savetheearth | Stealing, of course, is a crime...

Who: Robert Holloway + Avery Strider
When: Noon 01/08; Then later Noon 01/10
Where: Whatever park in Locke City that isn't completely ruined.
What: Holloway needs some quick and easy cash, so he figures stealing some weird-looking chicks sunglasses. Then two days later and unable to get rid of them, he meets said girl again and realizes he hecked up. He hecked up bad.

The thing about Holloway's life is that it's very much not the kind of life that has a steady flow of income. Things have been... less terrible recently. Mostly because no one really want to come out in weather like this, and plenty of people are willing to pay him to shovel snow out of their parking spaces or whatever. But extra money is still something he could always use, which is why he's in one of the more crowded parks scoping out the crowds.

He's already nicked a few small but pawnable items when he sees her.

She's perfect...

Well, not really. She's kind of pale and and tall and a little chubby, but he's not really in the position to care a ton. She does have a pair of RayBan sunglasses, and he knows a guy who'd pay a decent amount for those.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It's been a pretty rough day, so Avery swings by a shitty "park," barely even a park, just a cluster of trees on a patch of grass at the ass-end of a city block. The city threw a bench or two and a fountain in it and called it a park. Whatever. It doesn't get much traffic, and she needs a chillaxer before she gets to class or she's going to die.

Toking before going out in public is pretty rude, but it's a lecture hall and she can sit in the back, away from where people can smell her stank, so she rolls a shamefully sloppy joint sitting on the edge of the shitty fountain, her backpack laying on the ground at her feet.

She disappears into the miserable cluster of trees before lighting up, her backpack slung across her shoulder as she leans against a tree and practises looking like the person they warned you about in afterschool specials. Mostly she looks like a fat nerd, but at least she's a lawbreaking fat nerd. Or something. Said RayBans are, in fact, tucked in the front pocket of her backpack, because it's not that bright out and she won't need them until class when the fluorescent lighting starts to brutally attack her retinas.

Holloway watches her out of the side of his eye, moving to sit on the floor with his back against the fountain at a distance designed to let him watch her while not being too hilariously obvious about it. He used to be nerdy enough in high school that he can happily say that he's got the art of petty thievery down to a science, even if watching other people makes him feel a fair bit more awkward than actually taking their things. He pulls out a book--Animal Farm, because it's thin and sad as shit and makes him look too intelligent to be a thief to certain parties-- while she rolls one up.

When she moves to a place farther away afterward and Holloway doesn't have to be a genuis to know that she's smoking up. He stays where he is, watching her still and trying not to cringe at how easy this is going to be. She probably can't run as far or as fast as he can, and he'll have to run pretty fast and pretty far if she starts shouting after him.

But she'll have to leave the park before he can actually move. As she is now, approaching her is probably a sure way to get caught, and he's still not super keen on actually mugging people.

She doesn't loiter, and only ends up smoking about half before putting it out and shoving it into a little box for later. Avery slings her backpack up over her shoulder once more and ambles out of the tree cluster, not really paying any attention to the boy sitting by the fountain as she passes.

Turning in the direction of the school, Avery digs her cellphone out of her pocket and begins texting rapidly with one thumb while walking, her other hand in the pocket of her hoodie.

Holloway picks up his bag, but waits a little and makes a note of the way she turns as she leaves the park instead of tailing her right away. Instead, he follows her a little bit later, walking a reasonable distance behind her. Enough to watch but not so much as to seem creepy. He's casual about it, still reading his book, but he holds it with one hand and doesn't pay much attention to the words. This really is the choice part of it after all.

Carefully, he quickens his pace until he's close to passing her, then slips her sunglasses from where they're hooked.

It's not that she doesn't know someone is walking behind her, she just doesn't realize she's being followed. Avery isn't paranoid like that, being privileged enough to have never gotten in any kind of fight, altercation, or felt unsafe wandering around any of the cities she's lived in. Thus she doesn't pay the footsteps behind her any mind-- until they get really close behind her, and her attention flicks from her phone screen to beside her, looking for the person, because that's weird, and that's when she feels a slight shift in her back.

Avery flinches away, seeing ratty clothing and a slim frame. "Dude, what the fuck?"

Holloway gives the girl a very what the actual fuck look, and while it might seem like he's surprised by her yelling, he's mostly surprised that someone who was fucking around on her phone after getting high would have awareness that good. He slips his hands behind his back, quickly hanging the sunglasses on his waistband. There are people staring now, not a lot, but enough to make him look sketchy as fuck.

Awesome.

He lifts his hands up, palms out in a placating sort of gesture and a wide friendly smile plastered on his face. "Sorry, sorry. Totally my bad. Wasn't really paying attention to where I was going."

Losing her sunglasses for the second time pretty much sucked, and she hasn't had time to call the RayBans company again to negotiate replacements, so she's stuck with a shitty pair of knockoffs from the drug store. At this rate, she should probably just go with the cheap ones if she's apparently doomed never to keep another pair of shades longer than a couple months.

Some bullshit, right there.

She slumps out of the cafeteria, skateboard tucked under her armpit. She cuts through the small pond ecosystem thing next to the science building, navigating around piled up stones rather than just walking a few extra meters to hit the sidewalk. There's some other students milling around, because there was some kind of movie event tonight that Avery neglected to attend.

Holloway doesn't really mind coming to the college, since most students who've given up caring and think hobo-chic is in this season dress like him anyway. It works to his advantage, since no one questions he's a student, which means he can get free food after doing something he doesn't really care about. The movie they'd watched was free, and so was the food, so Holloway didn't see the harm in sticking around the campus for a few hours. Plus, they had sandwiches, pizza, chips, popcorn and soda, and who was he to turn that down.

He's halfway through his second sandwich, nicked from the move night before he left, he bumps into someone heading out of the cafeteria. "Sorry," he says automatically, before actually getting a good look at the person he bumped into.

Oh shit.

Jerking her head up, Avery winces but doesn't scowl--she's not really the kind of person to lambast a random stranger for running into her, so she's actually the one prepared to throw a quick sorry followed by a speedy retreat to somewhere with no people to accidentally bump into her. She squints at him, finding him slightly familiar, but it's getting dark and as always the two hours in the day where the light is just bright enough for her to see clearly without fizzling out her eyeballs has already passed, so he's kind of shadowy and she can't quite recognize him.

He has a vaguely terrified expression on his face, so she takes a few steps back, wary.

The fact that he actually has to hesitate on running is a completely novel concept for him, but he is also a bit bogged down with food in his hands and he really doesn't want to drop it and leave. Mostly because he's on his last twenty bucks, and the more of that he can save, the better. But when she doesn't immediately scream, try to punch him, or scream and try to punch him, he relaxes and tries to look less guilty.

"Sorry. My fault. Wasn't paying attention."

Okay. Good. Now just back away. Slowly, slowly...

Stealing, of course, is a crime...

1.08

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1.10

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