Ava walked down the darkened side street, heading back towards her temporary residence. To her left and slightly ahead her scorpion puppet clacked noisily against the stones underfoot, it's deadly tail wrapping protectively around it's puppeteer. Ava's right hand rested against the large stinger, as if she was being escorted by a genteel suitor. She much preferred the scorpion.

A boy, Ava estimated around her own age, walked into the alley just ahead of her. No good, had he seen her just now? Even if he hadn't, the scorpion puppet would raise enough questions. She should silence him, that way he wouldn't go about starting strange rumors about a girl with a scorpion. Ava lifted her hand from her escort's cold arm. The speed of her scorpion's strike would shred the skin from her hand should she be touching it.

The boy called out to her, commenting on her puppet, but mistaking it for a 'pet'. The girl set her hand back on her puppet's unfeeling skin. No, not a pet, just another dead puppet. She wouldn't kill him for seeing her. He'd done nothing wrong. The gray girl walked past the boy, her large puppet climbing on the side of the walls to get by. A few feet past, she stopped for a moment to curl her scorpion's tail about her again. She half-turned her face back, just enough to look at the boy out of the corner of one eye. "Thank you," she said with an absolute lack of emotion or sincerity, and she turned and continued walking.