WEEK 04

[modmachine]

Weather: If you ask the residents, it's freezing, though it technically hasn't dropped that low yet. A rather nasty rainstorm does pick up steam late Tuesday and last well into Thursday night, however, so it might be a little justified on the part of the unfortunate souls stuck out in it.

Moon phase: Monday the 21st is the last-quarter moon, and the crescent is hidden behind clouds until Friday night.

Carried on from last week: After Ryoji and Kitty open an Underworld gate, the ice from the week before melts away over the next day or so, unsealing the rest of them. The thickly-built man can still be found watching the construction site, though no further strange accidents occur.

It's Black Friday Somewhere - the Goblin Market:

On Wednesday night, flyers start getting tacked up in weird places; the ink used in them is an ancient sort that runs in the rain, but if you can manage to find one that's intact, it speaks of an open exchange of goods... But the location is left mysterious. Those with any kind of supernatural sight, however, will find that the running ink leaves behind a quite useful map when the flyer is taken down.

The Goblin Market sets itself up in the early hours of Friday morning that can technically be called Thursday night, booths full of oddities going up in the central park while the last of the raindrops still sprinkle through the trees. The market is separated from the rest of the park by three strange gates set around the perimeter, all of them formed of two poles strung with flowers. Passing through them causes a strange sensation like stepping through the surface of a pool; inside the market, Changeling masks are disabled, and other illusions have difficulty working properly. Only the Covers created by the God-Machine, whether they belong to angel or demon, remain unaffected.

Almost anything can be found here for the right price, if you know who to talk to or just wander around long enough, and there are changelings on the ground practically from the moment the stalls are set up. The market is open for roughly 24 hours.

A few highlights;

• The Boss: Whoever this guy is, he's Big News. Dressed in what seems to be a suit made entirely of burlap sacks, he has a glittering woman on each arm wherever he goes in the market. The expressions on the women are dazed and dreamy; they sigh periodically. Three glittering children follow after him, occasionally being sent on errands for this or that in the market, and they'll stop long enough to wave if they come across Kitty before going back to work. Occasionally, their boss pulls a glittering beetle or some other insect out from the folds of his suit... and eats it.


• A pair of horned shopkeepers share a stall; one sells a variety of engraved weapons, and the other, star charts. Occasionally, the astronomer glances up at the sky and scribbles something down in a notebook in his lap. Strangely, though their booth has no cover, nothing within seems at any risk of getting wet, and the blade-seller can occasionally be seen flicking water away with his fingers. A banner across the front of their stall proclaims 'PROPHECIES CHEAP.'


• A large enclosure is home to a number of strange animals, ranging from small birds whose voices induce synesthesia, to glittering insects (not unlike the ones someone else at the market is snacking on), to chimeras, to a single, inexplicably normal giraffe. Every couple of hours, the animal seller has to leave to chase down one of several pink puppies that attempt to escape his notice and run freely through the market.


• At dawn and sunset, a golden-haired Fairest ascends the small stage in the back corner to sing. When she does, almost all the market goes still to listen to her voice. The only person who seems capable of moving is her black-wrapped companion; only his eyes are visible, and he rolls them regularly, but no one seems willing to test him by approaching the woman he accompanies.


• A young woman sells gears that are clearly ripped off pieces of Infrastructure, for those who know what to look for. She doesn't seem concerned by the fact that a number of them are covered in blood or other fluids, or by the single angel who is doing a very poor job of finding excuses to walk past her booth repeatedly. Closer inspection will reveal that her dark 'skin' is in fact entirely made of wood, and gears like those she sells have been carefully embedded in it.


• There is an informational booth from the local university, which seems to be accepting payment for winter tuition in whatever barter people have brought. It is by fair the most mundane-looking set of tables in the place, except for the slowly-growing collection of odd payments behind the registrar. Her assistant, a tired-looking adjunct professor, appears to be human, and occasionally rubs his eyes and mutters to himself over some of the stranger applicants.


• A certain Art Student from said university, who is distinctly staying as far away from that booth as possible, and instead looking at a half-a-table full of magically bright pigments. It might be a bit difficult to recognize her, though, with the hood high around her head blocking most of her face from view and the streaks of temporary pink dye in her bangs.


• A girl of about twelve, running about the market unsupervised, occasionally produces a strand of her gleaming silver hair to trade for seemingly worthless items. By day's end, these strands are one of the most in-demand pieces of merchandise in the market.


