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>> "I wander. I started in Seattle, and walked all the way. Ya could say I'm on a quest."

“Seattle, eh? Long way.” Maxine cast a sneaky glance upwards. “Not as far as Orkney, of course...”

>> "As for work: I've done a bunch of things. Bein' a street performer is my favorite."

In other words: her Knight was a professional hobo.

Seriously?

Yeah. That was his ‘serious’ face.

Crap.

For the first time since he’d shown up in her bathroom mirror, the kid got points knocked off his score. Granted that he was an underage kid (kids tended to be), so his score didn’t matter in the first place, and she hadn’t been keeping track, and...

Really? A hobo? A hobo who’d probably dropped out of high school, too. Maxine tried not to visibly deflate. It did distract her from their surroundings, though.

>> "So, how about you?"

That puffed her back up. “I,” she stated proudly, “am a reporter. Maxine Rawls, Wolf News, at your service. Milord.” She flashed a grin. “Intern reporter, any way. I go to school at NYU.” And he should, too. Or any college, really. Maxine had standards for her ideal guy. Those standards included a high school and college education. (And not being some kind of runaway from Seattle.) Until today, she’d never considered adding ‘ballroom dancer’ to the list. Or ‘prince.’

...Really, though? Was it too much to ask for a prince with a Harvard degree?

“Where did you learn to dance like that, any way? That was a little beyond anything my high school gym teacher ever made us do.”

A torn and crumpled McGrease King burger wrapper rolled past them in the chilly breeze, like some kind of New York-style tumbleweed.

>> "Wait, you like me?"

“Of course!” Maxine stated. No hesitation: just a firm nod. “You floated into my life and bought me ice cream. What’s not to like? Oh—do you have a phone? We should exchange numbers.” She rummaged in her purse for her own, coming back out with a white iPhone. A splurge, but a splurge that indulged her compulsive internet news checking, and helped her keep on top of her ‘fan’ mail.

>> "So, does he follow you everywhere?"

“Yes.” One. Word. Reply. “He does.” With two supplementary hard stares at the octoclip lurking in Juka’s shadow.

Everywhere. Yes. To school? Yes. To her internship? Yes. To the shower? Yes. Yes, yes, and yes. Everywhere.

“How about you?” Maxine asked, ignoring Rex again in favor of her ice cream. “How does that bubble of yours work?”

((ooc: Sir Gawain--tell me if I need to modify anything! )

She wasn’t quite sure what to do about her Knight in Shining Road Block. A few images flashed through her high-tailing mind.

Veer to the side—try to dodge him. Too close. Even in his condition, he’d probably still make the grab. Hmm. His condition.

Punch him in the face, and keep going. No no no. Not the face. She liked the face.

Lower her head, and keep up her battering ram charge. This came with a bonus: she wouldn’t see the kicked-puppy look on his face when her hard skull collided with his Cthulhu-tenderized ribs.

Moment of truth. She was almost on him. She—

Was falling. With a sharp pain in her left foot. Falling, huh? Good choice.

She stretched out her arms, and fell right into him, locking him in a don’t-leave-me-with-these-psychos hug. So help her, even if they both went tumbling to the ground, she wasn’t letting go. Maxine, after all, was banking on the Scooby Gang not to hurt her. It was just her camera they wanted. And they could have it, over her cold dead body.

“Sir Gawain!” She gushed, “That man does not know how to treat a woman!”

As for the police: she looked up from her knight molestation to address them hurriedly. “I’m a reporter—Maxine Rawls, Wolf News! I have ID! These mutants are trying to confiscate my footage!” Footage which was, friends, her constitutional right to possess and—God bless America—to edit. But, friends, that had been pretty darn golden without any touchups. “One of them has already assaulted me!” And that, Marbles, was illegal.

The black pen perched on her ear seemed to fall off in all of this fuss: it dropped into the curtain of her red hair, and disappeared. She gave a little shiver as it slipped its cold self innocuously under the edge of her scarf. That tickled. Poe, I love you. The Bic pen was a reliable supply, if ever there was one. Unlike Rex. Who was, last she’d had him in range, still pawing up his new ninja toy.

