Elizabeth Combes had left Philadelphia late that morning, and had roared into New York, as Lucie Grey, in the mid-afternoon. The city, which fifteen years ago had been home, was now stranger to her than anywhere else she had visited in ten years of vagrancy; stranger because it had been home; stranger because home was a foreign concept now. There was something in her, a forgotten core of emotion, which twanged in response to being on her home ground. She'd been a child here. She'd been happy here, an emotion she'd almost forgotten, and because of that, of course, she'd been broken here.
She'd avoided New York for a reason.
But she couldn't stay away any longer, not with the disease still raging and no idea whether her family were even alive. She couldn't stay away forever. A part of her had always known that, and had been fighting against it for the last decade, but there was only so much fighting one woman could do. So, at last, she'd come back; locked the Mongrel away in storage on the waterfront, carried her saddlebags up onto the rooftops, and finally set up camp on the sloping roof of an office block on the edge of Manhattan, battening down her possessions and quickly falling asleep as evening crept in.
She was used to getting by on very little sleep, though, and the city poisoned it with nightmares; by the time it was dark, little more than a half-hour after she'd fallen asleep, she was up again, changing her jeans and denim jacket for the Bandit's leathers. Through the mirrored visor of her helmet, the city seemed quieter, no longer tugging at her with that odd mixture of nostalgia and disgust. It was just another city. And where there were cities, there was work to do.
She found her first job almost immediately, brought in by a cry only two blocks from her starting point; five men, their faces mostly obscured by shadow, advancing on two teenaged boys. As was her habit, she didn't jump in immediately, moving silently from shadow to shadow as she moved to cling like a spider to the wall above them. Her breathing was shallow, relaxed, as she crawled lower, five or ten feet above their heads. She'd fallen from greater heights before, and with one of them to cushion her fall, she should be able to recover quickly... even if she missed, she thought she might recover quicker than they did. All this, she took in within a few seconds, poised there on the sheer wall. Any moment, the first blow would be struck, and then...
There was someone else there. She caught his movement out of the corner of her eye, and without moving, slid her eyes sideways to see who it was - and saw herself. Or, well, not herself - smaller, lighter than her bulky jacket made her look, with a different cut of leathers which were far less battered than hers. Not herself. But another Bandit, moving towards the fighting, ready to step in.
He saw her. She knew he saw her, because he stopped, his mirrored helmet facing directly at her, and swore - loudly enough to draw the attention of the thugs at the crucial moment. The moment was lost. Fuck.
To hell with the plan, then. She'd never been much of a one for planning out battles, anyway. With one last look at the other Bandit, she snapped her attention back to the men below her, taking any last shreds of advantage she might have; pushing away from the wall, she dropped the fifteen or so feet to the ground, rolling as she landed, and came up fighting, although the fall had all but knocked the wind out of her.