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marveldc-imagines-hub · 2 years

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Imagine Being Saved by Jake Lockley:

A/N: This was actually inspired by another Moon Knight piece that I’m working on. In that piece, there’s a lot of backstory lead-up that’s making it kind of wordy, so I figured I’d just... write the backstory as well. So, here’s the start of another accidental series, lol. This is the first time I’m writing Jake Lockley and I don’t know a whole lot about him, so sorry if he’s a little ooc. Also, my Spanish is not the best because I’ve only taken a couple classes, and I took some help from Google, so sorry if it’s rough. Luckily, I don’t use it too much, lol.

Ko-Fi | Commissions

You worked for an organization that traveled around the world buying and trading for artifacts, usually from museums and black markets, in order to return them to their rightful lands. This meant you lived a fairly mobile life, practically living out of hotels, basing your operation out of whatever buildings would lend you the space, and working with new individuals–aside from you superiors and the few permanent members on your team–during almost every job. Still, you enjoyed your job, as hectic and sometimes dangerous as it was, and you’ve always said that you wouldn’t change it for the world.

“Well,” you grunted as you pried open a crate, “except for maybe now.”

Alarms were blaring alongside flashing red lights throughout the office building that you were working in, indicating that someone had broken in. You would have been grateful for the alarms if it hadn’t been for the fact that you had already heard the breaking of glass and muffled voices a few rooms over before they had started. Now they were just giving you a headache as you wriggled the crate lid free, revealing a load of packing material.

“Perfect to hide in.” You set the piece of wood aside and began shoveling the various artifacts and important documents that you had gathered into the crate, apologizing to them for the mistreatment as you went. Any smart person would have probably booked it as soon as there were signs of a break-in, especially if they were the only person working that night, but you were more stubborn than smart. You cared too much about your work to let some lousy black market thieves put you back several months of progress. You had scurried around the room where you had been preparing a set of artifacts for shipping and grabbed as many as you could to hide in the old crate that was going to be disposed of.

You were finishing covering the items with the packing material when you heard the handle of your office’s door jiggle. With that being your only escape route, you found no other choice than to join the your work in the rotting crate. You quickly patted your pockets to make sure your phone was on your person to call the police, then you armed yourself with a stone statue of the Egyptian god Sekhmet. You apologized to her for using her as a weapon in the near future before jumping into the crate. Luckily, the area that you were working in was large enough where you still had time to cover yourself with the crate’s lid before the assailants could get to you.

You knew from the muffled conversation you had heard earlier that there was more than one robber but you could tell more easily now that there was only a few; unfortunately, the blood pumping in your ears made it hard to understand what they were saying as they began rummaging around the room. Despite getting poked and prodded by statues and helmets, you shimmied further down into the crate in hopes of hiding yourself under the paper packaging. A dim light suddenly caught caught your eye in the process and you turned your head slightly to a gap between the crate’s slats. Clutching Sekhmet closer with one hand and gingerly fishing around for your phone with the other, you tried to peek through the opening.

There wasn’t much to see other than shifting shadows and black clothes. You caught a pant leg here, a large gloved hand there, but nothing that would help you describe the robbers to the cops. Still, between your own labored breaths the thieves’ destroying your workplace, you managed to make out a word or two. It sounded like all of the people–the ones you were currently sharing a space with, at least–had deep, masculine voices and they sounded frustrated over not being able to find much. You had done your hiding job well.

Then, in a lull of movement, one of them said, “Hey, what about that junk in the back corner?”

Your heart dropped into your stomach. You grabbed your phone as quickly as you could without causing too much noise–at least the alarms helped with masking–and tried to keep an eye on the approaching figure through your peephole. You just managed to free your phone, which luckily had its brightness turned down, and were struggling to unlock it with one hand when a slam echoed through the room. It took you several moments for your heart to start up again and for you to register that it was the office’s door being knocked open rather than your immediate incoming death.

“Well,” a new, much louder voice called out, “what do we have here?”

Whoever it was, they took the attention of your hiding spot long enough for you get into your phone. Busy pulling up the dialpad, you weren’t focused on the crack in the crate slats but you could hear confused exclamations from the initial group of thieves as they focused elsewhere. There were the sounds of clacking that you assumed was them readying their weapons followed by hurried footsteps. You took a moment to feel bad for whoever walked in trying to play hero but then decided it was better them than you.

