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[Rachel dreams. Warning: Major spoilers for the Animorphs series.]

Rachel's eyes snap open. She stares overhead for a few moments before glancing at a tree nearby.

Whether the hawk is awake or not, she's climbing out of her sleeping bag and stripping down to her morphing suit. She needs to run.

Horse morph would be fun. Cheetah would be better.

<You are already a nothlit, Rachel.>

In the middle of the night, there's a young woman taking a run down the main street out of Metropolis.

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"What are you even doing out here?"

Wasn't she leaving? Yes, she was leaving. But then this annoying guy offered a better distraction than running did.

"It's winter in the middle of the night and you're sitting on an offroad out of town with nothing in sight for the next ten miles. What are you doing here?"

"Enjoyin' the sights." He swigs from his flask then leers. "Have to admit, was pretty borin' until a few seconds ago when some barmy bint ran by...."

Leering reminds her of Dean, which isn't helping her mood anyway.

But it's distracting her something wonderful.

"I'm American," she points out blandly, crossing her arms and shrugging at him. "That means nothing to me. But I can guess what it means, which really insults you more than me since you've been hitting on me."

Tom snorts at the news that she's American - and tries his next sentences in a flat American accent.

"Oh, come on. Crazy chicks are hot in the sack. Any dude knows that."

Now he's really reminding her of Dean.

Rachel shakes her head and turns away again, running a hand through her hair irritably. "Thanks for the lesson. I won't keep you from your search for a nutcase anymore."

Another swig from his flask.

His accent is back to normal, his tone still amused. "And I won't keep you from tryin' to kill yourself anymore. Or whatever the feck you're doing.

"Thanks for the view," back to American, "baby."

"Going for a run is killing myself?" Rachel demands, not very good at walking away from a fight. She scoffs and drops her gaze to the cigarette and the flask. "Never mind - to you, anything more than a drive to the mini-mart for a new pack and bottle must seem excessive."

Ah, the penalties of being buzzed - it leads to poor word choice. Tom begins to frown: if he could tell her what he'd really been doing that night, how much work he put into it....Not as much work as his jobs with the Protectors, though, those heights he can never reach again....

The incipient frown slides away as Tom goes back to careless and confident.

"Frostbite, at the feckin' least." He shrugs. "And going for a run," he pauses to remember how she said it, "in the middle of the night on an offroad out of town when there's shit around for ten miles - feck, yeah, I'd say that's excessive by most standards."

Rachel smiled, bland and forced.

"Movement keeps the frostbite away."

No reason to explain that she isn't camped that far away either.

Tom didn't know that. Medical science still consists of leeches in large portions of his land, and ratskins heal so well they don't pay much attention to medicine anyway, except when it comes to diseases.

His response - the first genuine one he's given - is an interested, "Does it? Huh."

And then a final swing of his flask, which he slides into his back pocket. Wen might be interested in that bit of info - he's always trying to improve his mind.

Rachel blinks and offers a brow. "Uh, yeah. Duh. Why do you think people are supposed to exercise when it's cold? It makes your heart pump blood faster."

Tom gets only vaguely how those two things relate, but he's not about to say that.

His words come out in a bitter grumble. "S'posda exercise-- feck, you stay inside when it's cold. 'Least we did back home."

Of course nobody does things the way they're supposed to be done here. Even the simple things like that.

"Yes, but if you are outside, you better be moving."

There's another duh in that sentence, whether she says it or not.

She's also looking at him shrewdly. This is something like having a discussion with Lucy, when he isn't hitting on her.

Except for a lot more anger and sloshy stumbling thoughts.

Rachel's shrewd look meets a hard glower. "Well, go on, 'en - keep that heart pumping fast. Don't let me stop you."

A pause, then he puffs his chest out under her gaze. "'Less you're lookin' for some way other than running that'd do that...." The hitting on is half-hearted at this point.

Like he's trying to distract her, hide something.

"What are you?" she asks, and it's surprisingly soft, curious.

He's interesting now.

Tom looks confused, because he (thinks he) is usually much smarter than this.

A voice within hisses to smarten up. A ratskin can always be found out and punished - none of which matters here, but you keep what advantages you have.

"The feck're you on about?" he says, complete with glower.

"You live in a cold place and you have no idea that you need to move to keep warm?" She steps closer to him, lives twitching in amused curiosity now. "What are you? Do you shapeshift?"

