((Not gonna lie, I just looked up cool guy names (like that's literally what I typed into google) for these dudes because I was coming up with shit like Cheese and Rat, would be rude to both cheese and rats.))

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This guy was not making the kidnapping situation any easier. They couldn't just steal him in front of the whole damn mall. Jax grew tired of all this, they were just meant to pick up the guy and leave, but Kace didn't want them to get caught. As if, they were part of one of the deadliest gangs in the country, getting caught didn't happen to people like them. Still, Kace was being cautious, and Jax wanted nothing more to just stab him and leave with the oblivious guy in front of them.

Kace grew tired of Jax's impatience. It wasn't like he disliked working with others, but Jax was a new member, and believed he was the toughest shit out there. Missions like these required patience, and Kace had no clue why the Boss had sent out a member like Jax to help him kidnap this guy.

He kept his emotions off his face though, and replied to the man with a smile. "Ah, well you see, we are looking to see if you have this one shoe brand, uh um, Jackson what was the brand called?" Kace was too old to be into the latest hip shoe, but Jax was nineteen and apparently hip with the kids, (Kace was pretty sure that he'd just bribed people to be his friends and not a single one actually liked him) so Kace was pretty sure he'd know a shoe brand that was hard to find.

Jax rolled his eyes, looking like the epitome of an annoyed, annoying, teen. Of course Kace didn't know a pair of Adidas from Gucci, he was just a stupid old man (Kace is literally 24) . "Did you really already forget?" Jax's gaze rolled over from Kace to the employee, his eyes alight with anger. "We're looking for XXX brand, and for the love of god just hurry up, we don't have all day." This earned a hard glare from Kace, who knew that Jax was talking to both him and the guy that they were supposed to be kidnapping.

Rhys I-Am-A-Good-Employee smile grew a little more frayed, but he didn't say anything that would get him fired, luckily, "Alright then! I do not know if we have those, but we can certainly look -" It seemed like his big and strong protection would not be arriving (curses!) "- and see."
Rhys set down the clothes he had been hanging up, and led the pair into the back of the store, and began to quickly scan the shelves, "As I thought, we don't happen to have anything from that brand, but I believe the Famous Footwear next door would?" Rhys looked up from his checking of the shelves at his two (really rude and odd) customers.

Jax and Kace followed the man, Jax did so rather creepily, humming softly to himself. Kace was rather tempted to step on Jax's foot, but decided against it, which was a big show of self restraint on his part. These new members continously forgot about what this whole thing really was. The gangs' original purpose was to help those who needed it. Did they steal in order to help those people? Yes, but it had brought them all closer, then the new leader slaughtered the old one, Kace was demoted and now he was stuck kidnapping people. Not something he wanted to do this early in this morning.

Regardless, he was under orders that he couldn't just ignore, so when he got the opportunity to lunge forwards and try and grab the man they were supposed to be kidnapping, he took it. Unfortunately it didn't quite go as planned, and within seconds he'd crashed into a shelf of shoes. Jax rolled his eyes and raced forwards, trying to grab the man and tripping over a sudden foot that had appeard in his path.

Aria's tall form stepped out from her hiding place behind a rack of shoes. She was rather interesting looking, her short hair barely touched her shoulders, and was wildly curly, with bangs that reached a bit above her dark eyebrows. Her black tee shirt was tucked into her baggy camo jeans, and black combat boots covered her feet. At the moment, she was glaring at Jax, who was holding his foot in serious pain. "That's what you get for trying to kidnap people, asshole," Aria murmured. She didn't stall for long though, as she quickly realized she recognized the people in front of her. "Oh shoot," she quickly looked up to the poor employee dude, "we need to get moving, like right now." She brought out her white wand and a sudden breeze pushed shoe boxes off the shelves while the lights began to flash.

Without warning, she darted forwards and grabbed the other dude by the elbow and ran, her sharp grey eyes consistently turning back to look at the two men who were no longer slumped on the floor, they were following the two. Grabbing her phone from her pocket, but keeping a consistent pace, she shot over a text to Ian, panic beginning to coat her face.

"Hey Ian, please help, other gang, at Macy's. They are literally about to murder us. Help!!" Hopefully he would reply soon.

