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 Posted: Sat May 31, 2025 4:31 pm
In the time that Lex had spent on Earth without Lilitu, he had built up a new life for himself. One that, yes, he had welcomed Lilitu into warmly and eagerly, but one that required maintenance and care, as all lives did. Lex’s little place—their little place—didn’t have the electrical power that other human dwellings seemed to have. And because Lex didn’t own it properly or have the right paperwork to get a human job, but they had to survive by other means.
Not that this had proven terribly challenging. Lex had seemingly learned his way around telling what sorts of people were generally okay to take “saved your life, you’re welcome” fees from after saving them from one of the Chaos senshi in town getting grabby about their energy. On top of that, plenty of places in this Destiny City housed fairly wealthy people, and many of them had appallingly wasteful attitudes toward……everything, really. True, one could hardly rely on trips uptown to the exclusion of all other ways of finding food and other necessities.
But such pursuits were reliable enough to call for semi-regular excursions. Tonight’s, for instance, saw Arcalís digging around in the large, green, metal contraptions where humans put garbage. Bags of it, yes, but sometimes also larger containers. Sometimes, perfectly good food or whole pieces of furniture. Usually, things in here needed to be cleaned after reclaiming them, but working from one of the city’s more expensive neighborhoods would likely yield good finds, sooner or later. Maybe it wasn’t glamorous work, but the important part was getting things that he and Lex might need.
So far, Arcalís had gotten quite lucky at finding some clothes that looked about the right size for Lex, getting them piled up in the cardboard box he’d brought from home to help carry things. The box sat next to the dumpster, atop a wide metal end-table, nearly four feet tall. Arcalís would need to organize the contents when he was done, but the night was young and there was still more trash to dig through.
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Posted: Sat May 31, 2025 11:01 pm
Mason heard clanging and assumed the worst.
Before this month, 'the worst' would have meant...maybe a homeless guy, just trying to get through the day. Maybe some kind of petty criminal, at the absolute worst. Then again, before this month, Mason never would have even noticed the noise, let alone made his way towards it.
What he saw...confused him. Someone was dumpster diving, and Mason had no problem with that, except that the someone...
...didn't look...quite...
Normal.
"Uh," Mason said, announcing himself in a most undignified fashion. "Um. What're you doing?" Mason paused and shook his head, because it was pretty obvious what the guy was doing. "I mean. Are you okay? Do you need help?"
It only occurred to Mason after the fact that he probably should have waited and made sure that this unusually-appearanced creature was one of the good guys, and not one of the guys that wanted to eat his soul or whatever, but...
Well, that ship had sailed, and Mason could only hope that if it did want to eat him, that Mason could outrun it.
Mason squinted, getting a better look at what had been collected from the dumpster - a side-table, Mason thought. Surely the bad guys who wanted to eat his soul didn't have a need for, or the ability to search and find, side tables, right? The one he'd seen, the one that had almost eaten him, had seemed more animal, more monster, than...sentient creature that wanted things like side-tables.
"...You're not gonna eat me...right?"
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