I Know You're Out There! {open}

[Tim Lyne]

See this? This was the part of the job that Tim hated. Not the whole going out into Downtown, though with the Christmas decorations up, Tim did have some reservations about that. No, it was the fact that here he was, sent out to find a student that was wandering without permission. Honest to God. That was the plan. Find the student who's wandered off, the poor, lost little lamb, and return them to the flock.

Did he look like a shepherd?

Tim paused to look at the display, seeing exactly that sitting there. Yep, shepherd. Wa. Hoo. This was just way too much work, even with his power, and the picture they'd given him. Sighing, Tim dug his phone out of his pocket, flipping through till he landed on the picture. Yep, there it was, a picture of a kid. Now he just needed to follow the buzzing.

Because finding one meta in a town of them was totally easy.

"Come out come out, wherever you are!" called Tim. Muttering, he shoved the phone into his pocket and stomped. A buzz, a hint, and an "aha!" Tim lunged forward, grabbing onto the meta with at least matching hair and right height.

"Hold it right there you---" he called. Then paused. Did he get the right person? Where was that picture again?

[Cassidy Mitro]

((This has been open for way way too long! *hogs again* I'm sorry!))

It was unbelievably easy to sneak out of Hammel. Of course, once she was out, she found that she was just a little night blind again. This caused little Cassie to walk down one street then another and another and another until she was totally and absolutely so lost that she was about to break into tears and cry. Sounds became louder and louder as the night wore on and it never occured to her that anyone would care enough to be looking for her. At that point things were pretty hopeless and she was pretty scared. She avoided people.

She avoided the busy streets because her palms were flickering again. She had to shove them in her pockets to avoid being too obvious. Her shoulders shrugged under the heavy straps of the back pack. Yes, Cassie had decided, she was gonna run away back home... only she had no idea how to get from Vermont to New York. She had yanked a piece of paper out of one of the library books that showed the US. Apparently she was five hundred and sixty seven kilometers away from home. She reckoned it would take about 6 hours to drive. How long would it take to walk?

Before Cassie could attempt to work out how fast she was walking she heard someone walking down the alleyway behind her and her eyes widened. She quickly dashed behind a trashcan and crouched down whimpering when he called for her to come out. She had to make a run for it. When she did, however, a pair of arms wrapped quickly around her waist and she struggled in them, screaming as loud as she could. Not a word a man wanted to here though when he had his arms wrapped around a tiny girl. Another thing her daddy taught her.

"NO! DON'T TOUCH ME THERE! IT'S MY PRIVATE PLACE! RAPE!"
Cassie shot him a smirk before sticking her tongue out at him. She steadied herself and aimed a kick right at his nuts where her daddy had taught her to kick.

[Tim Lyne]

"What?" spat Tim, immediately letting go of the girl. "The hell? Are you nuts? I get plenty of action, plus, you're like ten years too young."

But she was definitely the girl. The buzzing in his head told him that much, plus the familiar expression. Now that he was actually within range, Tim could see why they'd been so persistent in making sure he came out to look for her. She was way too young to be wandering around Pilot Ridge. They didn't even let kids her age roam the place, right? You had to be in at least your third year or something.

That sounded right, anyway.

"Would you stop screaming?" asked Tim. People were starting to gather and stare, and even though Tim had backed up a lot, he was pretty sure this didn't look good. Sighing, he rubbed at his face, wishing that he'd bullied Ella into going with him or something. Hell, at this point, he'd take Evgeny.

"I don't suppose offering to buy you ice cream helps my case any?"

[Cassidy Mitro]

Cassidy was let gone of which was what she wanted and she quickly dusted herself off turning to the man that had captured her before she noticed her screaming had worked. She smirked at the idiot that had tried to get her to go back to that god aweful place that she had to stay in before she pulled back and stumbled away from him. She had to keep pretending that she was being hurt by the guy. She knew that much. Cassie backed away just as he had glaring at him as he mentioned the ice cream.

