“Fuck, this guy’s not playing!” the fox he hadn’t punched said. He was holding onto a new smartphone, pointing it right at Walter. In the matter of a second, he went from surrounded by a handful of morons to watching them run away in separate directions to get away from him. For a moment, he considered chasing after them, but it wasn’t worth it. Instead, he looked back at his phone, and texted Nichola. He’d need to warn her about the possibility of that video surfacing. As if she wasn’t already angry enough. He decided to silence his phone after that, knowing he’d never enjoy lunch with it dinging at him every 20 seconds.

Once back in his car, Walter opened the center console and pulled out a handful of napkins to take care of his split lip. One of his teeth had cut clean through it, but he wondered if he could get away without having to get stitches. He wrenched the rear view mirror over so he could see himself in it and was unsurprised at what he found. The little fucker had got him good. In addition to being sliced open, he was already starting to bruise under his fur, but luckily his dark undercoat would hide the worst of it. But it was just what he needed after putting so much time into no longer looking like an idiot on national television. He suddenly regretted trimming his fur. One advantage to looking like a scruffy dirtbag was that the scruff tended to hide shit like this.

He sighed, resigned to the outcome of his day so far, and decided to swap his shoes over so they’d already be broken in by the next time he went to the gym. The bright colors stood out against black jeans and a black shirt a little more than the other pair had, all black with red piping along some of the seams, but that was the last thing he cared about. He was more concerned about not getting massive blisters the next time he stepped on the treadmill. He tossed his other shoes into the passenger seat so he wouldn’t forget them, and then consulted his phone to see what was nearby and acceptable for lunch. There was a hotpot place not too far away, so he told his phone to take him there. Parking was on-street, which meant he was probably going to come back out to his car to find it smashed up or missing the way his day was going, so he grabbed anything he didn’t want to lose and stuffed it into a shopping bag to take with him. The restaurant was quiet and almost empty, but that suited Walter just fine. He found a table along the wall and got settled as the waiter came over to take his order. He got himself the seafood option, and when it arrived, he found it rather larger than he expected. He pulled his chopsticks out of the paper sleeve and snapped them apart while the waiter got the rest of the meal ready, bringing several dishes of sauces and garnishes, along with a pancake and some rice cakes.

While the waiter cracked open and shucked most of the harder to open creatures in the steaming pot, Walter noticed that one of them was still moving rather vigorously. Some enormous clam-looking thing apparently had other ideas about where it had found itself, but it was soon buried under other clams, and crab legs, and a mountain of shrimp, and presumably stopped trying to escape before too long.

Once he was left alone, Walter dug into his enormous lunch, taking bits out of the simmering pot and dipping them into separate broths and sauces. The cut in his lip made hot, spicy soup not the best choice, but Walter was hungry enough to ignore it for the most part. Whatever goodies were at the bottom of the pot were going to have to wait until later, when Walter could actually see them. At one point, he found a snail that he had no idea how to get into. His chopsticks couldn’t coax it out, and when he got sick of trying, he glanced around to make sure nobody was looking, and smashed it against the table with his fist. That did the job, and cracked the shell open enough to let him dig the meat out.

As he got down to the bottom of the mountain of seafood, he found a thick broth filled with assorted vegetables and some long, stringy noodles. He was going to have to get this one more often. He liked it, he decided. He spent way too long enjoying the peace of a quiet restaurant, without arguing over petty nonsense. Tables came and went, and Walter took his time with his enormous lunch, leaving nothing left but a pile of shells in a shallow puddle of broth. When he was done, he threw a pile of cash down onto the table and got up, taking his shopping bag with him. For some reason, he was surprised to find his car still there, with all the windows intact. He got behind the wheel and pulled his phone out, sure enough finding entirely too many texts to be sent from one person. But they were. All from Nichola. Sighing, Walter decided to call her.

“I swear to god, if that shows up on YouTube,” Nichola warned as soon as she answered the call.

“Have it taken down,” Walter said. “I’ll call my agent. It’s fine. It’s probably just some new ‘prank’ going around.”

“Not a very good one,” Nichola said. He could hear her frustration down the line.

Walter shook his head. “We’ll spin it into a story. Get me on Cascadia on Monday. I’ll write something up.”

Nichola sighed. “All right. Just go home. Don’t get into any more trouble.”

“What, like getting rear-ended?” Walter asked.

“What? You’re kidding?” Nichola asked. Her frustration was turning quickly to panic. Maybe telling her hadn’t been the best choice.