It's not Delivery [Aine]

Kevin was convinced of it. He had magic food powers. Nearly every time he’d gone out for a meal, he’d run into something supernatural. The burgers had led him to the Crow, Geminae, and Meridith. Tacos had guided him to Diarmaid, too. The one time he’d gone out without getting a delicious meal somewhere, he’d run into a Shinigami who very nearly killed him. He’d have to add on a bit more cardio, but he had decided that the only way to keep himself from running into any more Shinigami was to eat every time he went outside.

Baseball players are nothing if not superstitious.

He had had Japanese food without running into anyone, but anything Western had always ended up good in some way. It was this which led Kevin to get a delicious pizza from one of Karakura Town’s finest pizza establishments in order to test his theory. He had no real direction and, after sharing his location with Meridith on his phone just in case something were to go wrong, he set to wandering the streets around the pizza parlor with the box in one hand and a hot slice in the other.

It was in these wanderings that he ran into a mysterious foreigner, a tall man with a severely receding hairline and a slight gut. ”Hey, champ!” he called out in English. He’d recently realized that nearly all Quincy knew English, so there was no reason in trying to stick to his Japanese. ”You a Quincy, bro?”

The man’s Japanese reply expressing confusion saddened Kevin and, after a brief back and forth, he discovered that he was in fact a half-Japanese local who had no idea what the hell Quincy meant. No amount of glove showing, weird occult questions, or blatant questioning seemed to do anything other than make the fellow even more uncomfortable.

Having struck out in his try, Kevin frowned in shame as the man walked off. It took him a few seconds of irritation before he shook his head and set off back for the hotel. ”Oh well, can’t win ‘em all,” he muttered to no one in particular as he took a shortcut through a back alley.

Reaching into the box and extracting a fresh, if slightly chilled, slice, Kevin very nearly bumped into a woman who was hanging out in the alleyway doing who knows what. ”Sorry, miss,” he said to her, bouncing back a step to not collide and damage his precious pizza cargo.

The world had really turned upside down since coming to Karakura Town. What had started out as a mission to aid the Ishikawa Clann during these recent Hollow attacks had totally blown up into a disaster. How was she supposed to explain to the head of the main branch family that she had not only failed to protect the heir from Shinigami capture, she had also lost contact with his orphaned niece and by all accounts she could very well be dead. It was not something she could just tell him over the phone and she didn’t want to leave that burden on the Ishikawa family when they arrived at the O’Donovan Estate. The Gemischt Quincy was going to be on the black list for life.

At least she had been able to explain everything and see that the Ishikawa were proceeding with the evacuation. She didn’t wish to have to deal with stubborn pride, not when the threat was so very real. She had enough to explain without having to add the extermination of Ishikawa as well.

She couldn’t leave and return with them as Michael had ordered. There would be nothing for it but to break the news over the phone. She couldn’t just leave that burden to his former in-laws and set about the horrid task. Although she dreaded hearing what Rónán O’Donovan would have to say, she knew she couldn’t put it off any longer.

Ducking into an alleyway, for what else would she be doing in such a nefarious location, she sent the call and was soon relaying what information she had on the situation to the Lord of her Clann. Speaking in her native tongue so delicate information would not be heard in passing, she laid out the devastating details of the night Michael was captured, reported on Jessica being missing, and that the Ishikawa would be seeking asylum. Their plane would land sometime tomorrow evening and they could fill Rónán in on the full situation upon arrival.

Much of the conversation involved her one word replies, ”Yes, no,” or at best when she could get a word in edgewise, ”I understand, Lord.” So focused she was on giving her report and listening to the backlash on the other end, that she was quite startled by nearly being bumped into by a man with a pizza that came out of nowhere. Her phone fell from her hand and went skittering across the pavement, the back coming off and the battery popping out and into a sewer drain. ”Jesus Christ on a crutch, bloody fucking Mary, Josepi and all the ships at sea!”, she cursed switching to English as she failed to scramble forward fast enough to prevent the battery from slipping down the drain.

Whirling around, her mind in a panic at essentially having hung up on the head of her clann, she pinned her eyes on the man who had inadvertently stumbled upon her and said, ”Son of a bitch. That was my boss on the phone. I will probably get fired.” She would immediately feel bad, the man couldn’t know, but her ears were still ringing from the dressing down and now she had to find the right battery in a shop somewhere fast or risk further trouble than she was already in.

