Exhausted, Dr Douglas struggled to keep her eyes open. What had she just done? And why? For a few prickles of guilt? You have to stand on a few toes to become a renowned physics professor - and that had never bothered her. So why should a few mutants? And now she had just exposed her most closely guarded secret. Hopefully the consequential damage would not be as bad as she worried it would.
The thing, the man, with the electrified core had buckled under her action. Some small sliver of her brain celebrated at her small triumph, that despite her lack of training with her mutation, she could still pack a powerful, disarming blow. A figure clad in monk robes had executed some kind of lightning fast move on him as soon as he showed signs of weakness, hacking at his shoulder and sending him tumbling down onto the concrete. She - for Dr Douglas suspected she was female, though the dimness was making identification tricky - certainly knew her combat skills, Dr Douglas found herself thinking, not that Dr Douglas herself knew anything about the matter. When robed-girl glanced at Dr Douglas, Douglas realised that her eyes were pretty conspicuous and swore under her breath. Her only hope now rested with the fact that no one here seemed to attend her lecture and would therefore probably not recognise her. She was certainly in it deep, if they did.
But she would have to deal with that issue later.
She was certain that she, and the person in the monk robes (presumably some odd fashion fad that Dr Douglas did not, and would never, get) had disposed of him. The wound on his shoulder seemed - even from this distance - pretty severe. However, barely seconds later, he began to move, the wound vanishing off his skin before their eyes. It was both the scariest and most extraordinary thing she had ever seen in her life. She actually found herself wishing she had caught it on film.
Under his stare zeroed in on her.
She muttered yet more swear words, appalled by her own use of language. She tried to shuffle into a standing position but her body was so tired that her limbs felt as though they were made of lead. She barely had time to blink before he had hurled something in her direction - for the oddest fraction of a second, she thought is was a Frisbee - before it landed a few feet away from her, beeping. It felt as if everything was happening in slow motion as her brain finally comprehended what it was.
A bomb.
All of her knowledge on physics drained from her head as she merely gaped, open mouthed, at the tiny device. That is, until she realised that she need to move. She scrambled up, her phone long forgotten and lying on the concrete somewhere, and began to dash in the opposite direction but it was too late. Even her jumbled thoughts knew that. She tried to reach out for her technopathy - maybe she could disarm whatever was powering the bomb - but her brain was too hectic, not trained enough to deal with this sort of thing, and she couldn't focus on anything but fear. Fear was not something she felt often. Now, she had an abundance of it; it flooded her entire body.
She stumbled in her heels - her choice of footwear, this morning, was probably going to kill her - and crashed to the ground, as it caught on something. She felt something wet on her face and could see red out the corner of the vision. The pain wasn't there, though. It had retreated in the depths of her brain, one of the least pressing things her disorientated mind had to deal with.
In the back of her head, she noted a nearby telegraph pole - humming with warm, inviting electricity - but that thought was cut short when the bomb exploded in a glorious orange blaze.