You expected to hear a scuffle and gunshots, which you did in the moments following. What you didn’t expect was some eerily cheerfully spoken Spanish in response. Your focus on your phone began to wane as your morbid curiosity got the better of you, especially when a weighty thud sounded after a particularly loud gunshot. You were sure that the dropped body had been the newcomer, only to be shocked further when you heard a chuckle that sounded more like them than your artifact thieves. Another shot sounded and another thud followed.

You couldn’t help being drawn to what was going on outside of your hiding place. You were a curious person and research was the nature of your job. It was only natural for your phone to be forgotten as you squirmed closer to the opening in the crate to see better, which allowed you a fuzzy glimpse of the scene.

The view was mostly blocked by the back of the last assailant. They were dressed head-to-toe in black, although you could see in the gap between their vest and ski mask a line of pale skin. To your surprise, their hands were in the air and, as close as they were to you now, you could see them shaking. You strained to hear and heard them whimpering.

“Look, man, I’m sorry,” they whined. “I– I was just following orders. Let me go and– and I won’t say a word, I swear. There’s nothing here anyway, take what you want!”

“Here’s the thing, amigo–” the newcomer started, and you caught a glimpse of tan skin and a hat when the final robber shifted. He didn’t finish the sentence until he’d already fired his gun, though, and the robber’s body dropped to the floor. “–you’re in my way.”

Without another body standing in the way, you could see the loner more clearly. He wore a bomber-style jacket over a collared shirt and driving gloves, and you caught a gloved hand slipping a handgun into the jacket’s pocket. You spotted curls of black hair poking out from under a flat cap as he looked around, as well as dark eyes and a jawline that could probably cut a diamond.

Well that’s… a weird detail to notice on a psycho killer person, you thought. Despite the mental scolding, you found your gaze lingering far longer than necessary on the curve of the man’s grimacing mouth, the outline of his shoulders and back as he turned. He really was quite attractive. Okay, down, bad, no.

The man wandered in and out of your sight as he examined the office space. The way he walked reminded you of a big cat on the prowl, his movements careful and measured and ready for action. He seemed to be looking for something– other thieves, perhaps? Then he stopped a few feet away from your crate, gaze slowly rolling over it and the other materials around it. His eyes found the gap you were peering out of and then he was staring directly at you.

You froze under the intensity of his stare and, for some ungodly reason, found yourself blushing. As much as your brain willed your body to do something, anything, your corporeal prison refused to move, even as the man stepped closer and closer. His body blocked the gap, leaving you in complete darkness and your blood running cold as it washed over you. You only managed to move when a creak groaned above you but it was only to turn your head and watch, quite dumbly, as gloved fingers moved appeared around the uneven edges of the crate’s lid and lifted it away. He tossed the lid aside and leaned over the opening, and there you were, a deer frozen in the headlights of a man who had just killed three people minutes prior.

It was silent as you and the killer looked on at each other. The air around you was thick like fog and chilly like it too, causing goosebumps to rise on the skin of your arms. You still held the Sekhmet statue but couldn’t bring yourself to throw it; instead you clutched it like a child holding clinging to a teddy bear, the sharp edges digging into your skin. Your other hand still held your phone but it was locked once more and all your fingers could manage was fidgeting helplessly around it. You mentally cursed yourself for knowing as little self-defense as you did despite your work. Now there was a murderer standing above you and you had no idea what he was going to do.

He raised a hand, the hand that been holding a gun moments earlier. You sucked in a breath.

He gave you a “relax” motion before leaning further over you and carefully prying your fingers free from the Sekhmet statue.

“You’re bleeding on an ancient artifact,” he mumbled as he removed the statue from your grasp and sat it somewhere outside of the crate. His voice was much quieter now, albeit still gruff in a way that made a warm tingle cut through the cold as it danced its way through your body.

Okay, I’m officially the crazy one, you decided but you still couldn’t stop focusing on the gentleness of his touch. Now that he was closer–another thing to revel in despite the obvious danger–you noticed that the robbers must have gotten a couple of hits in before the shooting started and they went down; the man’s bottom lip was split and bleeding, and one of his cheeks was swelling with a purplish tint.

