Whatever Sarissa had expected to see in the alley, a man who was glowing blue was not it. The other occupants were much more prosaic, and it took only a glance to understand what was going on. The only question was what she was going to do about it.
While she hesitated, the glowing man had eveloped the would-be mugger's gun in some kind of force field, which was enough to make the guy decide that he really didn't want that woman's purse anyway. He started running towards Sarissa, obviously thinking that she'd offer less resistance than the scary glowy guy.
He was wrong.
By now, Sarissa had snapped out of her indecision. As the mugger passed by, some weeds poking through the cracked pavement lurched up to snag his foot. There wasn't a lot of nature in this concrete jungle for Sarissa to work with, but it was enough. With a yelp, the guy went down.