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after this: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1168324.html

Mysterious girl showing up looking for him: check. Mysterious girl is being chased by the cops: check. He, clearly being placed in the protagonist role of this common plot start, decided to help the mysterious girl escape, for no reason and against common sense: double check.

And of course what usually happens in this kind of scenario is the mystery girl takes the lead to find a safe place to drop exposition, so when the redhead went and did exactly that, Leofric was already expecting it and followed without argument. Normally, he mused, his so-called adventures petered out about this point and left him flailing around for the next piece of the plot - although how he knew that, he wasn't questioning. That's just how things went.

This time, though... This time, there really was a mysterious girl dragging him through the back alleys of Albany. Being chased by cops. It was exciting and he realized suddenly that he was grinning.

When they came to a stop in an abandoned maintenance shed, he dusted himself off, noted it wasn't a rooftop but was pretty much in keeping with what he expected anyway, and looked over at the girl again.

She was pretty, like he'd noticed before, with surprisingly bright green eyes (sign of special powers, or just plot importance?) and red hair which was starting to show brown at the roots. Freckles, clothing she'd been wearing for a while but not that dirty. For some reason, looking at her, he felt like she was missing something.

"Hi." She seemed shy all of the sudden, after dragging him all this way; he tentatively labelled her dandere, at least for now. "I don't know you, but I've been looking for you."

The plot thickens, he thought. No exposition dump here; mysterious girl didn't know what was going on, either. He could work with that.

"I don't know you either," he pointed out. "What's your name? Why are the cops after you?"

He was supposed to sound suspicious here, he knew, but this was just too good to be real and he couldn't help it, the whole thing was exciting.

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"Cynara. My... friends call me Cya. I mean... well, I'd like to be called Cya." If I had any friends sounded too depressing. "I - well, I ran away from my foster home. What's your name?" She had a sound in the back of her head, but it wasn't right, wasn't... quite right.

A runaway, huh? Well, that made more sense than just being a jaywalker, but he wasn't sure he believed it just yet. Cops don't call for backup for teenage girls who ran away from their foster parents. Foster... that meant she was an orphan, too. No family, no friends... That fit the profile. And if she really was just running away from home? It was actually kind of comforting if things didn't go exactly right. Made it easier to believe it was really happening.

"Leofric. If we're doing nicknames, you can call me Leo." He walked over and sat down next to her, resting his arms on his knees. "How do you know I'm the one you're looking for, anyway? You didn't even know my name." He had a list of likely options and he was really curious which one might be right.

Plus, it was weird; he kept having this nagging sense that she was familiar, somehow. He toyed with the bracelet - his 'power limiter', as he liked to call it, in the vague hope he had powers. Maybe he'd figure it out if he took it off...

"I..." She considered for a moment. "I was having these horrible nightmares - I know, not a great lead-in. But I kept waking up knowing something's missing; so I, um, went looking for what was missing?"

Her eyes went to the bracelet he was wearing. It looked wrong somehow, but that had to be one of those things from the nightmares.

"If it helps," she offered cautiously, "you're not all of it. There's something or someone else out there that's still missing."

"Dreams, huh?" Leofric steepled his fingers, looking off across the room. "What do dreams usually mean..."

He had nightmares, too, but he never remembered them when he woke up. Sometimes he was left with a lingering sense of panic or a sick feeling in his stomach, but nothing more concrete than that. Still, the coincidence was a start.

"Nightmares, missing pieces... forgotten pieces?" He absently started thinking aloud, not realizing he was doing it. "Dreams could be left over from some kind of mind wipe, like at an experimental facility. Or they're a psychic communication attempt. Or visions of the future...

"Either way." He turned to the girl - Cya. He turned to Cya, speaking directly to her again. "Whatever else you're looking for is probably either some magical artifact, the rest of the "team", or both. Do you have a special necklace or something? You know, with a pendant." There was usually a pendant involved in quest plots launched by random girls. Hey, maybe there'd be a giant mecha! ... Nahhh.

Cynara took this in with a slowly sinking heart. He was teasing her, making fun of her. He had to be. She touched her neck. The feeling of wrongness slid over her for a second, and she shuddered. "No. I don't. I.. I think... anymore." Her eyes lit on the bracelet. "Like your bracelet."

This, he wasn't expecting. In retrospect he should have been expecting it. If he was tied into this weird real-life plot somehow, it made sense for the bracelet to be involved.

Leofric studied her; she looked unhappy. One of his ideas must be right, then... He'd just have to wait to find out which. "What about my bracelet?"

She took a breath. "Some things are... there's no memory, not really, but there's the emotion that should be tied to a memory. Necklaces with pendants. That bracelet - certain kinds of wood."

