cityofhex | WEEK 02

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WEEK 02

With Halloween past, the weekend of November 5-6 brings the beginnings of holiday trappings, as businesses begin to put up lights and other decorations for Monday. Residential areas, too, begin to pick up on the trend; throughout the whole month there will be a slow but steady increase in front lawn decorations.

Interestingly, though some are close parallels to the Christmas decorations that those from Earth will be familiar with, many aren't quite right. Locals, if asked, talk about something called the Day of Lights as much as they do Christmas or any other holiday; it's easy to find out that the amber-yellow and blue lights common in shops are for this holiday, and that it takes place on the last night of autumn, before the solstice. Snowflakes and candles are the most common motifs.

Changelings seem especially into the Day of Lights, and it is a near-assurance that they will be picking up blue candles for it as the month goes on.

Weather forecast: In a word: dreary. Small showers through Monday and Tuesday grow into full rain throughout Wednesday, continuing on Thursday and as a light misting on Friday. The weekend looks clear of rain, but is still chilly and cloudy. There is still no frost, though it's expected by the end of the month; gardeners are moving potted plants inside and putting cover over the more fragile ones for winter.

Moon phase: The moon reaches a first quarter on Monday the seventh, and continues to grow throughout the week.

Employment Opportunity: Those who are of adult age in the city can get work collecting holiday donations for charity, or, for those more inclined to physical labor, a park in the residential district is putting up lights for a holiday attraction. Additionally, plenty of shops are hiring for the upcoming retail season.

Free lunch?: Though there doesn't seem to be an equivalent to Thanksgiving in Hex, food banks are brimming with holiday spirit right now, and in addition to their usual offerings, many are handing out warm lunches to those in need, usually soup or hot sandwiches, sometimes pizza. While those at any given food bank will side-eye someone who tries to come in more than once, it's easily possible to make a circuit of them and get quite a bit of food, especially if you're familiar with the bus system.

Photo finish: Hajime gets a mild of small publicity for his candid photos of celebrations throughout the city, and on Friday will get a call about a potential contract for photos of decorations throughout December. He also gets sent an email about a campus-sponsored holiday fashion show at the end of the month - something Ryoji will hear about mostly via various rumours among the students.

Fueling the Art: At a coffee shop on the fringes of the campus, an Art Student can be found most every morning, sipping a latte and working on sketches. The Coffeeshop Manager, a man in his late thirties with a pair of small sunglasses perched on his cheeks in spite of the grey weather, occasionally offers her tips. Those with a keen eye will notice that walls made of gears are a common motif in the art that hangs around the shop.

The Ides of Fall: Out on the Island The Summer Queen is called before her Autumn peer and taken to task for her unauthorized gathering. She leaves his court fuming quietly to herself, and later in the week Makoto will receive a message - "Watch the falling leaves, but don't go chasing them." Several others of the Summer Court get the same message.

Sweet Loot: On the morning of the tenth, Kitty will find a locket and a note in with her stashed clothes. The locket is full of orange glitter that seems to stick to the inside, and the outside is worked with leaves. The note simply says TREAT in letters that are all distinctly different. When Kitty uses a finger to apply the glitter to something, it leaves glowing orange marks that only she can see, unless someone else sees her apply them or she intentionally shows them to someone.

Richter and Corwin, meanwhile, will each find a piece of candy hanging from their doorknobs the same morning, tied on with a ribbon that trails glitter on any surface it touches. The candy is wrapped in clear plastic, and has a strange flavor neither will be able to place.

Right on Schedule: The trains in Hex are going nowhere fast, but they do seem to have changed routes, frequently passing alongside an area of the wall that they used to avoid. New Arrivals, as well as Hajime and anyone else who can see Infrastructure, will note strangely runed plates of metal under this section of track - plates which seem to be directly attached to the Wall via cables. Every time a train passes over them, the plates spark with bright green, though nothing about the train itself seems to change.

