Ajax just needs time. If he regenerates his heart, blood will start flowing to his brain and he can finish off the rest of his regeneration while conscious and able to speed up the process. At the current rate he is healing, he will likely be able to restore his upper and middle torso within maybe four to eight hours.
Shaula wonders what she should do now. Should she continue to wait with him here?
No, that seems like it might come back to bite me in the ass later. I still have things to do. I… still need to check on the two orphan siblings. If I can move quickly enough I can make sure they don’t have to spend even a minute longer in a shitty jail cell.
Shaula recalls the sight of the two children being arrested and manhandled by the city guards earlier in the march. It was the first time today that she had been tempted to start a full-on massacre.
Their names were… The girl was Revy and the boy was… Fuck, I can’t remember. Whatever, I can probably still pretend to be their parents or guardians or something. Worst case, I’ll storm the precinct and get them out… No. I’m causing too much fucking messes everywhere I go, it’s just going to make things harder for Ajax and I in the long run.
Shaula also has something else to do and perhaps a way to get some information about the precinct the two kids are being jailed in. She has to figure out more about the place as well as the process to get kids out on bail. It could be a problem for her if bail is not an option, either because she has too little money on hand or because the kids did something they could be tried as adults for.
They are beastkin after all and it wouldn’t be too difficult to believe that the Federation’s justice system will come down on the two of them like a hammer hitting a window pane.
So, Shaula has to go to the police station with enough money just in case. In order to do that, she has to go back to the hotel room and gather some of the cash both she and Ajax have on hand. She quickly checks her pockets for her hotel key. Luckily, she still has it, remembering to grab it when she changed clothes earlier. She looks at it closely. There appears to be no damage to it from her earlier stunts.
Should I leave Ajax in the hotel room by himself while I do my shit? Hm. No. Not when he's like that. He has no way to protect himself. If for some reason, anything at all happens… Am I being too paranoid? No, no, more than that, if he wakes up while I'm out handling my errands, I would absolutely fucking hate that. He'd be all alone. Would I want to wake up alone if something like this happened to me? Fucking doubt. He's coming with me.
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Shaula sighs. Ajax is going to be accompanying her the entire night. Yet, there is another problem. Ajax's head is… conspicuous. She's been carrying it in her hands so far but she cannot walk into the hotel carrying him out in the open.
So… how am I going to do this?
While Ajax relives his life, Shaula carries him discreetly out of the slums in the direction of a general store. She covers his neck in her arms and shoves his face into her breasts so that only the back of his head is visible. She then covers that up with her head covering.
Even if her short hair makes her more conspicuous, for now Ajax is out of view. She had thought of placing him under her clothes, but her clothes are too tight fitting for that to work out.
She first needs a cloth sack to place Ajax in, and there aren't very many stores open around this time. She basks in the radiance of the red moon as she walks. It is certainly ominous, but it creates the perfect ambience for this place they're in.
She wouldn't go so far as to call Omicron “hell”, but it certainly has the feel of a place where bloodshed is rampant.
Really, Earth should have had a red moon too.
While looking for an open general store, Shaula walks up and down the darkened streets to test if anyone is wary of what's in her arms. The few humans out walking the streets pay her no mind at all, not even to her shorter than average hair. Actually a couple beastkin women walking together give her a glance and she hears their heartbeats skyrocket as they walk past her.
What’s with them? Hm, they might be afraid of me because I’m a lone human woman walking at night. Even gals like me could be terrifying human weapons if we have mastery of magic, right? Wait, actually… Ajax did tell me a few times that I have a really harsh resting bitch face, though those weren’t the words he used… Walking around with a mask is just so much easier honestly…
Shaula sighs at the thought of social interaction. Having tested herself enough and finding Ajax sufficiently hidden away, Shaula leaps up off the ground when she's in a safe place. She needs to be quick. She jumps onto a balcony, then another one, then a rooftop. From this point, she starts running from roof to roof at a high speed while keeping an eye out for an open general store.
She finds one within two minutes. She then lands in an alleyway, walks into the shop, grabs four identical cloth bags that meet her needs and heads for the counter. She thought having extras wouldn’t be a bad idea. She needs one to hold Ajax’s bloodied head for the walk to the hotel, and at least one pristine bag for after she rinses off Ajax’s blood. The other two for emergencies; she does have enough money for it after all.
She has a suspicion that the reason why the two beastkin women ran away from her is because they smelled the blood coming off of Ajax’s head, using their enhanced sense of smell. As soon as she returns to the hotel, she can fix that issue.
Unfortunately she didn't think something through.