Bending down to at least pick up the device, she sighed upon seeing that the screen had not been cracked. Minor league success in an otherwise shit storm of a day; a person took what luck they could get. ”Sorry. Work has not been great of late and that is hardly your fault.” She just wanted to cry thinking about what those bastards were doing to Michael, wondering if he was alive, and if anyone would ever know one way or the other. Overall was the looming dread of war which might end in their final extinction at last. She felt nauseous and likely to vomit as she tried to remind herself that she was made of sterner stuff than to shed tears in the street like some child. Somehow that didn’t seem to help at all.

”Aw, shit. I’m really sorry,” Kevin said in embarrassment after she tore into him. At least she hadn’t been covered in pizza, but she didn’t seem to be in a good state for looking at the bright side. At least he could use English so his response didn’t feel robotic from needing to translate. ”You can use my phone to call your boss back if you want. I’d be happy to explain it and try to take some of the flak off for you if that would help.”

It was a genuine offer, and Kevin set the pizza down on a nearby back stoop to protect it from alley dirt so he would be able to follow through. She certainly looked all kinds of angry and conflicted from what he’d just managed to stumble his way into. Even though he didn’t know the woman, he knew how harsh Japanese bosses could be from TV, especially from the cop drama he’d started watching recently. It must no doubt have been even worse for a foreigner such as herself.

Sticking a hand into the front pocket of his dark gray slacks, he produced the phone and unlocked it. ”Last thing I’d want is to cause you any trouble with work because I couldn’t keep my head up,” he said as he reached it over for her.

”Just don’t go yanking the battery. I’m location sharing with a friend and she’d flip her shit if my phone went dead,” Kevin quickly followed up as he realized that their phones might match up. Sudden radio silence would have been enough to send Meridith running off to find him, sword drawn, and an angry Quincy was the no doubt last thing this poor woman needed to put up with now.

The Quincy shook her head even as she sat down on the stoop next to the pizza and sighed. ”It’s not your fault man, chill”, she repeated once he was through. She put her hand up and declined the offer to use his phone, however. ”I will just have to go get a new battery. It’s not like I have the number memorized”, she explained. She didn’t even have her own number set to rote and had to look it up in her phone every time she wished to give it to someone. All those overseas codes in addition to the number were just out of the question. Additionally, it was not a smart thing to do even if she had. The idea of just giving some rando Rónán O’Donovan’s phone number would just be the cherry on top of all the stupid that was this week.

Sliding her phone into the pocket of her jacket, she rubbed her hands across the thighs of her jeans and rocked back and forth slightly. Choosing to sit next to the pizza was not doing her rising sense of nausea any good. Hanging her head a bit, her forearms now resting atop her thighs, she could relate to this man’s friend potentially losing her shit if his phone went dead. Aine had received the text from Michael about the Shinigami attack and then that is exactly what happened to her next. She pretty much felt like she was still losing her shit. Pushing herself up from the slump, she rose to her feet and sighed. ”Truthfully, it was a boring conversation anyway. And like my mother always used to say, I was looking for a job when I found this one”, she chuckled with heavy overtones of dark humor in her voice.

Moving away from the odoriferous food, she smoothed her hair away from her forehead and figured she would deal with it later. Rónán had all the pertinent information; his son and niece were gone and all he had in the field was little miss incompetent here. Turning back to face the man, she finally let herself register him as a person instead of just some intruder that had wrecked her day. ”Sorry about all the cursing from before. I wasn’t directing it at you though. It was more like the kind you do when you hit your thumb with a hammer”, she attempted to explain away her earlier outburst.

Extending her hand to the man she said, her voice laced with her own distinctive accent, ”The name’s Aine.” Apologies were not really her thing but undeniably, even for her, it was more than unfair to unleash all of her own fuck-ups upon this man. ”What brings you to Karakura Town Mr…”, she prompted him for his name. From the look of his attire he was the typical lost Murican. "Seriously, who came to Japan and ate pizza of all things?", she thought. "Only a tourist who had no desire to experience the local culture", came the mental answer right on cue.

