Loonie leaned against the wall of her apartment building, looking out over the city that she could see from her balcony. She wasn't particularly high up, just on the second floor, but from this vantage point, she could at least see out over the street and some of the smaller buildings across the way. Vehicles moved through streets, people walked, and the hound took a drag of her cigarette as she stood above them all and watched.
Back home she'd never really bothered with smoking, she'd had much more fun things to occupy her time - and nothing would ever replace the rush of being on a job, she knew that - but up here she couldn't really get ahold of some of the more 'fun' things she'd tried down in Hell. When your budget was a shoestring, smokes were about all that you could afford. Unfortunately, she'd found out that smoking wasn't allowed inside, but conveniently she had a balcony she could stand or sit on and as long as she kept things out here she seemed to avoid the ire of her landlord.
So many things to take care of now that she hadn't ever had to bother with before. Rent, bills, food, the others had taken care of everything for her while she'd been back home, now she'd been thrown out on her own to deal with it herself. At least she was reasonably okay with budgets, she'd never been able to get him to take care of it and she'd usually been forced to. She wasn't great with math, but she'd made do, and that experience had ended up being pretty valuable now that she was having to stretch too little money into too many things.
Fuck, she wanted a drink, but she felt eyes on her any time she walked to the store on the corner, and at the moment buying anything more than the cheap shit just wasn't really something she could swing. She was pretty sure the place recycled bottles and half of what was in the ones she picked up was water - or worse. Certainly tasted enough like piss that she'd believe it if someone told her.
It'd been about a month and the hunters had stopped by once or twice in that time. Never announced themselves, but she could tell. Dudes standing on the street looking up at her apartment when she was on the balcony, people in clothes too nice for this area lingering for way too long to just be sightseeing, things like that. They hadn't bothered her, but she felt them breathing down her neck and most of the time it just gave her the creeps. She was pretty sure that there was one of them down there right now, a guy in a pretty nice leather jacket leaning against one of the light poles and doing a really bad job of pretending he wasn't looking up at her every minute or so. She caught him this time and flipped him off, then crushed her cigarette under her foot and turned to head inside.
The hound settled herself down into the armchair... loveseat... thing that sat in front of her too-small TV as she flipped it on and leaned back, dangling her legs over the far side as she sat side-saddle in the seat. None of the movies up here were quite like the ones back home - for one there was a hell of a lot less sex in them, and they tended to be a lot less violent, too. Plus she'd noticed that a ton of them that she'd been familiar with back home were ripoffs of ones up here, usually with more sex, or more death, or both. Turns out demons didn't just steal from each other, they stole from the surface all the time too.
Still, there were things she liked about living up here too. For one thing, it was quieter. Sure, she was still in a city, and there was still noise pretty much 24/7, but at the same time, the quality of the noise was different. Cars, busses, the occasional plane overhead from the city's airport, animals, people talking. She couldn't remember the last time she'd heard a scream of the damned, or someone being murdered, or some bomb going off, or gunfire. She didn't wake up in the middle of the night wondering if the Exorcists had decided to come early because there was screaming outside her window.
She felt almost at peace, oddly enough. Even though she'd been torn away from her home, she didn't have any 'friends', and life kind of sucked without enough money to do the things she was used to, and she was in a world that by and large she didn't really understand the way she'd understood Hell, she found herself screaming at people less often. She didn't want a drink as badly as she once had. One of her biggest problems at the moment was she hated work and she was bored.
Maybe a walk could help - she had a few hours before she needed to sleep to get up for work in the morning and maybe something interesting might happen, who knew. She walked to the bathroom where she'd created a 'closet' for what clothes she'd picked up - not too many, just a piece here or there when she had time - and pulled a leather jacket she liked down off the rack. It was getting later in autumn and it'd started getting colder, and even her fur didn't help all that much when she was used to good old fire and brimstone. The jacket had been cheap, something she'd found on a stall some old drunk was running on the side of the street. Probably stolen, but it fit, so who really cared.
Loonie made sure she locked her apartment behind her as she walked out, then headed off down the stairs, pulling the collar of her jacket up around her neck as she did. Once she made her way outside she put another cigarette in her mouth and lifted her thumb to her lips, a small fire springing to life at the tip. As long as she shielded it with her other hand, it looked just like she was using her lighter, and she headed off down the sidewalk.