Through the Grapevine: Though Network Zero is usually considered a Hunter organization, plenty of supernaturals also make use of it to keep their eyes out for threats - and their eyes on each other. One or two of Hajime's photos of the changeling gathering is making the rounds, with the odd horned skulls in the bonfire circled in Photoshop, but perhaps more relevantly, there's a couple photos of Malin from a distance that have fallen into the grasp of a current meme ("Is this bat ok?") and three photos of men doing construction work on a building in the Sixth that seems innocuous until it's pointed out that most of the men are completely identical.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I fox ; downtown ; ota

There are upsides and downsides to this way of feeding, she has found. The upside is that it is surprisingly safe and easy; people drunk enough for other vampires to pass them up are also drunk enough to either be passed out or at least not remember the next morning, or think of weird hallucinations if they remember her. And after one or two close calls she's become good at keeping to those just far away enough to not be noticed by other Kindred.

There is one obvious downside, namely: There's alcohol in that blood. Lots of it. She's tried to drink in moderation when she used this kind of hunting, before, but somehow she must have failed to estimate just how drunk the guy she fed on was this time. Because ...she has four goddamn legs right now. It should not be that hard to stay upright on them and walk in a straight line. It doesn't help that all her senses seem to be a bit muted, her mind a bit slower than normal.

People might notice a fox very cautiously and unsteadily walking down a street, almost running into a lamppost at one point and then narrowly avoiding being run over by a slow moving car a few minutes later.

II some malformed person wearing a huge hooded military coat ; all over ; ota

She isn't quite panicking, but she is definitely close to it. Ever since Corwin made her aware of that meme, she has been scolding herself - she should have been more careful, should have watched herself and her surroundings better. Should have made sure that she stayed out of everyone's sight.

It's not only that she's a walking Masquerade breach, now. It's also that her aura is still marred for all she knows, and for however much longer, if any Cainite bothered to find her. And... and she doesn't know. She's been on the run and hiding, laying low with as little human thought processes as possible, for too long to change gears easily now, to pull her resources together enough to develop the creativity to deal with this in another way.

She runs.

Not literally, though. Her running away only brings her to head out into the districts which she hasn't been to before for one reason or the other, cautious explorations that draw circles that bring her deeper and deeper into the hills and farmlands, though she quickly concentrates on the hills. Still, they are circles. They bring her back to the urban areas again, because that is where the food is, a tall, awkward figure in an oversized military coat and comically big shoes, wandering through the darker corners of the city and avoiding to take off the coat at all times.

III hills ; owl ; hajime

But sometimes she also takes other shapes, especially when she is out in the hills. She sees more, hears more, is faster. There are almost only upsides to it.

And she cannot feed much out here, anyway. ...But she can still hunt, even if the prey is so small that it isn't quite worth it. Like this one. A mouse. For one of which she is swooping down, a silent predatory shadow descending onto the little animal and sharp talons tearing into it.

Makoto does not venture to the downtown area all too often. Too many people, too many bright lights. It's not that he's totally unable to take it, but the loud noise makes him think of the arena he sometimes fought in, and his hackles rise. To a normal human he might look like he's having somewhat of an anxiety attack, which is why he sticks to the city at night when he can.

Tonight he had to go find something from a harder to locate store, though, and he's wandering, trying to find his way back to his safe haven, and... is that... a fox? Is it drunk? Can foxes get drunk? He carefully makes sure no one else is around as he approaches it, making little snuffling noises. "... Are you all right?"

Edited 2016-11-18 03:32 (UTC)

The fox freezes and stares up at him, almost losing her footing, and Malin realizes about fifteen seconds too late that her reactions may or may not be appropriate for a fox.

The answer to which seems to be doing the appropriate reaction for a fox, which is running.

Which would be great, if her legs didn't disagree on the direction of the sudden moment. Which means that the fox in front of Makoto is just falling over. The more legs, the harder the coordination, sometimes.

