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» hide with all the ghosts in your bedroom, they will keep you awake.

Who: Kiden and Laura
What: Dumpster diving is a full time job. Get a friend to help you.
Where: Behind Chimer Market
When: Givdi night
Notes: Teen AAAAANGST /fistclutch
Warnings: It's Laura and Kiden. What could possibly go wrong?

She's been here a little less than a handful of days and Kiden's fighting the urge to slip into No-Time and just camp out there permanently. The only reason why she hasn't done it already is she's worried that the rest of the little group she has as a makeshift family might be here and they're just separated. Again. Wouldn't be the first time, but at long as she stays in regular time, they'll find each other. They always do. She can only hope.

Right now, living with the normal people means she has to eat and eat now. She didn't stick around at the inn long enough to get the free room and board talk from the grandmotherly looking lady who opened the door for her. Being locked in a bedless room didn't endear her to staying anyway. Besides, with her head down in a garbage can at the back of the now closed market, Kiden's in her environment. There isn't much to this environment, though. Nothing but fruits and vegetables in various stages of rotting and bruising. But some still look edible enough if Kiden spends the next half hour picking at those weird looking spots. She has time. It's something she has more than enough of.

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Laura doesn't spend much time in the nicer parts of the city -- they're usually well-patrolled and safe, and there's nothing there that interests her. She still has the money they gave her at the inn -- she didn't bother with food or shelter until she found Remy, and then she just followed him -- but she has no desire to purchase anything. She walks past all the shops, stopping only to look in the windows as if she's a normal girl just doing some window shopping.

Truth is, she's been making the rounds, acclimating herself to the city. She needs to know it inside and out, as intimately as she knew New York. In borrowed clothes -- too big for her, she's drowning in them -- she wanders around, not making eye contact with anyone who's still out at this time of night ... which is a lot. Baedal has a large nocturnal population.

Still, no one else hears the rattle of trash cans from behind the now-abandoned market, but she does.

She pauses. That's not the sound of a raccoon or stray dog, she can definitely tell that the rummaging there is purposeful and going on much too long to just be someone fussing with their own garbage. Curious, she turns and heads in that direction to investigate.

Two different people doing the same thing, though just not at the same time. Kiden's wandered about Baedal, dipping into the rougher areas that reminded her of District X and poking her little blonde head in the wealthier areas, the one where Kiden knows she'll never fit in even if she tried or wanted to. Finding a place to sleep is easy, falling asleep is a different story when she doesn't know what the surrounding area is like.

Tossing a fully rotten head of cabbage over her shoulder, Kiden lucks out with an orange and a bag of cherries that seem to have fallen onto wad of crumpled newspaper off to the side of the can. This means that they're still clean--relatively--and they look edible. No green spots or any fingerlike things growing out of them like that tomato she saw earlier. Ew.

After a bit more poking for anything else that's useful like more food or a lost wallet still full of money and coming up with nothing, Kiden gets to stuffing the fruit into the front pockets of her hoody and getting ready to put the lid back on the can. It's only polite especially when the can has given her two meals in one shot.

From behind, Kiden looks like any other blonde teenage girl, but Laura knows the difference in how she moves from other girls -- like she knows the scent that's uniquely hers, even buried as it is underneath garbage and dirt. She feels a brief stab of something -- she thinks it is anger -- that the people here would allow girls to have to resort to Dumpster diving. Oh, she knows Kiden prefers it over being someone's charity case or under the thumb of social services, but she should still have a choice. A better one.

It's a stark reminder of how laughably false all the propaganda they try to feed the newcomers is -- they don't give a shit, and there's nothing to be honoured about being "chosen" to come here.

After a moment, she manages to rein the anger in enough. "Kiden," she says -- there's a slight wariness in her voice, because what if she's wrong? What if she's from a universe where she never met Laura?

Doesn't matter. She'd still try to help her.

That unique scent of Kiden's is definitely undercut with the odor from digging through spoiled food and a lack of a decent shower or change of clothes, but it's nothing Kiden herself can pick up. Her senses don't work that way, but they do work well enough to realize somebody is calling her name in the quiet night. Her hearing is perfect in this environment, where she's the only one shuffling around behind the building and when she turns in the direction of the sound, her sight helps her make out a very familiar form, one she's imprinted in her mind even in the dark.

"Laura?" She's squinting at the thin mass standing in front of her, slightly blocking one route of escape. Kiden doesn't need it because it takes everything in her to resist throwing herself at Laura which she ends up doing anyway, wrapping her arms around the girl. "Oh my god."

They always find each other. Always.

Laura is, as always, taken aback by hugs -- it's not her natural inclination and thus it puzzles her when other people do it so automatically, but she no longer freaks out like she did as a kid. She still doesn't quite know what to do and stands there looking surprised for a moment before awkwardly putting her arms around the other girl. This is two hugs in as many weeks, it's getting kind of alarming.

