Rune's Story

At the shout from back down the street, Rune glanced over his shoulder. He had no intent to stop and turn back (returning to the scene of the crime was generally a bad plan) up until the point where the decision was made for him. With a nimble hop, snatching the necklace back into his mouth, Caedmon jumped from Rune's shoulder down to the street below and bolted back towards the source of the yell.

"Oh for fu- Caedmon you stupid weasel!" Rune barked, turning on a heel to pursue the rodent. "You are such a little shit! I swear to the pits below I'll snap and break your neck one of these days! I'll do it!"

Caedmon seemed unperturbed by Rune's threats, and after only a few short moments was bounding onto the fence next to Casper, shimmering necklace dangling from his mouth. He surveyed the blonde boy with beady, searching eyes before jumping from the fence post onto his head, little claws scratching painfully as he landed and gained purchase.

"Damn it Caedmon!" Rune, still a few metres behind the weasel, grumbled, "You are an awful thief. A terrible, dreadful, atrocious, shockingly poor thief."

Caedmon was far from willing to part with his prize so easily. As Casper pulled on the necklace the weasel tightened its grip on both it and the boy's hair, resulting in a tug of war contest that looked undeniably painful.

"Caedmon!" Rune snapped, finally skidding onto the scene, "Get the fuck out of that guy's hair! Heads are not nests, we've been through this!"

The horned young man glared at Casper, "And you get your paws off my necklace! I stole that fair and square. Or Caedmon did, but he's mine, so that counts!" He glanced over his shoulder concernedly in case the woman from earlier had taken note of the exchange and returned to attempt to reclaim her jewels. The lights flicking on were worrying. He really wanted to be several streets away by now.

"Come onnn Caedmon!" Rune hissed, "We need to leave five minutes ago!"

The weasel reluctantly relinquished his grip on Casper's hair, launching himself forwards off the boy's head to the ground below - which would result, if Casper kept his grip on the necklace, in him dangling quite comically from the length of metal from his mouth.

Casper was relieved to have the animal off of his scalp, but when he had seen what was now just inches away from his face and between him and a small mink, he most certainly did not let go. He swung the necklace as if trying to blow away a bad smell with his hand and did so with a frightening abandon toward Caedmon's spine; enough to send any animal activist screaming and kicking to their grave.

"This is your feral animal?" he questioned, snidely. "Right. That's my feral raccoon, in the back, digging through garbage. He doesn't come when I call him by name, either."

Whip. Whip.

"Watch it you little shit!" Rune yelled as Casper started to whip the necklace around, much to the distress of the squealing Caedmon. "You'll hurt him!"

Far from content to just yell at Casper, Rune - in an uncharacteristic display of boldness - launched himself at the blonde boy to join the fray of teenager and weasel, grabbing Casper's wrist to stop him swinging it around and shoving him backwards. "Get off! Let it go you dirty weasel whacker! Don't make me use the horns! I will use the horns and we will both regret it!" Whilst there was an undeniable satisfaction to ramming someone in the face with a pair of pointy, solid horns, Rune couldn't help but feel a little bit like an angry goat whenever he did it. And there wasn't much dignity to being an angry goat. He liked to think he was above that.

He was probably wrong, but he liked to think it anyway.

In the midst of the grappling, Caedmon relinquished his grip on the necklace to drop to the ground and from there scamper up Rune's leg to climb his back, surveying the scuffle from his unstable perch with avid interest.

"What the hell?! Get off me, horned freak! Just take it!" Casper screamed, letting go of the necklace enough for gravity to drop it on himself, and making quite the effort to shove Rune's face in a direction opposite him. Rune's horns did look awfully damaging, and he wasn't one to question a stranger's motives.

He also wasn't one to wait patiently for someone who had rabidly attacked him to patiently stand up and dust themselves off. Casper, who looked no more fearsome than a school kid, had thrusted his leg wildly in Rune's direction, intending to use that leg to take off afterward.

But his other sense had told him he was being robbed, and so the hand that wasn't keeping Rune's incredibly pointy horns away from him was busy throwing five whole dollars at him.

Rune fell backwards onto his rear as Casper kicked away, clutching his prize firmly in his hand. He glowered up at the younger boy angrily, only for his expression to change to one of confusion as a small handful of notes fluttered down over him. "Dude, what are you doing? Keep your damn money, I just wanted the necklace my weasel stole. We're a crime duo, alright? Part time."

Pulling himself up with a grunt, he flicked the one note that hadn't found its way to the floor back at Casper. "Save the small change shower for a stripper, idiot." he muttered, rolling his eyes. "And as a side note, I am not a freak! Are you new here or something? If I'm a freak I don't know what the hell half this city is."

Rune muttered under his breath indignantly as Caedmon clambered to his shoulder and shot Casper a baleful glare for the violent mistreatment.