• A creature that looks like nothing so much as it does a metal statue of an antelope harshly appraises goblin fruit at the various stalls offering such. In the late afternoon, one seller takes issue with this assessment, and attempts to start a fight, but passes through the creature as though it were air. In fact, the goblin fruit seem to be the only thing that it can touch.

EVERYTHING ELSE:

The Hunt is On: The day after the goblin market brings an unusual number of gun-wielding farmers into town - as well as their richer, fancier counterparts. There seems to be some tension between the two groups of hunters; those who spot an encounter between the two near the central parks can almost feel it in the air.At nightfall, the two groups assemble at opposite ends of the park, and chase... something through the grounds that previously hosted the Goblin Market. Though it seems to be a competition, neither group is successful in taking their quarry.

Spooky Scary: Network Zero goes through bursts of activity, and it’s started bursting again with rumors of one particular warehouse in the Sixth being haunted. Indeed, anyone who wanders over towards it can find a scruffy-looking Cameraman with a handheld camcorder poking behind boxes and trying to catch… something on camera.

Long Nights at Church:The greeter normally stationed outside St. Madeleine's church belltower seems uneasy, glancing up at the empty tower repeatedly throughout the weeknight services. Finally, on Sunday night, after all the human worshippers have gone home, she takes one of the largest of the handbells from holiday practice and takes it up the tower, ringing it twelve times at midnight. Over the course of the next few hours, several other dwellers of the night climb the steps and make their confessionals into the empty space, each ringing the bell when they have finished.

Comments

[helborn]

"Yeah. Like..." He glances around, and drops his volume a bit. "Like giant... creatures from before the gods. They hate the gods and hate everything connected to them, which is... pretty much everything."

[runs]

Your world is weird, dude. Because dragons owning worldwide megacorporations, people melting their mind with machines and AIs taking over people's bodies is totally not weird at all.

"I don't think they have them here. Only vampires and werewolves and such." You know, the normal things.

[helborn]

"Oh they - wait, there's vampires here, too?" He brightens a bit, smiling. "I know there were some in the city where I grew up, but my dad told me never to tell anyone."

[runs]

"They are different from the ones back home, though. And," since Casper breached the topic, "you shouldn't tell anyone here, either. Because everyone here tries to not let mundane people know that magic and magic creatures and such exist. And they're really good at keeping it a secret and probably will kill you if you don't protect it, too." The last one is a deduction on her part, but the various groups have to have solid mechanisms in place to make sure that the secret doesn't get spilled, if all that secrecy worked for so long.

[helborn]

He almost smiles at the mention of killing him. He's... done that before, he's not afraid of it so much. Not if it's for a good reason. "I'm not going to tell anyone. But uh... that might be kind of... a problem... since Bob follows me pretty much everywhere."

Of course he's not going to say just why he has to. Not yet, at least. That's not a good subject to broach so easily.

[runs]

"If you keep him close, people will just think that he's a normal raven. Humans are really good at only seeing what they expect."

And if they don't realize that magic exists, then they probably won't realize when essence is in the wrong place, considering how tightly the two are interwoven.

[helborn]

"True. Hopefully people won't ask me too many questions about him. Maybe we can get you a tiny leash."

That earns him a peck on the side of the head and a suddenly disappearing fry from his hand down Bob's gullet.

[runs]

"...If you need a place to stay, there's a tent city in the park where nobody asks questions, but in the middle of the winter it might be better for you to find a job and make rent as quickly as possible." The solution that her and Tobias found is good, but it is far from perfect and there's always the worry that they will be kicked out or some gang will claim the place. "There are always abandoned houses in the 6th that you can stay in for a night or two, too, but sometimes people wander in so that isn't necessarily safe."

Hm, what else. "If there's magic where you're from it might work differently from how it works here, so if you see someone or something that resembles someone or something that you know from home, they might not be the same thing. And there are a lot of vampires in downtown at night."

[helborn]

"Huh." He thinks about it, and shrugs after eating a bite of burger. "I'm immune to cold, so that makes things easier." It should, at least. There's the chance someone might ask weird questions, but he should be able to make them leave peacefully. ... Probably. He's not totally sure if Bob feels the cold, but he's got a jacket, at least.

The idea of him working makes him look slightly... concerned, though. "I don't know if most jobs would be good for me if they involve physical labor. Someone who looks like I do shouldn't be able to pick up heavy stuff easily." Then again... "Maybe the library needs help?"

