Eisley was hungry. All of what she had managed to save for the last few weeks was gone, thanks to a rival gang of homeless boys who weren't fans of hers. When you lived on the streets you tended to fit into a handful of categories. You were either one of the homeless community, and you stuck together and helped out, or you were not. You either fit in with the rest of the homeless kids, or you did not. If you weren't a part of the community, you were either shunned, or you were one of the unfortunate few who weren't all there anymore. The crazy ones who couldn't be trusted. 

She was among those that had been shunned.

She didn't take part in various aspects of the vagrant community. She refused to use or sell substances, she refused to sell herself, and she refused to share what she had earned with those who felt like they deserved it more. As such, she wasn't able to hang around the safe groups. She wasn't welcome in the larger encampments scattered around the city. She had to be on the move at all times, because if she ran into those that shunned her, her things would be confiscated. 

She was down $200 bucks. Money she had skimped and saved for. Money she could have used for food, clothing, basic necessities. She was penniless again, and starving. She had no other choice but to go back to work, and had been doing so for the past few hours. 

The teen had accumulated a small pile of things already. A few wallets, a few cash clips with cash thankfully attached, and a phone plucked from a coat pocket.  All together it was enough to get her by for a few days, but... it was nothing compared to what had been taken from her. Maybe with just one more job she would feel better. Yes... one more job and she would retire for the night, find some food, and a place to sleep for a few hours.

Eisley moved to a different location. A larger area of town with quite a few trendy shops. Tourists and locals alike tended to flock there. She set herself up against the wall of a coffee shop, tucked out of sight from the employees within.

Now, she just needed to find a target.

Keen eyes picked apart people as they passed. Most were locals, and not worth her time. She was looking for easy targets. People who were either too self-assured that no one would ever mess with them, or too naive to know that they were being watched. Tourists were often easy targets. They tended to carry large amounts of cash with them as they hopped from place to place, but it was getting harder to swipe from them. Often times they hid tings in harder to reach areas. The front pocket of jeans, coat pockets, fanny packs. (she did like fanny packs, though. One little buckle keeping all your stuff safe? Easy peezy.)

Locals were harder, save for a few. For example, men who fluffed themselves up like peacocks tended to be easy targets. She kept an eye out for gold check chains, fancy shoes, and the latest hairstyles. Men like that tended to carry large amounts of money around with them for show. Something to help boost their egos, she supposed. Women of the same caliber were harder. They tended to carry cards instead of cash, and she wasn't really into card theft.

Eisley watched from her perch, chin tucked and face hidden behind the bill of her cap and hood. It was the rush hour for shopping, and she could practically feel all that cash passing by her. 

She just needed the right target...

Saphirus had spent... All week. All week, looking for the right ring. He'd been sure to shop around; he didn't have a lot of money, and he had an idea in mind. So when he landed in a small shop, with a singular crafter selling his own designs, and asked what the name of the ring that caught his eye, he knew it was the one when the small Japanese man spoke plainly. 'Three Cosmos Ring'. It was perfect. It was the one. It was 4200 dollars.

Holy @#$^.

Holy. @#^%.

He spent it. It was the single most expensive thing he'd ever purchased, and that included his night vision scope he'd used as the Judge back in the day. It was his whole car down payment savings, and the rest of his bank account. Still, he couldn't complain too much. Her dad had bought him a #@$^ing car! He, uh, wasn't sure how to drive it right yet, so he was walking right now, but that was a different issue. He'd brought in his cash, which the vendor was willing to nix the tax for, and before he knew it he was walking out with a fancy engagement ring sized to his fiance's ring size(he'd asked and written it down, because this wasn't his strong suit.)

And then he was walking, or rather hobbling, down the street with the most expensive thing he'd ever purchased in his front pocket, looking as nervous as someone who was walking down the street with the most expensive thing he'd ever purchased in his front pocket.

