2014.06.26 - Take me away my Hero!?

Late afternoon, South Gotham. The weather had been nice this day, the sun burning down and casting orangeish light over the faces of the buildings, making the glass look like gold and copper. At one of the bus stops sat Jane, the laptop opened on her knees, the eyes trying hard to read something on the reflecting surface, while her fingers danced over the keys. Clackering mixed with the noise from the street while the commands she typed were trying to hijack a data stream sent to one of the computers of a stock exchange company - data that shouldn't be in the hand of the corrupt man, for they were stolen from a company.

Andrew Pulaski decided that he didn't actually like Gotham. The place gave him an urge to fly up and out of these gray stone and steel canyons. Up someplace high where the air was clean and that tense feeling of being in the lair of predators would go away. Which was pretty stupid for somebody with his abilities, but the mind is a funny thing. Still, he's been exploring and learning. And secretly hoping for a sighting of one of the city's heroes. No such luck. Too bright out, perhaps. He reaches the bus stop, dressed in khaki slacks, a button down shirt and honest-to-goodness loafers. If only he had a bible under his arm, he'd look like a missionary. Well, except for that wealth of pale golden hair framing his face. He gave the other person at the stop a friendly, polite nod and a murmured, "Afternoon, Miss."

Jane lifted her eyes from the keys, keeping them squeezed somewhat to avoid getting blinded by the harsh light. Her leather-jacket was tied around her belly, while she wore the blue shirt freely. "Afternoon..." she muttered, the fingers still dancing as she continued her programming without eying it. She could feel the keys under her fingertips anyway. What she wanted to type. That she typed was more a calming of her mind than anything else.

The fit youth gave the young woman a curious glance, but it was obvious that she was busy, so he left her alone for the moment. There was an aura of polite diffidence to him that seemed out of synch with his physicality. He looked up the street and down, frowning slightly as he saw a few very large men in very expensive suits who were following a weedy looking younger man, unkempt and very casually dressed, as he walked down the street with a tablet computer in his hands, sweeping it back and forth, as though trying to increase some signal or something. There was something about those big guys that seemed a little ... tense. As though they were hounds waiting to catch a scent.

Signals change as people pass by, but actively trying to pinpoint a signal is either entirely quiet, making the tablet a pure antenna and thus altering its surroundings by weakening the signals slightly in the close distance, or it could be noisy by sending out signals directed with a specialized antenna and trying to cancel out the signal on the path, giving a much better directional sense, but also warning whoever was being pinpointed, if you scanned for transmission signals. To Jane's luck, the sleazy guy had used the later method, and as he was still a couple hundred meters away, his signals started to tingle on her back. The distance closed and the cancellation became stronger. Jane's fingers clicked on the keys more, altering code more, before she eventually switched two or three parameters without even looking at her screen, stopping the Laptop from broadcasting anything at all. Her attempts to read the data stream so she could work against him were aborted and foiled for now. And no moment she had even looked onto the screen, which was almost impossible to read with the reflections of the windows anyways. "Anyone behind me?" she asked with low voice.

Andrew Pulaski watched as the men paused, the smaller one looking frustrated and annoyed as he held up the tablet, waving it back and forth a few times. At some terse instruction, the goons split up, two crossing the street, two continuing down the sidewalk towards the bus stop. Andrew frowned at the young woman's question and nodded. "Yep. Four big bruisers and a slacker." He glanced down at the seated Jane and said, "Is there any reason somebody would be looking for you, Miss?" The teenager's eyes went a bit unfocused as he expanded his vision farther into the EM spectrum and he added, "Somebody with really big guns under their jackets?"

"Just had a feeling." Jane answered to Andrew, her fingers tapping a few keys to change the screen from showing the black and white code lines to just an excel table and word document about the refraction value in a test. Under the surface, it was a more complex change, masking the whole identity of the machine under the one of a doctorate at the MetU. As the sudden EM static passed her, she shivered and closed the laptop in front of her, pinching the bridge of her nose. "And I have no idea, but sounds like trouble."

The teenager nodded and said. "It does." He frowned as the men came closer. They were intent and even stopping people, checking them over as though looking for something in their bags. But they weren't police officers, he was sure of that. If nothing else, he was sure those heavy pistols were modified for full auto. Even in Gotham, that wasn't right. The trio on their side of the street got closer and Andrew sighed. Well, it wasn't as though he technically had a secret identity. It would just make his parents uncomfortable to have their name attached to anything as 'devilish' as super heroics. His expression was nervous. So many people. Bullets didn't care who they hit. He looked back down to Jane and asked, "Miss, if there is any chance they are after you, would you like a quick exit out of here?"

"I'm just working on an essay" Jane answered, pointing to the screen, tilting it to make it at least some readable "An analysis of the refraction factors of people needing glasses and if they wouldn't be better served with contacts." At least that was what she was pretending to do, and she wasn’t bad running the line of near truth - it was what was on the screen, and she had been working on that file, just not a moment ago. A moment later she chuckled and closes the laptop to slip it into the bag of hers. "But I must say that’s a new kind of Pickup line. Much better than 'Hey honey, I'm Batman' or 'Your place or mine'. So I give you a chance."

Andrew Pulaski actually blushed. "Ah. Um. You ... Er!" He seemed a bit speechless as the goons approached. "Oh, heck." The teenager stepped closer to Jane and said, "Er, this is going to get a bit personal, Miss. I need you to grab hold of me." He added, quickly, "And I swear that's not a line. I'm not, I mean, you ... if I were going to hit on somebody like you, you'd totally be at the top of the list. But I'm not. Er ... I think I'll just shut up now. But if you want to leave, now's the time." The thugs were perhaps twenty feet away by then.

A look over the shoulder and Jane grinned, shouldering her bag as she went to hug Andrew, almost like in those movies - well, actually it was like in the movies and she did copy it. "Take me away, my hero..." she whispered into his ear - totally stage worthy, was it? Her hands kept clamped behind his neck - and if he would either lift her on his arms or hug her tight, he would have pretty much a good grip for taking her aloft.

Andrew Pulaski blushed even harder at that whisper. He wrapped a hand around Jane's waist and the other braced the back of her neck lightly as he said, "I'm pretty sure Superman would do this with a lot more grace." And then, because hey, he really was getting to do something heroic, he grinned and said, "Next stop, top floor!" With that the pair of them lifted off the ground smoothly, floating a moment a foot or so in the air as people stared. And then Andrew spun them around so his back was between Jane and the thugs. He flexed his will and with a sudden gust, the two were rocketing through the air, growing smaller, smaller and then gone. But Andrew didn't stop blushing until far after he dropped off his passenger.