"At least I'm not ... lurking on someone's doorstep like some sort of stalker," Rune retorted, "At least I'm not an attempted weasel murderer!" he added with extra venom, reaching up to pet the glowering Caedmon. "Poor Caedmon. Stupid blondie tried to take our prize and then abused you."

The weasel squeaked angrily.

"Caedmon hopes you die in a car crash," Rune noted, as though translating for a weasel were a perfectly normal thing for someone to do. "He doesn't appreciate your tone, either."

"You are so. Fuck-ing. Crazy." Casper said, enunciating each syllable by framing Rune's face with his hand, be that he was at least a foot away. "I know the guy behind me. I don't know you. And I wouldn't even tackle the guy behind me. That's the difference. He owes me shit and I still wouldn't tackle him. Even if he were squeezing my ... goldfish."

The boy's eyes rolled in his head, and he went from standing to sitting in one fluid motion. His hand went to his head, where the weasel had dug its claws, surely taking locks of his hair with it.

Sirens sounded from far down the road. The neighbors had called the cops.

"Great." he sighed.

"Clearly," Rune muttered, "You don't care much about your goldfish again. Imagine ... imagine some random stranger was strangling your best friend. You have friends, right? Even assholes have friends. But imagine some random asshole was strangling your friend, I bet you'd tackle him then. Or do something."

Rune scowled. "Just because my friend happens to be a weasel."

He glanced up when the sirens sounded, groaning. "Well maybe if you hadn't started yelling!"

"You attacked me! You think that didn't play in a little? At all? Or maybe the stealing?"

Casper reached forward toward the necklace that glinted against the porch lights. He tried to snatch it, drop it, and stomp on it. It seemed to be of little to no consequence that it was worth so much.

"Can you and your best weasel friend screw off now, before I have to explain something that I don't even fucking know?"

Rune yelped and grabbed for the necklace, but his reflexes were sorely lacking and it was on the floor under Casper's foot before he could do anything about it. "What the fuck asshole!" he protested, bending to pick up the remnants of the jewellery. "What was that supposed to achieve!?"

He straightened with a glare, "You attacked Caedmon first! I was defending him! I was on my way over, all ready to coax him off your head so we could be on our way, but no! You decided that a little spot of animal abuse to spice up your day was in order! What, is that a habit of yours? Psycho."

Stuffing the broken necklace into his pocket in the hope that the precious stones might at least be worth something even scattered, he folded his arms and sighed. "I don't know what crawled up your ass and died today, blondie." Rune cast a furtive glance down the road at where the police car was approaching, swearing and starting off in the opposite direction.

"You're lucky I'm not feeling more vindictive!" he yelled over his shoulder.

"What are you gonna do? Throw your weasel at me? We know how that turned out!" Casper yelled back.

He rocked forward, and popped up on a foot. The young man looked behind him, making sure the horned man wasn't following him. He lowered his head, and let the cop car shoot past him and stop where he was sitting before.

The buzz of activity that normally filled the promenade of Wing City's western boulevard quieted to a low hum when evening approached. The street-lights were aglow, casting an orange light across the street's bricked surface. The families and couples that made up the crowd passing to and from the nearby lake's beach during the day had dwindled to but a few, either families with older children or couples out on a romantic evening. Many of the stalls that lined the road had packed up and gone home, though a few selling various hot foods and treats remained for the evening crowd, and many restaurants and cafe's continued to emit a warm glow out into the chilled night.

It was to the side of the promenade, on a grassy ledge just outside the gardens, that Rune was sat cross-legged in the shade of a tree. It was quite difficult to make him out clearly, something about his unnaturally pale form that blurred in with the dark. His cloak was wrapped about him, and he appeared to be hunched over a card game of some sort.

The odd thing was that though the cards were laid out in what appeared to be the setup for Texas Hold 'Em, or a similar poker-based game, his opponent was nowhere to be seen. Their pair of cards were visible laid out on the opposite side of the flop cards to Rune, but they themselves were conspicuous in their absence.

In the meantime, a short way down the street, a little weasel darted from shadow to shadow as it approached a burger stand. When the attendant was distracted speaking with a customer, the weasel made its move. It nimbly scurried up the side of the stand, settling itself beside where the food was laid out, and started to quickly shovel various burgers, sausages and buns into what appeared to be a tiny backpack it wore.

It wasn't to last, though, and after only a few seconds of looting, the attendant laid eyes on it. "Oi! Stop that you little fuck!" he yelled, prompting the weasel to leap off the stand and dash away into the night with the man in hot pursuit.

While the man had been too busy yelling at and following the weasel, small hands reached over to grab a bun and a burger off of the stand. Both the hands and the owner of the hands disappeared, making off toward the gardens. That owner in particular was a young girl, tan-skinned with apricot hair. She had a set of very large, round eyes that shined with the thrill of the stolen goods. It had been a good thing that weasel was there!

As she walked, something and someone took her eye. In fact, it took both eyes, one of which was blue, the other brown. With a moment of contemplation, she began to meander over to the stranger sat under a tree. She came up behind him to look over at the cards, and would scrutinize before speaking.

