An Evening Out on the Town (Miles/OPEN)

[ACE]

The Lo’ki beat her wings harder when she realized that the brunette wasn’t going to protest. She let out a small chirp and then started forward once she had gotten enough height. She took him at least twenty or thirty feet above, out of eyesight for most people on the ground; and high enough to feel the wind currents swirling around them. The cold air moved over her skin, reminding her again of home, as she flitted through the air with amazing speed, especially for someone of her size. The Lo’ki let out a soft croon and flapped her wings once, her eyes following the blonde figure below as she hovered above him. Occasionally though, she was forced to circle and wait from the running human to catch up and show her the proper route. Flying was much faster than running….

When they arrived at the building, the Lo’ki saw the blonde wave them down. She figured that must be the human way of calling someone over to them. The Lo’ki let out a hawk-like call and quickly descended. Her movements were still graceful and showed her years of experience when it came to flying on her own, despite carrying a passenger with her feet. She gently placed the brunette on the roof, in front of the blonde. She maneuvered herself sideways before landing herself and turning to the two humans. The Lo’ki’s wings moved back into her arms and back and the openings closed seamlessly. Her tail swished from side to side as she looked at them expectantly, curiously blinking as she waited for them to move.

The Lo’ki had a short attention span at the moment; however, and she quickly ran over to the edge of the building and looked down at the people. She crouched, her tail curling inward toward her back again, and let her eyes adjust to the new distance. She couldn’t see anything, but there wasn’t anything down there anyway since it was an alleyway – there were so many of those. She didn’t open her mouth, but let out a croon from her throat and got up. The Lo’ki looked back toward the humans and pointed to the building in front of her, was that their target?

[The Tommy]

Watching Miles from above while the alien flew them about the city, Tommy was genuinely relieved when they all stopped atop the right building. After he was released to the rooftop, it took Tommy a moment or two to regain his footing... As it turned out, as difficult as it could be to gracefully pop out of a sound... It was just a little more disorienting to readjust to the ground after having nothing below his feet for a few minutes... However, once he was confident in his footing, he looked about himself. After comfortably being sure they were all together, he nodded to Miles, before making a movement to the door. Just as he was about to turn the knob, he looked about once more... To find that the creature had wandered off... While he wasn't quite sure what she was up to, he had a good enough idea that she needed something to keep her focused...

When she turned back to them, and pointed at the building across the street, it suddenly hit Tommy what was going on... While she realized they were going to a building, she hadn't quite grasped why... While he didn't know anything about what she really was, or what her people's culture was like... Hell, even if it turned out she was one of the Lo'ki he'd heard of, well... Aside from rumors in back rooms, he really had no idea what her birthplace was like. As such, his best guess was that she thought they were on some kind of hunt...

Shaking his head in the universal, for humans, at least, message of 'no', Tommy opened the door to his building, and motioned for her to head in. "Alright, Miles... We made it, now we just have to hope she isn't about to run in and destroy everything... I'll head in first to make sure nothing incredibly expensive will be in the way of any potential warpath... You do me a favor, and make sure she doesn't go running off somewhere else? Something tells me she's more likely to listen to you..."

With that, Tommy slipped into his home and down the flight of stairs, to his primary living area. Hopefully, he wouldn't need to take safety precautions for any of the lower floors... Considering they were mostly empty, he wasn't too worried, though... He did have some nice suites suited for guests, and while it wouldn't be the first time someone he hardly knew trashed one of the suites... She had the chance to cause more damage than he could fix under the normal pretenses of wild parties...

Moving quickly, Tommy hid all of his expensive sound equipment into hollows he'd had placed in the wall... While they were actually meant to keep rambunctious guests in line, and weren't particularly thick... He could at least hope that the alien creature wasn't planning on tearing through every wall... Pushing those worries from his mind once everything was hidden, he headed into his kitchen to start looking for something to feed his guests... He honestly had no idea what to feed the alien, but... She seemed a predator, meaning meat should suffice... And he remembered Miles requesting no red meat... Not sure where lamb laid on the scale, but deciding to move on the side of caution, Tommy removed a few boneless breasts of chicken from his fridge, and proceeded to cube them rapidly. After he'd finished that task, he set to work creating a nice masala sauce... If Miles and the alien had tastes similar to his own, some chicken masala with tortillas and maybe some rice as a side or something would be a good enough meal to satisfy them for a while...

[ALASTAIR!]

