InsaneJournal

One of the first things that had hit Nick that morning -- other than Major's tail, clean across the face, with a psychic harrumph to go right along with it -- was the memory of the attack that had almost ended his life, a recollection that he had lived without for a few days at least and genuinely felt better for. Less on edge, more relaxed. Now that it was back he was moving around the apartment with the automatic motions of someone not really paying attention to what he was doing but following some sort of routine that had been carried out hundreds of times before, if not more. Nick was running through his mental list of possibilities for what had happened, taking the incident at the high school into account. Even after he cleaned himself up for the morning, showering and clothing himself and pulling on some shoes so he could head down the hall to push the garbage down the chute, he was still thinking about what he had been without for almost half a week. Not much, all things considered, his interactions with the people around him, namely his sister, hadn't been all that changed, but it was the principle of the thing that perturbed him more than anything.

"You don't like that someone messed around in your head." Major sounded drily amused by that fact and Nick turned a scowl in his familiar's direction. "The truth hurts sometimes." If the cat had been capable Nick was certain he would have been smiling then and if he looked hard enough he could have sworn the feline's mouth was angled up at the edges just enough to pass for some sort of smirk.

"Stop being smug and come for a walk. You're putting on weight."

"Oh all the--!" Major's ears tipped back, his tail swishing irritably from side to side, but with a low feral roll in the back of his throat he stood and trotted after Nick as he headed out of the apartment. It was without much in the way of surprise but a decent amount of disappointment that he realised the chute was blocked, almost as if someone had forgotten to clear or empty it for a few days, and that meant heading all the way down to the dumpsters at the back of the building.

"Come on." Before his familiar could complain Nick started down, deciding to take the stairs so he wouldn't stink out the elevator with the bags gripped in one hand. Major grumbled to himself all the way down behind him and when they reached the ground floor he followed to the parking lot where the dumpsters were located. Nick had no sooner pushed the door open than a voice caught his ears and he followed it back to its owner quickly enough, catching sight of a man leaning against a car gesturing at someone else before he pushed off from the vehicle and crossed the gap between them.

"Perhaps we should go back inside."

Ignoring Major and his warnings Nick set the bags down and descended the few steps to the lot proper, his long legs eating up the ground between him and the man who was closing in on a woman who could only be described as petite. "Do we have a problem here?" he asked, not stopping until he was at least partially in the other guy's path and therefore cutting him off from his target.

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For Nick it was a simple matter of right and wrong, it was relatively black and white as far as he was concerned. Cruelty or abuse of any kind was unacceptable but especially when the odds were uneven as they seemed in this case at first glance. It was only when he got closer that something started to prickle at the back of his brain, a hint of awareness that hadn't yet taken form, hinting at something more going on here than met the eye. In his approach he hadn't seen the fox and now that he'd engaged in eye to eye contact with the other guy he couldn't break that. Though he wasn't a werewolf it was a simple matter of challenge and dominance and fire elementals weren't the types to back down. It was as simple as that.

There was the slightest trace of a smile on Nick's face at the sound of the woman's retort to the guy's bitter remark but it was gone in an instant when he recognised the intent behind that motion. Predatory, aggressive, there was no question about what he was planning to do. Nick might not have been on the front lines when he was overseas serving but he was still a soldier. He would always be a soldier.

Without hesitation Nick stepped into that advance and brought up one hand in a simple calculated strike, precise and powerful. It caught the other man in the throat and knocked him back, choking, one foot tripping on the other to spill him to the ground. Nick felt the tension through his shoulders and rolled them to ease it, turning to look back over his shoulder at the woman and it was as his eyes landed on her face that he heard it in his mind, a strong voice, proud and resolute.

She is Fire.

As soon as it had come it was gone again, there one moment and gone the next. Fire had said what He had come to say and had moved right along to other business. Nick allowed a faint sign of a smile to show on his face before he looked down at the choking man again. "I'm sorry," he said to him, "I can't understand a word you're saying. You're going to have to speak up."

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Some people might have seen it as unnecessarily chivalrous, perhaps even chauvinistic, of him to step in the way he had but to Nick nothing came more naturally than standing up for other people. It was why he had become a doctor, why he had joined the army, why he stood up to those who saw fit to belittle and bully those smaller or weaker than themselves. That sort of targeted cruelty or arrogance was never going to sit well with someone like Nicholas Bryant and that had been true for a long time now. His siblings could speak to and so could every single friend he'd had over the years, his parents too. They all knew it about him and for a lot of people it became obvious within a short space of time that he was always going to step in and stand up for the people around him if he felt they were being treated unfairly.

Without saying a word of protest or warning Nick allowed the woman to step in and take over, keeping his posture prepared and subtle tense, that of a soldier poised to leap into the fray. Just because he hadn't been on the front lines that didn't mean he hadn't had the same rigorous intense training everyone else had gone through.

The man on the ground was shaking his head with tears streaming from his eyes, waving one hand in an attempt to placate the pair standing over him, and Nick nodded his head. "I'd say that's all the apology and promise you're going to get." With a slight lift of one shoulder that passed for a shrug he went on to add, "He probably won't be able to talk for a while." Addressing the man instead then he said, "You're going to want to get some ice on that." With any luck the woman would take that as a cue to let the scumbag off the ground so he could scurry back inside to wallow in his shame and embarrassment.

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If the guy was terrified of them now he just needed to count himself lucky he hadn't seen what they were really capable of. Of all the Elementals the Fires were the most formidable, at least in Nick's mind, they had the most power behind their potential assaults and this idiot before them had no idea what he was really dealing with, the kinds of things they could do to someone like him if he'd pushed his luck and gone too far. It wasn't that Nick necessarily enjoyed bringing his powers into things but he didn't hesitate if it was necessary, he never shied away from doing what had to be done and on more than one occasion he'd managed to stealthily apply his abilities to his work when gazes were momentarily averted. It was a wonder really, the kinds of things you could do with heat when it came to the medical field.

Nick didn't realise Major had left the steps and trotted idly up to stand by his side until he felt the brush of a warm body against his outer calf. "With a familiar like that she might as well have a beacon." Nick mentally hushed his own familiar privately, grateful that the cat had at least only transmitted that remark to him and not the woman and the fox with her. With a swish of his tail Major twitched his ears, licked a paw and swiped it over one, sitting himself down beside Nick's foot as he did so. "It was just an observation."

"There's very little a good throat punch can't fix," he said with a hint of humour in his voice as he took her hand with his own, feeling the heat in her palm that was a match for his own, his smile growing more than a little. As if he'd needed confirmation. "I'm Nick. I live upstairs," he said, indicating with his other hand towards his floor, albeit a little vaguely, "I'm rarely here though. I work down at the hospital, I'm basically paying rent on a place I barely see."

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