Douglas walked briskly (as if he ever walked any other way, unless he was really in a hurry) some distance from the water, his gaze trained on the ground. He looked as if he was waiting for something out of the ordinary to happen, as he would glance around the area at random intervals, his quick grey eyes gleaming eerily in the evening half-light.

He was pacing, in very wide circles, so that it would feel like he was going somewhere. He couldn't go very far - he knew he'd have to check back at home soon,... but at least the circles let him feel like he could actually leave. He was getting so damn sick of this whole mess,... couldn't it be over yet? All this wasted time...

Ooh, look. Somebody pacing in neurotic circles. Beautiful. If she played this right, she could really mess with him...or at the very least, really irritate the hell out of him (well, that was really all you could hope for with older men. Sigh.).

For reasons known only to herself, Cassandra had parked her motorbike in a rather concealed location, behind some thickish shrubbery. Now, she hopped onto her beloved vehicle. You could tell it was beloved because it was extremely large and shiny, and ran well. She was, after all, a motorcycle mechanic (did cars, too, but fancied herself a motorcycle mechanic).

Can Douglas outrun a motorcycle? He had warning by the rumbling of the engine, but that machine is coming at him at faster-than-neckbreak speed.

Douglas can't outrun a motorcycle any more than he could participate in an international comedy festival.

He looked up sharply, upon hearing the roar of the engine. He stopped pacing.
Who would be racing so fast, out here? They may not be able to see me,... if they aren't careful, they might very well
hit
me...

He glared at the motorcycle and its rider. Suddenly, there were six Douglases, in a straight line. A classic trick, really. It would be difficult to hit the real one, considering that, all of a sudden, he was standing inches from the water. He wasn't even part of the line, but he watched with cold interest as the machine approached it.

Bah. That is so the oldest trick in the book.
Illusions obviously. She plowed straight through the line, looking around all the while for the real one...aha! There he was, by the water! Pretty quick, for an old man.
As soon as she'd gone through the line of false Douglases, she made a hairpin turn, sending up a spray of sand and heading for the real one.
As she rode straight toward him, she let out a high-pitched, shrieking sound, very like a battle cry.

So this is deliberate, he thought, with a very faint frown. This wasn't as surprising as one would think. There were probably a few people who would, given the chance, try to kill him. Ineffective.

He raised a sandstorm, into which he vanished. It was partly a distraction, and partly to - hopefully - confuse the motorcyclist to drive into the water. He was standing behind the motorcycle, and in front of it was the sandstorm.

This is a waste of my time. I should finish this quickly.

Cassandra was very quick on the uptake. This was partially because she was...well, quick, and partially because her antennae picked up vibrations and smells and other interesting bits of information.

So she hit the brakes (that motorcycle could stop on a dime) and then hit reverse.

The man was proving a challenge, though, which was great fun.

Her aim, by the way, was not to kill.

Damnit.

He glared. A thought current in his mind right now was going over any enemies he'd made, and trying to decide which of them would be so crude as to try and run him down like this. He wasn't coming up with anything, and his frustration was growing.

Well, I am not safe on dry land at the moment, he thought, and was soon standing in the (cold, cold, cold) water, up to his waist. He shot a sharp look at her... him... whoever it was. This was going on far too long. And he was standing in the icy unsanitary water,...
His sharp look, with a spell attached of course, pierced the rear tire of the motorcycle as if it had been slashed.

Try driving with that.

"BASTARD!"

Well, that's funny. Does a disgruntled teenaged female fall on that list of enemies?

That question might have to be left until later, because the motorcycle flipped, and the rider went flying. She tumbled over a few times on the sand, and then lay very still. Her bike lay some yards away, its wheels spinning.

She didn't appear to be alive.
She was, though...and she wasn't done yet. She let her glamour fall, for all the world as if she'd lost consciousness or died. Her antennae were now completely visible.
Hopefully, it would spark his interest. If not, she'd chase him.

He waded out of the water (no fast-forward motion this time), and spent half a moment trying to brush some of the water off his clothes. He kept an eye on the rider, his mouth set in a thin, firm line. His eyes were caught by the antennae. I was not aware I'd pissed off any of the fae, he thought, then passed it off, One doesn't necessarily need to piss them off to gain their attentions.

He approached cautiously, keeping a distance of about five feet between them.
I wonder if I've killed it, he thought, suddenly fascinated by the 'creature'.

