"You ready for this?" Harper whispered in the darkness. Her hood completely obscured her face, and she looked like a shadow.
Felix was just as inconspicuous. "Yeah," he replied, walking forward and out from behind the safety of the wall of the building they had been hiding behind.
What he saw ahead of him caused fury to well within his chest. Two men were standing over an unconscious woman, and it didn't take someone of Kyle's caliber to guess what they were planning. Felix did his best to bury that rage as he spoke.
"Hi! I'm looking for the nearest fast food joint. Do you guys know where I might find one?" he asked, doing his best impression of a completely naïve tourist. All he needed to do was to convince them to not kill or maim him outright; he needed to gather information for the next stage of the plan.
The guy on the left, the one closer to the woman, had his hand on something attached to his waist. A gun, then. The other man literally held a bat in quite possibly the worst attempt to hide it. It was halfway up his jacket sleeve, making him look like he wore a splint. It would have been comical if these two men weren't scum.
With a little wave, Felix bid goodbye to the men as he restored himself to how he was ten seconds ago.
"You ready for this?" Harper whispered for the second time. Whoops, Felix had meant to appear after this. It was a shame that the power to control time was given to someone who had the barest inkling of its passing.
"Already done. There are two men. The one in the back has a gun, and the one closer to us has a metal bat. Be careful, yeah?" Felix detailed the situation. Now it was up to Harper to see the rest of their plan through.
She nodded and paused. To Felix, it looked like she was zoning out, but he knew that she was summoning her power. Unlike his, it wasn't instantaneous. Maybe it could be, with time, but Harper hadn't seen much in the months she'd had her powers.
Then, she opened her eyes. Felix didn't see any difference in her, but that was because black clothing covered her entire body in the same way that it did for him. With any luck, she wouldn't get shot at all. She shot off like a rock from a sling.
Felix wanted to watch her hit the men with everything she was worth, but if he got accidentally shot, there could be consequences. As far as his powers went, if he died instantly – like through getting shot in the head – there would be no rewinding time.
A gun went off, its harsh crack breaking the relative stillness of the night. Moments later, a man screamed. The gun didn't make a sound anymore; Harper had managed to disable him, somehow. Feeling relatively secure, Felix looked into the alley.
The man with the bat was better than the average person. Much better. He realized that there would be no beating Harper so long as she was made of steel. If a gun couldn't destroy her defenses, a bat surely wouldn't. He bought himself time, avoiding Harper's big movements. Rolling, sliding, leaping: he did everything in the book.
This was taking too long. Harper's power was going to run out at any moment. As soon as he thought it, Harper cursed. "Felix!" she called out, running his way. Though her powers granted her increased toughness and strength, she was not nearly as trained at brawling as Felix. And when she couldn't use her powers, she wasn't as strong as Felix, either.
He sprinted forward, intercepting the man with the bat. Though the snake tried to slip from his grasp, Felix held tight, getting behind the man. He took a few jabs from the bat, but with such little distance between them, the weapon couldn't develop the momentum it needed to really hurt. Ivan could do so much worse.
Felix wrapped his arms around the man's neck, squeezing until his opponent's body went limp. He unceremoniously dumped the unconscious man on the ground and looked around for Harper, who was standing right next to him.
"Good job," Harper said, already dialing the police. Felix nodded, checking up on the woman on the ground. She was still unconscious, but she didn't seem to have any injuries. She'd probably been drugged.
When the classic red and blue of the police began to light up the alley, Felix and Harper made themselves scarce. They didn't want to out their identities. Well, Harper didn't want to out her identity; she was the only one of them that had done anything outwardly impossible that night. No one could tell if Felix rewound time or not: only he could. Prisoners talked, and if they knew Harper's name, she'd be inviting a world of trouble.
They sped towards 16th, the larger street being well-illuminated and pretty far from the mess they'd just left. Slowing to a walk, Harper began laughing. Felix looked at his partner-in-not-crime. "What?" he asked.
"That was so much fun!" Harper exclaimed. "We have got to do this again!"
Felix shook his head. Adrenaline junkies. Still, he didn't see any harm in helping the world be just the tiniest bit safer. "Yeah, we do."
Harper stopped walking, looking at him. "But for now… maybe you'd like to stop by my place?"
Felix felt like he'd just hit a wall of bricks. What had she just said?