Speaking of range.

It was outrageous, really, how many ill-used pens and twisted paperclips one could find in the typical New York gutter. She willed them to hold their positions, for now. They were all within twenty feet of her, after all. Twenty feet, taken at seventy-five miles an hour, meant she didn’t have to give away her backup just yet.

>> "What, don' tell me I suprised you. Ya were the one askin' for a prince."

She had an urge to pinch that grin off his face, but her hands were occupied elsewhere. At these gallivanting speeds, a lady wouldn’t be wise to simply let go. Even if a lady wanted to. She settled for grinning back.

“A prince, Sir Gawain? You’ll have to treat me right, if you don’t want your royal ambitions getting back to Arthur’s ears.”

She heard the throat clearing and snickering. She just didn’t let herself register them, until the music died.

>> "What?..."

His arm was around her waist; she slinked her own around his shoulders, and leaned into him. “Problem?” She asked, batting her eyelashes at their instructor. That might just be a blush she felt warming her cheeks. Let’s get one thing straight, though: it was a defiant blush.

“Sir Gawain,” she asked curling one leg up behind her as she turned her innocent eyelash batting up to him. “How do you feel about being kidnapped to dinner?”

>> "Oh, I'm a performer. I'm between bands at the moment, trying to find new band members as a matter of fact—”

A performer. Trust the news intern: New York had a surplus of those. Talented ones, and all the struggling muck below them, trying to get a little light shone on their own names. Maxine prepared herself for a pleasant smile and a ‘I’m sorry, I don’t really follow the music scene.’

>> “—but perhaps you've heard of Ukime? They were my band back in Japan."

Blink. Cone crunch. Swallow. “Yes, actually. I have. Didn’t you play with Angela Aki at the Osaka concert? Or was it Tokyo? She’s the one that does Tegami, isn’t she?” Crunch. Maxine licked delicately at the ice cream now peeking out of its dark brown shell. “One of my friends is really into J-Pop.” And insisted upon converting others to her musical tastes. Oh, the joys of pre-class headphone-forcings in Photo Journalism, every Tuesday at three. “Do you think I could get your autograph?”

Lick, lick. Crunch. “What brought you to America?”

((ooc: Koga-modded with permission. )

The gray clay flailed and writhed. Inconceivable. Drop by drop, fire truck by fire truck, his body—his beautiful, unholy body—was submitting to the forces of nature. No: not even to something so dignified as that. Submitting to a floating bubble man, a pubescent general, girls with firecrackers (and their bruised-rib little pillow-boy), and a lizard ninja.

His death approached. He could feel it, in every pound of gray flesh that traitorously dripped towards the ground. But he would not die alone. His bulk slumped forwards, defiantly sealing the ninja’s grave with a wet tombstone, meters thick and tons heavy. The last remains of his tentacles stood twitching guard over it.

A smaller tentacle reached up to touch them. Paperclip strand wrapped gently around wet clay. Octosaurus Rex almost seemed to stand vigil for a moment, over the death of its many-armed brethren. Then its grip tightened. Wire cut into wet clay as easily as distain into a dying elder god. The octoclip sunk below Cthulhu’s flesh.

Long moments passed.

In the street, the firefighters stood aghast at good chunk of their yearly budget, lost. The police, more calloused towards such things, kept directing traffic away from the site of the victorious battle. Overhead, the sky continued its pittering onslaught.

Cthulhu’s flesh bulged from within.

A paperclip tentacle sliced through the growing boil, and wrapped onto the splintered stump of a nearby tree. It pull, pull—(paused irritably to readjust its grip, then)—pulled[/b] itself from the elder god’s melting carcass. Gray clay coated it, and the ninja-shaped passenger wrapped in its arms. Air tank and all.

Across the street, Maxine zoomed in for a dramatic close-up. Good boy, Rex.

God rest ye merry fighters, let nothing you dismay,
Remember Cthulhu our Blighter was smote on Christmas Day;
To save us all from his power when the X-Men were away.

O tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy;
O tidings of comfort and joy.