"What do you mean you went up there without telling anyone?" Callisto all but shouted at the old smiling woman who just finished cooking up a huge pot alongside the other women. She could still hear the chittering of the energized shits from inside her tent which was why she didn't raise her voice all too much.
Still this was too much. "I expected something this reckless from Richter and his group of idiots, not from you Anna."
Callisto didn't give much in terms of respect but the old woman had been here since they were just a ragtag bunch of runaways trying to stay alive from the hoard of humans that hated them, for that alone Callisto was more considerate towards her than she was with the others.
Hence the current situation.
"If Dreamer hadn't said anything we wouldn't have known you were gone. And how did you even get the money for all that? You could have at least taken someone with you if you were going shopping."
Callisto clicked her tongue, slightly angry at how much Annalee looked unaffected by the interrogation. Anyone else in her position, even the older ones like Caliban and Masque would appear slightly agitated when held under her stare.
"I knew the risks," Annalee started, already making Callisto frown.
"Clearly you didn't or else you wouldn't have made such a stupid decision. I can understand if you're worried about the children but we have enough to last us a few weeks— a few weeks that we will use to scope out the surface to see if it's safe enough to resume operations. You leaving at such a time is an unnecessary risk that endangers all of us, even the children."
Annalee didn't have a calm rebuttal to that, at least not with sound logic. She knew Callisto enough to know that the brash hard-spoken was not one to subscribe to emotional stupidity and the fact that Callisto called her to her tent to give her a talking down was more respect than she gave anyone else.
"And how did you come up with the money for all that? Some last minute savings you set up years ago?"
"Not really." Annalee replied. It should have been a sad thing but the day was just too blessed for her to be sad about it. "I sold some old trinkets to scrub up the cash. It was just collecting dust so I decided it would be better to sell and help out with whatever came of it."
"Mmn…" Callisto looked at her, her thoughts of the story unknown to Annalee as her face was set in its passive frown. As for her emotions, she was one of the extremely few people down here that Annalee couldn't read.
"This won't happen again." Callisto stated in finality. If it was anyone other than Annalee, Callisto would have been slightly suspicious of betrayal – surprising, but it had happened before.
Annalee smiled, making Callisto's frown dig deep, and stood up slowly. "The young man I sold it to, he's a mutant. He's a polite one and he owns a pawnshop near Queens. I think some of us should go talk to him and see if any kind of cooperation can be had. He's polite enough to at least hear them out."
Callisto's brow raised – not much, just a tiny fraction – as she took the scribbled down address.
"I'll have Caliban send some guys there." They were out scouting if Annalee was followed but Callisto did not say anything. Just because she didn't suspect Annalee did not mean that she couldn't have been found out in her little daring excursion.
She waited until she was sure Annalee was far enough before she called out.
"Masque, send Caliban here the moment he returns."
.
...…
Three inconspicuously dressed young men moved through the loud neighborhood with small frowns on their faces as they grumbled in low voices to each other.
By every metric of identification, social and visual, they looked completely human but that did not make them feel completely at ease as they walked.
Numerous times being hunted down by armed agents and hateful men were memories that were hard to get rid of just because they could blend in.
"I really don't like this." Henri said not sounding particularly pleased with their current task.
He wasn't against being outside and mingling with humans but he also wasn't completely comfortable with being in a neighborhood that was too far from any of the secret entrances to their tunnels, especially with the current situation they were going through.
Richter, an older teen, shrugged with his eyes. It was a shared understanding but still they had to do this because no one could say no to Callisto. She was a cold bitch in every extreme sense of the word but she was still their leader – and unfortunately for their peace of mind, she was a brutally capable one.
"Shrug it off, man. Caliban and the others are keeping an eye on us. They'll signal us if things start looking suspicious."
The third one, Bloc, asked tiredly. "And why couldn't the big guy be the one here instead of me?"
They knew who he referred to as 'big guy', a name that was affectionately/respectfully used for the only person in the camp that could give Callisto her shit without taking one.
He was also the one who caved Masque's face in when he found out about his particularly… vile habits. So yeah, he was the big guy, as well as their best chances at bailing out when things went rugged.
Richter shrugged again. "My guess? Probably with Caliban and the others to save our hides from getting tanned if shit flips."
"That's not reassuring." Bloc remarked unamused. He looked up to spot a path smudged between two major ones. "Ain't that the place?"
The other two looked up and nodded while Richter tapped on the earpiece behind his ears.
"Well, time to see what this is about. The sooner we get this done the sooner we can go back. I still haven't eaten."
They shared a nod and walked towards the nondescript shop, ignored whatever the name was supposed to mean, and walked in.
"Am I the only one who thinks something is up?" Henri asked in rising anxiety. He slowed down half a step as they crossed the threshold. "Please, tell me that's just me."
"Knock it off, Henri. He might be a mutant but he's just a storeowner." Richter said, frowning at the elder boy's jittery. "If he's down for it, cool. If he's not, chill. It's not like we want to ask him for some favors."
"Are we sure he's in?" Bloc asked as they arrived at the empty counter. "Anyone in?!"
They heard a sound coming from the back so they relaxed since their trip was not a busted one.