Rhys started to turn around right as Creepy Dude #2 was about to LUNGE AT HIM, and quickly sidestepped out of the way. The guy crashed into the shoe rank and Rhys mumbled out a quick, "Sorry!" As he turned towards Creepy Dude #1, the guy fell flat on his face, and another person appeared. Rhys had no reason to trust her, but at the moment his adrenaline was kinda high, and figured, "What the heck, it can't be worse than staying with those guys."

Besides, he didn't get much of a choice once Random Lady began pulling him along, and his feet just sorta followed.

After a bit of running, though, Rhys took the lead, and dragged the other girl along with him. He didn't say anything as they busted out of the doors to Macy's, disrupting some customers, and even as Rhys mumbled apologies he tugged the girl behind the side of the building, and pulled out his wand from the convenient storage void.

With a look of pure concentration, Rhys waved his wand in a wide circle, and a portal appeared, although the edges were wiggly, "C'mon. Unless you wanna deal with that," Rhys pointed back towards the store, where they could both hear the ruckus as their pursuers got outside of the building.

Rhys went through first, and was ready to close it the instant the girl walked through as well. Luckily he didn't fudge this one up, and they were a few blocks away, in the alley besides a smoothie store. Sometimes his portals went a bit haywire, and brought him places he didn't need to be.

Aria felt her phone buzz but had no choice but to ignore it, as she was too busy running to look at her phone at that moment. Her main problem was that she had no idea where the hell they were going, as she hardly ever went to Macy's for anything. When the other dude took charge, she was actually grateful, otherwise they probably would've died. Whenever she could, she turned and slammed her wand down, causing boxes to fall on their pursuers, and other people too but it wasn't like she could aim at the moment, as she was literally running for her life.

When they finally exited the building, she was beginning to tire, she was great at sprinting quickly for short distances, but Macy's was huge. The guy was practically pulling her along at that point. When he made a portal, Aria's eyes bulged, and her mouth dropped open. His words brought her back from her shock, and soon she had hopped in after him, promptly colliding with the wall of the building in the alley, and slumping against it, panting very, very hard.

Once the man closed the portal behind them, she found her voice again, though the first few words that came out were completely unintelligible, eventually she was able to properly speak. "What? How? You can make portals??"

Rhys flubbed with his words for a moment, and just kinda shrugged, "I, uh. Yes? Um. I don't do it a lot. Kinda lucky I didn't portal us into the sky. That's uh. Why I went... first."

Rhys shuffled his feet against the concrete, looking down at the ground.

Eventually Rhys looked back up, and scanned where they where, "Oh! It's by the smoothie shop! I love this place! Not sure, uh. Why we are here? But are pretty far from Macy's. Thanks by the way! For getting rid of those really weird dudes."

Aria was panting a bit, a sheen of sweat coating her cheeks. It wasn't often that she got really involved in the gang war, she was mostly just there to heal people once they returned. Truthfully, she hadn't seen fighting in years, mostly due to the arrival of her daughter, and although she was still involved with Bleeding Streets, it was not the violent part of it.

"They weren't just any weird dudes, I don't know what you did to piss off the Young Threats but you're practically screwed at this point. It wasn't a problem by the way, I hate those rats." Aria shrugged, pausing for a moment before continuing. "I should probably call my boss, Ian, he can help you." As if the words had summoned him, Aria's phone began to ring, and when she pulled it out, the name Killian, was displayed on the screen.

Killian was having the shittiest day of his life.

It wasn't like he'd been having the greatest of times anyways, his gang lost ground by the day, and his magick was drained. That was normal though, and Ian was used to this new way of doing things. What had struck home, quite literally, was when he'd arrived to his house two hours earlier to find that no one was home. Avery was almost always home by the time Ian arrived, since their job was relatively relaxed and allowed them to leave by 4 in the afternoon. It had been a little off putting to arrive home to no one, but Ian knew that sometimes things came up.

It was the note on the table that did it.

Killian had spotted it soon after entering his house, and the sigh it it caused a wave of nausea so intense that he had to sit down. It took him twenty minutes to gather the courage to open it, and once he read it, he wished he'd waited longer. The letter basically stated that Avery would not be returning, that they were afraid to be home alone and afraid that something would happen to Ian while he was out. All of this was understandable of course, but it didn't stop Killian from collapsing into sobs. After holding the strong outer armor he wore in front of his gang all day, coming home to this just simply broke him.

