The Streets of Fandom, Late Sunday Morning

[okteiviakom]

Bellamy had not taken well to Octavia's disappearing act on Friday. There'd been kind of an argument over it, actually, because come ooooooon, Bel, she'd already been here a bunch of times and nothing had happened to her! And she usually never got to go anywhere on her won, because she never got to go anywhere at all! It wasn't fair!

There'd maybe been some tears, actually.

But she'd stuck around him for all of Saturday because she hated making him worry.

... But then Bellamy had slept in on Sunday and experience had taught her it might be the last day, and Friday had been fine and so she'd snuck out again, still wearing a jacket that was too big for her and that had a small stuffed bunny peering out from one of the pockets, though the pockets weren't filled with cookies anymore.

Because there were also a couple of sandwiches in there. Along with all the cookies, because, cookies.

And now she was just roaming the streets around the island with no particular destination in mind. Sometimes, she hid behind corners when she saw strangers coming down the street - because while she thought she was safe, unfamiliar adults still kind of concerned her - but mostly she was just excitedly peering in through shop windows, occasionally ducking with a tiny 'eep!' when she caught someone actually looking back out at her.

[ooc: Open streets, open post!]

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[betterthanaplan]

Duke didn’t have any previous experience to draw on, but the weird old guy has said that if he was still here on Monday he’d have to go to school (or at least that was how Duke has interpreted what the weird old guy had said), so he was planning to ship out ASAP tomorrow morning.

You know. Somehow.

So he has to get in his last free wheeling wandering today. And get some supplies together and find somewhere to sleep that wasn’t the boat so the weird old guy wouldn’t know where to find him and make him go to school.

“Hey, Cookie Girl,” he called when he spotted Octavia. “You running away again?”

[okteiviakom]

"Duke!"

Octavia's settings were stuck at 'excited' right now, sorry. Hence the beaming - and the rather elaborate gesturing at the latest window she'd been peering in. "What do you think this place is?"

She wasn't ignoring the question on purpose. She'd just found Wonka's, just now, and everything she could see through the window was bright and inviting and honestly kind of distracting.

[betterthanaplan]

Duke blinked a little at that greeting. People were generally not that excited to see him. He returned the smile though, before looking in the window.

“. . . A candy store?”

[okteiviakom]

Look, they'd gone exploring together, they were now friends for life as far as Octavia was concerned.

"Ooh!" she said. Before kind of a really long pause. "I... don't know what that is."

Bellamy had wisely tried to limit her excessive sugar intake to just the Oreos.

[betterthanaplan]

Even grownup Duke would say he'd never had one of those.

"You don't know what a candy store is?" Duke asked, appalled for her. He was definitely going to punch that Bellamy guy in the nuts before he left. "Do you want to go in and find out?"

[okteiviakom]

The shifting expression on Octavia's face were a whole journey from hesitant excitement to her eyebrows slowly starting to pull together, the corners of her mouth pulling down.

She chewed on her lip as she cast a quick glance through the window at the unfamiliar grown-up behind the counter, then shook her head quickly. "I dunno if I should."

[betterthanaplan]

"Why not?" Duke asked, even as he decided he knew the answer already.

Bellamy.

". . . What if you had a disguise?"

[sake_shinigami]

This place was fine enough, he guessed, but Shunsui was feeling incredibly restless and bored. Granted, he would have been feeling restless and bored back home, too, probably, but at least back home, he would be restless and bored at his family estate where it was nice and he had whatever he wanted pretty much at arm's reach and there were pretty gardens and shamisen players and pavillion at the center of a lake filled with koi wtih herons and cranes roosting there, and...

Point was, he was bored, but not comfortably bored like he was used to, and so he was just sort of wandering around the island, looking for something interesting to do or going on, and that was when he came across the girl with the cookies ducking behind a corner as some people passed. He sort of watched those people as they passed him, too, not being very subtle about it, thinking they just looked like normal people, and then he shrugged and, as he got closer to the cookie girl, he lifted a hand to his mouth and called out.