Now your body moved but it was once again without your brain’s permission. For some reason, you were compelled to say something to him, and what your mouth came up with was, “You’re bleeding… from your face.”

The man blinked, then raised a hand to his face. He checked his cheek first and after confirming that there was no broken skin, he moved onto his lips. A thumb brushed against the bottom one, followed by his tongue, and you probably would have been caught staring at his mouth had he not taken a glance over his shoulder afterwards.

“Yeah,” he said after a moment, more to himself than to you. He slipped into Spanish as he touched his cheek again and winced. “El hombre escuálido tenía un fuerte gancho de izquierda.”

“That was good Spanish.” But my English continues to deteriorate, apparently.

He smirked when he looked back at you, offering a flash of white teeth and making you sweat in the process. “Gracias, lo hablo con fluidez.”

“Cool,” was your dumbfounded response, “I studied in college. Latin, too. Arabic. German. Greek. Helps with the job. And I liked learning more than I liked being around other people.”

You found yourself relaxing a bit, enough to wriggle around in your wooden confinement. You fidgeted your fingers as you moved your arms and flinched. Looking down, you saw that what the stranger said had been right. You had gripped the Sekhmet statue so tightly that its sharper parts had cut into your skin, leaving blood beading on your skin.

The man still standing above you looked at your hand as well before his eyes found your face again. “Can you get out by yourself?”

It finally registered with you that you probably looked like a mess, tangled up in yourself in a rotting box of packing paper. You quickly sat up to fix yourself– Too quickly, because you headbutted your companion in the process. The man spun away from you with a yell, followed by a string of expletives.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry!” You scrambled your way out of the crate and trailed after him as he held his nose. You were careful to avoid the bodies around you, which would have been a lot more jarring if you weren’t focused on making sure the well-mannered murderer of them was okay. He tried to wave you away with his other hand and kept stepping away as you got closer, causing your reaching hands to graze his back, his shoulder, his chest instead. “I promise I didn’t do that on purpose!”

“It’s… fine,” he grunted back, his voice now slightly nasally voice from pinching his nose. “It’s fine. Just… give me a minute.”

You had noticed the blood, though, so there was no stopping you from catching his arm to properly check on him. Before you could really think about what you were doing, you caught the man’s jaw in your uninjured hand and leaned in close to inspect the damage. You handled him gently, carefully turning his head from one side to the other as you eyed his nose and used your other hand–and part of your jacket sleeve–to dab at the blood.

“Well,” you said after a few moments, “it doesn’t look broken. So that’s good.”

“What a relief,” the stranger said. The tinge in his voice said he didn’t care much either way.

It wasn’t until he spoke and his breath landed on your lips that you realized just how close you had gotten to him. You backed away from him, only to trip over a nearby corpse. You floundered around, physically and mentally, but before you could land on a dead body, the man caught you with one hand secured your waist while the other steadied one of your waving arms. He turned with you in a seconds-long, bloody waltz as he helped you avoid the body. As a result, you ended up being tugged further into the office, near where your desk was. Reminded of the danger at hand, you may have been worried, but then the memory of a first-aid kit in your desk overtook it.

“Thank you,” you said quickly. You parted from him and slipped around the other side of the desk to dig around in the largest of the drawers. “Hang on.”

The man looked at his hands and flexed them like he wasn’t sure what had just happened either; it was nice to see that you weren’t the only awkward one. He shifted his weight from foot to foot and looked around while he waited for you, the thought that you might be searching for a weapon not occurring to him in the slightest.

It didn’t really occur to you either, even had your hands found a stapler and a pyramid-shaped paperweight. You were honed in on the first-aid kit, which you pulled from the back of the drawer and tossed on the desktop triumphantly. You popped it open and grabbed a rag, which you offered to the man for his nose. Once he took it, you grabbed some hand sanitizer and bandages and fixed up your hand, wincing at the mild sting but your mind to focused on your stranger to spend too much time worrying about yourself.

Seemingly out of nowhere, he said, “I should probably get you to the police.”

That drew your attention. You quirked an uneasy eyebrow at him. “That’s weird, coming from the man who killed three people.”

