The Skittering Chaos Interlude: Various
Felt that a multi interlude would be better for this than just Skidmark, especially for the shopping scene. Note: I am not sure how to write one so this will be my first attempt. If there are ways to improve it I would be highly appreciative.
As always, any and all feedback is highly appreciated.
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Me, Skitter and Mimi walk into the gun store and are greeted by racks of weapons, some big, some small. Hell, I can see a rocket launcher behind the counter there. This place has everything and that's why I like it.
"Frederico, my man, how the hell are ya doing!?" I call out to the guy who I've been buying my guns from since I first arrived here in Hell. The massive elephant like demon brightens up as he sees me.
"Hey hey hey! Adam, you here to do another gun run for me?" Ah shit, like Hell! I remember a while ago when I agreed to come with him on one of his gun runs. Granted I was happy to help, and get a little bit of a discount for helping him, but that thing was a shit show. Run a bunch of guns over to New Canada and make sure they get to the rebels there. Shit was fucked the whole way there. Giant fuck off worms, bandit, feral demon tribes, demon bug hives, and even a fucking crusade with armoured knights and everything going on. Makes me wish that we had been using the tank rather than the van but we didn't get it until we got the warehouse. Still, gave us the boost of cash we needed to start the new Merchants.
"Nah nigga! I nearly got eaten by a fucking worm! We ain't even thinking of going out again until we get a better damn ride," Frederico chuckles at my expense. He's a bastard but got the damn charisma to keep me coming back, I just am never going to accept a job from him ever again unless I want to be eaten by fucking land krakens. Plus that discount is pretty sweet whenever I need to stock up on ammo for the fire fights around the city.
"Next time then my friend, though I haven't seen you in a while. Have you been seeing another gun store!?" he says and levels a finger towards me.
"What me? Nah, my girl knows her way around a pile a scrap and shit. Hooked me up with a baseball launcher that I been using with my magic and shit. Literally blows fucking heads off my dude."
"Ah then, I guess that poor old Frederico can no more get your business then huh? This is a sad day my friend a sad day! How could you do this to me?" He says this while clutching his heart and making a pained expression.
"I wish, nah, I came here 'cause I need to get mo' ammo. You know that big ass gun fight that was going on in Val's place?" That got him to straighten up.
"With the vigilantes? Don't tell me you were in that? That shit looked as crazy as the battle of Wofla."
"I was man, I was. You said it, shit was crazy, but we came through, partially 'cause of this girl here." I reach over and pull Skitter close. "Girl blasted a load of 'em and we managed ta get outta there 'cause a her." Frederico reaches over the counter and sticks out a massive hand out for Skitter to shake.
"Well, let me be the first to congratulate you on your well fought victory my lady. It's not often that I meet a woman such as you, even here, if his stories are to be believed that is. Is he lying to me or did you actually manage to help this poor desgracado out?"
"I did a bit to help get us out of there."
"Ha! So modest, you remind me of all those tales where navigators or explorers would discover that one of their best men was actually a woman! Only without all the disguises and finding out and stuff. Haha. So, how can I help you three?"
"I'm just looking." Mimi says beside us, looking at some of the shooting range clothes that Frederico had out, mostly outdoor hunting stuff, mostly in red camo, since we are in hell and every damn thing is red.
"I didn't have my launcher so I was using ma gun, an I'm startin' to run low 'n' sheit." Frederico snorts at that and his shoulders shake a bit in amusement at me.
"Let me guess, you were shooting like a dumb ass right?" He then makes a finger gun and starts pointing it side ways, making some low effort gun sounds.
"Ha, fuck you man I was shooting straight. There was just a fuck ton of 'em and I couldn't see for shit. Smoke and dust and shit was everywhere." Frederico stops with his teasing and nods along.
"That sounds about right, from all the smoke I saw on the news, I bet half of the bandidos were using black powder rounds. So what about you miss? Looking to defend yourself? Or deal some damage?"
"Both preferably, do you have a pistol that fires forty five auto for under a thousand?"