Still no movement. No apparent breathing. No apparent pulse (but pulse isn't exactly apparent anyway).
Cassandra waited, resisting the urge to let her antennae twitch to get more of his scent.
He smelled altogether too clean (except for the water), which was very interesting indeed.

Interesting, he frowned, coming closer. Well, he wouldn't know if it was dead until he had had a better look. He hadn't had the opportunity to do an in-depth examination of one of this kind. He'd never seen one before, though he could recognize it. It occurred to him that he could probably learn quite a bit from such a creature.

But only if it was dead.
He went up to it, and poked it with his foot.

Now, last time I checked, poking someone with your toe isn't a valid way to check if they're alive or not.

Aaaaaand...

Nothing. That's not close enough yet, so Cassandra bided her time.
She thought about what she'd do once he got close enough. Flipping over and biting his face off was high on the list...but he had such an amusingly peevish face...one of those 'so disagreeable, it's cute' things. It wouldn't do to remove it. Then he'd be left with absolutely no redeeming qualities.

After his nudge failed to provoke a reaction, he bent over her and placed his hand on her neck. This served a dual purpose. He'd placed his hand entirely over her neck, so he could check for a pulse. Also, if she/it was still alive, he would simply choke her to death. And voila, he would have a new specimen.

"I believe I have enough freezer room for this one," he murmured. He'd had to make do with an ordinary freezer you might find in anyone's basement. He had two, actually, but a third would be too much of a drain on the house's electrical system, so he had to make do with two freezers to store specimens.

Luckily for Cass, she had no pulse at the moment.
Freezer space...hmmm...
On the one hand, getting shut in a freezer didn't sound like a lot of fun. On the other hand, it wouldn't really hurt her, just make her mildly uncomfortable. Even if he locked the freezer, she could get out fairly easily.
And then she'd be inside his...wherever he kept his freezers. Where she could proceed to wreak havoc.
Fun.
So she continued playing dead.

She was, by the way, wearing her mechanic uniform. It wasn't a terribly warm evening, so most of her skin was covered for once. She'd landed face up, and there was a patch on the front of her uniform, reading: 'Steve's Auto Clinic'. Were Douglas to turn her over, he'd see that the back of the pale blue shirt said 'You'll swear by us...not at us!'

No pulse. Dead. Good, that saves some energy.

He gave the creature a quick once over. It didn't ocur to him she might be playing dead. To him, there was dead, not dead, and living dead. She was classified as clinically dead, to him.

No one is around. I don't have to move the body right away, he thought, Though it's best if it's done soon.

Moved by curiosity, he took hold of one of her antennae, and gave it a sharp yank to see how easily it would come off. If he caused it damage - that was too bad. He'd be more careful with the other one.

"OW!"
Faster than any dead thing should be able to move, she was upright with her teeth fastened tightly in Douglas' ear.
See how you like it, you little...skinny blond man! UGH!

He lashed out with his fist the second he realized she had her teeth in his ear. Having teeth set into one's ear is painful, but Douglas was somewhat immune to pain. He felt it, but didnt react to it, other than to remove its cause.
Not dead. Damnit. Now I have to kill it.

Should I risk damaging the soft tissue by burning it? he wondered, I will if it won't get its teeth off. Blasted thing.

Something that might worry Douglas later, besides the pain, is the fact that she broke the skin. I heard somewhere (though I'm not sure if it's true) that the only kind of bite that gets infected anywhere near as quickly as a cat bite is a human bite.

She let go, though, rubbing her jaw and sticking her tongue out at him.

"I'm not a bug! If you yank on my appendages, I'm going to yank yours! And it's not nice to stick people in freezers. You're a horrible person, and I hate you. What's your name?"

"It talks," he said dryly - well, of course it talked. He was being sarcastic.

"My name is Dr. Kael," he said. "Need I remind you that you were trying to run me over with your - machine. You may not be a bug, but you are the equivalent. I killed bugs as a child. You're only a larger one, though more interesting."

He watched her every movement, still trying to decide how he was going to end her life. It might prove difficult - he had no knowledge of her species' resistances.

Her antennae flicked about expressively as she spoke. Interesting...they weren't simply functional, but decorative/communicative as well.
"Sure does talk! I am not any kind of bug. You're an idiot. I kill bugs too, you know, it doesn't make you special."
I wonder if she's talking about real bugs, or metaphorical bugs like Douglas is.
"I wasn't trying to run you over, I was trying to spook you. Honestly, you people are no fun, thinking your lives are in danger all the time..."
She squinted her bright yellow eyes at him.
"You still want me to not be alive so you can put me in a freezer and look at me, don't you? Well that's too bad. You're perfectly welcome to look at me--on the outside, no cutting open--while I'm alive, though."

