Masks: Dragon City IC

[gailforce]

Ai

Ai does not tolerate loneliness well. She's experienced so much of it, she's sick of it. But her new team mates cannot be around all the time--they have school, or they have to sleep, or eat, or see to personal affairs. Even Deadboy, who is often around when all the others are gone, needs his space sometimes. Ai is trying to learn to respect that, even though it's hard.

Ai does have other things to occupy herself--she can go scavenging, or exploring, or fiddle around with the bits of human machinery she's picked up and experiment with how it interacts with her own, far more advanced tech. But sometimes she craves human company, and the others are all unavailable. On those days, like today, she wanders the city, people-watching, integrating herself into crowds, playing at being a human.

The old women are her favorite group to follow around. Ai is happy to see them going about in their usual circuit--first the grocery, to stop and examine the produce in bins outside but not actually buy anything; next, the long plaza lined with boutique clothing stores, where they look in the windows but never enter the stores; and last, to the park across the street from the Bandar Naga public library, where they walk a slow lap and then sit on benches to smoke cigarettes.

The old women don't talk to each other, not really. Sometimes they'll point out a particularly egregious price for food, or will complain about one ailment or another. Sometimes, while they smoke, they'll allow themselves to reminisce together about dead husbands or children now grown up and moved away. Shifted into the form of an old woman, Ai can integrate seamlessly into their little group--the women come and go, and no one notices another crinkled face.

She joins them today as they make their way across the plaza. She's dressed in what she thinks of as their uniform--a loose button-down shirt, thin black pants, and a wide-brimmed hat to protect from the sun. The woman closest to her nods absently in a half-hearted greeting. Ai nods back.

The group is halfway through their slow lap of the park when Ai hears it. The tell-tale hum of plasma weapons, then a loud, cracking crash as the doors of the library are blown of their hinges. The other women look around in alarm--hearing the continued gunfire, they hurry back towards the plaza, where they can take cover among the buildings. But Ai, moving at a speed that would be impossible for a woman of the age that she appears to be, runs towards the building.

Seeing the vans and the figures in kevlar, she changes tactics. She shifts herself to be mostly translucent. Thus camouflaged, she flies over the vans and the figures in kevlar, searching for a window or skylight through which she could see what is happening inside.