"Straight to business then. Yeah, I got about a dozen different kinds of them on hand that are less than a thousand. Got a bunch of ten millimetre too, cheap to if you like you're guns oversized and looking like the bastard child of a desert eagle and a block of steel."
"I think I'll stick with the forty fives. I'm more familiar with them than the ten millimetres." Frederico shrugs as he grabs a small binder that shows the various pistols that he's got.
"Alright, so here is what I got. I have it all sorted cheapest to most expensive so you can buy on your budget. I know most people these days like to sort on that on that internet thing." He thumbs one of the tabs sticking out of the side and opens it up to the forty five auto pistols. "You can check the other guns if you want as well. Like I said, the ten millimetre are pretty popular among some people, same with nine millimetre. But that one will only get you so far if you're trying to bring down a big mean demon on your ass, or some of the other bad shit out there."
"I'll make sure to keep that in mind, thank you."
"Enjoy yourself miss." Frederico says before turning to me.
"So you do need bullets from me then? Good. I just machined a fresh batch, did you want the smokeless or the black powder ones? Oh, and what gun did you use?"
"What else homie? I used my glock!"
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Skitter had grabbed a hold of a classic, a M1911. Replica of course, made with the black metal you can get in hell. Still looks fine as Hell. Frederico let us use the shooting range he got for a bit less than usual, curtsey of my discount of course. Skitter mostly wanted to test out her gun, check the sights and all that. Mimi didn't want to, instead she just asked for something to muffle gun shots and pulled out one of her comic books. Girl's damn well obsessed with them.
She checks the gun over first. Once more she reminds me of those veterans that ended up with us in the old Merchants gang. Always checking over their guns, always cleaning them. Skitter's got that kind of movement to her.
I watch Skitter load a mag in faster than I've seen anyone but professional soldiers, or Frederico, do, sight the target down range, and let out five shots. Three of the bullets enter into the chest and two bullets into the head of the target. None of them miss their mark.
"Damn girl you scary… Makes me wonder why you never had a gun." I tell her. She doesn't look away from the target as she just stares ahead. Like usual I suppress a frown at her. Girl's so damn uptight, back in the bad ol' days Big Daddy would have tied a uptight bitch like her down and would of fucked the bitch out of her, or until she bit her tongue. I remember having to watch that. Some tough chick, tough as nails and ugly as sin. Started working with us, she could take orders, but she never fucking calmed down, pissed off Big Daddy more than us, we never really gave a shit.
I still remember the screaming… Daddy didn't even care about it. Was just him "loosening up a bitch." She wasn't the same after… then again… none of us were the same after Daddy came into our lives.
"What changed?"
"Wha?"
"What changed?" She asks.
"What you mean?"
"You, Sherrel, the Merchants. You were all runts." I can't help my brow scrunching a bit as she says that, was that an insult or? "I don't mean it in a derogatory way, but rather in a more literal sense. Always scraping with the big dogs, always fighting for every single scrap, never caring at all who got in your way. You never had a bit of self preservation in mind when you started fighting everyone, no plan, nothing, just thinking in the now and fighting for every scrap you could get, tearing down everyone on the way to eat your next meal… a force of destruction and anarchy." I don't know what to say to that so I just let the girl talk.
"Now I come across you and you're saving people on the streets, helping the poor, giving them jobs… you've built a business, and despite how some people may see it by selling drugs, you're contributing to society here. So what changed? What changed you Skidmark? What changed the man that would have revelled in this anarchy and chaos and made you into an honest man?" Ah, shit, that. I pull out a small joint I had, and lit the end with a little fire magic that Mimi had shown me. I take a long drag, feel it in my lungs, and finally exhale.
"Shock… I guess."
"Shock?"
