Welcome to Gaia! ::

There were nights when Tomlin went home to his senshi, curled on her windowsill like some kind of housecat, tame and safe. And again there were nights when he roamed the streets, watching over this or that point of light, his team or any other agent of Order he could find, because it didn’t really matter who was on patrol, just that his duty as a guardian would not let him sleep. And some nights, not as often as he used to, he skulked through the back alleys with the ordinary people, the ones in the gutter who had partied a little too hard, or simply had nowhere else to go. He couldn’t offer them much, but he was furry and warm, and sometimes that was enough.

Tonight the ginger cat had found a lone teen, hollow-eyed and coming down badly from whatever he’d been taking earlier. It was bad enough to see an adult in this state, let alone a kid. Tomlin had begun trailing in his unsteady footsteps, hoping the boy would remember his way home - that he had a safe place to go and someone waiting at the lighted doorstep to welcome him in. Of course he should have known better. He should have known by the unstuck sneaker sole, and the holey outsized shirt. He definitely knew that the only thing down this road was the park, but he was an optimist, and up until the moment that the kid flopped down on the leaf litter to settle against a tree root, he still hoped. The teen barely stirred when Tomlin rubbed up alongside his hand, and only sighed when the cat settled against his chest, making a nest among the rags and tatters, to keep them both warm.

Dark energy woke him from his doze. The nest had grown cold as the night set in, the young body in the too-thin jacket barely able to keep itself warm, let alone give enough body heat for the cat curled in beside him. Tomlin rose with a slow stretch, wary. Something was out there, unfamiliar in the darkness, on the move. His whiskers twitched as he tried to place the direction. Coming closer was the best he could guess, so he crept silently out onto the path and headed out to track it, or at least get an idea of what he was dealing with.