As he walked by one room in particular, Tyson considered the two voices inside. They both sounded female, and surely, with the societal norms impinged upon that sex by both their own and the opposite gender, one of them would have long hair. Granted, this was a hospital, where people tended to abandon some small portion of their usual shame. Tyson himself had his ass very nearly exposed, and had attempted some friendly banter to that effect with his assigned police officer. This had been met with more-or-less amicable silence.

Before he needed to make a decision regarding the room in question though, Tyson spotted a potential loophole: a young woman of long hair, who wore a backpack. While the idea that she'd brought supplies for some venture or another encouraged the possibility of the hair-restraining mechanism he sought, there was one immediate difficulty with his new plan. The blonde hair that fell down the girl's back seemed, to Tyson's estimation, on the far side of the bell-curve of Appropriate Length for Hair Bands.

Tyson walked to this unknown person despite his misgivings, as he had some small decisions he very much preferred to beat away with the aid of his quest.

"Do you randomly have a spare hair band in there?" he asked the girl, consciously making his slipper-clad feet slap loud enough to clarify his approach to her.
-•-•-•- 

[i]"...and one day you'll see a huge fire-breathing cyborg Dragon K9 of doom."[/i] Kai's introspective thought was broken as she heard feet approaching her position. She expected the sound to die away as the person moved away but they did not, they got louder. So she turned her face down the direction of the hallway and ended up looking at a stranger. A patient by his appearance that or when she wasn't looking high fashion had deiced that hospital gowns were suddenly in vogue for the next fashion season. Next she noticed his acquaintance standing a few feet behind him, dressed in a police officer uniforming seemingly attached to the man like a dog to a steak. So apperantly either a dangerous or crazy man was talking to her, probably having wandered from psychiatric help to her and the police officer was following him to make sure in his disillusion state he did not harm anyone. But he didn't look really that crazy, he looked normally kind of had a whole mystic seventies hippie vibe going on which made him disillusioned maybe but not crazy. 

He then asked her about if she had a headband on her person. She thought about it for a moment long and hard before nodding her head to herself. She opened her backpack and began pulling things out six plastic bags filled with separated rubick's cube blocks broken into color came out, then a roll of duct tape, a notepad of graph paper with numbers scribbled frantically about on it, and then three pens and three pencils before finally she pulled out a small black headband and placed it in the center of the spiral she had slowly been creating starting with a bag filled with white rubick's cube blocks and ending with the headband. She picked up the headband and held it in her hand but before she handed it over she had a question for the man.

"Are you always accompanied by a police escort, or are you just trying it out today?"

-•-•-•-

"Well, you know how it is, I'm sure," Tyson answered, cheerfully. "How better to find prospective romance than to get oneself shot being heroic?"

The young man gingerly placed a hand on the lump of gauze beneath his hospital gown, the mass contrasting with his otherwise wiry build. At the same time, he grinned back to his police officer, in an attempt to assure her of his jest, and not leave her out of the conversation. She smirked in acknowledgement of the message's reception, before helping Tyson out.

"He's only been in town four days, and already he's made friends with two police offices and a trailer park," she said, meaning 'friends' euphemistically.

Tyson intoned a quiet 'Oi, oi,' before returning to the not-cop, and holding out the hand he'd used a moment before. It rested low enough for a the offered hair band to be dropped on his palm without the girl needing to make contact with him. It didn't occur to Tyson that this was less of a courtesy when he'd actually (been) bathed.

-•-•-•-

"Oh well I suppose that, your own personal cop could be useful. She could tell you if that dress really does make you fat." She jested with the man dropping the hairband into his hand content with her answer. She pondered for a moment thinking about the man's story. The trailer park was not the nicest part of town, on her way to school she would pass it along the way almost everyday. It became the talk of the town for a bit when in senior year, a kid in Kai's grade that lived there killed himself with a well placed application of a shotgun. Turned out he had enough of his abusive father one day, and a line was just crossed. Needless to say it was an odd creature the trailer park, one seemed to live in any small town like growing moss upon a stone and they were usually to be but in the nicest way the worst pits of pestilence since the plague.

"Well, I hope you don't take getting shot too personally. We are generally pretty civilized creatures here. You see I only murder prostitutes and dump them in the river on Tuesday, like a civilized human being." She explained with a smile that seemed very out of place with her deadpan morbid tone. It struck her odd for a moment as she slowly but the other objects back into her bag. Two years ago she probably wouldn't even be able to have this conversation, but it is surprising what some anti-anxiety pills and therapy can do to ease ones fears about people. After she was done cleaning up the objects she looked back at the pair and explained.

