Dayshift 49: Bill's Hardware
An effort at movement only shuffled the Digimon around, leaving one place to end in another. A hardware store wasn't the worst she could think of, but it still rankled. The humans outside, nurses and otherwise, that were almost panicking at the natural movement of rain was irritating, more fierce a sensation than she would have believed
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Claude returned the smile.
"Something like that," he admitted in a low voice that matched the stranger's. "It's nearly impossible to make use of anything under normal circumstances, but I figured it couldn't hurt to get a better feel for what's here."
He turned away from the glass case, searching out some of the larger objects available. There were a few shovels for sale -- those made decent weapons, especially if you just needed something hard and sturdy to hit things with. That was what he'd used last time, though he was certain there were better items available if he really needed to make the best of what was in here in the future. But that was why he was here.
"Is this your first time in town?" he asked the other blond as he slipped his hands into his pockets. "I don't think I've seen you before."
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Cloud nodded. "Yeah, I haven't been here but a few days and this is my first time out here. It's friendlier than I expected." He said this with a smirk that conveyed the exact opposite. The only real explanation for the townspeople's current attitudes involved events that he hadn't been around for.
No sense skipping out on greetings, of course. He held out his hand. "Cloud Strife."
The other blond had revealed himself as a patient with his smile, something none of the townsfolk had given him all day. He didn't feel as bad scouting the place for something to snatch for that reason.
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When the other patient offered his hand, Claude reached out grasped it in a firm handshake and a friendly smlie. "Claude Kenni. Nice to meet you...Cloud." It was an unusual name, to be sure, not to mention it sounded kind of similar to his own. The fact they were both blond-haired and blue-eyed hadn't escaped him, either, but none of that seemed worth outwardly commenting on at the moment.
"I'm not sure if you heard about what happened last week," he added, "but things can get pretty crazy if we're caught outside the Institute after dark. That's partly why I'm in here." Claude didn't want to seem overly pessimistic, so he gave a small shrug in an effort to seem more at ease about it. "You know, just in case."
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"I did hear. Thankfully, I had a friend here already when I arrived. Well, I'm not thankful that she was stuck here, but you know what I mean." He imagined this sort of thing was said often between patients in this place. Oh, you're here too? I'm glad. Except not really, but yeah. No one wanted to be stuck here without anyone else they knew around.
He had a point about the locale, of course. If a zombie invasion was to happen, this would be one of the best places to be. At least here they'd be able to arm themselves. Maybe those pliers over there... No, he needed to look for something small he could slip into his shoe.
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Either way, it sounded like Cloud had already been given the run-down of the dangers of Doyleton. With that in mind, it was easy to see why he might be interested in the hardware store too.
"Yeah, I get what you mean," he said with a nod before his expression grew a little more curious. "Do you have a lot of other friends who're in town too, then?"
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"Yeah, there's a few of us. We all arrived at similar times, it seems." With other complications, of course. Yuffie had been here before all of them, along with a couple Turks, and he had apparently been there before even though he didn't remember. He just wasn't going to bother Claude with all the details, friendly as he was.
It was starting to get late, meaning they'd either be led back to the buses soon, or they'd be faced with hordes of undead. ...The fact that he had to take a moment to decide which was worse should have bothered him more than it did.
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There was still so much they didn't know, but the answers were definitely out there somewhere, Claude was sure.
Still, it was nice to hear Cloud had people around whom he could rely on. The fact he was already aware of the disasters that could happen in Doyleton after dark was a good indicator of that. "I wonder if I've ever run into any of them before," he said. "Sometimes it's funny how interconnected some of the people here are."
Claude casually began to move down the aisle, taking note of some of the hammers on display. Even if he'd wanted to outright steal something while no one was looking, he doubted he would have been able to sneak anything useful past the nurses and onto the bus.
"Do they have shops like this where you and your friends are from?" he asked while looking at everything on display.
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...There. Some of the screwdrivers on a nearby display just might be small enough for him to sneak out with. Something that small wasn't actually going to be all that useful, but that was really only half the point. Cloud wanted to sneak out with something just for the sake of sneaking out with something. Stick it to the man and all that.
