Participants:
| Scene Title | Morbid Curiosity |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Abigail Muldoon and Isabelle Ashford-Khan catch sight of a wanted fugitive while on the scene of a crime, and become caught up in something impossible after initiating a chase. |
| Date | February 1, 2021 |
Hell's Kitchen, Midtown NYC
In policework, sometimes the only sign of God having a plan for anything comes in the form of the uniformed men and women dedicated to finding justice for those who've been wronged and are no longer here to speak for themselves. It's too soon to know yet how missed the tarped-over body on the concrete will be, but even if no one comes demanding for answers and ramifications, they'll be sought anyway.
For Isabelle Ashford-Khan, getting that satisfaction for others makes it feel as though she'll eventually come closer to finding her own.
"Move along," one of the street cops drones with an edge of irritation toward some people who are lingering on the edge of the police tape. He lifts it up so the approaching Abigail Muldoon can step under it and join her partner on the scene of the crime, and then goes back to minding the onlookers. As long as they don't start flashing camera lenses, phone or otherwise, there's not much more energy he'll put into shooting them off. There'd just be more to take their place soon enough, anyway.
Even in New York City, where everyone's got some place to be, there's an unsettling number of people who make time for morbid curiosity.
“Thank you Officer.” Abby’s drawl thick as syrup as she ducks under the tape and dips her head to the drone with a badge. Without fail, she was one of the polite detectives. No one was low enough on the totem pole to be bereft of a thank you from her. Badge on her belt, she picks up her pace with a glance to her phone and typing a few words to James before tucking it away and heading toward her partner.
“Came fast as I could Isa.” She calls out, tucking her chin into her scarf, slowing as she approaches the body, her partner and the other members milling about doing their job. “Anything yet?” Already she’s looking around to the numbered markers if any and then to her partner who had been there longer. “Do we know anything at all?”
Isabelle is smoking, leaning into the cliche of a heavily addicted, haunted detective just having a smoke not too far from a dead body. The things you get used to on this job.
"John Doe, drive by shooting. No ID, unsure if gang initiation or just a robbery gone wrong." Or right. She thinks as she tosses the almost done cigarette into the distance and motions with her head for Abby to follow and come closer.
Today's an alright day, the weirdness she had been experiencing alongside Shahid hadn't left her mind but nothing pressing had happened as of late. Focusing on work was the way.
The onlookers, almost all of them, focus on the mysterious deceased, take a look up and down the crime scene, and pass on. Some linger to peer at the work the officers perform, detailing the scene, but even they, too, move on.
Except one.
A shorter woman in a red hoodie with a brown leather jacket worn over it stands on the other side of the yellow tape, hands in her pockets. Dark bangs frame a pale face, brown eyes intent on the scene.
Or rather, on Isa while she smokes. And then when Abby appears, the woman focuses just as keenly on her presence, too, looking at her— almost through her— with a stoic expression lending itself toward curiosity. Her head lifts a little higher as she angles it for a better look, revealing more of her profile from behind her hood.
Down to the very outfit in the initial BOLO from over a month ago, Asami Tetsuzan lingers on the edge of the crime scene, fascinated by something in Abby and Isa's vicinity, if not by them themselves. The woman with a manhunt on for her shouldn't be anywhere near here— or at least should be moving past quickly— but she seems rooted, unable to take her eyes off of them.
“Fingerprints will pull something if it's gang related. If it’s not gang related, within 24 hours we’ll have someone who knows him looking for him.” Her lips press thin as she looks at the prone form and there is sadness there. She’s never liked this part of the job. The waiting to identify and then notify family. She grimaces and moves away from the body to go talk to one of the other members marking evidence but pauses at the sight of Asami. “Shit.” Under her breath. “Isa. Person of interest. To the left. Wasn’t she…” She’s moving toward Asami then, casually, getting out her phone and leather gloves swiping to open it up and start combing as she goes.
As Abby begins to move her partner is right behind her, drawing her firearm as she does so. Isabelle knows this woman, spotted somewhere before. The park; she had seemed more helpful than criminal.
