Found: One Wallet {open}

[Izzy James]

Izzy bent over and picked up the leather wallet, studying it closely. It didn't look familar; not that Izzy spent a lot of his time going through people's wallets or anything. He turned it over and over in his hands, studying the outside of it, trying to figure out if he could somehow magically deduce its owner simply by looking at it.

It wasn't his. He'd just found it, sitting there, laying there, actually, in the middle of the street. He'd been heading back to Hammel after doing a gig at Kali's, and had happened to come across the thing. Naturally he'd had to pick it up. The problem was that he now needed to figure out who it belonged to. Logically, he should just open it up and see whose picture lay in the inside.

"But is that wrong?" muttered Izzy. He flipped the wallet slightly, trying to figure out what he should be doing here. There was probably a name on the inside, even a card with a picture attached and everything. But sorting through someone's personal belongings just felt... wrong.

"Okay, first I'll see if it's somebody nearby..." he said. Izzy began looking around then, twisting and turning and seeing if there was anybody else looking for a wallet. Uncertain as to how exactly to get attention, he held the wallet up, even wiggling it a bit, as though to say "hey, I found this, but I have no idea what I'm supposed to do with it."

Because surely somebody would recognize it, right? Or at least wonder why someone was standing there, holding a wallet and looking a little lost (which, really, was about how Izzy always looked).

[Sidra Cotton]

Cosmetically dark ringed eyes shifted from a well worn copy of Monsters: Mary Shelley and the Curse of Frankenstein and snorted. The incredibly mundane wallet certainly wasn't hers. In fact it didn't belong to anyone in her very select crowd of acquaintances.

There were people she had the unfortunate displeasure of knowing who would carry such a regular thing, the boy waving it looked to be the type. But it clearly wasn't his either, or he would have simply stuffed it into his back pocket and moved about his merry way.

Snorting derisively, Sidra marked her place in her book with a finger between the pages and called out in her most 'you're such an idiot' tone from where she leaned against a wall, "Keep it. Turn it in. Just don't cause a fuss about the thing." Of course if someone had lost their wallet the odds of their ID being inside were good. Not that she was going to help the boy who was too simple to figure it out on his own.

Dork.

She studied him for a moment. In Pilots Ridge the odds of him being something 'special' were good. Over half of the population seemed to go to Hammel, or were an alumi of it. The prison masquerading as a boarding school. Regardless of having a power or 'gift' or whatever he wanted to call it, he looked ordinary. And boring. And a do-gooder.

Her brother would have probably done the same thing. Sister too. But not Sidra. She would have left it alone. There were always people like the boy around who just couldn't help themselves.

Rolling her eyes she opened her book up again and resumed reading. Maybe he'd go away.

[Izzy James]

Derisive snort, which seemed to come from the girl leaning against a wall. Izzy turned, and nearly had a double-take. He knew the school attracted all kinds of strange people, having seen several of them himself, yet still, there was something about Sidra that really deserved a double-take. Izzy just kept trying to remind himself that the whole music scene he liked to claim to be a part of had a lot stranger people. Besides, she could be a really sweet girl under all that makeup.

And snark.
And harsh words.
Really deep, apparently.

"I'm not trying to cause a fuss," said Izzy. He played with the wallet, rotating it in his hands. "It's just, it belongs to somebody, and I want to get it back to them. I mean, I could just look inside or---"

Izzy paused, then looked up at the girl. Why was he even talking to her? she didn't exactly look like she was about to start shedding tears for the lost owner of the wallet anytime soon. Maybe she knew something though? Couldn't hurt to ask, right?

"This isn't yours, is it?" he asked, holding it up. "Or, you know, maybe you saw somebody drop it or something?"

[Sidra Cotton]

It spoke again.

So it wasn't going away, instead it was speaking to her again. With a huff Sidra looked up and stared at it.

"Does it look like something I would carry?" Arching her eyebrows at the mundane she waited, knowing that the question answered itself. As cold as it was in Vermont already she was able to layer things more interestingly than she could in the summer. There was no doubt that she was superior in every way to those around her. If her attitude didn't prove that, her ensemble certainly would. Nothing about her said 'off the rack' at such stores as Macy's or Target. Effort went into how she looked. Real effort, not that I want to look like the store window dressing kind of effort.

