maskormenacelogs | gold teeth and a curse for this town were all in my mouth.

[Richie, who hadn't brought along his baseball bat for this, squints up at Andy. How hard could it be, he reasons. Sure, she's in good shape, and sure she's immortal, but Pennywise was an evil immortal clown monster and Richie still knocked him on the head with a baseball bat, and he was trying to kill them. Andy's just trying to make him better at hitting shit.

Richie cracks his knuckles, like a tough guy, then charges forward with a shriek, putting all his momentum into swinging his fist at her stomach. It's probably immediately obvious that if this kid ever won a fight, he had a lot of backup, or the people he was fighting were worse than he is—he's sloppy, and as fast as he is he has no real idea of how to use that to his advantage.]

[ He is right about that — whatever her other quirks are, Andy is decidedly human. As far as she knows, anyway. She's certainly not much of a monster. She's more... Ambiguously middle-aged.

But hell, she moves fast. And smooth. Like she's done this over and over again, to the point where the muscle memory is perfect. It helps, of course, that her opponent right now is a teenager who yelled loud enough for the entire neighborhood to know that he was about to charge her. It takes minimal energy to sidestep him, grab him by the back of his shirt, and spin him back around. ]

You're quick. [ She muses idly, letting go of him so he can make another swing at her if he wants. ] Fucking sloppy too. But we can fix that.

Wha—

[Okay, that was—unexpected, to say the least. Richie is only saved from sprawling out onto his face by Andy’s hand on his shirt, having not registered her moving until it was too late. Okay. So maybe this is going to be harder than the clown was.

When she lets go, he aims a kick at her shin, to knock her feet out from under her. It’s a move he saw done in a movie, and if it worked then, surely it’ll work here, right? Right?]

[ Oh ho, the shin kick! Scrappy. No technique at all, but who needs it really? Andy might know a dozen different ways to break a man's neck, but she'll play dirty when it suits her. If it's life or death, honor matters less than survival. She's seen enough bloody battlefields to know that it doesn't make any difference how fair you fought if you end up bleeding out in the mud anyway.

It's with an almost kind of lazy grace that she moves to counter his attack, smoke still wisping from the cigarette at her mouth as she steps back out of the way — then steps down, right onto the offending foot, her boot pressing against his laces to pin his shoe underneath her own.

Mildly, she quips: ] That all you got?

Fuck you, you ain't seen nothing yet! [She has, actually. Scrappy as he is in a fight, the things that Richie knows pale pretty hugely in comparison, and he knows that. But shit, he wants to impress her, wants to show that there's something to be made out of him. So when she traps his foot and he can't yank it out, he decides, well, he's in reach.

And tries to shove her back with all the strength he can muster.]

[ But she already knows. She knows there's potential there. Sure, she hasn't bothered to tell him that — humility a good pupil makes — but there's a lot to be said for stubborn and scrappy when it comes to a fight for survival. Kid has spirit. You can't teach that shit.

He'd be easy prey for a schoolyard bully as it is right now, but it's nothing some practice won't fix. ]

Alright — [ She lets him shove at her, bracing so that the force only makes her sway backward a little — kid's going to need to put on a bit of muscle too, if that skinny teenage frame can manage it — and grabbing him by the wrists, she casually twists and throws him bodily to the ground. ] Good enough. You have a long fucking way to go, but it's not hopeless.

[As far as fights go, this is not actually the most embarrassing one Richie's ever lost in. Yeah, some part of him is embarrassed he lost a fight to somebody's mom, but he's also realistic enough to recognize that six thousand years means Andy's been in a lot of fights.

He gets to his feet, dusting his shirt off and wiping away the dirt on his face. Then he spits out what got into his mouth and makes a face. Thank god Eddie's not here, because he'd likely never let Richie live this down.]

So, what, [briefly adopting a voice uncannily similar to Apollo Creed:] you fight great, but I'm a great fighter, is that what you're saying?

[ He's right about that — she's definitely been in a lot of fights. Maybe you'd think she would have tried to diversify more in six or seven millennia, but Andy comes from warrior stock, and she never strayed far from that for too long. Human nature, maybe. She never became a famous philosopher, she never solved any great mysteries, she never created some masterpiece — she just got really, really good at killing people.

