Who: Qrow Branwen & Leon Orcot What: Leon gets hit with Qrow's bad luck When: Monday, September 27 Where: Somewhere in town Warnings: Nothing but language
Leon would never say he worked as a pet detective. He wasn’t Jim Carrey, and he’d never especially liked that movie in the first place. Besides, he wasn’t even really a detective anymore. But finding pets was fairly easy cash-money, especially when it came to rich old ladies who were just beside themselves over their loss of their pure, precious Snowball.
Not that Snowball was particularly pure or precious. He’d caught her once already, and if he hadn’t been wearing the white leather jacket with an eagle embroidered on the back, she probably would have clawed his arms all to shit. She’d gotten a good swipe at the chin (nothing to rival the scratches Catra had raked across his nose the week before, which hadn’t quite healed yet, but still annoying), and had climbed up a tree as if she’d get away from Leon that way.
“If you think I can’t climb a fucking tree,” Leon growled up at her, and then did exactly that. He maybe wasn’t as quick about it as he had been in his mid-twenties, but he was athletic and relatively agile, and it didn’t take long to reach the branch where Snowball was perched, glaring at him, tail whipping back and forth.
“I don’t see why you can’t just let me have some fun,” she complained.
“Because your old lady is paying me good money to make sure you’re not,” Leon growled, shimmying his way out onto the branch, crouched low for balance. “Anyway, you can have fun at home. Aren’t you hungry? Bet she has a big, juicy tuna fish or something for you back there.”
Snowball snorted, (“Puh-lease”), and backed up further, and Leon followed her out. He reached out his had - almost there - and then stiffened as he heard a loud crack behind him. He turned toward the noise, there were suddenly four paws using his head as a springboard, and he just had time to say “Oh fuck,” before the branch snapped from the trunk and he went tumbling downward, and landed hard on his back. He glared up into the branches, winded, saw Snowball wiggle her fingers at him, and then hop out of the tree and onto a nearby roof.
"You, ah, you gonna be okay there?"
Qrow had felt his Semblance kick in right before he heard the branch crack; enough time to look around, not enough time to figure out if there was anything he could do about it before the blond stranger was sprawled on his back in front of him. "You didn't hit your head or anything, right? No concussions?"
Look, he was a little sensitive about concussions since he'd gotten one of his own. He hadn't realized exactly how much they sucked until he had to give up his phone until the doctor cleared him to look at screens again. At least he'd had Clover to keep him company until he completely lost track of how many games of cards he'd lost.
This guy didn't look familiar at all, which probably meant he didn't even have an Aura to protect him from a fall.
Qrow thought he remembered something about not moving someone with a possible neck or back injury, or something, but he offered the guy a hand up anyway.
Leon waved a hand dismissively to show he was alright, still not quite able to draw enough air into his lungs to speak. While he waited for his breath to come back, he checked his limbs with small motions to make sure everything was still intact, and only once he was sure he hadn’t suffered any major injuries did he take the man’s hand and haul himself to his feet.
He took another moment to get his breath back, scanning the rooftops for Snowball. When he realized she was nowhere to be found, he let out a low growl in the back of his throat, and reached for his cigarettes.
Which had been crushed in the fall.
“Fuck,” he muttered, slipping them back into his pocket so he could throw them out later. “Yeah, I’m fine,” he said, finally turning his attention to the man who’d helped him up. “My head’s pretty hard anyway, but I don’t think I hit it or anything. Sorry if I startled you.”
Qrow shrugged. "Takes more than that."
It wasn't a Grim. That made a guy falling out of the tree a step up from the kind of surprises he usually got. And he hadn't landed on top of Qrow, so that was a step up from the kind of bad luck he'd been dealing with recently.
"What were you doing up there anyway?" Not that Qrow was one to judge being up in a tree, but he was usually in bird form when he was doing it. He squinted up into the tree the stranger had been in, looking for something that might explain what was going on.
Of course, if there was one thing he'd learned about Vallo, it was that sometimes there really wasn't an explanation for the weird things that happened here.