She considers informing Kiden how strategically hugging her is a terrible decision -- she could be another Laura, she could have been sent to kill her. Possibly Laura needs to chill the hell out and stop assuming there's danger where there is none, but it's an assumption she will never stop making. It's not PTSD, but some things are similar.

She does not know what to say, but she knows she's supposed to say something. "Yes." A confirmation will have to do, then. She pauses, then decides, as always, to go for practicality over sentiment, the latter of which she's terrible at. "When did you arrive?" If she's been here for weeks and nobody's noticed, Laura's going to be pissed.

Kiden's never had a reason to suspect this could be some Laura clone. All her enemies have come to her in their real faces and besides, if Laura had been sent to kill her, Kiden really wouldn't be standing here hugging her so tightly as she is right now.

She finally pulls back, grin wide on her face, and she stares at Laura like she's changed. It's been... how long? At least a year, more than that since she last saw Laura and Kiden's thought about her too often to just forget the girl. Honestly, this is the best things that's happened to Kiden in almost forever.

"Couple days ago?" Kiden answers with a shrug. She's clearly unsure how long it's been, other than knowing the sun has gone up and down twice so far and without knowing what time it is right now, this could be day three or still day two. "What are you doing here? What am I doing here? Have you seen the others?"

So many questions thrown at one time. Kiden can't slow her mouth down even if she wanted to.

Laura looks about the same -- it'll be decades before she starts to show any signs of physical aging, likely -- but so much has happened ... She's not sure what it's been like for Kiden, though, either. If she's changed.

"We have been abducted to a self-contained pocket dimension with no ascertainable exit." She's such a helper. There's a pause before she adds, on the subject of the others, "No." Which is probably for the best. They were all in a bad way back home in New York, but Baedal doesn't seem to offer much in the way of fresh starts if Kiden's here digging through the trash still, and Laura's already spent some time in the Spatters. She wouldn't wish this on anyone.

Kiden hasn't changed physically all that much either. Her hair's shaggy and longer now and she might have a couple of more fading scars, but otherwise, Kiden looks like the same skinny kid she was a couple years ago.

"I see..." No, Kiden doesn't. But knowing Laura how she knows Laura, none of that sentence was sarcasm in the least and just the absolute truth. Probably for the best indeed, but they stuck through shit together. Kiden is going to worry about the other three like hell and what if they leave for Vegas without her after all? If she ever gets out of Baedal, she's back to being alone because who's going to wait for her? Better yet, Kiden is pretty sure Laura won't stick around for much longer if they went back together.

She's shaking her head to clear out all the thoughts that will lead nowhere if she keeps thinking them. "And who did it?" Because in their world, nobody asks what a pocket dimension is; they just ask who yanked them there.

"We do not know." 'We' -- Laura's an outsider by design, but there's no chance in Hell she'd just mope around doing nothing. Of course she's already investigated. There isn't exactly a lot of evidence for "~~a wizard~~ the gods did it" -- that's what people have told her but she's not quite sure it's a hard fact.

"Why are you here?" She means here, specifically, with the trash. She can already see why dumpster diving in Baedal will present more problems than in New York -- there's very little prepackaged, processed food for sale here, almost all of it's fresh produce, which goes bad faster and isn't packaged separately. She's not above scavenging when she has to, but it concerns her nonetheless. "They did not give you money?" In that, Kiden was even more gun-shy than Laura; Laura did not stick around to hear the pitch initially but she went back a few days later after she'd calmed down. It seemed like the easiest way to acquire an initial bit of information. They told her she was supposed to get a job, a mandate she ignored, and they gave her money and the clothes she's wearing now, since her uniform makes her too conspicuous, and she'd like to keep her identity secret for as long as she can. Superhero habit.

Edited 2011-11-16 23:58 (UTC)

It's self-explanatory why Kiden is digging in the trash. Shoplifting has been a failed venture for that exact reason of most things being fresh or cooked on the scene and it's been hard as hell to find a can of soup to steal.

"They who? What money?" Perhaps if she stayed just a bit longer at the inn, Kiden would have realized that she could have stayed the night there, but call it a little PTSD of her own that staying anywhere with a locked door she couldn't open herself sounded like a pretty bad idea. Instead, she flipped Granny the bird and hightailed it out of the inn, pulling a quick timeslip in the process. Nothing makes sense except for the one person standing in front of her, and to be honest, sometimes Laura doesn't make much sense herself to Kiden. One of those times is now.

"The Inn you arrived in will provide you with a small amount of money and a temporary residence." Her head cocks to one side; it's clear to her that Kiden must have fucked off before they told her. "You did not read the propaganda?" Fuck no she's not calling it the pamphlet.

Well, still unacceptable. Laura digs into the pocket of her coat, procuring the small bundle of marks they give all newcomers that she never had the opportunity or desire to use. She holds it out to her like she would regular money back home, as something basically meaningless to her that she knows other people value, and it's usually the only thing she has to give people. "Here. It's money. I do not need it."