[runs]

"There's a lot of people that aren't regular humans, so you won't stand out too badly if you try to not be too obvious." But she hasn't managed to find another shapeshifter yet, to her eternal disappointment. ...Okay, eternal disappointment when she happens to currently think about it. Like right now.

She shrugs. "I don't know. I haven't really looked into it because they won't hire me anyway."

[helborn]

"Hopefully. And they won't hire you because of your age? Or because of something else?" For all he knows, there could be another reason. Not like he has any real idea about this city, anyway.

[runs]

"Because of my age.

I've been working for two years back home, it is really stupid." Okay, nobody has ever hired her, she just was on a team that got hired, but details. Her teammates worked with her and she worked, that should be enough.

[helborn]

"Oh. Huh. What kind of work did you do?" He's only really had a job helping his dad, and that... didn't really get him paid.

[runs]

"A lot of different things. Do you have Runners where you are from?"

Sharing things with him is a bit different than sharing things with people from this world, somehow, and so far she's shared nothing that would compromise her safety back home. At least not in areas where she usually talks to people outside of runs.

[helborn]

"Um... I don't think so?" It sounds cool, though. Like something from a sci-fi novel.

[runs]

"Shadowrunners. We do..." How to even describe this to someone who doesn't know about her line of work already. "We do missions for payment. Like protecting something or someone or destroying it or them, like finding something or someone and getting it to the hands that pay us. If it's a person, sometimes the person we also extract.

I'm most doing scouting and other stealth stuff."

[helborn]

"Oh, neat. As long as it's work you enjoy. I've heard horror stories about getting into jobs that just make you miserable... I know what I want to do if I ever get a chance to study and live a normal life again." It's not like he really had any other options, in terms of where his life before was leading him.

[runs]

"It's sometimes boring, but most of the time it isn't and I get around a lot because of it. And I have my team because of it and they are cool." They all have their flaws just like the job, but everyone has that. Chantalle's main flaw, for example, is that she keeps falling asleep while petting her lately. Or used to, when she was still home.

She makes a face at Casper's last words though. "Why do you want to study?" That sounds like the most boring thing anyone could do.

[helborn]

He laughs a little bit at her expression. "Because what I want to do is go into mortuary science and run a funeral home, like my dad does. The business part of it is pretty boring, but I like helping families when they're making decisions as to what to do for funerals."

[runs]

"...What?"

She has no idea what he's even talking about. Funerals exist in her experience mostly as well, it's your funeral kind of threats. Dead bodies happen, sure, but she has never really looked into how they might be disposed of gracefully, or any experience with it.

[helborn]

"... A funeral home is the place where bodies go while preparations are made for burial or cremation or whatever the family wants to have done to it. Sometimes we do autopsies, where we try to figure out what caused the death. A lot of it is a business, where you sell the various services to the families... but I like helping people with their grief. I kind of was born for work around death, after all."

He knows that can be taken several ways, but... well. It depends how she reacts.

[runs]

"Is it normal for people to do the same work as their parents did where you're from?"

At least she assumes that that is what he's referring to.

It's the easiest part of what he said, the one that she can relate to the most, Bodies... the only people who were important enough to her that she might have had an interest in them past their passing didn't have bodies that could have been retrieved, at least not safely, and so she never spent much of a thought on what you do with them if you can get your hands on them. Dead animals got usually thrown in the bin in the area where she lived, so she'd kind of assumed that the same happened with people. Sure, she's seen burials on TV and heard people talk about it, but she just assumed that it was an eccentric thing rich people did, like pools.

"What's cremation?"

[helborn]

"Sometimes? Not always. But it's something I enjoy, and it's something not a lot of people really are comfortable doing, so I feel like someone who isn't bothered by death should take up that kind of role."

As for her other question... "Cremation is... burning. Putting a body into a big oven and cooking it until it's ash, and breaking down the bones. Sometimes people keep the ashes in a special container, and sometimes they scatter the ashes in a place that the person liked - the ocean, the forest, in the garden... we didn't do that at our location, but we had business partnerships with some places that did."

[runs]

That is all ...really creepy and weird and fascinating at once.

"Do a lot of people get rid of bodies like that?"

[helborn]

"Some people do. Buying burial space can be really expensive, so it's cheaper and easier to cremate someone." The ghost shows up either way if they've got attachments. It doesn't matter what happens to the body, really.