Nevertheless they had a job to do.
But why would Asami be so stupid as to show up here, at a crime scene?
"NYPD! Hands where we can see them!"
Asami slides a hand from her pocket, lifting it… but only to push back her hood. To bare her teeth in a satisfied grin upon receiving Isa's attention along with Abby's. The casual approach as well as the firebrand. Between their combined approaches, she's certain they'll follow.
She skips a step backward and then turns on her heel, beating a path west down the sidewalk. Her hands are perfectly visible, out by her sides while she runs and free of any weapons. She jukes her way around a body on the sidewalk, and upon seeing a cluster of people blocking her path ahead, she suddenly jerks to the side and begins sprinting across four lanes of oncoming, one-way traffic.
"What, what'd you see?" the cop minding people asks as he turns back, not immediately catching sight of Asami's retreating form. His hand goes to his hip since Isa's drawn, but he doesn't follow suit just yet. "What is it?"
Tires of multiple cars screech, and one of them honks their horn, bringing the officer's head to turn in the sound of the noise. A sedan pulls off to the side to avoid collision with the pedestrian beating an uncaring path across the roadway, and a taxi slams to a halt as fast as its brakes will allow. The driver's eyes are wide. He should have hit her.
But Asami keeps running, mounting the other curb with only a look back before she continues on.
“Call it in!” Abby lets Isa take the lead and yells over her shoulder to the cop. “Asami Tetsuzan! Fleeing west on foot! Detectives Ashford Khan and Muldoon are pursuing on foot . Remain at this scene to keep it secure.” She’s taking off in pursuit now, her own gun not out yet and hangs back just enough to see which way Asami will go if she doesn’t keep heading west. Her attention is diverted for a moment, blonde ponytail whipping to one side as she looks to the vehicles then picks up her speed again as it’s a foot race through the city and try to work with her partner about boxing in the fugitive.
Wayward strands of brown hair freed from her bun fly into hazel eyes as Isabelle sprints after the woman on the run. It was really a good thing she had been running so fucking much lately. Allowing Abby to alert the rest of their colleagues before she pushes a little harder ahead, breathing steady and arms pumping. "Stop!" She shouts again.
What was going on here?
The screeching of tires and seeing Asami harrowingly avoiding being hit makes Isabelle's eyes widen but she leaps onto the car's hood and over it in pursuit.
"Honestly when… did… everyone get so fit. Fuck."
Isa's jogging habit pays off. She gains ground on Asami's sprinting form, closing in from the hundred yards of lead that the fugitive had on her. The further west the run leads them takes them away from busier paths, past buildings that are older in structure, in care given to them.
Asami breaks suddenly for a wooded-over door to a two-story storefront shut down for renovations. She yanks on the door to pull it open, the wound chain winding door to frame opening what doesn't appear to Abby across the narrowed street to be near enough space to slip thrdough—
And yet the hoodied fugitive somehow— almost impossibly— slips on through. The door slams back and forth, chain jangling, padlock still dangling on the outside when Isa jogs up mere seconds after Asami escapes through the crack in the door narrow enough to elbow into, but not fully clear with the lock still in place.
Instead of draining more energy by kicking the damn thing, Isabelle looks around for a side entrance but quickly rolls her eyes, "Fuck it."
BLAM BLAM BLAM
Bullets are wasted but here's hoping the young woman sprinting away from the partners would maybe be a little scared after hearing a succession of gunfire.
Now, Isabelle kicks at the door to enter. Dragging her phone out to use as a flashlight, triggered with a tap.
"You with me?" Calling out to Abby behind.
The universal constant of the two having each other's backs remains.
Abby’s got her gun drawn, confusion clear on her features. She’s not so loose with her own bullets. But she at least catches up with her partner and moves to take up on the left. “At your nine.” The paperwork is mounting. At least it’s Isa’s paperwork for three bullets. “Fuck.” Under her breath. “Robert's gonna murder me if I get shot without a vest on”. She notes, already looking for any other points of entry. “How'd she get in…” Abby’s slender as it is but she wouldn’t fit in through there.
