She stands her ground, hooded in a black robe and not at all afraid.

"We will not be caged. Not by you, or anyone."

"I don't suppose that means you'll swear off the murdering? If you don't commit any crimes, maybe we can talk about not jailing you for the earlier ones."

"Were it anyone else, Shepherd," she laughs, "we might have to take offense. But for you, we could content ourselves with merely scavenging the battlefield and ceasing to contribute to the carnage."

He levitates in place for a moment. "You meant that. But what happens once you think you could challenge me? If it's only for me that you stopped, there'd be nothing stopping you from starting again."

"What oath would you have us give that you trust more than your own strength? For those such as we and you, what higher power can there be?"

"Contessa," he doesn't say. "Scion," he doesn't say. "Derek Parfit," he doesn't say.

"So that's a yes, you'd go back to killing capes as soon as you thought you could get away with it? I'm taking you in after all, then."

"Are you so eager to see a death today? Our question was genuine, Shepherd. What assurance do you seek?"

"If you could have honestly said that you wouldn't, and that you were not expecting that to change, I would have believed you." Not necessarily true anymore; the truth-detection power is being swapped out for something he hopes turns out to negate hostile powers. "But if it's a question of strength, we both know you'll eventually get to where you think you can challenge me. I'm not going to loose that on everyone else if I can capture you now."

"If you can."

Two of her shades are blasters, and start shooting. She and the third blink away with a briefly blindingly bright flash of light, appearing on a rooftop behind Eidolon's position.

He doesn't bother turning around, but casts an arm behind him and throws a beam of dull light toward her new position. It moves past her, and during the period where it intersects she can feel part of herself moving slowly. Then it's past and she's back to normal.

Eidolon shrugs off the shots from one of the blasters but takes the time to neutralize the ones from the other.

That... did not feel pleasant.

She blinks again, back to the ground, and replaces the ineffective blaster with the shade of Edict. "Don't do that again," she orders.

That power only does one-word commands, but in context "don't" is perfectly clear. Eidolon knows Edict's power too—he stares Ellie down for the requisite three seconds and then deploys the same thing from both hands directly at her.

She knows the timing as well as he.

"Stop."

The beam washes over her with the same bizarre feeling as before, but he doesn't replenish it. After pausing for what feels like maybe one second he does it again, not showing any effect from the order.

Rather than actively block the ranged attack, he experimentally lets one hit him and decides against shrugging off the rest. He drops out of the sky, it looks faster than free-fall, then catches himself.

She swaps Edict for a brute, who charges. She blinks away again.

He avoids the charge. No surviving witnesses ever did find out if the shadows can do the instant death thing, so he's not about to take the chance.

The blinking is ineffective because he's fast, and more importantly because he still knows where she disappeared to right away. His own blaster power catches her again, and this time the world speeds up by even more than before for a shorter subjective time. It hadn't reached full strength before. There's no way to tell if it has yet.

Can she block it with forcefields?

If she drops one of the current powers.

It acts like a variety of light. The translucent force fields make it less effective but not ineffective. On the bright side, each fields lasts a relatively long time against this beam compared to other ranged attacks.

She keeps the blaster and the teleporter, uses the fields to set up a barrier around herself and two other points, then rotates them between them. She drops the forcefield maker while doing that to experiment with other offensive capes she has, to see if she can find another one that is as effective as the blaster.

He's keeping his distance enough that it has to be ranged, and the lightning bolts are still the best blaster power she has.

Eidolon seems perfectly content to let her shuttle around and slow her down. How much it interferes with her is mostly determined by how many fields are in the way at the moment, but the general trend is toward the world speeding up more and the force fields giving less protection.

It was probably to much to hope for. Time is not on her side here. She'll have to get close.

Blink.

He stays at range, and high enough to be out of reach. It costs him accuracy but he's mostly still playing for time.

Note to self: find a shade that counters flyers.

She tries blinking up to where he is and grabbing him.

He's moving quickly and not especially predictably. If she gets close he'll start to worry. 

And then there's a sound effect like a rush of air and he flits outside her field of vision to where there aren't any force fields blocking his way, and suddenly everything is a gray blur.

The blur disappears after a few seconds. When the world is visible again she's restrained, in what is either a very small room or a very large box, and with an uncomfortable series of irregular plates jutting out from every side instead of any flat surfaces.

Killing him is going to be personal now.

Plates block her tunneler, no spaces big enough for her to fit through.

She summons a selection of shades, arrayed around her. The projecting metal presents no obstacle to them. First, dangers in and around the box?