Someone hobbled past, and the peculiar gait caught her eye. Then a wallet snagged her attention. Poking out slightly from the back of a pocket. She stood, following behind. This would be her target. Now she just needed to figure out how...

As she tagged along behind her eyes traced the silver gleam of a chain attached to the wallet. The guy was smart. He'd either been robbed before, or he was super cautious. She followed the chain with her eyes. It looped around to the front. It would be difficult to snag the wallet without alerting him to what she was doing.

Eisely abandoned the wallet for a moment, eyeballing the rest of him. She stepped off to one side slightly. There as a square shape in one front pocket. A mystery object. She wandered to the other side. She could see the end of a phone poking out of the other front pocket, and where the chain ended just above it. No jewelry on his wrists save for some kind of strange bracelet, one solitary ring on his left hand. No chains or earrings. He was slightly scruffy in the hair department, but clean shaven from what she could see of his face.

Still, the limp made him a good target.

She plotted what to go for, ultimately deciding on the mystery lump. It could be anything, and phones were too easy to trace. I order to create a distraction, she edged little closer to the opposite side of what she was targeting. A man in a white collar shirt and vest was walking in front of her, about to pass her target. She stepped on the back of his shoe, and with a slight push from behind caused him to stumble.

He fell right into the limping man, and during that same movement, she slipped back to the other side, small fingers reaching out and into that front pocket. They pinched around a little box, withdrew, and pulled back into her own coat pocket.

She continued forward without missing a beat, picking up her pace a little bit as she weaved in and around people. The sidewalk curved up ahead, and if she could make it around the corner she knew a few different routes to take to escape.

As soon as she was in the clear, she stopped and pulled the box from her pocket. She walked along slowly, turning it this way and that. The box contained another box, so she discarded the cardboard parts. It looked like a ring case. Flipping it open, the teen stopped in her tracks and stared wide-eyed down at the little set of rings inside. They were beautiful... Wedding rings, she assumed.

Guilt momentarily clouded her mind and she turned to look back the way she had come.

... She could probably sell them for like, $200 bucks.

Eisley snapped the box closed and turned away again. She knew just the place to take them, too!

Saph had, admittedly, been absorbed in his own thoughts; how excited Shelby would be to see her ring among them. He missed a set up his experienced eyes might have normally seen coming, and instead felt someone stumble toward him suddenly. A hand reached out to stop the gentleman firmly as he started talking. "Woah, buddy, watch where you're-" It took a moment for the mutant to process exactly what had just happened. He'd stopped a direct impact, but still felt a shift, something darting quickly toward his pocket and pulling out quickly. Why would- Oh sh#$! His hand reached down to confirm the box in his pocket was indeed missing, even though lingering nerves told him it was still there.

"Mother F@%^-"

He pushed the gentleman who had bumped into him back dismissively as he looked around. The figure he'd felt... Small, quick. Heading down the street, but through the crowd. A pickpocket, for sure, and a good one. Good, or stupid for going for a front pocket score... No, good, using another person for the bump.

He pushed through the crowd, trying to get a bead on the figure, who was already fairly far ahead. Nothing, nothing... There! Short, fast, dressed right for their occupation. He knew, because he'd done the same thing. His hobble increased in speed as a trained eye saw her slip around a corner into an alley. Coupler's alley, actually. He was familiar with it. It was often occupied by a gang of kids that were more into the drug game than pickpocketing. He gritted his teeth as he jumped up thirty feet with all of his saved force, and glided into a nearby fire escape, using his right foot to make the landing silent. Quickly he shook off the tunnel vision, and looked down at his thief... Yeah, really small... Like.... A 13 year old boy, or so. Maybe even 12. Jesus the couplers were starting them off young. Maybe they didn't trust him with product yet.

Damn shame, he needed that ring back, though.

"Hey, you! Wut you got there?" A young man's voice chimed in from deeper into the alley, he was dirty, tall, and had a bruise on his cheek; the boy of maybe 16 was walking up nonchalantly, but an experienced or wary eye could see him tucking a switchblade.

