This little girl breaks laws...

[teenytinyteme]

Ahhh. Chicago. Heart of the Midwest, if some are to be believed. Certainly not the worst place to come from.

Chance Adams would know, because she does come from the worst place to call your hometown. Peoria is a shithole if you ask her, and even if you don't. She'll probably tell you anyway

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[sittinontrains]

A tiny, Indian boy comes sprinting around the building on the corner. He has a Polaroid camera wrapped around his neck with his fingers curled around the straps. Jamal isn't paying attention to anything in front of him, but keeps turning his head to look behind him. This presents a problem as he doesn't even see Chance on the corner before he barrels right into her with a yelp which sends him flying backwards landing on his butt on the pavement.

[teenytinyteme]

Oh. Great. Chance hasn't even been in the city that long and already people are running into her.

She whirls on Jamal and is about to start yelling when she sees it's actually a tiny kid. Oh.

"Are you okay?" she asks. "Gosh, I'm sorry, I didn't see you there! You should really be careful, running around the city like that."

Not that Chance would know, having been in the city for all of six seconds. But that doesn't mean she can't say things!

[sittinontrains]

Jamal climbs back up on his feet, nearly tripping over the camera that practically comes down to his knees. He looks up at her a moment, but he's not entirely sure what all she's said. Doesn't matter. Jamal looks down the sidewalk. No one seems to be coming. He may be safe.

He shifts over to the other side of her. His first customer!

Jamal holds up the camera with both hands. "You want-" He mimes snapping a photo of her. "Ma'm?" Only for a dollar!

Not that he could really enforce getting money from anyone for taking their picture.

[teenytinyteme]

Chance blinks at him. "Are you offering to take pictures?" she asks. "I'm... of me? I got this far without needing any dirty pictures, thanks." Because she's new here and suspect of everything. And of course little kids are going to take nude pictures of her.

"But, uh... hold on, I might have a dollar..." she reaches into her pocket, only to realize that nope, she doesn't. She doesn't have a dollar or ten dollars or even a quarter.

"Well," she says, her hand dropping to her side. "Guess I'm fucked." She eyes Jamal. "Um, I mean, screwed. I mean, in a lot of trouble."

Because swearing in front of children is a no-no. Or something.

[sittinontrains]

Jamal snaps a shot of her, anyway, and hands over the Polaroid to her.

"Free of charge," he says in his heavy Indian accent with a tiny small before he glances back down the sidewalk. He wasn't sure he'd know how to work the thing and he can't exactly expect people to pay for badly taken pictures anyway. This one didn't turn out bad at all considering it's the first he's ever taken.

No one running. Still. It could change at any second as soon as someone figures out...

"Fucked," he agrees, even if he doesn't know the meaning of that word. Jamal sends her a look. "New to Shee-ka-go?"

[teenytinyteme]

Chance looks at him oddly for a moment, then accepts the Polaroid. "Th... thank you," she stutters, because what kind of person just takes pictures of people... of her? It's all very sweet, at least from her perspective. She relaxes just a little, though he doesn't seem to her like he is relaxed...

"Why do you do that?" she asks. "Look behind you like that?" She looks over him, trying to see what he's looking at.

And then he says that word and she just looks back at him again. "You're a weird kid," she says. "But I kinda like you." She grins, and then grin turns into a look of confusion as she tries to decipher what it is exactly he's trying to say. "Oh!" Realization finally hits. "Uhm... yeah, I guess. I mean, I've been here before, on like a school trip, but not really this part of town..." She trails off, looking around. "Where are we, exactly?"

[sittinontrains]

Jamal nods. He knows thank you, but can't remember the response to it in English so he figures the nod will translate. Or something. It's more likely he really hasn't thought about it much at all.

He tries to understand what she's saying, but then just... shrugs. It's a long story to try to tell in English.

"Weird?" No, he does not know that word, but the grin seems to imply that it's good so he smiles back. "Shee-ka-go?" That's about the extent of his knowledge as to the where-abouts.

There's a flash that hits him. Big guy yelling for him. Big guy he stole the polaroid camera from. Of course, it hasn't happened yet, but he doesn't realize that he can see the future so he twists around to look. No one there... weird.

"Kid! Hey, come back here!" There's the yelling.

Jamal squeaks, bouncing up on his feet, and then sprints in the other direction.

