Greg liked to think that he had at average, a normal level of 'whatever' luck. Never too unbelievably lucky, either good or bad. An average level of luck, for an average sort of guy.

Hmm.

Unfortunately, nowadays his status of 'painfully average' was at tremendous risk of being toppled. Shrink a foot or two and everything just turns all out of whack. Not to mention the terrible crime of misplacing 'Greg junior'. It wasn't his fault, the darned thing just up and disappeared without his say so! Whats a growing lad to do, when his body just up and decides to switch back and forth between lad and lass? Whine, complain, mope and whine some more, apparently. There's just nothing to be done otherwise.

Greg thought he had prepared enough. He made a kickass robot arm, and a whole fleet of robo minions! True, that asshole Stormtiger had crushed a bunch when he decided the building they had been standing on should... NOT be standing anymore, but who needed an army of minions? Dumb people, that's who. Mom said it wasn't how much you had, but how well you used it. Sure, dad had laughed uproariously at that, but Greg held faith in the message itself. Too bad that asshole had also wrecked his throne, that thing might have been a bit useful now as well.

Aforementioned musings of luck reared their ugly heads once more, as Greg was forced to admit that as of late, his day on average had ended up being rather unlucky. Sure, he had been blessed to wake up to such a sight of beauty this morning but- NO, Bad Greg, not the time- the day had only seen fit to cap off what had been rather enjoyable with something that rather wasn't.

Greg found himself running a lot these days, he mused morosely to himself. Running away from guys with guns, running away from nazis with fart powers, running away from more nazis but now with bullshit powers...

"Your powers shouldn't friggin work, you clod!" He yelled out behind him as he ran.

"Are you seriously taunting the angry nazi? Seriously?" Sparky nearly screamed in his ear, feet beating against the street below them almost as swiftly as Gregs own. He had to take more steps due to shorter legs, give him a break.

"He's a nazi, it goes without saying that he's probably angry," Greg reasoned, dodging to the side as a tire bounced between them. It continued on its way, crashing into a car and disappearing down a side alley. "Could be blacks, maybe jews. perhaps his eggs were too runny with slightly burnt toast, I dunno." Greg didn't know why he couldn't shut up. As Sparky pointed out, riling up the roid filled nazi did little to improve their current situation. Despite that, Greg felt yet another quip sliding its way down out of his brain, struggling to escape from his lips. "Ha, juice. Nazis hate juice."

"Fucking seriously?!?" came the frenzied, almost desperate cry from Sparky once more.

"Only when I have to be."

Greg wasn't sure why Krieg was chasing them. The burly nazi had done little to explain himself beyond hurling obscenities at them as soon as he had walked in through the front door of Fuglys. A shame that, wouldn't be good advertisement for them, for people to know that nazis can just walk in the front door. Need to have a slogan, 'leave your swastikas at the door', or something. Nazis didn't leave home without them, right? No shirt, no shoes, no swastikas, no service... wait, no, that doesn't sound right. Whatever. Suffice to say, Greg wouldn't be visiting that Fuglies any time soon. They'd more than likely be shutting down for a week or two to fix the giant hole they had in the front window. And replacing the fryer that Krieg had thrown through said window.

Yes, Greg had been standing in front of said window when Krieg had thrown the fryer, why do you ask?

So, they were forced to run. They could have stayed and tried to fight... but the fryer rendered that as a slightly foolish idea. Running was much safer for everyones health. Especially for all the innocent civilians, who might have gotten caught up in such a fight. Krieg didn't seem to give much thought to the safety of others. Speaking of...

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"Car," Greg blandly mused, ducking slightly as he jerked to the side.

"What?" Sparkys confusion was short lived, the flying remains of the shattered Buick hurling overhead and barely missing Gregs own.

"Where'd you learn how to drive, ya rube!?" Greg hurled back. If he couldn't throw a two ton car back at the bastard, then he'd have to settle for annoying the shit out of him.

"Fucking stay still and just die already!"