"Yeah… shock. Like one moment we were having the party of our lives. Then the next moment, none of it mattered. Nothin' that I did mattered after I died and ended up here… Ya know, I've been fighting my entire life you know? From fucking birth to right now. I've been fighting, scraping, surviving, all that shit. At some point it became sort of a habit. Wake up, get dressed, figure out what you lost in the night, figure out how to get it back, or how to get even and shit. Just habit. Eventually when we went big, we just kept going. Kept fighting, kept surviving, even after all that shit. Fight, survive, celebrate that you ain't dead yet. How it was. No body gave a shit 'bout us.
Then Levi hit. Suddenly there was a fuck ton a people just like us. Joined up with us. We were golden, damn well platinum. We were the strongest gang in Brockton and we could do what ever the fuck we wanted. You wanna know how I felt? What I felt at that moment when the Merchants were top of the world?" Skitter is silent as I look at her. Her expression never changed. If it weren't for her big eyes it would almost look like she didn't care, or she was waiting for me to properly answer, but with them it almost looks like she's looking at me with puppy dog eyes. I know she ain't, but the impression is still there.
"Nothing. Not a God damn thing. All that shit was the same thing, different day. None of it mattered. Just going through the motions. Kind of like I said. 'Sall just habit. I know I should of felt something. I just didn't know what. I'd look at how my guys were taking over, grabbing more territory than we ever had. And I'd just nod along as they talk to me. Telling me about what we were doing."
"I had a similar feeling in the Wards. I didn't realise it then but I could have been doing something else that either made more of a difference or just spent it with my friends."
"Not when you were the big bad warlord?" I ask, a wry grin gracing my face as I watch Skitter turn to the targets once more. She hits the button on the side of the shooting range and a large number of targets start to pop up at random.
"When I was in the Undersiders, at least I was with my friends. We were making a difference in the city. For some we were the new gang that was keeping people down and bringing crime to the city. For so many more however, we were saviours. Then I gave it all up to try to stop the end of the world." While she talks she's popping off shots, bulls eye, bulls eye, bulls eye. Her aim never wavers as she continues to hit targets, more like a tinker tech robot made for shooting than a person… or that one Canadian guy that we ran with. Wonder what ever happened to him?
"Well ya did." Skitter looks over at me for a second while reloading her mag, after loading it, I watch as despite looking away she is still aiming for the next target, she squeezes the trigger. Bulls eye.
"We did. But we didn't prevent it. That was the whole point of joining the Wards. Prevent the apocalypse. Turned out that all that time in the Wards, all that training. We dealt with a lot of bad things, fought Endbringers. But none of it stopped the apocalypse. None of the things I did in the Wards couldn't have been done outside of them as an independent." Skitter empties her mag at the targets, reloads, and holsters it. I look at the targets, already knowing what I'll see. Bulls eyes. Seems Skitter's happy with the gun I got her. We walk out, and Mimi is just where we left her, reading her comic book. I see a bug go by Mimi's view, hover there, before coming back to us and Mimi follows the bugs until shes looking up at us. Seems Skitty got her power back.
"Up until I learned more about the heroes, I had wanted to be one. I would dress up as heroes with my once sister. It wasn't until I learned more that I stopped wanting to be a hero. Then… there I was, a hero. I did good work as one, and I don't regret the good I did. But the entire time, I was being blocked from doing much of anything meaningful. It took me years trying to get the momentum I needed to actually properly get things rolling in a ways where I could try to change things for the better. Those changes however, might have been easier if I had been outside of the system. At some point, all the stuff I had been dealing with, everything I had sacrificed, all of it, it had stopped being worth it, but by then I had already been committed, and the dead line for the end of the world was coming up fast. Even if I had wanted to get out and try again, it would be too late. So I stayed, because after everything I had gone through, it had to have been for something." Mimi and I are silent as we continue along with Skitter, walking out of the gun store.
"Was it something?" Mimi asks. I'm about to ask what she means but Skitter seems to get it. She glances over to Mimi before nodding.
"It was, but not enough to be worth it. I didn't do enough, didn't get enough done. Some of it was because whenever I wasn't attending to Ward duties, I was confined to my cell or the base where I would do research and make sure I didn't get lazy. Whenever I was actually making a move to something positive, the Protectorate leadership or PRT would block me off, and keep things from getting done." Skitter shrugs.
