Welcome to Gaia! ::

“Are you serious?”

The indignant, angry words came from down the street, but a knight was already moving very briskly in the direction of the scene, having arrived just in time to entirely miss the bit with the door being locked up securely. Magical muscle boosts were fun, and so were magical speed boosts. Joy, in fact, had more than once wound down a night of being powered up by simply sprinting until she couldn't, relishing this change of circumstance for a girl who had always walked the mile in gym class and did not own a single pair of sneakers.

She cracked her whip as she came into range - the exact knowledge of its size being one of the things she had actually found to be useful in the dreary and annoying training she subjected herself to on her Wonder - and the perfume of white flowers provided a pleasant contrast to the smell of damp pavement as they opened along the length of vines erupting from the sidewalk, exploding towards Nis.

“Shoplifting? And not even, like, an Ulta or something? A small business!”

She still held the whip warily, as if prepared to use it, but she shivered, pulling her furs around her shoulders and giving Nis a withering, disapproving look. The vines withered and vanished as she did so.

“Girl, I met someone on our side that I'm pretty sure eats people. Your aura can be cinnamon rolls and glitter and you might still be stealing s**t.”

She hefted the whip as if in dire warning, wrinkling her nose - although she still wasn't standing within range to use its lash. “And having a key doesn't mean s**t either. You think a landlord or a maintenance guy or an employee never stole anything?” She pointed imperiously at the boxes, and although the magic was gone and with it that annoying urge to earn her approval, she still spoke like someone accustomed to being obeyed, with a queenly little tip of her chin. “Powered up to get it moved out faster, are you?”

The idea that this tactic could equally apply to a totally innocent removal of goods had not, apparently, occurred to her. Joy had internalized some slightly distressing ideas about being powered up.

“I do not talk like a bad 1940s detective movie. I talk like a bad 1970s detective TV show.”

She hesitated. But she didn't put the whip away, although she did drop her arm to her side, letting her grip on the thing grow loose.

“At worst I sound like a bad 1940s gangster movie, and that's totally different.”

But she approached as she said it, taking the offered seat with that same queenly air of self-possession, despite how ridiculous everything she was saying was. “I don't think I can anyway,” she said frankly. “They don't last very long. Could probably knock you over a few times, though.” She arranged her skirts, crossing her legs and adding conversationally: “And if you must know, yes, I do always assume the worst, at least when it comes to all this bullshit.” She made a little gesture, as if to encircle their uniforms and their auras in a circle encompassing all of powered life. “I've learned that it's usually the wisest thing. Don't you?”

"I don't envy you, either," she said, feeling distressingly - and unexpectedly - defensive. If someone had proposed the conversation to her in abstract, she probably would have laughed and agreed, and made some sort of rueful joke about being beholden to dour French assholes with unhealthy ideas about honor and duty. But hearing the idea in person stung, and she felt herself bridling against it. "No one to show you the ropes, no one to prod you along. Seems lonely, to have to tackle the bullshit by yourself." She added, then: "It's your planet too. You live on it. Seems worth remembering that."

But she let it go, dismissively waving her hand and gesturing at the quiet shop. "Do you actually have permission? Because I can swing around here tomorrow and ask but I'd really, really rather not have to ask in the context of 'oh, sorry, I let them go because they had a key.'" She looked down at the boxes they were sitting on, somewhat skeptically. "I guess I didn't consider that you could - I don't know - rent yourself out as a superhuman moving crew, or whatever."

She was a little pale, in the wake of this stranger having done what Joy herself lived in perpetual fear of doing, her face feeling icy as she tried not to outwardly react. Her recourse, as it usually was in the case of discomfort, was to flippant humor.

"You know, it's a good thing I've got that ghost to rely on instead of having to dig through my own recollections, because I have the leakiest memory sometimes. I have the funniest feeling I'm not going to remember having this conversation at all." She paused. "I've spent money here, and she's real nice. At least I won't have to remember that I let her down and failed to apprehend a petty thief breaking into her nice little shop."

And then, after a reluctant hesitation: "You know, it is good to know that at least one person knows my real name and that it's safe with him, even if he's been dead for a thousand years or whatever. Sure would be nice for me to be able to pay the favor forward." She smiled - unsteady, uncertain. "What a shame I'll never have the opportunity, because of that whole leaky memory thing."

She didn't offer her own name, either, understanding the silent contract. She stood up and dusted herself off a bit before taking the offered hand with a broad smile, pretending that her chest had no constricted painfully moments before around the idea of a starseed that could not be returned.

She raised her hand as if to tip an invisible fedora, adopting an exaggerated old-timey movie sneer - an impression pretty terribly done, it must be said, but with enough panache to convey the idea, delivered in the appropriate sneering twang.

"Be seein' ya around, kid," she said.