Akirai stood as soon as her unexpected customer had left the store, the chime placed above the door playing softly as it fell closed.
She yawned a bit and grabbed her bag as well as the 200 credits she´d earned from this small transaction and left the store, stepping out into the now repaired street.
As this was a very small city, if it could even be called that, there weren´t many people wandering around, in fact she barely saw anybody, although that could be because she lived at the edge of town.
She felt a bit of dread start to pool in her gut, it would be the first time in a while that she would walk around openly, among other people, she severly disliked crowds, or maybe just people in general.
She tapped on her wrist watch, smart little thing it was, and pulled up a digital map, she needed clothes and she needed to find a store that sold them.
The map showed that she was going to walk for a bit to get there, she frowned, great more people.
She hurried there, hoping to avoid as many people as possible, letting her eyes wander around the streets and houses, the farther she got the more life she saw, be it Beast or man.
Akirais eyes lingered on a few Beasts more than others.
Large spiders, towering over their contractors, ladybugs in bright colours and ruby eyes, dogs with spikes on their backs and claws gleaming in the dim sunlight.
She felt as if she was on an expedition into an uncharted land, which she´d had the pleasure of doing once before in another life.
Everything was new, a danger, or an aid.
Although, they were more likely to be a danger, a threat, a fact that her brain wouldn´t let her forget.
Were the claws of the giant dogs, resembling their ancestors more and more the closer she looked, poisoned, were they hooked, how sharp were they?
Were the spiders fangs dripping with venom? Could they be used to create cures?
Could the ladybugs carpaces be used as armor?
So many questions were left unanswered as she made her way down the streets, keeping away from particularly bright Beasts or people, shying away from loud noises and slinking in the shadows when she could.
It was loud, so, so loud, and she was once more reminded why she prefered the wilds over human settlements, they went against so much of her instincts, hard earned lessons disregarded and caution thrown to the wind in the face of supposed safety.
Growing up in the wild had done her no favours of fitting in with other people, not that she normally minded, but in situations like this it became a problem.
Because it meant that her hackles were raised and that she could nearly feel the goosebumps coming, it meant that she had to force herself not to slink away into a quiet corner and it meant that with every passing glance on her person, that a shiver went down her spine.
Maybe she was being over sensetive, but there wasn´t much she could do about it other than hurrying along and getting whatever she needed done as fast as possible.
She had always hated supply runs.
It made her skin crawl and she had long since stopped questioning if that was her long ingrained instincts or her general dislike for humans and what others called social anxiety that made her this uncomfortable around large amounts of people, of colour, of noises in general.
It isn´t that loud in nature, not this bright unless there´s mortal danger.
Her eyes darted around, jumping from lamp post to shop window, from person to person, child to man, babe to woman, made her asess their danger level towards her.
She held her partner tightly, not enough to harm her, but enough to ground her and force her fight or flight instincts down, with practise, but not with ease.
She saw signs, coloured brightly with advertisment on them, a new reopening of a shop, or a sale somewhere.
She pursed her lips as someone bumped into her on the now bussy roads, forcing herself not to spin around and defend herself from the threat, instead she focused on something else- on vendors across the street, trying to sell their wares to passerbys.
She wasn´t far from her goal, and she prayed that it was empty, or at least not packed with people, she truly just wanted to get the clothes and get back.
She had barely been around people for more than an hour and her paranoia was already screaming at her to find cover somewhere, because the were loud, because they´d attract beast to their location, because she didn´t know them and didn´t know if they were reliable as teammates, didn´t know if they were backstabbers.
She bit back a groan- or maybe it would have been a whine, slunk into an empty corner between a few houses and closed her eyes, squeezing them shut, she breathed in and out, in and out, and tried to squash the accumulating panic down.
She wouldn´t say she was safe, but she would say that the wasn´t in imminent danger at the moment.
Lynna whined softly, a noise she didn´t think a moth could make, and it helped bring her panic down, and her soft fur beneath her fingers worked better than most things she´d tried to calm herself down with before.
Akirai was a lot of things, and broken was among them, not shattered, but broken, fear and paranoia overwriting normal thought, learned through hard lessons from nature and humankind, her parents were curel, the caretakers in the orphanage neglectfull or scorning.
"Host, are you alright now?" Sylvie asked, being the last straw to strip away the panic for the moment, she shook her head softly and smiled down at her partner.
She sighed, leaning against the cool wall of a house dowsed in shadow and sighed, loosening her grip on her partner slightly, "Yeah, I think I´m fine now, thank you, both of you."
She breathed in and out, feeling slightly sick, but not downright nausious like she often did after moments like this one.
Lynna chirped happily and nudged her, not unlike a cat would.
"It´s my duty, Host, now might I sugguest you finish whatever buisness you have quickly?"
"Ah." Akirai ackknowledged and exited the ally, picking up her pace and trying to find her goal.
She saw it after another short walk, a shop with a sign in front of it "Spider Paradise", that was the place she needed to go to.
She hoped that this would be over quickly.