I was about to question her further on that when one of the nurses came in and called my name, reminding me that I was actually there to talk to my doctor, not have a meetup with someone I’d only met once before, in very different circumstances.

“That’s me,” I told her.  “I guess that means it’s time for me to go.”

“Madden, huh?”  She looked hesitant.  “I’m Alessia, by the way.  If, um, you want to stay in touch or anything.”

I wouldn’t have exactly planned, walking into the building today, to keep in touch with the demon who caused me to have the issues with my hip, but on the other hand, after our talk, I’d realized we had a lot in common.  I didn’t really have friends anymore, thanks to trying to keep a low profile and a distance from everyone just in case the three gang members found me again, but Alessia…she might be a good option.  She might not be able to fight much anymore, but they wouldn’t necessarily know that, and even a centaur should hesitate before attacking a demon – regardless of whether she appeared injured or not – because they’d figure she would have a pandemonium.  Just because she didn’t, didn’t mean they would realize that.  I didn’t want to put her in danger, either, but somehow I thought she could also intimidate them and bluff them into leaving if they ever found her through me.  Though hopefully…hopefully I could deal with them and no longer have that even be a concern.

“Sure,” I responded, accepting the card she gave me with her gym’s name and number on it.  “I’ll give you a call later, okay?”

“Do that.”  Her eyes gleamed a bit.  “I might not be able to help you fight the guys, but I can help you come up with plans for dealing with them, once you know what you’re looking at.  It’d be nice to have some real battle plans for a change instead of just strategizing about matches.”

That could actually be helpful.  “Thanks,” I told my unexpected new friend.  “I look forward to planning some murders with you.”

~~~~~

I groaned and glared at Alessia.  “I think that’s enough.”

She was, not surprisingly, not scared off by my glare.  “The therapist said you have several more exercises to do.  Come on, you’ve gone through this before, you know you have to do all your exercises for physical therapy or you won’t recover as fast as you should.  And you don’t need to delay recovery, Madden.”

She was right, but that didn’t mean I liked it.  Hip replacement surgery was just the first half of the problem, and now that that was past and I was dealing with the second part – recovery – I was partially regretting agreeing to let her help coach me through this.

“You could use some work on your bedside manner,” I informed her.

“Hey, I coach boxers for a living.  I’m used to convincing people to punch things harder.  Besides, naga, I don’t think you need a gentle hand.”  She smirked a little at me.

The rehab facility was connected to the doctor’s office, so it was also all supernaturals, or otherwise she presumably wouldn’t feel so comfortable referring to my species.

I sighed again but got up to work on the next exercise, trying to ignore the aching and pains and just push through it.  I had withstood worse pain.  I hated this whole hip replacement recovery process, but I could deal with it again if it meant I could keep my promise to Ambrose.

“Hey…want to be in a pandemonium-nest thing with me?”

I was focused enough on getting through my exercises that I wasn’t paying as much attention to Alessia, so her question surprised me enough I nearly lost my grip and my balance, but managed to catch myself in time.

I turned to give her a reproachful look.  “Warn me if you’re going to ask stuff like that next time.”

She just smirked again.  “Gotta keep you on your toes!”

“Explain,” I suggested as I started my exercise again.  “What do you mean?”

“I’ve missed having a pandemonium,” she said slowly.  “Not just from the fighting, or the idea that there’s always someone who will have your back in a fight, but just…companionship.  Friendship.  Knowing someone might have my back in an argument over which restaurant is better, I dunno.  Supernaturals, we live a long time.  It’s hard, spending year after year and decade after decade with no one in your life on a regular basis.  No one I can count on, no one I can trust with just…what’s going on with me, you know?  I used to have that with a pandemonium, but I don’t now.  I haven’t really tried making too many supernatural friends, but talking to you has made me realize something.

“Demons and naga, we’re not all that different.  We have cultures that revolve around fighting, around being the strongest, around our community being there for us.  And you and I, we’re both not really involved in our natural communities anymore.  So what if we just…made a new one?  Not a pandemonium, or a nest, exactly, but something else.  Something where supernaturals like us, who don’t fit in with their original community anymore, and maybe they can’t fight or don’t want to, but they still want that community – they can still have one.  At least friends, at least someplace safe to go, someone to ask advice from, someone who you know will have your back in a dumb argument even if they can’t actually have your back in a fight.  That – I mean, I wish I could help you fight, you know, but I’m pretty useless in a fight now.  But I’d like to help with other stuff, maybe.  And I’d like to know that there’s someone I can talk to about stuff, rant about what I’m frustrated about, ask about what food to get for supper, I don’t know – the normal friend stuff.  And honestly, you get it.  You aren’t surprised by demons being willing to kill people any more than I’m surprised by naga being the same way.  You know what it’s like to spend years alone, not really with any sort of community.  I know it’d be small to start, but I bet we could find others who feel the same way.”

I thought about it.  I hadn’t been lonely enough to join another naga nest over the years, but I had sometimes wished for something more than the brief friendships I allowed myself.  Maybe it would be nice to create something on our own terms, something that didn’t need to have the same rules as either a pandemonium or a nest, but something that could provide some of the same benefits, anyway.

“What would we call it?”  I asked, implying my agreement with the idea.  “A pande-nest?  No, no, that sounds too much like pandas,” I muttered.

“A pack,” one of the other patients chimed in.  He looked a little embarrassed when we both looked at him in surprise, but hesitantly continued anyway.  “Some shifters run in packs, so it is a name already used, but it’s not a common one.  And packs could involve members of different species, or, uh, you know, just…different people combining together for a common goal?”

Alessia surveyed the shifter who’d spoken up, considering.  “You like the idea, huh?”

The guy blushed a bit, but nodded.  “I, um, well…after my accident, no one around me knows how to treat me,” he explained.  He glanced at his left leg, which was amputated just below the knee.  He was probably late teens or early twenties, several years younger than Alessia and I had both been when we’d undergone our life-altering injuries.

“I’m a horse shifter,” he added.  “We normally run in herds, but, well, I can’t now.  Not for the time being, anyway.  The doctor said it’s possible they could get a prosthetic I could use in shifted form, but he’s not sure, and at best, I could probably manage a trot but not anything beyond that.  So my family’s been tiptoeing around the whole thing, like they don’t even know how to talk to me anymore, and we have several friends who are also herd shifters, and they all just…don’t come around.”  He sighed, a little forlorn.  “I don’t know if you’re willing to take in applicants yet, but if you are, um, I think I like that idea.  A misfits pack, I guess?  Just, you know…people who don’t fit in with their normal people anymore.  But still want to fit in somewhere.”

I rested against the stability bar, looking at him.  “What’s your name, kid?”

“Troy.”

“I’m Madden,” I told him, “and I’m a naga, if you didn’t know that already.  The demon over here who’s smiling all creepily is Alessia.  I’m not saying it’s like a permanent commitment or anything, but are you sure you want to join a naga and a demon in making some kind of pseudo-pack?”

He thought about it for a moment, then nodded.  “I think my family will probably still love me anyway, but it might be awkward with them, especially because of our herd friends and I can’t join them anymore.  So I feel like it might take the pressure off of our relationship, and my relationship with my friends, if I could tell them I didn’t need that anymore.  That I had friends that understood being a little different and were okay with it.  Even if you’re a naga and a demon.  I don’t really care, should I?”

Alessia tried to contain her excitement a bit.  “Nah, you shouldn’t.  We can be friends just fine no matter what we are, all that really matters is we get it.  We know what it’s like to be a little different and just want a misfits pack.  I like that.  Misfits.  That’ll be us!”  She seemed kind of pleased with the idea.  “’Kay, give us your number, kid, so we can keep in contact.  And email or whatever, if you want.  We can use my gym for a hangout if you want, or find something more central.  Not your work, I’m guessing,” she added with a glance at me.  “Even if Troy is old enough to go, you’re only hanging out there during work hours, and that won’t be much fun.  We can hang out at the gym after hours and just be us, doing whatever we decide we wanna do.  Sounds like a plan?”

“Sounds like a plan,” I agreed, Troy nodding eagerly as well.

This hadn’t been exactly what I’d been anticipating adding to my life, but it seemed like a nice adjustment.  A plan to have our own little community with people who understood, well, in our cases, injuries that prevented us from being our full supernatural selves.  It would be nice to be able to talk freely with people for a change.

I just had to make sure that I dealt with my other plan swiftly.  Troy, unlike Alessia, was more in danger of getting hurt if the gang members targeted my friends.  And I wasn’t willing to take that risk.

