"Fuck you!" And she's running again. Aiming for somewhere open-ish.

"Come on, just hear me out!" he says, and there's a flash and he's ahead of her again. "We can give you parts!"

"I ain't joining nobody! No gangs, no debts!" Is he going to get out of the way or is he going to get kicked?

He's not exactly in the way, she can run past him if she runs in a straight line, he'll just be—sorta close if she does.

"Not a gang! Just a deal! One hand washes the other, you know how it goes."

"Call me paranoid but I have a sneaking suspicion you are not particularly heroic. And you tried to trip me." She passes by without kicking him. Timing the stride so she can lash out with a springloaded kick if he tries to grab her or something.

Nope, he just appears directly in front of her—

—and a set of weighted ropes are thrown at him from the side with enough strength to knock him to the ground and tie him up.

She turns the kick that she was about to put into his chest back into spring energy as it hits the ground, stopping crouched-down, and tries to see where that came from.

A [gender undetermined] with a rather... strange costume. Fully white body suit, white cape, and a glass mask with moving emoji.

"Go, I'll distract him!" the carefully androgynous voice says.

She doesn't stop to nod at them or anything, just exits the crouch at speed with a click-THOOMP and sprints down alleys, making random turns. She doesn't slow down for several minutes.

She's not followed. White-masked person probably managed to hold that dude back.

Or they were both too busy fighting each other and he lost track, or that guy was more interested in the new cape. 

Either way, this seems like a good alley to stop, catch her breath, and see if she managed to break anything in her legs. Zip ties and shoelaces both feature in its construction, which tends to make durability an iffy prospect.

"Oi! You okay?" masked person calls from the top of a building after a few minutes.

"Fucked up one of my legs - er, the longlegs, not my legs - when I aborted that kick. Ugh. He's not coming back, is he?"

She reaches for her weapon as she says this, but leaves it pointing at the ground.

"Nah, pretty sure he's stuck for a while. Should probably not work out in the open again like that, though."

"No duh. I thought I was being sneaky enough. Not like I can buy hundreds of dollars worth of stuff in a hardware store twice a week and not get weird looks, y'know?"

"Yeah. You got any reason you didn't want to join him? Other than the 'probably a villain or Toybox' reason?"

"That pretty much covers it."

"And not the Wards because 'ugh Protectorate'?"

"That one's a little more complicated, and I don't quite see that I owe you my life story. Not that I'm ungrateful, but..."

"No, no, it's okay. I'm not joining the Protectorate either, it sounds terrible, but I'm not a tinker so that's easier on me."

Sigh. "How do people keep doing this for years?"

"Which part?"

"Running around and fighting and worrying about who's going to attack me next or why I have to keep it secret that I even exist. Building things with twigs and scraps and shoelaces."

"...well that's why most tinkers get a team. Or you could I suppose just not—tinker."

"I can't not tinker. It's like an itch that keeps getting worse. Plus, my life kind of sucks and tinkering is better than leaving things like they are."