capeandcowllogs | ( open like a box of donuts )

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( open like a box of donuts )

WHO: Dexter Morgan |

dextirpate and YOU.
WHERE: HARDWARE STORE. Or outside, before/after he gets on with his shopping. You decide!
WHEN: Today, why not.
WARNINGS: TBA
SUMMARY: Inner monologues give way to discovering the Death Count power. TIME TO GO SHOPPING. Feel free to have your character recognize from the MAC or Police Force, whateva whateva.
FORMAT: Empty... like him (by which I mean whatever you prefer)

( BLABLABLA JUST SKIP THIS PART )
I felt it. When I first stepped into that cold, metal room... I knew something was over. My resources, my plans and files, the game with the Ice Truck Killer. Those voices in the network were helpful, but none of them knew what I really needed. Directions to your brand new single room apartment can only give you so much guidance.

And Harry's code never mentioned anything about interdimensional travel.

It's amazing how time flies when you're trying to figure out what to do with your life.

It's been over a month since he's been here. He's been lost and wondering what to do with himself, with the Dark Passenger. He's been quiet, that one, something Dexter hasn't quite decided whether he should be thankful for or worried about, reminded constantly that he's in there somewhere, even if only because the machine somehow captured him and carved his name into the dog tag carefully tucked away in his pocket.

He isn't sure how it happened. He was lost in his thoughts as he walked down the street, weighing the pros and cons of trying to figure out where his purpose went as long as he had a job. The spell was broken when he finally paid attention to one of the many strangers on the street, a man in his forties wearing his proudly slicked back hair. Pink shirt, thin glasses and an air of dignity in his pressed lips and tipped chin. Eyebrows creased as he looked for something in his very expensive cellphone. Dexter was focused on something else entirely, sitting right above the man's head.

There it is. That number.

It was telling him something. Was he the only one who could see it? He definitely was the only stranger on the street staring at him with something short of a gawk. He stopped and turned quietly to watch him walk away in the company of his very expensive and demanding phone. Something told him that was what he had been looking for. Not just the number, but what it represented.

Maybe the Dark Passenger didn't leave him after all. He just went out for a walk and waited for him to catch up.

How could he say no?

⚫

OKAY YOU CAN READ THIS INSTEAD

August 19th. It's been a week since he followed that man and grabbed his wrist. Something unexpected happened, and yet... something in him almost knew it was coming. He saw the faces of two young girls, blond with blue eyes. Tied down, probably screaming. It didn't take a genius to understand what was happening -- what had happened. The number above the man's head told a story that he had seen in quick flashes. It was invigorating. He felt... relieved. Satisfied.

Yes, a lot was taken away from him, but something was given in return.

He can see killers. He can see what they've done without having to dig through files and photographs and carefully covered up bureaucracy.

Of course there still has to be some investigation involved. That's why he finally bit the bullet and signed up to be in forensics after multiple invitations...

But for now, it's time to redecorate.

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There are things that can be deduced about the girl examining the wall dedicated to various kinds of rope. She's small enough to be in the eleven-thirteen year old range; fair skinned; blind, if the walking cane and the way she touches every rope on display without looking at them are any indication. And then there are those candy-cane horns on her head, which could be either a part of a silly costume or a sign of an imPort.

Her glasses are red, but they're not as opaque as they appear--her eyes just happen to be the exact same color.

All in all, she's just a kid in a hardware store. Nothing too exciting. She does seem to be getting pretty frustrated with the store's selection, though, considering the way she keeps going back and forth between the various ropes on display and frowning.

Dexter can be very focused and observant, yes, but his attention on the outside world is practically muted when he dives into his own thoughts, either to imagine how his plans with play out or the consequences they will have, should anyone notice one less depraved serial killer walking among them.

Blond girls. Really. That's isn't even imaginative. But it's okay to start small, that's how it should be done. He's still getting the hang of things, a barely month-old imPort in a sea of year-long veterans.

He passes by Terezi's aisle on his way to gather a significantly smaller supply of shrink wrap than his average (tarting small, remember?). While thirteen year old girls are usually well out of his range of interests -- unless he has to impress his girlfriend (Rita -- he completely forgot about her until now. Some boyfriend he is.) -- her cane does manage to catch a glimpse of his consideration. Needless to say the glance turns into a double-take and stare at the horns and glasses, turning his head and shoulders to perpetuate a blatant observation.

No numbers dancing above her, though. Not until he looks for them.

