Papa's Pops Pop Goes The Weasel
#1


Soda shops weren't really all the rage back in New Jersey. Zachary had heard they were very popular in the west, particularly in Mormon country Utah because people didn't drink alcohol all that much, so instead they turned to a different vice: sugar.

As a business owner that makes a living on selling sugar, Zachary could offer nothing but his immense respect. Part of the visit had been professional interest. He'd been thinking of expanding his own offerings to a small soda selection and he wanted to check the competition, or perhaps see if a partnership could be reached. The other part, however, was simply here for pleasure. Nothing would satisfy his inner child more than a big gulp of some crazy soda concoction made through the power of his imagination.

A cup purchased, Zachary whistled his way to the mixing station, ready to experiment. The brightly colored buttons were lit up to entice customers and Zachary was initially at a loss on where to begin. Regular cola sounded like the place to start and afterward it would be a fun mix in flavors from there. He pressed what he thought was right button but a slip of the finger had not one but three separate buttons flash as a flood of soda and syrup splurted out the nozzle. "Oh crap!" Zachary yelped and held a hand out. His eyes flashed dazzling white as his power kicked in enough to divert half the spray away. He still ended up with a healthy amount on his own shirt that dripped down his front.

The true tragedy was that the poor soul next to him who got the brunt of the second half of soda being shot at their side.
#2

Outfit



That poor soul was Katya.

She’d been standing off to the side from the dude, giving him space as he concocted his own creation. She had no interested in being that person who was next in line and breathing down his neck about it, so. Space. And also she wanted to see how this creation station worked, and there was no better way to learn than by staring down what the customer in front of you did. Fuck yeah.

When the sugary blast of soda pop and syrup splurted his way, she jolted her arms just a bit. The nozzle was quick to redirect the action in a way which probably broke physics, and that action landed all over her side.

White top. Bare skin. All over the side of her waist, soda dripped.

Katya closed her eyes and smiled in a “fuck me” fashion, letting it happen without any intervention. One big deep breath for her wolf.
#3
In a half-blind panic, Zachary managed to slap at the machine until it finally shut off. For his efforts, he was rewarded with a sticky mess all down his front and one pant leg. He avoided the 'someone wet themselves' area, but only barely. His cup was hastily set to the side as he went to inspect the damage. A sicken groan left him as Zachary realized that his shoes were very much covered in the syrup as well. Fingers splayed, he shook them in a sad attempt to remove the residue. He looked up and turned comically fast to search with wide eyes for some napkins. No napkins entered his line of sight, but here was the moment he finally noticed the other soda machine victim.

Already red-faced, Zachary waved his hands uselessly in her direction. "Ah, shit. Sorry. It just –" He turned back to gesture at the dripping nozzle. "You okay?"

His eyes went to her portion of the mess and then immediately away because that was a lot of see-through wet shirt and technically, her soda spill had been his fault.
#4
”Yep,” she replied to the first half of his hurried apology. Because like yep, she got it. Shit happened. Just fucking sucked that it had to be her and that she had to be wearing white on this one occasion.

Katya creaked open both eyes after he’d averted his gaze.

”I’m good. I’ve got spare clothes in my car anyway.” And honestly, judging by his own appearance, he was worse off. Poor sucker.

Poor... familiar... white boy. Her eyes lingered on his features before she abruptly piped up again.

”Imma go ask them for napkins. Take this,” Katya instructed as she handed him her unharmed cup.
#5
His own cup was a goner, cast aside in his attempt to fix the situation and likely to be forgotten. It was the least he could do to guard her cup in his, uh, somewhat sticky hands until she returned. "Ah, sure..." Zachary held it gingerly by the pads of his fingers, maintaining minimal surface area at all times.