The lighting in the building is minimal at best, filtering in through cracks on boarded up windows. The second story skylights let in some rays against the scored concrete stripped of industrial carpeting and glue. The beam that Isa's flashlight puts out sweeps once, twice, and sees nothing in the dim, emptied-out space.
"I don't mean you any harm," a woman's voice says from above, about fifteen feet in front of the kicked-in door. When the beam of light tracks up to the sound, there's Asami.
Hovering midair with nothing to support her, her hands out by her side in an open-palmed gesture to mirror the sentiment her words carried. Slowly, she descends foot by foot, that same keen gaze focused as ever on the two detectives. When her feet come to the ground, her knees bend momentarily as gravity kicks back in fully for her, her hands lifting up a little higher, more in the realm of don't shoot than they were before.
"I just wanted to talk to you." Asami maintains a nearly-serene, focused calm. She's listening, and not just with her ears. Beneath her skin, her heart races with adrenaline, and her mind opens to theirs with a supernatural ability to pick up on inner dialogue.
"Detectives, there's a mystery I'd like to pose to you. One you can help me with," she says, shying only a step closer, the keenness in her eyes imploring.
"What the fuck is this?"
BLAM BLAM
"Explain yourself. Fast."
Firing two rounds in the wall behind the fucking flying woman. "I'm not high right! You saw that?" Shouting to Abby who is literally right next to her but also what the fuck. Isabelle's hazel eyes take in the woman she was pursuing just a moment ago and she steels herself.
Can't explain it.
Can probably shoot it.
So fuck it.
This is the way her brain is coping with the totally unrealistic sight of a woman hovering in midair.
"And don't say you're a fucking alien."
Two more bullets. Abby looks horrified when for a moment that her partner is going to shoot someone who by all accounts is unarmed. Jesus Isa. Floating, yes, but still unarmed and in a non-aggressive posture. But they don’t strike the woman, just the wall. The look on her face is still bewilderment but she starts moving as one hand reaches for handcuffs from the little leather holder at her waist and she starts to circle while not answering her partner back.
She’s focused on de-escalation. She won’t shoot her if I’m behind. She won’t shoot me. Flank the woman and hopefully keep her partner from losing it. “We can talk Miss Tetsuzan. But with you in handcuffs and coming in. You can posit it there. “ She makes her way closer, putting her gun away in its holster and opening the cuffs. “Please don’t make this harder than it has to be.” Or stranger. Don’t make my kids motherless.
“Please.” One hand outstretched and ready to cuff her if the woman stretches out an arm further.
Asami flinches when Isa opens fire again. She's brave, not unflappable. "Holy—" Her hands go up a little higher, like to shield herself from the bullets, but they thankfully go wide.
Out goes calm for the fugitive. Alarmed and a little louder in voice than she means to, she starts and sharply replies, "I didn't shoot anybody, I didn't hack anybody, I just woke up one morning and found out by the end of the day I could fly, all right?!"
"Isa, please," Asami pleads to her first, and then looks to Abby as she steps in between the two. Partly, she's relieved for that. But the closer the detective steps with the handcuffs, the less likely it looks like she'll stay in one spot. Which…
"I can't come in. If any government agency catches up with me, that's it. Then everyone who has powers like these— I don't know who else is going to help them. Who's going to wake them to what's rightfully theirs, who's going to— look out for them."
Asami shakes her head quickly, hands still lifted up enough Abby's going to have to reach high if she means to close the gap and try to lace the cuffs. "I was hoping you could help, because you're one of them," she explains in a rush, glancing over Abby's shoulder to Isa and then back to the blonde. "Both of you."
A moment passes.
"Okay."
Isabelle holsters her firearm and puts a hand on her hip. Giving Abby a look as if to say: trust me Jesus. But Isa had always been the more overzealous of the two.
Asami gives a brief of her story and Isa snorts and rolls her eyes. "We are definitely high." Rubbing her temple and briefly closing her eyes the brunette bows her head. Considering, what's been happening to her. The general feeling of something not being all that right.
