Freak Chance [ AnonymousRelated x Nika ]

[~Nika~]

It was a hot and muggy night, but the slender figure who flitted quickly under dim stuttering streetlights was bundled into a long coat, it's hood drawn up and pulled down to cast a delicate face into shadow. Despite this censorious precaution, it was no stretch of the imagination to see past the bulky coat and to the slight body it hung from.

See a hooded pair of eyes did, from the corner of the street. A tight smile wormed it's way onto a stubbled jaw as he turned from his conversation partners to follow the figure's hurried path. That girl, that late-night waitress always walked this way home, in her coat, with it's hood up, even in the hottest summer nights. Hoarse chuckling coughed from a group of deepening smirks. The man flicked his cigarette down as she passed their small party, eying the way pretty ankles flirted with him, peaking out just beneath those clinging black tights and just above work-appropriate black tennis shoes. A heavy boot crushed it into the gravel, grinding the butt into oblivion.

-----

Alix hated walking home on friday nights. The bars and strip clubs were seeding until early morning, but the restaurant in which she worked only remained open until 12 closing. That meant she had to take the closing walk of shame, each night, past the fringes of the red light district, in order to get to the street from which she could make her way to her small apartment. She could deal with the usual night of cat-calls, and propositions of a few harried-to-leave customers. Except, friday nights were the worst. Friday nights the streets were dangerous.

It was no mystery as to why Alix had adopted the habit of wearing baggy pants to work, and a baggy sack of a coat with a broad hood home after the first few times she had been mistaken for a street-walker. However, this week she had opted for lighter and cooler, if more revealing, yoga pants under the long coat. Alix picked up her a brisk pace, eyes set ahead, brows furrowed, and phone clutched in her palm. Despite the measures she took, she could still feel the stares creeping up the back of her neck. There was nothing she could do to hide her small stature or height.

She'd taken this job six months ago, and despite her hatred for the district of town it was in, she needed the money. As she passed a group of men who looked to be drinking, leaning against the side of a building along the street corner, she cursed quietly under her breath.

 

[AnonymousRelated]

For a person who had no real life, for someone who had to hide in the shadows and live in fear of being exposed for who they were, the night was home. The green hued skin, and black as night eyed man that walked with a hood covering most of his face didn't even think of his own safety. All he thought about was finding something to eat, and a place to sleep where he wouldn't be disturbed. The name he'd given himself, 'Freak' was highly appropriate for who and what he was. Freak had never gotten a positive reaction with his looks and wasn't expecting to start now.

The weather was slowly turning dreary and he could smell rain in the air. He also could feel a surge of electricity in the air, which for him lead him to the conclusion that there was going to be something bad happening tonight. Freak was walking the opposite direction that Alix was, and fortunately enough for her, he spotted her before she did him. Freak noticed that she was busy looking over her shoulder, and watching the people who followed her. It was three men, Freak's eyes mutated so that he could see thermal signatures. What he could see was a thin girl, wearing clothes to try and hide her physique. And the men behind her had guns.

Freak was going to turn the opposite direction and walk away, but he noticed her cut down an alley. One he knew was a dead end, and he figured that she was trying to just avoid the men and wasn't really focusing on where she was going. The destination didn't matter as long as she was away from them, he was sure. She was still a ways in front of him, and so by the time Freak got near to the alley he could hear the men's cackling laughter.

Peaking around the corner Freak looked to the scene before him, his eyes still on thermal. He could see that she was scared, due to the amount of heat coming off of her body. And the men were aroused, clearly they already had plans in mind for her. Freak knew to not involve himself in matters that didn't include him. As such, he pushed off the corner and walked away from the alley, but her scream stopped him in his tracks.

Turning around Freak walked to the alley and was about to call out to the men, but instead he kicked a can which alerted the men to his presence. Clearly the men were thugs, trained thugs but thugs none the less. Because the man standing at the back of the group spun around and spotted Freak. He couldn't see any of the features of Freak since it was dark out, but nevertheless the man responded with violence. Freak would have moved out of the way, but the man's responsiveness and quick to act mindset led him to shoot first and ask questions later. The bullet he fired spun out the barrel, and lodged itself directly into Freak's forehead.

The back of his hood ruptured as the bullet flew out the other side of his skull. Freak toppled over onto his back, his hands sprawling out behind him. The thugs panicked and tried to decide on what to do, but knowing that the gunshot would attract attention, they decided to split. As they ran passed Freak one of the men noticed that his face was very strange and that only made them run faster.

After the men had cleared the scene, and Freak could tell that the girl at the end of the alley was still sitting there in shock, he sat up. Freak rubbed his face as the bullet hole began closing up. Pulling his hood up over his face, Freak stood to his weak knees and stumbled out the alley back the way he had come from.

 

[~Nika~]

The comments grew louder, bolder, as she glanced over her shoulder meeting the eyes of one of the men for a second. Why they chose her tonight to heckle, Alix didn't know, and pulled her hood tighter around her face as she hurried down the street. She could barely hear them over the blood pounding in her ears; being pursued by three huge, drunken men was more than enough to trigger her flight response.