”DuBrow, Kevin DuBrow,” he said, trying and failing miserably to refrain from adopting a bad mock Connery to his tone, ”And don’t fret about the language. I guarantee I’ve heard worse. Hell, I guarantee I’ve used worse, and in front of a national audience no less.” He huffed out a little chuckle at the memory. He’d managed to elude a fine from the league, but the angry mothers screaming about how their kids were repeating him still got him going. All the cameras caught were his mouth movements. Those kids damn well knew those words before he said them. He’d wanted to fire up his Twitter and start going at it with them, but the team had taken his phone away when he told them his plan, probably for the better.

”Anyway, I’m here on family business, I guess you could say,” he told her in a retelling of the same half-truth that he’d used with Geminae, ”Retired from baseball a few years back, so I’ve moved on to other things. What about yourself, Aine? What brings a woman such as yourself to Japan? There’s not some kind of British Isles convention going on I don’t know about, is there?”

He smiled at the last question, thinking back to when he ran into Diarmaid and Meridith. If he had to guess, he’d place her as Scottish. The swearing was a big hint, but the Irish did that too. She didn’t seem stuck up enough to be a Brit, and her hair wasn’t nearly red enough to be Irish. Yeah, definitely Scottish. He was going to have to get a little map and start checking people off with all the foreigners who he’d run into so far in this town.

”Nice to meet you Kevin”, she said, choosing to ignore the mangling of her accent. It was a typical Murican thing to do and no more than she expected. National audience, she pondered wracking her mind for his face and name in the world of celebrity, but she was drawing a blank. ”Ah, baseball”, she said nodding her head as it began to make some sense. Sports had never been her beat, but if it had been, Rugby was more her speed. Then she had to laugh at his question that seemed to come from out of left field.

Aware that he was already polluting her mind with baseball euphemisms she asked, ”British Isle convention?” What sort of asinine question was that? Her first instinct was to be stunned by the comment, but soon enough she was thinking that he must have run across others from back home and that led her to jump to the conclusion that it could be Jessica. God Bless America!

Her demeanor brightened visibly and she had to find out. This could change everything for her if she could verify her cousin’s safety. ”One person hardly constitutes a convention. Are you saying you have met other Irish tourists during your stay?”, she asked with visible signs of excitement on her features. Her hand came out to the appropriate shortness to aid her impending description of Jessica, ”Red headed woman about this high? Delights in adventure and the drink?” She laughed and smirked a bit lopsided with her mouth, ”Sorry. I came here with my cousins”, she gestured toward Kevin with her left hand before continuing, ”As you say on family business, and well I am afraid I have lost her.”

She pulled her lips tight and shook her head sadly, ”That wasn’t really my boss, Well he is but, he’s my uncle and I was just explaining that I can’t find his niece. I guess your bumping into me saved me a tongue lashing, at least until I replace my battery.” She looked up the alley toward the main part of town thinking she really should not put that off any longer. Her uncle had enough on his mind without inventing more disaster, such as Aine’s call being cut off due to a Shinigami attack. Brother what a shit storm this trip was all turning out to be.

He was all smiles and friendly gestures until she described a woman who looked suspiciously like Meridith. He hadn’t seen her hitting the bottle, but they’d been so busy with other things that they hadn’t really had the chance. She certainly did enjoy adventure, though. He almost blurted out a yes when he remembered how averse she had been to her family getting involved in things, stopping himself just short of possibly giving her up.

”I ran into an Irishman a little while back. Nice enough guy,” he said as he mentally stalled for time, ”Dermott. No, wait, Deermate? Sorry, I’m absolute ass at foreign names. Diarmaid! Yeah, that’s how he said it.” It took him some time to work his mouth to accommodate the right sounds. He hadn’t the heart to ask him to spell it, so he’d just listed him as ‘The D Man’ in his phone contacts list.

He could have kept on blabbering, but Kevin knew he really ought to figure out if this woman was looking for Meridith. He wouldn’t sell her out. They’d made a pact together and he wasn’t about to turn his back on her, but she deserved to know if her family had come looking. If this was a totally different missing person, they could always keep their eyes out for her on their nightly escapades, too. ”This cousin of yours got a name?” he asked, ”I’m probably going to be in town for a while, so I could always keep an eye out. Red hair ain’t exactly common over here.”

