[indent][center][img]https://i.imgur.com/16dO9Jx.png[/img][/center][COLOR=yellow][INDENT][B][SUP][SUB][H3]L O N G  I S L A N D[/H3][/SUB][/SUP][/B][/INDENT][hr][/COLOR][sup][color=darkgray]Night  |  Queens Borough, New York City[/color][/sup]

The wind pounded into Scott's ears with a roar no lion could match as they shot across Brooklyn and into Queens. He jerked the steering wheel to the side to narrowly avoid a car turning into the street he was busy barreling down at dangerous speeds, ignoring every red light along the way. He could already practically hear the professor chiding him about such recklessness, but on this particular night, Scott wasn't all too concerned with following the rules of the road. Anger was cutting through his veins like a virus, seeping into his fingers and forcing them to clamp down on the wheel hard enough to make his knuckles go white.

Jean had been right. Putting the pedal to the metal had gotten them to the 105th precinct in just ten minutes' time. He let his foot loose off the gas at the sound of sirens- they weren't approaching, though; it actually appeared he was coming up on them from behind. The building melded into view as he rounded the corner, revealing a fleet of cop cars as they sped out of the station's garage in pursuit of their mutant attacker. The sight of it made Summers' stomach drop.

Only two nights ago a psychopath who just happened to be a mutant murdered a pair of New York's Finest. It didn't take a mind reader to feel the rage bubbling just beneath the surface of those officers as they raced after the culprit. There were no reports of casualties coming out of the precinct, at least not yet, but...that wouldn't matter. Not when a bunch of angry cops with guns got their hands on whoever did this.

"We'll get to 'em him, Scott." Jean placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder, snapping Summers back into the present.

He had a half a mind to give her the 'no mindreading' spiel again, but it felt like a waste of breath at this point. Instead, he let his hand fall down to the gear shifter and eased the gas back down, pushing past the precinct once the police cruisers had gone on their way. "We don't have a lot of time before they catch his trail. Do you think you can reach out to him? Find out which way he went?"

Jean gave a hesitant nod, falling back into her seat so she could concentrate. Her eyes slipped closed and her mind's eye opened in the same instant, revealing to her a hundred faces in her immediate vicinity. 'Face' wasn't an accurate term- not really. What she saw was more of an...imprint. A brief, surface-level imaging of a mind. It was easy to parse through them when they were like this, though it took a bit of strain to reach out for specific traits that might stand out. 

'Mutant' was an easy one, letting all the faces that word didn't resonate with melt away. There was Scott right beside her, his image far more detailed than most. And there were a handful of others. A child hidden under a blanket with her cellphone, pretending to be asleep. An old man knocked out on his favorite chair. The police officers spreading out in front of her, though their connection to the word was...dark, to say the least. But she couldn't find their perpetrator. 

She cycled through a few labels the criminal might give him or herself without any luck. Whoever they were, they didn't [i]seem[/i] to affiliate themselves with the seedier parts of New York City's underbelly. It was possible they weren't any kind of thief, gangster or mobster- this might've been the first thing like this they'd ever done. Hell of a start to a career.

Jean furrowed her brow, glancing over at the precinct itself as they drove past it. She noticed a window was broken and glass had been shattered across the lawn. It was quite a fall. At that height, most ordinary people wouldn't have been able to stand back up, let alone escape the police. She zeroed in on a new word. 'Pain.'

"I've got him," Grey told Summers, raising her voice to be heard over the wind and the sirens. "Keep going straight, then hang a right." There was something...off about him. The imprint read like it was two [i]different[/i] people, completely distinct from one another yet placed right on top of each other. One of the faces was recognizable as a person, but the other...The other felt horribly alien. Its very presence near her mind made her throat tighten and her eyes water. It was like nothing she'd ever felt before.

The convertible's driver was none the wiser to the nature of the thing they chased, however, and eagerly pressed on in the direction Jean had pointed him to. Scott's heart was pounding against his chest as he tore across the pavement light lightning, glancing over at his mirrors every other second to keep an eye out for the police that were so very near to them. Trees, houses and the night sky raced passed them on either side like a blur of green, browns and black. He slammed down hard on the break the moment they reached the intersection, skidding across the pavement to make the turn in record time. They were off to the races again without pause, soaring down the road with abandon.

Sure enough, though, his recklessness had proven fruitful: their prey's back had come into sight.

Whoever he was, he appeared to be wrapped up in some kind of costume. He was dressed head to toe in a skintight suit as black as midnight like you'd expect any thief at this hour to be- but then there was that big, ugly beetle symbol stretched all along his back, painted on in a blinding white. When juxtaposed on the field of black that was the rest of his suit, it sort of looked like a giant target.

"You see him, Jean?!" Cyclops roared, his fingers dancing across the rubber of the steering wheel with an equal  measure of anxiety, excitement, and anger. "Let's slow him down!"

Jean blinked a few times to get the block splotches out of her eyes, nodding in agreement. She stuck her arms out the side of the car, keeping her palms held straight out and her digits as widely spread as possible. She focused fully on a bundle of objects sitting on the side of the street that they were rapidly approaching: a couple of garbage bins full to the brim with trash and a mailbox filled with much the same. She took in a deep, ragged breath, willing her mind to grasp each of the containers with an unseen hand. A silent scream fled through her parted lips as she strained to tear the mailbox's post from the dirt and lift the pair of surprisingly heavy bins from the ground, bringing them into the air and dragging them alongside as they approached the mutant from the back.

"Hey, pal, you got mail!" She shouted, heaving her arms forward and willing the objects to fling through the air toward the black-clad man's back.
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