The employees of the soda shop were thankfully on the job and one had already arrived with a mop. He sidestepped them and looked aimlessly for a moment until rational thought told him to stop standing around a find a place to be out of the way for a while. He ended up just to the side, leaning against a table because, surprise, surprise! Sitting down might mean not being able to stand up again with all the mess gluing him down.
#6
She put a bit of a bounce to her step, not like, urgent, but also not not urgent. There were few things worse than totally dried soda, god.

When Katya returned it was with enough napkins to paper mache the shit out of them both. She didn’t really think words were required as she placed all of them onto the table in an unbalanced but pretty pyramid, so she started patting herself down.

The back of her brain buzzed in full force though. Ice-cream shop dude. Psychic. Cris.
#7
They would get a free coupon for next time. That's what the employee that had quickly come by told Zachary with a mop and bucket who frankly looked more upset by the incident than he did. The nerve! Zachary would have to waddle his way home, possibly even bowlegged so as not to spread the soda stain to the clean pants leg.

The mountain of napkins stacked to his right was the first thing Zachary focused on, he took the first and began scrubbing vigorously at his own fingers.

"This is definitely a surprising way to begin my afternoon." He tried for light-hearted because it was no use crying over spilled soda.
#8
Small talk. She could get with it. ”Forreal.” Katya cracked a grin, shaking her hair out so it didn’t get in the way of her hands as she wiped the side of her stomach and top down.

The napkins didn’t need a lot of liquid to get soaked. Which probably attested to their shitty quality, but whatever, good thing she’d brought over as many as she had.

Katya swapped the old for the new, taking a handful of clean ones.

”I should probably make you pay for a new top. But I’m not that mean. Normally,” she charmed with a glance up to his eyes, totally joking.
#9
Zachary cracked a smile, relieved she wasn't overly upset. If she knew that he was more directly responsible for the mishap...things might have been different. Thankfully, he would accept this gift of mutual easy-going commentary while they cleaned up.

They probably needed some soapy water to really get the job done, but by how easily the napkins shredded against this palm – they'd likely dissolve in anything stronger than a light misting.

"I would. If you insisted." Zachary found himself saying, although truthful. Again, it was his fault technically, even if he couldn't say how or why. "We'll get refills, though I'm not much in the mood for soda right now."
#10
Wow, well. That was fucking nice of him then. Katya did a, ”Heh,” amused.

This dude... what did he control again? Ice? God. She couldn’t remember for sure. She just had the image of Cris making her an ice sculpture on the table of the ice cream store cemented in her brain.

Ice cream.

”Oh, uh...” Katya remembered. ”Pretty sure they got ice cream. Wanna try some of that instead? Or are you gonna dip?”
#11
"Don't think so." His nose wrinkled at the word ice cream. No way could they beat his stuff and the very idea was like cheating on...himself.

Zachary realized the face he was making after the thought has passed and let everything smooth out with a clumsy explanation compete with hand motions. "I mean, I– ice cream is fine here. But I'm surrounded by it at work, you know. Definitely not." He balled up the napkin he was using and tossed it at the trashcan right across the way. It flew in with skill that he did not normally possess.

The unlikely throw seemed to boost his confidence a bit and Zachary was able to finish up without stumbling over more words. "Paradise Creamery in Alameda. I, uh own the place, so eating ice cream elsewhere is like blasphemy."
#12
The face he was pulling didn’t make sense to her at first. Like, was he allergic to her or something? Trying to find a way to excuse himself?

But nope, it wasn’t that. He was just... snobby. Fucking haha. Katya decided that she dug that, because it was interesting. Being boring was ten times worse than being a snob, and being allergic to her was twenty times worse than being a snob. Duh.

”I get it. I mean, kinda. I get feeling like a traitor to yourself.” Katya scrunched her own napkins up, pressing her lips together. And then she pouted, looking to the side.

”I’ve, uhh. Do you ever remember the faces of your customers? I betchyou get a lot.”
#13
She hadn't taken it the wrong way, not an outright rejection. Just one with more...flair.