If he's another dragon, that may make him tolerable.

You keep what advantages you have. She could say something to the police one day.

Tom looks at her like she's mad. He also doesn't take a step back from her. He's saved from having to respond to the first question by the third.

"Shapeshift?" His eyes narrow, as if mortally insulted. He sets his hand against his chest, palm flat, fingers close together: the Hand of Man, to ward off evil.

"I ain't no demon. An' I dunno why you think I am. I'm just," Tom shrugs, wishing he could map out all the assumptions that lead to Rachel's painfully accurate guess. "Everyone goes inside in winter. Maybe not farmers or shit, but I'm city-folk."

Another shrug, with a bit of a head-wobble. He's drunk. How good an explanation for their current confusion can she expect?

"I didn't say demon." That just makes him funnier, demons, and if she knew what the gesture meant, she might have laughed out loud. "I said shapeshifter. You wouldn't be the first one here, I've already met a few."

As for the city, he just gets another annoyed look for what Rachel sees as surpassing the question. She's from the 20th century, Santa Barbara, California, and she still knows what to do in the snow.

She's still walking toward him, too, arms crossed over her chest.

"It's what they are," Tom insists, like a good Fremmanish human. "Demons. Shapeshifters. Same thing."

He sucks in a breath at the news that she consorts with demons. "You've met...?" he murmurs thickly, shaking his head.

Only that prompts him to take a step back, and then another. Tom inwardly seethes at giving ground, but he's found his role now.

"It's hardly the same thing," Rachel replied with a roll of her eyes. "Lucy at the farm shifts from human to dragon and was born like that. There's another that can become any animal they touch."

Whoever that is.

"If that's not what you are, then what?"

She's grinning now, almost predatory, his giving up ground a sign of victory coming.

Lucy. That's almost enough to make Tom drop the act right now. But just because someone knows Lucy doesn't mean they're a friend of his. (And he's having fun, of all things. He wants to see what he can get away with. It's better than moping over what's gone.)

Any animal they touch? A tiny part of Tom remembers riding on the back of a stagskin, his sudden desire to be this strong, magnificent creature. Damnit, everyone gets the cool powers.

The rest of Tom goes into someone trying to regain his confidence. "You speak of dark magic and deviltry. And-- and keep your distance now."

"Oh come on, there is no way you can live in this place and talk about 'deviltry,'" Rachel snorted. "You probably think cars are mechanical demons or something, come on."

The pure confusion on his face at the discussion of cold weather comes back to her again. 'Dark magic and deviltry' sounds old, ancient, in a time ages before hers, in a time when weather would have been far more important to everyone.

Tom snorts a little at the mention of cars. "I know what they are now, well 'nough."

Well 'nough to steal them, at least.

He keeps his distance, wary and unsure, searching for some leverage poor human Tom could use to get out of this situation.

"And Lucy?"

Brows lifted high, utterly amused, and still getting closer. It's extra amusing, if only because he'd been hitting on her earlier and is running from her now.

Tom gives a bewildered shrug, because he's just a human, and Lucy's so outside his realm of experience he has no idea what to think about her.

Rachel's the important one. She consorts with demons! He should keep moving!

Admittedly, he hasn't broken into a run yet. Tom might change that soon. When he gets bored. (That Rachel could outrun him doesn't even enter his head.)

It doesn't even occur to Rachel that he's drunk or in any way inhibited, other than pure confusion at what she's saying or surprise at being caught. And that he's done arguing has lowered his level of interesting quite a bit.

"Watch out for frostbite," she warns with a smirk, backing away.

Tom stops, watching her warily.

"You gonna leave me be now, demon-friend?"

Rachel snorts, making a face at him. "Not so interested in my legs now, are you?"

Tom winces and looks down, as if embarrassed to ever think such a thing.

He almost smirked. He can appreciate the funny.

"No, ma'am."

She smirks, though she's rolling her eyes at the ma'am at the same time.

Tom gets a wave before she turns her back and walks back up to the road.

Tom does nothing to dissuade her, waiting until she's out of hearing range.

His mouth slides into a rat's muzzle; he sniffs deeply at where she stood for most of their conversation.

Even alcohol can't make him as confident that he won that argument as he'd like to be.

Hopefully Wendell won't laugh at him when he explains it.

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