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Incompetent silver eyes scanned the shadows. They felt incompetent, anyway; Mills couldn't see ten feet in front of her. She had not eaten since the night before when she had shared a bag of chocolate with the strangest - yet strangely nice - creatures? monsters? guys? she had ever seen. He was black and spotty and horned and he looked like someone had lit a wad of Sterno tied around the end of his tail. His freaking tail! She felt so naked in this dungeon. She had no mutant features to help her fit in (what the hell is up with that anyway? I thought those rumors were fairy tales), no special abilities, no size to benefit her, only her fear and her anger. Her eyes certainly weren't helping.

She clung to the nearest stained and pitted wall. She heard footsteps. She felt thankful that she could at least tell that they belonged to bare feet. Unless the staff who ran this place ran around barefoot, that would be another patient.

Wait. What if they're as intimidating, but not as friendly, as Zhu? Well, then I'm pretty damned effed aren't I. Biting her lip, she glanced up and down the hall. There was a door standing ajar just a few feet away. Inching toward it, she slipped inside and found the darkest shadow she could fit into. And she waited.

She wasn't scared or anything. It was an ambush. Really. On second thought, she looked around for anything she could use as a weapon. She found a dirty looking sock. Okay. That... works.

She crouched in the dark with a menacing glare and a dirty sock she planned to throttle a menacing creature with. "That's totally what I'm doing." Yeah.

Shrinking further into the shadows, Mills was nevertheless drawn to the voice. Who belonged to it? She peered out carefully, twisting the smelly sock in her hands in her anxiety. If asked about it later she would swear that she had been preparing to use it as a rope. Or a whip, you know, like a towel in the locker room. I was totally gonna goose the guy. Yeah.

She saw black skin. Not that which belongs to a brotha, no, but truly inky-black skin. Her heart skipped for an instant and she almost jumped to her feet until she realized that the head of hair was rainbow-colored. Not orange. Rainbow. Like a My Little F***ing Pony. No, it was worse. He had fairy wings. She almost jumped to her feet, yet again, but this time to exclaim childishly, 'It's a fairy!' Holy s**t.

She swore a lot out loud to sound tough. It was just natural when you lived on the streets. The fact that she was thinking in expletives only betrayed - but only to herself, hopefully - that she was not handling her situation half as well as she would like. Okay. Calm down. Her legs were starting to burn from crouching in the dark but she ignored the sensation, taking deep, calming breaths to try to relax. Maybe if she stayed quiet he would go away. If not then maybe she could offer to relieve him of the burden of carrying around such cumbersome little wings. But you know, only if he wanted to be spared their burden.

Mills felt a brief wash of jealousy. What, does everyone in this place have a tail but me? Obviously that could not be the case. The feeling died quickly; people do not get ahead sitting back lusting after something they don't have. They have to attack it, lustily.

Maybe she couldn't pursue something like that, but she had a reputation to build. She needed to survive. She needed... to run into tougher guys. No, you know what, that's okay. She knew most people outweighed her, towered over her, and could attack her with some kind of voodoo creepy stuff. But this guy was as nervous as she was, perhaps more so because he couldn't even be certain she was there. Small, pale hands darted out of the darkness as soot-colored toes disappeared in their depths. The girl grabbed him firmly by the ankle but only briefly, roaring, and snapped his belly with the twisted-up sock hoping he'd fall on his butt or something. "RAAAARGH!" Haha, whaddya know, I goosed him after all.

With the light of the hallway glaring dully behind him, Lennox was shrouded in darkness. It was probably a good thing that Mills didn't see the bizarrely pointed teeth bared by the strange fairy dude. If she had, she'd probably be screaming louder than him, like a, well like a girl. A girly-girl. His screaming did sufficiently startle her to let go of his ankle, and she back-pedaled until her back was flush against the wall.

Her eyes squeezed shut and her mouth pulled tightly back over her teeth, ironically in a similar way to Lennox's, but her chest and shoulders were heaving in silent laughter. "Ah..." she gasped, nearly choking, "Ha-ha... aha-I really... got you... ehehe..." she trailed off into near silence as she fell over onto her side cradling her burning ribs. She was laughing so hard she had not seen the way his wings went rigid nor did she hear their loud flapping, like the neck frill of that one dinosaur from in Jurassic Park. She did have the presence of mind to realize that her little prank was probably not the smartest she had ever pulled. If he got really angry she was dead meat. But... it was just too funny.

Mills caught her breath. For once in what seemed like a lifetime, her heart was not racing because she was afraid. She still didn't know what he'd do when he realized she wasn't this 'Revi' person. She ignored the hand and rose to her feet on her own, taking her time in an exaggeratedly self-confident way to brush off her clothes. "Yeah, it was funny. And the name's not 'Revi,' it's 'Mills.'" Thus, after doubly contradicting him, she took Lennox' hand, determined to shake it with or without his participation. "Mills Napier. Nice to meet ya. I guess I can guarantee you'll never forget me after this kind of introduction, huh?"

"Yeah well, I'm not the one who likes to corner people in a dark room. You do what you can, right Lennox? I mean, I didn't do too bad for someone with just a sock, right..." She smirked toothily and held up the rancid sock she had found on the ground to use in her defense. "That's what I hitcha with." She dropped it back on the ground a moment later, gingerly; just as easily it could have been a smelly fish or a banana peel.

"Normal? Geez, what's normal in this place? I feel like the freak but you're the weird-looking one." She scratched her head. "I mean, it's not like you look bad. Just. What the hell is up with all the people with tails? I feel like a Furry convention was accidentally booked up in Silent Hill instead of the Hilton."

How stupid do you think I am, answering whenever any random weirdo calls out to me and I have nowhere else to go? "Aha, yeah, well you know I took one look at you and decided the sock was probably enough. And look, I was right." She was not about to admit that the sock was all she could find at the time, of course. If he had been truly dangerous she would have been in some seriously deep s**t. How could she know that he had other forms to draw upon?

"Yeah... funny thing about that. I kinda wasn't admitted so I guess no one really knows I'm here." In the back of her mind she had to wonder if being captured by those doctors would actually benefit her. If she couldn't escape, better to be a king in hell than a slave in heaven right? However that saying went. Maybe they'd literally make her into a t-rex or something and she could eat everybody. RAWR.

"Er, yeah... I've found a few rooms. None that were empty had locks on them. All that had locks were occupied. Them's the breaks I guess. But I'll find something eventually. This is a big place." She shrugged. Shrug it off and keep moving, regardless of what happens.

"So what were you doing before this? Do you always go skulking about looking for someone to scare? You might want to ask them to give you huge teeth or spikes or something. I hate to break it to you but if it weren't so dark you wouldn't be very scary. Not that I was scared or anything."