Unphased, he tossed a thumb over his shoulder. “I’m a cab driver? I saw the robbery at a stoplight.”

You looked past him, through the window at the far end of your office. Sure enough, you saw a bright yellow cab with its lights still on sitting outside. You turned your attention back to the man with a squint. “A cab driver with a gun?”

“Passengers can get weird.”

“A cab driver with a gun and the skills to take down three black market guys with more guns?”

“Passengers can get really weird.”

You were torn. One the hand, all things considered, this guy did seem like he wanted to help. He’d had plenty of opportunities to kidnap or kill you if that was what he’d wanted to do. On the other hand, though, you couldn’t get over the feeling that he wasn’t telling you everything.

“Offering to take me to a police station feels like trying to get me to a secondary location,” you said slowly. You then immediately wanted to kick yourself because why would you tell a possible kidnapper that?

The man blinked at you, still relatively unbothered. “I mean… Cab driver. It’s kind of my job. But fair enough…” He trailed off and his gaze trailed downward. Your cheeks grew warm as his eyes danced across your body. Then he looked at up at you, a smirk playing at his lips. “Doctor.”

He was looking at the name tag. Of course he was. Your face and neck still felt hot, this time from embarrassment, as you turned away from him to fiddle with your phone again. You unlocked it and dialed for the police, got a woman to take your case. After you explained who you were, where you were, and what had happened–minus some key, handsome details–she told you that police would be on their way. You finished the call and gave the stranger intensely watching you a smug look.

“There, problem solved.” You pocketed your phone and turned your attention back to the first-aid kit. You dug out some painkillers, a cooling pack, and another rag before giving the man a wave to come closer. “Now come here.”

He didn't argue. Joining you on your side of the desk a moment later, he leaned on the desk before you gestured for him to sit in the nearby chair instead. He did so silently and you leaned on the desk instead, trading him the cooling pack for the now bloodied rag that he still held. After activating the pack, he held it to his swollen cheek while you grabbed a water bottle from the first-aid kit and poured some of its contents on the new rag.

When you turned back to him, he nodded past you. "What's that?"

You took a quick look before turning your attention back to him. You wiped your suddenly clammy hands on your pants before taking his jaw in your hand again to tilt his head up. Tingles danced on your fingertips and in your belly as you ran the wet rag over his split lip, carefully scrubbing the blood away. "Egyptian tablet of some kind, but it's a fake. We found it during a black market search, one of my newer people bought it without consulting me first. Gotta be careful with black market stuff, lots of copies."

The man nodded along, and his tongue poked out to instinctively chase the wetness on his lips. You nudged his head back a bit to swipe the blood that had reached his chin and neck; you could have sworn you felt the pulse in his quicken but you were quick to dismiss it. Your out-of-nowhere attraction to this questionable man was already a lot but having him sit nestled between your legs while you cleaned his wounds had to be making you imagine things.

His eyes still lingered on the tablet as you worked. "Why do you still have it if it's fake?"

You shrugged. "Haven't gotten to tossing it yet. It was supposed to go with that rotting crate and the stuff with it but then… the universe had different ideas for me, clearly."

"The universe wanted you to be cleaning up a dirty taxi driver surrounded by a couple of bodies? Sounds like a bad joke." He had an amused twinkle in his eyes. Whether it was because you had slipped up and said fate brought him to you or it was just the morbid enjoyment he had had earlier when fighting returning, you weren't sure. Either way, his smile made a new wave of goosebumps grace your entire body.

You wiped the rag over his nose a little carelessly to keep him from noticing, which seemed to work. He flinched and pulled away from you with a mild glare. You offered him a playful raise of your brow and the glare turned into a scowl before he leaned back into your waiting hand, grumbling under his breath.

You finished cleaning up the blood and tossed the rag aside. You took a better look at his nose now that it wasn't bleeding and confirmed what you had said earlier; you hadn’t headbutted him hard enough to break anything. While checking, you felt compelled to run a gentle, probably-more-affectionate-than-it-should-have-been finger down the bridge of his nose. You thought you saw his eyes flutter at the touch but you had no time to reassure yourself about it because then they were focused on the stone tablet again.