"Common honey, don'tcha want some company tonight?"

"Where you going, bitch! We just want to talk!" Raucous laughter followed swiftly on the backs of her heels, and creeped up her spine. Her vision tunneling like a deer caught in headlights, Alix didn't realize the alley she turned down for a quick escape was a dead end.

She turned swiftly around, only to be met with three approaching lecherous smirks.

Setting her shoulders forward, Alix tried to make herself seem as big and hostile as she could, speaking coldly, "Leave me alone! I don't want your company!"

One of the men approached her, spreading his hands, as if approaching a cornered animal,

"Shhh, sweetheart, I won't hurt you 'less I need ta..."


Panicked green eyes flicked nervously over the man's broad shoulders and brawn as he closed the distance between them. She'd have little defense once they had their hands on her, and these men weren't backing off. Alix did the one thing she'd been taught since grade school. She screamed for help.

"Help! Help! These men are attacking me! Someone help! Stop I've called the police!" She yelled, waving her phone and putting out a hand, that the man simply swatted away, backing her up further. He moved slowly, with a lopsided smile, confident enough to take his time playing with her, his eyes running down the front of her coat as he reached for her,

"Nah you didn't, 'sides, no ones gonna come git ya down this part of town..."

Alix screamed once more as she was grabbed by her shoulders, backed in against a fence, kicking out against the man's shins. He cursed, raising a fist, when the sound of a can being kicked across gravel made him pause, and turn his head.

Alix opened her eyes in that brief moment, just seeing the silhouette of a hooded man beneath the street light. Something about the way he stood, still and silent, almost unnaturally so, chilled her. The stranger seemed to have the same unsettling effect on her attackers, as the man to her left smoothly drew a gun, and in the span of a fraction of a second had shot the stranger without a second thought.

The gunshot echoed through the streets. Blood splattered out in a gory arc as the man seemed to crumple in slow-motion, his arms swinging limply forward as his head was jarred back. They had shot him in the head.

Alix choked on a horrified scream, covering her own head and falling into a crouch on the ground as the three men seemed to panic as well, taking off without another glance her way.


She sat staring at the dead body, hands still woven into the auburn strands of her hair, expression frozen in one of petrified terror,

He's dead...

but before she could have another conscious thought, the man stirred. He sat straight upright. Alix eye's blew wide, her mouth limply falling open. W-what. What. He was alive, but that wasn't possible! She had seen the bullet pierce his forehead. His head! Alix came back to her body as she saw the man stagger to his feet, making for the main street once more. Scrabbling to her feet as well, Alix took hurried trembling steps after the man. She could see the ragged bloody exit hole in the back of his hood. A creeping chill trickled down her spine, but the adrenaline of tonight's ordeal drove her on,

"W-wait! Wait please! Are you hurt? Are you okay?" She babbled out nonsensically as she jogged towards him, her voice weak in disbelief that he had survived such a grievous wound, closing in to touch his shoulder,

"please let me call you an ambulance!"

 

[AnonymousRelated]

Of course, any normal human would be dead from the grievous wound to the head, but Freak was no normal human. He wasn't even certain you should or could classify him as human. But Freak wouldn't die from such a wound, or better put couldn't die from such a wound. But that didn't mean that he was completely capable of functioning properly.

A large black streak of blood painted the wall from where Freak's hand had braced himself to walk. Freak could not hear, nor could he see out of his left eye. The shot had torn a hole through the section of his brain that controlled sight and hearing. But his body recreated itself many many before. Thus the hearing started to come back almost instantaneously and he could hear the voice approaching him from behind.

He hadn't the ability to fully tell distance just from sound alone due to the fact that he was still regenerating. However he was clearly able to see, at least with his right eye. His head turned to see the woman approaching. There was no hope to avoid the confrontation, but nevertheless Freak yanked his hood over his head concealing himself more. He knew his black as night eyes would be noticed immediately by her.

Her hand reached out for him, and she told him that she would call him an ambulance. But Freak clearly wasn't in need of such a thing, he was fine without care from nearly any disaster. The few things that were capable of killing him, would be complete immolation, or being broken down to his atomic structure.

While it didn't look to be that Freak was capable of speaking, he was. He could mutate himself to give himself a mouth. But he often found words were ineffective and very wasted on people. Freak knew there would be some immense trouble if she were to cry out. Police were likely already on their way, and Freak was having a hard enough time making his body respond the way he wanted, having a female cry out would only increase the response time from individuals.

Trying to push off the wall and onto his own feet, Freak hit a turned over trashcan and stumbled to his hands and knees. Freak wore fingerless gloves, and thus with this sprawled out position his hands were very visible to her now too. Freak had never before been in such a vulnerable and or exposed state. Pulling his hands into his sleeves Freak crawled over to a nearby dumpster and tucked himself into the corner of it and the brick wall it sat against.

:: Sorry for the delay! ::