"Yup," came the reply from Miles as he hopped up to sit on a pipe, large enough to be used as an effective seat. Miles wished he could see stars. It was the normal New York night, that was what he kept telling himself, but something inside of him longed to see something more than a black canvas encompassing the city. Maybe after this he could go somewhere rural for a bit. Maybe head down south? He had never been anywhere south of... Oh, he'd say maybe South Carolina. Maybe Georgia once in passing but he was pretty sure he'd turned around and went right back. He did have a distant cousin in New Orleans... Then again, he was just that: distant. He needed to talk to him on Skype or something later.

Miles turned to look at Xanny. She seemed... On edge, almost. He frowned a bit and patted the pipe, hoping that she would take the message and sit. Relax, hopefully. Miles wondered if Tommy was going to come back up to get them. Hopefully. He stared at the sky, wishing that something interesting would happen. A light breeze floated by, lazily ruffling what was left of the tattered hoodie. He placed it on the pipe and spotted a helicopter, blinking. Going across the sky like it had a right to call itself a shooting star. It was probably airlifting someone to a hospital or something. Miles never really knew what helicopters did. With a little sound of saddened frustration, he walked over to the door, stretching a bit. He opened it just a crack and hoped Tommy could hear him.

"Hey, you ready!?" he shouted, waiting by the door to prevent Xanny from entering before she was supposed to and so that he could hear a reply, should one come. Returning his gaze back to the helicopter, it quickly went out of sight, as if it was running from Miles' distaste. Despite all of Miles' fancy jumping skills, he disliked flying. Everything about it was bad to Miles. While in an airplane, there's just about no way to escape. The same went for boats, mostly, but they at least had the little mini-rafts. Cars were fine. Traveling by foot was, by far, Miles' favorite method. Though, it always made people think he was some sort of hitchhiker or a homeless person. Of course, the latter was true, but his appearance generally made people believe that he was a hitchhiker. He didn't know which was better. Either way, they thought that he was either drunk or on drugs. Not a good thing when Miles refused to touch even celebratory champagne. He wanted to keep his body as clean as possible so he could run more efficiently. So far it was working pretty well, but he still took offense on some occasions.

[ACE]

The Lo’ki watched the brunette disappear behind a door. She tilted her head, wondering where he was going. Was he coming back? Or was he leaving her to fend for herself? Some Leader he was. The Lo’ki frowned and snorted to show her disdain. Her delicate ears picked up the obnoxious whir of one of the Human’s smaller sky ships flying over them. She hissed at it and clenched her fist in front of her. Those were the things that the Human used to slaughter and transport her people, she didn’t like them, but she knew better than to attack them without a plan. The Lo’ki ran over to the edge, ignoring the human’s invitation completely. Her eyes quickly realized that the ship was shaped differently than the ones from her planet. She let out a devious, low growl and smiled a little. She didn’t see any guns on it…

Just when she was about to take off after it; however, the voice of the blonde burrowed its way into her ears. The Lo’ki turned her head to look at him and then looked back at the ship, only to realize that it was far out of reach. She let out another, disappointed, growl before stalking back toward the blonde. So this was their target after all, was there food here? That was surely what they were after yes? Food was a nice motivator, for all species the Lo’ki reasoned in her head. She sniffed the air instinctively, a simply delectable scent reaching her nose. She let out a loud chirp and pushed the blonde out of her way as she ran into the brunette’s house.

What was that scent?! She let out another loud chirp as she came into the living room, sniffing again before turning toward the brunette in the kitchen. The Lo’ki jumped up onto a nearby chair in the kitchen and stared down curiously at the food in front of the brunette. She knew that was what she smelled….she wanted some. Should she just take it? No… not even on her planet would anyone simply ‘take’ someone else’s food. From her throat she let out a rumble as her mouth watered, her eyes didn’t leave the chicken once. It looked nothing like the food on her planet, sure, but she had already anticipated that Human food would be different. One of her feet detach from the chair and curl under her like a flamingo, as if she were getting ready to move to another spot, perhaps onto the counter.

[The Tommy]

Patiently preparing the meal, Tommy almost forgot why he was cooking in the first place. Preparing the masala sauce, the scent of the delicious Indian dish drew him further into his work. Each ingredient in any dish was equally important... Too much of one ingredient would overpower the taste of the entire dish, making it a terrible waste of time, and something that Tommy wouldn't even feed to a dog... But, at the same time, too little of any ingredient would weaken the impact of the taste... The flavor would be gone, and it would become a bland dish no one would care to have again... Due to this necessary balance, when he cooked Tommy never allowed his mind to be drawn from the task at hand, until he was sure everything was proportioned perfectly.