The thief wasn't one of them? Poor kid had wandered into the wrong alley. Another boy came from the alley entrance after running around the back way, and moved to quickly shove the thief into the alley. "Looks like a good score. Thanks for dropping it off!"

He reached for his crowbar, and paused when he realized it wasn't there. Right, the jeweler had insisted he not bring any weapons. Stupid rule.

Eisley glanced up from her score, struggling momentarily to identify where it came from. She tilted her good ear in the direction of the boy while keeping wary eyes on him. She didn't instantly recognize him, which was both good and bad. He wasn't one of her usual tormentors... but he might end up being one if she weren't careful. Big blue eyes darted about is person, noting this and that. He was armed.

"Nothin'... wrong territory, sorry."

She took a step back, on the sly slipping one of her fingers into the box to sneak one of the rings onto her finger. The big one with stones came back out hidden by her sleeve, all while she swapped hands to hold the box up. "Y-you can have it. I don't want any trouble."

She didn't hear the second boy come up from behind thanks to her distorted hearing. Not until he was right on her, shoving her forward. Eisley took the dive, tripping forward and catching herself on her hands on the rough road. The closed box bounced and rolled, stopping just in front of the taller boy.

Unfortunately, her hat took a tumble with her. Dirty brown hair fell limply around her face as she twisted back to stare at the other boy. Dread was coiling up in her stomach. She was going to lose all of her haul again, she could feel it.

"Eh! I know that face!" A pair of hands wrestled her backpack from her. She didn't fight it. "If it ain't Tom Girl! I heard about you from some of the other boys..."

Her backpack was passed to the tall boy. She watched as he unzipped it and all of her worldly possessions fell to the ground. He stooped to collect the wallets she's snagged earlier in the day and began leafing through one.

"I thought Ricky made it clear to stay out of our territory."

Slowly, she started to get to her feet. "m'sorry. I didn't know. Won't happen again. I'll leave."

The tail end of black eye was still healing from when 'Ricky' had explained things. She wouldn't need to be told twice.

He was no longer on the fire escape. He'd seen enough, and a quick series of movements found him landing on the street outside of the alley silently, and slowly hobbling in.

The kids looked up at him as he put a clueless smile on his face, and stopped a few feet into the alley. "eh, hey, great, Ricky said you'd be here. Got the stuff?" He reached up to scratch his neck, eyeing the... girl? For a moment, and giving a short wink

The taller boy looked at him strangely for a second, and then looked back to the 'tom girl' before tossing the items in, dropping the backpack and pulling out his knife. Saph wasn't the greatest actor, and he knew what a junkie looked like. "Look, old man. I'm busy right now. Why don't you mind your own business?"

Saph sighed as he stepped closer, putting the boy closer to her on the defensive. He reached out to grab her. Saph's eyebrows went up a bit as he raised his hands. "Old man... That's a new one. Look, I don't want any problems, and neither do you... So let her go. Gimme that ring there back, and we can all go our separate ways."

They didn't know who he was. He didn't blame them, he didn't exactly watch the news a whole lot when he lived on the streets, and he'd been out of the public eye for months now. Also, being fresh faced and relatively well maintain wasn't a usual thing for him.

"Wachu think, then?"

The boy looked down at the haul... The wallets, the phone, the ring box. This wasn't his normal bag, but he knew a fence. He looked to the other kid to see if he was on board still. He nodded.


Well, this was about to happen. Saph could leave the girl alone now that these kids had the box. All he really felt the need to do was afford her a chance to escape.

The shorter boy would go for her wrist to try and hold her in place. They weren't done with her, they would want to teach her a lesson. Switchblade stepped toward him, going for a threatening lunge that quickly showed off his inexperience in a real fight.

Saph quickly pivoted, pushed, tripped, and sent him flying out of the alley in an almost comical fashion. A thump and a gasp was heard as he landed like a sack of bricks and scrambled to his feet. Saph looked at the younger boy intently as he did this. "You still wanna do this?"

