“I really wish you’d eat more…” Alk bemoaned at the girl sitting across from her. The two girls had stopped at the first restaurant they found since it was already the middle of the afternoon, and they hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Well, they’d split one of Lieu’s rations on the ride over, but that was a bit less than satiating.
Creti, who was face-deep in a huge, juicy sandwich, with a bit of grease running down her chin, looked over at her friend in confusion. “What the hell are you talking about? I eat way more than you do.” She then paused for a momenting and realization dawned on her face. “Oh, I must be doing it again, huh?”
The girl set down her sandwich and took a few deep breaths so she could refocus. Unlike some other Fiends, Creti had never been able to turn her Curse off fully. There was always at least a minimum baseline of pitifulness that acted as a last line of defense, to keep anyone from actively seeking to harm her. Most likely out of instinctual protectiveness, her body wouldn’t let her turn this off.
But Creti usually left her Curse at a notch or two higher, so that people would perceive her as someone they looked upon favorably, or not get angry at her if she somehow slighted them. Or if she was feeling a bit more entitled, she’d leave it at the level where people would go out of their way to give her special treatment or actively look to help her in some way.
For the sake of her friends, though, she’d alter her Curse so that those levels didn’t affect them specifically. However, it required a bit of subconscious effort, and if she got lost in something else, she’d forget about it and they’d start to act like everyone else around her. Once the girl saw the look in Alk’s eyes actively change, she returned to her sandwich.
“You probably wouldn’t be so scrawny yourself if you didn’t move your mask back between each bite,” Creti pointed out while her own mouth was stuffed. “It takes you forever to eat anything when we’re out, and you usually give up halfway through. Doesn’t it get tiring?”
Alk paused with her mask pulled down, now more self-conscious as she was taking a bite with her fork. Once the food was in her mouth, she let go of the mask and it returned to its usual spot on her face. She did in fact do this for every single bite, but now she grumbled as she chewed. “Maybe someday I can do without it.”
The rest of the meal was pretty quiet after that, and eventually their waitress returned with the check. “You look like you really enjoyed that!” she said to Creti. “Since you were probably starving, and needed it desperately, it’s on the house!” Creti gave her a big smile of thanks in return, as if this was something special, but it was pretty par for the course, happening more times than not when they ate at a restaurant.
“Your bill, ma’am.” Without a second thought, the waitress handed the receipt to Alk and walked away.
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Alk stared at the racks upon racks of black clothing. There was nary another color in the entire store—a shopping haven for the girl. She didn’t really need any new clothes, but Creti had touted all of her tights being ripped as a reason to go shopping, and she quite didn’t understand when Alk insisted that it was on purpose.
But she knew that no matter what she tried, she’d eventually give into Creti’s whims, so she stopped trying to fight her on it. At least this store was to her tastes, though there was little here for the girl who always needed to look homeless. They’d have to walk a bit farther to find clothing that looked purposefully ratty, and it was always far more expensive than regular clothing for some reason.
Creti had also said that she was low on makeup used to make herself look more haggard and sickly than she really was. That was an actual valid reason to go buy things, but Alk knew her boss wouldn’t let her leave the store until she bought something, so she may as well try and find something good.
Most of the items were just okay, a bit too studded and glitzed with dangling accessories for her tastes—a completely different kind of vibe than the one she went for. Yet for some reason, her eyes kept drifting over towards a long-sleeved black jacket that was cut off just below the bust. “Do you think she’d like it if I showed off more skin like she does?”
“I think she’d like you to just be you and wear what you want to wear,” Creti put her hand on her friend's shoulder, having returned from her clothing expedition, a few different pieces in her arms for Alk to try on. It was times like this when Alk remembered why Creti was their leader and convinced them to join in the first place. She sometimes knew just the right thing to say.