You perked up a bit. "You into Egyptology?"

The man shook his head. "Not personally. I know a guy or three, though."

"Oh, nice."

He nodded a bit and turned gaze back to you as you set the rag aside and grabbed the pill bottle to shake a couple of painkillers into your hand. You offered them and the rest of the water bottle to him with a smile and after an assessing look that you weren't sure was completely serious or not, he took the pills and popped them in his mouth. You cleaned up the bloodied rags and first-aid kit as he took the painkillers.

"So you just throw stuff like that away?" He asked when he was finished and you saw his eyes trained on the tablet yet again.

You wondered if something more drew him to the object as you nodded. "I mean, not like throw it away, throw it away. Usually we'll, like, destroy it or something. So they're not found and resold again. Sometimes we'll keep them for research purposes. Sometimes they go to the police but that particular job went a little hairy and they got called in pretty early."

The man nodded again, still staring intensely at the engraved stone. "It might make a… decent decor piece or something. For a place."

You sat back on your hands and grinned. "Why? Want it for your most special Egyptology buddy?"

He turned his powerful gaze on you before pushing back the chair and standing up. You were caught off guard by just how close he was to you standing up, especially with the way you were sitting leaned back with your legs spread. You weren’t sure if it was intentional when he leaned further into your space still. Then he offered you a somewhat darker grin of his own and you suddenly felt like he was an animal on the hunt again, every move calculated. He knew exactly what he was doing.

"Quizás," he said simply, a teasing Maybe in Spanish. Then he moved away from you altogether to look out the window. While you released a labored breath, the playful energy faded as blue joined the red alarm lights in dancing across his face.

"Shit," you hissed as you jumped to your feet, "cops. Um."

The man looked irritated now. He scolded himself under his breath but still loud enough for you to make it out, "Should have parked somewhere else. There goes my car."

You found yourself dancing in place as you thought. You snapped your fingers and an idea arose and shook a finger gun at him. "Two rooms to the left there's a hallway that leads to the bathrooms. There's a fire exit at the end of it. You can hang around until I distract them, then pretend you came out of the drug store on the corner or something."

The man raised an eyebrow at you. "Are you helping me get away with murder?"

Your face twisted into a disapproving look and you shook your head. "No, but you did save my life, and also chose not to kill or kidnap me, so…" You trailed off as your eyes settled on the tablet on your desk. You tried to weigh the pros and cons of giving it up to a stranger but when muffled voices became audible outside, you opted for just shoving it at him. "Consider it thanks."

The man stared at you for a few moments before taking the tablet and tucking it under his arm, hiding it underneath his jacket. "I wasn't going to kill you."

"Well, how was I supposed to know?" The voices continued to get closer, so you ushered your companion out of your office and towards the fire exit hallway. As you went, you offered him a restless shrug. "A promise then."

"A promise?"

"You will continue to not want to kill me," you replied simply.

He chuckled. "Okay. Deal."

The two of you reached the hallway and you shooed him the first few steps down it. Your heart ached watching him leave and you were positive this time that you saw him hesitating as well.

Then he turned and headed to leave. You stopped him with a wordless holler and blushed as he turned back with raised eyebrows.

"Um, also," you stammered, "I will, uh, see you again. As. Part of the promise."

You felt the blush reach your ears as he smirked at you. The front door to the office building opened and he began backing his way to the fire exit. Before he spun around and disappeared from the building, he offered you a tip of his flat cap and said, "Jake Lockley. Call and request my cab sometime."

"Oh, okay," you said softly after him. “Bye, Jake Lockley.” You waved as the door shut and continued to stare in bewilderment of the night’s events for a few moments after.

A police officer called out for you on the opposite side of the building. You collected your thoughts, crafted a story that you hoped would cover up Jake’s presence, and headed back the way you came to meet them.

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marveldc-imagines-hub · 2 years

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Imagine Trying to Cheer Nanaue up With a Makeover:

A/N: I love Nanaue/King Shark from The Suicide Squad very much and I haven’t written an imagine in forever, so here’s a silly thing I came up with at like 2am a couple of nights ago. Also Reader is a part of the Suicide Squad in this so... yeah. Also, this was beta read but it was beta read at 5am so... yeah, lol.