Rightfully theirs.
"If you hadn't been literally fucking hovering right in front of us a fucking moment ago I would probably fucking shoot you… arrest you." Shaking her head and rubbing the back of it. Fuck.
"Okay the next timer is now ticking, prove it." Isabelle has been walking forward slowly this whole time and she stands at Abby's side. Firearm still holstered but she's openly glaring at the unknown woman. She doesn't have to like any of this but you can't argue with facts or what you see, unless you're drunk. Which Isabelle was not.
"What's my power, let me guess. Invisibility? What about Abby here? How about good ol fashioned telepathy?" Thalia had liked comics and superheroes. Thinking of her sister makes the woman even more angry.
Abby doesn’t look behind her to Isa. Her attention is completely on Asami. She knows she’s not high, or at least not voluntarily. But this is a run down building, there could be all manner of things left here that if they break down, could induce hallucinations. Or maybe there’s a meth lab underground or… somewhere in the building. There were plenty of reasons as to why there was a woman flying. She doesn’t lurch upward to get the cuffs around the woman but she does move just a little closer, both hands up in a non-threatening manner. Back up would be here soon enough, they’d track them down surely and then surround the building. So stalling was in order.
“If anything, Miss Tetsuzan, it sounds like you’ve had a mental break and if you’ll let us help you, we can make sure that you get the appropriate help for whatever your condition is. I promise you that we’ll help you to an appropriate facility that can assist you in your recovery, get you the medical help that you need.” Jesus, Isa stop feeding the delusion.
Isa's active listening with needling is one thing, but Abby's silent plan to stall brings Asami to look back to her, her frustration a thing she tries to lay over with calm. "Who says your back-up even knows to come into this building, anyway?" she snipes plainly, an indirect rejection to everything Abby just said. "Did you even tell them here is where you ended up? I don't think they're right behind you. Not yet."
Her head goes back and forth between the two of them, then back to Isa. "I can't— see exactly what it is. Not from here. Here, I can just see what's broken. It takes…" Asami hesitates a moment, a bout of self-consciousness hitting her for how insane this sounds. Her head quirks and she lets out a hard sigh, peering warily between Isa and Abby both. "It takes just a touch," she explains without making any move to try and attempt it. "Getting closer, looking inside to make the broken pieces line up and seal them back together."
So they were at an impasse, potentially. Asami wasn't keen on getting closer to being handcuffed, and at least one of them thought she was crazy.
"All I can see from over here, though, is just… I don't know, the potential?" These aren't things she's adequately developed a lexicon for, at least not one that's palatable. "I can see what was broken, and I can see how to fix it." She takes in a quick breath, trying to move on from that.
"All it takes is just a touch," Asami stresses again, trying— for what it's worth— to insist upon the harmlessness of what she wants should she end up being nothing more than what Abby thinks her to be.
"Oh for fucks sake Abby she was hovering in the air."
Maybe Isabelle has needed something to believe in, so lost in her grief over Thalia's murder. Her addiction problems, the way she was utterly failing to cope even all these years later.
Or possibly the woman is just the same as always, wanting to get to the point and if the woman in front of her had answers about the weirdness going on in their lives.
She reaches forward and yanks Asami's hand towards her, gripping tightly. "Go on already, do the bullshit." Waving her free hand in the air, while looking over at her partner. "If she's crazy then I'm crazy and we can both go to the loony bin, okay?"
“Shit.” On so many levels. Did she talk out loud? Abby’s pretty sure she didn’t talk out loud. But she’s pretty good at being readable. Everything’s usually written on her face. Shit, because she froze for a moment and Isabelle’s past her, reaching out to grasp at Asami’s hand and not with the intent to cuff the woman. “What are you doing?” She yells at her partner, darting forward to try and slap a cuff around the previously floating womans - Has to be a meth lab somewhere - wrist and try to yank her away from Isabelle, leather gloves barring her from making skin contact for now. “Don’t!”