Used to watching facial expression in her numerous interviews, looking for hints of discomfort that might steer her in a certain direction with her questioning or identify when one was attempting to simply gaslight her, Aine caught the change in his facial expression upon mention of her missing cousin. It was more than just concern over her own worries, but bordered on something else. What was he hiding?

She too could play at dissembling, though in truth it was not at all difficult to show surprise upon hearing he had met Diarmaid. It set off alarm bells in her head as she wondered at not only the likelihood that they had run into the same people but what made the odds even more skewed and unlikely was that both O'Cahan and herself should be Quincy. The phrase ‘family business’, a common cover for those of her kind when traversing the world on Hollow hunts, was a bit more of an indictment than it otherwise would normally have been. Was Kevin Quincy too?

Even as she corrected his pronunciation and emoted her surprise in the commonality between them from this meeting, she drew her Reishi to hand and attempted to sense his essence. ”Ha ha”, she laughed and then provided a slight correction, ”That’s fairly close, but it’s pronounced Deer-mwid. Funny coincidence for I too had chance to recently meet him. Clearly the man gets around. Must be a Quincy thing,” she said just throwing caution to the wind when her sensing came up dry. Either he was Quincy and would react or he was not and might comment on the strangeness of the word. In that case she could just play it off as local Cavan County slang for the Norn Iron folk. He’d never know the difference.

Then she moved on to the matter of her cousin. ”Well it would be pretty strange if you had run into her too, but you never know, right? Tourists do tend to frequent the same trodden paths. Her name is Jessica? Does that ring any bells?” It would be worth the delay in going to buy a new battery if it bore fruit and she could hardly pass off the chance that Fate would have its eyes on her.

Kevin released as single, somewhat high pitched, hum at the revelation that Aine knew that Diarmaid was a Quincy. That didn’t mean the she was a Quincy, but the lingering Reishi around her hand did more than enough to confirm that. So the pizza did have magical Quincy-finding powers! He was just looking in the wrong place from the beginning.

Before he could say anything, she answered his question about the missing cousin. Meridith certainly didn’t seem like a Jessica. Kevin had dated a Jessica during his minor league run and she was absolutely nothing like that woman. Sure, she could be a different kind of Jessica, but he had seldom run into a Jessica that wasn’t at least somewhat like that. Still, it could all be a part of a clever ruse on Meridith’s part.

”Not really, no,” he finally said in response to her question, scratching his chin and letting a little bit of his own spiritual pressure surge through his arm to reveal his nature to her, ”As for running into the Deer Mead, I think I know what’s up with that. Ever since I came to this town, I’ve been running into Quincy left and right. I thought I’d figured out why, and I thought I’d guessed wrong, but then you showed up and confirmed it, so I’m pretty hype about that!”

He reached over and picked up the pizza box, lifting the lid and holding it out facing her, the smell of the hand tossed pepperoni, sausage, and mushroomed goodness filling the air. ”Magic pizza. You want some? Literally every time I get Western food in this town I run into a Quincy. I’ve proved burgers and tacos work, and you just confirmed another important food group. I’m still not sure if Google is messing with the places I see because they are run by Quincy secretly orchestrating something or if I have some kind of magic food powers. Still, might help me find your cousin if you have a picture or something to go off of.”

As the string of luck breaks seemed to dead end into a brick wall, Aine wasn’t really all that shocked. It’s not like all Quincy knew each other or anything stereotype of the sort. Still, it would have been useful if they had some secret society that reached all over the world...the stupidity of the thought, that they actually did have such a thing, was certainly not lost on the woman who lived a dual existence. His next words would completely blow her mind.

”Magic Pizza?”, she stammered in disbelief. Even if such a thing were possible wouldn’t he have had to make it himself? Her hand came up to palm her forehead in an attempt to keep it from exploding. As her hands wiped down across her face, it turned more into a gesture designed to keep herself from commenting on just how fucking dumb that way. Obviously the man knew little to nothing of how his abilities worked. ”How long have you been woke to what you are?”, she asked certain the answer would be along the lines of ‘since yesterday’.