~~~~~

I flopped down in the middle of the boxing ring.  “This place is bigger than I expected.”

“Hey,” Alessia sounded a little offended as she poked at me with her cane, which I tried to fend off, “I told you some of my trainees make it to the big leagues.  Of course my gym looks the part.”

Troy was looking around in fascination, marveling at some of the pictures on the walls of famous boxers.  He was using crutches, because he wasn’t able to afford a prosthetic and he wasn’t sure he even wanted one yet, but at least he found crutches reasonably fast for the time being and seemed to be getting pretty good at using them.

Alessia paused with her cane-poking looked over at him.  “Wanna learn how to box, kid?”

He turned back towards us, surprise on his face.  “Can I?  I don’t really have hands free for that.”

“Eh, you can still practice punching while sitting down, for now, and eventually when you get a prosthetic leg that works for you, we can work some on standing, maybe moving around.”  She motioned to me.  “You can practice with Madden when it comes to that – he’s got a blind spot and bad hip, so you’re a little more even than someone who can move around the ring freely.”

“Wow, thanks for your ringing endorsement,” I grumbled.  “My hip’s a lot better post-replacement, thank you very much.”

“Still, more limited than you used to be,” she countered, before turning back to Troy.  “Think about it, if you want.  I’ll teach you myself, no need to worry about signing up for a class or anything.  Consider it pack privileges.”

Troy made his way over to us, looking a little pensive.  “I don’t want to take advantage of you – that wasn’t the plan when I asked to join.”

“I know.”  She gave him a smile, looking a lot more relaxed here than she did at the doctor’s office or rehab room.  Apparently being in her domain helped her feel more comfortable.  “I’m offering it, anyway.  Madden and I, we both come from cultures that believe in fighting and being able to defend yourselves.  Now, I can’t exactly fight much anymore, but I can still defend myself if I had to, and Madden’s in much the same boat, though I think he can fight a little better than I can.  Shifters aren’t big on the same training, I get it, but if you wanna learn, we can teach you some.  Wouldn’t hurt to know how to throw a proper punch to defend yourself, right?”

He hesitated, then nodded.  “I’d like that, eventually.  Maybe not quite yet.  I’m still trying to just – get used to this.”  He glanced down at his leg.  “Sometimes it doesn’t feel quite real yet.”