"You're fucking kidding me." Seriously, free money? And she walked away from it? Damn it. Kiden wouldn't mind knocking herself upside the head right now. Sometimes her run and keep running 'til you die nature really does her wrong. She can't go back and beg them for it, not when she acted the way she did and they probably will tell her to go to Hell after she tried to kick down the door in the first place.

However, Kiden's expression changes from furrowed brows of anger to ones of confusion when Laura thrusts a handful of marks at her. "No, that's yours," she replies, pushes Laura's hand away. "You need to eat too."

She'll just bum a handful of whatever Laura buys and call it a day.

"I am not."

She looks down at the money in her hand, her expression coming close to a frown -- not quite, but from context one can assume she's unhappy. "I do not need it," she repeats, still holding it out. She knows that street kids don't like taking money as gifts and she knows why -- that free is never free and always comes with the expectation of payment down the line, that any exchange of money is an exchange of power -- but Kiden is her friend and she wants to help her. "I am living with other people. We have more."

... Most of it acquired through less than legal means, but hey, that's always how Laura's gotten money. She still won't be surprised if Kiden won't take it; she'll just have to go to plan B, which is buying food to share and then allowing Kiden to have the vast majority of it.

It's not that Kiden feels that Laura's offer comes with strings attached, but there's a little bit of misdirected pride and a lot more concern about Laura's own wellbeing. It's not like there's a community pot to put their money into and there's definitely nothing for Kiden to put in there either. Living on the streets means everybody puts some work in and there's not much for Kiden to offer Laura, except the now forgotten fruit in her pocket. Cash money is a bigger deal than just some cherries.

"I don't want it." And Kiden's tone says that's final. Instead she hangs onto the next part of what Laura says both curious and thankful for a subject change. "Living with who?"

"Friends." An idea occurs to her -- if she won't take her money (which she reluctantly puts away... for now), she might take their hospitality. At least for a couple days, to give her some time to figure out what she wants to do without having to worry about being locked in or out of the Inn. She hopes Kiden trusts her enough for that to be possible; Laura's never steered her wrong, has never hurt her, has actively worked to protect her and the rest of their motley group, even if she had to kill people to do it.

"It is across the city. I'll show you." She turns, nodding her head for Kiden to follow her. They'll take the train -- there are no cars and walking will take all night -- and hopefully the nearness of her friend will calm her down and give her some time to think.

If there's anybody Kiden trusts her life with more than herself, it's Laura. Even though they may not see eye to eye or even understand each other sometimes, Kiden knows that Laura has her back as much as she has Laura's. Kiden thinks Laura as the lucky sort, the kind to have these friends she can stay with. She probably even has a bed and a shower to use, though Kiden probably appreciates simple things like that more than anybody else would. There's a streak of envy that runs through Kiden, but it disappears as fast as it comes on.

So she nods and follows as directed, shuffling around in her pocket until her hand clasps over the plastic bag in there. "Want a cherry? Or an orange? But peeling's gonna be a bitch." They're still in the bag, hence clean from whatever else was in the garbage can. They could use a good scrubbing, though.

"No." If she thought of it, she would lie to her -- say she already ate earlier so she's not hungry now. She doesn't think to do so like she never thinks to do so and she would be very surprised if it hurt Kiden's feelings, anyway, she's not some emotional delicate flower.

Her claws pop out, snikt, all casual-like, as she walks. "I will peel it." Uh. Maybe best not to eat anything that's touched the knives that have been inside her skin. And inside other people's skin when she stabbed them.

Kiden's feelings are fine. Not everybody enjoys her trashy cuisine, plus she'll just offer it to Laura later, assuming the other girl just isn't hungry.

"Actually, never mind," Kiden says with one eye squinting at Laura's hands. She knows where those claws have been and doesn't know where they have been at the same time. Kiden's not really taking her chances on some weird blood disease transferred to her orange from whoever Laura poked lately. Time for a subject change, anyway.

"How long have you been here?"

Laura kind of half-shrugs, an odd, out of place gesture on her she must have picked up from someone else as she retracts her claws before too many people start getting nervous. She gives the answer absently -- she's a very recent transplant even in terms of Baedal time, it's not much more than a week or so -- but the ease with which she moves around is odd in contrast to that. Then again, she prowled around New York as if she owned that, too, and she'd only been there a few weeks.

When the El in Chimer's End pulls up, she takes Kiden's hand -- unusual for Laura, she rarely initiates non-violent physical contact -- and pulls her along with her onto it.

Out of place, indeed. Enough that Kiden eyes her strangely but then shrugs back, accepting this more normal side of Laura that's beginning to show. The good part is that Laura hasn't been here much longer than her. The bad part is that Laura hasn't been here much longer than her. Kiden's unsure about the people Laura's met and is staying with even more now, so to her, this is less about finding a place to crash and more of a trip to see if these people pass her approval.

"What? No Metrocard? I like this," she announces, falling right in line with the hand holding and not wanting to let Laura go just yet. Her excitement is comes more from the no risk of getting ticketed for jumping the turnstiles, really, but that's a given with Kiden.

Edited 2011-11-23 11:12 (UTC)

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