"Part of it was prejudice, some of it was because I was making waves, disrupting people's nice little system. I was riling up the status quo, and people didn't like it, so they tried to stop me. Some people didn't like what I was doing to the Wards so they would look into stopping me there, others would just show disdain. Lots of heroes just avoided me because they knew that the leadership didn't like me, so they choose that they would rather keep their career secure rather than associate with me or my ideas." We were silent for a while. It sounds like the hero shit was a bunch of bullshit. But then Skitter had been a warlord and took over Brockton. Can't have been good for the shit heads on top to have got shown up time and time again by a gang of brats. Wonder how Skitter managed to avoid the cage for that though?
"You know… I always wanted to be a hero." Mimi says, staring off in the distance, the way she always does when she reminisces. I can sometimes see the horror in her eyes when she's remembering things. Makes me wonder what she has experienced to give her such a face like that. But she doesn't like to talk about it, so I keep my distance. She's a good Merchant, even if she won't fight for shit. "I'd look at all their pretty costumes, all the TV shows. I'd read all their comics and dream I was a hero. I'd fight the bad guys in my mind while I read their comics and played with their action figures. I'd imagine what my costume would look like, and I would just dream of being something I'm not. Though… the way that you talk about it… and… what they did to you after… I'm not sure I want to be a hero anymore."
"It wasn't actually the Protectorate that killed me in the end. It was a cape named Contessa. She'd been behind the scenes in nearly everything. After the end, she came for me, pulled me to another world, and talked to me for a bit. I wasn't sure what was happening to me, but because of the alteration to my power, I wasn't really me. Yet Contessa managed to talk to me. She was the one who killed me. I think it might have been a mercy killing, but I can't be sure. I just know that I let it happen."
"Why?" Skitter doesn't answer. She, like Mimi, looks out as she reminisces. Unlike Mimi however, her face didn't change into one of fear, or horror. Instead she just contemplates. She doesn't answer.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to."
"Fear."
"Fear? What the hell was you scared of? You the warlord o Brockton! An' you just killed Scion. Couldn't ya just go back and get ya mind unfucked by Panpan?"
"I wasn't in control, not really. That's what I was scared of."
"You were being mastered?"
"In a sense…"
"Shit man…"
"As for the Protectorate, I don't know. They are, or rather were necessary. They were also reforming things from how they were, or at least trying. I paid attention when I could. Unfortunately, without the PRT playing ball, most of the time the reforms they were trying did nothing or were put on the back burner, as well as there was an attempt to get capes to clean up their acts. I don't know how well it went though. I was about to find out myself before the apocalypse hit. If you had joined the cape scene, I think it might have been best to join them, or some other hero team. You could make a difference in the world and help people, save some lives, and make sure not so many people die. Don't get me wrong, for all the faults of the Protectorate, at this point, after so long, they had made themselves necessary. Not to mention that they were one of the major organisers of the Endbringer fights. Without them, I don't think we would be doing so well." Skitter finishes her musing on the Protectorate for Mimi. She doesn't look like she's convinced though.
We just walk for a bit in silence again. Heavy shit like dying and all that shit was a damn mood kill, but then, the mood was already dead. Still. Control, makes sense. Masters are a bunch a mother fuckers like that. I don't need the god damned PRT boys to tell me that. All that mind shit is freaky as hell and I made sure I ain't never got involved with capes that did that shit. Not just too much heat, but also you never knew if they were going to try something on you. More than a few human masters had thought about joining the Merchants back in the day. Daddy let them, but after I took charge, I told them to fuck off. Usually with a dozen or so guys with guns, and a dozen more out of sight to take him down just in case.
"Hey," Mimi speaks up and draws our attention. We're by a clothing store. The place doesn't look like it's even been affected by the bullshit that other parts of the city have been dealing with. "Do you even have any of your own clothes Skitty?"
"Not really. I've been getting by with just Squealer's spares. I haven't exactly had time to get clothes before now." Aw crap, clothes shopping. We're going to be here for hours.