"This is stupid," she can be heard to mutter irritably. All she wants is some good rope to tie up a jerk and interrogate him, and maybe also some rope that is suitable for tying nooses.

Apparently they just don't make it here like they do on Alternia.

She's oblivious to his stare, of course, and in fact is oblivious to his presence at all. She's gone from examining her options by touch to pulling them close to her face so she can sniff at them, which no doubt looks bizarre. It's a good thing that Terezi has never cared about how she looks.

Dexter is still standing there, hands in his pockets, brows creased with varying levels of intrigue and bemusement. A supposedly blind young girl with horns sniffing away at ropes... Not something you see every day, alternate dimension or not.

Safe to say that once he realizes he's actually come to a stop to observe her, he figures he might as well satisfy his curiosity. Take a chance, Dexter, who knows when you'll have it again. It's a whole new world filled with old and new possibilities.

The tone is casual, spoken out loud to show no ulterior motives, taking his time with a perfectly friendly approach.

"Need any help?"

Terezi lets the rope be for now to turn to face Dexter, at least in a vague sense--she's not looking directly at him. She simply assumes that he's an employee, since he's offering assistance.

"Is this all you've got?" She waves her cane at the wall of ropes and such, still looking faintly irritated.

He takes a moment to reply.

"I think so, but I'd be happy to ask." Hands are still in his pockets, even when he's close enough to pick up the ropes and inspect them himself. He'd rather figure her out instead. "What's it for?"

She grins, baring her teeth in the process. This is normal for her.

"I'm gonna make a rope swing, heheh!" And that is true in the most technical of senses.

The closer he gets, the better she can smell him, and she doesn't hide the way she sniffs at him like an animal trying to get a scent.

Dexter has no problem in properly frowning at that, calm but apparently bemused nonetheless. What a strange creature you are, Terezi.

"... What are you doing?"

"Wow, you're slow! I'm trying to shop."

And she's purposefully obtuse too. What a charming young lady.

Ariadne was having a weird week, to say the least. Being dumped in the City will do that to a person, she supposed.

But then there were the weird things she was seeing. She'd been told she would develop some kind of special "power" on her arrival - she figured it was the dreamsharing, without the PASIV, without the Somnacin. She could just go to sleep, and enter someone's dreams - practically anyone's. But what was starting to happen when she was awake, that was way more disconcerting. She was getting a weird feeling, mostly around Arthur and Eames. A niggling feeling in the back of her mind that something was wrong. Which was absurd, because there was nothing wrong with Arthur or Eames. They were her friends, her business associates. They were helping her get on her feet in the City, and she would trust them with her life - and had, in fact.

Sure, they were both kinda shady guys, with criminal connections, but they weren't people to fear.

So why was she uneasy around them?

Clearing her head was a good way to regain her perspective, she decided, so shopping for supplies was in order. After hitting up some art supply stores (on Arthur's generous dime), she found herself at the hardware store, the architect's second-best friend, looking at fiberglass pipes, nails, and wood glue.

One couldn't really say the supplies made available in a hardware store merited a lot of admiration, but the shelves reaching high earned careful observation from a man searching for very specific materials. Shrink wrap, hammers and blades, boards and construction gear, all came with variety and good deals, as long as he looked at the right corners. Sometimes this meticulous observation required him to take a couple of steps back, chin tipped up with his hands in his pockets.

Dexter bumped against Ariadne to no one's surprise but their own, turning immediately to offer an alert apology with appropriately arched eyebrows and a harmless hand.

"Sorry--" He threw in a smile, short of something sheepish, just to show how unintentional his distraction had been. All of it was fake, of course, a carefully automated response to perfectly normal social situations (as social this could get, anyway). With that taken care of, he was ready to step away and return his attention to its due place.

It would've been completely innocuous, except for the fact that the second she looked at the stranger who had just bumped her, Ariadne felt a wave of wrongness wash over her like a tide - a great, big, sick-making wave of alarm bells going off inside her. It came as such a shock that the items in her arms fell to the floor and before she even realized it, she was backing hastily away from him, her stomach roiling. "What the hell?" she demanded incredulously.

He was barely on his way to turn back to his respective side of the aisle when her reaction quickly put that to a stop. He raised a harmless hand again, not quite reaching for anything, and glanced down at the items still swaying to a stop. Another brief moment was spent staring at her, not quite sure of what to make of... this.

Should he ask if she was alright?

