Six o’clock came and went, without Manon Labranche, my manager, ever showing up again. Hence, after serving one final cup of coffee, I locked the front door and started packing things up.

“Cain!” I called out. “Come here, there is free food.”

I wasn’t sure when this switch in me had flipped, but I was now very comfortable with stealing food from Manon. I saw it as fair compensation for not being paid overtime for cleaning and closing the store.

“I don’t want that disgusting cake.” Cain said as he emerged from the staircase, before taking a seat at one of the tables.

“Do you want hot chocolate then?”

Cain shook his head, and sat with his arms crossed, watching me. His expression was neutral enough, but I got the feeling that something was amiss.

“Where is my phone?” I asked as I gave him a side-glare while sweeping the floor.

“Here.” He innocently replied, before taking the device out of his pocket and putting it on the table.

I angled the broom against a nearby table and approached him to check. When I grabbed my phone, I almost immediately dropped it; it was burning to the touch.

“It’s a miracle it didn’t explode.” I sigh, leaving the phone on the table to cool.

“What, that was a possibility?” Cain asked, genuinely surprised.

“I mean, unlikely, but you shouldn’t play with it for that long without breaks anyway.” I said as I returned to my task. “What level did you get to?”

“416.” Cain proudly replied. “I would have gotten further if not for the adverts I had to watch to regain lives.”

I thanked whatever entity had stopped me from linking my bank card to my phone. Who knows how much he would have spent on the game had that been the case.

I continued my work, while idly chatting with Cain. Just as I was about to leave, a familiar face appeared on the other side of the door.

“Etienne?” I called out, as a smile involuntarily appeared on my face.

He knocked on the door, pretending to be a gentleman, before coming in. Before either he or I had had the time to say anything, Cain turned towards him and asked:

“Aren’t you cold walking around like that?”

“I’ll have you know this jacket is made of quality leather. It keeps me warm even in the coldest of winters.” He replied with a smirk, before turning to me. “Hi.”

“Hi.” I said back. “I, umm, didn’t know you would be back from your work thing this early.”

“Yeah, … Well I was thinking about what we talked about back … umm…” Etienne said as he rubbed the back of his head. “You know what, it’s not important. I need to inform you of a grave matter,” His tone suddenly shifted to his usual joking one. “Your cousin has stolen your phone and went through your stuff before messaging me.”

“Good thing I didn’t have anything inappropriate on there.” I muttered before I had had the time to think about what I was saying.

“What?” Etienne asked, his face suddenly turning ever so slightly red.

“Nothing!” I quickly replied, before spinning around to hide my own blush. “Give me a minute, I gotta finish up, if you want any drinks, help yourself.”

“Ah, I see you no longer trust me to pay after last time.” Etienne said before heading to the coffee machine. “Do you want a hot chocolate?” I heard him ask Cain as I hastily headed downstairs to pick up our coats and lock up the back door.

“So, how did that art expo go?” Etienne asked as we headed down Montmartre in the direction of Gare St-Lazare.

“Believe it or not, I didn’t omit many details.” I replied with a soft smile.

We carried on walking for a few more moments in silence. Cain was walking a few meters ahead, and I wasn’t sure if it was because he didn’t want to ‘disturb our moment’ as he’d once put it, or if he was taking his bodyguarding duty too seriously. Either way, Etienne and I weren’t holding hands, and I needed to do something about that.

“I told you about the shady bathroom person right?” I asked, before reaching out and snatching his hand.

He let me do it, as he said with an amused grin:

“That’s a brilliant pickup line, how very romantic of you.”

“I know, I know,” I replied, my cheeks turning pink once again. “But that person was shady, I’m telling you. They were there to conduct dishonest business.”

“And you were there why again?” Etienne asked, jokingly insinuating that my business there was as dishonest as theirs.

“To intimately admire art.” I dramatically replied.

Cain scoffed, proving that he’d been listening to our conversation all along. I was about to tell him off, but suddenly both he and Etienne stopped.

“Say,” Etienne asked, “they do have megapigeons in Normandie, don’t they?”

It took me a second to put together that Etienne was talking about what he thought was my birthplace.

“I’m still not from Normandie,” I replied as I glanced around, expecting to see some kind of monster.

I did not see anything of the sort, but I did meet eyes with Cain who seemed to be silently asking me is he should take care of it. I gently, but firmly shook my head. The last thing I needed right now was Etienne asking questions about Cain’s identity.

Then, I finally saw it. A bird, the size of a cow, was flying in large circles around our position. I opened my mouth and raised a finger up, as I was about to question Etienne about it, but he hushed me. I noticed as sparks of blue lighting appeared around his free hand.

The bird above emitted a noise that sounded almost like ‘aux armes citoyens’ but could not have been more than a series of bird noises, before plummeting towards us.

MP –2

A half-dome of electricity formed around the three of us. But it did nothing to stop razor-like feathers that the giant pigeon projected towards us with a fling of its wings. The projectiles made our trio split up, as each of us attempted to dodge in our own way.

Etienne condensed the dome of lighting over his head. The projectiles fizzled out as they came into contact with the artificial electricity, but some did manage to fly through, grazing his neck and shoulder.

Cain dodged all the feathers by jumping around, like he’d been training for this exact moment his entire life, before giving me the ‘what are you looking at’ look.

I blocked and stopped most of the feathers with my blade until I got distracted by the kid.

Luck -5

“Shit.” I swore, as I shook my left hand, which had been sliced over. The wound closed up as fast as it was meant to, but for some reason, it still didn’t feel right. It was almost as if the shear embarrassment from getting assaulted by a pigeon was enough to –

Luck -3

I realised what was happening, and tried very hard to stop thinking about the bird. Although, I could not phantom how such a lowly creature could deal passive psychic damage –

Luck -3

“It didn’t even hit me!” Cain suddenly exclaimed, “Why am I losing luck?”

“No, don’t attract-” Etienne began, but it was already too late.

The bird rose up before heavily plummeting towards Cain; its tiny beak ajar.

Etienne grabbed his arm, charging up an attack, but by the time five tentacles of lightning had formed around it, the bird had long since failed to hit Cain and flew back up.

“Stop thinking about it.” I told the kid, before dashing a few meters away from the group, to the centre of the empty road.

Outsider

Target: Megapigeon

Duration 15 seconds

MP - 6

The bird cooed once more, its sound eerily similar to ‘Abreuve nos sillons’ before flapping its wings and releasing a rain of tiny blades onto me. I gave up control and waltzed amongst them, moving faster than humanly possible and blocking the ones in immediate proximity to my skin. When I looked up again, the thing was falling straight towards me.

I stood still, like royalty awaiting the guillotine, looking into its teeth-filled little beak. When it had come close enough, I raised my blade and sliced its head clean off.

Two masses hit the ground, its massive body, and its oversized head, on each side of me.

“Laura!” Etienne called out. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah, I’m fine!” I replied, hoping to reassure him. But my tone came off as irregular, as I felt something crawl against my foot.

When I looked down, dozens of tiny grey, deformed featherless chicks were crawling from within the corpse of the pigeon. A shiver of disgust ran down my spine.

“You should probably step out of that,” Etienne said, as he approached me, and extended his hand for me to take.

“Is this were baby birds come from?” Cain asked, as he approached as well.

Before either of us adults had had the time to reply, he kicked the corpse, causing even more of those horrendous birds to flood out of it.

I bit my lip to contain a shriek.

“Let’s just go away, okay?” I said, as I grabbed Cain’s hand and nudged him to follow us.