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 Posted: Wed Jul 26, 2023 8:43 am
She had to go grocery shopping. Everything in the fridge was spoiled.
She had to open a new bank account. She would lose all her money in conversion fees otherwise.
She needed a job if she was going to be here for long. She hadn't even begun looking into work visas, after having thought that her trip would be short and full of nightmares. But her trip was looking more complicated than it seemed, and Kaðlín was already thinking about pushing her return flight back.
One of these problems needed to be solved. And considering the state of her stomach, Kaðlín decided that the grocery store won out over all others. After donning a sun dress with bike shorts underneath, and slipping on a pair of tan leather sandals, she pulled up the nearest grocery store to Aileen's apartment and set foot out the door.
The grocery store in question was the "Food Pillow". She'd never heard of such a place, even during her last visit to Destiny City. But as long as "Food Pillow" had bread, butter, and milk, they would get her money. The trip to it was short and uneventful, as was purchasing her groceries at a moderately broken-down checkstand with a clerk who looked fused to the stool on which he sat. Just as well that they were hiring, too; Kaðlín put in her application on paper and left it with the manager on her way out. She didn't care what position she was applying for, either; she just needed something that paid her and gave her something else to think about.
On the way out, Kaðlín knew to cut through the alleyway that transected her street just a few houses down from Aileen's apartment. It was the only direction that Google Maps offered her, suggesting to her that people took that route often. That it must be safe. That the single time in which she encountered a bear missing half its face was a fluke, or a feverdream, or an exception that proved the rule. Squaring her shoulders, she stepped off the sidewalk and into the shadowy alley.
Something farther down had rattled and slammed metal trash cans, crumpling them like cheap cardstock. She was starting to think that the people of Destiny City didn't care about safety.
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Posted: Wed Jul 26, 2023 8:55 am
Riker stared at his phone. Frowned at it. Glared at it. Turned it on, and then off again. As if doing so would prompt a random text to show up. It didn’t. Just as the rest of his contact list was full of casual assignment reminders, or in the case of Maisie, a thanks for letting him know about Brooklyn, followed by an agreement to hang out and run around as knights for a bit.
Hey, just thinking about you and wanted to say hi --
He quickly backspaced and turned the phone off again and sighed heavily. She didn’t even like him. She tolerated him at best. They worked together. She knew his secret. She could blackmail him if she wanted. She was also the only one who bothered texting him.
Then again, she was the only one who really had his phone number.
You thinking about going out sometime --
That was also backspaced and Riker quickly put his phone in his pocket before he was tempted to pull it out again. He had a coffee in his hand. It was about half empty and cold now. Just something to carry around and look busy while he avoided going home. But he would have to eventually. And if this chick walking in front of him would walk a little faster maybe he could slip into the alley and--
s**t… she was going down the alley too. Go figure. Now she was going to think he was some kind of creep, stalking her.
But worse than that, Riker heard the trash cans. Heard the way they crumpled. He froze, trying to see on the other side of the woman.
“Get out of there, are you insane?” he hissed at her, waving his free hand frantically for her to come back towards him. And a bit more frantically when the lid of a trash can was apparently launched at a high velocity and into the brick wall of the building.
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Posted: Wed Jul 26, 2023 9:05 am
Kaðlín didn't know what she was dealing with, and that was her main trouble. She'd encountered bears in the woods before, and in larger groups, bears were less of a problem. Bears could be directed away from hikers by making a lot of noise so a bear understood where the hikers were located. Depending on the species, as long as one was not aggressive toward the bear, even a bear assault was survivable.
She'd dealt with elk, too. Coyotes. Frightened deer. There were accepted patterns of behavior to use with each of these animals to increase chances of survival. They weren't guaranteed, but they were better than the alternative.
But Kaðlín couldn't see what was jostling the trash cans to know how she should react to it. She caught the briefest glimpse of a tail that whipped about and sent one of the trash cans into a wall, but that was hardly enough to understand what she was looking at. From that alone, she could guess it was something more reptilian, but she had never seen a reptile act with such energy for such a prolonged period of time. Carefully she lowered her tote off her shoulder, reaching in with her free hand —
Then a voice came from behind her, and Kaðlín whipped her head around to see who was speaking. She didn't dare answer, just in case; it was clear enough that whatever was ahead hadn't realized that it had company. The boy speaking was probably a local, she gathered, and she was far more inclined to trust their guidance over whatever she cobbled together based on her own experiences. She began to back out slowly.
The animal in the trash cans must have been curious as well, for all the rustle and racket ceased. What raised its head out of the mess was more akin to a kangaroo, if a kangaroo grew scales and was stretched out by another third. It hunched far forward, owing to its strangely long anatomy, and rotated the upper part of its body around while its lower part remained pointed toward its trash cans. Down at the edge of the alley were two humans, separated from the flock of other humans. Its upper body raised up, then its lower body swiveled, and soon it was hopping towards them with claws and teeth bared. Its tail whipped behind it in a fury, the barb on its end sharp enough to cut the bricks that it brushed against.
There wasn't a chance to leave, then. Something that fast would catch up to her in an instant, she knew, so Kaðlín felt blind into the bottom of her tote and pulled out the bear spray that she tossed in after last week's incident.
