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((OOC: This has been an Austin-approved order change.))

>>"You don't know where we're going or why. Why would you want to come?"

Astrid pursed her lips in a scowl. Why did she want to go with them? Boredom was one answer, but in reality, she could be walking straight into a trap. A trap with a wolf-like face and full of stupid teenage boys. All in all, she couldn't really come up with an answer better than 'because I want to'.

While her brain scrambled for a good response, Astrid tried her best to continue looking as menacing as possible. There really was no good way to come out of this except to continue along down the path she had chosen. After all, she couldn't just go around saying that she actually changed her mind and now didn't want to come after making such a scene. That would be childish and, well, as the Yanks say, lame.

"Why you want to know?" Astrid countered in her most I'm-too-good-for-you voice. That sounded good. It sounded... Snarky. If she could have patted herself on the back without it looking strange, she would have.

In order to shift the focus off of herself, she then turned to the first boy, "why you going?" Astrid asked, even adding in a sassy head bob for good measure.

Astrid was killing it with the attitude.

The green man opened his zipper like mouth into a smile. He gave her the name of October, which, if she remembered correctly, was the name of a month. It was a strange name, she noted, for a strange man. Even more strange, he had declined her offer to help. America was an eternal source of confusion for the young girl. "Valkyrie," she supplied in return.

Her eyes brightened as he offered her a glass of wine. She hadn't even needed to coerce him or get a fake I.D. In fact, the bartender hadn't even batted an eye. Maybe Astrid should have just asked in the first place.

She didn't receive wine, though. Instead, she was handed a bottle of some sort of ale. She looked at it cautiously, not bothering to hide her disappointment. It smelled sort of funny as she sniffed it, and she wasn't sure what to make of it. It was still a far better option than her soda, though, so she tried it. Swishing it around her mouth for a moment or two, she decided that it wasn't horrible.

>>"Seems like we both have stalker problems. If they start something, want to trade?"

"No!" She replied immediately, slightly too loud. There was no way she wanted to take on the smaller man; that would be boring. Besides, she was sure she could handle herself, probably even better than the funny looking green man. "I take big man in sleep," she told him in a haughty tone.

She leaned back and tried to suave as she looked around the bar. The entire effect was pretty much ruined, however, when she choked briefly on her drink. Astrid wiped her mouth with an embarrassed expression, trying her best to act like nothing had happened.

Bars were just downright boring when you couldn't drink. Back in France, where wine was cheaper than water, there were much looser drinking laws set. But in America, Astrid hadn't had any luck at getting someone to serve her. Everyone was sitting around and having a good time while Astrid was forced to wallow in the fact that she still had seven more years until anyone would serve her. Of course, that would require some kind of I.D., which required her to be a legal citizen, but she hadn't quite pieced that all together yet.

As she sat staring at her liquor-less soda, she tried to brainstorm ways of duping the bartender. Maybe she could... Swipe someone's I.D.? No, scratch that. Astrid had never met someone who looked even remotely like her. Ever.

Perhaps there was a way she could get her hands on a fake I.D.? Yeah, that could work, but she'd have to figure out where to get one first. She scanned the room, searching for someone who looked the type to make a fourteen year old a fake I.D. It was, after all, a less than upstanding establishment.

Her black eyes fell immediately a green man sitting at the bar. He was difficult to miss, with his red eyes, lime complexion, and very bald head.

Huh, someone weirder looking than me.

The man was obviously glancing around the establishment as well, although he was trying hard to make it look as though he wasn't. Astrid followed his gaze over to a man with wild hair, who looked down right as the green man spotted him. That was the body language of someone who had been caught staring.

Her white fingers tapped the table as she thought about how to proceed. The man with the dark hair looked to be the seedy type, though probably not the kind to hand out I.D.s to minors. He was more the rough-you-up-behind-a-dumpster kind. The green man, on the other hand, had sort of a shifty nature to him. Maybe his persona was completely due to the alcohol, but something about him made Astrid believe that he was her best bet in the joint. So, the decisions was made that she would be on his side for whatever went down. And, from the looks of things, something was going to happen.