It was honestly surprising how easily the flame'd come once she'd started looking for it again. She was a Hellhound, after all, mythology back through thousands of years spoke of their connection to the flames of Hell, and it'd come once called once she remembered to ask. She'd never needed to bother, back home, she'd rarely gone on missions and when she did, the others had always been there to protect her, so she'd never needed to bother. It was almost comforting, in a way, one little reminder of home that even the hunters couldn't take away from her, since it was more of a part of her than anything else was.
As she walked, taking a drag now and again, a thin, wispy trail of smoke following the hound down the sidewalk, she found her thoughts turning to home and the ones she'd left behind. It'd been over a month since she'd properly spoken to either of the Ms, just a text here or there, always promising 'soon' when they asked when she'd explain what'd happened. They were stuck down there - Stolas had taken the grimoire back because of course - and she was stuck up here... and frankly, she wasn't in any kind of a hurry to explain. She did sort of miss them in her own way, Moxxie's innocent enthusiasm was kind of endearing and she even kinda missed Millie the same way someone might miss their favorite lamp. The background just wasn't the same.
Loonie turned a corner to head back and found herself walking through an alleyway she'd been through a few times before. She wasn't sure if it was the same one she'd arrived in - she barely remembered that first night she was so fucked up - but it was kind of familiar to her all the same. Sounds echoed off the walls differently in an alley, and she noticed a couple of pairs of footsteps following behind her. A sidelong glance told her it was probably more of the same - shoes too nice for the people around here, one of the dudes was built like someone'd carved him out of a boulder, and the other was trying too hard to pretend that he wasn't watching the hound.
She leaned back against one of the dumpsters with a sigh and stuck her hands into her pockets - the last little clue she needed was the fact that they coincidentally both decided to stop walking when she did and stepped off to the side. "You guys couldn't be more obvious if you tried, you know", she called toward them without looking, turning her gaze up toward the sky through the thin strip visible overhead, instead.
Now that they were made they just finally decided to approach - Loonie towered over one, though the big brick still had what felt like a foot on her, and maybe a whole other person in his shoulders. The shorter one took off his sunglasses and peered at the hound. "You should cover those eyes up if you go walking around in public."
"Fuck yourself with a cactus, okay?", the hound sighed as she flicked her cigarette off the big one's jacket. "Nobody around here cares."
"We care", he started before Loonie blew her smoke in his face, forcing him to cough and wave his hands in front of his face to clear it. "We care that you're just walking around in public advertising 'whoa hey I'm a demon look at my fucking eyes if you want proof'."
"Listen. You set me 'free' to live, right? Sometimes I want to go on walks." She noticed something over the short one's shoulder, something sticking up out of one of the dumpsters, though she turned her attention back to the short one and grinned just a little bit. "I'm a dog, you know? I like walks."
He blustered for a moment and looked at the man-mountain next to him, but he might as well have been asking the wall for advice. "Just - wear sunglasses or something, won't you? Here." He unfolded his own pair and handed them to the hound, and refused to remove his hand from her face until she took them. Then he stared insistently until she put them on."
Now-covered eyes rolled behind sunglasses as she put up her hands. "There. Happy now?"
"No. We let a demon walk around in our city." He frowned and stepped away from her, then glanced back at her again. "We're watching you in case this is some kind of long con. Remember that."
Loonie just flipped him off and raised an eyebrow at him until he walked away, going back to his 'safe' following distance. She felt like she had bodyguards or something. But the thing that'd caught her eye did so again, and she pushed off of the dumpster she was leaning against to wander toward the other, then slowly pulled it free. It looked kind of like a guitar but... different. "Hey, hunter-" She ignored the hissed 'shut up!' from him and held out the guitar toward him. "What's this?"
He tried to pretend he wasn't talking to her after being called out as a 'hunter', but when she held it out toward him he looked over. "I dunno, it looks like a bass guitar. Looks broken, though."
That was easy enough to figure out, it was missing strings and there was a torn cable sticking out of the bottom of it. "You don't say." She held it up and peered at it for a moment or two - no shoulder strap, missing strings, no cable to plug into an amp - but she didn't have one anyway... And she needed a new hobby... "Sure, thanks." She let it rest on her shoulder and began to walk home, ignoring the muttered 'oh good, she's digging in the trash now' from behind her.
They wanted her to stay up here, she needed a hobby so she didn't get bored and set something on fire. As far as she was concerned, it was a win-win.