Another voice. It took a moment but eventually, she turned and looked at the newcomer. Oh crap, it was him!

Her surprise surely showed on her face. Even more so when he winked at her. She wasn't sure what that meant but would roll with it. The boy closest to her stepped in further. She tensed, waiting. It seemed as though he was going to help her out, so she would wait for her moment.

Eventually, the taller boy made a move. He had helpfully tossed some of her items back into her bag beforehand, though. When the guy sent the tall boy flying, the other lurched in to take control of her. He was afraid, and probably also had a weapon on him somewhere. She waited patiently for his attention to be fully on the guy before making a move.

Eisley wasn't strong in any way, shape, or form, but she knew you didn't have to be in order to make a punch count. When the boy leaned in to grab her wrist, she grabbed his back and tugged, her other hand fisting shortly before she jabbed it into his jugular with as much strength as she could muster.

He dropped his grip on her and she took that moment to dart forward to where her things had fallen. Her journal and the stolen items were most important. She could always swipe more personal are items later. She ditched the ring box as a decoy as she bolted for the other end of the alley without looking back.

A few blocks away she stopped in a more familiar alleyway. She wouldn't be able to stay long... not if that guy or those kids were going to come after her.

She was getting dizzy though and needed a moment to rest. Food was still her top priority, but it would need to wait until she could get her bearings. Eisley plopped down against a brick wall, pulling her knees up to her chest, and held her hand up before her. Her fingers were splayed out and there at the bottom of her middle finger sat a gleaming golden ring. She briefly pondered keeping it... but it was too big for her, and she wasn't in a position to afford such a luxury.

She neede to sell it ASAP.

The older boy was already running by the time the girl hit the other one in the neck., and he let go of her. Quickly she grabbed her bag, dropped the ring box, and sped off. Good, they had an understanding. Sometimes all it took was a little give and take. you know, honor among thieves. The younger boy had recovered, and he paused, staring at him awkwardly, and then turning to run off.

With a chuckle and a shake of his head, Saph slowly walked on over to his ring box, and picked it up, opening it to make sure all of the jostling didn't hurt the ring.

What he saw cause him to curse loudly. Apparently honor wasn't a thing anymore. He hobble sprinted in the direction of the other end of the alley, poking his head out either way. Which way had she gone... right? Right. He peered closely. Someone was running further off... hard to tell if it was her. It was his closest bet.

As he gave chase he tried to think of the best placed for her to hide in the area. He'd been a part of the system among these streets for so long in his past that he had a good idea of what was safe. She wasn't welcome around here, which meant she was a part of another group, or a drifter. He didn't know which, but he did know a couple blocks up in this direction there were a couple more quiet areas. A glance down the first alley was a bust, the second, nope...

Third try was a charm. He rounded the corner very near an alleyway he used to call home, taking in the familiar brick walls for a moment before focusing on the girl sitting against them.

"Ain't smart to have that out and about like that, kid. Someone else could see it."

"Ain't smart to have that out and about like that, kid. Someone else could see it."

She jumped like someone had shocked her, nearly tipping over. Wide-eyed and startled, she turned her head to him and inwardly cursed. It was him again. Her mark. The teen stared quietly before giving a little sigh and removing the ring from her finger. It was undamaged, but warm from her hand. She didn't bother to get up in case he thought she was trying to make a run for it. This was the second time he'd found her after all. Something wasn't quite normal with him.

Instead, she stared down at the little ring in her palm sullenly, before holding it out for him to take. She didn't offer an apology or an excuse. They just tended to make people more mad.

"...Thanks." She muttered, pulling up her hood to tuck herself away. "For before."

He watched her silently as she jumped, realized it was him, and sheepishly held out the ring for him to take. He did so, shuffling forward to grab it gently, and eye it closely before returning it to its box.

