Rika was roaming around the city. Alone.
Hooooray.
You see, there came a point in your life. Especially if you had an inclination for fiction. A point, when you grew utterly bored with yourself and could trade half a limb and your good eye (she was myopic in her left); to be someone else, anyone, for a period of time. Or maybe boredom was the wrong description. Maybe self-hate would be a tad more accurate. There came a point when you grew so bloody darned angry and frustrated at yourself that you watched yourself tug your hair out in the mirror and felt vindictively satisfied. Then for additional self-punishment plus getting rid of the goddamned fear that dogged on your heels on the time, you slipped out on the streets and took a cab and got off on a curb teeming with people and skyscrapers and cars and noise and people.
It was Brenda's fault, naturally. Every problem in Rika's life could be rooted back to her, if she turned and twisted it through adequate angles and squinted long enough. (She paused, hopefully, waiting for the indignant denial inside her head. It never came. B*tch. ) It had all started with the unnatural silences, the times when Rika would call and Bren wouldn't answer, and those silences were getting more and more frequent. Every time scared her. Every time she would repeat the comment, the question, again and again, the third time, the fourth time.....and that sassy reply failed to come. And it had happened six times, already. She didn't know what to do.
Of course, Bren always returned. But caught in that moment, that mind-destroying silence, that cruel hope stretching out tighter and tighter the longer Bren stayed absent, those seconds when the clock ticked and her heart seemed to be frantically seizing up, it was difficult to remember that fact. Difficult to breathe.
Even now, the annoying blonde wasn't talking. But it didn't make Rika freeze up, ice sliding through her insides, severing nerve endings and motor impulses and her ability to move. Like it did on the day of the breach. There wasn't an empty space, a null void at the back of the head. She could still feel a presence, and felt strangely enough that all she needed to do was dig out a response, pull that retreating shadow out of the corner, stop it from leaving. Do something, anything to coax a response.
So here she was. Among people in a crowd. A crowd. Which pushed and pulled and forced you this way and that and overwhelmed you with sensory overload. No matter how much Rika tried to force her chest in, and keep her arms pressed tight to her sides, fingers digging desperately inside her pockets; somebody still managed to push her. Pat her on the shoulder, shove her to the side, knock into her shin......she hadn't had this much of physical contact since.....
Eyes flitting this way and that, wildly, almost hunted. Head bowed low, so very low to the chest, shoulders clenched up. When something dangerously warm curled on the bare skin of her neck, and a Scottish, high-pitched voice spoke too loud and too close, "Something wrong, dearie?" Rika jerked like a puppet whose strings had been cut, wrenched out of the grip and took to her feet, tearing through the crowd like a rabbit scurrying for its life.
The entrance of the alley caught at her vision, a spot of black among the glimmering, bright, metallic lights and she ducked; the smell of rotten eggs and garbage hitting her nose like a speeding truck. It was cold. It was filthy. It was deserted. Thank God. Rika leaned her forehead against the cool brick, breathing in fitfuls, water gathering at stinging eyes. The world was beginning to steady now. Not seem so much like a bad scene out of a nightmare.
God. What had she been thinking?
Nonsense, as usual.
Rika barely had the time to feel that overpowering surge of relief wash through at the sound of that familiar, irritatingly resigned voice; when the sky fell.
~
"Ouch."
It was huge. It was warm, and had knobbly edges that poked her everywhere: in the gut, up the eye (it was the good one, too), and squashing her face and weighing down on her limbs. All Rika could see of it was a bony, jacket-covered elbow that was the aforementioned knobbly edge poking her in the eye; and a stockinged leg waving about mid-air, upside down. Rika watched it wave, right and left and right again, for sometime. Then realised the thing was also breathing. And hence, had to be human. Y'know, considering the fact that animals didn't really wear stockings, last time she checked.
Of course, she could be wrong. Pet owners were ridiculous about fashion for their poodles nowadays. Still, Rika vouched for the safe option and opened her mouth to yell.
"Gerroffme!!!"
There was a brief scuffle, even as she shoved the thing off herself; stray body parts doing a bit more of stray waving, until Rika received a knee to the stomach and got winded, eyes watering, gasping out breathlessly, "Did you jump out from like, a spacecraft or something?"
Everything stilled. Thank God for a second time.
The.....girl, yes quite definitely a girl, managed to sit up straight. Not alien either, so that possibility was eliminated. Then why the hell had she ended up jumping on her, out of all other possible, non-haphephobic people in the world? Why the jumping in the first place?
Bloody hell. Rika wasn't a guy. She wasn't a lesbian either.
And she had just said that last part out loud. Shiiiiiit.
by 