Zachary smiled a little towards his chest as he swiped a napkin across his stomach. His first course of action after leaving here would be to get home asap for a shower. The stuff had seeped so deeply into his shirt that he could feel every drag of it against his skin. Yuck.

"Yeah, I'm pretty good with names too." He laughed softly for a second and then stopped. Maybe it was the way she phrased the question or the unusual train of thought. Most people first asked about flavors or how he got into the business. Zachary looked up at her and for the first time really looked.

It came in flashes. The shop. The table. Cris stealing his power to draw designs on the table – and her friend

"Oh shit. Katya, right?"
#14
He was good with names! That was like, a talent she had yet to master. Anyway, Katya didn’t expect him to go through the stages of recognising her. She wasn’t super memorable. It’d been an insanely long time.

But... despite that, she kept her trap shut as Ice Boy’s face went through it. Intense eye contact was happening, man. Katya held it in case it might help.

When he said her name, she chuckled in a combination of awe and unease. Busted, buster.

”Yep. And you’re...”
#15
"Oh, Zachary." He went to offer a hand, remembering halfway up that it was holding a wad of dirty napkins. Looking at it in befuddlement, Zachary blinked and tossed it back toward the table. The hand remained down as sticky soda hands weren't the best way to re-introduce yourself.

"I'm good with names, but not incredible. I just – I remember you coming in with Cris." He stopped there, face slowly losing its smile, edges softening into a sadder expression.
#16
Katya would’ve been down with the handshake. If only he knew half the shit she got up to when she was shifted, god. But instead she did the human thing, which was to laugh at his confusion. Whilst also offering a fist bump to smooth it all out, if he’d accept it.

”Yeah...” Katya replied. She thought she read his face saddening but she was also pretty shit at reading expressions, so.

Sigh.

Katya lobbed her napkins into the trash, and would head out with him if he was keen on joining her. ”Did she ever come back in after that time?” she asked, working under the assumption that Zachary didn’t know she’d been fucking culled.
#17
He happily took the fist bump, a little mad he hadn't thought of it himself. Way less sticky overall.

It didn't brighten his mood, unfortunately. The somber edge was sharpened by Katya's question as it seemed she might not know what happened to Cris. It surprised him as they were clearly close, but maybe she had been away, or maybe she was testing the waters here.

"Not that I know of. It was a while after that I heard about what happened." If Zachary had tried to keep the wording vague, he was foiled by the pain in his voice. He wasn't the blunt sort, nothing compared to Cris that is. It felt wrong to do it here. Censor Cris' death when her ghost probably would be shouting it from purgatory. Yeah, definitely purgatory. Because lets be honest. Cris would spit in Saint Peter's face just to see what the angel would do.

"I wish they caught the bastard." Zachary hoped that was a compromise that she might approve of.
#18
Okay. While she hadn’t known he’d known, she also wasn’t surprised. Not when she still had the fucking newspaper clipping where her name was listed under one of many victims. In her wallet. She carried it in her fucking wallet.

To like. Not forget.

”They didn’t even try to. Cops in this town don’t do shit where it matters,” Katya revealed. Zachary had pain in his tone, she spat hatred.

She stopped just outside Papa Pop’s, standing near the wall. Bounced a leg. Scratched the skin at the edge of her nail with another nail. Squinted up at him, dead serious.

”You weren’t like... close with her or anything? Were you?”
#19
He didn't even think about it, following after her. This wasn't something they could really get into with staff all around, nor did he want to let Katya go just yet.

Her anger was justified. The cops were a silent bunch here, but what could they even do with the shit that happened to people like them? Zachary nodded wordlessly along to Katya's cursing, letting the fury of her words spark a wave of similar anger within him.

"I wasn't in her top five list, that's for sure. But we had the whole power thing in common and that was usually enough for Cris." Remembering correctly, Katya had to know anyway. Cris had used his ice power with her, so might as well fess up.

