The time passed, and as many accidents as she had seen in her life, this one was no different. Yet, she found herself lingering among the growing crowd that urged as close to the yellow tape as possible. Her hood was replaced to hover over her brow, occasionally lifting a hand to check the slice of broken skin that made its way across her cheek. It had stopped bleeding, but it didn't seem to heal as quickly as she would have liked.<br/><br/>Her gaze looked over the individuals in front of her, their newest style of phones up and on to record the aftermath of a disaster. Typical morons. But her moving eyes stopped to an certain man sitting with a paramedic, low and sullen as anyone might expect a survivor to be. Her dark eyes sank into him, nearly feeling as though she was drawing closer when her concentration was broken by a young man colliding into her.<br/><br/>"Thad! God..." she huffed, luckily still much quieter than the majority of the crowd's chatter.<br/><br/>His scrawny frame backed up a step, acquainted with her temper and all the reputation she had built behind it. He wasn't unfortunate looking, but he was still rather young - about eighteen or nineteen as she could tell. His clothes were nice and his hair was tended with a phony colour, suggesting he came from the high parts of town. Yet, his adventurous nature brought him here to the high class side of the land of drugs and indecent nature. His mother must have been so proud.<br/><br/>His hands raised and pushed his naturally slicked hair back, as he stood on his toes over the bobbing heads and hands that struggled to get the best view. He zipped up his inner hoodie as the outer shell flapped around his hips with his hops, bringing her eyes around in irritation.<br/><br/>"What's going on? What'd I miss, huh?" he yammered.<br/><br/>"Nothing. It was just an explosion or something." she muttered.<br/><br/>He stood as high as he could, looking over as many people as possible, and struggling with his surprisingly short stature. Barely taller than the woman he knew, his height was a fraction higher than her sixty-nine inch height - possibly an inch more if you counted the pale lavender poof atop his head. The slick buzz cut was neat and tapered down to the nape of his neck, only adding to his youthful look. He scooted back and forth a couple times, seeing what he could see with the given situation. When he finally gave it a rest, his hand flopped on his hips and turned his upturned lip to her, subsiding his giddy energy for a moment, as he turned and turned and finally caught the right angle to see her face.<br/><br/>"Hey, Nanu, you're bleeding. How'd that happen?"<br/><br/>"It's nothing. I was here when the place went up." she said flatly.<br/><br/>"Here, how bad is it?" he lifted his hand towards her, a simple gesture of kindness to the coagulated scratch. His hand was halted abruptly an began bending back as her firm grip slipped from her pocket and held his at bay and began bending it backwards, forcing him down to one knee.<br/><br/>"Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay!"<br/><br/>She finally let go as his body began crumbling downward. His free hand wrapped around his palm, pressing his thumb into the stretched tendon along his wrist with a twisted face.<br/><br/>"I just wanted to help." he cooed.<br/><br/>"Do I look like I need help? It's just a minor repercussion of the TPD unable to do their jobs again." she snapped.<br/><br/>"Better not let them hear you say that. Those guys are crazy bad-asses. They're like an elite task force man. They'd take you down." he smiled, bouncing back and forth like a hopped up "beach bro."<br/><br/>His excitement was quickly stifled with her hand clasping around her cheeks, pulling him closer as she began to lean over his body, bending awkwardly to avoid her nose to nose discipline.<br/><br/>"Listen you little cockroach, there is nothing for you here and if you keep coming around, someone is eventually going to get their hands on you and get you addicted to something you don't like or fuck your living brains out. Get the hell out'ta here and run home to the mother you still have." she scolded through gritted teeth.<br/><br/>His eye flicked from side to side for a moment as though thinking on his answer with some semblance of a smile pressing his cheeks outward.<br/><br/>"Does this mean you're gonna kiss me goodbye this time?"<br/><br/>She scoffed and tossed him aside, tripping over his own feet before regaining his ground and standing straight, his shoulders quick to slump over in disappointment. A few steps forward, standing just clear of her swinging range behind her as he leaned in and spoke quietly,<br/><br/>"I just want to learn to be cool like you."<br/><br/>Her irritation drained as she sighed, her head dropping as she pushed her hood back from her fiery hair and turning just enough to see him from her peripherals.<br/><br/>"Don't say that kid. No one should ever want to be like me. Go home."<br/><br/>He shrugged and let his hands flop again, turning the way he came and jogging away towards a better lit part of town. Her eyes turned and followed him, watching his skinny legs carry him away as her lips lifted for a moment, before falling again as though she had just heard awful news.<br/><br/>"No," she murmured aloud, "it's just not going to be us."