Leon scanned the rooftops one last time before he sighed. "I was chasing a goddamn cat," he said, not quite looking the man in the face. He wasn't proud of the fact, but it was what it was. When you were jumping from place to place, you took what work you could get. "She's gone now though. For all I know she's making her own way home right now and I can kiss my paycheque goodbye."
Hey, Qrow wasn't judging. He guessed someone needed to chase missing pets down. He did feel pretty bad about it though; the guy didn't know it, but it was Qrow's fault if he didn't get paid. He figured he owed him.
"Need a hand chasing her down? I didn't have any plans for the afternoon." Better than sitting around wishing he could have a drink. "Qrow, by the way. Qrow Branwen."
Leon raised an eyebrow and sized the stranger up, the corners of his lips pulling downward. Leon generally tracked these cases down by asking the local urban wildlife if they'd seen them, which wasn't something he generally did in front of other people. Mostly, because that tended to attract a lot of strange looks.
He also wasn't entirely sure if he trusted a random stranger who'd seen him fall out of a tree and then offered to help.
Then again, Vallo was different than anywhere else Leon had been, and he thought he thought he could take this guy if he tried to rob him.
"Yeah, sure," he said after a moment, extending a hand to Qrow for a handshake. "I'm Leon Orcot. You ever do this sort of thing before?"
"I've done all kinds of things." How much harder could this be than keeping a bunch of kids out of trouble? Qrow figured at least there was only one of the cat to worry about. Even when it was just Yang and Ruby and none of their friends, being an uncle was like herding two cats.
Since Leon had asked, though, Qrow shook his hand and admitted. "Can't say one of them was bringing a cat back home, though. Never really had time for pets."
Or a place he stayed long enough to keep one of his own. He just borrowed the dog when he visited Tai and the girls.
"So how do we start?" If nothing else, Qrow never said no to learning a new skill. Never knew when something would be helpful when you lived the kind of life he did. Not that he'd be living much of it anymore, now that he was here. His life in Vallo had been a lot more stable than his life on Remnant, so far.
“Bringing a cat back home might be the biggest pain in the ass out of all of them,” Leon grumbled, but he followed it with a twitch of his lips that showed he was, mostly, joking. “Well, she took off that way,” he said, gesturing east.
He grimaced with his first step, paused, and then continued walking, this time with no change in expression but with a bit of a hitch in his step as he favoured his right leg. “Normally I’ll ask people if they’ve seen a cat wandering around. Show some pictures, that kind of thing. Most people don’t really notice unless they’re one of those crazy cat people, but sometimes you’ll get someone helpful. I usually get better results if I - and I swear to God I’ll punch you if you laugh - talk to the local wildlife. Birds are especially helpful; they tend to be hyper vigilant of cats and they’ve got the whole ‘birds-eye-view’ thing going for them.”
"Birds-eye-view, huh?" Qrow's smile was a little crooked, a shadow of former mischievous grins but just a little bit closer than it had been, lately. "Think I can help with that."
Talking to birds wasn't exactly the weirdest thing Qrow had ever heard. Not even the top ten. Honestly? He was more curious about the details of it. Like...
The transformation was instantaneous. One second a man stood there. The next a large black bird was staring intently up at Leon, head quirked to one side. He cawed at him, You getting this?
Leon took a step backward when Qrow turned into a … well, a crow. For a moment, he wondered if he’d been talking to a crow the whole time. He hadn’t had any of the usual tells - the feathery boas or collars, the nearly cawing tone of voice, but then, not all animals had obvious tells.
But then he realized that if that was the case, then he wouldn’t have suddenly turned into a literal crow.
He frowned a little. The voice was a little fuzzy, more caw than words, and he wondered if whatever magic turned the man into a bird was interfering with his ability to see him properly, but he nodded. “Yeah, more or less,” he said. “You some sorta shapeshifter?”
Something like that, Qrow acknowledged. It was a gift.
Sort of. He'd thought it was at the time, anyway. Now he knew it was mostly a tool, like he'd been mostly a tool. Not the time to get maudlin about it though. Nothing good ever happened when Qrow got maudlin about something. That need for a drink was never as far from the surface as he'd like.
He hopped a few steps, then rustled his wings. How about I go up and take a look, then meet you back here... partner.
Heh. Look at him, voluntarily teaming up with someone else. Clover would be proud.