"NO! I don't want ice cream anymore. It tastes funny and it's not really ice cream if it's attached to you is it! "
Cassie twisted to someone and grabbed at their hand turning her desprate blue eyes up at the elder man.
"Please help me. I wanna go home. To New York. He took me away from my home. Him and his friends. Please help me."
The man she'd held onto gave a yelp and pulled abruptly away from her hand staring at the red on his hands.

She lowered her eyes to her palms and flinched away from the bright light glowing in her palms. Those few people that had gathered around them when she'd cried for help, just had to take one look at her glowing palms before they disperced immediately.
"NO WAIT!!!"

[Tim Lyne]

"What? I told you, you are way too damn young for that! Seriously, do I even look like a child--" he turned, looking into the face of a rather accusatory old lady who'd wandered close by. Her eyes had narrowed dangerously, and she looked like the type to carry mace. Tim smiled, raising a finger to point at her. "Don't answer that."

He turned back to the girl, figuring he should at least try one other thing before calling for help. Ella this time though, because there was absolutely no way he was calling the bossman in for a girl who wasn't out of training bras yet. Cassidy wasn't about to stop talking though, carrying on her act. Worse:

"Well, yeah, that part's true," admitted Tim. Though he couldn't actually remember whether he'd been the recruiter who'd gone and picked up Cassidy or whether that had been someone else. It was all irrelevent details in the end, really. "I'm from Hammel. I've got a badge and everything."

Thank God he actually remembered that this time. At least a few people were nodding now, though several others were looking skeptical. That didn't last long though, since Cassidy started burning and turning on the lights. Tim nearly fumbled his own badge as he saw the girl start to glow. Like he shouldn't have been expecting her to actually use a power of some kind.

"Whoa!" he yelled. His brain buzzed more fiercely than ever, nearly ringing in his ears now. "Turn down the light show, kid. I swear, I'm not going to do anything to you! I'm not like that!"

No, that would require work. In fact, Tim was half tempted to go report in that he couldn't find the girl. Except, knowing his luck, they'd call him in to trace her long distance or do that crazy s**t with the GPS unit again. The headache had lasted weeks last time.

"Look, just chill out. I'm not gonna do anything, I swear. Well, I gotta take you back to the school, but I'm not doing anything besides that."

[Cassidy Mitro]

Cassie nearly screamed when he told her to whoa. She twisted to the recruiter who was fumbling with his badge and she glared like she was about to tear him appart with her glowing hands. She was really really pissed off right now. All she wanted to do was be a normal little girl again and be back home with her mom and dad where she was safe and wanted and accepted. Not here among freaks like herself acting as a constant reminder that she was a freak too. Cassidy glared at Tim and shook her head as tears formed in her eyes.

The glow was passing through her body, up across her arms and already the irises in her eyes were melting into white. She had to stop it. She had to stop. Cassie closed her eyes letting the stray tears roll down her cheeks.
"I'm trying... I can't. This is your fault! If you people would just have left me alone I would have been fine and I don't care what you do to me. I just wanna be able to go home afterwards..."
Yup, she had no idea what she was saying.

She wanted to go home! Where six year old Lacey was. Where her mom was. Where her dad was. She just wanted to go home. Why didn't they get that!?

[Tim Lyne]

"What's the hardest part of the job?"
"You mean besides doing the actual work?"
"You know what I mean, idiot."
"Well, it's... you see, every once in a while, there's a kid that really shouldn't be there. They've got a family back home, or a life that just doesn't fit with the whole staying in a school and being taught shit. They need their families, or they need to be normal or some shit. But they can't, because Hammel is, like, the only place for them. So, like, I pull them, and I get them there, but all I really want to do is, I don't know, get them away or something."
"But you can't. We can't."
"Yeah."
"So... it's the kids like you then?"

The lights made Tim throw up his hands and he was already cursing. This was what trainers were for, not recruiters, certainly not recruiters like Tim. Tim was supposed to go out, find a kid, and bring them back in. That should be it.

