C'est Moi (Russ)

[Thomas Legrand II]

Thomas was vaguely conscious of the fact that he probably shouldn’t be in this position. Again. He’d promised himself that he was going to have to stop doing this, especially Tuesday night. He didn’t have work the next morning. He had the late shift so he had no reason to be up that early. Therefore he had no reason not to go out drinking except basic common sense, like the fact that he didn’t recover from hangovers as fast as he did, and lately his drinks seemed to be triggering his powers. Probably not that good. But in this time, he hadn’t been planning to get that drunk. He hadn’t gotten that drunk. Until a friend of his had challenged him into literary personality mimicry for grins. The personalities he could mimic made it a little challenging as he had to keep himself enough to remember to snap out of them. He’d gotten well into character in Holden, Jay Gatsby, and then had gotten well and truly stuck in Lancelot du Lac of the Once and Future King variety. Very serious, very earnest, very religious. Eventually, the bartender had kicked him out. If only that had been the end of it. Lancelot had always been appealing to Thomas and one of the harder ones to kick himself out of. He was so much like his younger self in a lot of ways that he couldn’t quite get out of it.

And so it was that Lancelot du Lack, in search of his horse and sword, bumped into a man walking down the street. It wasn’t that late. But Thomas’s walking was not all that steady and he was not paying that much attention.

“I beg pardon,” he said, bowing his head. “Have you seen my steed? He appears to have wandered off.”

[Russell Sands]

Russell loved this time of day. His work cell had long been switched off and the only work associates with his private cell were his own secretaries who would not call unless it was absolutely necessary. As much as Russell loved his work, he needed some time each day to be away from it and focussing on other things. He believed that was true for everyone; if no time was spent away from the intensity of business, it was all too easy to get burned out and then you were of no use to anyone. For Russell, his favourite activity to unwind with was walking his dogs, and they really did not seem to mind being out and about in the cool night air. Besides, at this time of day he could walk them all at once without fear of running into too many people who might be intimidated by the relatively short man walking five tanks-on-legs down the street.

To his left Outlast, Stat and Mitten trotted obediently, the half-check chains around their necks jingling softly in the evening air. They were all exceptionally well trained, but Russ was hardly a body-builder and when he was walking all the dogs at once he did much prefer to have the extra braking power there just in case. To his right Nessie padded quietly with Tia bounding along beside her, the young puppy exciteable and trying to bite at her lead as they walked through the quiet streets of the club district. At the weekend this area would be thronging with people, but tonight it was blissfully peaceful. Russell had stopped for a moment at a crosswalk, preparing to head over to the park to let them off the lead for a bit, when a man bumped into his back.

As the closest to Russell Stat was the first to react, the hulking great male spinning to face the potential threat with a rumbling growl of warning leaving him, but Russell was quick to react and was able to check Stat with a jerk down the lead and a sharp ‘shht!’ before he set the others off too.

Getting all the dogs to sit (except for Tia, who he settled for just keeping on a short leash so she didn’t try to pounce on the stranger), Russell gave a confused smile to the man, his brow furrowed into a befuddled but amused frown. “Ahh… No? By ‘steed’ do you mean ‘car’? I’m not sure you should be driving, buddy. Do you need a hand getting somewhere?”