"Hold on there." He takes a few steps closer to the fox, crouching down so he doesn't pose as much of a threat. "You're hurt somehow... let me help you. Please?" It doesn't hurt to be polite to a wild animal, especially when you're trying not to spook them.

Briefly, he considers calling some kind of animal shelter - but no, they'd probably call someone to put down a fox acting strangely like this. He has to do this on his own. "Shh... I'm not going to hurt you. I promise."

She flinches back at first, but his words do calm her a bit. He seems genuine - being an animal, she was told, has the huge advantage that people will not lie around you with their words. They might with their tone and the emotions that they fake, but they will usually say things as they are, assuming that you don't understand them.

This guy is ...genuinely polite and friendly, too, and she tends to be more trusting of people's good intentions when she's in this form. When she's not really herself. So she allows herself to relax a bit, allowing him to come closer.

He doesn't move yet, trying to let her get comfortable with the distance first. "You shouldn't be out here... I can take out out to the farmland if you want." He's not sure if the fox is in any state to answer him, though. Still, he keeps his voice soft and his words gentle. "How did you get like this, anyway? Do you remember?"

...Farmland. She's not sure if that is really a good place for her, and if he carries her there... if he carries her anywhere, she probably won't get to leave that place before having to retire for the day.

Not that she can risk to show an understanding of what he's saying. Even if he.... talks like he expects her to understand.

But he's talking in normal human words ...isn't he? She's not sober enough to try and make sense of this, so she just lies down instead, flopping on her belly and putting her head down on the dirty ground, looking up at him with big, soulful eyes. Or something like that.

He sighs and takes a few steps more towards her before sitting down and glancing around. No one's nearby... good. He switches into canine, doing his best to keep his words simple. "If you don't want to go there, I won't force you. I just want you to be safe."

She blinks in surprise and her head comes up just a bit. Did he just - he did.

But she can hear a heartbeat in him, and he doesn't smell dead ...he doesn't smell very human, either, now that she gathers enough of her thought processes to analyze those things. He smells like dog, a lot more than someone who just owns one.

She does know that there are other supernaturals than vampires and werewolves, but she's never encountered one (and noticed - they all seem to have their own kind of Masquerade) or heard much about them, only that they are out there. Mages, and... more.

So whatever this guy is, he's probably one of those others. She's not sure if it makes him more or less trustworthy, but at least she can try and keep up pretending to be a fox while still talking to him. Keep your words simple, Malin ...at least that part shouldn't be hard. She couldn't string together complicated thoughts right now if she wanted to.

"Forest or trees are safe."

"One of the parks, then." He can handle that, and reaches out to the fox. "I'll have to pick you up. Is that okay?" While he can endure a bite, he doesn't exactly want to. Besides, that would be a pretty awkward thing to have to answer for at the clinic. It's not like there's many secrets in a Freehold.

He does his best to stay calm, but he does want to get the fox out of here quickly. He doesn't want to risk anyone seeing him with it.

She wants to say no, but ...honestly, with how unsteady she is on her legs right now, it might be her safest bet for getting anywhere.

"If you're careful."

He nods, and scoops an arm under her belly and another around her back legs, holding her gently as he gets up. He heads towards the central district, and glances down at the fox. ... It's cold, and he can't feel a heartbeat.

He needs to help canines, but... "What are you?" It's not a normal fox. Some kind of Hedge beast? Something sent to spy on them? His grip tightens slightly.

She tenses in turn, ready to fight. Curses. She should have figured that he might notice something if he got too close. She's never again going to drink from a drunk guy who smells that badly. Or from anyone who is drunk, probably, at least for a few days. If she gets out of this. At least he didn't seem particularly strong. But who even knows.

"I'm drunk."

It's a correct way of answering his question, even if it probably isn't what he wanted to know. But it's what stood at the end of her not-so-quick train of thought.

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