“Do you think he ever gets bored of like… just wearing jeans?”

Cleo stopped staring out of the bus’s window to glance down at you slumped against her shoulder, then to where Nanaue was sitting across the aisle pouting. She looked back at you and after a moment gave a low-energy shrug. “I don’t know, I don’t think he seems to mind. He’s probably more upset about the fake moustache.”

Poor Nanaue, not being allowed to join the rest of Task Force X-slash-the Suicide Squad in the gentlemen’s club to find the Thinker. Your skills on the team included using technology to make realistic illusions that would have dealt with the “King Shark doesn’t have a feasible disguise” problem that DuBois and Rick were using to keep Nanaue out of the public eye but when you offered up the suggestion, you were shut down by the secondary issue of the demigod seeing every living creature as food. So there you were, feeling bad that Nanaue couldn’t join the fun as the bus slowly pulled up to the club.

“Well, guess it’s time,” Cleo commented at you. She lightly shrugged and you moved off of her so she could place Sebastian on her shoulder instead. Then she stood up and adjusted the dress she was wearing as her own disguise.

Sebastian gave you a cheerful wave and squeak as he passed and you smiled and gave him a quick head pat in return. You however made no other move to prepare to leave the bus, which had Cleo quirking an eyebrow at you and shooing you to move so she could get past.

“I don’t think I’m going to go,” you said as you pulled your legs up onto the chair and wriggled your way across the seat to give her room to get out.

“Why not? It might be fun.” Despite her very casual attempt to convince you, your rat-controlling friend shuffled past you into the aisle.

“Might be,” you admitted, “but it’s not fair that all of us aren’t able to go. Besides, I don’t drink and clubs aren’t really my scene.”

Cleo snorted and offered you a smirk. “And you think it’s mine? Or his?”

She pointed and you looked over at Abner, the Polka Dot Man, who was trying to decide whether or not he should tuck in his shirt while Dabois and Rick tried to brief the team in the aisle next to him, with very little success.

You smirked back. “To be fair, you look very pretty. Like my grandma. In her coffin.”

The comment earned you a flick to the forehead, which made you snicker. Then Cleo shoved her hand into your face as she flipped you off but she had a goodnatured smile on her face all the while. “Fuck you.”

“Hey,” Rick suddenly hollered in your direction, and the two of you jolted to look over; he was coming your way. He stopped in front of you and Cleo, grabbing the back of the seat in front of you as he threw an expectant look your way. “What are you doing? Get up, we’re about to go.”

You frowned and looked over at Nanaue again, who had now moved to grumble in the back of the bus. His back was facing the rest of the team in pouting defiance.

“[Y/N],” Rick scolded, “no.”

You turned back to the man with a puppy dog-eyed pout. Outside of Harley Quinn, you were the longest reoccurring member of the Suicide Squad–killing, robbing, and being good at your job had a habit of doing that to people under Amanda Wallace’s thumb–so you and Rick knew each other well. Well, not well; you barely knew each other really, but you had a love-hate relationship that you enjoyed. That is, you loved to give him shit and he was forced to admit that you were a pretty good asset and thus had to endure you.

“Ricky,” you whined, flinging yourself over his arms, “he looks so sad, though.”

Rick sighed but made no move to remove you. He knew that if he actually tried to wrangle you, you would do the exact opposite of what he ordered you to do, so he tried half-hearted reasoning. “We are this close of being done here, [Y/N], and this whole thing would be a lot easier if you could just… illusion us in and out of there.”

You gasped, eyes growing starry as you stared up at him. The expression changed from lovestruck to morbidly amused in a flash as you smirked, “Aw, Richard, are you saying you need me?”

“I’m saying it would be easier–”

“Say please~”

“No.”

“Please~?”

Rick looked like he wanted to bash his head into the nearest wall. The thought made you giggle. After a few moments of what you assumed was silently begging whatever higher powers existed to give him patience, the soldier’s eyes rolled back to glare at you. “Please, would you just–”

“What’s going on?” DuBois yelled from the front of the bus. You peeked over Rick’s shoulder and saw his older war buddy glaring. The man, first name being Robert and alias being Bloodsport but you liked DuBois better, was messing with his mundane clothes like everyone else with. You supposed that being imprisoned for a while with only orange jumpsuits to wear would make any other clothing feel a little odd.

