Who: Alice Bell and The Canary What: Alice's food truck gets robbed When: Tonight, September 26th Where: A dark parking lot Rating/Warning: Low/none Status: Complete
Sara was finally starting to adjust to her schedule. Wake up, go bartend until the bar closed, slip on the spandex she got from the dreams and look for bad guys to fight, shower and go in for her barista job bright and early. Then, she had much of the afternoon to run errands and sleep.
It didn’t leave her with a lot of free time, but she didn’t mind it so much. Who needed free time for socialization when you could spend your evenings helping people? Besides, this was something she needed to do. Between her time as an assassin in the dreams and the Mirakuru even that had leaked through from her dreams and infected the Orange County that had finally prompted her to leave again, she felt as though she didn’t have a choice.
Her ears perked at the sound of a woman’s scream, and Sara ran, leaping over rooftops before she found them - a blond girl near a food truck and two large men who didn’t look as though they were her friends, and Sara leaped down, landing between the men and the girl.
“Are you alright?” she asked her.
***
Ali liked to think she could take care of herself but even she knew that she couldn’t handle two large men at once. This was not how she’d thought her first week with the truck would end - getting robbed. If they’d just wanted the money that would have been fine. She’d have handed it over to them but they wanted her to give them the truck too and there was no way in hell that was happening. So she did the one thing she could think of and screamed as loud as she could. It earned her a hard slap from one of the men, making her head swim but then there was another woman there in between them.
“No. They’re trying to steal my truck.” She said, reaching up to wipe away some blood from her split lip. That was going to be fun to try to explain.
***
Sara’s eyes narrowed. “Is this true?” she asked the men, her voice coming out distorted from the voice modulator that had come from the dreams. It was still obviously a woman’s voice, though it was eerie and unnatural.
“What are you gonna do about it?” one of the men asked, and the Black Canary shot him a smirk, and beckoned him closer with her hand.
The other man lunged at her, but Sara swung easily under his fist, stepping up again, nearly chest to chest. She drove the heel of her hand into his jaw, and his jaw snapped closed with an audible crack, and he hit the ground hard. Sara twisted, taking two steps in, driving her fist into the other man’s sternum and then delivering a roundhouse kick to the side of his head, and he fell just as hard as his friend.
Then, she turned toward the girl, frowning a little when she noticed her split lip. Her outfit was tight enough that it didn’t seem like there was much room for anything other than her, but she still managed to pull a piece of gauze from her pocket, and stepped forward to press it against Alice’s lip. “Are you hurt?” she asked. More than the busted lip, she meant.
***
Ali took the gauze from the woman, applying pressure to stop the blood and then looked down at the men on the ground, stepping closer to one to kick him hard in the nuts. Cheap shot? Definitely. But it made her feel better to do it all the same.
“I’ve had worse injuries than this.” She said simply, turning her attention back to her rescuer.
***
Sara’s lip curled a little at the cheap-shot. She certainly wasn’t going to hold it against the girl; the guy deserved worse.
“I won’t say that’s good,” Sara said, frowning a little. “But if the busted lip is all you have, then I guess it’s not so bad.” She glanced at the men, one of whom was groaning but didn’t look as though he would be getting up any time soon. “You should call the police though. Have them come put these guys where they belong. Maybe call someone you trust too. I can stay here with you until someone gets here, if you’d like.”
***
Someone she trusted? That was a pretty short list for Ali. Jeremy and his sisters, as weird as it might be she trusted them not to hurt her even with their humanity turned off, and Christie. But she definitely didn’t want to bring the younger girl into this. It was going to be hard enough admitting that someone had tried to rob her when Christie saw her lip but she’d just emphasize the tried part of it when telling her what happened. And that she’d be taking the suggestion of sticking to her approved parking lots after dark. Owen had a safe place for her at his restaurant for open mic nights. Kept an eye on her to make sure nobody hassled her - it was good business for both of them after all.
“I can call a friend of mine to come wait with me for the cops. Pretty sure they’d take a bad opinion of how you saved me.” And Ali definitely wouldn’t want to get this woman in trouble. Not when she was doing what Ali considered something good for the county. “Thank you for helping me out.” She said, pulling the gauze away and grimacing at the blood on it before flipping it over to press the clean side against her lip.
***
“That’s what I do,” Sara said, frowning a little, wishing she had more than just the gauze on her. Some rubbing alcohol or medical tape would probably be helpful right now. “Let me see,” she said, moving the girls hand away from the split lip for a moment. “It might scar, but I don’t think you’ll need stitches,” she said after a moment. At least, she hoped it wouldn’t need stitches. It wasn’t like Sara had ever made it to medical school, but she’d seen enough wounds that she was pretty confident in making judgement calls like that.
***
Ali could live with a scar. She’d just tell people the truth - she’d gotten it from a guy trying to rob her. And not needing stitches...well she’d be happy to avoid hospitals for a while. She pulled out her cell phone, shooting a quick text to Jeremy to ask him if he could meet her at the truck. While she waited for him to respond she looked back up at the other woman. “And I am definitely going to stick to more populated spots after dark so that we don’t meet again like this.”
***
“You’d better,” Sara said. “If I see you out here by yourself again you’re on your own.” She was teasing, of course, and she tried to make that evident in her voice, which might have been even more obvious that she waited there, taking her lead from Alice on whether they made small chat or stayed silent, right up until she saw the headlights coming toward them.
She glanced at Alice’s face, and once she saw the gleam of recognition in them, she took off; if Alice didn’t notice her leave, Sara didn’t mind.