It had been a long but not unpleasant afternoon at the fruit
and vegies mart. Cara had spent most of it unloading the truck into the
coolroom, stacking boxes of fresh produce in piles according to type and weight
of what was in them. Some fruits and vegetables were more popular than others,
especially at this time of year, and the boss had ordered the new delivery to
compensate for that. There were still leftovers of old stock though, and they
needed to be moved out to make way for the new. Each employee took a box of
leftovers home with them at the end of restock day and today was no different. 

Cara had chosen a selection of apples (they would be good to
take to uni for a few days, then she would make them into a pie), a lettuce,
several tomatoes and some of the stranger fruits that didn’t seem to move so
quickly. Today she was going to try lychees and cumquats. The box was a good,
sturdy kind of cardboard, with little triangles in the corners to give it
stability, but it had no lid. Still, it was only a short walk to the station
and then a subway to her area, and it didn’t look like rain, so she wasn’t too
concerned.

She was walking steadily, but somewhat distractedly.
She had a paper due in a few days and she was still structuring her argument in
her head. She had to find a way to be pro-mutant, without being obviously so.
The whole point of the assignment was to encourage them to find a tactic that
worked for them to prove their point that was not brow bashing, forcing the
reader to take your word for it as is. She was semi-aware of the other
pedestrians, but the faces passed by in a blur.

Tses was bored.

It wasn't a rare occurrence. Lately, it seemed that was all she ever felt. Boredom. After getting dumped, suffering a round of amnesia, going through being dumped again and generally taking a vacation from life, she felt like nothing was enough to distract her. Her plan to clean up her act? Gone. Anger and frustration had taken it's place, and that left her somewhere in the rebellious thief mode as she wandered through the streets of New York. A wallet here, a watch there, her pockets were gradually being filled with strangers possessions.

She passed a girl carrying a box of produce and snuck a piece off the top. Apple. She took a bite and kept walking, forcing herself not to glance back at the person she just pilfered from. If they noticed, whatever. Getting away was half the fun.

… while if the opposing view is to be considered, there may be some merit to acting in a way in which society frowns upon, when the situation calls for-

She was almost set in her argument, she would just have to write it down and flesh out the middle of it, and in a way that wasn’t a big Robin Hood rip off, when a hand darted out and snatched away one of her apples. Her reaction was knee-jerk and unplanned.

“Oi!”

The figure didn’t run, the way a street urchin might run having snatched a vital meal for him or herself. In fact there was a distinctly cocky feel to the way it sauntered away, as if it wanted to be chased. Cara did not disappoint. It was a piece of fruit, a free piece of fruit at that… but suddenly it was important that she saw the face of her thief. She trotted after the girl, box of producing bouncing against her hip with every step.

“Hey, Miss apple pincher. Wait up.”

Of all people, this one might give her just the interview she needed about why there were good reasons behind bad actions.

Tses didn't get far down the sidewalk before she heard the call, but it had a different ring to it than most people who caught her pick-pocketing act. There was the stereotypical cry of 'thief' that invited someone to intervene and catch her. That was always fun--it usually resulted in some explosions. Some people just tried to catch up to her and there was the nasty name calling when they picked a fight. This? It had a ring of curiosity, a challenge to it. She took another bite of the apple and slowed her pace to let the pursuer catch up. When they were within a few feet she turned her head and gave a wily smile.

"Well I've been called worse. Oh wait, this is the part where I start running, right? You caught me! Oh no!" She tossed her hands out like she was ready to surrender than laughed, taking another bite of her stolen goods. Her combat boot's buckles clicked as she kept walking, and she was in her most familiar outfit today from arm bands down to her leggings. There was a certain punk attitude to her that didn't end when her mouth shut.

"So are you gonna go robin hood with that box of fruit in your hands or just felt like a chat?" The comment came out almost like a purr as they came up to the intersection. While she was calm on the outside, she let the energy from the moon flicker to just below the skin, waiting in reserve.

Not cocky, sassy. This woman allowed her to catch up, simply so she could laugh at her reaction. Well really. Still, she didn’t seem like your average run-of-the-mill mugger and Cara felt better about talking to her about necessary evils than some of the other people she had seen on the streets. She would work her way up to that, or down, as the case may be.