"Now," she continued, "Does that look like the sort of thing someone I would associate myself with would carry around with them?" Sidra allowed it to digest that bit of information as well and then tilted her chin at a particularly superior angle. "Certainly not. Are you sure it didn't fall out of your pocket? And whoever lost it clearly doesn't deserve to have it if they can't keep it upon their person."

[Izzy James]

"Well, not really," admitted Izzy, looking down at it. "But I figured that maybe you were doing that on purpose, or something."

The girl was quite openly hostile, and Izzy was already thinking about backing away. It wasn't as though he had any particular fight with her; he hadn't even seen her before. There was that whole obvious, philosophical disagreement, and that was what was really making Izzy stay there, still holding the wallet in his hand, still unopened and unlooked at.

"I know it's not mine," he said, looking up at Sidra again, "I can feel mine in my pocket," the implication being that Izzy wasn't that much of an idiot, really. "There could be lots of reasons why someone could lose something like this too. I found it, so it's now my responsibility to make sure it gets back to the owner."

Izzy finally gave in, flipping it open and looking it over. Unsurprisingly, it belonged to a man. Also unsurprisingly, Izzy didn't recognize the name or picture at all. Well, Pilot Ridge was small. Maybe he could put it up to the lost and found or turn it in to the police station or something.

Now, should Izzy try arguing more with the Princess of Darkness here, or should he take the wallet back to the police station? The latter made the most sense. Only one small problem: Izzy didn't know where it was.

"You wouldn't happen to know where the police station is, would you?" he asked Sidra. Not at all because he figured she'd know. Nope. Not. At. All.

[Sidra Cotton]

WHY was it speaking to her again?

Slapping her book closed, Sidra pushed herself off the wall and in a few goth-booted strides stepped into it's personal space. With luck it would take a step back proving her dominance over it and the situation. Just as she had superiority over everyone else. Particularly because she was meta, that just made it better.

"This is a small town. There is a town map, right over there," a crimson tipped finger jutted at a signpost with just that posted in a small plexiglass shadowbox. Points of interest for tourists, such as they were, were marked.

"Of course, when a person comes into a town, it's generally a good idea to know where the emergency services are. Police. Fire. EMT. Hospital." Of course that was her father talking, but Sidra took her father's word as gospel. It was also something she took to heart. She knew where each of the aforementioned was located and how to get there in the shortest time possible. NOT that she was going to help the simpering goody goody in front of her.

"You wouldn't last five minutes in a zombie outbreak would you."

It wasn't a question.

[Izzy James]

Small town. Map. Izzy turned to look, and nearly blushed. He hadn't thought that someone might put up a map of the town or something, but he guessed that with all the various metas coming in from everywhere, plus the droves of people that would be coming to see said metas, he really should have figured that something like that would be there.

The lecture was unexpected though. "Uh, I did, sort of," he said, looking over. "I just didn't figure I'd need to know where that stuff is. Plus, you know, I don't know how to get there from here."

Why was he defending himself to her anyway? She just seemed determined to be unpleasant no matter what Izzy said or did. He was already shaking his head and walking over to the map before she said anything else. However, her next words caught his attention, and he looked over his shoulder, his face crinkling in an expression that could only be called "You must be joking."

A beat, and Izzy realized that no, no she wasn't. "I really haven't thought about it," he finally said. "I think my friends have though, so maybe they'll help me."

With that, he turned to look at the map, locating the "you are here" bit and tracing a path to the police station. He could totally do this; no reason to bother the unfriendly girl anymore.

[Sidra Cotton]

As it turned away, Sidra stood in horror for a brief moment. No, his friends would not look after him if they had any real sense of survival. When the zombie apocalypse came it would ultimately be everyone for themselves. Alliances might be formed, though in brief. Hell, even her dad knew that if she out ran him that was it. Either he kept up or she went on to survive on top of Stone Mountain or on an oil rig on her own.

Giving her head a shake, Sidra felt something akin to pity for the thing that had found the wallet. Turning on her own heels she wandered off, considering the ultimate demise of the world and how it would burn when the zombie virus actually happened. She'd have to email Gel about the whole conversation and the male-thing's reaction. How he hadn't seen the map, how he hadn't bothered to know where emergency services were. How he had picked up the stranger's wallet and was going to hunt them down to give it back.

Nope. People who cared like that would always be the first to go. They'd stop to check the person who'd just been noshed on and end up a meal themselves. That's how it worked. That's how it would always work.

Glancing back once, Sidra snorted. People were just... odd.