WEEK 02

[modmachine]

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.

Comments

[runs]

Hm....

She opens the locket and draws a small circle on the ground with the glitter.

"Can you see it now?"

[chalicejoker]

Hajime looks at it, and he nods. "...should I not be able to?"

[runs]

"Nobody else was able to see things that I drew with it."

At least not that she could tell. What did she do different this time? It's not the material, after all.

[chalicejoker]

"Strange." Hajime considers this carefully. "...did you do anything different here?"

[runs]

"No." She frowns. "The only difference was that you were here." Not just anyone, because she'd snuck around people to do a little paw print befo- "And that you were looking while I applied it."

[chalicejoker]

Hajime turns around. "Draw something else. I won't watch."

[runs]

She does so - just a circle with a cross in it.

"Done."

[chalicejoker]

Hajime turns back around and frowns. "...there's nothing there."

[runs]

"...So the key is someone seeing me apply it."

She kicks up some of the dust that the glitter sits on with the tip of her toe and then pockets the locket.

"I wonder if it does anything then." Maybe it was a good idea to not have it put on anything that belonged to her. She should really have tried to find out where it came from before playing around with it, probably.

[chalicejoker]

"So it would appear." Odd. Hajime's got to wonder about the purpose of such a thing. Useful for tracking, certainly... "Be careful with it until you know for certain."

[runs]

"Now you sound like uncle Eeve."

The mystery that she set out to solve is somewhat answered, and she's rapidly losing interest, so there's no much reason to worry about her painting more things with the glitter.

And she can't even redirect her attention to where the locket came from, because she doesn't have the slightest clue and she has no magical way of figuring it out. There probably are magical ways to give her a hint, but she's not learned such spells, never tried to learn calling upon spirits who might be able to assist her with such a skill, and isn't academically inclined enough or blessed with the patience to develop a spell or ritual for it herself.

[chalicejoker]

"Then your uncle has a pretty good idea of how these sorts of things usually work out." Look, you can't be too careful with weird magic glitter.

[runs]

"He does. He went to school and all."

He's also a quite experienced mage, and her teacher or at least the person who helps her figure things out.

[chalicejoker]

"...do they teach about things like this in human schools?" Hell, he doesn't know. He didn't think so, but you never know...

[runs]

"No, but it means that he learned about all kind of things and reads books about even more things."

Reading books is what you do at school, right?

[chalicejoker]

"I wasn't aware humans had books of such things." Interesting. Very interesting...

[runs]

It's so strange to her still that it's humans, not metahumans, just by virtue of the other races no existing, but she is slowly getting used to it. "Humans have books on almost everything. Even soyburgers."

[chalicejoker]

"Soyburgers are strange and unnatural--but still an entirely human creation. These other things...they're not always human creations. Not something humans usually discuss in their books." Makes sense to him.

[runs]

"I don't think there is anything that they don't discuss in their books." Or their electronic counterparts, anyway.

"Though sometimes others will go through and delete what was written because they don't want to be it out in the public, or in the hands of specific people." In a way, she's been part of such efforts before.

[chalicejoker]

"They discuss everything, true--it's just that they're wrong about a great many things." Hajime nods. "Misinformation can serve a purpose, true, but with others? They're only endangering themselves through ignorance."

[runs]

"They think it'll get them more profits or power." Which is essentially the same. And, hey. It creates a lot of jobs. "And if someone who wants to blow up everything gets information on bombs, that's dangerous too."

[chalicejoker]

"I think they have watchlists for that," Hajime muses, completely failing to notice the fact that the kid's talking about humans like others the way he is.

[runs]

...That makes sense.

"But you can't know of everyone who wants to blow up things before they do it. Some people surprise you."

Surprise is the nastiest factor of a runner's life. Well, people that are shooting at you aside, but that's just a occupational hazard.

[chalicejoker]

"Many are full of surprises, true." Hajime nods. "That's why you have to watch people."

[runs]

"You can't watch everyone."

Though, she guesses, if you have enough resources you can watch most people who would have the resources to build bombs. Maybe. Even AAA corporations can only have their hands in so many pots, or want to have their hands in so many pots.