Sunrise Deli SHE WORE A CROWN AND SHE CAME DOWN IN A BUBBLE, DOUG

She didn't know what this person looked like. She didn't know their name. Not a single goddamn thing about them, and that was just fine.

Grace had chosen a small but definitely public venue for their meetup. Had her brain on high alert, aura checking every person who went by to see if she got a hit of meat flavor. She'd gone in and purchased a bag of Flamin' Hot Cheetos and a Mountain Dew, using them to claim real estate on one of the two tables outside.

When she eventually saw a shimmering outline of someone nearer, her gaze locked on them, waiting to see if they had the "I'm waiting for someone" expression pop up.

---

general vibe, plus a plain septum ring

Red wasn't good at spotting psychics. Vampires and weres, easy. Too easy, sometimes. But the magical gals and guys? No luck. He parked his motorcycle by the deli, tucked his helmet under his arm and looked around, squinting.

Like a lizard trying to search for a fly. And then he locked eyes with this girl.

"Uh... hi?"

Things Grace wasn't expecting: an old. He approached somewhat warily, and that left her feeling like she had an advantage already. She likely knew more about shifters then he did about psychics.

"You here for the orob- orbor- ors-"

There went her fucking high ground. What a Billy word.

"The supe thing?"

How the fuck did you say it? Too many vowels. Assuming he didn't run off, she'd wave him over to her table and one person trash feast.

Red just nodded and threw deuces at her. Then took his motorcycle gloves off.

"Yeah, that would be me. Name's Red." he said.

Red. His name was Red as much as Grace's name was Purple, but sure. She eyed the gloves as he took them off, then kicked a foot across beneath the table to nudge the other chair out for him. A warm welcome by skeptical psychic standards.

"Grace," she said, not as interested in code names.

Could have prompted him with a question, but it was his deal, after all. She decided instead to leave it there, wondering if he'd go into an introduction of the whole thing or if she was here to tease info from him.

Red sat down with her, unsure where to start. He was a bit hungry, so maybe he should get himself a sandwich... But maybe business first. Yeah. He brought out the spreadsheets he made for finances since people tended to ask him about that first.

"So, what do you want to know? The why's and how's or the money?" The shifter decided to ask first.

She saw him bring out papers, eyebrows rising with interest. He was an open book, apparently, and she was ready to go in order of questions offered until the last one.

"There's money?" she asked, always caught there first.

B-Dawg was putting in work on the blood selling front, but she would never say no to more cash.

"I've told about this in the ad. Looking for part-time paid employees, too." Red said, going through the papers. The club was bringing profits, his other venture was bringing profits and Red wasn't exactly looking for a change of lifestyle, entirely satisfied with his dingy apartment in Hawknell.

Despite everything, there was a knot in his stomach... but why?

Oh, right. Long term. That sounded scammy enough that she hadn't connected to it much. How many jobs had she done free training for and then ended up not getting paid?

"I remember now," she said. "What part-time shit are you looking at?"

Was it being fed to vampires? She had a suspicion it was being fed to vampires. How the fuck else were they helping bloodsuckers out?

"Teaching, mostly. How to use powers and keep them at bay." Red said, scratching his head. "Uh... sometimes teaching English, too."

That needed an explanation.

"You see, some weres are born like this and it causes... complications with development."

And he was a burning example of that.

Teaching English? Grace could teach English. What the fuck people needed-

Oh. The clarification brought her eyebrows up as she dug a hand into her Cheetos. People born this way? Like a pregnant woman getting turned?! Grace's expression was one of obvious alarm.

"Uh. Like?"

"Like, you grow 18 years in 6 years." Red explained with a grimace. "Can tell you from experience."

Yo. Fucking. What.

"Wait."

She blinked, immediately seeing a very disturbing problem here. A ferociously red colored Cheeto hovered in her grasp between the bag and her mouth, frozen for the horror.

"So you're saying. There's six year olds. Who look like legal adults."

"Yeah. Now you see why I'm doing this?" Red sighed and leaned back in his chair. "I got lucky I had some kind of support network. Of clueless, confused dudes, but could be worse. Much, muuuuch worse..."