"Hey, it's not my fault you're here! You think I want to be here!?" shouted Tim. He was nearly waving his arms, but he figured that wasn't exactly "helpful." So he wound up rubbing at his eyes, trying to think of a plan. It wasn't his strong suit. "This really isn't helping the whole 'let me go home thing,' you know. They really don't like letting people who light up like this."'

He was going to have call in help, wasn't he? His boss was going to kill him. Quite literally, too.

[Cassidy Mitro]

Cassidy let out a sob when he started screaming at her and say down quickly in the dirt pressing her palms into the ground to try and hide the light. Finally the crying came in hiccups and sobs as she broke down. No, he was right. People didn't like her because she was a freak and she was a horrible person for being able to burn other people. It wasn't fair. Eventually she flickered and the light in her simply dimmed because she was too exhausted to keep it glowing like that. Too tired to keep pushing it even though her emotions were clearly more responsible for it.

She lifted her dirty hands and covered her face as she cried into her hands. All she wanted to do was go home where she had a life, a family, her room with her toys and her books and her art and her daddies feathers strewn across the floor and sticky taped to the walls. Little souvenirs from everywhere her mom had been littering every possible surface and glow in the dark stars pressed to the roof so that when she looked up at night they were blinking back at her. Cassie's body was shaking with sobs and she was coming to terms with the fact that she was never ever gonna be free again.

[Tim Lyne]

This all kinds of sucked. Tim had actually made the girl cry, which was just about the absolutely crappiest thing he could have possibly done. Worse, Tim actually felt relieved because she hadn't gone all nuclear on him. His first reaction at her curling up had been to heave a sigh of relief. He then waved for people to leave, doing everything just short of outright ordering them to.

He waited a few minutes, mostly walking about, trying to figure out what to do or say. They were likely to punish the girl, which struck Tim as being grossly unfair. Punish someone who didn't want to be there for running away from there, so then they didn't want to be there anymore. Maybe Tim could put in a good word or something, defend the kid. It just sounded like so much work. Maybe he could just write up a report or something?

"Oh, Hell," muttered Tim. He knelt down next to Cassidy, rubbing her back. "It's not really that bad there. I mean, it's not like they torture you or something," he sucked at this; he really, really sucked at this part. Why couldn't she have been older or something? "They'll teach you how to use your shiny hand thing, and then you can go home."

See, that should be enough. Tim took a deep breath, trying to think of something else to add. "The holidays are coming up too; they're likely to let people head home for that."

Wasn't that how it worked? Sounded good, anyway.

[Cassidy Mitro]

Cassidy didn't even notice what was going on with the man who was supposed to take her back to her prison. All she noticed was that she was sad and scared and not able to make her big road trip home. She hadn't even noticed that he was relieved that she was crying instead of burning at her clothes with her lightbulb glow. When he finally did manage to chase away the tiny crowd of people that had gathered in either end of the alleyway she could feel him watching her but this only caused her to bury her head deeper into the crook of her arm.

He was pacing. She could hear him. At the end of the alleyway, he was pacing, up and down and up and down. Cassie didn't have the will or the desire to watch him pace or to move from the possition she was currently in. If only she'd know that she had more or less won favour with him. That she could cling to him and he would most definitely try and do some much hated work for her, she might have been out of her possition already and at his side, making a big tear stain against his clothes from all her tears. She even might have reconsidered that she saw him as the enemy.

She jumped when she felt his hand against her back rubbing and quickly she turned into him leaning against him as he rubbed at her back before pausing in her sobbing at the last sentence. Really? She got to go home soon? For the holidays? Cassie sniffled and lifted her tear drenched face to look up at him, her eyebrows furrowed.
"I get to go home?"
She had really not understood any of this.

She hadn't understood that she was free to go home during holidays. She really didn't understand much of it at all. Cassie's muscles slowly untensed and she nuzzled her face against Tim's side hoping to get all her tears off of her and only him.
"I just wanna be normal..."
Cassie sobbed in a shaky voice, her body jerking with a hiccup every so often.