That didn’t stop them from getting a scoff and an eye roll from the nearby teenager manning the register at the cheesiness of it, but that was also just the kind of place this was. After a bit more poking around, they actually ended up getting Alk one of the more expensive items in the store—a black evening gown with netting similar to what she usually wore over the arms.
And since they’d reached a certain price threshold, plus the encumberment of carrying the dress around for the rest of the day, the already-over-it clerk offered to ship the dress for them. They had it sent to the same dummy address where they forwarded their bills, since it wasn’t like they could actually have it shipped to their monster-surrounded bunker.
◆◆◆
“How can they have the gall to charge so much for pants that are already ragged and washed-out?” Creti frowned at the price tag of some jeans that would suit her needs perfectly. She then shrugged and decided to get them anyways, since she wouldn’t have to put in the extra effort of altering them. There was also a nice, only mildly overpriced patchwork jacket that made her look ripe for a night camping in an alleyway. She made sure to get it a few sizes up to add to the raggedyness.
The girls left that store with a few bags in hand. Thankfully, they also sold the makeup Creti needed, so they had no need to find another place. But it was clear that the leader didn’t want to go home quite yet, despite the fact that the sun was just about to finish setting, so they walked down the market street without any real direction in mind.
“My purse!” That was when they heard a scream from a woman behind them, and the thief in question bumped past them, a little bit of surprise in his face that he hadn’t knocked the two frail-looking girls over.
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“You take care of it, Alk. I’ll go negotiate with our new customer,” Creti had a greedy smile, thankful for the new opportunity.
It didn’t take Alk long to subdue the man. She merely threw one of her needles into the man’s heel, immediately tripping him, and it injected him with a paralysis concoction. Only a bout a minute after they’d separated, Alk returned with the bag in hand, dragging the thief by his scruff.
“So there you have it. Thief caught, bag in hand as promised, so what do you say to $50 commons?” Creti asked with not even a hint of shame. She also noticeably wasn’t using her Curse to manipulate this woman, for now at least.
Their leader had never admitted to it, but something had changed in her after their last run-in with the Fiends For hire. She’d mentioned something about how the Drazah boy had tried to convince her that it wasn’t in her best interest to always rely on her Curse. That had seemed to bother her, but not enough to do anything about it initially.
Now that there was rumor floating around of handcuffs that could weaken a Fiend to the point that they couldn’t use their Curses, she had to be a bit more mindful. Creti had absolutely no strength, since that would be counterintuitive to her power. But that meant if she ever couldn’t use it, she’d be screwed to no end. As a result, she’d been trying to get better at negotiating and persuasion without it when dealing with clients, only activating it when the rest had failed.
“Uhh, I don’t know…” the victim looked like she was being robbed for a second time. “The bag isn’t even worth that much.”
“Well, it’s not really about the bag, is it?” Creti’s mouth shrugged. “Think about everything that’s in it that you’d have to replace. Your wallet at least, and all the cards in it. That’d be such a hassle. Maybe your phone’s in there too? That’d just be awful to lose.”
“But if you’re not interested…” the girl’s head spun to Alk. “I guess she doesn’t want our services. Go ahead and return the bag to him and let him go.” The woman gasped in surprise when Alk actually started to give the bag back to the man.
“Okay, fine, I’ll pay,” she stopped Alk before the handoff could be made. “But my common card is in the bag, so I’ll need it back to pay you.”
“Oh, wow that really would be quite a pain to replace. Common cards certainly aren’t cheap,” Creti’s greed found new life. “$70 commons.” The woman nodded in agreement, not wanting to make things any worse for herself.
“And have a good rest of your night,” Creti waved the woman goodbye when she started to walk away. But she did it on purpose so that the woman would look back. “You’ll be sure to tell all your friends about how much Above helped you out, won’t you?” She certainly had activated her Curse this time, trapping the woman in her spell.
“I know, I know, you think I asked for too much,” the girl looked to Alk’s somewhat distraught face once the woman had left for good. “But… now that we have some spare cash, we could go to that dessert buffet you were eyeing earlier, guilt free.”
