[Second City: Cat & Jack]
Cat watched. From her perch, her vantage point, that place that put her above everyone else. She liked heights, and this would do. Oh, it wasn't so very elevated, but then the options were limited in an underground city. Still, Cat was comfortable here. Back home, there was a place like this, and she'd spent an inordinate amount of time weaving through stalls and stealing from customers. She'd gone deep enough to learn that things, people, who lived in darkness looked different than people who basked in the sunlight. Underground, it was a place for misfits, and it was a place for people who couldn't live in the mainstream, and it spoke to something inside the kitten. She belonged here.
From her perch, she watched Jack reach for the paper. She wondered if it made him salivate, the real stories printed on cheap stock. Oh, the grammar might not always be perfect here, but the stories were controversy. The stories were the kinds of things that wouldn't wash in the polite word. Men, women, journalists, they contributed to these publications in order to shed off the yoke, and Cat wondered if Mr. Penhaligon was envious.
But enough watching.
Cat jumped down. Oh, she was as silent as silent could be. She landed on feet that made no sound, and even the air around her seemed respectfully undisturbed. As for what she did next? That too was such a beautiful slight of hand that there wasn't any indication she'd done it. But however she'd accomplished it? She had Jack's wallet between her fingers a second later. And she took off with the same kind of inexplicable and beautiful silence. Ah, the kitten was a very good thief, and it made her blood sing to feel leather between her fingertips.
She put space between herself and the mark. She perched herself atop another stand, this one selling potions that promised everything from love to death. There, she whispered to the vendor's son, and she watched as the boy approached Jack.
The boy was young, blond hair standing messily upon his head, and his clothing was careless and carefree. He wasn't poor, this child, but it wasn't the kind of attire the world above-land would expect, blacks and greys and fabric loose and made for movement. Not yet eight years old, skin a phosphorescent pearl, the boy tugged on Jack's sleeve and asked where Jack's wallet was. Once Jack noticed it was missing? The boy would point at the stall, at the girl above it.
Now, Cat wasn't dumb. At this distance? Jack wouldn't be able to make out her features enough to see her. But when he looked, she flipped perfectly and effortlessly off the stall, and she ran and weaved slowly enough so that Jack could chase without losing her, but nowhere near slowly enough to be caught.
That trail? It ended in the middle of a room with a circle of stalls. Each one boasted some black-market wonder. Eternal life. Eternal health. Eternal intelligence. Eternal wealth. Here a kidney. There a heart. Here a teleportation device. There a beautifully human AI. Here a child to replace one lost. There a grandmother to tuck you in nights. Wonders, and what journalist wouldn't love that?
Cat, she watched. From out of sight, out of reach, and so very curious, she watched.