He barreled on, a little worked up now. "I did talk to an officer, but one who knew Cris too. Nothing came out of it. They were still running on the idea that it was a freak accident."

It was a disservice to Cassidy to say that. She didn't believe the public report either, but she also wasn't here to defend herself and Zachary was still sore from Pandora's death. A death that rang far too similar in his opinion.
#20
Cris had had a top five? Katya... fucking doubted that, but like. It was probably an expression. Yeah. Sigh. This shit was heavy. She kept her eyes on Zachary’s, shifting her attention from the left side of his face and to the right with intensity.

This was the first time Katya had even spoken Cris’ name since she’d died. Fuck.

”Bullshit,” she interjected, barely letting him finish his last sentence. The curse wasn’t directed at him and she elaborated to cement as much. ”It’s bullshit. The cops know what did it—it was a fanged fucker.”

It was easy to trust faces from the past.

She glanced around before reaching a few fingers to tug at the side seam of his maple leaf t-shirt. ”Come to my car with me?” Katya kinda asked, kinda pleaded.
#21
They were both in the midst of this hurricane of resentment, spitting accusations at faceless bodies while riding along with the wind.

"Yeah? You think so too?" Zachary slowed down enough to ask with a new spark of interest. He has suspected for a long time, but it had been fueled by feeling rather than fact.

She stepped closer and dug fingers into his shirt. Zachary looked down, confused. To her car? To hear her opinion on what exactly was happening around here?

"Okay." He let himself be pulled along.
#22
She nodded firmly, just once. ”Know so.” And then tugged him along to her sedan, jaw set. But for all that she was like, fucking mad on the outside, it actually didn’t reach the interior of Katya.

Blood pressure? Usual. Heart rate? Usual. If anything, she was eager to drown Zachary in everything she thought she knew.

Unlocking the silver car’s doors, Katya would separate from him to bounce into the driver’s side. ”You can’t say shit to anyone about this. Okay?”
#23
Halfway to the car and Zachary finally come to the realization that this was a tad weird. Not standard behavior for a stranger to lead you to their car, although in fairness he barely knew Katya.

When she left his standing by the door he closed his fists together at his sides, waiting.

A short relief filled him with the knowledge that she didn't expect him to get into the car. He might have. Maybe. Rational thought wasn't readily available when he got this intrigued by something. "Promise." He returned back clearly. An X was drawn upon his heart as he sealed the deal. Whatever it was, he wouldn't breathe a word.
#24
Promise, cool. But why wasn’t he getting in the car? Oh my god. Katya leaned to peer at him through the passenger window. She waved towards herself.

In?
#25
Oh my god. She meant like in-in. As in, come inside. Wait. Zachary could have sworn she wanted to just show him something in the car, but did they actually have to go somewhere?

"Um, is the thing in here...or elsewhere?" His hand reached and pulled on the door handle, opening the car door just enough to feel the vacuum of air brush against his arm.
#26
What thing?

”No like, I wanted to talk. In here? In case someone hears us?”

The confusion wasn’t doing much to rev her. Losing steam here. Only Weres were ever on the same wavelength as her, but she was willing to be patient with Zachary’s human brain.

”I gotta theory. Kinda.” Half-toasted theory.
#27
Oh, phew. Yeah, this wasn't so elaborate kidnapping scheme at all. Privacy only. Got it. Coo cool cool.

"Ah, yeah. Sorry. Had a bit of stranger danger vibes for a second, but all good. Totally same page now." Zachary rushed to swing open the door and slide into the passenger seat.

The door shut behind him. "Okay. Please continue."
#28
She wanted to like squeeze his face cheeks and tell him she was five foot two and totally harmless, but... that wasn’t true. Katya just huffed a smile—a fleeting moment of humour.

”Okay. Continuing.” Because apparently they were robots.