She shook her head and sighed, ”Never mind, just suffice it to say that’s not how it works. The reasonable explanation is that like is drawn to like. Either consciously or otherwise, Quincy are just naturally attracted to one another.” ’Jesus’, she thought. ’this guy is going to get himself killed just wandering around without a clue like this. Does he even know about our history at all? How dangerous it is to use his powers? What about Shinigami?’ Each thought made her sicker and sicker at her stomach until the smell of the pizza became more than she could handle. Surely it wasn’t as bad as she surmised? After all, someone had taught him the word Quincy. Did that not come with any warnings or lessons on what that actually meant? What sort of half assed clann did he come from anyway?

It was not in her to just walk off and leave him to his own devices for her sense of duty and community was stronger than that. His words had given her an out to continue their time together and she jumped on it readily. ”Why don’t you come help me find a shop I can get a battery? I have pictures on my phone.” Hopefully along the way, if he agreed to come with her, she could question him and find out just how unprepared he was and if there might be something she could do to help this poor wandering man. Second. Michael and Jessica were her first priorities.

He brushed off her explanation dismissively. If Quincy were naturally drawn to each other, then he’d have come across them at literally any time other than when he was eating western food. Sure, he might have only been eating Western food since he discovered this occurrence, but getting in the way of a baseball player’s superstitions and a track record that may or may not be there wasn’t something to be undertaken lightly. Had it not been for her unfortunate circumstances, he might have argued he point, but letting it slide seemed the less dickbag option, and Kevin was always a fan of not being a dickbag.

”Sure thing. I’d normally let you use mine, but that friend of mine who I’m location sharing with is a Quincy too,” he explained as he pulled up a map to a nearby store on his phone that ought to sell replacement batteries and showing her the walking route. ”I got into a bit of trouble a while back when we were out hunting for Hollow and, if I hadn’t been doing a Face Time with her then, I don’t think I’d be in a position to be talking right now. I go radio silent and odds are she’ll come crashing around a corner ready to save the day again, and I’d rather not add that on top of the trouble you’ve got with your uncle.”

He considered telling her about Zenji, but she was in enough stress without needing to toss anything with the Shinigami on top of it. ”I’ve been doing this since 2015. I get the Quincy stuff from my mom’s side of the family and I got baseball from my dad. Not really a traditional upbringing from what I understand, but my mom bailed out on keeping things traditional when they tried to have her marry her cousin. Nice enough people and some damn good instructors, but that’s a little too European for my tastes,” he said, totally forgetting he was talking to a European for a moment who was doing an errand for her Quincy uncle. The recollection hit him suddenly and prompted a very rushed, ”No offense intended to you. I’m sure it’s a cultural thing.”

”It’s not necessary. I can buy my own”, she replied and moved so she could see the route to a store he had located upon his phone. Setting the direction in her mind, she stepped back with a look of concern upon her face as he told of his recent hunt and his concerns of raising an alarm with this Quincy woman he mentioned. ”Totally understandable. I would like to meet this woman sometime, but as you say, under less stressful conditions than her rushing out thinking you are in danger”, she replied and began looking up the street wishing to get to the store sooner rather than later.

Kevin seemed to be a talker, and normally she would have enjoyed something like that were she not in need to get her phone situated and let her uncle know she wasn’t being murdered in the meantime. Still, the information he gave her was of great interest and did explain that he wasn’t as untrained in his heritage as she had first surmised. Then he stuck his foot in it by hinting that Eurpean’s were inbred.

”European?”, she laughed and began moving slowly toward the end of the alley intent on getting to the store. Surely he would follow, especially if she gave him a taunt in return. ”You mean like your hillbillies and okies?”, she laughed and then said in a twangy sing-song voice of the banjo from Deliverance, ”Der der der, da da, der der, da da...the heels have eyes.” Moving further up the alley she grinned over her shoulder at him and said, ”Yeah, sounds like a Murican thing to me. There are enough Quincy in my country for us not to have to marry our siblings you know.” So far the issue of marriage hadn’t been broached by her parents and she was in no rush to see the hopefuls that would be put forth.

Unlike her siblings, however, she had an advantage by only being Gemischt rather than Echt Quincy thanks to her mother’s lineage. Her brother’s and sisters were the children of her father’s first wife and their bloodlines were prized while her own was less sought after. At any rate, they all would do as they wished and no amount of parental pressure would sway them to enter an arranged marriage to which they were adverse.