"... I'm clumsier than I thought." Right. Dry humor and another charmingly apologetic smile were much better. "Are you okay?"

"Oh god," she muttered, nearly backing into shelves of supplies, her fingers pressing into her temples. "What's... what's wrong with me?" It was pounding in her head, and she swallowed hard, not wanting to vomit.

"I don't know." Too literal, Dexter. His hand was still hanging midair idly and he was still trying to think of something. He couldn't just walk away. What would be the best way to evade this situation without being a remarkable (therefore memorable) jerk?

"... I'll get help."

"No. No, I'm..." She blinked, took a few deep breaths, straightened. It had been like being slapped, but now it had somehow...settled a little. Well, it certainly couldn't maintain like that forever. She had to function. Even if it was still difficult to look at him directly without getting a little woozy. It was as though her body were beginning to adjust to the new... whatever-it-was.

"I'll be okay, it was..." What was it? "You didn't... feel anything just then?"

There could be an entire inner monologue going on about his inability to actually feel anything, adding to the irony of her question, but all he gave her was an unaltered expression still trying to create some sort of solution for this situation.

"No." He wanted to ask if he should have (of course he should have). "Are you sure you don't want me to get help?"

She shook her head a little, but not much, for fear it would make her dizzy again or something.

It was dawning on her that this must be, well, a power of some kind, but what sort of power it was supposed to be, that was a mystery.

"I'm fine, really. I think I should just maybe sit down for a little bit. I'm sorry to be causing such a fuss - I'm usually not this much of a drama queen." She managed a faint smile in the man's direction.

The problem with having wild cats in your apartment was sometimes they destroyed the things you had for your domestic cats (much faster than the domestic cats could, at least). So Selina was picking up a few wood screws to make some minor repairs. Such a pain to have new furniture delivered when you had a full-grown leopard sleeping over.

For all he knew, she was just another woman shopping for completely irrelevant items. For all she knew, he was just another man who had already spent too much time looking for his.

Then he saw it. It wasn't intentional, it wasn't supposed to be, but a single number floated above her head, quiet, inviting. It was only supposed to be a passing glance, but now it was telling him more than he expected to know.

She's done it too, Dexter. She's next.

No. It was too soon. He hadn't even picked a place for the first one yet, and the Dark Passenger only called to him for one victim at a time. Had this place made him... different?

Dexter had more catching up to do than he thought.

"Hey, sorry." He showed her a perfectly harmless smile, even a little uncomfortable, probably untypical for a Cityzen. After the appropriate beat, he proceeded to tell her the name of the brand he was looking for. Manufacturers of the tools he used back home. "You wouldn't happen to know if they sell it here?"

She gave him a perfectly polite smile in return. At least he wasn't one of those creeps who recognized her from the tabloids. "Sorry, not really a tool person."

He looked at her, parted lips holding his breath, then exhaled with a drop of his shoulders.

"Right." He shook his head, smiling again, uncompromising and casual. "Sorry. I'm still pretty new here and you looked like you knew what you were looking for, so."

He played the part well more often than not.

"New here, huh?" That caught her attention much more than the question had. "ImPort?"

Another moment was spent in silence, as if thinking it through. He finally smiled, pointing in realization, still taking his time to answer.

"Yeah. That's the name. I read it somewhere."

Well, the slowness in replying was a bit odd. But some people were just a bit odd.

"Probably on the Network." She fished her comm out of her bag and showed it to him. "Have one of these?"

"Uh, yeah." Arched eyebrows looked down at it -- it was perfectly identical to his own. "I left mine in the apartment."

It could be a tracking device, for all he knew, and he didn't want (what were going to become) frequent shopping trips to go on record so easily.

He could give her a false name when showed her his hand, considering the number over her head, but she obviously had access to his introduction. It wasn't worth the risk.

"Dexter Morgan."

She smiled. And had a very firm handshake.

"Selina Kyle."

He noticed. He also tried to keep his concentration in one place when the physical contact brought him the expected visions (a gun in her hand, shooting someone in the head, judging from the aim). They were slightly underwhelming, but still there.

He let go, exhaling.

"How long have you been here? If that's okay to ask."

She nodded. "It's fine. Going on three years now."

Lily had just gotten a new dresser for her room and discovered that one of the types of screws she was supposed to receive in the box was completely absent. It didn't seem worth it to pack all of the pieces back in the box and get a ride back to the store just for the sake of exchanging the dresser for a new one, so the store had agreed to give her the screws needed at no extra cost so long as she showed her receipt.