"Oi! Octavia-chan! What's with the hiding?"

Which was...probably not very helpful to her hiding, there, Shunsui, good job. Very helpful.

[okteiviakom]

Super helpful! And not at all a way to startle Octavia into looking extremely alarmed and helplessly shushing him!

No, wait. That was exactly what it did.

And not only that, but she retreated further behind the corner, trying to flatten herself against the wall as she scrunched her eyes closed and muttered to herself, "I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid, I'm not afraid --"

[sake_shinigami]

Shunsui gave a confused look around, still not seeing anything that he'd consider worthy of hiding from, and then shrugged a little, ambling on over to Octavia's hiding spot. He considered just continuing on and leaving her to her hiding, but he had been hoping something interesting would happen, and this was way more interesting than just walking around all day.

And so he poked his head around the corner and into her hiding spot, and tried again.

"Hey, why're you hiding?"

At least this time, he did ask in a whisper?

[okteiviakom]

It was a start, though given the whole 'eyes closed' situation, Octavia still yelped quietly when he spoke, and her eyes flew open again.

Okay. Okay. It was still the kid with the pork buns, it was fine. Not that you could tell by her deep frown or the obvious worry in her hushed voice.

"There were people."

[sake_shinigami]

Shunsui glanced back over his shoulder just a little bit before slipping into the hiding spot with her, shrugging again. "Yeah," he said, still keeping his voice low, "I saw 'em, they looked like just normal people. Do you know them, or something?"

[okteiviakom]

Octavia shook her head, looking anxious.

"No."

That was the whole problem.

[thatwaslucky]

Rey tended to leave when she took a break at work because there kept being things to ping into, which was how she ended up walking down the streets for a while.

Maybe she was keeping an eye out for people she might know. Maybe.

[okteiviakom]

Octavia had been standing on her tippy-toes by yet another window, straining to see inside, when she spotted movement coming towards her down the street. She immediately darted behind the nearest corner, then peered around it carefully.

Well, she thought it was careful, anyway. It didn't keep her hidden as well as she perhaps thought or was hoping it did.

[thatwaslucky]

Yeah, Rey totally saw that.

She kept walking, slowing down when she got to that corner, and said loudly, "Oh, I hope there aren't any kids waiting to scare me around here."

[okteiviakom]

Oh, there weren't. Just Octavia backing up quietly, pressing her back against the wall and hoping the woman would just walk by.

What she'd said didn't really make Octavia feel like she'd pulled off her hiding very well, but she could still hope, right?

[thatwaslucky]

Okay, then that was real hiding.

Rey stopped before the corner, not wanting to scare her by just appearing, and said, "Hi there. My name's Rey. Do you need help?"

[okteiviakom]

It was real enough hiding that Octavia was keeping very quiet and very still even after hearing that. The woman sounded friendly, but Octavia had gotten spooked, and that wasn't easy to shake.

[firstofitskind]

Liam, too, was wandering once more... although today it was less exploring and more of a broody sort of wander.

"'lo," he mumbled to Octavia when he spotted her.

[okteiviakom]

Octavia was not broody in the slightest. "Hi, Liam!" she enthused. "Did you see there's a place that has toys?"

Actually those were action figures and it was a comic book store. But they were all toys to her.

[firstofitskind]

"No," he said, a little interested despite himself. "What kind of toys?"

[okteiviakom]

"They looked like little men!" That was the best way she could think of to put it, not that it was super descriptive. "And women. Some of them had capes!"

She'd really liked the women with capes.

[firstofitskind]

"... I want to see," Liam decided. He shouldn't care about toys, he knew, given that he wasn't meant to be a child, but...

[okteiviakom]

'Shouldn't' was an annoying, dumb word anyway, if you asked Octavia.

And clearly you should, because she was practically bouncing in place. "I can show you!"