“...Yes?” Adelyn answers, though it sounds more like another question. She isn’t sure why Todd is asking her something he already seems to know, but then he follows the question up with a request.
“Huh. I’ll try.” She nods firmly, steps faltering as she tries to think back. She catches up to him again with a few hurried steps but just as quickly almost trips when she lets her mind drift again.
Half-distracted, she reaches out to get a handhold so she doesn’t get lost in the real world while she’s lost in her thoughts. She finds the loose wing of Todd’s jacket and curls her fingers into the fabric.
A little more secure, she casts her mind back, blocking out all the now sounds and trying to remember the then sounds. Her eyebrows furrow, a faint frown on her face as she chews on her lip.
She remembers… The steady patter of Todd’s shoes hitting the sidewalk. The accompanying shuffle of her own steps. The faint sounds of the people around them, not really faint but out of focus and unremembered. And…
Something, maybe. A little shuffle-step, too close to them, the rustle of fabric against leather against skin.
Someone bumps into her, not in the memories but in the now, and she loses the thread. Her eyes snap open as she flinches hard, reeling sideways into Todd.
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Todd dropped his speed again, just enough for Adelyn to keep pace in her distracted state. He glanced at his arm as she took it, but didn't say anything as her hands curled around the fabric. He felt her warmth through it again, felt the cutting pang of hunger, but this time it was well under control. No feral plan to run off and eat her somewhere out of sight crossed his mind now. If she hadn't already noticed the layers masking his thin frame, she certainly would now. Or she would if she hadn't been thinking, as he'd suggested.
He navigated them while her eyes were closed. His eyes now settled on anyone who came too close, not with suspicion but with enough attentiveness to note their hands and attention. Most were scrolling through social media or talking on the phone. One or two people not in that category met his eye and abruptly decided to give him a wider berth. His nose, meanwhile, looked for that faint scent. Cheap deodorant and sweat masked by layers of clothes. It had to be that, he'd decided. The person had to have a smaller frame to avoid his attention.
They moved away from the park, deeper into the belly of the city. It was much busier here. It'd be a good place to hide if you'd just picked someone's pocket. More people passed them by, all noted, none quite what he was looking for. Just as he wondered if Adelyn would remember anything that might help, he saw a man on his phone step out of a store too fast for Todd to reorient their path. The stranger turned and brushed shoulders with Adelyn, and she snapped back to the present. She stepped sideways, into Todd, and he steps closer to the street as the man didn't even acknowledge his mistake. Todd looked over his shoulder to watch him go. No sign of anything off, besides the obvious rudeness, but that was the big city for you.
"You okay, kid?" he asked Adelyn. He didn't ask her the obvious follow-up. More important than finding out what she remembered was her moment to recover, and he wouldn't take that from her.
Adelyn turns to snarl at whatever bumped her, shoulders hunching up in the absence of a fur coat to puff up. She almost wants to hiss, but the instinct fades an instant later and she’s left blinking in confusion. Her shoulders drop down again, and she reaches a hand up to massage one as she gathers her thoughts.
“Yeah, I’m okay.” Realizing she’s still carrying her backpack the wrong way around, Adelyn shifts it to her back again. She isn’t sure what face she’s making, but if it’s half as twisted-up as she feels inside then it must be one doozy of an expression.
“Sorry, I don’t know where that came from.” She rests her hand over her heart for a moment, counting its beats until she feels a little more centered. Then she shakes her head. “I don’t remember anything pacific.”
The city is still loud, but either she’s adjusting to it or she’s too discombobulated to spare the energy to be even more out of sorts. The rush of humans around them seems distant, here-but-not in a way that hurts her brain to think about.
They’ve walked further than she thought while she was trying to sort through her memories. Looking back, she can’t see the bus stop anymore, just a too-big centipede of a car idling on the side of the road. But the park is still in sight, and she can find her way home from there. With that resolved, she turns her attention forward again.
