"Clair. Your name will be Clair." Riley says, patting the creature on the head.

"I'll accept it, then!" Clair replies, climbing up Riley's face and resting on top of his head.

Riley continues on into the night, further on the road which he's never seen before, to go quite literally anywhere he wants to. It's the same as before he was brought here, but it feels a bit more like freedom instead of suffering now that he's got someone he's willing to trust in, even if it's just a little bit.

His footsteps are the only noise that populate the district after dark, as it seems everyone else around here has either left the area or gone to rest. All except for another set of footsteps that approach behind him. Not just one set, but five.

The blade in Riley's hand cuts through the air, dissipating the tension between him and the approaching assailants.

"Nice blade you got there. Is it some sort of toy?" the frontmost assailant snarkily remarks, pointing a knife back at Riley's throat while his group behind him prepares their weapons.

Riley winds back and stabs forward, piercing right through the thug who's most likely the leader, and then uses as much force as he can to pull it back out, narrowly dodging a wide swing from a baseball bat aimed directly at his jaw from another one of the other combatants.

Every breath that comes from his lungs is deep, and every beat of his heart is heard crashing through his ear as he backpedals and strikes away an onslaught of attacks, each swing filled with more hatred and force than the previous one. Through a miracle not of his own creation, he's becoming proficient in deflecting at an astounding rate, and his posture is getting increasingly more stable as the fight goes on. But that alone isn't enough to warrant a complete turn of the tables against the unruly thugs.

Clair taps Riley on the head over and over and starts cheering him on.

"Just take deep breaths and start slashing at them, you're pretty much set to win at this rate!" it says to him.

Riley takes a deep breath, steadying his blade and preparing to lunge with his blade.

The focus is almost torture for him. If he doesn't land this, or he can't follow up, he's dead. But what else is there to do but try?

He rushes forward, piercing two with a single lunge, but the blade gets lodged in there in a strange way. He tosses the thug-kebab to the side and throws a right hook directly into the chest of the thug holding the baseball bat.

His hands grasp the dropped bat, although his stance and technique is messy and his previous prowess seems to have disappeared into thin air. Regardless, he swings full force into the cranium of the man who used to be holding the baseball bat. The dent the strike left behind in the bat pales in comparison to the one left in the man's head.

The last man standing in the back doesn't quite seem like the rest though. Especially since he's not even bothering with the fight, instead opting to loot the corpses of his former comrades.

However, the moment the man tries to grab the blade from the skewered thugs, Riley slams down onto his hand to stop him from doing so.

A loud CRACK is heard, but it didn't come from the man. Instead, it was the bat breaking into pieces.

"Rude, but warranted. I'll see if I can pick it up another time, then." says the man, picking out splinters from his clothing as he drags his spoils away.

Riley contemplates going after him, but after remembering what happened last time he took a risk like that, he just decides to take the blade out of the skewered thugs and wipe the blood off of it with his sleeve.

Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

"Good job on your first official self defence!" says Clair in a sickeningly cheery tone. "Though, if that wasn't a bunch of thieves and instead a bunch of fun-loving hooligans strolling at night I think it wouldn't have been quite a good first impression on them."

"Fuck, you're right. I could have just slashed at some wandering drunk or something. Probably wouldn't go over very smoothly with Drew." Riley says, mulling over the possibility of what could have happened if his life wasn't actually in danger.

"I'm sorry, and please excuse me for asking, but who exactly is Drew? I heard the petstore lady yell about him all the time, but never managed to really get any good information about what he was like besides a bureaucratic maniac."

"I'm gonna be honest, that's my only impression of him too. I've probably got to meet him at some point before supper."

"It's midnight. Way past supper right now."

Riley looks through the glass of a nearby store and sees a clock, confirming the fact that it's definitely way past dinnertime.

"I'm hungry right now, and I'm not going to wait for him to probably never show up. I've got a bit of cash in my pockets if you're thinking of getting something." Riley says, not waiting for Clair to respond nor waiting for Drew to arrive.

He places down Clair onto a seat and walks over to the other side to sit down and look at the menu.

"Pretty good pizza, but it's all pricy. Thirty brun for a large is nothing short of robbery." Riley mutters to himself.

"Brun? What the hell is that?! I thought we still paid in pounds!" shouts Clair, clearly confused about the payment.

"Pounds? Have you been sleeping for the past century? Nobody in the world has used those in forever. I don't even think we're anywhere close to where London used to be. Are you going to start telling me about the good old days of you knitting sweaters in your house under a rock?"

"I swear it's been no less than a decade since the last time I've seen one!"

"You're tossing around the word decade as if you're some sort of eighty year old man."

"I am not that old!"

Clair pouts and starts looking at the menu.

"Let's just get the large one and leave it at that."

Riley orders the large pizza from the menu as well as some poutine on the side. The order doesn't take very long to finish cooking and get to their table.

"There's gravy on the chips? I haven't ever seen this before in my life, ever!" Clair announces relatively loudly, not even taking a moment to look at them before plunging their face directly into the poutine, shattering Riley's hopes of getting a single bite of it.

Riley sighs. "It's gravy and cheese curds on fries. Not that revolutionary."

Clair very obviously hear anything that Riley's saying, as they're far too lost in the delectable poutine to care much about whatever he's saying.

A young boy approaches the table that the two are currently sitting at and frantically starts babbling something about "Helping his sister".

Riley puts his hand on the boy's shoulder and instructs him to take deep breaths before telling him about what happened.

The boy calms down and hands over a brochure on some local company a bit far from the area.

"My sister was supposed to give a big tour of this office, but she still hasn't come home after she was supposed to! I'm worried sick about her right now!" The boy explains to Riley.

"You don't think she got lost?" Riley inquires.

"Her? Getting lost? Fat chance. There isn't any alleyway anywhere that my sis can't navigate. She's even found all the stuff I've ever lost!.." The boy's face turns to a pout. "...Even the stuff I ever try to hide. I don't think my Halloween candy has ever lasted any longer than a week."

Riley stands straight up and picks Clair out of the poutine and hoists him onto his shoulder.

"Looks like I've got a job for now, then!" Riley exclaims while walking out the door. "Oh yeah, one more thing!"

"Yeah?" The boy replies.

"Pay my tab for me, alright?"

"Wait-"

The boy reaches out and tries to run towards Riley, but trips and falls. By the time he stands up, Riley's already far gone.

"Miss Fein?" the boy says while looking at the cashier.

"Don't worry about it, I'll foot the costs. Can't have a kid like you falling into debt." the cashier replies.

"N-no, I can't let you do that. I'll do the dishes for today."

The lady scoffs. "Why can't we have more kids out there like you, and less like that old scum who ditched you with the bill?"

The boy laughs it off and heads into the back to help with the store.

----------------------------------------

The delectable aroma of chamomile fills the air, as Drew pours himself a nice cup of tea.

"I feel like I'm forgetting something, but I'm not quite sure what it is."

He takes a sip and remembers what exactly he had forgotten the moment before.

"Ah, I forgot to tell him where I live!" he exclaims frantically to himself.

"Well, no fretting over spilled students. I hope somebody at least finds his corpse."

Drew reclines backwards in his chair and picks up a hefty book to read, not lasting very long before he slowly falls asleep, pouring his hot tea all over his leg AND his book.

"FUCK!"