"No offense or anything but shouldn't you be in a bed somewhere? You did get shot." She explained meekly, as if trying to find the right words to explain the situation.

-•-•-•-

Tyson snorted politely at the joke regarding the young woman's civil MO regarding prostitutes, before beginning to wrangle his hair into its accustomed shape. While he became more involved in this task, and ignored the pain that holding his arms in that particular fashion brought his torso, he considered his situation in this town. He wanted to leave before long, as with every place he visited, but there was the issue of the domestic violence. Setting aside that he would be on the run somewhat if he skipped town, it seemed wrong to leave without resolving the issue, given how the wife didn't seem willing to.

"Well," Tyson answered his new question, coming back to the conversation. "I suppose that I should, given how my stomach is all... torn up." He resisted the temptation to hiss as he lowered his hands from his hair, and his wounded stomach protested. "But now that you have restored my [i]groove[/i], I must repay the favor. What service may I render, mademoiselle?"

Tyson smiled despite the dull burning he'd managed to invoke with his hair-styling. Dulled as his stomach was, he also didn't feel the quite-small trickle of red-brown that began to make its way into his gauze, not yet visible to an observer.

-•-•-•-

"You know, a person with a dirtier mind than mine, might be suspicious of a man offering to render her services after restoring his groove." Kai explained rather bluntly the small hint of a smile upon her face as she rose from her perch standing up back to her full Six feet and one or so inches. She tilted her head for a moment thinking before answering.

"But, you know what? You seem pretty harmless enough in your current state. One well placed flick and you could end up doubled over in pain and getting blood all over the newly polished floors. Slowly grasping for life as you slip away into senseless oblivion as all your memories, feelings, your small existence over well a well applied application of force." She explained with a smile on her face that was jarring to say the least with the morbidity of her statement. By this point the man's cop freind was giving her a funny look and didn't know if she should be prepared to take down the blond girl or laugh. It dawned upon her that it was about time to go see Dallas, and so a thought dawned upon her.

"Though, actually... there is a favor that you could perform for me. I'm visiting a friend of mine his name is Dallas, and he got into a bad wreck about a month back. I'd imagine that he hasn't had that many visitors because frankly he acted like a bit of an arse in school. But he had a nicer side to him, most didn't get to see, very picky about who he choose to accept as friends. As you might of guessed, I was one of those poor unfortunate souls. So I at least owe it to him to go say hi. And now... you are going to go as well no ifs, thens or, buts. He has been in a coma so you probably won't have to say anything." She explained punctuating words occasionally with her hands for emphases.

Kai then began to walk away back towards the direction of Dallas' room. As she carried herself across the hallway with the traditional long gait of an awkwardly tall person, a thought dawned upon her. It came like lighting in a thunderstorm, like she was Archimedes stepping into his bath, like a man falling through the sky who just came to the conclusion that once he reached the bottom it was going to hurt, or the man with broken stitching from a gunshot wound laying on the cool floor of a hospital as his life danced away from him. She had not told Mr. Groove her name. So she stopped and turned around and spoke up again.

"And before I forget again... You can call me Kai!" She said with a strong nod, before continuing walking counting her steps as she went, she vanished round a corner, but a few moments later half of her body poked around the corner. 

"Fleischer. Kai Fleischer! And are you coming or are you just going to sit around like horse dung on a midsummer's day?" She asked once more before vanishing round the corner again.

-•-•-•-

Tyson suspected the floors were 'newly polished' on a quite-regular basis, but merely smirked in an especially friendly fashion at his new companion, even as she proved herself taller than him. He was similarly pleased when his two hospital-traversing associates shared an odd moment, reveling with the small window into human decency.

The favor, when it came, was mildly surprising. It wasn't unheard of for someone to visit a friend in hospital, of course, but Tyson hadn't expected to be placed into such a personal issue spontaneously. For one, people didn't generally propose as much to him, as he was a stranger to everyone, and on a second point, he'd got involved in someone's personal affairs quite closely just days prior. It seemed a bit frequent.

Still, he accepted the mission. It was easily accomplished, which Tyson found ideal in acts of kindness. When the girl declared herself 'Kai', Tyson looked back to his assigned cop. Given her expression, she had also, apparently, only known it as a boy's name. Tyson returned his gaze to the departing girl, and finally followed her around the corner, and into a small hospital room, which was filled primarily with females. The young man wasn't sure about this development, but kept his unease cheerfully masked.