Katya angled herself towards Zachary, but she stared out the front windshield. Nails picked at fingers again. ”Cris was a blood whore. Which, like, I don’t know how else to explain it so I’m gonna say that. But basically she gave her blood to Vampires, and they paid her for it. Or one Vampire. One client. This guy was really, seriously, old, and he had a name.”
#29
There was a lot of information coming at once, but Zachary knew it was important. Vital even, for Cris' story and possibly for him as a psychic living in this fucked-up world.

He kept his own gaze firmly on the nobs and buttons of the radio, giving himself something to drag his eyes over as his mind ran a thousand miles, firing connections.

When a natural pause came, Zachary had to interject. "I think someone told me about that, maybe even Cris. But our blood, psychic blood – it's really potent or something to vampires." Did it taste better or did it last longer in their system? He wasn't so sure on the mechanics there, but something made it a hot commodity and leave it to Cris to benefit right off her own lifeblood.

He didn't know whether to be reluctantly impressed or downright horrified.
#30
Why was it so easy to tell him any of this when she couldn’t even bring herself to say Cris’ name in other circumstances? It was, probably, a moment of grand stupidity. But. Her gut was all she had.

Katya nodded to his unspoken question, gulping a dry gulp of air. ”Yeah. It gets them hella high. Totally intoxicated, but it doesn’t last like, that long.”
#31
"Shit." Zachary ran his fingers then his palms up over his face, chin to temple, pressing into his cheekbones. Why was the truth somehow worse? They were a literal drug then, an addiction, and Cris gambled.

He squeezed his eyes shut for a beat, then blinked up, looking back at Katya. "So what'd you think happened? Something with this old vampire guy?" That had to be it. Something went horribly, awfully wrong, like the deal gone upsidedown or the vampire took too much.

Either way, Cris ended up dead and here they were, passing survivor's guilt back and forth like a stolen cigarette from mom's purse.
#32
”I think it started when their relationship went sour. He didn’t like that so he messed with her brain. You know they can do that?” Katya explained, meeting his gaze without angling herself any more towards him. ”Like when you make eye contact with them.”
#33
He nodded solemnly. Young as Katya was, her eyes looked decades older when she spoke. "I know they can make you forget things and that their eyes can glow too." Zachary couldn't quite remember who told him that. The others were beginning to blur together and he didn't want to think of the possibility that he'd stumbled across a vampire who...

Not that he'd remember of course.
#34
”That too,” she solidified. And... Katya’s eyes could glow in ways which she had mastery over nowadays. But irrelevant. She wasn’t that disconnected from the real world to not know how springing “I’m a Were!” would freak Zachary the fuck out.

”It’s not just forgetting things, though,” Katya went on to say, slowing her sentences down. ”They can convince you to do whatever. This dude... he did something to Cris, and he convinced her to not tell anyone about it. I tried to crack it out of her before she died. I tried to find a way to reverse the power, too.” Amelie. ”But all I got to find out before she died was that he was involved somehow, and he’d done something bad to her. Both those things came from her mouth.”

Then next minute, she was dead.

”As much as they could... anyway.” Sigh.
#35
Zachary's lips parted with a small suction sound, brow pinched and his face etched in deep concentration.

His next words came out breathy as he tried to piece together everything Katya had just shared. "So– this vampire used their special power through eye contact...and suddenly Cris couldn't say anything about a secret. Something the vampire wanted nobody to know." He was hypothesizing some things here, but it didn't feel too far off.

"Whatever he did to her, it must've been pretty specific since Cris started to find a way around it. Did you ever try having her write it down?"
#36
She was good with him running things through with her again so she knew she hadn’t lost him. And yep. Katya nodded...

Until his last question clocked her right in the fucking throat. Guilt swept her eyes. ”I... I don’t think I did.” But then she was remembering a moment of... trying to... pen and paper. Shit. Why was her memory so bad when it came to important things?

Was the visual just wishful thinking?