They started looking around, their juvenile mind easily taking shine to some of the items they saw.
"Okay, that's sick." Richter pointed at the skull-hilted sword and dual pistols combo that were locked behind a glass case. And just adjacent to the glass case was a sword make he could clearly tell was a katana
"Erm, guys, I don't think mirrors are supposed to do that." Henri's voice called their attention to the mirror the young man was standing in front of.
Instead of a reflection, there was a swirling void that was slowly forming images that looked eerily similar to an older Henri.
"Okay, this is getting a litt—"
"Hello, how can I help you, gentlemen?" Their reaction might have been a stance that was too aggressive for a pawnshop but the storeowner they were here to meet just looked at them calmly.
'Shit!' Richter cursed in his mind as he and Bloc were instantly ousted. The hazy filament around his hands and the static hums it produced could be ignored, if someone was intentionally and conditionally blind.
Bloc however had half his skin transformed into an earthen color. He didn't exactly look 'I just have bad allergies, I'm completely human, trust'. Whether the man was a mutant or not, people hardly reacted well to escalations.
"Sorry for the tardiness. The boys in the back have been… restless as of late." Or maybe he was intentionally and conditionally blind.
"Yeah, uh no problem man, sorry for uh… walking around your store…?" Richter said slowly, definitely not playing ignorance to the nothing that disappeared from his hands, and definitely not ignoring Bloc's detransformation.
"Don't worry about it. You are free to browse through if you want." Uh, looks like willful ignorance was the theme of the shop. "So what can I help you with?"
Richter didn't need to turn around to see the foolish looks that his friends were giving him for the episode that just played out.
They were here to confirm that he was a mutant, not plead for immediate deniability and reject the perfect chance they could get in breaking the metaphorical ice.
"… you saw that, didn't you?" The pressure was great so he went for broke. Richter wasn't the best at improvisation, Caliban and Mikhail knew.
The man chuckled, looking amused if anything, and nodded. "If you're talking about the interesting display, then yes."
"Oh, that's great." Richter heard sighs behind him that he ignored. "So you're a mutant then?" At least the entire thing wasn't a bust.
"Oh, no no. I'm afraid I don't have those special genes."
Richter did a double take, an action that was perfectly copied by the two behind him.
"What made you think so?"
Henri took a step forward as Richter bluescreened for a second. "Well, a friend of ours said they thought you might be. We came to see if what they said was true."
The man tilted his head and looked slightly confused, but not panicking. Not panicking was good.
"If you don't mind me asking, is there any reason you'd want me to be a mutant? Why I won't deny that I have a few peculiarities, the famous X-gene is not one of them."
What followed after that was a short introduction as they slowly stepped closer to the counter. Isaac, the now named shopkeeper – though they already knew his name – was a pretty swell guy.
"When you say peculiarities, what do you mean by that?" Henri asked tentatively. Isaac had been pretty casual with them and Caliban hadn't sprung them yet, so they relaxed a little.
"Hmm, how do I put this?" Isaac crossed his hands over his chest with a thoughtful crease on his brows. "Well, let's just say I can do a few things most people can't, and it's not because of an X-gene. Honestly, it's closer to magic than anything else."
He opened his hand and a box appeared in it, he made a waving motion and the box disappeared.
"So does that satisfy your curiosity?" he leaned forward on the counter with a teasing smirk that unsettled the trio of young men. "So tell me, why did you really come here? You could have told me you just came to do some window-shopping and I would have believed you."
Richter ignored the cleaning rag that definitely wasn't on the countertop a second ago and just shrugged. It would have been better to just end it there and simply leave but there was this magnetism in the way Isaac used his words and the shop in general that he couldn't find himself too paranoid about security risks.
Being frank with Isaac had been the theme of their conversation so far so he just went with it.
"Cash problem, really." He leaned sideways against the counter and idly studied the propped up wooden mask — The Mask: Do Not Wear — and wondered why it vibrated weirdly. "We got some things we could pawn off for cash but we don't know how much you'll accept."
Isaac scratched his chin, but he didn't look guarded or disinterested so that was a good sign.
"I'll probably buy it off you but I'll be more interested in the rare and unnatural finds you might have. While I'm very much open to adding interesting trinkets to my collection, I'm vastly more interested in what I can sell you."
"That's fair." Henri said, and it was. "But like he said, it's still a cash problem. We can't really buy if we don't got it. And what exactly do you even sell, dude? I saw some swords earlier, and I know this is a pawnshop…"
Isaac still looked thoughtful, which let them know that he was at least taking this seriously, and despite how casual they sounded, the lack of cash was a real problem.
"How about you tell me what you want and I'll tell you if I have it or not." Isaac said offhandedly, still looking deeply thoughtful.
"So like, if I say a water purifier and… a mounted turret, hahaha—"
The chuckle died in Bloc's throat before it could get any louder, as well as the amused smiles on Richter's and Henri's face.
"Huh? That's… pretty deep." Richter remarked in a deadpan. He really hated these scouting tasks, because here he was in some pawnshop, and while he couldn't make a comment on a water purifier, he damn well could tell what a turret looked like.
"Fuck it, I ain't dealing with this." He mumbled under his breath.