He took a few steps toward a display across from it, bending over as if incredibly interested, but at the same time knocking lightly into the shelf with his target. He reached back as if to brace himself, and in the process slipped a very small screwdriver up his sleeve, letting it fall toward the elbow, where the flannel shirt would help keep it concealed. Then, because he knew any movement toward a shelf would have drawn attention, he made sure a couple others fell to the floor before jumping back and holding both hands off with the palms out so that the nearby nurses could see he wasn't holding anything.
"My fault! My fault." He made no move to pick them up, because he knew a staff member would stop him, and stepped back to allow a glowering store worker to clean up for him.
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Regardless, he didn't get a chance to ask. Instead, Cloud leaned toward some tools, something having caught his eye, apparently. Claude turned to get a better look, but was surprised to see him knocking a couple of screwdrivers onto the floor. At first, it had been easy to attribute it to a simple mistake, even if the guy didn't seem like the sort who'd go bumping into things. After all, Claude hadn't exactly been the epitome of coordination today, either, so he wasn't really in any place to pass any judgment.
But a subtle movement caught his eye, and in the next moment Claude realized he'd let one of the screwdrivers slip down his sleeve. He doubted any of the nurses or store workers were standing close enough to see it, and Cloud's technique had been natural enough for it to pass unnoticed by anyone who was just glancing over in passing.
Still, watching him do it made his stomach give a slightly uncomfortable turn, even though he doubted Cloud was the first patient to steal something from one of the stores. Hell, Claude had contemplated shop-lifting his first day in Doyleton. Not only that, but he'd more or less stolen some things himself once the zombies attacked last week. Yet he'd come to believe the townspeople were victims in all this as much as they were. That was why stealing in the day put a bad taste in his mouth as much as taking something from a fellow patient would. Desperate times called for desperate measures, certainly, but...well, he wasn't so sure why it would be so imperative for Cloud to get his hands on a screwdriver when there weren't that many materials back at the institute for them to work with.
He held back a sigh and slightly stepped back from where the tools had fallen to the ground, glancing over toward where the rain was pounding against the windows. What Cloud did wasn't any of his business, and Claude had no desire to turn him in. It was just sad, this entire situation they were in.
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The fact that he was also reminded far too much of Nibelhiem didn't make matters any better. What was that about a fire? No, we've always lived here, you must be mistaken. What was that about zombies? No, we haven't seen anything but hooligans.
And on that note, it looked like the blame for any damage was being placed on them, as if it wasn't enough that those who'd been there the previous week had to fight for their lives. Now they had to receive dirty looks just for trying to survive. No, Cloud didn't feel bad for taking just a small screwdriver after all that. It probably didn't cost more than a couple of gil, or the equivalent of. Not exactly grand larceny.
He noticed Claude didn't look all that cheerful all of a sudden, and wondered if the other blond had at least seen what he'd done. If he had, was he really that bothered by it? Cloud couldn't even find it in himself to feel guilty. "What about you?" he asked just to break the silence. "Do you have any friends here?"
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He wondered what it was about Expel that had gained Landel's attention. Did he know about everything that had happened with the Ten Wise Men? Claude couldn't imagine why else he would have bothered capturing any of them. But, then, if that was the case...what else did he know? And did he capture other people for similar reasons?
Claude thought about giving the names of his friends in case Cloud had run into any of them today, but part of him decided to hold off for now. They had just met, and while Cloud hadn't done anything to suggest he was an ill-meaning person, Claude wasn't inclined to share that kind of information with him at that particular moment. It wasn't his usual style, but after some of the things he'd been through lately, he didn't think his feelings were unjustified, either.
"It makes you wonder how Landel manages to take people from so many worlds," he said instead. "It can't be easy, and yet it seems like we get new folks almost everyday."
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When Cloud thought of beings from other planets, the first thing to come to mind was Jenova, which kind of took some of the intrigue away. But if they were friends, then the circumstances couldn't be nearly the same, and he did want to know more.
"Were you the alien visitor, then, or were they? Do you look much like each other?" Everyone was the same species here, that much was clear, but he knew there would be others like Red XIII who'd been changed from their original form in order to better fit in. It was strange just thinking about it. Hell, maybe Claude didn't even look like that where he came from.
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