The young woman didn’t stop walking while talking, so Cara matched her pace and shuffled the box around so she could also retrieve an apple. She bit into it thoughtfully, trying to word her reply. Strange that the other woman had also had Robin Hood on her mind… although she used the analogy in reference to Cara not herself.

“Taking from the rich to give to the poor? Well, I suppose the market is fairly well off, and I’m not rolling in it… and I kind of gave you the apple, kind of… but that wasn’t my main objective, no.”

She crunched into the apple and regarded the woman with curiosity, she was all punked up, with the scruffy looking clothes and hair that was messed just so. Cara, in comparison was almost the opposite; she was wearing a knee length white sundress with a lacy type overlay and her denim jacket, her hair was somewhat restrained in a ponytail from work, but curls were escaping left right and centre. They were like two sides of a poster advertising good life choices.

“I am interested, however, in what prompted you to liberate my apple in the first place.”

She wasn’t angry, nor did she sound it, she was curious, and keen to get an inside perspective on necessary (or passable) ‘evils’.

Tses shrugged her shoulders slightly as the girl commented on her jest. So she wasn't going to give to the poor. Oh well. The poor could steal well enough for themselves. She put a hand on her hip as she took another bite, and sized up the stranger from her sundress to her jacket. Much like Cara, she felt they were on opposite sides of the fence right now. But the day was uneventful and there was no reason to make a fuss over it yet.

She took a stride into the street before light turned and seconds later the rest of the traffic followed. Counting off in her head, she glanced back over to see if the figure had kept up. Tses hadn't lost her yet, so it was a good start. "What prompted me to liberate it? Well, it looked a little heavy. Thought I'd lighten the load." She chuckled with a twinkle in her eye. She shifted the apple from one hand to the other for a moment, and readjusted the bands on her arms. Her left wrist was wrapped more heavily, the broken bones in her wrist still healing but allowing her to be more active again.

"But I guess that's not the answer you're looking for huh. Well, let me tell you something. There are only a handful of reasons why people take things. One, they can't afford it," With her slim figure, mostly muscle, it was a plausible assumption. But she wasn't malnourished, so that would mean she was either a good thief, or she didn't really need it. Tses waited for the girl to consider it, then continued. "Two, it's a habit. Perhaps they couldn't afford it before, now it just comes by reflex. Some people will jump and pick up a wallet and give it back to the person who dropped it. Other people have the same reflex to pick it up and move away." Again, another option she could consider.

Then, Tses turned into an alley, and in a blur of motion stuck the apple in her mouth, gave a jump and caught the bottom of the fire escape. With a cat-like scurry she pulled herself up, relying mostly on her good arm to do it, and then she leaned over the edge of the railing to smirk at the person below her. "The last option, is they do it just for the rush. Life gets boring. Sometimes, rule breakers just want to push buttons and know what breaks." She didn't start climbing yet, just waited to see how much this girl wanted to know. She took another chomp of the apple.

When the girl parroted back what she had said Cara regretted the word ‘liberated’. It sounded snobby, and silly and just not what a normal person would say. She also didn’t believe that the other woman had been trying to lighten her load, not really, she could tell that much. Cara noticed the wrappings when the girl adjusted them (injuries? fashion statement? hidden mutations?) but it could be any number of things, so she kept her thoughts to herself and didn’t question them.

She noted the reasons in her mind as the other girl said them; need, habit, boredom. All reasonable excuses for actions that had small repercussions, petty crimes, such as crossing the street against the light, she trotted to keep up and not get smushed by the traffic. There was not really a reason for the bigger misdeeds in that three-fold explanation, or at least not so easily forgivable a reason.

When the girl made a quick detour into an alley and jumped her way up onto the fire escape Cara stopped. She couldn’t make the jump with a box of assorted produce in her hands (she wasn’t sure she could make that jump even without a box of fruit and vegies actually) and she wasn’t going to abandon her free food just for a chance at a quote for an assignment. So she leant against the wall of the alley and looked up at the girl on the metal platform who was looking down at her, it was like some same-sex rendition of Romeo and Juliet or something.

“And what about you, are you one, two or three?”