You answered before Rick could with an aggressive wave in DuBois’s direction, just to make sure he knew who was talking. “I’m not going!”

DuBois’s eyebrows flew up his forehead. “You’re not going? Why?”

“They are,” Rick tried to intervene, “Just give us a minute–”

“We don’t have a minute!”

“We also don’t need a minute!” you chimed in. You sat high up on your knees on the bus seat and tapped Rick’s nose with a finger. “I’m not going. The idea of needle-head man freaks me out and it’s probably smarter to leave Nanaue versus a very nom-nom-looking human bus driver, yeah?”

You heard shuffling from behind you followed by a questioning sound from the shark-man in question. “Nom-nom?”

“No,” Rick, DuBois, and Cleo sounded at once, then Rick gave you a glare.

The kindly stating that you weren’t going didn’t seem to work but pointing out that you were more qualified to keep Nanaue from eating people than Milton was definitely a swaying argument. Just for added effect, you clasped your hands together and gave Rick your best puppy eyes and smile once more, although it once again cracked and turned into an expression that was a little more unsettling when you pleaded, “I’ll be good, I promise! C’mon, Dick Flag!”

“Heh, dick-flag,” Cleo snorted next to you.

Rick frowned but you could tell his resolve was cracking. “You’re not much better than the bus driver. Probably worse. You killed 500 people in two days because you said they all looked like your ex.”

Your eye twitched. “They did! At the time. And if he hadn’t cheated on me and stolen my money, it would have never been a problem.”

DuBois broke first. “Flag, we don’t have time. We’ll figure out something else, let’s just get the hell out of here.”

For a moment, Rick looked like he was preparing to argue further but he quickly decided it wasn’t worth it. He pointed a warning finger at you before turning and walking to the front of the bus, then out of it. One by one, the other squad members followed, until Cleo and Sebastian came up the rear and the two waved at you before departing.

“And then there was three,” you chirped to no one at all, although you were still in the presence of the pouting Nanaue and Milton the bus driver. You sat and waited until your teammates disappeared into the club, then twisted in your seat to face your sharky companion. “Hey, Nanaue!”

Nanaue only grunted in response. After being disappointed twice now, he wasn’t willing to take the bait for a possible third.

You had no intentions of disappointing him, though. You hopped over the back of the bus seat, then the next two, until you were sitting in the same row as him with only an aisle separating you. You waited there for a moment to see if you would earn anymore acknowledgement and when you didn’t, you slid over to sit directly next to him.

The so-called King Shark’s small, dark eyes watched you but when you got closer, he harrumphed and turned as far away from you as he could without literally leaving the bus through one of the windows. You gave him a gentle pat on the shoulder but his only response was to cross his arms and growl over his shoulder at you, “Go away.”

“But Nanaue, how will we go explore the town without each other?” you asked. In the meantime, you pulled up the sleeve of your disguise’s puffy blouse and fiddled with the dials on an augmented arm brace that you wore underneath. Once you were satisfied, you pressed a button on the brace an a small puff of pink smog was released from a grate on the device’s wrists. For anyone else, the puff was simply a small billow of colored air that smelled a bit sweet, but you knew that there was an army of microscopic nanobots following your orders. As the smoke dispersed, you pulled down your sleeve again and wafted a breeze in Nanaue’s direction.

“No exploring,” Nanaue pouted, “No disguise. No fake moustache.” Then he caught a whiff of your brace’s work and shifted to catch you still waving air at him. “Ew. What is that?”

“Well,” you started, then paused as you took a glance at the bus window to confirm your nanobots were working. The reflection in the glass showed you sitting next to a random, albeit large, human man instead of a sharky hybrid and you grinned. With a point at the window to draw Nanaue’s attention there, you continued, “It’s not a fake moustache but it’s one heck of a disguise.”

