aterat | [OPEN] Kindness For Children

Who; Tommy Shepherd, Open
What; Small Pranks and Halloween Plans
Where; Apartment Common Rooms, Courtyard Outside of Apartment Buildings
When; Week of October 10th
Warnings; None Anticipated

I. An Homage To Loki | Apartment Building Common Rooms

It was that time of the year again, perhaps the hardest for Tommy in some ways. With what would be Halloween (and thus his birthday) approaching, a black mood was settling over the speedster. He wanted nothing more than to flee, to hide, to fall back on old habits and avoid it all. But there were those who would disapprove of that he thought. Gar for one thing for caring about Tommy. Wanda and Enis as she'd been at the Sphere, who had worked so hard to realize his dream of an amazing haunted house. And the one friend he hadn't intended to make.

It was this last missing friend whose opinions kept Tommy from running from the season. This last one was the one whose opinions motivated Tommy now as he moved through the common rooms of... Well, he doesn't remmeber which apartment building he was in right now. He'd been laying his little playful traps in them all. What mattered was that right now he was busy in the reading nook, putting down a bowl of wrapped hard candies. This joke here was a simple one. They looked like peppermints, and each one was actually powerfully flavored with cinnamon. That should shock someone pretty seriously, right? And if that wasn't enough, buried under all of the candies was Tommy's best attempt at drawing Loki's face, complete with horned helmet.

"Okay, what next," he said to himself. "Too bad there aren't books here. I could put fake fortunes or treasure maps in them. Damn."

II. Making Your Own Holiday | Courtyard Outside of Apartment Buildings

Somewhere along the line of his little pranks and watching his couriers run about, Tommy had come to a conclusion.

There needed to be more little things for the kids, and Tommy wanted to give them something he didn't reliably have back home. Which was why he was out in the courtyard now, standing by large, rolled out strech of paper weighted down at the corners with rocks. In his hands was a plate with globs of paint on it: orange and black and purple and green. And on the paper below was a few words sketched out lightly in pencil.

'Fall Candy Quest!' the sign did, or would, proclaim, along with a date and time for later in the month, and little sketches of spooy things like bats and cauldrons, as well as images of different candies.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Watching people isn't a bad idea," TOmmy said. IT was a hobby some people had back home. "Good at malls. NOt that there is any malls. here."

“Yeah, they don’t got any really big stores here.” There were larger supermarkets and stuff that had been abandoned in the pale city, but they would be pretty good for watching people. “So I mostly just watch em around the city.” It had only gone kinda wrong once, so that was a pretty good track record. “So usually I got a better idea if they’re okay or not before I talk to em.”

"Exactly. If there was, we could handle the deliveries for them," Tommy pointed out. That was something he wouldn't mind doing. It would feel more helpful.

"I'm glad you're cautious though."

“It just seems smart. Sometimes people are different from how they first look. It’s good to watch to make sure they aren’t gonna change on ya.” Sometimes more literally than one would think, but it was that caution that kept the kid safe and got him far back in his world. People here were pretty okay, though.

Oh man. Tommy frowns and then looks at the kid directly. "No one stays one hundred percent the same. You know that, right? Like, we change from the things we live through."

Mono blinked a bit, tilting his head slightly. “Yeah, I know that… I mean a different kinda changing.” Less life experience and more… disguised. There was an old lady in a schoolhouse in his world that was unassuming, if unsettling, at first… and then if she spotted you, she wasn’t. So when Mono spoke of following people to make sure they weren’t going to change, he meant something different from what Tommy was thinking. The boy was always afraid someone or something from his world might show up here, or be like that, since no one seemed to know when or where anyone was going to come from next.

"What kinda changing? I won't know what to look out for if I don't understand."

And the kid was his right hand man. A little brother, in a way. Not a full on stand in for Billy, but... But enough for him to just want to watch out for Mono too.

Mono’s face scrunched a bit as he tried to decide how to explain it. The kid tried to be fairly careful with how he explained some things, given reactions he had now and again. The question was, how did you explain this without it being particularly alarming? “Like… One minute they’re doin’ something normal and they don’t look scary. Like writing on a chalkboard or walking around a kitchen, but then if something gets their attention they change. Like they drop the people disguise.” He gestured slightly, stretching to his full height and waving his arms around in an exaggerated manner. “And sometimes people or things from the same world get here, or some worlds have the same kinda stuff in them, so I always watch to make sure it’s not like that.” There were others who were more obviously dangerous, of course, but those were the easier ones to avoid.

Oh. Tommy winces, but not because it's particularly alarming.

"We had stuff like that happen too, back home. They were called Skrull. They don't sound as dark as what you had, but I get it. People were scared of that back home too."

“Really?” Well… Mono was glad Tommy at least kind of understood what he meant, then. The boy really didn’t want to explain some of the things he’d seen, because they were rather horrifying. “I dunno if there're names for the ones where I’m from.” He added, a tiny frown on the boy’s face. He had names for some things, of course, the viewers and such. But the ‘people’ that seemed… in charge of certain buildings, those were weird and hard to put names to beyond what they seemed to be pretending to be.

"If no one sees them much, that makes sense. Means you get to name them I guess."

And he wasn't going to force that matter, because for all he knows it will upset the kid.

Yeah, that was kind of a whole… Can of worms… Or something… Something that did not need unpacking. At least Mono wasn’t going to open it, since this had already been more explaining than he normally did. “Maybe, I dunno. Um…” He let his eyes fall to the poster again. “Does it need anything else done to it?” He asked, changing the subject rather awkwardly.

"Nope. Just the painting," Tommy answered. "Once it's done I'll put it out somewhere to dry, and then I'm going to go and get lunch."

“Okay, I guess that makes sense.” He responded, putting some more paint strokes in the letters. “What ya gonna get for lunch?” Because of course the kid was curious about that. Food was a good, safe topic.

"Don't know. Thinking about a salad for a change. Could do with some crunch and all of that."

If he can even find the vegetables for it.

“Yeah? Salads are kinda weird, but good.” They were all crunchy and stuff when they were fresh. The kid actually liked his vegetables when he got to eat them here, since fresh food was not the norm where he was from.

“Yeah, and since I don’t do them with dressings, I can give the extras to Speedy in his environment,” Tommy said, and what was always a bonus.

[OPEN] Kindness For Children

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