Asami blinks when Isa grabs her wrist. She shouldn't have— why did she let that happen? What if the hotheaded woman had other impulsive plans in mind than just to see if Asami was capable of what she claims? She feels the compulsion to fix stir, and that's her answer. That it starts to take over her motivations should startle her into backing off, but as ever, it's too late for that.
The shorter woman accepts the yank forward gratefully, free hand already lifting to touch Isa's brow by the time Abby begins to lunge. When Isa turns back to see for herself whatever the hell is supposed to be happening, she finds Asami's eyes shifted to a brilliant searing gold color, widened in fascination. Her head tilts just slightly.
Isa begins to feel— off. Overwhelmed. Like all the moments her unresolved grief bubble to the surface, unable to be hidden back any longer. It doesn't live in her stomach, it lives in her very bones, in her essence, in all of her, and it—
Asami's expression flickers with shock, regret at the last moment. But it's far too late to stop herself now.
—it burns.
All three women let out various cries, Abby and Asami both stumbling back from Isa who wails in agony, hunched over and radiating a painful, searing heat. She begins to glow from within, her bones appearing a blinding white through her skin. Eyes still gold, Asami looks down at her left wrist where Isa had grabbed it — a painful, brown handprint left behind. The bones of her own hand flicker momentarily with the same energy radiating from Isa, but she snaps it back quickly under control.
Unlike the woman whose power she awakened.
"N-n…" Asami stumbles a step back, looking at Isa and then away from her, to Abby. Before the gold in her eyes fades back to a more mundane color, she's seized by something, and shuffles a step closer to her instead.
She hesitates on what to say before her eyes harden. "Do you believe me now?" Now she reaches openly for Abby. "Hurry," she insists without further explanation, brow furrowing.
Insides burn as a scream echoes around the room the trio are in.
Isabelle's eyes remain wide, filled with surprise and a searing pure white. Her scream starts as a low moan, quickly escalating into a full blown roar as her body changes, into… something else.
Yanking her hand away from Asami, shaking her head at the hand print left behind, "Argh… the fuck…" Her partner probably shouldn't have whatever she is having. "Abby, wait— no!" But that's the thing with charging ahead with little to no thinking beforehand, you don't always get to take a step back.
A wave of heat and energy bursts off from Isabelle's form and she falls to one knee, both hands slamming to the ground and digging in. Her skin becomes more red and angry, wisps of smoke curl off of her back. With a groan she tries to reach for the other two.
"Hurry?" Abigail looks at Asami with horror as she tears her gaze away from whatever is happening to her partner. "Hurry? What did you do to her?!" Abby doesn't reach for Asami's hand despite the woman’s offering. Abby's going for her gun instead, by instinct as her partner has been attacked in some fashion. She draws and flips the safety in one movement before aiming for the bulk of Asami's chest and pulls the trigger to empty or attempt to empty a shot into the woman's chest. Then keeps pulling the trigger in quick succession and attempts to empty the entire clip into the woman's chest.
Oh.
Asami staggers from the first shot, and all the rest find home in her torso and gut as well. An anguished look comes over her face as she pulls deeper into focus and—
Her hand goes through her gut, comes back holding one of the bloodied bullets. Her eyes glaze over as she looks down at it, and one by one, the rest of the six bullets clatter to the ground, falling through her. With a wearied sigh, she lets the spent bullet in her hand fall to the ground as well, brow knitting together as she places her hand back to her stomach.
"We don't have time for this," Asami snaps in a flare of anger, her eyes beginning to glow again— a brightness not nearly as piercing as the white shine Isa puts off. She straightens, left arm out before her in a very clear telegraph of her intent to reach for Abby. "She needs you," she explains in frustration.
Her right hand snapping out suddenly for Abby's face once she gets in range is a less-obvious thing until it's upon her.
She has no more bullets. The clip is empty and there's a panicked look on the blonde woman's face as the bullets hit and the woman doesn't go down. Stagger yes, but doesn't go down. Then the bullets hit the floor and blue eyes track each one that falls to the floor.
