Further Experimental Exploration(s)

It's late now. You would be winding down any other day. Dimning the lights, avoiding hot drinks and such. Today you're completely out of sinc. Those ten hours knocked out on the floor, surprisingly given the **** of the wallop, left you with zero apparent damage and without draining any of the energy you might have otherwise spent throughout day time. Sleeping is out of the question. At least right now. You just ate half a ton of stuff (by student standards), so there's no chance of shut-eye until your digestion ends at least. You need to be active somehow, wear away some tension. Plain wanking, even with several prime cuts of porno won't suffice. You need something more. You just came home from your first mission, first true, tentative, foray into the new world your power opens for you. You just came home with your first victory. But there is yet more praeda* to be won. You have but the spoils of your first conquest. And the night, looming over a crowded city, is the perfect time to conduct further exploration with impunity.

You decide to improvise. Clothing yourself for the nightly chill without, and with but the barest essentials, phone, key-card, door key, a little money (although you can probably circumvent spending of it for many future situations), you venture forth from your room into the outside world. You quit the student residence area, and walk toward the city centre. The area around the faculty is somewhat sleepy at this time. There are many cars driving by but probably all of them are destined for the outer suburbs after the end of the work day. In the older town centre is where life is still flourishing. The streets are crawling with people, trams stopping here and there every 15 minutes, and a few wheeled vehicles. Students of your age and above easily dominate the population currently visible on the ground.

You wander through all this a little aimless. You don't know quite what to do. Everybody around you seems to have things to do, places to go; couples walk through the pretty avenues, small groups and minor herds of friends rampage through various cafés, and everywhere you look there's at least one or two of the more antsy types jogging back and forth between the various parks around the city. All around there are various shops still open, whether for groceries, clothing, housewares, books, whatever you can imagine. All around is opportunity to get free stuff, to see a film without paying, to get stocked up for weeks and weeks' worth of food, to get ressources that would be financially out of reach for you every other day of your past life. It isn't enough. After the first excursion within the small confines of the student residence you've gained a taste for the forbidden. You want to see something you weren't ever supposed to see. You want special material. You want hidden treasures.

You start to pay more attention to the people around you. You try to identify who is engaged in some out and about activity, and who might be at the end of their day. To see who's got lingering business in the public sphere, and who's headed home. It's the latter type you're interested in. You can immeditaely separate people together and people alone; there are probably couples and maybe even small groups on their way to a shared home, but you couldn't possibly tell which except by listening to them, so that eliminates them. You need not care naught of them. Lone individuals are a little trickier. Some have rather obvious shopping bags (full) or suitcases. Those ones you can be pretty sure are going home. Then there are people from whom all you can get is a vibe: are they nervous, hurried, laid-back, slack, lost? There are the ones on the phone conveniently spelling out details and clues as to their general purpose in their conversations.

It occurs to you all this observation, using this perception filter, is probably at least somewhat similar to the process that (human) predators choose their victims, although unlike a lot of monsters out there you don't necessarily have a talent at reading people, and you don't exactly know what you want of them. Certainly you don't want to cause harm at this point. But it makes things more difficult, not knowing what you're looking for.

All until you spot something irresistible.

*praeda: n, f, 1st declension: booty, spils, plunder, prey.