Snippet #974930

As he passed a house on the way to the Aegis' seat of power, The Drifter got one of his feelings again. He didn't understand quite what these 'feelings' meant. The sudden feeling of his guts twisting up and the atmosphere becoming tense around him. But he knew that it usually meant trouble, and it usually meant Alter trouble.

The Drifter stopped. His hobnailed boots clicked to a stop on the concrete sidewalk, both hands instinctively dropping to the grips of his revolvers, the old leather of his work gloves creaking as they gripped the worn sandalwood handles. His sharp eyes swivelled in their sockets, locking onto whatever had caused that feeling.

It was a kid. A little kid, much younger than The Drifter looked, felt, or actually was. Or at least, it looked to be a kid. She had two black pigtails and a baby-like face, dressed in what looked like a white nightgown. Nothing extremely threatening at first glance. Odd, but innocent. Then The Drifter looked harder. And he saw the gun. It was pitch black against the backdrop of the night, hard to see but for the slight glint of the starlight off its black-as-sin frame. He felt it in his bones, now - a sudden feeling of dread, of malicious intentions, of general bad-ness. All of it coming off that girl.

'Alter.' The word sifted through The Drifter's subconscious mind slowly, but it embedded itself there, glowing like red hot coals against the dark backdrop of his mind. An Alter, then, and one that didn't look very friendly by any measure of the word. One hand drew one of those massive revolvers, and levelled it at the girl. "Alter, I conjure," he said, his aim never faltering.

((If it wasn't obvious enough; I'm aiming at Kiiya.))