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Posted: Wed Jul 26, 2023 9:11 am
WAS SHE DEAF?! No! She wasn’t! She clearly heard him and yet decided to ignore him! She had a death wish, then! It didn’t matter if she started backing out if she was just going to decide screw it and not make a run for it!
“What. Are. You. Do-- s**t--” Riker hissed as under his breath as he could, but that youma (which he decided to believe was a youma and not like that weird bear they’d run into before) was much larger than the ones he’d seen before. And probably faster. And would probably kill two civilians in an instant. And he did not want to risk his identity even if death could be the outcome.
Frantically, Riker scoured the ground with his eyes, looking for something heavy, something solid to use against the youma. Of course he didn’t have his baseball bat with him! Why would he have something useful!
Maybe it would just be distracted by movement? He had no idea. He was really hoping this chick would be some kind of Moon Knight and they would be rescued by the Code or something. Not that he and Maisie had been rescued before the youma had been dusted, but still!
In an attempt to give them a little more time, Riker gripped the cup of half empty coffee as tightly as he could without crushing it, and hurled it down the dark of the perpendicular alley, and then reached for the back of the lady’s shirt to bodily drag her away if he could. Or at least get her farther from harm.
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Posted: Fri Aug 25, 2023 4:35 pm
The boy threw his cup of coffee at whatever it was. Strangely, it seemed more deterred by a cup of coffee than Kaðlín would have expected — the creature made a snuffing sort of hiss when the cup struck its snout, then it almost seemed to lose interest in them in favor of sniffing the spilled liquid. That was as good an opportunity as any to get away —
Jerked back as she was, she lost her step somewhat, but the intention was clear. She swallowed down anything she had thought to say; now wasn't the time, and the noise would likely be a distraction. She rushed as quietly as she could, for the mouth of the alley and back to the street wasn't far. She knew nothing about a creature like that, couldn't begin to fathom if it was some kind of evolved komodo dragon or one of those strange rumors she'd read about on Instagram. Part of her wanted to believe that, if she risked looking back, she would find that it vanished.
Maybe in a few days' time, she would be reading the morning newspaper and would find that a gas leak was reported in the area. Or there'd be another rumor in those occult magazines about demons walking the earth. It could've been Jurassic Park-style cloned from ancient DNA, as far as she knew.
Kaðlín ran because she had to, but she wondered what would happen if it followed them into the main street. It wasn't extremely populated, but there were enough people to be alarmed and startled by the appearance of such a thing. Would it attack them, too? Or would it be just as overwhelmed and return to its alley?
She wasn't one to make that kind of decision. That call should be left to better judgment. "Should we call the police?" She asked the helpful, unknown boy.
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Posted: Mon Aug 28, 2023 6:31 am
Riker hissed and cursed as quietly as he could as he, and the girl who had clearly never seen a youma before, got the hell out of Dodge.
“Yes, we should call the police. They have guns! Do you have a gun?” he gaped breathlessly at her, staring with wide eyes at her suggestion. Of course they should call the police! Any kind of distraction where they wouldn’t be youma food was ideal.
“It’ll be fine. Probably. Someone will come and take care of it. Probably.”
Hopefully. Maybe not. Maybe he was the one who was supposed to be taking care of the youma, but like hell he was going to power up in front of someone who might very well be a Negaverse person!!
“Come on -- Hey! Can someone call the police? There’s, like, a rabid dog-- bear down there. Yeah don’t go that way. Yeah go inside,” he shooed people walking in the direction of the alley. “Like, a whole pack of rabid raccoons. Probably.” What was more believable? He didn’t know, but he hoped he could get this girl away from it without having to tell her (or anyone else) that he knew what it was that they saw.
“This way,” he gestured towards a sign for a shopfront that said open, hoping she would follow him and they could assess what else they’d have to do to stay away from the youma.
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Posted: Mon Aug 28, 2023 10:30 am
"No, but —" Kaðlín silently held up the bear spray she'd fished from her tote. It wasn't as effective as a gun, but it was effective in a different manner. It could be a good deterrent without doing so much irreparable harm. She thought it would be a good interim step while they waited for police to arrive at the scene.
She let out a breath she didn't realize she was holding when the boy started to brush things off. He must have his own way of dealing with such affairs. Luckily, he took what she thought to be the harder job, so Kaðlín pulled her cell phone for contacting the DC police.
After a moment, she considered a dangerous animal on the loose to be more of an emergency than a routine call. If the boy was running interference like that, then they couldn't leave the scene until there were police. She called 911 instead.
She waited. She got an operator on the line. The conversation that followed — and the series of questions she was asked to answer — led her to believe that strange instances like this happened more often than she expected. It led her to think that she should expect to find such things in alleyways more often than she should expect to encounter nothing in an alleyway but pallets and delivery drivers. That was an unsettling thought for her. How did Aileen live like this without just moving to another city? How could she raise a kid in a place that seemed so dangerous?
But those questions had to wait. Once she got off the phone, she called to the individual who had helped her out. It seemed he'd just finished directing someone away. "Hey, I called them. They're sending a dispatch. They said to stay away from the area."
It worked out for them, since he wanted her off the street. After breathing a steadying sigh, she looked up at the shop front, and thought it might have been more of an opportunity to learn about this than she initially expected.
"I'm buying you a coffee," she stated offhand, her voice carrying the same even tone as before.guine fin here, can transition to another reg in the shop!
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