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Todd didn't seem upset by Adelyn's half outburst. The feral part in his own brain twisted a little as it perceived a potential threat, but he pushed it down with the same ease he used to push back the hunger. He let her recover in her own way, nodding with the smile of an experienced sage. “Yep. Big city folks. In a big rush to get nowhere they wouldn’t be already if they’d left on time.”
She did come around to the original question. He wasn’t surprised she didn’t remember; it was hard at times to keep track of everything in the bustle of a new environment, especially one so aggressively different from a deep forest. He wasn’t exactly designed for city hunting either, after all, but he’d managed to adapt over the years. Necessity breeds invention, and eventually skills once meant to pick off humanity’s strays in the farthest reaches of nowhere could be applied to doing the same at the heart of a population center.
“Well, it’s hard to pick up a scent,” he answered her, after a second, “but you’ve got to put yourself in the thief’s shoes. You just picked someone’s pocket in an open area, and they’re going to notice soon. Best choice is to slip into a big crowd and head away from the open area, deeper into the city. Personally I would’ve waited to dump the wallet until I was farther away – one of the ways I knew I hadn’t dropped it on the trail was because I found it right nearby. Our hypothetical thief isn’t the best, although they’re pretty good. So they’re going to find somewhere to lay low for a little while before they decide to strike again, at least to make sure nobody finds them if we come looking.”
The pickpocket had essentially turned this into cat and mouse, a manhunt in miniature. Todd was still scanning the street while he talked, both to navigate and look for anyone with the right vibe about them. As usual, though, it wasn’t his eyes that gave him the hint he needed - his trusty nose caught just the faintest edge of something familiar as a crowd thinned. He shuffled to a stop, tilting his head back to look down the alley he and Adelyn were passing. It led to a sharp turn at the end - a maze to the unfamiliar and unprepared.
“Pretty sure our guy’s down there.” Todd nodded into the alley, his voice growing quiet to hide under the city noise from any ears except Adelyn’s. Something maybe familiar, maybe foreign, maybe frightening lit up behind the cold blue of his eyes, and he took a sidestep into the alley.
He’d look back to see if she wanted to follow him, although he wouldn't blame her for turning back to the comfort of the forest now. While the alleys were quieter, they were also the hiding place for things a lot more dangerous than their little pickpocket. If there was ever a time to change her mind, this was it.
Ooh, he does have an idea. Adelyn listens attentively as Todd explains how thieves think , and not once does she think to question where he gets the know-how from. Probably from the same place she gets hers - learned or inherited, as most things are.
“They might strike again?” She asks, pouting a little with a quiet frown. Isn’t one hunt enough for a day? Maybe Todd didn’t have that much in his wallet, like catching a little bird and keeping on until you find something bigger, but it still doesn’t strike her as very fair.
But then her guide slows down, and she nearly walks past him before turning to backtrack and join him at the entrance to the alleyway. She peers into the gloom, glancing around briefly before lifting her sunglasses a little to get a better look.
“I don’t see him,” she whispers back. Then her ears catch a faint sound echoing from far down the alleyway- a little shuffle-step!
“!” It sounds distant, like it’s traveled through twists and turns.
Adelyn takes a step forward, pushing the tinted glasses up into her hair when the gloom settles over her. In the darkness, her eyes catch the light like a cat’s, the white nearly luminescent. She catches Todd’s glance and smiles, nodding her head. “Let’s go get ‘em!”
Either way, it’s a relief to be away from the crowds and the cars, even if most people have moved off on their own little ventures down the street.
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Todd laughed softly at Adelyn’s indignation toward the idea of the pickpocket hitting a second time. He’d had a bit of cash, sure, but they probably had a stockpile somewhere to lean back on. Or, if they were doing it for kicks, the money didn’t even actually matter. It was more about the adventure, the chase. Most of the time, if it was about the chase, they didn’t actually expect to become prey.
