[ And Kitty might have been an idiot for a moment, but only for a moment. She catches on soon as the coin-purse arcs too high; she grabs the boy's arm and shoves it away from her throat, tumbles out from where she'd been trapped...
And then a tiger slams into him. Oh. That's - rather a lot, isn't it. But even if that boy's well taken care of, now, he's got friends who are perfectly capable of finding the soft bits of a girl or of a tiger to stab at, and so she turns and finds one standing quite near her and so she punches him hard in the crotch, and he goes down. Then the third - her own knife comes out, rests against his throat, and she hisses at him - ]
Don't make a move.
[ And then, soon as he's looking properly cowed, she looks round to see whether Bartimaeus has eaten the stupid kid. ]
['Eaten' is a strong word and the taste of human flesh has never really wet his palette in the way it does for some other spirits. Still, even he might admit to drooling a little more than is strictly necessary for the show of it around the kid's head in his mouth. Look, you might strongly consider a lunch of unseasoned, boiled vegetables too if you spent all your time being slowly siphoned through a magical pin hole poked into the fringe of your Essence with nothing to show for it but an increasingly haggard appearance and disposition. Would eating the boy satisfy? Not really, but sometimes you just want to eat things because they're convenient and you're hungry.
But they've been having such a nice time of it, and it would be a shame to ruin that over someone who doesn't deserve anyone's pity much less Kitty's outrage, so soft mouth and ominous growling it is. The combination (and the tiger's weight crushing him into the dusty paving stones - let's not forget that) is enough to terrify the would-be thief into dropping the knife. The tiger flicks its long, banded tail. Somehow, without removing the boy's horrified face from its mouth, it says:]
Well don't just stand there, Jones. Fetch our things.
[ For once, there's no back-talk from her. Evidently, she was embarrassed enough by her earlier slip-up that she doesn't quite have it in her. She shoves her hand into the pocket of the boy she's got at knife-point and pulls out her coin-purse. Then she kicks him hard in the back of the knee so he goes tumbling to the ground. ]
You sure you don't want to kill 'em?
[ She's got her tough voice on, now, that gruff street urchin growl that says sure, I'll cut your throat if I think you deserve it. It's reasonably convincing. She's had a lot of practice with it, to be fair. She steps over the boy who she kicked (who, admittedly, seems rather more pants-wettingly terrified of the shapeshifting tiger-boy than her tough voice, but every bit counts) and goes for the purse that Bartimaeus had chucked. ]
No real loss, you know.
[ She trusts that Bartimaeus will understand that this is purely for the purposes of intimidation. ]
[The tiger appears to consider this. The spirit actually does give it some thought - on one of many levels of consciousness, he entertains the idea of snapping shut the tiger's jaws just to see the look on everyone's faces - and the intervening pause, genuine or otherwise, is enough to send the boy in his mouth sobbing something indistuinguishable against the roof of the tiger's mouth.]
Oh boo hoo. —Best not. The meat on this one will have gone all sour anyway.
[And just like that, the tiger opens its jaws and the boy is scrambling backward.]
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no subject
And then a tiger slams into him. Oh. That's - rather a lot, isn't it. But even if that boy's well taken care of, now, he's got friends who are perfectly capable of finding the soft bits of a girl or of a tiger to stab at, and so she turns and finds one standing quite near her and so she punches him hard in the crotch, and he goes down. Then the third - her own knife comes out, rests against his throat, and she hisses at him - ]
Don't make a move.
[ And then, soon as he's looking properly cowed, she looks round to see whether Bartimaeus has eaten the stupid kid. ]
no subject
But they've been having such a nice time of it, and it would be a shame to ruin that over someone who doesn't deserve anyone's pity much less Kitty's outrage, so soft mouth and ominous growling it is. The combination (and the tiger's weight crushing him into the dusty paving stones - let's not forget that) is enough to terrify the would-be thief into dropping the knife. The tiger flicks its long, banded tail. Somehow, without removing the boy's horrified face from its mouth, it says:]
Well don't just stand there, Jones. Fetch our things.
no subject
You sure you don't want to kill 'em?
[ She's got her tough voice on, now, that gruff street urchin growl that says sure, I'll cut your throat if I think you deserve it. It's reasonably convincing. She's had a lot of practice with it, to be fair. She steps over the boy who she kicked (who, admittedly, seems rather more pants-wettingly terrified of the shapeshifting tiger-boy than her tough voice, but every bit counts) and goes for the purse that Bartimaeus had chucked. ]
No real loss, you know.
[ She trusts that Bartimaeus will understand that this is purely for the purposes of intimidation. ]
no subject
Oh boo hoo. —Best not. The meat on this one will have gone all sour anyway.
[And just like that, the tiger opens its jaws and the boy is scrambling backward.]