"Well why don't we go in here then, maybe even find some more stores, come on, we can make a day out of this right? Not everything has to be about work."
"When have I ever said that everything has to be about work?" Mimi rolls her eyes in an exaggerated fashion.
"Come on Skitty, You've been here what, three days? All you've done is work, and from what you told me, all you've done for the past two years is just work. You need some time off!"
"I had some time off less than two years ago."
"Oh really? When was that?" Mimi had crossed her arms and moves in front of us, her eyebrow raised.
"My birthday, right before everything started happening. I got to be with the Undersiders for a bit. It was nice for a while."
"And that was?"
"A little more than a week ago. I don't quite remember how long we were fighting Scion for. I think it was maybe four days, but I'm not quite sure, everything was happening so fast. But I had a bit of time off."
"Not enough! Come on, just one more day before you go back to working on the next problem?"
"I wasn't planning on trying anything today. Yesterday proved that I was woefully under equipped to even deal with some of the things we will face going forward with my plan."
"So then today you can relax and stuff. Come on, we can go shopping!" Mimi moves over to Skitter's side and drapes an arm over her shoulders, guiding the taller moth demon over to the store we had stopped in front of. I follow along as well. I got a bit of cash on me. Might as well browse, could find myself something better than a shirt and jeans. Heck, might even find something bug themed as well, go with the fact that I'm now the toughest son of a bug that there ever was, a cockroach.
"Hey how old are you now anyways?" Mimi asks Skitter.
"Eighteen."
"Oh cool. I'm twenty four. Just turned that a couple of months ago."
I walk off towards the guy's section of the story, though in the corner of my eye, I can see Mimi drags Skitter off to the women's side of the store. The mouse demon starts showing Skitter different outfits and trying to get her to try some on, some of which she tries, where as other's she rejects. A onesie being one of them.
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
I drag Skitty along with me as Skidmark follows us to the store. She's barely offering any resistance as I bring her along with me to the woman's side of the store. Oh this is going to be so fun! I haven't been able to do this in so long. Now with all those paydays under my belt I can finally have some fun and spend it on something more than comics and that stupid TV licence thing they have here.
I push it from my thoughts as the boss walks off to the men's section of the store. Probably for the best since he could use some new clothes as well. Maybe when we expand the gang and all that like what Skitty was saying we could do a theme kind of thing. I've never really done a theme thing before, and the Undersiders didn't have a theme last I remembered, it could be cool.
We are in the middle of the racks when I let go of Skitty's shoulders and turn around to see what I'm working with. Skinny, tall, with legs for days… are her breasts bigger than before? Could have sworn she was smaller, like a b-cup or something like that. I must have been paying more attention to the blood on the jacket than her. How many time… how many times, I push it from my mind. I'd rather not get caught up in old memories. I… I aggressively throw it out of my mind this time as it comes back. Skitter, no, Skitty. I'm… I'm focusing on Skitty.
Skitty stares at me with her big cute eyes. Definitively need to accentuate that. Maybe some glasses to go along with it, like big cute glasses. Maybe… I look around and a big grin starts to spread itself on my face.
"I know the perfect thing!" I say before walking off to one of the racks. Yes this is perfect, and totally works with in making her cuter!
"How about this?" I ask as I show her what I grabbed. Unfortunately, she doesn't exactly look impressed with my choice.
"A onesie?" what? What's wrong with a onesie?
"Yeah totally, it works great with your eyes and make you look cute! Come on see!" I guide her to a mirror where she can see for herself. I put the onesie in front of her where she still has her eyebrow raised.
"See!" I say, she doesn't exactly brighten up however. She does start feeling the material though.
"Maybe if Hell was actually cold… but with this, I think I would die at night."
"Oh, but if we had a cold day you'd wear it?"
"Maybe. I was more just thinking some practical clothes that aren't an oversized shirt and some short shorts. I'd say a hoodie but I've already got my wings as a jacket." Skitty says while indicating her fluffy jacket. Actually, I should probably take that jacket into account. She needs something to go with it and make it pimpin. Maybe… I hate to think back to it, but what had…?
