Miles swung his knife and very narrowly avoided impaling a girl his age.

The purple-haired teen let out a burst of inaptly timed laughter right after the blade skimmed just by her.

"Who the hell are you?" Miles snarled, heartrate still up in the air.

Before she'd answered the question, two boys emerged from the shadows. It wasn't very dramatic or frightening, but it was still disturbing to try and imagine how long the three of them had been there.

"Miles?" called Lia from the other side of the shop, worry lacing her tone.

"I'm fine," he replied, still staring furiously at the girl and her companions as he awaited a response.

"I scared you!" gasped the girl through her fit of stupidly hysterical laughter.

Miles wasn't laughing. "I almost killed you!"

"Naw," she said, trying to pull herself together. "You couldn't if you tried!"

Miles doubted that, considering the girl had only just managed to make it out of the way to avoid meeting an untimely end at the tip of Miles' blade.

"What are you doing here?" he asked. His voice had an edge to it that was sharper than usual, but it also suggested he was a little nervous.

"Same thing as you," said the girl. She opened her mouth to continue, but Lia appeared all of a sudden, face a muddle of confusion and concern.

"Do you know these people?" she asked suspiciously, shopping basket hanging on one arm as she stood beside Miles.

He shook his head.

"I'm Angelina, and this is Bates and Spike." She indicated to the two boys behind her as she said their names, and they did little but grunt in confirmation. Miles fought the urge to wrinkle his nose at their names. In comparison to the boys, Angelina had a peculiarly elegant name, but her cropped purple hair and icy eyes together took the shape of a constant warning. She looked threatening; even more so when she crossed her arms over her chest. "Where've you two been staying since this started?" For the first time, Angelina's gaze flitted to Lia.

Lia said, "Here and there," at the same time Miles said, "None of your business."

There was something disquieting about this encounter with Angelina's small group and he couldn't pinpoint why.

"Oh," said Angelina brightly. "Well, we've been in the city the whole time. It's real dangerous here, you know."

Lia seemed to pick up on something in Angelina's tone, because she defensively straightened up. "We can handle it, thanks."

Angelina hummed a single soft note of thoughtfulness.

Before any more words could be shared, Miles dumped the clothes he'd found for himself into Lia's basket, which was nearly full already. "We're going," he said, leaving no room for argument.

Angelina's face fell. "What, that's it? You're going?"

"Is there a reason you'd like us to stay?" Miles examined the unmoving expressions on Bates' and Spike's faces and looked away again immediately, intimidated both by their scowls and their height.

"We've hardly found anybody alive in this," Angelina said. "Doesn't it make sense to talk to people you meet?"

Miles ground his teeth, considering that she actually had a point. Despite it, he didn't want to keep the others in the library waiting too long and he was reluctant to get involved with Angelina's group for reasons he couldn't even find. "No, really. We're going."

Anger flared in Angelina's piercing eyes, and she tossed her head once to shift her hair from her eyes. "You're making a mistake. Allies are more valuable than enemies."

"You're not our enemy," Miles said, nudging Lia towards the door. "We're just not working together."

Angelina gave a small shrug. "Whatever. I bet you'll be regretting that when you need people on your side."

"This isn't a fucking war," said Miles as he turned his back on Angelina and her two friends. "We don't need numbers, we need to make smart decisions."

And involving themselves with Angelina's group was not a smart decision.

"Let's go," he muttered to Lia, grabbing her hand once more to pull her quickly through the store.

At first Lia stumbled, but then she caught up to him, falling into step behind him as the made for the door. "What was that for?" she hissed.

Miles could practically feel Angelina's gaze boring into his back. "I know those types of people," Miles said. "I was friends with people just like that before they were all fucking Altered. We don't want to get involved."

They exited the shop and were once again showered heavily with the pouring rain. Lia protectively held the plastic shopping basket against her chest so the rain didn't wet the clothes it contained. "We hardly spoke to them! They could be nice people!"

"Did they look like nice people?"

"Oh," scoffed Lia, voice small beneath the thundering rain. "We aren't living in 2020, Miles. And you're still judging people by their appearance?"

Miles guiltily admitted to himself that Lia was right - that had been a stupid mistake on his behalf. But it wasn't just how Angelina and her friends had looked that had put Miles off. "Trust me, Lia. She was trying to pick a fight. You heard everything she said."

Miles let go of Lia's hand when they finally reached the shelter of the library patio once more. They both slowed, Miles pushing his wet hair off his forehead and readjusting his grip on his knife. He'd likely never get used to running with the thing - it felt dangerous and unpredictable. It probably was.

"In the end," Miles said, walking swiftly to the library door, which hung so slightly ajar from their exit. "It doesn't matter. We don't need more group members and we don't need to work with anybody."

Lia looked unconvinced but followed Miles through the door without a word of protest. Once both of them were through, Miles closed the door behind them and leaned back against it, letting out a heavy sigh. "Do you think we were gone long?"

Lia looked around for a clock. Even if she'd found one - which she didn't - none of them would work without electricity. "No, not too long. Not long enough for the group to get worried. Let's not take any longer, though." She let the translucent basket fall into her hands and she clasped the handles together only after checking that the clothes inside were mostly dry.

Miles couldn't wait to finally tug off his sopping clothes and change into something clean and warm and dry.

