underlondon_npc | Outside of Muses: Camden Market, Christmas 2032

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Outside of Muses: Camden Market, Christmas 2032

At first glance, the busy street Nix ushers Reid out to looks like something out of a Charles Dickens book, although slightly more sanitised than that. The street is narrow and jammed with stalls selling a massive variety of food, clothing, small animals, tools, odd-looking electronics and virtually anything (and everything) else. Few people in the street look particularly well-off - or particularly clean - although there's a wild variation in outfits, ages, genders and races. There are even horses and carts, although the occasional electric flicker betrays the fact that the horses, at least, are some kind of hologram, and in the sky are pigeons, and odd flying shapes that look as if they might be some kind of motorcycle or quadbike. Far off, and high up, an odd-looking machine like a train or perhaps a tram whirrs and rattles along elevated rails into the distance as it snakes through the tallest buildings.

The overall impression is that of noise and ragged colour and smoky late-afternoon air, all highlighted by the rather incongruous-looking strands of fairylights and the lightly falling snow. London smells odd: not entirely unpleasant, but smoky and damp, with an odd note of petrol and oils, maybe even gunpowder, behind the smells of dozens of cultures' worth of cooking food.

Nix turns to Reid with a laughing, red-lipped grin, gesturing with her furled umbrella. The door she's holding open for him is now that of a pub, the George Cross, with people laughing, shouting and drinking behind them as they had been in Milliways, but unlike Milliways it's far pokier, darker and overheated: it's no surprise that she preferred to drink at the end of the universe, when the opportunity presented itself.

"Welcome to London!"

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The sight of her sister moving snaps Eden out of her shock and she starts to struggle wildly against Jack, who has to lift her off the ground to keep her from getting away, and who looks like she would be incredibly tempted to slap the girl if she had a spare hand. ""If you want to deal with this, Reid, be my guest!"

"Eden Mary Bright, you can stop being such a gawpin' great idiot whenever you like!"

Romilly is stiff and her voice sounds laboured, and she still drips with snow from where she fell, but she is also unmistakably furious as she stalks towards them, completely ignoring the odd bullet flying behind her. "If I am moving then I am sure I am not dead, and if I am not dead I am sure - oof!"

Jack finally has to let go, and Eden promptly throws herself bodily at her older sister.

Nix and Gryff, meanwhile, have mostly stopped coughing and are bringing up the rear. Nix appears to have a bullet-hole through her hat, and her lip hasn't stopped bleeding, and overall she is Not Impressed and saying so.

(This might be because Eden appears to be sobbing into her sister's coat, and they all know better than to comment on that fact.)

"Calm down," Reid says. "Please? We-- I think we really need to get out of here. And everyone will be okay. Right?"

Nix wipes her lips with the back of her hand, giving Reid a grin. "It's a fair cop. You heard the newbie, people, shift! Eden, you won't do y'sister any good by clinging like that, so pick up your gun and get moving. Romilly, you all right to move quickly?"

Romilly, her arms wrapped tight around her little sister, nods. "I'll be fine s'long as someone keeps hold'a my bag. C'mon, sis, time to go."

Eden disentangles herself and swipes at her eyes, giving those around her a glowering look that dares anyone to mention what just happened.

"Reckon we're best off following the others over the rooftops - it'll be quicker and they'll have a bastard of a time following us," says Gryff. "You all right with heights, Spencer?"

"Uh-- Depends on what you mean by heights," he replies. Pauses a moment. "I, ah, have only two shots left," he adds. "I thought you might like to know."

"Duly noted. We're gonna take the walkways over the rooftops," Gryff explains. "They're safe enough, like - people use them all the time - but they're, well..."

"Rooftops," says Jack with a grin.

Reid swallows.

"Right. All right."

"You'll be fine." Nix smiles at him again, taking his hand. "Good job, by the way. All right, you lot, scoot!"

"Last one buys the drinks tonight!" Eden's grin is as bright as if it had never gone away as she turns and runs off through the alleyways.

"Is it... always like this?" he asks.

"Sometimes." She shakes her head as they head through the alleys. "Theoretic'ly, this was a nice, quiet shoppin' trip in a relatively quiet part of town - hence bringin' some of the kids with us. If I'd known otherwise I'd never've brought y'. Which, sorry, by the way."

"No one's dead yet," says Gryff optimistically. "Which makes it a good day. So let's keep it that way, yeah?"

"Uh, yeah," Reid agrees. "Yeah, that sounds like a good idea."

"You Welsh are a cheery bunch of bastards, you know that?"

Gryff sticks his tongue out at her. "I'd heard it before, yeah. Wasn't it the first thing you said to me?"

"Might've been." Nix looks shifty. "Gryff and I were locked up together, Bright Spark. Thus the matchin' set of scars."

"Now who's being' cheery?" Gryff demands. "We also broke out together, which is the important bit."

"If you hadn', I might not have met you," he points out. "And you know, I'm only just now wondering how I'm going to explain-- Never mind." He shakes his head.

"Bit surprised you feel that way, what with gettin' shot at and all," says Nix. "Go on, though. Our friends behind don't seem too fussed on following us - they've probably run into Tonnerre."

Gryff laughs. "Bet they forgot about him, too."

"Do, ah, do I want to know?" Reid asks. He can't say he's not worried, can't say he's not scared, but...

Gryff shrugs. "Usual story. He's lost people, same as the rest of us. Only Tonnerre is, well... if you think we hate our police, you have no idea. He's ... explosive, and that's puttin' it mildly. And he is worryingly good with those knives he flogs."