TW underage sex

---

Red didn't need to do this shit for psychics or vampires. He needed to do this for his own utterly fucked up group of people. Her disgust remained. Weres doing "appears technically legal" porn or some shit. A six-year-old looking like an adult. Growing physically but not mentally. She wanted to throw up at the thought.

"How the fuck do you get turned as a baby? Like, your mom?"

"My mum was a shifter and had me with a human." Red explained his own situation, not going into much detail. "She wasn't really prepared for this and dumped me as soon as I started looking like an adult."

That was so fucked up. On multiple levels, it was so fucked up.

Grace's own parents hadn't been ready for her. But it was something else entirely, going between species. She brought that bit of fried corn dust to her mouth and crunched it, thinking. Couldn't blame the guy for what his parents did, but it was fucked up.

"That's wild, man," she said, shaking her head. "Ain't never heard of anything like that."

"Wild... Pshh, no shit..." It was one thing to hear about it and another to actually live through that. "I'm a middle-aged dude who just turned 30..."

12 years shaved out of his lifespan. An actual 30 year old boomer, just missing his can of Monster Ultra White.

"I don't think that many people really know about this, but I know a girl who was in similar situation, only she got it way, waaaaay worse..."

Maeve. The main reason Red started this project... He at least had his 'adoptive dad-cops' he could have lean on in his early years, she had no one.

"It also feels like... uh... our merciful lords in political seats..." Now his voice was dripping with sarcasm. "Are afraid to touch such things with a ten meter pole... so you know. Taking matters in my own hands."

The shifter relaxed a bit.

Yeah, no shit, motherfucker, Grace was being as polite as she could. (Also, real talk, wasn't thirty already middle-age? She saw it that way.)

She listened to him talk, didn't understand the merciful lords thing until he explained further. Grace listened, considered. Still wasn't convinced of much. His heart was in the right place, for sure, but she didn't like the idea of him wrapping up vampires and shifters with psychics.

"So you think putting psychics in the same space with shifters and vampires struggling to get their shit together is a good idea?"

"I have planned making separate spaces for each faction." Red said. "I know a lot of things could happen in corridors, though, but... one could say security is my speciality."

Been doing this for years. As a cop, as a bouncer, as a private bodyguard. He could do this...

"I know, I know, groups... but..."

Wince.

"Seeing recent news, that guy dying on a ski slope, businesses being burned... I feel like people deserve a helping place that's neutral."

Faction.

She heard the rest, blah blah blah. Security was his specialty. Yeah, easy to say as a fuckin' shifter. That didn't secure psychics very well. If "security" had a bad day, they were suddenly a threat.

Then he rattled off news. That "guy" dying on a ski slope. That was shifters threatening psychics.

"Faction?" she repeated back he'd finished his monologue. "Is this, like. A video game to you?"

That question threw him a bit off-balance. She thought he wasn't serious...?

"Naw, ma'am. I'm just shit with words." Red sighed.

Now she was a ma'am. Grace went for her Cheetos again, torn between a nasty variety of protectiveness and something milder.

"Real talk, dude. The most dangerous thing for a psychic is a vampire or a shifter," she said. "You can't accidentally turn a vampire. And they can't turn you. But one scratch. One shared cup. Any of that shit, and it can be game over for a psychic."

That was the thing with shifters. They always underestimated how fucking dangerous they were, and psychics and normies paid for it.

"I know dozens of psychics. I've shown dozens of 'em how to do shit. You run into a psychic who needs help, you send 'em to me. You don't put them in a building with anyone else."

That seemed fair enough. And what she told him was quite educational for him, too.

"Very well, I will. And if you find a struggling were, send them to me as well." Red nodded.

Grace was ready for a fight. To make demands, to sell this motherfucker on it, and to ultimately warn the rest of the psychic club if she had to.

But instead, he seemed to get it immediately. Made a very reasonable request in return. Grace was left briefly silenced, grappling with her prior desire to verbally throw down. It had been easy, if even too easy. He was quick to trust her, which was good for Grace, bad for others in his care. But those people wouldn't be psychics, and that's what mattered to her.

"Deal," she said, successfully defused. "You ever heard of psychic pacts?"

