Everyone paused.

Sirens wailed off in the distance. Punctuated by the occasional explosion.

In between the group of costumed teens and the gas masked villain in her jeep was a smoking crater. This wasn't particularly strange. Miniature black holes had a tendency to be somewhat destructive.

No, the pause was more to do with the body in said hole.

Again, bodies wouldn't normally be that strange when dealing with black-hole grenades, save for this bodies remarkable non-crushedness. Tragic, perhaps, but not necessarily surprising. Had, you know, the grenade hit anything. But no: empty street + black-hole = sudden human body didn't quite add up. And then the silence was broken with a wracking cough and groan.

"Anyone catch the number of that bus?" The.. man? Said in a pained voice as he struggled into a sitting position, blinking profusely.

Bakuda recovered first. Leveling her grenade launcher "Alright chucklefuck. Very funny. Who the fuck are you and how did you get there? Talk fast."

The man rubbed his eyes and focused in on Bakuda. Waiving her off he cleared his throat "Calm down, Panda, Its Jack, I was working on getting BS-019 online and things went weird. I guess the gateway got me out but I've somehow de-synced from the others." He frowned at that and looked down at the intricate golden orb in his left hand. tentatively twisting a few rings on it. "Not that that should be possible..." shaking his head he braced himself on his knees and staggered to his feet.

It was at about this point most people watching actually noticed his distinct dress, or more accurately the lack thereof.

Seemingly unaware of the even more awkward silence and the grenade launcher still pointed at his face Jack started to dust himself off with one hand while continuing to fiddle around with the golden orb in the other, "Still, I'm not dead! which is a pleasant surprise. I guess we will work back from there and figure out how this happened."

And then he froze. well, mostly; the hand with the orb still kept rotating rings and setting levers. In the distance several more explosions could be heard over the emergency sirens. One of the now-mostly-forgotten teenage onlookers absently twirled his scepter in in his fingers. a fly buzzed aimlessly down and quietly landed on the back the the Jacks head. Bakuda's unnamed driver had the worst itch on his left ankle but now really didn't seem the time. Uber stoically remained unconscious.

Very slowly, Jack's right eye swiveled autonomously and focused, not on the twitching Bakuda, but on the clearly nervous Asian man in the jeep's driver seat. Much to the drivers increased discomfort the second eye soon followed the first. Jack blinked. Jack looked around at the cityscape. Jack breathed in deeply and could taste the ocean... Brockton Bay flavored ocean.

Regret.

Heroically hiding his gagging with a cough, his gaze resettled on the now practically vibrating Bakuda. Slowly raising his free arm he pointed at her. "You," he began, with a tone of cosmic revelation, "Are not Panda."

"FUCK YOU, YOU BASTARD!" Came the vaguely coherent scream of a megalomaniac who may or may not have been a huge fan of naked men ignoring her, not answering her questions, ignoring her, and playing with golden balls instead of paying attention to her. two cylinders arced lazily through the air as a group of teenagers suddenly realized that the last couple of minutes would have been a great time to maybe not stand around in firing range of the lunatic with a grenade launcher.

Fortunately for the teens the grenades seemed to stop halfway through their arc, caught in a bizarre distortion that compressed down until with a soundless flash there was nothing left. the sound of whirring redirected everyone's attention from where two grenades seemed to unexist back to the still quite naked man from before, he was now manipulating the strange apple sized golden ball from before with both hands. the strange device suddenly lit up and expanded out into a larger sphere of floating strips of spinning metal. the man, seemingly unfazed, kept futzing with it now. Almost directing it like a conductor? With a pen? He had behind his ear? Until suddenly with a flash he was gone too.

"Right, that's enough of that." Bakuda barely had time to flinch from the sound of his voice right besides her before she found herself hauled from the jeep, disarmed, and held to the ground with her hands behind her back.

"There is quite a lot going on for me right now." Bakuda couldn't see him from this position but Jacks voice sounded a lot more... focused than it had previously. "And i would appreciate it if, for once in my life, when i'm trying to figure out what the hell is going on, people didn't just show up out of nowhere and try to shoot me, or blow me up or inject me with illegal experimental gene-grafts, or start a war, or aggressively try to hire me for their slave based call center. So let's just all take a deep breathe a-" Bakuda stopped listening. This asshole just shows up on her big debut and ruins everything? This was HER. DAY. She'll show him 'starting a war'.

"WATCH OUT! Shes got a remote bomb switch in her shoe!" A very purple spectator interrupted whatever her captor had been talking about.

Fuck. Well its not like he can do anything ab-

Aaaand she's in space. Great. She's floating in the void of space. Next to a naked man waving a pen at her shoe. This was happening. Shouldn't she be suffocating and freezing or something? Then the weightlessness caught up with her and Bakuda preceded to empty the contents of her stomach into her custom tinkertech gas-mask. Oh they are back in the street. Great. But now her detonator's controls aren't responding. Fantastic. And she's choking on her own vomit. Oh look her minions have been rounded up by the Underlosers. Fine. Great. This wouldn't stop her. They don't know who they are fucking with. She was the greatest fucking tinker to ever goddamn live and if they think this will even slow her down th-

*BZZZT*

Everyone turned to stare at the taser scepter holding renaissance-fair-wannabe standing over Bakuda's twitching, unconscious body. He shrugs.

Fair enough.

Attention once more turned to the newcomer. Who finally broke out of his reverie about a seemingly inhabitable earth and whatever the hell that could mean due to a stiff breeze.

"I don't suppose anyone knows directions to the nearest clothing store?"