normal. Instead, her pretty little face gained an expression of what he could only describe as pure rage. Her eyes bore into his soul and promised pain of the worst kind. They say hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Well, he didn't know about scorned, but she looked pretty goddamn pissed off with him right now. He may not have meant to shoot, but it was evident that she didn't care. The moment the albino terror spoke again, the clerk who had until now been restrained had made a break for the back door, slamming it behind her and almost assuredly locking it. He guessed that unlike him, her shock at seeing a superhuman just shrug off a bullet came second to common sense. Had he been in a more relaxed state of mind, and not about to void his bowels, he might have been able to appreciate the fact that the very thing he did to incur this woman's wrath wasn't so much that he shot her, but the fact that it caused her to crush her ice cream. It was kind of sad really, the biggest mistake he'd ever made was quickly looking to be spoiling this girl's frozen dessert. In the end it didn't really matter, he now knew one absolute fact. He. Was. Fucked.

In his twenty seven years of life, Rich had the good fortune of never having crossed paths with a metahuman, alien, monster or interdimensional whatever. He didn't have any experience fighting or even speaking with one before. Understandably, he was more than happy with this, as people of his particular profession rarely had any good dealings when it came to the likes of them. Crooks like him were very often the victims of violence from all sides of the moral spectrum in the superhuman community. Today, it looked like this was Rich's turn to be beaten to a pulp by one of said individuals and unluckily for him, it didn't look like she was one of the minimum force necessary types. With speed that Rich couldn't hope to match, the woman struck his outstretched hand. The clang of the metal as her hand made contact was easily drowned out by the resounding 'bang' that came with yet another gunshot. As most will tell you, it's not usually safe to go around striking loaded weapons, especially when the person holding the gun has already proven himself rather untrustworthy when it came to wielding it.

Sharp, stinging pain shot through his hand. Even barely trying, the woman's strength wasn't something to shrug at. Nothing was broken, but it sure as hell hurt. The handgun skipped across the floor, well out of recoverable distance, not that Rich was even thinking about going for the firearm again. It was already clear that shooting her did little more than piss her off, so trying again was beyond suicidal. Wasting as little time as possible, he hopped the counter and and made a mad dash for the door, keeping well out of what he'd dubbed the woman's 'swinging distance'. He prayed for a quick getaway via one of the parked cars just outside the store, but inside he knew with the way things had been going so far, the fates were unlikely to be giving him a break anytime soon.

His fear refused to let him falter in his run for safety, even when he heard the woman's pained screaming he wasn't fazed. Momentarily, the crook's balance was lost as he rushed out the door, but after a few uncertain steps he'd managed to regain his composure. His heartbeat had forgone any sense of rhythm and was hammering erratically in his chest. He had no idea how he'd manged to get this far without the super-powered psycho already giving chase. It was clearly evident she was fast from the speed she'd smacked the gun out of his hand, so obviously that accidental shot had done some damage. Well that or she just didn't think he was worth the chase, though from the way she'd spoke to him earlier he wasn't going to assume she'd just let him off like that. In any case, the cops were likely going to be here soon given all the commotion and the likely 911 call the surviving clerk would make. Standing just outside the store, his eyes quickly set themselves upon his salvation. A heavily used and car with noticeable wear and tear. The maroon vehicle had clearly seen better days and wasn't a particularly pleasant sight to behold, but it would do. Hastily, he ran to the side of the car and started fumbling with the door handle. As expected, it was locked, but it didn't hurt to try. The glass shattered easily when his elbow struck the fragile material, then it was only the simple matter of reaching in and opening the door from the inside.

He didn't waste any time as he pulled out a pocket knife and used it as a makeshift screwdriver to open the panel under the steering wheel. With surprising skill considering his only average intellect, he managed to hot-wire the car in record time. Though it wasn't really that amazing since he had years of experience and the motivation of a highly pissed off metahuman coming after him. A slightly relieved smile found its way to his lips with the thought of actually getting out of this in one piece. To his dismay, it was at that moment the albino woman came into view, facing him through the front windscreen. Even with some more distance between them, the look of rage on her face wasn't any less apparent. Pushing down his instinctive dread, he realized that he actually had an advantage over the bulletproof villain. Currently seated in over a ton of mobile steel, this was probably going to be his only chance to deal some damage and he wasn't going to pass it up. He'd heard horror stories from some of his other less than reputable friends regarding their dealings with these freaks, none of which had a very pleasant ending. While the thought of killing her would put his mind at ease, he would settle for stunning her long enough to buy him time to escape. If he was lucky he'd get out of there before the cops showed and had a chance to pursue him, and if he was really lucky they'd go after the crazy girl instead of him. That is, if he didn't manage to turn her into paste in a second. Shifting gears and slamming his foot down on the accelerator, the car hurtled towards the woman ahead with all the force the almost jalopy could muster.