prompt
Trick or Treating is a longstanding tradition across Destiny City; because of the danger the city anticipates, parts of town are sanctioned as safe havens where children can trick or treat in well lit, patrolled areas. These well lit areas often include businesses or heavily populated suburban regions. For once, it seems like things might actually be peaceful--so why not cause a little mischief? Who said only children get to trick or treat? Why not go out and see if you can get lucky, too? Or, maybe you're the one passing out candy and find out you don't only have children knocking on your door? Whatever you do, try to have fun; Destiny City isn't always this safe, so enjoy it while it lasts.
There were drawbacks to living so close to campus. Anytime an event of any stripe occurred, students were among the first to partake in any festivities, and they were seldom quiet about it. Typically, Nataniel wasn't fond of such things. Raucous behavior and the dull buzz of activity could be heard even from his apartment complex across the street from the campus.
But he'd decided it was fine, tonight.
It wasn't his favorite form of entertainment, but given the holiday and the usual gimmicks it entailed, it seemed like the opportune time for an experiment of his own. Nataniel dressed casually in some form fitting dark jeans and a tight black tank top adorned with an orange face that consisted mostly of the outlines of teeth and narrowed eyes. He tied a deep purple hoodie about his waist, slipped a dark rhinestone cat ear headband on to keep back his hair, and lastly, fastened the silver rod of his tablet against the inside of his tank top, so that only the dark and glimmering crystal was visible against his throat. It didn't seem reasonable to dress up any more or less than that.
Nataniel walked to the courtyard outside the Student Union Building, where volunteer students had very generously decided to put on a 'trunk-or-treat' for the children of nearby residents. It was a nice thought, truly, even if Nat despised the high-pitched excitement of children or the delightedly frantic skip in their movements. Or just the children in general, mostly.
But it was fine, he was hardly here to partake, though that didn't stop him from getting a frozen pumpkin juice from one of the little food and drink stands set up off to the side. No one could blame him for that. Pumpkin was good for you and only available seasonally, anyway, so might as well enjoy that much, at least? With drink in hand, Nataniel stood beneath an overhang to the side of the building. His gaze wandered after passerby, not expecting anyone to pay him any mind, but wondering if they would, and if they did if the would notice the little crystal.
Because surely the only people who would were people involved. The only people who even could recognize it were people involved, and Nat couldn't help but be curious if, given where they were and the great secrecy around it, if anyone would even dare-
A woman made sharp and immediate eye contact with him. She held a little girl's hand in her own, with the child swinging eagerly between the woman and a man to the other side of her. The woman's gaze was pointed, direct, and even from the handful of paces between them, Nataniel could see the way it scraped down him and then rose to pin at his neck before darting almost expectantly to his eyes. He didn't make any move to pretend that he hadn't noticed her stare.
She murmured something to the man that Nataniel was too far away to hear, and shooed both of them along ahead of her. She waited only a beat to ensure that they were headed off, then moved to stand directly in front of Nat.
"You need to put that away," her tone was soft, expectant as a command, but still gentle, and it gave nothing away of who the woman could be.
Nat glanced to his drink and gave it a swirl to help settle the clods of ice that were starting to build up. "Once I have finished, I will be sure to-"
"Son, please." Still quiet though perhaps somewhat more impatient now, and she raised a hand- Nataniel tensed immediately, still with little idea of what to expect when he had no information on who the woman was- to tug the hem of his tank and fold it against the silver clip, bringing the fabric up enough to conceal the crystal from view. "There's a time and place, but not now. Never when you are in this guise. If you are so green and so brazen that you don't know- or..." She had to look up to meet his eyes, standing shorter than him by four or five inches. "Or perhaps don't respect, if that tone is anything to go by, then perhaps you shouldn't have it at all."
There was a challenge there, in her eyes and in her voice, no matter how gentle it was. And the stress of it, respect, Nat didn't think a senshi would approach the topic in that way. Not an order one, anyway.
"Sometimes deviation from the expected is necessary in order to gain a more complete understanding of the situation at hand." Agents should be trained to be observant and ruthless. He expected someone would inform the senshi of the same. Be aware of those surroundings. But this was the only person Nat had noticed to give him even a glance.
Maybe the city wasn't so full of as much opposition as he expected.
Or maybe others had noticed and had just been better at concealing it.
The woman folded her arms. "Understanding won't do anything for you if it gets you wiped out. What's your name? No, no..." She waved a hand dismissively, shaking her head as if she'd said something even she found ridiculous. "Not yet, I think, there's no reason to... Can you open it? The tablet?"
She knew what it was. Did senshi know what it was? They surely had some idea, since every agent had one, but he was also fairly certain that no non-agent could access them... But it would be foolish to assume they didn't have even that much information. And he had been 'brazen' enough to display it, so it was scarcely a secret what he was. Nataniel nodded.
She tipped her head at him, eyes narrowed, analytically. And then she twisted the purse she carried toward him against her hip, popped it open, and for just the length of a breath, she held it open where he could see it.
A dark crystal attached to a silver rod in her bag.
And then she was rummaging through it, pulling out a slip of paper and a pen. "If you took the time to come out as a civilian, you must live nearby. I have an office on campus. I'm an advisor here. Come see me during the week," she stressed the word, "when there are no children around and there can be a moment of privacy." She made it sound like she was talking to someone inept, like he ought to know better than to put them in this situation. She scrawled her building name and office number on the paper and slipped it to him.
He glanced down at it- what horrific handwriting- and then back to her. "I have almost no incentive to seek out someone outside the time I have spent-"
"Your incentive, you narcissistic brat, is that you get that 'understanding' your stupid a** was looking for," she quipped impatiently. "It would be a real pain to hunt you down, but I do know your face and how to find you to some extent..." She patted her bag, concealing her tablet. "So don't be a p***k about it. And frankly, I don't want to waste my time arguing about it. If you couldn't tell, I'm taking my daughter trick-or-treating." She huffed, straightened, and resituated herself, while Nataniel blinked back at her.
What a bossy thing.
"Please don't take longer than a week, or I'll get impatient."
"Are you not already?" Nataniel retorted.
Her flash of teeth was almost a warning, a smile, but one that contained too many sharp points to be warming. "Oh, I am," she replied. But that was the last. She turned on her heel and moved in the direction she'd sent her family, leaving Nataniel to himself once more. Even if not precisely what he expected, it still felt as though he'd learned something from the experience, and it always seemed a boon to familiarize himself with another disciple of chaos...
