You catch your breath and winter starts again, and everyone else is springbound...

[w_for_wizard]

In the alley behind the Empress Theatre, there's the loud crack of a pistol, easily mistaken for a car backfiring or something else entirely unnotable. There's no reason to be alarmed about it, either - if anyone happens to poke their head into the alley, they'll just see Harry, tucking his pistol away and moving forward to inspect a small leather

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[nounicorns]

There happens to be a blonde girl walking past the alley when Harry does his shooting. So, at the noise, Kristy's head swivels, and Oh sh*t there's a guy with a gun.

Yes, Kristy even bleeps out curse words in her own internal monologue, sometimes.

So she does the only logical thing, which is to run away while fumbling for her cell phone so she can call the police. She couldn't really see clearly enough to find out of someone actually got shot, but... someone was shooting a gun in there, and she's pretty sure there's no friendly reason to do that.

You may want to do something about that, Harry.

[w_for_wizard]

Harry was kind of betting on the fact that he'd only need one shot and that there probably wouldn't be any passersby who actually cared at the exact moment he decided to go shooting things.

With his luck, he really shouldn't have counted on that.

He catches sight of the girl out of the corner of his eye, the sudden movement catching his attention. It takes him a moment to process, and then he growls, quickly holstering his revolver and running after her. Murphy is going to kill him if she has to bail him out of jail.

"Wait!" he calls, hands up and palms out. "I swear everything's okay and I'm not going to hurt you."

[nounicorns]

This would be the worst possible time to drop her phone, so of course, that's what Kristy does. She makes a small squeaky noise and whirls and the guy's there behind her. She's not going to listen to the guy with a gun. Listening to the guy with the gun is a bad idea. Going closer to the guy with the gun is also stupid, and if she doubles back to get her phone, that's pretty definitely closer.

Great. My life could be depending on my ability to do magic. I don't believe in magic. I don't...

There's nothing else she can do. She starts stumbling backwards, thinking as hard as she can, Phone in my hand. Phone in my hand.

And then the phone's in her hand.

[w_for_wizard]

Even if Harry didn't quite see what happened there, he still doesn't miss it - there's a palpable shift in energies, of magic slightly flailing and uncertain and not quite what he's used to, but definitely there.

He skids to a stop, hands still raised, though he keeps a wary eye on the phone in her hands. If she starts dialing, he can short it out with hardly any effort at all, but he'd hate to break the girl's phone for no good reason.

"Hold on... just a second and let me explain before you call the police, okay? I'm not going to come any closer, I'm just going to stand here and be very still." He's talking to her in that low, soothing voice generally used with easily startled animals - mostly because chasing a teenage girl through the streets is generally a bad idea no matter what your very good reason is.

"You're a wizard?" he asks gently after a moment. "Or a witch or a mage or... I have no idea what word you usually use around here."

[nounicorns]

Okay. Standing still. Standing still is something. She can deal with this. And he knows about her sparkly mag-

She did not just think of it as sparkly magic. Stupid Aaron Barnam, whoever he is.

"Okay, you know what? You can stay there, and I'm not going to call them yet. But just in case..." She quickly punches in 911 on the keypad, and keeps her thumb over the send button. "All I have to do is push one button, and even if you shoot me the cops can track the GPS on my phone. So you don't do anything, and I won't do anything, and I can be alive and you can not be in prison. Everybody wins. So yeah."

She takes a deep breath, because she's calm and collected, and totally not about to panic. "And I think the word's sorcerer," she says, "but I don't really know for sure. I'm kinda new at this. And I should not have said that to the guy that has a gun. Crap. Um. You were gonna explain."

[w_for_wizard]

Harry nods a little, swinging his gaze from the phone in her hand to her face. Slightly twitchy baby sorcerers are nothing he can't deal with, but he kind of has to wonder how these things happen to him.

...not firing guns in alleyways would probably help with that.

"I wasn't shooting at anyone. I just enchanted a coat for my friend. All sorts of shields, so it's like a bulletproof vest, but more effective and slightly less obvious, and... it seemed like the most effective way to test it. I could go get the coat and show you, if you want."