She stood up and walked as confidently as she could manage in her new heels that weren't quite broken in and sat down on a sticky bar stool beside the green man. "You want help hurt him?" She asked him quietly. Her accent coated the words which formed an almost complete sentence. Astrid hadn't spent all that much time in American bars, but based on her knowledge of pop culture, she knew that things had ended in a bar fight. So, obviously, a man being stared at must have no other intentions other than fighting.

Astrid gave the boy a malicious smirk. He had taken the bait. Obvious, everything was going exactly as Astrid had planned and there would be absolutely no hiccups now. She had him in the palm of her hand.

She turned the wallet upside down, frowning as she felt the cheap fabric. The boy really needed to be taught what was cool and what was most definitely not cool in any way. She turned her attention back as things began to tumble out from the wallet and onto the ground.

Astrid crouched down as she examined the her new plunder. There were a few rectangular slips of paper with his name on them, a few with a picture. So, his name was Jude. It was a nice name, not that she would ever let that sentence fall on human ears.

As she was going through the items, something caught her eye. It was all shiny. Not shiny laminated, but a different kind of shiny. Astrid picked it up and examinated it carefully, even taking a seat  on the ground so she could study it better. 

Someone tried to approach her slowly from behind, but she absently threw a crystal in their direction to warn them not to step closer. She missed completely, but it did the trick. The crystal ended up grazing a bystander on the arm and then struck a nearby car. 

<What's this?> Astrid asked Jude curiously, having completely forgotten about her purpose of fear and torture. Instead, she was completely absorbed with curious thoughts. 

She held the little thing up to her ear and shook it, trying to figure out what it did. Perhaps it was one of those cell phone things that she had never bothered to look into. 

Looks like an awesome character! Welcome to MRO

The creature was slowing down. Slowing down for her. That meant he wanted her to fly next to him. Astrid had truly made it into the big leagues now. Obviously she had garnered the respect of this absolute evil, which was almost more than her adolescent brain could handle. Her heartrate had risen to almost twice the speed of normal and she wasn't even really exerting herself. 

The creature started to list of some names or words or something that went right over Astrid's head. Maybe it was her excitement or her lack of English, but she didn't really catch anything after "Jabberwocky". At least she now had something to call him by. "Jabberwocky," she repeated softly to herself, butchering the pronunciation. 

"I am Astrid," she managed through the fog of the language barrier. Then she remembered something; her name wasn't very evil. In fact, it was hardly evil at all. She needed something much better if she was going to spend time with Jabberwocky. "No, Valkyrie," she covered quickly, pulling from her memory of the winged women.

She looked down at the city below them, admiring the view. She hadn't been that high in a good while, actually. Of late she had been sticking mostly to the tops of buildings and houses where she could get a good view of things. But it felt good to get up into the higher altitude and stretch her wings a bit more than usual. It did seem strange that they hadn't landed yet or even started to go in the direction of anywhere in particular.

"Where we going?" She asked Jabberwocky curiously from her newly assumed position beside him.

The grape thing seemed to be working well for Astrid. She had managed to freak out the boy she had initially throw the grape at, making her giggle when he dropped to the ground. He seemed even more scared than most people, actually. The majority of the people she had hit prior to him had just looked around for a moment and then brushed it off like nothing had happened. The boy, however, looked as though someone had tasered him from behind. It actually took him a full minute to compose himself.

What Astrid hadn't expected, was the attention of a second boy with strange movements. While the first boy's eyes had sweeped right past her, the second boy looked as if he could see her. While she was confident that her black wings would block any recognizable features (such as her skin), it was still a bit unnerving to have someone focus so intently on her. Yes, she had sort of wanted the attention, but now that she had it, it was... Strange.

Astrid kept her eyes focused on the two boys as they talked to each other just below her. The entire time the second boy was talking, his gaze never seemed to waver from Astrid. It made her want to squirm in her skin as she tried to make out what they were saying. Unfortunately, the distance between them was too large for her to do so.

The boys had started to move down the street. Astrid panicked. They were the first interesting thing to happen all night, and the second boy was the first one to ever spot her when she sat like that. As much as the feeling unnerved her, she didn't want to lose it.

Astrid croutched on the edge of the building and inched along with the boys, doing her best to keep pace. If they started to move any faster, she would be able to take off.