Hatchetfield.

The Pitiful.

Emma hated the morning shift.

She was not a morning person to begin with, so having to get up as early as 4:30am definitely made mornings worse than normal. If she was going to have to work mornings, she would have much preferred the 9am shift. At least that would give her a chance to sleep a bit longer. Instead here she was, trudging along the sidewalk toward Beanie's from the nearby parking lot at 5:20am, trying her best to keep the chilly wind from affecting her too much.

The weather had begun to cool significantly, with October right around the corner, so the morning breeze was crisp and clear. The weather was in a strange spot where the mornings were cold, but it would become significantly warmer by mid-day, so Emma found herself in that odd position of dressing for both cold and warm weather all at once. She'd settled for long pants, a pair of black non-slip shoes, and a light windbreaker jacket over her white shirt. Her hair was pulled back into a simple ponytail. The windbreaker she was sporting was doing a pretty shit job of breaking the wind, so she found herself shivering as she hurried down the sidewalk toward the coffee shop, drawing her jacket around herself as tightly as she could.

It wasn't often that she worked this early, but Zoey had evidently requested a later start that day so that she could spend the night before out with her scummy cop boyfriend or whatever. So that left Emma opening the shop by herself until Nora came in at 6:30. As she rounded the corner that brought Beanie's into view, the quiet morning was interrupted by the sounds of a struggle.

It wasn't overly loud. No one was screaming hysterically or anything. But it was enough that Emma froze and quickly dug into her purse for the pepper spray she kept attached to her keys. Hatchetfield was a very strange town full of very strange people, but it wasn't inherently dangerous; she'd never felt unsafe walking around by herself, even very late at night. Despite that, though, she subscribed to the saying "better to be safe than sorry." So she carried pepper spray and had taken a self defense class or two. She wasn't going to take on a trained army or anything, but she trusted herself to fight off a creepy drunk dude if she needed to.

Someone let out a pained cry and Emma slowly made her way toward where the sounds were coming from: the alleyway beside Beanie's. Dawn was just beginning to break, but it was still dark enough that she couldn't see much beyond a few figures. No more than two or three people surrounding a lump on the ground that Emma quickly surmised was also a person, curled up on their side trying to protect themselves. The three standing figures were surrounding the forth, laughing as they kicked at the person on the ground, who was whimpering.

"Hey!" Emma had called out before fully thinking and found herself wincing a bit. What was she planning to do here, exactly? She wasn't sure, but she didn't like the idea of three people ganging up on a forth like that, so she'd apparently decided to step in. "What are you doing?"

One of the figures turned to face her so she finally got a good look. It was a kid, probably no older than 18 or 19, tall and lanky with a mop of dark brown hair that fell into his eyes. He shook his hair out of his face and snorted, crossing his arms over his chest as the other two figures with him – another boy and a girl right around the same age – stepped forward to flank him.

"Who the fuck're you?" the tall kid asked, his voice thick and deep in a way that told Emma he was posturing a bit, trying to sound more intimidating than he actually was.