Truth to be told...

"I did not and quite frankly, sounds like something you'd hear about during Satanic panic." Red allowed himself a bit of a joke.

Ha, ha. Grace found her sense of humor to be off from his. It was weird how old he was for being thirty. Growing up fast had to be a whole lot of brain whiplash.

"It's a group of psychics coming together to get more powerful," she said. "But what matters most is they can like. Undo turnings that are just getting started. So if someone gets scratched by a shifter, and they hit us up within a few days. There's a chance we can undo it. Vampires too, maybe."

She assumed he'd see the utility in that given his business.

Ohh... Oh, that could be very useful.

"I believe that turning should be a mutual consent thing, so I'm glad there's a way to... reverse the process in case some shit happens." He said with a sigh. Well, he had no choice, really. And he haven't really knew any other life.

Sometimes, especially during winter, he was envious of humans...

"I'll send people who'd want that to you, too, then. Are you the only group around? I can imagine stuff like this can be straining."

Made sense in his head. Shifts were straining, such kind of magic (?) had to be to...

Good. She wondered if he really meant it, but it was good enough news anyway. She was happy to be the point of contact for this shit. Felt she was better qualified than anyone else to sniff out trouble.

"There's another," she said. Thoughtful of him to consider that. He'd claimed to have psychic friends, so there was a chance he understood not everything came for free. "Hopefully more on the way. I can pass 'em along if I gotta."

She'd likely pass the next one off, when it came to it. Her prior failure hadn't left her feeling confident despite her words here.

It seemed like they were kind of creating a network here. It actually made Red smile...

"Alright, sounds good to me. Thank you, really."

That was all easy enough. She'd come into this skeptical as shit, and while she was hardly Red's best friend, it felt like a good agreement.

"Same," she said. Reaching for more Cheetos. "You got anything you want to ask me?"

Wouldn't hurt her feelings if he didn't. Grace wasn't necessarily dying to tell shifters everything she knew.

"Well... I assume that 'reverse gear' thing for turning doesn't work for people who are fully turned or born like this?" There was a glimmer of hope, tiny one that he was willing to extinguish, but... he had to ask.

That was a common question, seemed like. Jimmy. Asha. Now this guy. Grace felt bad for them. It never seemed to get better, and it was fucking sad to live a life where you obviously were secretly hoping to live an entirely different one.

"Never tried," she said. "Had a few people ask."

She crunched her Cheetos, fingers stained red-orange.

"Could try it some time. Just need someone we can trust not to shift and freak out if it goes weird."

"I could volunteer as a test subject. I'd say that my animal form is very... managable in case of a shift." Red said with a sigh. "It's a small snake, no longer than a meter. But... Imma be frank, winters are tough for me."

He nearly died this year, when his heat pads died...

Manageable, huh. Everyone thought they were in control, at le-

Oh, shit. Turned into a fucking little snake? Didn't mean it couldn't bite them, but if they saw him starting to shift, they could throw something over him, right? Grace's expression crunched up thoughtfully.

"So you, like. Shrink into a skinny fucking snake?!"

"Yeah." Red nodded. "Got a kind of short end of the stick when it comes to my animal half. I'm more in danger than actually being a danger. Last summer got nearly eaten by a fox, so go figure..."

Grace still saw him as plenty dangerous as long as he could turn someone else. But definitely not on the level of a tiger or some shit, sure.

"I might be able to set something up," she said. "Lemme talk to my sisters and I'll get back to you."

No promises. But now at least Jimmy would know, if they did make it work.

"Alright, you have my number." Red said with a gentle smile. "Hit me up when you're up for it..."

That would be interesting. If it worked, he could do much more things in winter. Would suck to lose his fast healing, but... being at constant risk of death for half a year sucked even more.

"And if you have any more questions, feel free to ask me, too."

Easy enough. Grace nodded, then lifted her bag of Cheetos to tilt lightly in his direction.

"You want some?" she asked as a peace offering, ready to pour them into his hand rather than risk his mitts in the bag.

Still, she thought it was about as kind a thing she could do.

"Sure."

Red accepted a handful of cheetos as a beginning of a good cooperation. Felt good. Felt right, even...