Lia and Miles walked to the unmoving escalator together and wordlessly ascended. Miles hoped nothing had happened to the group while they'd been gone, but the fact that he even had thoughts like that angered him. He wished he didn't have to be worried about leaving for twenty minutes, but he was.

Thankfully, when Lia and Miles reached the top of the escalator, the three other group members were fully intact and doing something Miles couldn't see from the distance. As they approached, all three of the others looked up, and the relief washed over their faces in unison.

"We found a board game!" Eira announced, leaning to the side so Miles and Lia could see a board on the ground, small playing pieces scattered across it.

"What the hell is a board game?" Miles murmured to Lia, but she wasn't listening.

"That's so cool!" Lia exclaimed with genuine excitement, running the last few lengths to the group and leaving Miles to jog after her without an answer. Lia dumped the basket of clean clothes down so she could lean over to inspect the board on the ground.

Aaron, Eira, and Percy were all seated in awkward positions around the game, dripping onto the floor and obviously trying not to ruin the board.

"What is it?" Miles asked as he reached their side.

"A board game," Aaron answered, his blue eyes sparkling as he lifted them to glance at Miles. "They haven't been made for like, twenty years. And this thing is old as."

"Fun, though," Percy said.

Aaron snorted. "You only say that because you're good at it."

Percy grinned. "I'm strategic."

Aaron looked back at Miles and gave a dramatic roll of his eyes to indicate his opinion on Percy's so-called strategy. Miles couldn't help but smirk at the fact that such a petty matter was the subject of conversation. It was much better than talking about the dark state of the world currently, though, so he was happy enough.

Lia lifted the basket and tipped all the dry clothes over the large, circular white couch that nobody had yet sat on, thanks to their saturated state. "We've got heaps of clothes here. Take what you think will fit and we can all finally get changed."

"Where are we changing?" Aaron asked, scrambling to his feet to go inspect the clothes.

Lia thought about that for a little while as she too sorted through the clothes to find something for herself. "There's a room for the library staff over there," she said and pointed vaguely in the direction of the door on one of the library's walls. "Eira and I can go change in there. You guys can change in this room."

"What, together?" Percy sounded disgusted.

Lia gave him an expression that suggested she was both irritated and dumbfounded by this remark. "I don't know, Percy, figure it out."

They did figure it out. Once everybody had found their fit of clothes, Lia and Eira went to change in the staff room, and the boys separated, each moving behind a different bookshelf to use as cover.

The three boys finished changing quickly. Miles knew that he, for one, took hardly thirty seconds to strip off his sopping, too-big clothes and tug on the new, clean ones. The new clothes were warm and his size, and though they smelled like the store shelves they'd been sitting on for so long, Miles was just relieved to be dry again.

Once he was finished, he wasn't quite sure what to do with his wet clothes, so he simply carried them - holding them as far away from himself as possible as to not get himself wet again - out from behind the shelf and found that Aaron and Percy had also finished changing already. Miles dumped his soaking clothes in the pile alongside theirs.

Percy and Aaron were seated on the couch in the room, sharing an awkward silence that didn't disperse even when Miles seated himself too.

Five seconds passed in silence - the girls still hadn't come out yet, which meant they were probably still changing.

Then, suddenly, Percy glanced at Miles and said, cheeks red, "Hey, dude?"

"Yo?"

"I know this is stupid to ask right now, but I have a question-"

"Just ask, Percy."

Percy cracked his knuckles nervously. "How do you - um - get a girl to... like you?"

Miles was surprised that Percy had managed to choke out the question. "I..." he had to think about it. "Sorry, man. I wouldn't know."

Percy looked confused.

Miles said, "I'm not into girls."

Percy looked at Aaron, hoping desperately that he might have the answer instead.

"Huh?" It took Aaron to process that Percy was searching for an answer. "Oh." There was a pause; longer than the pause Miles had left. Aaron tried not to catch anybody's gaze, pressing his back hard against the couched and bouncing his knees. "Sorry, Percy. I'm on the same boat as Miles."

Miles eyed Aaron, suspecting that this might just be the first time Aaron had said something of that nature out loud, exposing a whole part of himself. Except to Eira, perhaps, who seemed to know everything there was to know about her brother. There was something wonderful about this moment, and not only because Aaron had just said something that had clearly been a weight on his shoulders for so long. But because he was handling it considerably better than Miles had when he'd come out a long time ago, and a significant part of Miles was proud of the blond even though he wasn't sure if it was his place to be so that way.

"Both of you don't like girls?" Percy let out a distressed groan and ran his hands through his hair, positively devastated that his question couldn't be answered.

Miles felt a little bad. "Just a general rule," he said, "but you can't really make somebody like you."

Percy defeatedly stuck out his tongue.

"But if she likes you too," Miles added, "I'm sure you'll know."

It was then that the sound of soft chatter and laughter could be heard over the sound of a door opening and closing again, and then Lia and Eira strolled back into sight. Lia was holding the shopping basket from earlier, and in it were the girls' dripping clothes.

Percy fell silent.

"You guys finished quick," Lia commented as she dropped the basket beside the boys' wet clothing pile.

"Yup," said Aaron.

Eira looked suspicious.

Lia didn't seem to notice. "Well," she said. "Have you got any spare player pieces for the board game?"

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+2199 Words.

If Miles' coming-out experience was anything as chaotic and laughable as mine, he's well within his right to be darn proud of Aaron for handling it so well <3 Yay for Aaron!