Not that it really mattered, if the girl was simply going to escape up the ladder and disappear. Cara had the inkling that she wanted to tell her story, or at least, that running away was not her top priority. If she had to guess, she would guess that the girl would be a three; miscreant through boredom, because why else would she be hanging around to chat to the person she had stolen from?

Tses seemed to consider her options, plopping down on the metal railing and scooting so her legs hung off the one open edge. It would have been a decent sort of fall if she took it the wrong way, could maybe twist and ankle with an off landing. But she didn't seem concerned.

"Trick question. I'm a mix of all three. Sometimes I steal because I have to. Gotta make a living somehow. Sometimes I steal because it's habit. Muscle memory can nab a wallet faster than I could put it back. Most of the time though, life just gets boring." She gazed down at the odd grocery girl with her box of fruit in a manner that would be reminiscent of the Cheshire Cat. That sort of dangerous curiosity a predator takes to its prey.

"You seem like you got a cozy job though, a box of fruit. Is it as dreadfully boring as it seems?" She pulled a stack of wallets from her pocket and started flipping through them with disinterest. The girl obviously wasn't one of those vigilante crime stoppers. She pulled a few bills out of one of the leather bill folds then tossed the rest of it across the alley at the dumpster. It hit the wall and landed on the ground a few feet away.

Missed.

The woman clearly had a good head for heights, casually swinging her legs out over a drop that would be rather uncomfortable to make. Cara nodded as the girl explained her mix and match approach to misdemeanours, it was fair enough, the girl clearly knew the three reasons because they were her reasons, close to her heart.

Cara wasn’t sure whether the girl meant her box of fruit was boring, or her job at the fruit and veg market was boring. Either way, she shrugged and rifled through the box until she found a cumquat. The placard had said they could be eaten raw, and whole, still the thought of biting into a little citrus fruit was peculiar. She did though, to prove she wasn’t boring, and the fruit was quite delicious, a mix of sweet rind and sour insides. She turned the miniature orange over in her hands while she pondered the woman’s question.

“Gotta make a living somehow, like you said. It’s not so bad, the staff are nice, the pay is reasonable and the hours are when I need them to be.”

She couldn’t work in a coffee place, or somewhere that she would have to serve snappy customers all day. The produce didn’t speak back (most of the time) and generally her mind was left free to wander while her hands stacked the displays on auto-pilot.

“Everyone has bills to pay, some of us just aren’t as handy at relieving others from theirs.”

It was funny because the other girl had wallets and was taking the bills out of them… Yeah she really needed to work on her puns before she was going to become any good at writing headlines.

Tses watched as the girl ate the citrus fruit, a small smile on the edge of her mouth as the stranger's facial expressions shifted as she tried to process the taste. No matter how 'adventurous' she tried to look, she was still a girl with a box of fruit. In Tses' mind, there was no way such fruit could be dangerous. Unless she was some freaky fruit manipulator, her position up on the fire escape was safe enough.

The pun about bills was almost missed to Tses, but after a moment she blinked and looked down with an expression that was in mild disbelief of how cheesy the remark was. Cleaning out the last wallet and tossing it at the trash can (also a miss), she shoved her spoils into her boot, and considered swinging back down to the ground. The fire escape gave an easier escape if she needed it, but it took extra energy to get talk to someone below you.

"So why are you so interested in chatting with a fruit thief, anyway?" She finally asked. Her interest was fading slightly, and she wondered if it was lunch time yet. There were always a few coffee cups to explode around lunch...

The pun was received with the same expression usually reserved for Dad jokes and the like, which made sense really. The higher woman continued to empty wallets that clearly didn’t belong to her and toss them in the general direction of the bin. Most of them missed, and even the ones that were on target didn’t go in, as the lid of the dumpster was closed. Cara resolved to pick the wallets up and drop them into the nearest police station so their owners could at least get their licences and library cards back.

Why was she chatting to this particular thief?

“I’m writing a paper about why people do things that society frowns on, and when it is ok to do so. You just happen to be the first thief I‘ve run into since I started this assessment. Cumquat?”

She held up one of the odd little citrus fruits towards the other woman, ready to toss it up to her if she wanted it. Even though it was one of the less popular fruits it was quite nice, sweet skin and sour insides, opposite to most citrus fruits.

“Do you mind to do an interview so I can quote you? I don’t have much money, but I can shout you lunch to make it worth your while?”

