WHO: Nathan Petrelli, Sarah Williams, Claude Rains, Peter Petrelli WHERE: streets of L.A. WHEN: Saturday, October 29; evening WHAT: Costume shopping gone unexpectedly awry. RATING: TBD STATUS: thread; in-progress
"Is that really the look you want to go for?" Sarah said, doubt evident as she eyed the costume. It was a great costume, to be certain – this was one of the best theater-quality costume shops in the city – but she just wasn't certain it worked for Nathan.
Sighing, Nathan put it back on the rack. "There's not that much left." Which wasn't true, as there were plenty of costumes still left, but nothing he'd yet decided he wanted. It had been a long time since he had really dressed up for Halloween, he wanted to make it count.
"It's Halloween, what did you expect?" Sarah said, rolling her eyes. "If you'd told me you wanted a specific costume, I would have worked on one for you along with the rest." Once her skills as a costumer had spread, Sarah had found her afternoons and evenings the last few days taken up with more than just the costumes for herself and her fiancé. "Now, you're just going to have to pick something in one of these shops. I liked that pocketwatch and waistcoat at the last place, if you did that costume, you'd match Peter and I."
Nathan made a face at her, spoiled by a grin. "You're cramping my sense of individuality," he said, dropping an obnoxiously big hat on her head so it fell over her face. "Are you done? I want to get to the next place."
Removing the hat, Sarah whacked him lightly in the arm with it and put it back on the rack. "I just need to check back there," she said, waving in the direction of the back of the shop, where yard goods were located. "I still haven't found better felt, but they might have it."
Nodding, Nathan stayed still and browsed until she was out of eyesight, then slipped off to buy something he had been eyeing since he spotted it in the shop.
After determining that, unless the other two shops proved otherwise, she did have the best felt, Sarah made her way through the shop looking for Nathan. After a search, and questioning of the proprietor, she headed out of the costume shop.
"You could have waited, geez," she muttered, slipping out of the side-door, as the next shop on her list was closeby. She hadn't gone more than a few steps when the single ugliest demonic face she had ever seen before appeared in front of her.
"BOO!" Behind the mask held up to his face, Nathan was already laughing. The boys had wanted him to get something scary, and even if he wasn't going to wear it all night, it would be good for some boyish shrieks before everyone got their costumes on, but first he had to try it out and see how big a scream he'd get from his future sister.
But it wasn't a scream – at least, it wasn't a human scream – and a second later, he was flat on his back on the ground next to the costume shop with one hundred plus pounds of black panther sitting on him, twitching lips with admittedly impressive teeth just millimeters from his face, and he had no idea how the hell it had happened.
"I take it back," he gasped, searching for the air that had mostly whooshed out of him as he hit the pavement of the wide alley. Had he thought holding his hands up in a gesture of peace would be seen as such, rather than something to aggravate the big cat on his chest, he would have done it. As it was, he kept very, very still as he scrambled to understand how Sarah had been there a second ago and now there was a panther.