Reaching the end of the street, she opted to just get going and if Kevin would follow or not, Aine had to get a call back to her uncle pronto. Turning in the direction the phone app had indicated, she somehow knew, as evidenced by the sly grin on her face, the pro-baller would not be far behind.

Kevin kept up with Aine, wagging a finger at her claim that Americans were the incestuous ones. Sure, he didn’t actually know any other American Quincy, but that was hardly his fault. Their people were so poorly organized that, for all he knew, he could have been on the same team as other Quincy without even knowing it. Maybe, somewhere out there, there was a professional first baseman who he could have tested his pitch against.

Pushing thoughts of spiritual baseball to the back of his mind, Kevin had a spring in his step as he dismissed Aine’s digging with a laugh. ”I suppose you’re right there. I don’t really know many of our people aside from the folks I’ve run into here. You can go 30 years and never see another Quincy but, in the span of a few weeks I’ve run into four. It’s nuts, I tell you,” he insisted jovially, smiling and shrugging the series of crazy coincidences away.

”Is that how it is for you?” he asked once his own amusement had subsided enough for his curiosity to overpower his mirth, ”I don’t really know how things are for most of our type. My family were the only other ones I ever met. I knew there were others out there, but they never really took me around for a big meet and greet or anything.”

She kind of bumped her shoulder against this as they walked when he wagged his finger at her over the inbred quip. It was nice to have a bit of a playful interlude to break up all the disastrous events that were going on around her. Kevin seemed disposed to speak of his own upbringing and it provided the distraction she craved to speak about her own in contrast.

”Well outside family, for there are an endless stream of cousins and the like. I’m the youngest of seven siblings so there were no dearth of people to train with. But yeah, I get what you are saying”, she stopped speaking long enough when they came to the corner to look both ways and then stepped out into the intersection once the coast was clear. She didn’t speak until they were on the other side and she cut north to head further on up into the city. ”I think this is a unique place that just draws people together. I didn’t notice anything like that when we went on Holiday to different countries around Europe.”

The sight of the phone store up ahead made the little vacation from reality fade away swiftly enough and she brought the conversation back to a more grim reality. ”So yeah. We all got drawn here and funny thing is so do the Hollow and the Shinigami. It’s like a hot spot, or convergence center for Reishi. Have you noticed how its easier to use your powers here than say, back home?”

Before he could answer she walked into the open store front and was talking to the vendor, showing him her phone so she could get the proper battery. The sales lady kept trying to engage Kevin in the sale’s pitch, like flirting with him would cause Aine to buy more merchandise and data plans. Had Kevin actually been her boyfriend or husband, what would have gotten the sales woman was a punch in the face.

At one point Aine had enough and snapped her fingers several times in front of the woman’s face to get her to even tear her eyes away from the baseball star. ”Hey, Little Girl. The battery, remember? I’m the customer here, not him.” Aine was beginning to think she literally could have walked right out of the store with the battery and the young woman wouldn’t have even noticed, so infatuated she was with Kevin and her incessant need to throw herself all over him.

He took the jostling well, returning his own bump and smiling as he successfully averted a diplomatic disaster, though his amused attitude gave way to a ponderous chin scratch as she talked about how much easier it was to use their powers here. He honestly hadn’t considered the possibility that the area itself had caused that, though it did make sense if the magical food he’d been eating was all coming from some sort of magical well water. Western food was higher in bread content than all the rice the Japanese used, too. Perhaps that was what was at play. Kevin would have to find out how rice was actually made in order to get to the bottom of that mystery.

He would find no such assistance from Aine, though, as they all too quickly came upon the storefront. Not wanting to be left talking to a sign post, he followed her in and was almost immediately greeted by an exceedingly friendly and helpful saleswoman. He hadn’t stopped by a Japanese electronics store before and, naturally, he was curious as to where they kept the robots.

Smiling and nodding along, completely oblivious to the undertones of her flirtatious overtures, Kevin let her show him around the store, curious as to when they’d be getting to the batteries, but also curious if they had giant fighting robots or if they were just little ones. Similarly to the salesgirl, he was snapped out of his curiosity by Aine’s interjection. Blinking a few times as he came back to reality, he nodded to the saleswoman. ”Yes, it’s important that my friend get that battery right away. We can resume the tour after that, but she needs to make a very important call right away,” he insisted, smiling and winking at her.

