An odd thought floats through your mind, and before you can stop yourself, you say it. "You're hungry, huh?"
The girl's eyes snap up and narrow, her focus returning to you and the knife. "Don't psychoanalyze me."
"No, no," you say, raising your hands defensively. "Sorry. I just... almost starved to death about a month ago."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah," you reply. "Crashed my car, got trapped inside."
"What, and you just sat there, starving? Didn't call for help or nothin'?" Her attention's on you. She's curious.
"Nobody there," you say. "Was driving through a just opened Exclusion Zone. No signal on my cell."
"That sounds like a pretty fucking stupid thing to do," the girl replies, returning her attention to your purse. She finally locates and removes your cash - about eighty dollars - and stuffs it in her pocket.
You snort at her words. "I can't argue with that."
"Here," she says, tossing the purse at your chest, and you scramble a little to catch it before it falls to the ground. "I don't need your damn driver's license or your makeup."
She starts to back away, knife still raised, and some weird pang of sympathy makes you talk. "Look, do you need a place to stay?"
She looks at you like you're crazy. "Do I need a place to stay? I fucking rob you and you're seriously asking me if I want to live with you?"
"I don't know," you say, defensive. "I mean, my house used to have three people in it and now it's got just one, my appetite's been way less since the accident, and you look like you're in a bad place. I could help, and it wouldn't put me out much. You would have a place to stay."
"I could also, like, fucking stab you while you sleep."
"You could stab me right now," you point out. "But you aren't."
"You're fucking crazy," she says, shaking her head.
"Ah. Well, it was worth–"
"I didn't say I wouldn't come," she interrupts. "Just- don't try anything stupid, okay?" There's a little tinge of weakness in that sentence, a desperation for shelter and food that you recognize, but she clearly doesn't want to draw attention to it, so you don't mention it. She steps back from you, letting you dust yourself off. "You lead, I follow," she says, a suspicious expression on her face.
She stays behind you as you walk. You imagine she doesn't keep her hand far from the knife, but you avoid looking back much. You don't want to seem afraid. "You have a name? Even a nickname, or a cape name, if you have a power. Something to call you," you say as the two of you start to head to the bus stop
She hesitates. There's just the quiet sound of your footfalls. "Crystal," she says, at last.
"That, uh, a cape name?"
"No, it's the name my mother gave me," she half-spits, sounding more than a little cross.
"Okay, okay," you say. She's obviously pretty on edge and more than a little defensive. Best not to poke anything. "Sorry. I didn't mean to offend you."
There's a silence for a time, then Crystal volunteers something. "Apparently I have a cape name, though."
"Yeah?" Just keep her talking, be gentle, calm, sympathetic. She's obviously not in a good place, but you've been in a similar place recently and it's giving you an unusually large amount of empathy.
"Yeah. I saw my description in a couple newspapers. Hush, they're calling me."
"Pretty good cape name, as far as they come," you say. Although the question occurs to you, you don't ask why she was reading newspapers while homeless; you don't want to offend her somehow. "This is my bus stop," you say, gesturing. "I take the Southbound 11." You glance at your watch. "We're late, though. It's another twenty minutes until it comes around again."
Crystal twitches her lips as you sit down at the stop, obviously uncertain about what exactly to do. Finally she decides to sit down next to you, and she keeps one hand inside her jacket at all times. On her knife, you imagine.
She obviously doesn't want to talk about herself, but she's willing to listen to you, and she doesn't make any complaints. You talk about your job, your mother, your late father, your high school friends who have all since either died or left. Whatever you can think of, to fill the silence and try to build a rapport. You don't want her running off with your TV in the middle of the night or anything, and getting her to think of you as friendly might help with that.
When you arrive at your house, an hour and change later, she's a little more skittish than she was, peering around you and looking at the windows, as if trying to discern whether there are people inside, whether this is a trap. It's odd, how on edge she is, given that she apparently has a power. Does it not work well if she's put on the defensive?
In any case, there's no one but you living at your home any more, so you simply unlock and open the door and walk inside, inviting Crystal in. She follows, some of the tension rolling out of her as she does, though she still casts a long gaze across the room. "This where you live, huh?"
"Yeah. My bedroom's over there," you say, gesturing in the vague direction of it, since it's around a corner or two. "You can sleep in my parents' old room, Mom didn't take the bed with her when she left."