"Okay then, what about, uh…"
"Did you ladies need some help?" A fox like demon saunters it's way over to us as I try to think up some ideas for what could go well with Skitty's coat. I haven't really done much with long coats. I hadn't needed one for a while.
"Perhaps, any suggestions what might go well with this coat? I got it recently and I've only just gotten the freedom to actually decide what I can wear," Skitty says.
"Oh? Is your pimp letting you have a bit of fun deciding what to wear?" the foxy lady asks in return, mildly curious.
"No, I just finished my sentence, and then the world ended," Skitty retorts.
"Oh dear, well, you've been out of practice for a while then, and you haven't even had time to look up the most recent hell fashion trends have you? Well, we will just have to fix that. Do you need the jacket?"
"I'm quite attached to it," With the way that I've seen her cuddle up in it when she was baby sitting Lil Mark, I'd say so. The little devil and her when I was passing by were all curled up and snuggling together. Skitty practically wears it everywhere.
"Let me guess, they're your wings? Oh don't act surprised, many older demons like to turn their wings into parts of their clothing. Though I wonder how you managed to figure it out, if you're as new as you claim." She stares at Skitty for a moment before continuing. "But then you must have been one of those 'capes' that were running around up on one of those Earths that's got them."
"I was," the fox demon shrugs.
"figures, anyways, why don't we figure out something for you to wear underneath. Oh and did you need anything ma'am?" I start as she suddenly begins addressing me.
"Oh uh, no, well maybe but you can attend to her first. She turned eighteen right when everything started going to crap."
"Oh jeeze. Well then I'll do my very best to help then! Do you want to come along or were you going to keep browsing until I can help?"
"I'll come along, I want to see what she picks." The foxy demon leads us over towards the changing rooms.
"So what are we working with then? Got a budget?"
"My budget is around a hundred," I can imagine the store clerk frowning.
"Make that two hundred." I say, it's Skitty's birthday, or well, close enough to it. She deserves something nice to go with the gun she got, as well as maybe a… No stop thinking about that. I've got a bit of money from not spending it on everything I see. Would be a shame to let a girl go without some clothes of her own.
"Alright then, I think I can make an outfit with that. Anything specific you are looking for? Or do you just want to have something casual?"
"Casual is fine."
"Well then just give me a minute and I'll be right back," the fox demon walks off, and starts going around the store, grabbing a few different items. Most of them look like to be on the parts of the store where things are on sale, completely ignoring any of the racks where there wasn't a sale going on. Was two hundred not a lot for clothes?
When the fox demon returns, she sets down a small pile of clothes down on a bench by the changing rooms.
"Alright, I've gotten a few different outfits for you to try." I look over to the outfits for Taylor. One of them is a set of jeans and a light blue stripy loose fitting shirt. Another is a set of black pants and a black tee, with the final outfit being a Champagne skirt and orange tee to go with it. I'm not sure she would like the bright coloured one. Plus I don't think that Skitty is a skirt girl despite having legs for days. Personally I think the contrasting colours would look best, rather than the one with the striped shirt.
They take a few moments to try on the two outfits. I smile when she leaves the changing rooms with the black pants and shirt, and even give a thumbs up. Skitty gives a small smile my way before changing back to her original clothes.
"So what did you think?" the fox demons asks.
"I like the black outfit, it shows off the coat better," I voice my opinion.
"It does seem like a decent choice." Though, now that I think about it, the other outfit had been pretty alright as well. It looked cute on her, and I can imagine what it would look like without the jacket.
"Though the other one did look cute as well."
"Did it?"
"Yeah it did, plus it's nice and light and it goes with your jacket well."
"The stripes do go well with your coat," the fox lady comments as she listens in. "It really make's the blue pop," Skitty nods along at her advice.
"And what about the third outfit?" our attendant asks, Skitty however frowns when she looks at that one.
"It's not really what I am looking for."