Nanaue looked at the window, then grunted in confusion at it. You drew his attention to the reflection itself and then he growled at the reflection that didn’t seem to look like it belonged to him, only for him to be surprised that that the human reflection moved with him. You watched with an amused little smirk as he executed some tests; he raised a webbed hand and the human reflection followed, he tilted his head and the reflection did the same. It took him a little while to get to the most obvious conclusion–that the human reflection following his movements was in fact his own–but then he looked at you as he raised both hands to his face, patting lightly. He groaned confusedly with a twinge of sadness, “Human?”

“Oh, gosh, no,” you said as you quickly shook your head. You placed your hands over the shark-man’s own and squeezed, giving his face a squish. “You’d be much less fun that way, promise. I just gave you a little disguise of your own so you wouldn’t feel left out on the party! You’re still all sharky-like, I just changed what everyone else sees.”

“Party?” Nanaue echoed as he dropped his hands. His head lurched to look towards the club where the rest of the team had gone.

“I mean we could go in the stuffy boring bar,” you admitted with a tilt of your head and a bored sigh for effect, “or we could take a walk on the town. Check out the stores, try some of the local cuisines, have a nom-nom chaser or two…”

Nanaue’s eyes shined like little black pearls; he didn’t get some of the words you were saying, like cuisine, but he certainly understood nom-noms. He got to his feet, jostling you and the entire bus in the process, and pushed into the center aisle. In the process, one soft, silvery hand engulfed your own human-toned one and Nanaue dragged you after him. “Friend and Nanaue get nom-noms!”

You would have clapped if you had both hands free but you simply grinned and followed Nanaue off the bus, much to bus driver Milton’s dismay.

~~~~~

“Nanaue~” you sang from your perch on a chaise-style lounge chair in a random clothing boutique. The rest of your sentence faded off a bit as your eyes caught a particularly interesting tidbit in the magazine that you were perusing and you casually kicked your feet as you looked the text over. Towards the end of the reading, you remembered that you had been saying something and shook your head to refocus. “Nanaue, how’s it going in there?”

Some grumbles sounded and the curtain that separated from you from the dressing room that your companion was in shivered. From the gap between the floor and the curtain’s end, you could see Nanaue’s feet turning, and a bulge appeared caused by his dorsal fin appeared briefly in the fabric as his back faced the exit. Eventually, he got twisted around enough in the tiny space to be able to grab the curtain, but rather than pulling it open properly, he yanked it off it’s rail completely and tossed it to the side.

You tossed your magazine to the side and clapped as he wriggled himself free from the dressing room and stepped out into the viewing area. “Look at you! What an outfit for a man! So much better than some of the stuff that everyone else was wearing, like that god-awful yellow shirt that Rick had on. Didn’t fit him too bad, though.”

Not too long into your and Nanaue’s tour, you managed to find a store that sold clothes for larger men. With some minor editing–like tearing a hole in shirts for a fin and hemming some pant legs–you were able to come up with enough outfits for Nanaue to give you a little fashion show and the demigod, high on exploration and human flesh, was in a good enough mood to give you what you wanted. Instead of his usual and only pair of ratty shorts, Nanaue now wore a pair of what looked like jeans but were made with a stretchier fabric along with a tank top and a brightly patterned button-up polo shirt.

“And I thought the jean jacket was the best one.” You chirped as you hopped to your feet. You tried to circle him and assess the outfit from all angles but to no avail because Nanaue started turning with you. You checked out the outfit in the three old mirrors that faced the viewing area from different angles instead and noticed the collar of the overshirt twisted oddly–probably because it wasn’t really a shirt meant for people with fins on their backs–so you stepped up to Nanaue and fixed it for him. Then you stepped back and placed your hands on your hips with an approving nod. “This one’s definitely the best. What do you think?”

Nanaue shrugged but then appeared to notice one of the mirrors for the first time. He eyed himself a bit and flapped his arms, then shrugged again. “Okay.”

“That’s all?”

“Mhm. Hungry.”

You sighed but you couldn’t really blame him. He was quite big, after all.

“Well, let’s head out then. Sorry for the lack of cash, Ms. Shopowner, Ma’am! You’ll just have to put it on our tab.” You waved over to the counter, where the bloody remains of an arm sat on the glass, then headed toward the shattered front window of the boutique with Nanaue in tow. “Wait, do clothing stores even have tabs? Hm.”

Nanaue shrugged yet again and grabbed the leftover arm as he ambled after you.

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