Crystal nods, just standing there, looking around. You worry that she's going to peel off or do something short-sighted, by the way that her whole body is tensed up. After what feels like several minutes, she finally relaxes, sighing, and glances at you, out of the corner of her eye. "Th-thanks," she manages to stutter out.
You wind up giving her the tour of the house.
* * *
Broaching the subject of powers isn't easy. Crystal isn't exactly open with you, and often flickers right out of existence, activating her power to vanish from your sight. You're not entirely clear how it works, exactly, but it's extremely effective. You could walk right through her when she's hidden, and she can (and often does) take the couch with her to... wherever she goes. The only downside is that, in the occasional observations you have of her using the state, you get the impression that her mobility is very limited.
You don't want her to think that you only invited her to stay because you were planning on using her. The occasional "movie nights" where the two of you watch TV together is a kind of comfortable you'd forgotten since you ran out of friends in the area. Just... being with another person, a friend. She doesn't make trouble for you, not really, other than needing to learn to clean up after eating.
It's actually her who brings up the topic of powers, when she starts to notice how little you eat. It wasn't much before she came, and it's even less now. You don't want to waste money on food when you aren't hungry, and you're never hungry, now that your powers are here. You can eat, you just forget to or can't be bothered to, and it adds up to missing most meals and only eating snacks when you do eat.
The two of you are watching some crappy drama, as you take one single piece of candy from the container that Crystal is stuffing her face from. She just watches you palm it, toy with it for a minute or so, then finally pop it in your mouth. "Are you, like, ana or something?"
"Ana?" You don't recognize the term.
"Anorexic." You still don't recognize it, and it must show on your face. "You eat like, nothing. Are you starving yourself, or do you just eat when I'm not around?"
There's... not really going to be a better opportunity than this. "I believe I told you that I've had less of an appetite since the accident," you explain, gingerly.
"I thought that meant you used to be, you know, a tub of lard. And after the starvation diet, you know, you never rolled back to eating as much as you used to."
"No, that's not what I meant." You pause, calming yourself a little, mentally preparing for Crystal to use her power, or to freak out on you. "I'm actually a parahuman. My power..." you gesture to your stomach, vaguely. "It substitutes for food."
When the word "parahuman" escapes your lips, Crystal's shoulders tense, her gaze steady, level, as she moves away from you a little bit on the couch. Getting ready to run, or to activate her power, you'd guess. You don't reach out, not wanting to set her off. "You're..." Crystal trails off, thinking, looking you over with fresh eyes. "I don't recognize who you could be, and I try to pay attention to the local capes, so I don't get forcibly recruited." She glances at the door, her whole body still tense, ready to run.
The implied question is obvious to you. Are you going to conscript me?
You have to admit, the thought had crossed your mind. The idea of moving into mercenary work has come up a few times in your browser's search history, as you considered options other than working at fucking Rauner's. It's a bit of a legally complicated gray zone, if you work for villains (against other villains), but there are some opportunities for mercenaries outside of that, especially in a city without a local hero population. If anything really important is going down (legal or not), people want capes on their side, either there or waiting to show up. Since the nearest Protectorate office to Fannin is in San Antonio - four hours by car - and there are no local heroes, that's an excellent opportunity for you to profit a bit from others' paranoia.
The problem is that for all its mobility and the one-touch-takedowns your power provides, you're not that much more dangerous than a normal person with a taser or a gun, and you're certainly not tougher. There's websites that offer "dilatant armor" for sale to the general public that supposedly maintains flexibility while rendering one more or less immune to most small arms fire, but those things cost somewhere in the range of six thousand dollars or more, and for all the money you don't spend, you don't have that much to throw around at the drop of a hat.
Crystal's power is to some extent complementary to yours. Defense to your offense. The only limitation is that you're reasonably certain it severely curtails her mobility while it's active, and you imagine it would do the same to you.
In any case, she has just asked you a question. Or at least, she's implied a question, and it's hanging in the air, producing an uncomfortable silence.
Are you going to try to sell Crystal on becoming a mercenary?
[ ] Yes.
- [ ] Your research suggests that parahumans tend to go a little stir crazy without a fight. It's probably for the best, for both of you.
- [ ] She could use the money to buy things for herself. Nicer clothes, whatever food she wants, electronics, etc.
- [ ] Write-in.
[ ] No.
[ ] Write-in.
Sorry for the kinda weak prompt/choices, deciding what to put for options has always been the hardest part of QMing for me. Also sorry for the delay; been busy.
