How dare people have birthdays every year!!!!!
Since movie theater patrons never bothered to tip (which was baloney, considering the messes they left behind at their seats), she was left doing the only other thing she knew how to do: pickpocket.
It was beginning to become a more routine operation, with her stealing out of wallets at least once, twice a week. She figured she'd have to pick up an extra night or two to afford the presents...and maybe a pint of ice cream from Baskin Robbins. Y'know, as a treat to herself.
Which is how she found herself at 10 o'clock at night, pilfering through some bar-jerk’s wallet in some dirty old alleyway.
______
If there was one thing that Alabaster knew, it was money.
Money was what made the world go round. Money was what made everything better. Money was what he hoped to be able to sleep in buckets full of at some point in time, even if buckets were uncomfortable, because it wasn’t about the buckets, but what was inside the buckets.
Namely money. And more money.
He could use another suit, Alabaster thought musingly, as he strolled down the street, cane tapping against the pavement. Another nice, sleek black one, since he had gotten a navy one last, and generally he preferred blue, but black was also good. He needed suits for all occasions, after all, and this was the perfect occasion.
The occasion of himself.
Alabaster rounded a corner and came to a sudden halt. Preoccupied as he was about his thoughts of money, he shamefully hadn’t noticed the power signature until he was practically on top of it, Alabaster staggering back a few paces, staring in disbelief at the scene in front of him.
“Are you - are you stealing from that guy?” He asked, sounding outraged at the very thought.
Mostly because why hadn’t he thought of that.[/szie]
______
Lovejoy jerked up from where she was hunched, dark eyes growing wide when she heard the exclamation from the entryway to the alley. The wallet went fluttering down on top of the jerkwad’s chest, the couple of twenties spilling out and falling to the ground.
Crap!
She couldn't tell who this joker was (aside from like...some gel haired looking skeevy pimpazoid) but the fact she'd been caught red handed had her panicking. What if he was some undercover Nega cop or something?
Without giving it much thought, one hand shot out and she hollered, “Confusion!”
______
Alabaster saw them as soon as they fell, mostly because he was trained to laser hone into money like a cat watches a laser pointer. He lunged forward instinctively, a hand shooting out to snatch up the bills before they floated away, except -
Magic smacked him in the face, quite rudely, he would have thought, if he hadn’t just forgotten what he was doing. Alabaster staggered to the side, clutching his cane, and almost toppled over, arms windmilling in order to keep his balance. He managed to get himself back upright, free hand moving to brush nonexistent lint and dust from his uniform, fingertips tweaking the lapels to make sure they were exactly in place the way they were supposed to be.
His eyes flickered downwards towards the girl, brows arching.
“Are you lost or something?” Alabaster asked. For the life of him, he couldn’t recall what he had just been doing. Or who this girl was. Maybe she was a monster. Maybe she was a youma in disguise.
Maybe he was going crazy. His thoughts spun like a tire in mud, nothing making real sense. Alabaster frowned.
“Where even am I? Was I doing something important?”
A silly question. He was always doing something important.
______
Hands flew down to snatch up the cash as soon as she made sure he was hit by her spell. Stuffing it down the front of her fuku (because it was SUPER annoying that these dresses didn't come with any kinds of pockets), she glanced over at the staggering old geezer and watched his transition from confused to irritated to more confused.
Okay so he looked more Negaverse agent than pimp, the longer she stared at him. He had a cane - was he really that old? - and sass...but that was about it.
Shrugging her shoulders, she gave him as innocent a look as she possibly could as she made her way towards him, then around him.
“Dunno, mister,” she said sweetly, “I dunno who you are. Maybe you should go home and take your meds or something?”
______
He probably had missed something somewhere. Like this kid’s curfew or something. Or maybe the fact that she was stuffing money down her dress, but even that didn’t seem particularly out of place if only because Alabaster still wasn’t sure where he was or what he was doing or why he was here. Maybe he’d been on patrol. Maybe he’d been getting something for someone. Maybe he was going over to kick Sinoite’s a**.
Maybe he was just losing his mind. That was also a possibility, though an unwelcome one.
She clearly wasn’t helping him much, or maybe she never had been. Alabaster frowned at her, half turning to follow her progress, still deep in thought as he pivoted on one shiny black shoed foot.
“What? My meds?” he repeated, like he’d never heard the word before. “I don’t think I have any meds…”
He was pretty sure he wasn’t on anything, at least not at the moment. Possibly he was imagining things. Maybe he really was getting old and needed a cane to walk with and that was what was happening now.
He tapped his cane idly on the ground.
“Are you going somewhere?” he asked. “What were you just doing now, with that guy? Why is he on the ground?”
______
The old geezer wasn't letting up on the questions, which was both hilarious and annoying at the same time. The cane tapping didn't help - it was like a peeved teacher waiting for an answer or an inpatient parent wanting her to hurry things up.
“He owed me money.” She shrugged again, as if her answer was self-explanatory and he was a dummy for asking it in the first place. “I didn't have pockets, so I made a pocket. You do what you gotta do to survive, right?”
Tap tap tap went the cane and for a brief moment, Lovejoy considered swiping it on top of the cash she had stolen, just to get the dude to stop.
“I've got...a sick grandma I gotta get meds for, why you gotta be nosey, mister?”
______
”Money is important,” said Alabaster wisely, because this was a very true thing that he definitely needed to say because money was what made the world go round. “Everyone needs money. Well, not everyone. Stupid people don’t need money. I’m pretty sure I’m not one of those people because I definitely need money, it’s what makes everything much better.”
He was rambling a little, mostly because he had no idea what was happening. Alabaster tapped his cane against the ground, watching the girl sidle away, and for a few seconds more, his mind was still a strangely befuddled mess of incoherent thoughts, like a puzzle that wasn’t quite put all the way together.
Then, slowly, the magic began to fade, and Alabaster became aware that he was, in fact, being hoodwinked.
“HEY!” he yelped in outrage, lunging forward to swipe his cane at her legs. “Put that back! Or give it to me!”
______
She had almost made it out of the alleyway when cold, hard something sweeped by and snatched her footing out from beneath her. Having been mid-step, Lovejoy quickly found herself tumbling forward, face first into the dirty pavement in front of her.
Ow.
Turning around, she gave the old geezer a dirty look, knees stinging from where they skidded across the sidewalk. What sort of a*****e tripped a teenager???
“Wow, RUDE dude.”
Rising up from her splayed form, she brushed off her hands and then proceeded to give him a very unladylike gesture. She was so focused on the jerk that she didn't even notice the two twenty dollar bills that had slipped out from her dress due to the fall.
“Go pick on another old guy or something, leave everyone else alone. Or go home and eat some jello or...or something.”
She was still a little sore from the embarrassing tumble but made up for her lame comeback by giving him the middle finger again and proceeding to stalk off in search of a mirror.
Some people, jeez.
______
The sort of person who tripped a teenager was the same sort of person who was debating seeing of the guy that she had been stealing from had any money left to take.
Except that she had called him rude and then she had called him old and that was way more offensive than anything else she’d said that night. Alabaster stared at her in outrage, his mouth open in utter horror because he was not old how dare you assume such a thing -
“GET BACK HERE YOU LITTLE - “
But she was already gone, skidding away. Alabaster stared after her, his expression one of pure annoyance.
At least until he noticed the twenties. He looked at them for a long moment, eyes wide, and then stooped and snatched them up, stuffing them into his pocket and hastened away before anyone could see a suspicious blond guy wandering about late at night with a cane..
No one saw anything.
[Fin]