"My parents, Gryff's family and his ex, Threnody's dad, Eden and Romilly's parents, Ely's dad... The list gets depressin'." Nix squeezes Reid's hand, hurrying them onwards. "And he has a lot of friends, and most of them make us look like paragons of virtue."

"Hey," Gryff protests, "I am a paragon! I've got sparkly pink wings and everything!"

Reid returns the handsqueeze, a little shaken; it's one thing to deal with the things he does in his line of work, and another thing entirely to have it mixed up with someone he's started thinking of as a friend.

"Yeah, they match your eyes."

Nix sounds matter-of-fact when she talks about the people they've lost, as does Gryff: it's the best way to deal.

Carmody is waiting for them around the next corner, looking impatient. "You're the last," zie says. "Who's first?"

"I'll go," says Gryff, rummaging in the bag on his shoulder and producing a device like a cross between a gun and a large hairdryer with a grappling hook at the nozzle. "You two next, then Carmody?"

He looks upwards, sights ... and fires. The grappling hook whirrs out of sight, a long thick rope trailing behind it, and after a moment someone whistles from above to say it's secure. Gryff gives Reid a grin and a salute. "Ta-ra!"

He shoots upwards to the roof, pulling himself up and disappearing. Nix hasn't been paying attention to his disappearing act: she's been rummaging in her bag for her own grapple.

"Clear!" calls Eden from the roof, and Nix in turn sights and fires. The answering whistle comes back as before, and she gives Reid a smile.

"Just as well I'm not shorter than you, or this'd get awkward. Still trust me?"

Reid swallows, eyes wide.

"Uh. Well, uh, I guess--"

"Are you getting a move on or what, newbie?" Carmody demands, sounding fidgety. "The Peelers're not going to stay on the other side of the canal indefinitely!"

Nix, a odd, not-quite-smile on her face, wraps her free arm around Reid.

"Imagine what an idiot I'd look if I let you get hurt," she tells him. "I'm stronger than I look, and I've done this before. Loop your arms around my neck and don't worry."

He nods.

"Yeah, yeah, okay."

This is crazy. This is insane. No-one on the team is gonna believe him. For a single second.

The trick, Nix would tell him, is not telling them.

She's warm and smells of gunpowder and perfume, and her arm around him is reassuringly strong; she gives him another kiss on the cheek, and then -

- They're gone.

She's laughing faintly while they're in the air, but it's barely seconds before they hit the roof and Ariel and Jack are helping Reid onto the level area on top.

Reid's heart is hammering in his chest, and his eyes are still wide, but he gives a breathless laugh himself.

Adrenaline. It does that.

There's a reason Nix loves it.

She scrambles up the roof herself with the skill of long practice, unwrapping her grapple from where it had lodged itself and standing well back before calling down to Carmody, who fires and scrambles up without waiting to know it's secure.

"You'll kill yourself doin' that, one day," Nix calls as zie scrambles up the roof in turn, but Carmody's only response is a cheerful, "Not dead yet!"

The plump blonde Celia is crouched behind a chimneystack near Nix, fiddling with a spidery-looking radio signaller and talking in clear clipped tones and a language that isn’t English into the mouthpiece. The seven-year-old with the red boots is helping her, fiddling with the copper buttons with an experienced air.

Gryff nods to the radio. “We can get better signal up here, see,” he tells Reid. “Less interference from the buildings, like. And it’s quicker to get across town this way. Safer, too.”

“Just as well pigs can’t fly,” Celia remarks with a grim humour, and gets a muted chuckle from the group.

The oldest of the group, the tall ash-blonde in her late forties, is sat with her back against the second chimneystack, still gasping from her run; the curly-haired young man Nix called Suicide is crouched next to her with a medical kit, keeping an eye on her as Romilly, Eden apparently glued to her side for the time being, is attempting to examine the dent made in her body armour by the bullet. Threnody has what looks like some kind of hastily-assembled rocket launcher balanced on her shoulder that doesn’t look as though it should really be capable of the accurate delivery of smoke bombs that she achieved with it, while Meda Bennett is flat on her stomach with her rifle, calmly and carefully picking off any man in blue she can spot in the distance as the oldest of the three children lies flat beside her, handing her ammunition. The second oldest, the boy with the braided hair, is sitting in a sheltered spot with Elodie, his arm around her as they wait to move on.

They’re not the only people up here, either: the walkways around the city, across the rooftops lying lower than the Overground trains, make a safe way of avoiding the curfew, the police or simply avoiding the crowds. Rope bridges string together jumps too far for the street urchins who are their major traffic, with the occasional iron fire escape providing routes to ground level for those without the climbing skills to make their own.

Nix makes her way across the roof to where Gryff is standing with Jack, Ariel and Reid. It's twilight, now, and the last of the sun's rays is trembling and red against the smoky orange and indigo of the sky and the golden of all London's billion billion lights. This evening the wind is almost still, just playful enough to tug at your hair, and the snow has almost stopped. Somewhere in the south, brassy with self-importance, Big Ben is striking the hour.

She smiles, absent-mindedly sliding her hand into Reid's, and just - looks at it like she's in love.

"London calling," Nix says quietly, half to herself, then glances across at him. "How d'you like my city, Bright Spark?"

"It's-- Amazing," he manages. "Terrifying, but amazing."

Pauses.

"So you're not worried about helicopters?"

"All the best things are scary," Ariel says, and smiles. "God, I love this place."

He punches Reid lightly on the shoulder. "Nice shooting down there, by the way."

Nix smirks at the question. "No helicopters lately, no. Long story, but it involves a very bitter ex-RAF fighter pilot with a major grudge. Mayday lived up to her nickname spectacularly, gotta say."

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