Single post in The Little One -- [COMPLETED]

“Fine with me.” The young man tossed the sealed weapon over his shoulder without the slightest hesitation. It clattered onto the white leather, but as soon as he stepped his foot out on the wet concrete, there was a loud beep that echoed in his ears. A slight throb emerged around his left temple, but what caused the noise? He looked back at the weapon. At first glance, it looked the same. He almost turned around without noticing it. Fully turning around, with his knees on the seat, he carefully reached for the weapon and lifted it by the sheath. He stared in silence, wondering what had happened. Of the five rectangles on the sheath, one now glowed bright blue. He gently brushed his thumb across its surface, and it remained blue. Maybe he’d triggered the lock? He quickly tugged on the hilt again, but the blade still would not release. So what changed? “Hurrup, boy!” the old man called back. “Yeah!” The young man dropped the weapon back on the seat, almost hoping it would beep again. He exhaled. Nothing. With a forced, heavy sigh, he left the weapon in the car and hurried to catch up with the old man who had already reached the bar’s main entrance. He clattered into the stuffy, stogie-stenched room and shook off the rain like a dog fresh out the bath. “Watch it, Willie!” a sprayed patron sitting at a table near the door shouted while hovering over his half-empty mug of dark brown liquid. “Ah, shaddup, Mac. You need a bath anyway.” A couple other patrons scattered about the dimly lit room chuckled, but interested eyes found their way to the young man lingering a step behind Willie. “Who’s the kid?” The question belted from a scruffy, heavily bearded man under a dingy trucker’s cap sitting at the bar across from the entrance. Willie hung his hat on a wall-mounted rack just inside the room before shedding his dripping trench coat. “Probably ‘nother one of them frat kids from the university. Just look at his get-up. Says he can’t ‘member who he is though.” More chuckles seemed to echo around the room, but this time the gray-haired man behind the bar—whose face looked less wrinkled than Willie’s—spoke up. “You wanna give him a jump-start?” he asked while wiping down shot glasses and stacking them on a shelf behind him. “Read my mind, Leland.” While the two older men engaged in chat as Willie approached the bar, the young man caught glance of a wide mirror adorning the wall to his right. Although it had a big crack running from its top left corner down towards its center, the young man still quickened his pace to get closer. After rounding an empty table, he stopped to get a direct stance unobstructed by the crack. The reflection in the glass was as foreign as every other face in the bar. The pair of blue eyes staring back at him frowned. They didn’t recognize the dark brown—nearly black—wet bushel on his head, didn’t know the slanted nose nor the dimples on either side of chapped lips. The young man didn’t know which was weirder: chapped lips that didn’t feel dry or a completely unrecognizable visage that apparently belonged to him.