You slowly lean into the walkie-talkie clipped to your jacket and speak into it: "Throwback, this is Fleet, you read? Over." It still feels so strangely natural, and yet you know it's not. You've been forgetting your 'overs' and your 'outs' and you know you've got the terms wrong. It's like you're wearing the clothes of someone bigger, but they're your clothes.
"Loud and clear, Fleet. What's the problem? Over."
You chew the inside of your cheek. "Maybe nothing, but we'd better make sure. I'm taking my team to check it out, we'll catch up. Over."
"Negative, Fleet, you leave me four of those spiders or this whole trip is for nothing. Over."
Ah. Yeah, right, that's. Actually a good point. You go to order Asset Protection to attend on Nattie, realize they're never going to obey that order, and instead turn to Jill and three of the sentries. "Jill, take those three and keep moving with the Throwback team, the rest of us will be back soon. You're the person with the best rapport there besides me." Jill snorts, but she doesn't argue, so you hit the walkie-talkie again. "Acknowledged, Throwback. Fleet out."
And with that out of the way, your section of the outriders starts scurrying to get a better vantage. It's an odd experience; the spiders are avoiding wasting their webs on creating bridges from building-to-building, given the time and calories involved, but you'd be surprised what they can balance on, even with the weight of an entire extra rider. When they leap a few of them giggle, and their blonde leader - your own mount (shut up) - shushes them with the biggest grin on her own face. In and out, quick five minute adventure...
You frown as you get closer, sheltering atop a fast food franchise which, for some ineffable reason, has crenellations on its roof. You lift the binoculars again and look at the grisly feast on the ground. The figure, now much closer, is clearly like the other refracted humans you've met; the greasy glass of its hair might have been blonde once, and scars on what little of its arms and hands you can see have filled in with some kind of black glass...no, obsidian, like a volcano. Hrm. But something about it keeps making you want to look away, and you can't figure out what. The dirty, tattered clothing? No, that's just a fact. It's young, ish, maybe Marie's age, but while that's sad for reasons you don't understand, it's not a reason to look away. It's like...
...It's like your mind doesn't want to look at it...
"Hey," a strange, gravelly voice says right next to you. "Got a dollar?"
You turn your head quickly and notice, for the first time, that you are completely fucking surrounded. Each person around your little squad is attended upon by elements of the urban ecosystem; the one that spoke to you from behind a bristly beard of steel wool is weighed down by pigeons who snap mosquitoes out of the air with lancing tongues of half-melted glass, while others are attended by gleaming, wide-eyed frogs, miniature versions of the giant rats, even packs of those half-glass dogs. Your mount growls, and you stroke her hair to soothe her, meeting the new person's eyes with your most customary of expressions: innocent confusion.
You hold up one hand, and the other person blinks. Your team is looking to you for your cue, but all you do is slowly open your jacket and show the sheaf of bills you brought for the spiders which just rests there in an inner pocket. You raise an eyebrow. The other person's expression is all disbelief, but it nods, so you use your other hand to carefully peel a single bill out and -
Oh, this is embarrassing. Your cheeks actually burn a little. "Um. If you specifically need one dollar we might have a problem," you murmur. "Can I give you a fifty?"
"...Yes," the bearded person says slowly, in the tones and expression of someone who has lost control of this conversation and is no longer certain what is happening. It actually looks at Jack, and so you look at Jack, and Jack gives his best helpless shrug. These are both expressions with which you have become increasingly familiar. You've done something incorrect again and this person is indulging you. You're almost used to it by now.
Slowly, you offer out the bill, and your mount whines when it's snatched. "I can't give it all, they need to eat it," you explain quietly, patting your mount on her shoulder. "But -"
"Oh sod this for a game of soldiers. Scatter!" the bearded person calls, and all of a sudden the roof is, seemingly, as empty as it was when you got on it, even though in hindsight those other people were always there.
Choose 1
[ ] That was weird but non-hostile, let's leave
[ ] The young one, down there on ground level, it hasn't vanished. Shadow it.
[ ] Why shadow when the binoculars use mirrors to flip their images properly? Reach out with Familiar Strangers.
