Phil nudged Dan. "Look at that girl over there, I wonder why she's not joining in with everyone else?" Dan looked over and saw a girl with long, bright red hair, sitting by herself on a rock, a couple of hundred metres away. Dan thought that it was a bit unusual, as it was the festive gathering, so everyone else was either chatting amongst themselves or queuing up to see them. From what he could see, he thought he'd seen the girl earlier, running across the park, being chased by 2 beefy guys with dogs. He wondered how she could've gotten herself out of that situation... or into it for that matter.
It was early in the day, and since not many people had arrived yet, he decided to leave Phil to contend with their 'fans' (he hated calling them that) and walked off to talk to the girl. He didn't usually go over and talk to random girls, but his interest got the better of him. Some of the people queued up to see him looked over at him, hurt, as he left and almost ran after him, but were soon preoccupied with trying to talk to Phil and some of the other YouTubers that were now arriving.
The girl was facing away from Dan, and everyone else, as he approached, and she seemed to be in a world of her own, so he slowed down a bit and took the time to think of something to say to her (just so he didn't sound creepy).
Arya had been walking down the street that morning to go to the festive gathering at Hyde Park. She was almost bursting with excitement because this was going to be the first gathering that she'd gone to, but she had no idea why she was going. She wasn't really a person that interacted with others. She was nice enough. She'd talk to people if they spoke to her and she was friendly with the people she worked with, but she was terrified of what other people thought of her, so she generally distanced herself from others.
She noticed a group of about five big guys up ahead of her, so she decided to cross the street so she wouldn't have to walk near them. What she didn't notice however, was that the guys had 2 big Wolfdogs (a mix between a wolf and a dog) with them. Arya was terrified of dogs and would've turned around and hightailed it out of there if she'd seen them. As she walked past, a couple of the guys started whistling and shouting at her.
"Hey shorty, how about you come over here and talk to us!" One of them shouted with a heavy London accent.
"Yeah, come on babe!" Shouted one of the others, and the rest shouted words of agreement.
""Pft! Yeah right. What sane girl in her right mind would talk to you?!" She shouted back. She wondered why she was being so sassy all of a sudden, usually she would've kept her head down an carried on walking. It might've been because she was ill, or maybe it was all the medication she was taking for it.
"Oi! You can't talk to me like that, bitch!" The group of guys massed together in a big, angry bunch and started walking towards her threateningly. They walked right in front of her and the leader(or at least the one who seemed like the leader anyways) growled "I could beat you up for talking to me like that!"
They were so close to each other by now that Arya could smell the alcohol on his breath. She was slightly terrified, but she didn't let it show. She laughed instead. "Yeah, you sure about that? Well you'll have to catch me first!" Arya stamped on the big guy's foot and ran off around the corner in the direction of the tube station. By the sound of it, they were chasing after her. She was slightly concerned with the idea that they might actually catch up with her, but despite being an extremely introverted girl, she loved excitement and adventure, which she mainly got from books, but occasionally real life threw her an opportunity to experience it herself, and recently there hadn't been much happening in her life that she could call 'exciting'. Anyway, there wasn't much chance of them catching up with her, she was a cross country runner, and not a shabby one at that.
While she was running down the pavement, she heard a bark, and it sounded like it was coming from behind her. Please don't let there be a dog chasing me too, please, please, please... She looked behind her, hoping that there weren't any dogs, but her fears were confirmed. There were 2 great big snarling dogs, and unlike the guys, they weren't slowing down from exhaustion, in fact, they were catching up. Arya picked up her pace. There was no way she'd be able to get to the gathering by tube now, they'd catch her too easily, she was going to have to run all the way. Joy... On the bright side, she'd lost 2 of the guys already and it looked like one of the others was slowing down as well. Arya changed her direction to Hyde Park. She'd gotten to know London pretty well over the past 2 years and knew all the short cuts.
Arya arrived at Hyde Park with 2 of the guys and the dogs still chasing her. She had to admire their stamina (and their determination, she would've given up ages ago), it had been about 4 miles since they'd started chasing her and they'd been running a constant sprint. Arya herself was starting to get tired, she wasn't used to running quite this far, but she couldn't just lead them the Hyde Park, there were other people there and the youths would just start causing trouble. Look at me, she thought, I'm calling them 'youths' and I'm still a teenager. She mentally laughed at that. Arya was running on the edge of the park, and from what she could see, not very many people had turned up yet. She thought she was Dan and Phil, and her heart leapt, she'd had an internet crush on them for years. She never thought the day would come that she'd actually have the opportunity to meet them. There were a couple of other YouTubers that she didn't recognise, but she knew they must be pretty cool since there were already a few people crowded around them.
Arya thought she saw a couple of people looking at her, she would've loved to slow down and have a proper look, but when she looked behind herself, she noticed that she was being caught up again, so she picked up the pace. She could feel her lungs burning, she wouldn't be able to carry on for much longer. Thankfully the streets were now quite busy as the rest of London woke up. She saw a big crowd gathered at the entrance to the tube station and started running towards it. She knew she would definitely lose the guys there, but she wasn't so sure about the dogs, and that's what she was most worried about. Luckily, when the dogs realised she was running into a massive crowd, they stopped and started whimpering. No such luck for the youths though. They continued following her through the crowd, so she decided to lead them down an alleyway. She reached into the front pocket of her bag and grabbed her pepper spray. She ran about half way down the alley, stopped and turned around to face the guys who were now blocking the exit. She kept the pepper spray hidden as they approached, panting heavily.
"We've got you now, you stupid bitch." One of them said, chuckling darkly. "Nobody insults us and gets away with it."
Arya let them carry on walking towards her until they were about 2 feet away from her when she pepper sprayed one of them and kicked the other in the nuts. She ran past their curled over, wailing bodies and left them kneeling over in pain as joined the oblivious pedestrians walking down the sidewalk. That was easier than she'd expected it to be, but then again, it could've gone so very wrong. Arya jogged over to the edge of the park and stood there for a minute, watching everyone interacting. I can't do this. She thought. What am I even doing here? The thought of actually interacting with other people that she didn't know suddenly became very daunting. Although she was a 'YouTuber' herself, she had no idea what to so, or what to say to other people. I've come this far today, it'd be stupid to just go straight back home now. After all, I did arrange the day off work just for this. Eventually she decided to sit down at the base of a tree, a little way away from everyone else and faced away from them, put one of her earphones in (she didn't put both in because she didn't want to seem rude if someone started talking to her) and started drawing.
A/N: Hey. I'm usually alright at writing these little notes, but this time I'm not, it's just another fanfic. My third one on the go actually... I should probably slow down a bit and focus more on the work that I should be doing. Anyhows, feedback is welcome as always and maybe vote if you like it ^_^