Nate sits up, rubbing his head.

"...Yvette? What the—whoa, are you invisible? How does that work, are you refracting the light waves around yourself somehow—" 

"Sort of, it's actually a bit more complicated than that, because if I just did that then I couldn't see anything, because the light would bend around my eyes and I'd be blind, so there's a—actually you know what this might be a bad time."

"—right, yeah, maybe."

He gets to his feet, trying not to step on invisible-Yvette. 

"So, your strategy was to run around invisible? Am I the only person who's run into you?" 

She assists with not being stepped on! In that she scoots away and then also stands.

"No, my strategy was to invisibly hang out on the ceiling under a sound baffle playing bejeweled, but my brother enlisted Kaldur who could tell that there was magic happening, so now I am on plan B. Plan B is draw chalk portals everywhere and play keep away—" Something occurs to her. It sure would be nice to have someone with superspeed who's good at running to put down portals everywhere. "—actually. I don't need to be the one to draw them. And you're already playing keep away—do you want to team up?"

"You mean, do I want to run around drawing magic portals everywhere instead of running around doing nothing in particular?" 

He considers it. 

"What do these portals even look like, anyway? 'Cause if you need the drawing talent of, like, a fourth grader, you might be out of luck." 

"Oh, no, nothing fancy. Just rectangles. Admittedly they need to be around the same size, otherwise the portal might end up kind of unstable. Here, let me show you." She quickly draws two portal rectangles on the wall, then activates one. Demonstrably, she waves a hand through it. Then she realizes that she's still invisible and that he can't see it, and awkwardly removes her hand, coughing. It's sure useful that she's invisible and he didn't see that. "I need to be on one end to activate them, though."

"Huh, okay." He pokes the active portal. 

"So if you don't need to draw it yourself, and there's nothing special about the shape, where does the magic part come from? The chalk?"

"The chalk, and also me. I can't do this with just any chalk, and not just anyone could use it to make a portal. Which is why I can't just make a lot of magic chalk, sell it to the world, make millions, and retire at the tender age of fourteen."

He snorts.

"Pity. But you can give me some of your chalk, and I can run around drawing rectangles on the wall and you can turn them into portals?" 

"Yep! And I can probably set up a magic radio thing so we can talk to each other and coordinate, so if you get cornered you can draw a portal and I can give you an exit. My brother will be able to hear us, but."

He can, in fact, hear them right now, and therefore so can the telepath listening in on his mind. 

M'kel could offer to create a telepathic link between the three of them, to help them coordinate without Rain listening in, but she's not close enough to the other two that they could hear her without telepathy and she doesn't want to suddenly start talking in their minds without an invitation. She'll wait; maybe an opportunity will come up later. 

"Sounds good...wait, you think he can hear us right now? Should we be standing around talking?" 

"He absolutely can hear us right now, and uh. No, probably not. I bought some time with portals but we are maybe running out of it. Hold out your hand? I'll give you chalk so you can go draw a portal far away, and I can rig up a magic radio in the meantime and meet up with you to hand it to you."

"Right, okay."

He holds out his hand. 

A single stick of blue chalk materializes out of the air and drops into his hand. It feels... strange. Not dry and dusty like ordinary chalk. Instead it's kind of fizzly, like a carbonated drink, but also strangely smooth. It bears more resemblance to something like crayon or oil pastel than chalk.

Another rectangle begins drawing itself onto the wall.

"I'll notice when you draw the other end and step through immediately. Uh, with the superpowered brother closing in, please don't take—"

And he's gone. 

Hmm, down this corridor, skid around the corner and along this one, dodging the occasional confused adult...and now he's on the other side of the base and one floor up, and he drops back to normal speed to draw a rectangle on the wall with the...weird fizzy chalk? Weird fizzy chalk. Sure. 

"—too long," she finishes, to the empty air. Feeling kind of silly. Well. That was predictable.

She doesn't actually finish rigging up the magic radio before he draws the portal. She activates it and steps through anyway.

"Hi, I'm here, almost done."

"Should I do another one?" 

In his head, he's already putting together a map from what he's explored of the base, trying to figure out the optimal placement of portals to keep them as far ahead of Rain—and, apparently, Kaldur—as possible. They can't go back to where they just came from because the seekers will be almost there, so he'll have to pick somewhere reasonably distant from their starting point...

"Yeah!" she agrees, brightly. Oh, this is great, teaming up with a speedster was a fantastic idea.

Nate is starting to think the same about teaming up with a magician. At least now he has a reason to be dashing madly around the mountain. 

He places another portal-outline, somewhere sufficiently far away from his best prediction of Rain's location. 

It opens immediately again, and Yvette happily hops through.

"Finished! Hold out your hand?"

This sure is a day for being handed things by invisible people. 

It sure is! A small ball of sticky play-dough drops into his hand.

"I didn't have a mic or headset or anything," Yvette explains, a little awkwardly. "But if you pretend it's a little microphone and stick it to the collar of your shirt it'll work, and we'll be able to talk to each other."

He does that.

"So what now? Do we just keep doing the same thing, only now we can talk to each other, or...?" 

"Oh, I was going to drown the base in magic noisemakers. Want to help?"