She ran her hands over her wrists. "You don't think I'm crazy?"

"You're the strange girl who dodged traffic to meet a guy she doesn't know, and I'm the guy who helped a strange girl I don't know run away from the cops." He grinned; a sharp expression, although he didn't know it. "If you're crazy, so am I."

Something about the phrase seemed to spark in her. "Say it again. Say that again, please?" She leaned forward. "Something's missing."

"...If you're crazy, so am I?"

The experimental facility plot was definitely looking stronger, Leofric thought, and toyed with the bracelet again. Maybe... maybe he should take it off.

Cya twitched. "That's... I've heard that before. This - you really don't remember anything?"

"Hey now, I remember some things," he said indignantly. "I-- wait. I didn't tell you about that. How did you know?"

There weren't any gaps in his conversation with her, he knew that much. So he hadn't told her about the black outs and just forgotten.

Edited 2016-09-04 03:51 (UTC)

That had not been what Cynara had been expecting. She held up both hands. "I meant... about me. Or about ... necklaces? Or .. well, anything." She deflated. "I don't want to have made this whole trip and it turned out I just made the whole thing up."

"I can think of worse things." He reached out to pat her shoulder reassuringly - and stopped dead as something in him screamed no, bad. His stomach twisted, the sick familiar feeling he woke up with so many mornings.

Leofric looked around the abandoned shed, at the girl sitting next to him, and wondered what the hell was going on. She seemed... familiar? Oh; he had a vague recollection of her running through traffic.

"Um..." Normally he wouldn't admit not knowing what was going on to anyone, but this was a weirder situation than he usually found himself being in. And he probably owed this girl an apology. "What are we doing here? I don't... I get these blackouts sometimes, so, um... I don't remember."

Cynara blinked and took a couple breaths. "Okay, so.... you don't remember anything that just happened?"

That should have seemed really weird. Instead, it seemed kind of like oh, this again?

She was taking it really well. ...almost like she was expecting it...? Did he already tell her about it?

Leofric shook his head. "I remember you running across traffic," he said, sounding apologetic. "I was heading home, but... well, you can come with me. We have stuff for lunch? Mom's at work, so it's fine."

Edited 2016-09-05 04:00 (UTC)

"That sounds good," she offered. "So... long story short, I'm running away from home, because something happened that.. I don't want to talk about." She eyed him cautiously. "And, well, you seem very familiar."

"Huh." That was interesting, since she seemed kind of familiar to him, too. "Don't worry, I won't ask about it."

He stood up, brushing off his pants, and offered her a hand. "So what's your name? Mine's Leofric. But you can call me Leo."

... now why, he wondered, had he said that? Nobody called him that. Somehow, though, he felt like she should.

Edited 2016-09-05 15:00 (UTC)

"Cynara." She shook his hand and offered a smile, no matter how absurd this seemed - or, maybe, because of how absurd it seemed. "But please call me Cya. So... you live with your mother?"

"Yeah, in an apartment on [street name]. It's... um, actually I don't know how far it is from here, but I know my way around pretty well."

It would've been a long walk before things went weird again. With his luck, they went the wrong way and it was even further now.

He sighed in resignation, despite himself. "It might be a long walk. I don't have any money for a bus."

Edited 2016-09-05 19:18 (UTC)

"Oh, bus fare's easy." Cya pulled a handful of crumbled bills out of her pocket. "As long as you know what bus to take, we're golden."

She was going to pay for the bus? But-- okay, he had offered to give her lunch. That was probably a reasonable exchange.

"Yeah, sure, once we get back to the main streets I'm good." He gestured for her to follow and headed out of the shed.

(oh hey it's my turn)

She followed him, even though she thought she might have a better idea than him where the main streets were. "So, do you, um, lose time a lot?"

Edited 2016-09-08 10:19 (UTC)

psst?

i'm a flake this week <.

"I guess so. Hard to say what 'a lot' means."

Some people would say it happening at all was a lot. Leofric had a suspicion she wasn't one of those people, though.

"It's kind of a pain, but you know. Life." He shrugged. Life isn't fair, right?

"Hunh. I suppose I can't ask you if things have seemed weird or out-of-place lately, then." She was... she wasn't sure. Everything still seemed right, which... ought to be wrong.

"...Sometimes." Why he was admitting all this to some random girl he didn't know, Leofric had no idea. Maybe because she was some random girl he didn't know?

"I try not to think too hard about weird things happening, it... You know. I wind up miles away with no idea how I got there." He shrugged again, starting to feel a little uncomfortable with the topic, and realized he was playing with the bracelet again.

Talk about weird things happening. He pulled his hand away from it quickly; like hell was he taking it off out here.

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