"I was not aware that you were not trying to kill me. Generally, one assumes that when a motor vehicle is speeding towards oneself, the driver intends to kill," he informed her, practically twitching to attack and kill this annoying creature. Silencing it would be nice. "An external examination provides little information. I can see all I would want to from where I am at this moment."

His wrist gave a flick, as if to remind him to check his watch. He resisted the urge, his gaze still trained on the girl. Thing. Whatever.
"Now, shall I kill you slowly, or quickly. I'll allow you to choose."

"Well exactly. And there's not much different on the inside either. I mean, if you really want to see which bits of the brain attach to these antennae and how they work and such, I have a brain scan of my brother, and it's a very clear view. But I'm not letting you kill me and cut me open."
She rolled her eyes at him.
"Anyway, that's the whole point, that you didn't know that I wasn't trying to kill you. You're not going to kill me at all, slowly or quickly."
She danced about barefoot on the sand for a moment, then looked intensely at Douglas again.
"What do you have in your freezer? Can I see?"

He was quite interested by the thought of a brain scan. He didn't have access to that kind of equipment anymore. Also, she just let him know that she has a brother - which would mean he was the same species, would it not? INteresting.

Seeming to forget about killing her, he stood up, brushing wet sand off his shirt.
"My freezer contains various specimens of different humans - mostly humans. I've obtained tissue samples from a half-dozen other species. The freezer keeps them from decomposing."

He'd answered her first question, so she asked the second again.
"Well can I see?"
Yay, cadavers.
"Of course, corpses aren't anywhere near as fun as live people."

"You ... wish to see the contents of my freezer."

He raised an eyebrow. Someone was asking to see his specimens who wasn't a law enforcement officer. This was new. "I don't know if that would be possible," he shook his head, "Seeing as the fewer who know of it, the better. I find that dead is more interesting than alive, unless one is studying the living processes. I prefer people dead when I'm studying them."

"I do!" She nodded rapidly, blue pigtails bouncing about her shoulders.
"I won't tell, promise. If I told, they'd start worrying about associating with dangerous people, and then they'd give me parents, and I wouldn't be able to do whatever I want anymore. So, you see, there is nothing in it for me."
She tilted her head. Studying them, eh?
"Ooooh. Studying them. I guess that makes sense. I like it best when people make lots of noise."

He thought about this for a moment. She was so eager,... and it would be a good excuse to get her to his house, if he ended up deciding to kill her after all. But somehow, it seemed like it would be a waste...

"Very well," he said slowly. "I suppose I can show you."
He looked at her for a few seconds, unblinking.

"I prefer it when they can't make a sound," he said. "Dead or not."

"Yay!" She clapped her hands, bouncing up and down.
True, her attempt to scare him had failed, but now she got to go to his house and look at his dead bodies!\
"But noise is fun. And I bet you could learn a lot about...something, if you studied what makes them squeal. ...I'd give you a ride home, if you hadn't given me a flat tire. Do you have another means of transportation, or is your...freezer space nearby?"

"Noise isn't fun. I already know how to make people 'squeal' as you put it. The hard part is making them shut up again afterwards," he explained, with a slight frown. Such cruel tendencies in such a young girl. It was almost admirable. He glanced briefly at her motorcycle.

"No means of transportation other than walking. It's not far. I keep the freezers in my basement."

"No, it's easy! You just sever their vocal chords, like you would a puppy. "
She chewed her lower lip, thinking.
"Or just tranquilize them. Now, see, distance isn't the problem. The problem is that I'm going to have to walk my bike...or find somewhere to stow it...you just hang on a second..."
She skittered off across the sand, pulled the machine (which, by the way, looked to weigh several times as much as she did) upright and wheeled it over to her shrubbery. Then she made it invisible and ran back to Douglas.
"Okay, I'm ready now!"

"I prefer to leave them as much intact as possible. And it would be a waste of tranquilizers. Duct tape is a simple solution."
He watched her roll her bike over, and make it disappear. Simple, but effective.
Much like duct tape.

"Very well, come along then," he said, beckoning to her and resuming his brisk walking pace towards his home.

"Well I don't."
Hee. Duct tape.
Most teenagers like duct tape, at least in my area.
"Yeah, duct tape is a simple solution for everything. Good for wallets, too."

She followed him, keeping pace, though she had to trot. He was taller, and seemed to be in such a hurry.