She blinks again, next to him, reaching out-

–and he crashes away at eighty kilometers an hour. Straight through the wall behind him, without even leaving an oddly precise human-shaped hole. Or a wall.

Dammit! That's exactly why she wanted him.

With her target gone, she will make her own exit.

(A few seconds after the crash there's a less dramatic sound of a door opening and then silence.)

And a voice blares through the same speakers as the heavy-duty alarm clock. "Surrender! You're surrounded!"

Drone report?

She's not even a little bit surrounded.

In that case, she's not sticking around.

They are on their way, though. First to arrive is a suit of power armor with limbs tapering down to points and a bewildering array of weaponry. "Hello again," says Dragon's voice.

...There's no one in that suit. No reason to stick around and try to peel them out, then. She pulls out the chaos blaster to distract/disable the bewildering array of weaponry while she continues fleeing.

The suit flits out of the way of the conical blast and activates some sequence of random bright flashes. The light isn't a threat, but it does mean there's no line of sight to teleport with.

"Grumman was a fairly obvious choice of victim once we knew you were coming here. Incidentally, my guess is that assassinating specific people for their powers would still get you a kill order but in most places would not mean every parahuman in the city bands together against you. In case you were wondering." Dragon is still talking for some reason.

"We were not. We were wondering why you care enough to provide us this information, but not enough to visit us in person."

She can still run. And call in drones to attack the suit.

"You're hard to find. And if someone does go to the courts, I'd rather you know better than to conclude you might as well go back to killing every parahuman you can." The drones are primarily built for stealth not combat. Dragon doesn't know that, so they provide an effective distraction.

Some ghostly forms, like hers but less caricatured, start shambling toward her from the direction of the street.

Any clear paths out of the area?

Bursting through hedges into a neighbor's yard? Or it's possible she could fight her way through the ghosts; research before arriving showed they're dangerous to touch but not all that tough and there are rarely more than four at a time. Whatever she tries, she doesn't have long before Dragon's drone finishes with the distraction.

She'll go through the ghosts. Even with one shade tying up Dragon, she's still got the firepower. And maybe she'll run into the cape responsible for them.

He's got to be around somewhere; nothing mentioned him having an amazing range. She could probably track him down by which direction the replacement ghosts are coming from if she wants to take the time.

The first cape she sees isn't him. It's a tall woman whose shade has a mark on its forehead. She's wielding a metal rod, which she plants into the ground angled toward Ellie. Then she starts unloading a containment foam sprayer even though she's outside the effective range.
(The Protectorate might not know whether she's grossly underinformed. Having done her research, Ellie knows any blow she lands would affect both of them.)

Another ones for the drones to distract. Ellie opts to continue tracing the ghosts' path.

Dragon can run through a carload of spy drones pretty quickly, and having to dodge an extremely destructive cone whenever the Keres can spare the attention doesn't slow her down all that much. She flies forward. When she's directly above Ellie she starts raining down red energy bolts that take a mover power to dodge.

Good thing she has a mover power at her disposal. And if Dragon's closing in, then she can start having to dodge two blasters.

She rises another fifteen feet, staying well outside the range of the maelstroms. One blaster is easier to dodge. Aside from the harm to Dragon's accuracy, the increased distance does mean there's the occasional gap in the dazzling lights strategy for blocking teleportation—

She finds a hole, blinks out-

She's past the hero with the containment foam, and the three current ghosts reverse course to come back at her. Then they vanish and four replacements start coming from the other direction. Makes sense, since they're slower than she is. Dragon repositions herself near-instantly to prevent the same thing happening again, decreasing her safety margin and firing more energy weapons. A glancing hit makes Ellie's left hand go numb.

Tsk. Her own fault for pausing. She keeps going towards the ghosts, and their creator.

They don't put up strong resistance so much as they have a decent chance at landing a touch while she's distracted. She still has to mostly focus on Dragon, with the occasional warning shot at the tall woman, but can zap ghosts as necessary. The time it takes for replacements to arrive gradually decreases until she steps around a corner and sees where they're coming from. Two capes, not one.

She can spare one shot of chaos at this pair.