”I dunno. No. I don’t think so. It took me... so long to even figure out something was up. Just. You know what Cris was like. She didn’t talk about herself. She never even let me come over to her place.”
#37
He deflated a little, but it honestly wasn't Katya's fault. Cris was a closed book on a good day.

"Yeah, she was good at making you talk. Sometimes I thought Cris would have been good at psychology. If she had liked listening and people in general."

The crack at Cris didn't help his mood much, today had been already shot dead on arrival with the stupid soda spill, and now this deeper dive in murder theory. Insane for this to happen here and now. The odds of seeing Katya again had to have been statistically improbably, a fluke of the universe. And yet ,he was strangely grateful for the chance to talk. "You know anything else about this guy?" An old vampire did narrow things down a lot when you considered the entire population, but in reality, it didn't give them much to go on. Zachary wasn't even sure if he knew any vampires. At least not personally.
#38
Scary, how easily they could agree on what Cris was like. She’d wanted to be a cop, but she’d never even finished high school. Katya... could’ve seen her as a cop, then. And now. It was the perfect combination of “don’t speak, do,” and compassion for her.

Because Zachary was right. Psychology would’ve been too much blah blah for her.

The mood in her half of the car had turned melancholy. ”Uh, Osvald. His name. With a V, not a W.” Katya rubbed her wrist, letting her gaze travel back out the front windshield. ”I know how I could find him too. But it’s just like... I wouldn’t even get past the first layer of Vampires before I got to him. They’re so strong. And then it’s like, I’d have to pry it out of him.”

It would be like walking into a death trap. Something out of Saw. And life wasn’t a fucking... game, or movie.
#39
"If you were able to though – what would you have done to him?" Zachary asked his question quietly.

It was difficult to imagine. Obtaining justice from a vampire. From what Katya had shared, walking into a den of vampires as a psychic...why that was essentially offering himself on a silver platter.
#40
“Scream. Spit in his face, probably. Get him to confess to the cops.” Probably not concurrently, and probably not in that order.

Probably also take his throat out.
#41
If he ever met this Osvald, Zachary would not be capable of any heroic action. Perhaps emotion would overcome his body and he might be tempted to lash out, much like Katya, but a part of him, the honest part, knew that he'd likely be little more than a coward. Cris deserved retribution, or maybe even revenge if her life was traded on the whim of a vampire incapable of control.

Cris might have know the risks to begin with. That didn't make it right or fair and the blame laid solely on the vampire, but in a morbid way Zachary wondered if Cris had planned for any of it, made a backup plan just in case. The evidence was against her ever having one or something more likely – the backup plan going completely wrong.

His anger earlier felt undeserved. Zachary hadn't know Cris well, not like Katya or even Cassidy. He was largely useless here, although he was grateful to be considered someone deemed worth talking to by Katya. Eyes sliding to her once again, his lips parted.

"I don't...know if it'll help. And she's a cop, but was also Cris' friend. You two might want to talk."
#42
Her lips parted as slowly as his. ”Sounds good,” Katya nodded.

She didn’t really want to spread awareness any more than this. It was dangerous knowledge to have, but it also felt a little like closure. Actually, Katya wasn’t sure. She didn’t know what proper closure meant or was—every death in her life had been sudden—but like. Telling him all of this had been cathartic. So. There was that.

She was already taking her phone out when she started eyeing him. Maybe she could get his digits too. ”Don’t... don’t ever fuck with Vampires. Yeah?” Katya suggested quietly.
#43
Wordlessly, he took the phone, and because, for that moment, they shared a psychic link, Zachary copied in Cassidy's number and then his own.

He would also send a quick "Hi," to his number for his own use, all the while mentally reminding himself to reach out to Cassidy right away. She would definitely be the opposite of thrilled to have her information sent out to strangers, but in this instance he hoped she would make an exception.

"Yeah. You too, okay?" He mirrored her last word followed by his voice rising naturally with the question. Then, he thought it over and said what he hoped was the right thing. "Or...just be sure you can win if you do."
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