Once it was secured, he looked back down to her. She looked a little defeated. Gaunt. His expression softened a little when she thanked him. "Yeah... That shiner... You get it from them?" He leaned against the wall, careful to keep his distance. On the streets the personal bubble was way bigger. It was one of the biggest adjustments he'd had to make when it came to mansion living.

"This your home turf? You safe here?"

He still couldn't make out any identifying markers of the groups that had been around when he was a kid, not that all of them had markers. She didn't appear to be a mutant, but he could still be surprised by her. He would be surprised if this was her safe zone, though... His eyes and thoughts drifted around the corner to a mid-alley entrance... that same old sign still hanging there. People thought this place was cursed... He didn't believe in that stuff, really.

He questioned the black eye. She waited a moment before nodding slowly. He wasn't the first adult to stop and try and talk to her... she just needed to figure out what he wanted. Justice? Pity? She would inevitably find out.

He surprised her against when he questioned if the area was safe for her. The curious gaze she'd had pinned on him switched to a critical evaluation. She was judging his person now. After an awkward moment, she shook her head again. She didn't have a home turf. She didn't consider anywhere particularly safe. She did need to block of that ally from her map, though.

Instead of answering, she edged her backpack around and dug into it until she had her journal out. She'd lifted the book from a store a long time ago. Its pages were filled with notes only she could decipher, and pictures of various signs and street names. She pointedly avoided answering his question as she flipped to a clean page and started jotting notes down. Her writing was sloppy and poorly spelled. She'd gone her entire life without a classical education, so everything she managed to do was self-taught. When she had left home she actually ended up feeling better about her lack of knowledge, seeing as quite a lot of people in her position also seemed to lack even the basics.

After a while, he was still there. She finished her notes, tucked the book away, and climbed unsteadily to her feet. She still wasn't sure what his angle was, but she had other places to be. She needed to go through her other haul items and figure out how much she had gotten. Then food. Then sleep.

She watched him again, eyes hooded and ringed with slight shadows from lack of sleep. "It's safe enough." She gave him a wide berth as she went around him, then headed out and toward an alley where a sign hung. She used it frequently as a passage from one place to another.

He watched her closely as she moved. Jesus, it was haunting how much he understood right where she was at. For years he'd had those very same bags under his eyes. He tilted his head when she hinted that this wasn't her turf.

"Where's home, then? I mean, as much as it gets over here... Front street? Hollander?" Leaned to a standing position... She really ought to get to her friends... Unless... She didn't have any. Realization dawned as he watched her flit through her sloppy notes.

Was she out here all alone?

She got up and walked toward the alley. He watched her as she aimed to pass through. "You don't sleep well, right? If it's a good night's sleep you're looking for... That's the crooked way... People don't usually go down there. They think it's cursed. No one even wants to walk past most of the time... They think a monster hides in the walls. Abandon hope, All yee who enter here..." He'd made his way to the outside of the alleyway as she walked in.

"It's perfectly safe. That man left here a long time ago..." It was interesting sometimes, how events turned into rumors, which turned into myths so quickly. It was saddening that he had been a part of that story...

"Might actually be able to get some peaceful rest. Looks like you could use it."

The teen turned a blank, curious stare his way as he started listing off some of the more common places to gather. "I'm not a part of any of the families. None of those places are safe."

He turned a few steps into the alley, big doe eyes fixed on him as he spouted off some random information about the alley she was in. Curses and monsters. "Sounds like a fairy tale." She muttered back, pivoting to blink at the brick walls.

"It's perfectly safe. That man left here a long time ago... Might actually be able to get some peaceful rest. Looks like you could use it."

She considered his words for a moment, giving the barren surroundings one more look before she turned and looked at him again. Her thumbs hooked under the straps of her backpack. She focused, trying to commit his face to memory. If he was telling the truth, she'd remember and pay him back some day.

"... Thanks." She swiveled back around to march away, hollering over her shoulder as she went, "Probably shouldn't go around telling girls they look tired, though! Gonna get slapped for it someday!"

She didn't look back.