Once he felt comfortable in the preparation, Miles' voice from above drew his mind back to what he'd been doing. "Oh, sorry Miles, man... Come on down, I got lost in preparing some dinner... Didn't mean to keep you waiting! I'm making chicken masala and..."

Before he could ask what Miles wanted to drink, and what he felt they should give Xanny to drink, the alien creature had made it's way into the house. "Might wanna hurry up, Miles... Xanny here seems hungry... You, uh... Probably wanna get down before she takes her portion, hahaha!" As he said this, Tommy put a small amount of the dish into a bowl, and placed it before Xanny. Hopefully, it'd be enough to give her a taste of the Indian dish, without upsetting her too much if the spices were unacceptable to her palette...

"Go ahead, Xanny, try a bit of that, let's see what you think of my less than five star cooking, hahaha!"

[ALASTAIR!]

Xanny ended up running toward the helicopter a bit instead. That was fine. Miles didn't mind much, especially when she hissed at it or something. They weren't Miles' favorite thing either, even if they really only did good as far as Miles knew. Upon hearing his voice, Xanny turned back and walked to Miles. Without warning, it let out a little happy noise and pushed him out of the way, Miles promptly pushing his foot back to catch himself. Another advantage of his power was no extremely embarrassing instances like this one could have been. At last nobody was looking.

He recovered from his momentary shock only to get another shock. He hadn't heard Tommy yet, and Xanny was, at this point, running down the stairs into the home of Tommy MacGrady, possible knocking over priceless portraits and other memories. This wasn't good. Miles took after Xanny but quickly let his pace down once he heard Tommy's familiar voice saying that it was, in fact, fine. One more heart attack, thankfully averted. He slowed to a leisurely walk, looking around. This house was... Amazing. Well, it could just be that he was in Tommy's house, but then again... Nah, it was probably just the fact that he was in Tommy MacGrady's place of residence, where he sleeps, where he eats, and where Miles was being cooked dinner.

He arrived to see Xanny waiting, rather excitedly. Miles gave a short laugh as he took a seat, looking at what Tommy prepared.

"Wow, that looks nice. Can't say I've had a home cooked meal in a while." Miles didn't think it strange, and he didn't think it particularly negative. It was just his... Rather nomadic lifestyle that made it seem so normal. To Miles, home was a park, filled with statues and railings and small little structures and nobody to tell him to stop 'disrupting the peace' or whatever. He had been asked to stop before by some policemen, but they were in small towns dotted lightly along the east coast, his normal route. As of late, he had been staying around New York, enjoying the various Chinese food restaurants. He loved Chinese food... What was this stuff? Miles didn't even know, he wasn't savvy when it came to various cuisines. Well, as long as it was good then he was fine. Judging by the smell, Miles was ready to try whatever Tommy made.

[ACE]

She took her portion after the brunette motioned to her. If that wasn't enough of an invitation to eat then she was truly screwed. With blurring speed she jumped down from the chair, grabbed the plate and disappeared into another room. Kitchen tables? What were those? She trotted down the hall into what seemed to be a bedroom, it looked similar to those on her planet...but there was this large rectangular thing taking away so much space. The Lo'ki narrowed her eyes curiously at it. What did the humans use it for? Oh well, she could figure that out after she ate. With out even a hint of table manners, the Lo'ki picked up the tortilla and took a large bite out of it. She swallowed at nearly let out a loud chirp of happiness, she would have if she hadn't stuffed her face with the rest of the tortilla.

It really didn't take her too long to finish her meal, and after she had cleaned whatever didn't reach her mouth off her lips, chin, and hands, she took another look at that rectangular object in the middle of the room. The Lo'ki stood and stepped over to in cautiously, her hand reaching out to poke it. It was soft...she let out a croon and unhinged her claws. Maybe there was something underneath! She ripped into the blanket once, expecting to see something pop out - but nothing did of course. She dug her claws into it again, deeper this time - the strain of her claws against the fabric echoed throughout the room and possibly the house.

Five minutes later, if she was able to continue that far, she had ripped up the whole comforter and had finally settled down for just a moment. She lay with her back to the door, curled on her side. Her tail was neatly draped over her legs, the tip near her chin. The Lo'ki took in a deep breath through her nose and suddenly vaulted off the soft mass and scurried down the hall - time to explore the rest of this place.

