By then, traffic had also picked up to the consistent level of chaos that would remain for the next twelve hours. Walter hated Portland traffic. He hated traffic anywhere, but he especially hated it in Portland, with its labyrinth of one-way streets barely wide enough for horse-drawn carriages, much less the modern array of sedans and large box trucks trying to navigate the streets. Walter counted himself lucky that at least the damn MAX didn’t wind its way through the area. The streetcar, on the other hand, was a constant bother that would pop up if Walter hadn’t paid enough attention to which street he was on.

He was thinking about how much he hated traffic in Portland while stopped at a light, when his entire car suddenly lurched forward so harshly, his glasses wound up on the dashboard. He scrambled to find them again and get out of the car to curb stomp whoever had just rear ended him. The bright green Subaru was already trying to reverse out, but with its front axle out of alignment, it didn’t seem to be going very far. But apparently seeing Walter getting out of the car and stomping toward him made the driver figure out what he was doing, because he managed to get away and speed off down the road. With his axle still out of alignment, he still didn’t get very far, and crashed into a cop car on the other side of the intersection about three seconds later. Walter felt like he’d have probably felt better if he’d got to kick the bastard’s face in, but he settled for watching him get his ass chewed out by a couple of cops, before turning around to inspect the damage. The entire rear end of his Audi was fucked. The lights were smashed, and the bumper was cracked and about to fall off. Walter flipped off someone who was honking at him for not going while the light was green, and got back into the car to get away, before someone else decided to rear end him again out of spite. He found an out of the way place to park, and then walked over to the Subaru-driving Skunk.

“Top means stop,” he snarled on his way over.

One of cops broke away to come talk to Walter. “Were you in the black car?” the wolf asked.

Walter nodded. “Yeah. It still drives. I just need his insurance.”

The wolf shook his head. “The driver that hit you is uninsured. But I can take your information and get you a police report instead.”

Walter tried very hard not to grumble and growl as he pulled his wallet out of his pocket. He pulled a business card and his driver’s license out and handed them over, trading it for the clipboard the cop held. He filled out the paperwork and signed it, all too eager to get out of there. As soon as he was able, Walter walked back to his car, and spent a moment to just stew in his own anger. He took another moment to just breathe, and adjusted his shirt where his fur had bristled up and got caught awkwardly on the fabric. This was not how his day off was supposed to go. After a few long minutes, Walter started the car again and got the hell out of the area.

Once he found a shoe store and found a parking spot, he took a few moments to call his insurance company so he didn’t have to drive around with a smashed up car a second longer than he had to. He thought about taking his phone into the store with him, but didn’t want to be giving a bunch of information to any Tom, Dick or Harry who might have overheard. So instead, he sat in his car on hold for almost twenty minutes, waiting for someone to answer. He knew he could have used the app on his phone, but he didn’t trust anything to be sent through properly, or for the connection to be totally secure. So he waited. And finally when someone did answer, their entire solution was to have him use their app anyway. Walter grumbled and got out of his car to take the pictures and submit the information to a page with dodgy confirmation. Not at all positive it had been taken care of, he headed inside to be greeted by a young mouse dressed up for a soccer match, who hovered about ten feet away from him the entire time he looked at new shoes. When ignoring her didn’t work, Walter waved her off, assuming she’d get the point and go away. She didn’t. All she did was hover a little farther away as she watched him look at new running shoes. He loved his job. He loved what he did. He hated that it meant random people liked to stare at him whenever he left the house. While she was younger than the normal crowd of gawkers, she did seem right around the age of the weirdos on Twitter who liked to get too personal in his comments.

Walter wasn’t sure what he wanted, and wound up looking at nearly every option available until he settled on something bright blue with neon green and yellow accents and laces. Once he found a pair in a size that fit comfortably, making sure his claws wouldn’t catch the way they did on the old pair, he moved to another section to try to find something to replace the shoes he was wearing, but nothing jumped out at him. His DCs were still in good condition, even if they were getting a bit old and boring. He paid for the running shoes without giving the girl so much as a syllable, eager to get out of there before he found out if he had some crazy stalker fan to worry about. As he stepped back out onto the sidewalk in front of the shop, his phone vibrated with a string of texts. Nichola was the only person who texted him like that, and she was usually pissed off when she did it. With a tremendous sigh, Walter stopped to pull out his phone to see what the hell she wanted now. As he read through another string of complaints about ratings and shared spaces, Walter found himself suddenly on the wrong side of a sucker punch. Before he even properly realized what had happened, he swung a punch of his own, connecting with a stranger’s ribs. As he stepped back, he swung out a kick toward the kid’s knee, and even though he could feel it connect, it wasn’t hard enough to drop him to the ground. There were two of them - a pair of foxes - but which one had thrown the punch, Walter had no idea. Nor did he particularly care. He brought a paw up to his mouth, and after wiping his thumb across the side of his muzzle along his bottom lip, he found blood in his fur and smeared across his thumb pad.