"Oh god, what are you—" She looks up and is too late to step back as Asami's there and there's a hand in her face. "I have children—" She bleats out, as if that might make the woman back off. But fear roots her in place, the clip empty and her left just terrified.
Asami's hand wraps around Abby's face, fingers arched and digging in painfully as she looks deeply into her eyes. The gold of them bore into the single one of hers that is able to clearly see her, panic encroaching.
Stop is the terrified thought that repeats over and over in Abby's thoughts. Stop. Stop!
And abruptly everything does stop, in a way.
Asami's eyes stop glowing. The anger-spurned strength to her grip becomes more human, grip being released a second after. Isa's painful glow flickers like a flame slowly being deprived of air, making a few valiant attempts to reignite before her skeleton quiets, leaving only what's already begun smoking as signs of what nearly happened.
Abby, for all the horror the moment holds, possesses a calm clarity that she is the source of the forced peace within Isa, preventing her pain from consuming her.
Asami retreats back quickly from Abby and Isa both, her position rotated so the door is at her back now. She's more alert than she was before, more on edge than ever. "See?" Asami implores. "See what you can do!?"
"We have such tools at our disposal. Ones you deserve to have. But now— if you don't keep what you can do to yourself…" With a stammered shake of her head. "They put a manhunt on for me. Who knows what they'll do should others…"
A nervous edge of laughter leaves her. "I'd say sorry. But I'm not. I'm sorry I'm not."
Isa stands still and looks between the two other women.
Eyes fading back to hazel, bones no longer glowing beneath pale skin. The pain she felt, the energy walled off by something as cold as ice. Or at least her mind interpreted Abby's ability in that way. Her eyes are clear now though, pacified by the power.
"You wake this up inside us, give no real information. If you cared for our survival, you'd equip us with more than…" She doesn't feel the need to swear, "Who, what group, how large, names."
Its not taking all of Isabelle to not scream bloody murder because she's been manipulated into a calm space, her next words ring clear, "Talk." A moment.
"Since we don't have any backup coming here right now."
There’ll be cops at some point. The street cop had presumably called in a foot pursuit of a heavily wanted individual. But Abby has no more bullets and she’s in shock at the moment as she stares down at her hands and arms, turning in spot and looking around her, points of red on her face where Asi’s fingers had gripped her. They’ll fade soon enough. “What did you do…” Isa may be calm but Abby’s not and the only calm coming off the woman is the negation that keeps Isa’s ability at bay.
She scrubs at her face with her hand, pulling her hands back to look at them then to Asi. “What’s wrong with me? You did something.” Then she’s striding forward. “FIX IT!” Hands coming out to grab the woman by the lapels of her jacket. “FIX. THIS RIGHT NOW. RIGHT THE FUCK NOW.” Fear gives way to rage.
"You wanted proof!" Asami gives a single broken bark of a laugh as Isa comes back to her feet. "How else did you expect me to prove what was in you? How did you expect me to get you to believe? You told me to do the bullshit, so I did."
It feels so quiet now. She can't pick up on the swirl of thoughts from either of them once any emerge with clarity. She can't hear them at all. That isn't so much an issue with Isa, but—
Abby's striding forward snaps Asami's attention back to her, her hands lifting. She slides a half-step back as she bats Abby's hands aside. "There's nothing wrong with you now. You are fixed."
"Listen, I wanted your help because I don't know the names of the people who did this to us," Asami admits, sounding grudging over her lack of greater answers. "I don't know who to hunt down for the hows, the whys. All I know is the government's involved— if they're saying I hacked the Pentagon, then there's Department of Defense Involvement. They were monitoring me, so that implies the NSA had eyes on others like us, too." Shaking her head, she stresses, "Since you're law enforcement, I figured you'd have a better chance at finding out specifics than I would."
"I didn't think your power would turn out to be what it was," she says with a look to Isa. The ability she carried inside her would be so difficult to mask. Maybe impossible. "So you need to be careful. Calm, or else…"
If she had another emotional meltdown, who knew how that could manifest.
