"I - you - self defense! Also, I've had a shitty life for the last two fucking years and only just the last month would my future maybe not be terrible, I can make things, and I was even going to join the Wards once I dealt with this other thing but life! Isn't! Fair! Is! It!"

The last few words are punctuated with the sound of servos clunking free and an engine revving up.

"Oh and you think every other parahuman's life is easy? That doesn't matter. You're coming with me."

She's going through the air toward a rooftop with a surprisingly energetic jump for something that just turned on.

Well he's a tinker too, he has a grappling hook and can start following her—

Walta - Hopper - is panicking. But one of her specialties seems to be creative movement. She can be creative about running away. Ducking into alleys off the rooftops and making a few turns before jumping back, making hairpin turns, leaping large gaps.

And she can tell where Armsmaster is. All that metal is fairly distinctive.

She heads north, to the bad parts of town.

She will in fact succeed at outrunning Armsmaster.

And then she'll scream in frustration and shoot dumpsters and garbage cans with her zappy-gun for a little while, venting.

And then she'll call Fire Guy and/or Glam on her radios.

"Hello."

Fire Guy doesn't answer.

"Agree or disagree: Life isn't really fair."

"—agree seven hundred and ten percent. What happened?"

"Panic and overreaction and an explosion and evading arrest."

She gives the full story, being cagey about what exactly exploded.

They listen, then—" Yeah, I heard about that one on the news. I—don't blame you for not wanting to go with him."

"I'm not a villain. I'm not going to be a villain. Except maybe I am if my options turn into 'petty crime to get parts' and 'jail'."

"Yeah. I don't know what they'd do, though, maybe they'd have offered you a position anyway or something, you're a tinker, they really need those..."

"I can't afford certain things. Just can't. Like 'not tinkering for a while', I think I'd literally go insane before two weeks are out. And the other thing, the secret thing."

"You could... maybe try talking to them on the phone or via email or whatever?"

"Maybe when they haven't tried to arrest me an hour ago. For self defense." 

"...well what would have happened if a regular human accidentally set fire to several cars?"

She gives a laugh-sob-type-sound. "In my part of town? They run away and hide before the police can arrive. So that fits."

Sigh. "I just mean, they're not—acting out of the ordinary, if you were a regular civilian they—wouldn't act different—"

Sigh. "C'est une impasse. Congratulations on creating another villain, Kaiser."

"You could just—remain an independent, run away if the heroes see you—"

"-Oh, I'm not going to rob people now. I'm just... This destroys the chance I'll work with the 'Official Heroes'. Ever."

"Does it? Why?"

"I'm not going to jail. I'm just not. If that's evading arrest, so be it."