He only didn’t reply because he had to catch himself there. This wasn’t for food. It could’ve been, as his stomach agreed, if he’d been alone, but Adelyn was here, and he hadn’t quite lost that ghost of Summer he saw every so often even in faces that were so different. He couldn’t hide the sharpness that was only growing in his eyes, or the tremble that was getting worse in hands that he abruptly shoved deeper into pockets. If he was the one actually hunting, there was no telling how badly he’d slip. He really shouldn’t have waited this long. He really shouldn’t wait any–
Get a grip. Soon. Not now.
“If I’m just trying to track them by scent, it’ll be slow.” That wasn’t the reason why – but he needed to keep the monster in check. “If you can hear him, you lead. I’ll keep an eye out.”
Even as he caught another hint of that scent, he forced the hunger back into the part of him where it belonged. All he could do about the cold long-term was ignore it, but ignore it he would for now. He tried to look encouraging as he caught Adelyn’s eye. She was a capable hunter herself, as he’d seen when she clearly heard that hint of life. They’d have time. He just had to hold himself back.
“I’ll do my best!” Adelyn promises, something hungry in her own eyes. Or maybe that was just the excitement, the same energy that had her bouncing in her boots and tugging a little at her gloves. She’s never hunted in her boots and gloves, and her steps aren’t as silent as she’d like them to be as she starts walking in the direction she’d heard the sound coming from.
Sounds bounce oddly off the alley walls, the shuffle of her boots rebounding back to her again and again until she can’t stand it anymore. She makes a face at her feet, then glances at Todd as though measuring him up again.
“Don’t freak out.” She tells him in a whisper, already hopping a little to free her right paw from its leathery prison. The boot thuds to the floor and she makes quick work of the other, revealing two matching snow leopard paws. The soft white spotted fur disappears under the long hem of her skirt, but there isn’t much time for gawking as she races off at double the speed. “And keep up!”
The thief is still walking, she thinks. The shuffle-sounds haven’t gotten any quicker, and she can hear them a lot better with her steps nearly silent against the alley floor. Her bag still clanks just a little as she moves, but it’s quieter with the increased stability of not having to balance awkwardly within her boots.
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For a man in several layers of clothes and old shoes, Todd was very quiet. He had enough experience to make himself practically invisible to any normal person. A shift in weight, care about placement of his feet, even as that didn’t seem to effect his speed, and he was almost silent. He imagined it was still noisy to Adelyn, whose ears were even sharper than his, but it tended to be enough for this kind of thing.
Unlike Adelyn. She started the walk not-quite-as-quiet, then, frustrated by her own sounds, stripped out of her gloves and boots. The soft fur shouldn’t’ve been unexpected, since Todd had recognized the scent from the outset, but now it washed over him. Feline. Predatory. Thick fur, sharp claws.
Even the monster was very glad he hadn’t tried to eat this one. Maybe she’d see that in his returned smile, the relief mixed with the reassurance that this didn’t change anything.
And then she took off at a padded run. After only a moment’s deliberation, Todd abandoned his shoes to follow her. He had a hunch she was as solitary a hunter as he was, but there was something mixed in, maybe from human experience, that let him follow her movements. Cooperation and trust. As he followed her, even that short distance, he managed to set her scent aside as white noise against the rest of the alley. There were other, more unpleasant smells as they traveled deeper in, but one became more prominent, the one that tickled his mind in that passing memory.
He picked up speed for two steps, caught up to her, and spoke while they moved.
His voice was very, very low. It was likely Adelyn would be the only person who could hear him clearly, given the circumstances.
“Seems like we’re coming up on a regular spot,” he whispered, and maybe Adelyn would hear the crisper edges of the otherwise soft voice, “something like a den. I can smell them everywhere. They come here often, so they probably have more than one exit. One of us can confront them, the other one can wait at the other end of the alley in case they try to run. You can pick.”
It was Todd’s money, sure, but Adelyn seemed pretty fired up about this. She probably had some steam to let off, and he’d give her the chance to do that. Whichever way it went, he’d resume his trot while they discussed.