Girls always liked his pristine white smile, and she was no exception. No sooner had he flashed the pearly whites than she had hurried off to find a new part for Aine. ”Sorry,” Kevin offered apologetically, ” It might be her first day if she can’t find the batteries, I dunno. I didn’t want to interrupt her before we got to the robots.”

Ms. Hayes’ grey eyes grey quite round, with her head tilting slightly to the right, as she watched Kevin explain how things were to the young saleswoman. Then he actually winked at the girl, to which Aine half expected her to faint or squee or some other such shit. To her credit she didn’t even flail as she ran off to find the battery for Mr. Crest Smile. While he seemed to understand her sense of urgency, he appeared to be oblivious as to what had afflicted the saleswoman. Finding the whole thing to be amusing, she actually had to cover her smile when he mentioned the robots. It was futile though and she couldn’t stop herself from asking, ”You mean like… Gundams?”

The woman came back with the battery and looked as though she was going to hand it off to Kevin, when Aine stepped forward and extended her own hand to receive the item. ”Kevin here was serious about the tour, miss. If I can just get this battery purchase out of the way then I can step outside to make my call while you continue showing him the store?” The woman seemed to see the logic in that and was quite swift in concluding the sales transaction so she could get Aine out of the picture.

Taking the small bag from the outstretched hand of the woman, she grinned to Kevin and said, ”Good luck with the robots.” As Aine turned and walked out the door she could already hear the woman start to fawn on Kevin once more. Once out on the street it didn’t take her long to realize the battery was not even fully charged. Fortunately it had almost 25% and so she sent off a quick text message to her uncle informing him her battery was low and the call had dropped; she would call later once she had it charged again.

Slipping her phone back into her jacket, she wasn’t really all that tore up about putting off the call. It actually gave her breathing room to figure out what to say other than yes sir, no sir. Aine didn’t figure Rónán would recall her until at least Jessica was found. Her eyes drifted back to the shop where Kevin was with the saleswoman. Aine figured what she needed to do was make contacts with as many Quincy in the area as possible. It only made sense to be able to call for backup if she got into hot water during her search.

She thought of those whom she had met so far, the enigmatic Nyla and the musical Diarmaid. Then she recalled what Kevin said about his own friend keeping tabs on him via his phone.

More importantly, she realized and started for the door of the shop once she did, the local Quincy had to be warned. Aine had been so caught up in how pissed Lord O’Donovan was, the peril Michael was enduring, and the general lack of news about Jessica that she hadn’t given thought to telling Kevin what was really going on.

She could see the sales girl occupying Kevin’s attention, so she got into her pack for her phone charger and hooked up her cell to the store’s charging station. When she did chance to make eye contact with him she waved and held up her phone so he could see what she was about. In the meantime she looked through her pics for one of Jessica. Futility was a bit hard to stave off and she couldn’t help but feel like some pet owner about to canvass every power pole in town with a lost puppy sign.

”I dunno what kind of robots they have,” Kevin told Aine with a shrug as she set about escaping away to send her messages. He watched her make her exit and, not wanting to rudely force his way into her private business any more than he had already done, continued the tour.

They certainly did have a lot of cool gadgets, which was to be expected from a Japanese electronics store, but Kevin’s excitement faded as he found their robot selection to be decidedly lacking. No humanoid servants, no battle suits, they didn’t even have a new model of Roomba.

There were some cool toys, though, and Kevin soon found himself delightfully playing around with a small yellow box with a display screen and a hole on the side that you could stick your finger in, causing a pixilated representation of your finger to appear on the screen that you could then boop around little characters with.

Excitedly purchasing three of the toys on top of a spare backup battery for Aine, Kevin made his way over to her with his shopping bag in hand. As he walked away, the sales assistant asked him for his phone number. It was an odd request, but when she quickly rationalized it as needing to be able to provide technical support, he couldn’t help but agree. It would be quite embarrassing if his new game broke or needed an update and he didn’t have a means to contact someone for technical assistance!

Sticking the scribbled number into his pocket as he walked out, Kevin handed Aine one of the box toys. ”It’s not a robot, but this thing’s pretty cool,” he said as he handed her both the toy and the spare battery, ”Everything okay? Did it work? I got a spare just in case.”