Even if she wanted to stay anonymous the quotes could be used as additional sources in her argument. While she had left her pocket recorder at home she was certain there was a voice recording function on her phone that would suffice.

”I’m Cara, by the way.”

A long slow blink responded to the girl's statement. She grabbed hold of the fire escape, and swung back down to the ground with an acrobatic hop, feet hitting the concrete with a solid thud, but body curling to take the weight of the impact. She crossed her arms again, and took the little fruit that was held out to her. "Paper. Like for school or somethin'? I'm not sure I'm exactly your prime example 's far as thieves go. I don't know if any of the stealin' I do is technically justifiable by normal moral means." She picked at the peal of the little fruit, and leaned against the alley wall.

"I mean you can interview me if you really want to. Heck, probably the only thing academic my name will ever be in, considerin' school was never really my sort of thing." She chuckled slightly, and shrugged. "I may just be your glowing example why kids should stay in school." She laughed like it was a joke, but there was a flicker of something more personal under the surface. Loosing her memories not so long ago, she saw a glimpse of who she could have been had life turned out differently.

Part of her wished she could have stayed that person.

"My name's Tses. T-s-e-s, first S is silent. Nice to meet you Cara. You have somewhere you plannin on conducting this 'interview', or ..." She was still holding that box of fruit, and it seemed like it would get heavy after a bit.

Ooph, the woman had jumped. Cara winced a little, but the other woman didn’t seem to be hurt at all so she didn’t say anything. The girl questioned her paper, and her own validity as a source, before agreeing to do the interview. Cara did a silent internal jig, she was so going to rock this paper.

“That’s alright, I can quote you on the bits that fit my argument and paraphrase the rest.”

Like any good journalist.

The woman, Tess, asked if there was a location in mind for the interview and Cara considered her possibilities for a minute. If they were outwardly discussing the excuse-ability of stealing while in any reasonable establishment they would likely be tossed out. Still, the thought of taking an admitted thief home was a little questionable… She had said she wasn’t a prime example of a thief though… Besides, Cara really had little worth stealing in her apartment, and her pocket recorder was there. It was decided then.

“If you don’t mind a stop or two on the subway we can go to my place.”

As far as lunch went she knew a good little Chinese food shop that had speedy delivery and reasonable prices. They could decide on the menu on the subway.

Tses listened to the girls response, and felt satisfied with it. Being paraphrased didn't bother her. Heck, she couldn't read so she wouldn't have an idea what the paper said anyway. She wasn't going to tell her companion that though.

>> “If you don’t mind a stop or two on the subway we can go to my place.”

Tses shrugged, "Sure, I got a buck or two I can use to get there. I don't travel the subway much, but you don't look like you do much climbing." She looked the girl over again, and tried to imagine her walking the rooftops in that outfit. Didn't seem likely.

"What exit are we taking?" She said, starting in the general direction of the nearest subway entrance. She tried to ignore the small feeling of apprehension that settled somewhere in her gut at the thought of the confined underground transport. Her claustrophobic tendencies would ruin the carefree attitude she was managing to maintain with her new companion if she let them.

Much climbing… No, climbing wasn’t high on her activities list, definitely not as a mode of transport. Tess did look like someone wiry enough to jump and leap between buildings though, and it was bound to be safer than the streets, at least some of the time, except for the falling to your death thing. She shuddered inwardly at the thought of a body hitting the pavement at terminal velocity, emphasis on the terminal.

“I’ll shout your ticket, I have a concession card.”

Despite there being a CUNY campus just a few blocks from her apartment the Journalism campus was further into the City proper, and she had to catch the subway every day, as such she had a year ticket as well as a student discount if they paid at the automatic machine. She didn’t feel bad about ripping off the system when it came to riding the subway (she tucked that away as a justifiable misdeed) and she was confident that they would get away with it.

“I’m in Queens, so a few stops thatta way”

She pointed in the general direction of her apartment, then again to the nearest subway station.

“We’re going that way though.”

When the other woman started walking Cara stooped and scooped up as many of the wallets as she could see and shoved them into the box beside the apples. She’d deal with those later. She trotted to catch up with Tess and wiggled the box around to on her hip. The wallets were mostly hidden under apples and assorteds, but if one really looked then they might be visible.