Silver Umbrellas

One-- Ba-BOOM!

Okay, guys... I have never before written a certain character that will show up in this chapter, so I apologize very much for her accent ahead of time. It's just... I'm writing what I hear from her English dub voice in the anime, okay? Please understand that.

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Pit pat.

The rain never stopped.

Pit pat.

It never would.

Pit pat.

It would take a miracle.

Pit pat.

By the front door, Alice tugged on her well-worn pair of rain boots while Yao picked up the metal umbrella for her. It was heavy, but nothing too much for either child to handle. Once her arms were through the sleeves of her too-large windbreaker and an old, ratty scarf was wound around her neck, he held the end of the umbrella out to her.

"Thanks," she said, taking it from him and throwing up her hood so it covered her overgrown hair.

"Don't stay out after dark," Yao told her, as if it really needing saying at that point.

"See you soon," was Alice's reply. She opened the umbrella, then unlocked the door and stepped out while maneuvering the umbrella so she wouldn't be hit by any stray raindrops on her way over the threshold. As per the usual, Yao shut the door behind her quickly and went to the window to make sure she made it out of sight well enough. Only when she disappeared from sight through the trees did he let the curtain drift back into place, but Yao knew he would be waiting on a knife's edge for the rest of her time outside.

Because they tried to stay hidden from prying eyes, Alice made sure she didn't follow the exact same route every time she left to scavenge the convenience stores and homes within a few-mile radius. With precision that only came from learning the hard way, she angled the umbrella in the direction the rain was coming from so she wouldn't be hit with too much of it.

Scavenging was always a painful chore that left a myriad of minute burn scars, but it had to be done. There was no way around it! Food and clean water would eventually run out if they didn't replenish their store often enough, and then they would starve or die of dehydration, whichever came first.

The responsibility of such an important chore didn't make it any more enjoyable, however...

By the time Alice spotted her first destination, a run-down convenience store that lay well off the beaten path, her fingers were beginning to hurt with the cold and her shins above the tops of her rain boots were inflamed with new burns. Before entering the store, she crouched down and scooped up a handful of damp soil to carry inside. Then she shouldered her way in and sat down on the front counter to slather her wounds with the dirt that would nullify the toxins before they could do any real damage.

Alice leaned backward a few degrees and just breathed for a moment as she willed back the tears building in her bright blue eyes. The pain was nothing she hadn't dealt with many times before, and all of those other times she had pushed her way through the pain to get her job done.

When she felt comfortable enough to walk again, Alice hopped down to the floor and walked to the back of the store, where she and Yao had hidden the food they hadn't been able to carry with them to their shack. The three-mile trip was hard enough to make with just one person having their rather special umbrella all to himself, so it was almost out of the question for them both to come along. Therefore, each time they scavenged they would only bring back as much food as one person could carry without having trouble holding the umbrella upright. Their safety was almost more important.