"Stop trying to kill me and maybe I would!" It wasn't the best comeback, but Greg wasn't operating under the best of circumstances.

Dodging another flung mailbox -and really, who even used those anymore? What was the point of dotting them across every street corner?- Greg turned to his friend with a questioning glance. "Can't you fling something back at him?"

"Maybe if he was allergic to cups of water, but I don't think that's gonna do much good!" Sparky snarled.

"I dunno, maybe he's like a cat!" Greg parried back, "Or a wicked witch!"

"He is a bit of a bitch," Sparky found himself joking.

"That's the spirit- AGH, watch it ya clod!" Greg screeched back at Kreig as the man decided to throw another manhole cover at them. Greg had tried to throw the first one back at Krieg, but he was still inexperienced with his ferrokinesis. The mass was simply too large, moving too fast. He might be able to control such a thing with practice, but at the moment it was out of his expertise. "You could have killed me with that!"

"I'm trying to, you stupid slag!" was the frenzied reply. His further comments were cut off as a splash of water temporarily blinded him.

Greg spared a second to glance behind, watching as Krieg pawed at his eyes.

"Can't you do something bigger?"

"How bout you do something bigger?"

Greg paused, the comeback jogging his brain worse than the actual jogging.

"Didn't you say you could make water wings?" he asked, dodging around a flying trashcan. "Like, flight wings?"

"Yes? No! I mean, kinda...?"

"So fly us away or something!"

"I can barely get off the ground on my own, how the hell do you expect me to be able to carry your fat carcass too?" Sparky punctuated his words with a flourish of water collecting from a nearby stormdrain behind her back. She then flexed them twice, lifting off from the ground by a mere inch.

Greg snorted, juking around a a pothole. "So just make the wings bigger! They're just water, right?"

Sparky started, an expression of surprise flitting across her features. A slight burst of effort, and a fishtank in a store window we were running past lost a couple inches and a goldfish. Poor goldfishy was deposited down another stormdrain, occupational hazards of living anywhere near a cape. Living in Brockton Bay, it was perfectly understandable for more than a couple goldfish to be lost to the nefarious wiles of evil.

Sparky grabbed Greg around the midsection, lifting her bodily as they rose... another three inches off the ground.

"More water!" Greg crowed, wiggling in Sparkys embrace.

"It's not doing anything!" Sparky panicked, jerking to the side as Krieg screamed behind them in incoherent rage.

"How 'bout you stop chasing us, ya dink!" Greg yelled back over Sparkys shoulder. "Turn right, up here! The pads just up here!"

"That's what you said last time!"

"Its not my fault they have three different streets called Alexandria street!"Greg replied vehemently.

"They're not all called Alexandria!"

True, they weren't all called the same thing. But what did you expect to happen when you just added Blvd, Ave, and other such nonsense to the same name? Wasn't it enough to have different names?

Turning at the end of an alley, dodging various debris the musclebound dumbass threw their way. Greg knew that the transport pad had been completed by the robonoids she had deployed to construct it, but the silly things liked to procrastinate. Who knows what could go wrong, especially in the most dire of moments? She let out a loose snort at the thought.

"Here, here, here, here!" Peridot crowed as they skidded to a halt. The pad was a flat platform of raised crystal, camouflaged to look like the asphalt surrounding it.

Jumping up on the platform, they both beheld the sight of an enraged musclehead rounding the corner.

"Smell ya later," Peridot called out as light slowly bloomed around her and Lapis, "Ya Clod!"

Just before the last vestiges of trasn-light swallowed them, Peridot saw someone fall from the sky and land on the road behind Krieg. A halo of brown hair framed a silhouette, a rose tinged blade held aloft.

A twinge in her heart heralded the absence of the shadowed woman.

"Shit," Sparky wheezed, staggering to the side of Gregs basement.

Greg stood silent, stunned at the last traces of memory desperately tried to maintain their hold on him. She had been familiar.

"Yeah..."