"Well alright then, you are still significantly under budget, did you want me to get you some more outfits?"
"Something simple please, and just one more. I don't want to go over budget," the fox demon nods before walking off.
"Not much of a clothes shopper are ya?" I ask Skitty and she shakes her head.
"Not really. Other than when I was taken as a kid, I've only really gone clothes shopping a few times. A few times with… someone I thought I knew, and a few times with my friends."
"Really? I used to love clothes shopping, I'd run around the racks, put on a few shirts when no one was looking and have to be chased around the store by grandma when we had to leave." I smile while remembering that. Most of my memories are not of happy times, but those days, those days were happy days. Didn't have a care in the world, everything was sunshine and roses, those days with Grandma… Then they were over. Just like that.
"I never put on the clothes that were on the racks when I was a kid, but I did the rest of that as well. That was only if it was just a clothes store though. Otherwise whenever my parents wanted to find me they would find me with the books. I'd go to the shelves and find the most interesting looking book there, sit myself down, and then read. Mom knew where I was all the time, and when I got older, she would let me stay there while I read while she went shopping. I still had one older lady bring me to the front and made an announcement on the intercom about a lost child though." I giggle at Skitty's story. Fuddy duddy Grandmas who coddled kids, they can be over bearing, but at least they cared… Not like Mom and Dad.
"I guess they didn't give you much free time when you were a Ward?" Skitty shakes her head.
"Not really any. For a long time they would just send me back to my cell whenever I wasn't on Ward duties. Not much to do in there so I did my best to keep in shape. After a while it just became a hassle to keep doing so I argued for getting a room in the Wards lounge. There was a few of them that were vacant. Some people didn't like that at all and tried to stop the transfer, but I talked to the leader of the Wards and the Protectorate leaders and got the transfer approved. Even so, I was confined to the base and wasn't allowed to leave except for official business so I never really got much time to go clothes shopping," I nod along as Skitty tells me more about her time in the Wards. Meanwhile I'm watching Adam trying on different coats and outfits while over on the men's side of the store. Trying on fur lined coats, leather jackets, as well as a wide brimmed white fedora. I tilt my head a bit, and start glancing between Skitty and Adam, before smiling a bit.
"Just a sec I wanna see something," I start walking over to the men's side of the store and straight to Adam. While he's distracted by one of the various leather jackets, I snatch the fedora off of his head. He lets out a surprised "Hey!" as his hat is taken. I quickly make my way back to Skitty who's looking at me with an inquisitive expression. As I get to her, I plop the fedora on Skitty's head and smile at how it looks. Combined with Skitty's long fur coat, it strikes as almost appropriate to have a nice wide brimmed fedora. Maybe combined with the black outfit… I try to imagine it and grin harder, she would look pimpin.' Oh that's good I gotta use that!
"You look pimpin.'" I say through my wide grin. Skitty's got a small smile on as she turns towards the mirror that's in the dress room. Skitty turns this way and that, looking at the outfit she has on now and looking at the fedora, and how it mixes with the rest of it. She frowns however and messes with her antenna a little bit.
"Ooo, you look good. The hat really goes well with the coat. If you want I can make some adjustments so that your antenna can go through the hat. It's a popular modification among those of us that have longer ears or things coming out of our heads," the fox lady says as she returns with a new outfit. This one had a shirt with a moth in yellow printed out on it, and another pair of jeans to go along with it.
"It's nice… how much is it?"
"Sixty dollars, even with the new outfit, if you got it all, you would still be below budget." Skitty still looks unsure as she looks at herself in the mirror. Behind her I give the thumbs up again, and she gives a small smile.
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
I'm not sure how I like this chapter and I might think about rewriting it to make it better later. Any suggestions on improving it would be highly appreciated.
I made this chapter to maybe get a bit more characterisation of Skidmark and Mimi going as well as show a bit about how Skidmark thinks of Taylor in this. I also kind of wanted to explain a bit of the face heel turn of Skidmark as well as foreshadow some of the stuff that is going on in New Canada.