Alk’s eyes lit up, not even caring about her usual shame when she showed interest in anything considered girly. The two girls could only laugh about the situation after that as they practically skipped their way towards replacing their dinner entirely with sugar.
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The Fiends practically had to be thrown out of the dessert buffet by the staff. They kept coming around, insisting that they were closing, but couldn’t do anything more than that because of Creti’s Curse. Eventually, though, the girls got tired of their griping, and left with a few last treats in hand that weren’t too sticky.
They enjoyed them while giggling all the way back to where they’d parked their scooter, but that was where the fun of the night ended. “Oh you two girlies look like you’re having so much fun out here late at night.” Three men had suddenly surrounded them. “We’re headed out to the club. Why don’t you come with us and have even more fun, eh?”
“We can get you into something a bit more colorful and pretty,” one of the men leered at Alk.
“Heh, maybe after a bath for this one,” the third man grabbed Creti by the chin and spun her face to look at his. But that was when it was all over. Her Curse had activated out of pure fear and confusion, cranking up to a level she didn’t normally reach.
“Oh Cosmos, oh zjik! We’re so sorry!” the man let go of her chin and turned to bolt away. His two friends were quickly in tow, probably not as affected since they didn’t look right in her eyes, but enough to know that it was time to flee.
But it was too late for them, and Alk pounced with inconsolable fury. She quickly captured them all and bound their limbs with zip-ties—something she never left home without. After dragging the three of them into the nearest dark bark alley and covering their mouths with tape, she pulled out some ingredients from her pouch and began brewing a concoction in her arm.
Once she was satisfied, she siphoned it and crouched down next to the terrified ‘gentlemen’. “If you swallow this, you die,” she blatantly threatened them. One at a time, she briefly peeled back the tape, squirted some of the liquid into their mouths, and then resealed their lips.
“In a few hours, this liquid will congeal into a paste that will dissolve the tape,” she gave them a glimmer of hope. “But each drop you consume in the meantime will make you feel weaker and weaker. If you even have so much as a sip, you’ll die in unimaginable pain. Good luck. If you actually survive this, I might consider forgiving you.” Alk finally left them to their fate, satisfied with her vengeance.
Maybe Creti was also appeased from what she’d witnessed, but she decided to throw them another bone. “You’ll do your best, won’t you?” she radiated as a beacon ambition in front of them, motivation to make it through such an ordeal. That last little light could possibly be what pushed them through to the end, but their lives were still in their own hands.
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It didn’t take too long on the ride home for Creti to crash completely. She started out rather hyper from all their sugar, raving about their day, ranting about those guys they’d just endured, and then dug into a rabbit hole of complaining about the Fiends For Hire—as was quite common with her.
But then the sugar wore off, and the girl conked out, curling up into a ball in her seat. Probably due to her usual lack of energy, but Creti was quite the heavy sleeper. Alk knew she’d be fine putting on some dark-rock without waking her, at a volume to help keep her awake for the ride home.
She was especially thankful for her leader’s deep coma when a monster attacked their truck. The event wasn’t anything too serious, and it only took a moment for Alk to shoot it dead with one of the turrets, but their leader didn’t stir. It was for the best, because despite the strong front Creti wore as a mask, she was a very timid girl on the inside—genuinely terrified anytime anything or anyone showed any aggression towards her. This was why Alk and the rest of Above worked so tirelessly to keep her safe.
After shoving the monster’s decaying corpse into the trunk as a snack for Bunchy, The Plague Doctor resumed the quiet, unsettling drive back to their bunker. Even though there were no more attacks, she was still on the edge of her seat the entire way back—eyes leering at her in the darkness.
When they got home, Alk left Creti in the car for a minute to feed the Buzzhound her treat. She then went inside, making sure the heat was still running, and that there was nothing to obscure her route down the steps. Alk then returned one last time to the truck, picked up Creti, and carried her to bed.