A Tail of Two Kitties || Jade and Thomas
Thomas's life wasn't even close to normal. Routine wasn't something he found often. If ever. Which was fine by him. His life had never really followed any normal sequence of events. It kept things from being boring as far as he was concerned.
There was one thing that he could always count on, though. The eggs in the fridge would need to be restocked. The only thing that seemed to be consistent around the House of Secrets was the rate they went through eggs. As such, Thomas found himself headed towards a market or a grocery store or wherever he felt like going this time about once a week. He may or may not leave the store with other items, but one thing was certain; he'd purchase a carton of eggs.
This week, he hit up a smaller convenience store type place while he was around City Hall. Partially because it also had a redbox. Someone had made the mistake of putting him in charge of movie night. Not that he had any idea what he was picking out. Gee, what movie suits the likings of a handful of assassins and mercs who live in a house with no address and have varying levels of taste. Maybe he’d just pick up a shitty horror movie and call it a day.
As he turned the corner down an alleyway, he realized he recognized the building next to him. Took him a second, he hadn’t seen it in the daylight in a while. It was sort of weird passing STAR labs on the way to the 7-11. It almost felt like he was going the wrong direction, heading towards the wrong part of the neighborhood, but he knew he wasn’t. The scent of slurpees and tacquitos were hard to miss. No, Thomas was definitely headed in the right direction whether it seemed like it or not.
It was kind of funny passing the building without any intent to break and enter, considering that had been his goal the last time he was here. He was wearing a lot more orange that time, of course.
His gaze was fixed upwards, there was a lot of building up there. He had to wonder if there was an alternative entrance from up there. The odds were that they upped their security on the first floor entrances considerably since last time and it was likely they’d run into some other client who had business inside those walls.
He paused his plotting for a moment when he heard someone turn down the alley. Strange. The odds of someone headed down this direction… It wasn’t as if this was a typical path. Whatever, guess it was an overcrowded city after all. And the woman down there looked harmless enough. Not a bad view, either. Thomas told himself he was keeping his eyes pinned to her to make sure she wasn’t going to pull out a weapon on him but if he was being honest with himself, he knew better. At least Floyd wasn’t around to poke fun of him over it.
As they got closer to point they’d pass, it became clear the alley wasn’t going to be wide enough for them to squeeze on through thanks to the piles of trash and boxes littered along the side of STAR labs. “Guess it’s trash day,” he said he stepped to the side to let her pass.
Only somehow he miscalculated that step back and slammed his head into one of the boxes. His hand instinctively went to rub the back of his head. Which was a bad move in hindsight given that the box or one of the other boxes piled on top of it were tumbling down towards them. Thomas shoved the woman out of the way of the falling tower of trash headed down to them, knocking them to the ground.
Very smooth moves, Blake.
He went to stand and was planning on offering a hand to help her up when he realized his left arm felt a little heavier than normal. Looking over, he saw it was right next to her own arm and both were covered in some sort of goop.
“Damn scientists,” he muttered under his breath. Think they’d be more careful with their cast offs. “Uh, you alright?” he asked as he tried to stand up again. Only this time it was clear that his arm was pretty well adhered to hers. Shit.