While she was at it, she was picking up a small selection of nails and screws of various sizes on an errand for the Institute. She had samples of each type in little plastic bags with labels on each and a checklist. As she got what she needed, she'd put a little checkmark beside the item on her list with her pencil.

The oddest thing about her appearance on first glance was that she was a short fourteen year old with pale blonde hair hanging around a hardware store. Then there were her eyes - yellow in colour. The third odd feature was the hardest to see, because it was obstructed by a light scarf tied around her neck. However, a careful glance from the right angle might reveal that there was a metal collar around the girls neck that embedded itself right into her spine from the back.

"Hmm..." she said out loud, wrinkling her nose up slightly as she compared two screws that looked extremely similar to one of the ones in the plastic bags she was carrying for samples.

A blond girl. About the same age the other two he'd seen were, tied down and screaming. She was slightly paler than them, though, certainly not as grown out as the ones his new favorite killer had gone for in the past. He had to wonder, for a moment, if she'd be next, should the killer feel a need to hunt again. If her life would be another one of maybe dozens saved thanks to his very own Dark Passenger.

Wasn't it nice, to think of himself as something... heroic? It fit the theme. Welcome to the City, hero.

"Here's your receipt."

Dexter looked away, spell broken, and focused his attention on the paper being handed to him with his change (cash only, always, leave as little traces behind as you can). He thanked the cashier with a quick nod and wished them a good day, grabbing the plastic bag to get on his way.

With all of the tiny items in hand to purchase, Lily was on her way up to the cash register when a small child suddenly ran in front of her. The way she had to pivot to avoid smacking into the child sent several screws flying. They went skittering across the floor. One of them landed right at Dexter's foot, and another landed a few feet away.

"Ah!" Lily scrambled to pick them up. They were rounded enough and the floor was smooth enough that if someone stepped on them on this floor, they could fall.

Dexter whipped his head back at the sound of the girl dropping her items. He wasn't far away enough to simply glance and carry on with his day, was he? And she had successfully drawn his quiet attention before.

A few steps were taken in her direction to help her gather part of the scattered items. After that was done, he got back on his feet, wiping his hands on his sides.

"I think that's all of them."

Laura was inside the hardware store, standing next to a rack of about four thousand different size nails, looking from a small piece of paper she had half-crumpled in her fingers and back to the shelves. She was dressed in a black leather skirt and high black lace-up boots, her knees devoid of fishnets fora change, and a dark purple tank top, with various black bracelets on her wrists and her usual collar around her neck.

She was moving slowly along the rack, checking each number carefully as she searched for the nail that the shelf-kit she had waiting at home had lied about containing already. She looked fairly innocuous, in a slightly punk sort of way...but the number above her head was anything but.

It was more than a number, actually, apparently so high that the Dark Passenger had given up counting and simply labeled it with an impression.

Whoever she was, looking fairly innocuous in a slightly punk way, that girl had killed a lot of people.

Needless to say all Dexter could do was stare at her. For now.

One of the benefits...if it could be called that...of the enhanced senses she had inherited from Logan was that Laura actually knew when someone was staring at her. As long as they were close enough, she could smell changes in attitude, in location, even tell from heart beats.

So after a few more moments of carefully looking at each little box of nails, her nose wrinkled and she turned to peer at the man who was watching her, green eyes slightly narrowed.

"...Do you need something?"

Dexter's heartbeat could be misleading, barely unchanging and very befitting for someone who kept insisting that there was nothing in him capable of real emotion. He stood from tall places with open arms and closed eyes when he was young, in hopes that he could feel it speeding up in his chest... and nothing. He gave up after Harry caught him and made a proper show of the anxiety it caused him.

"No, sorry." The man waved his hand dismissively with a lopsided smile, probably even a bit apologetic. We wouldn't want to make anyone feel uncomfortable.

She watched her for another few seconds. He wasn't lying, that she could tell. She knew people tended to stare at her at times, more than likely from how she dressed, so finally she nodded her head faintly to him.

"It is fine." She answered, and then her gaze shifted back towards the nails. A few moments later, how lucky, she found a box of the ones she actually needed.

He flashed her one last perfectly harmless smile, turning his eyes away to fake interest in the materials displayed closer to him. Laura would be left alone with her unique description for now, but followed later.

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( open like a box of donuts )

INSIDE DA STORE welp this turned into a tl;dr on me

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Inside!

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I am so painfully late let me know if this isn't okay.

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