Abby's ability doing steady work on Isabelle, making it so she takes it all in stride. Walking forward to place a hand on Abby's shoulder, "Let's go."
Another hand places a white business card in Asami's hands. "Call in two days. NSA is above our pay grade, but favors can maybe be called in." She shrugs, taking this all calmly, serene. Not happy, just direct. "Spilt milk," Shrugging again, "I'll manage fine." Probably a lie but she can't be bothered at the moment. "We'll need all your tech wiz prowess to discover why they've been watching anyway I'm betting."
Turning her back to the almost stranger that she's shared an intimate moment with now, "Abby. Let's go."
The only thing keeping Abby from moving further and slapping handcuffs on Asi, is Isa. The swatted away hands only seems to make her persist in moving forward, getting ready to use the more martial training she received, opening her mouth to start talking. “You have the ri—” And then Isa’s hand is on her shoulder, firm and keeping her where she is.
Nostrils flare, corners of them turn white but then there’s the order from her partner again to go and she regards the other woman. “We can’t!” She looks ready to tear away from Isa and have at Asi. “She’s wanted, we called it in, I don’t do this Isa and you know this. If she’s innocent then she can damn well prove it in court! This is the law!” She nearly yells at the other detective. “She did something to you! To me! What if she’s responsible for what happened before!”
All the while Asami continues to edge back toward the door anyway. "Then tell them a version of what happened," she suggests, lifting her voice to make sure she's still heard. "I attacked you. I got away." Her brow knits together for a moment, hesitating on saying more, on staying longer, on understanding what Abby means by what happened before…
But she can hear nearing sirens filtering in from the street. Time is running out. And the longer she stays in proximity to Abby, the longer she can't access the tools— the powers that have been keeping her alive this long.
She shakes her head once. "I'll find you again," Asami promises, then she turns and sprints from the boarded-up building with all the energy her tiring form can muster, away from them and away from the sounds of sirens.
And then Asami is getting away. Abby grits her teeth. “Isa!” Hesitation in going after Asi. Especially since she knows that whatever the woman did, is what is keeping her partner from… what? What can the woman do? Glowing bones, smoking… what the hell is it that she’s doing? She’s not been one to read comic books. Clandestine actions are not her bailiwick. Letting a suspect or wanted fugitive get away is not in her playbook. Abby runs a hand through her hair, looking to the sirens, the fleeing fugitive then back to the sirens. “God damnit. All the paperwork…” Fired guns, each bullet, reports about what happened. “Damnit Isa!”
"Our pile of paperwork will never be done, it's a myth." Isabelle is still calm and she doesn't look as the woman flies away but she does look at her partner. As Abby's emotions run wild, the grip placed on Isabelle loosens and her hazel eyes widen a touch, truly being able to appreciate the glowing of the bones in her dominant hand.
"Just breathe," Taking her own advice and breathing slowly, deeply.
"We'll figure this shit out Abs. Now calm yourself before I blow up a city block or something." A feeling of fear in her heart, what would happen when she got near her husband?
By the time the two detectives head for the street, the nearing police vehicles whine loud and close, drawn by the initial report put in as much as the calls of shots fired. It isn't long before there's a patrolcar pulled up to the curb of the building the altercation had taken place in, the two officers inside stepping out to get an idea of just what's going on. While Isa's initial calm starts the conversation, it's Abby that takes over before long. From where they both stand, they can hear the shoulder radio of one of the cops chirp with updates— Asami's stolen a motorcycle a few blocks away. More details begin to filter in about where it was last sighted and headed.
Isa's started looking up, distracted from that news as a different sound catches her ears. The distant sound of helicopter rotors— like the kind of helicopter Shaw flies. Exactly like the kind Shaw flies.
When she pulls out her phone, suddenly feeling the need to check it and attempt to reach out to him, she finds it unusable. Just a dead device rendered inoperable by the lash of the violent, powerful potential within her.
She and Abby share a quick look before she slides it away again, both doing their best to spin the story of what happened inside the building behind them… as well write out the parts that now desperately needed to remain secret.