"So who's winning?" she mumbled, biting into her burger. "You're cheating, aren'tcha?" She tugged at her red scarf, letting crumbs roll down the surface. She wasn't dressed too poorly, though her wardrobe did seem a bit worn. Her heavy peach jacket was stained and had patches everywhere. Some threads came loose. Her cargo pants were the same way, and were very loosely fitted. In fact, they did not fit her at all; she was using a piece of rope for a belt. Her sneakers had holes in them. She wasn't the daughter of a rich family, that was for sure.

Faintly luminescent yellow-green eyes looked up from beneath Rune's hood to come to rest on the child that had approached him. He scrutinised her searchingly for several long moments before he spoke. "I'm winning. And no, I'm not. He's just not very good at this."

After he spoke, Rune laid down his hand - a king of clubs and an ace of clubs. The flop contained a queen of diamonds, a ten of clubs, a ten of hearts, a six of clubs and a four of clubs. "Flush." he stated. "What you got?"

There was a silence.

Then, abruptly, Rune's shadow (which fell across the cards laid out on the grass) moved. 'His' hand stretched upwards, seeming to grow claws as it did so, and flipped the opposite hand over to reveal two queens, of hearts and spades. The shadows then nudged the queen and two tens from the flop forwards.

"Fuck. Full house. You win." Rune said, scowling.

It was at that moment that a weasel rocketed into his side.

Caedmon dived for the folds of Rune's cloak, just as the man from the stall staggered huffing up the slight incline to where he was sitting. "Hey! You! Gimme that weasel!" he demanded.

Rune fixed the man with his piercing eyes, looking him up and down as though assessing him. After what began to grow into an awkwardly long pause, he finally spoke.

"What weasel?"

As soon as she looked up, the girl gasped and stuffed the burger in her mouth fully. Her cheeks inflated, not unlike a hamster's. She stuffed the bun in her pocket and stood there, trying to chew the burger. Bread poked out of her lips. She just stared at the stall man, blinking. Unsuspicious. Completely unsuspicious.

Then, she rose a hand to tap him on the shoulder, then point the other way. "Wuufoe offo waoh," she muffledly mumbled, crumbs flying from her mouth. "Weefuh."

"I saw it come up here!" the man exclaimed.

Rune shrugged. "Must have gone into the gardens. Are we done? I'm busy." The young man glanced back at his card game. The stall owner glanced down at the cards and the lack of an opponent, then back at Rune, raising a quizzical eyebrow.

Right up until the point where Rune's shadow waved at him. And grinned.

Gulping, he took a step back. "Gah. It's not worth chasing it into there anyway. Blasted thing." he muttered, before turning and stalking away.

A few moments later, Caedmon stuck his head back out from Rune's cloak and scampered down onto the grass. Rune reached out and flipped open the little backpack the weasel wore, retrieving the food from inside and swiftly tucking in.

"Good job, little buddy." he said, smiling and scratching the weasel on the head before handing him one of the sausages. Caedmon took the sausage and set about gnawing enthusiastically on it.

It was then that he appeared to remember that Zuri was still there. He turned back to her, raising an eyebrow. "Do you want something, kid?" he asked. "I'd say I could spare a bite... but you're already stuffing your face. Literally."

The kid looked back down to the ground, eyes on the...shadow. It had surprised her before, but before she had been able to answer, food stall man had shown up. Slowly swallowing the burger, she stifled a giggle. When her cheeks were almost empty, she thumped her chest, trying to dislodge some of the food on her throat. That's what happened when you didn't chew.

"-what's that?" she spat, coincidentally spitting out some food, as well. Her hand clapped over her mouth, and she finished on swallowing the rest of her too-quick meal. She cleared her throat. "Oh. Uh...yeah. That!" she pointed to the shadow. "Is that a person?" She pointed to the weasel, too. "And him! He helped me steal some of the food! He's yours!?"

"No, he's not a person. Not quite, anyway." Rune said, before pausing to consider for a moment. "I suppose it depends on your definition of person, though. He's not human, certainly. In either case, his name's Nyu."

The shadow rippled in acknowledgement, but neither the hand nor the face showed themselves again.

"As for Caedmon," the weasel perked up at his name being mentioned, looking to Rune then to Zuri, "He's mine, yeah. Or at least we're friends. I wouldn't call him property."

Rune took a bite of a burger and chewed on it ponderously for a moment before going on. "My name's Rune. Who're you?"

"You've got kinda weird names for your... friends," she commented, wiping her mouth with her sleeve. She sat next to them, legs folded Indian style. "My name's Zuri!" she said brightly. "Nice to meet you, Rune-" She nodded to him, then turned to the shadow, "And Nyu," And nodded again before turning to the weasel, "And Caedmon!" She let her hands drop into her lap. "So how come he's not a person? What is he?" she asked. "And are you like me, too? Is that why you're stealing? Why is your skin so white? How come you look funny?"