The Rocky reference doesn't land. She stopped trying to keep track of movies a while ago, and the internet's another one of those things she never got very good at, so she mostly squints at Richie a little when he does "the voice." ]

Hate to break it to you, kid — you're a terrible fighter. [ She keeps puffing away at her cigarette as she gives him a chance to dust himself off: ] You're clumsy. And you advertise your moves from a mile away. Which would be fine if you were built like a tank, but. [ Andy gestures at his whole. Everything. ] It's going to be speed and cheap shots with you. That's how you'll win. Or at least buy enough time to run.

[Tough crowd. Richie has one reaction to tough crowds, and it’s this:]

I am a lover, not a fighter. Just ask my friends’ moms back in Derry, they’ll tell you. [They would probably all call him that weird, bug-eyed kid with the voices, in all honesty. But anyway, pithy joke said, Richie stuffs his hands back into his pockets, listening attentively. Clumsy he kind of knew, already—puberty is a gift—but advertising his moves? Yeah, that’s new.]

Yeah, I’m pretty good at running. Gotta be, if you’re a Loser.

[There’s a weight to the word: Loser, he says, like it’s important, like he’s proud. Welcome to the Losers’ Club.]

If I had a baseball bat with me, would that improve my chances? Like—[and he mimes taking a swing with one.] I knocked a clown flat on its ass with one, the one time. [It, not his or her or their. It, like he’s talking about something not human.] That means I’m good at that, right?

[ He is a weird, bug-eyed kid that does voices — but she's not judging. He can say whatever the hell he wants really, not like it's going to hurt her feelings. At a certain point in her long ass life, she just stopped caring enough for that. But she can tell he's paying attention — and that's the important bit. ]

A Loser, huh. [ She picked up on the emphasis, even if she doesn't know the meaning of it. ] Well. Long as you don't end up a bloody smear of Loser on the pavement, I guess.

[ Her dwindling cigarette finally gets flicked away. She gives him a little look as she smothers the stub in the dirt underneath her boot. ]

Do I even want to know why you were assaulting a clown? [ Not that she's particularly fond of clowns, but. ] Being armed usually helps. As long as you know what you're doing. If you don't, it's just something for the other fucker to take from you and beat your ass with.

'S'why I'm here.

[He stuffs his hands in his pockets, starts to seemingly, aimlessly pace. With anyone else, Richie would be loathe to say much more about it, but Andy's six thousand years old, right? And she's been here a very long time. So if there's any adult who might stand a chance of at least not thinking he's cracked, it's her.

Also, he didn't bring his bat, so he's looking for some rocks to throw. Not a whole lot of decently-sized rocks for a rock war here, so he has to settle for pebbles to collect while he talks.]

It killed and ate kids back home in Derry. Ended up eating the wrong kid, so we went after it. [He pauses.] It didn't look like a clown to everyone, it changed to look like whatever you were scared of, but I think it liked being a clown best. That's what it looked like when it was trying to scare all of us, not just one.

We killed it fucking dead. At least I'm pretty sure we did. I knocked it flat with a bat, my friend shot it in the head, it fell down a well and everything. [That's what he remembers, anyway, but his memory of that fight's going a little fuzzy around the edges.]

But it was overconfident, y'know? Like, it didn't expect us to come in and fuck it right up—[And then he tosses a pebble towards Andy.]

[ Honestly?

It's not even the weirdest shit she's heard since she got here. She's met robots and aliens. Gods. Vampires. Clones. The works. Nowadays, a murderous kid-eating fear-clown doesn't actually seem all that absurd. Takes her a moment to process the idea, her eyebrows pinched together as she tries to picture it — but after a moment, she seems to just accept his story as the truth, humming out a little noise of acknowledgment.

Tough kids, taking on a thing like that.

She opens her mouth, maybe to say something along those lines — but the words drop dead in her mouth as something hard bounces off her fucking forehead. The pebble falls to the ground in front of her, right between her boots. Her eyebrows pinch again. She gives Richie a look. ]

You could have at least used a bigger fucking rock. [ There's a tiny little red mark where the pebble hit her — or is there? Funny, but it seems to be gone already. She doesn't seem deterred either way, instead pointing out across the yard by the tree where there's a small branch that's broken off. ] Go pick that up. Show me your clown-killing technique.

gold teeth and a curse for this town were all in my mouth.

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