[The Tommy]

When Miles admitted he hadn't had a home cooked meal in a while, Tommy almost laughed... He himself wasn't exactly known for cooking all the time, usually only when he had people over... When he was on his own, he was more than comfortable with having his food delivered from nearby restaurants... After all, he knew them pretty well, the service was reliable... And he didn't have to waste time preparing meals just for himself! Now that was the highlight of having money... Nothing was as nice as being able to simply get what he wanted out of life, whatever it may be... Especially since, for the most part, all he wanted was a good meal...

"You're in luck then, Miles! I usually only prepare food for guests... Have you ever had chicken masala before? It's absolutely one of my favorite Indian dishes... Masala curry is the best... Admittedly, my preference is for lamb, but... I wasn't too sure if lamb is a red meat or not, so I decided to err on the side of caution!" As he spoke, Tommy ladled a good portion out for Miles, and handed it to him...

Before he could get himself settled in for a meal, he heard a noise from down the hall, where Xanny had run after getting her share of the food. Moving quickly, Tommy ran down to the room where the sound seemed to be coming from... To find Xanny gone, and the bed in tatters... Fortunately, it was only a guest's room, and not his own bedroom... But, he'd still have to replace the bed... And it wouldn't be free...

Moving again, Tommy began seeking the lost alien out, hoping to coax her into causing no more damage to his house. "Xanny... You around? Hey... How about some more chicken masala? Hmm? Sounds good, right? More of that, less tearing apart my expensive bedspreads... And beds, for that matter? Huh? How about it... Afterwards, you can even sleep in a bed! (The one you destroyed...)"

[ALASTAIR!]

"No, I haven't," Miles started, thinking a bit before answering the next question.

"Yeah, lamb's red meat. Good call!" With a grin, Miles tried a bite. It was pretty good, not like anything he'd ever tried before. He smiled and gave Tommy a thumbs up, Miles wasn't about to talk with his mouth open. It seemed like Tommy enjoyed lots of different kinda of food. Miles was limited to cheaper American food and Chinese food, that was about it. Italian food sometimes, when he could afford it. And this one time where his friend invited him to some Greek festival thing, that place had some good food... But outside of that, Miles had no experience with different foods. Food was really the only way to get any kind of cultural experience for him.

Miles was afraid of airplanes. Helicopters. Anything that flew, Miles didn't want to go on. Boats, too, but sometimes they were alright. Definitely not airplanes. He felt to helpless on them. He had only been on a plane once with his family to travel to somewhere in Europe or something, and Miles hated every minute he had to spend on the plane. He sunk into his seat, did all that he could to make sure he didn't get the window seat (something rather odd, since Miles usually needs a window in any long car ride) and he was quiet. For the entire plane trip. Something significant had to happen to make sure Miles wasn't talking, and his fear of planes gladly held that position.

Miles heard a noise and knew instantly what was going on. Xanny had run off and did... Something. Something bad, presumably, to make that kind of noise. Tommy took after it and Miles did too, hurrying to get the last few bites down. His stomach was going to be mad at him for that... But that was a problem for Miles one hour in the future.

Following Tommy, he began to call for Xanny. Last Miles knew, Xanny didn't like that name. Whatever. Maybe she'll respond. Something told Miles that the last part of Tommy's offer wasn't going to appeal.

"Tommy, I... Don't think she'd want to sleep in a bed. I don't think she even knows what they are." With a little grin, he took to searching himself.

"Heey!" he called, hoping his louder approach would get to her better. He still maintained a fairly good-sounding tone, just in case.

"Come back! There's still more food there, and it's all yours if you don't tear up anything else!"

[ACE]

The next room she found herself in only had a piano, the Lo'ki of course had no clue what it was - it was just a big black thing to her. She walked around it slowly, curiously. She came to the keys and pressed one, the sound reverberating and echoing throughout the house and most likely giving away her location. The Lo'ki's head tilted to the side quickly in a bird-like way as she pressed another one. It was a pleasant sound to her, though nothing like the music they made back home. They possessed no instruments like this, their instruments were much smaller and usually overpowered by the singing of the people. She let out a curious chirp and jumped onto the piano top, walking to the other side before jumping off.

The Lo'ki's head pivoted to her right to look out the door. She could hear footsteps. The alien girl grinned and darted into the opening of the hallway. She jumped up and forced her hands and feet into the junction of the wall and ceiling. She didn't move a muscle, her eyes focused on the end of the hall as she waited for on of the humans to venture down. When they were under her, or about to be, she would drop and land on them - that was her plan anyway. The Lo'ki smiled deviously, her tail swishing slightly before pausing completely when she thought they were coming.