[teenytinyteme]

Chance just stares at the space he was for a second, then looks at the man coming at her and freaks out a little bit. "I didn't-- don't touch me! Oh god please go away."

She curls into a half-ball standing where she is and covers her head with her arms. And that's when she realizes that Mr. Terrifying Camera Man is deathly afraid of snakes and that he accidentally killed his cat as a child and now would be a great time to bring that up, wouldn't it? She stands up, suddenly unafraid, and glares at him.

"I don't think you want to be doing that," she says, her voice taking on a harsher tone that it normally has.

See Chance. See Chance be scary--absolutely terrifying if you're the man, because right about now he should be having visions of his dead cat. Have fun with that, man.

[sittinontrains]

Jamal stops in his tracks when he hears her behind him. Is she talking to the man? He holds the camera against his chest and turns around, but he can't figure out what she's doing.

It's a little scary, seeing her face like that. But why is the man so scared? Not even Salim could scare a grown man away from hurting Jamal.

The man shakes his head, points, tries to say the word, "Freak," but it doesn't quite come out with all the stuttering going on from the fear, and then he turns and makes a quick exit. He can get another camera for cheap. It had just been the principle of the matter.

Jamal watches the man leave, and then walks back up to her and looks up at her face with a mixture of awe and.. okay, a little fear. He doesn't see what's scary about her, which is what makes him a tiny bit wary. "What you do?"

[teenytinyteme]

Chance sort of collapses in on herself as the man runs away. "Aw, shit," she mutters to herself. "Shit. Shit shit shit shit FUCK I didn't mean to do that. I did not mean to do that. I did NOT mean to do that. Fuck. FUCK." She smacks her forehead with the base of her palms of couple of times.

No, she's not really ready to get back to you on that, Jamal. Please try again in a few minutes.

[sittinontrains]

Jamal stares at her, utterly confused by everything. He isn't sure what happened or why she seems so upset now, but after a moment he slides his arms around her and hugs her.

"*It's okay. Everything's okay.*" But it all comes out in Hindi so it's impossible for her to understand him. "*You helped me*."

It takes him a moment to realize that he's speaking in Hindi. He frowns. How can he tell her all of that in English? He can't think of the words.

"Thank you."

[teenytinyteme]

And she stiffens a little as he hugs her, before wrapping her arms back around him, effectively hugging him back.

And he's speaking some language she doesn't understand, but it doesn't matter because it sounds comforting, and that's all she needs right now, espcially with this giant city where she doesn't really know where she is and she's missing home but it's okay. It is.

"No," she says. "Thank you. I..." she realizes there's some kind of wet on her cheeks, and she wipes it away with the back of a vaguely dirty hand, leaving a streak of dirt in its place. "I needed that."

Yeah, she's crying. Just a little bit. WHADDA WANNA MAKE OF IT, HUH?

[sittinontrains]

Jamal just pulls back enough to see her face and smiles at her when she says thank you. He hugs her back quick and tight, and then pulls away entirely.

He thinks about asking, again, what she did, but then he decides there's a lot about this world that he doesn't understand. And this is just one more thing that he doesn't need to understand.

"I took his..." He waves the camera, because it was his fault that the guy was chasing him and he understands that it was wrong. It's just... he has no choice.

[teenytinyteme]

Chance shrugs. Eh. Stealing's not so bad--she used to do it occasionally back home, but dumb stuff on dares mostly, but it doesn't bother her. Especially because he probably needed it, more than that guy anyway.

"That's okay," she says. "Not a big deal. Asshole probbaly has more, or money to get more or whatever." She pauses. "Oh. Uhm... yeah. I never really introduced myself. Hi. I'm Chance."

[sittinontrains]

"Asshole," Jamal repeats, agreeing with her even though he doesn't know exactly what she said.

He just knows it wasn't "man".

Jamal stares at her trying to understand what she's saying to him. , and then points his finger into her side. "Chance?"

He points his thumb against his chest and smiles up at her. "I am Jamal. It is please to meet you."

[teenytinyteme]

Chance just sort of chuckles at him. Yeah, she knows she should probably correct him, just so people don't think he's massively rude or whatever, but what the hell, right? She's not his mother. (Thank god. On the whole mother thing, not specifically him. Because that would just be AWFUL.)

She nods as he points. "Yup. You catch on pretty quick, not speaking too much English."

And then she smiles back at him. "Jamal. That's a cool name. It's nice to meet you too."