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To celebrate her first night back on patrol, Avalon bought McDonalds.

(It made sense in context.)

The context was that she had dusted a youma and not run into any real trouble; the sun hadn't risen yet and all seemed well in the little four-block grid of Destiny City she had staked out a whole year ago. It seemed hard to believe she'd spent more time missing her identity as the Knight of Avalon than she'd spent owning it, but there was only so much one person could do when faced with the forces of fate, and mystical hug magic, and speed-growing trees. Sometimes you just had to take a ********' seat and eat your chicken nuggets before they got cold.

She kept her wand close at hand, tucked neatly under one of her wide velvet sleeves; on such a humid night she ought to have been sweltering, but through a lucky conglomeration of an undershirt that wicked sweat away obscenely well and a brisk breeze, she actually felt pretty comfortable. And when winter came around, she was sure she'd appreciate the heavy fabric. She dipped a trio of fries into her sweet and sour sauce and sighed. Even if she hadn't cut a swath through the youma infesting the city, it was so good to be back, to have power, to see people going out of their way to avoid her--they didn't have to know that she wouldn't hurt them. It was just... nice... to see even the most sketchy of people treating her as someone to be reckoned with, rather than the other way around.

Avalon Squire did not expect to see someone sitting on the other end of the bus stop bench when she looked up from her knees again, but in the end, she supposed she shouldn't have been surprised. "Evening," she said to the familiar Negaverser; hadn't she seen this one before? Months ago. Probably before a promotion or three (and she'd seen Wolframite and Zinkenite through those; she knew the signs). How high could the Negaverse be promoted, anyway?

She sighed again, thinking about it.

Avalon's eyebrows went up in weird synchronicity with the corners of her lips. "Well then," she said, "I guess I'd better give it to you." She fished the large fry out of her to-go bag and set it down with a crunch on top of the paper; she'd already arrayed her dipping sauces in neat lines along the slats of the bench. Represented were (tangy, a ******** stupid upgrade since it was the same damn thing) barbeque, more sweet and sour, and a single lonely packet of honey. (Sometimes Avalon got cravings, alright?)

"Maybe take a future enemy off the board through the alluring siren call of trans fats and high fructose corn syrup." She didn't feel like fighting, not then, and this one hadn't hurt her when she was powerless. Granted, things did tend to change when one took the leap from powerless to possible power player, and Negaversers could teleport, but the officer had held an opportunity to wipe Avalon out without resistance and, well, she hadn't taken it. Surely that was deserving of a few potato sticks.

Avalon folded her legs in front of her and said, "Don't indulge too much or your bodysuit won't fit anymore." Three fries later--Avalon's outfit did have a lot more breathing room--she asked, "So, how's your night going?"

She watched the display of fearless flavor egalitarianism with a certain amount of disbelief. Surely the Negaverser wouldn't actually--oh, ew. "Ew," she said, in what would have been an excellent Mean Girls impression if she had one. (She did not. Avalon and movies were not good friends. Avalon and audiobooks were bosom buddies.) With a shudder, she turned back to her chicken nuggets, dunking them in the barbeque sauce and pretending she hadn't just seen what she just saw.

Ew. Ewwww. She would never be clean again.

"I try not to think about it too deeply," confessed Avalon. Not like she needed something else to do; with the theoretical Chaos-related deaths slowed to a trickle she didn't even have to spend that much time awkwardly in the library with Camelot lurking outside. Besides, now she had a position much better than Internet Crackpot to find things out from. She slanted a glance at the blonde Negaverser, and then looked fixedly down at the sidewalk. Blushing was not a good thing to be doing (which was probably why her stupid treacherous face was doing it).

God damn it, the officer did have a pretty smile though. "Be sure to point me in her direction, I'm sure she's a looker," said Avalon to the concrete, rolling her eyes again. She thought a moment, and then offered the blond a hand to shake. "Avalon, Squire of Earth," she said, politely.

"Hey!" Avalon, thrifty by nature and opposed to leaving any food she'd shelled out seven dollars for in its bag when it went in the trash, frowned impressively at General Howlite. Well, she didn't seem as prickly as Zinkenite, anyway, which didn't mean it was exactly safe to give a general any backsass--she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Squire Avalon could not possibly compete with someone at the third rank of training. "I wasn't done with that," she said, but it was an empty statement, mostly because there'd been like four of the stupid skinny fries left and honestly, who liked those?

She picked up one of the unopened containers of sweet and sour sauce and chucked it at the trashcan, overshooting by about half a foot. This time her sigh was more frustrated. Avalon: Squire of Sighs, more like. "So what're the generally evil up to, lately? I've been off the street for a while." Nine months of a while! "Last time I talked to a general, I was a civilian, and he slammed me into a wall."

And it had been embarrassing.

"I think you're the first Negaverser I've seen who isn't under five foot six," she said, realizing how utterly remarkable that was.

"Avalon," she corrected. Tate might take sass from Kess and from Finn but Avalon took sass from no one. It was part of the glory of having the physical strength to back her threats up when she wasn't just weak, stupid Tatiana. She got up, gathering the rest of her corn syrup additives, and chucked them in the trash. "I have legs; I am not, actually, legs, although I can understand that by a law of percentages, it is a compelling argument!"

She considered the trash can for a moment, and then said, "I never thought the forces of Evil would actually refuse to stoop to littering. I am shamed before my people." Granted, no one else was actually present. No one else needed to be. Avalon's conscience was her own worst enemy, prosecutor and jury all in one very tiny headspace. She would have gotten up to put her own packet of sauce into the plastic barrel. She would have.

"My apologies for the rudeness." She didn't mean it. She smiled at Howlite and laced her fingers together. If she didn't have a face made for suspicious stares and sniffing out injustices, she might have even looked innocent.

She felt her stomach try to drop out of her abdomen, and was grateful for the layers of skin and muscle that prevented it from doing so. When had she forgotten that she was facing someone much more powerful, with much more training, than she? In her head, she ran through common quote-unquote symptoms of fear, and hoped she wasn't displaying as many as she could remember, because ******** it, she was terrified in that moment. Even when Howlite let go, she couldn't get a few feet between them fast enough.

It wouldn't help, if Howlite were determined.

"Considerate of you," she said, "Thinking of our mother Earth like that." Play it off, she thought, turning her attention to her shirt; it soothed her to smooth out the wrinkles, to make sure the undershirt laid properly. At least the multiple layers meant Howlite probably couldn't see the sudden cold sweat.

She hated being terrified. "I would, but I think my stomach just joined the sad coffin of my value meal," she said. Not exactly "cheese!" material, there.

Her bad? Um, well, if that was just a mistake Avalon was definitely bailing out of there as fast as she goddamn could. If she had any idea of what she could do with her wand--she only knew magic was involved, not what it did--she might have risked staying, but right now, faced with possible doom, she was going to bail.

"Sure," said Avalon. It wasn't weakness to realize when you were outgunned, or so she told herself. Still, she couldn't smother the sense of shame that came with running away, even as she did it.