Ian hadn't moved for an hour and a half when he got Aria's text, and despite his ruined state, he responded immediately. Killian needed something to do, something to get his mind off the stabbing grief in his chest, so he got up and left. Aria hadn't replied to his texts for a long while by the time he got close to the Macy's, so he decided to call her instead, even though he felt as if his voice might be a dead giveaway to his unstable, shattered state.

"Hey Ian! So, change of plans, we are by the XXX smoothie shop. The guy that they were trying to kidnap can apparently make f-ing portals so he helped us escape." It was a relief to hear Aria sound intact, even if her voice was a little strained from exertion. When Ian finally spoke, Aria's eyes widened, he was on speaker, and sounded absolutely destroyed. "Well that's good, I've sent Wolfie over there with Pat so they can make sure those two are out of there. Who was the dude that they were trying to kidnap?" Aria didn't respond, she was too busy trying to figure out what the hell had happened to Ian to make him sound so.... exhausted? Sad? She didn't know how to describe it, he just didn't sound okay.

When the stranger told Rhys that it had been a gang that had been... trying to snatch him... a few pieces of his metaphorical puzzle fell into place. Then, she talked about calling her boss, and Rhys suddenly had sneaking suspicion about exactly what he had accidentally stumbled into. Rhys hated to cause even more problems for Ian, and was guiltily rubbing the back of his neck when she answered the phone.

And there it was - Rhys confirmation. That was definitely Ian on the phone, although he sounded awful.

When Ian asked who it had been, Rhys didn't want to say anything at first, as all he'd been doing is causing problems for Ian, but when the other person didn't seem ready to respond, he spoke up, "Uh. Hi Ian."

Rhys voice sounded kinda quiet, and he cleared his throat to try and speak up, "Yeah. Um, its me. I... sorry."

The sound of squealing tires came from the speakers, along with a string of curses that made Aria tense. "Ian? Ian? Are you okay? Oh my god what the hell was that?" Aria's voice was shot through with worry, her eyes widening in shock. It took Killian a few moments to finally respond, his breathing was unsteady, though his voice itself was rather stable. "Don't worry about it, I was just surprised is all. Flower Boy, are you okay?" Killian forced himself not to sound worried, it wasn't like he actually cared about Flower Boy. He just owed him.

Okay that wasn't true, but it was what Killian had convinced himself for Flower Boy's safety.

Aria's gaze finally returned to normal, but slowly her eyes turned to the dude in front of her. She was rather confused, tilting her head slightly as she finally spoke. "Who the hell are you?"

Rhys stared at the phone with wide eyes until Ian spoke again, and released a breath Rhys hadn't realized he had been holding.

"I, uh. Yeah. I'm okay. Don't... don't worry about me."

Rhys doubted Ian was actually worried, but the last part still slipped out. He was, in fact, very much not okay (for goodness sake he was being hunted down by some very scary people!!) but he didn't want to bother Ian. Besides, Rhys was also pretty sure Ian was just talking about being physically okay - which he was.

When the strange woman turned to face him, Rhys coudn't help but shrink back slightly, and shoved his hands in his pockets to hide their trembling, "Oh, um..." His voice was soft, but he spoke up a bit so Ian would be able to hear as well, "I'm Rhys. And long story short - Ian ducked into my apartment to hide from that, uh, other gang? Who had been chasing him? And I there was an old Witch's Portal on my apartment roof, so I got us up there and helped him escape. Since then the.... the other group has kinda been stalking my apartment, and since all of that....well, all of that happened... Ian's been helping me stay out of their range."

Rhys shrugged, and took off his Macy's name-tag with a frustrated sigh, "Guess they found out I was working at the Macy's Torture Chamber, and, well - you know the rest."

Rhys pocketed the pin, and his hand bumped against the walkie-talkie attached to his hip.

Great. Another job I'm probably going to be fired from. My resume is not looking too good. Maybe at this point I should just move cities.
"I... Can I know your name, though?" Rhys directed his question to the woman. It would be nice to put a name to her face, rather than calling her 'strange woman' in his mind.