Andie gazed down from her perch on a skyscraper window’s awning, carefully watching the scrambled thought doodles orbiting a midnight pedestrian’s head. The thought doodles were cubist in style, but had been steadily degrading into a more cluttered and abstract state for the past several minutes. The pedestrian herself was leaning back on a public bench, a bag of snacks from the local convenience store resting next to her. It was obvious from her face that she was stewing in her own miserable thoughts, but Andie could tell it wasn’t too bad. Clearly, life sucked for the poor woman, but she didn’t look like she was in any danger of… giving up.

“Hey, Andie. How’s the search coming along?” Cedric floated up to Andie, using his healing drone as a levitating platform. “Me and Dyllan haven’t found anyone particularly out of it, but there’s a mopey kid over on Patriot Lane.”

“That’s a good plan B, but I think I’ve found someone that could genuinely use some help. Plus, she’s all alone -” A snap of Andie’s fingers sent a jolt through the body of the pedestrian, immediately sending her into an upright position. Then, just as suddenly as the jolt came, it left - leaving the pedestrian to slump over and fall asleep. Andie could still remember the first time she had used this trick. She’d thought that she killed the poor kid she used it on, and had freaked out for a solid minute. “- so we can start right away.”

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“Perfect. I’ll go get Dyllan while you scout ahead.” Cedric glanced over toward the pedestrian, watching as electric green smoke started to billow out of her. “Remember, scouting does not mean ‘hit it in the face until we show up,’ it means ‘carefully observe from the shadows until we show up.’ Okay?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Andie rolled her eyes. “Don’t solo the raid boss, I know. Give me some credit, man!” She frowned. “I haven’t tried any dumb shit like that in a long time.”

“Sorry. I know that you know what you’re doing, and I really should trust you and Dyllan more...” Cedric sighed in frustration. “…but we’re putting our lives on the line here! I can’t help but worry.”

Andie nodded understandingly, then waited for Cedric to leave. There had been altogether too many heartfelt moments in the past week. Not that she minded a bit of sappiness. It was just… frustrating to be so out of her element, to be sitting around and tending to wounds.

She was really looking forward to facing a problem that could be solved with a good old-fashioned face stabbing.