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cityofhex2016-10-29 08:29 pm
modmachine) wrote in cityofhex2016-10-29 08:29 pm
WEEK 01
Somewhere, a gear slips.
It's sunset on Halloween night; a night of celebration for the dead and the once-dead, a night of wariness for those bound closely to the spirits. Everything seems to move more freely on this night; the sensation of boundaries crossed is almost palpable.
A handful of those native to the city will certainly feel such. Between one step and the next, there's a feeling of pushing against something, something you didn't know was there before - and it gives. Physically, nothing changes, but you now know something is wrong, as though waking from a dream. Something has slipped, and you remember. Hajime will feel the sensation most keenly, as the things he recalls lack the sharp details of a demon's memory.
Meanwhile, somewhere in the Sixth, the New Arrivals all also find themselves taking steps - the first thing the group will become aware of in the city is being shoved out the door of what seems to be some kind of broken down factory. The alley they step into is wide enough to get a truck through, but shows little sign of human habitation; only a cardboard box, half-dissolved by rain, and a few bits of stray glass from broken bottles can be seen. Their phones and any other communication devices they possess all beep loudly, once, after the door slams shut.
Except... What door? When they next blink, while there's still a vaguely door-like outline, the concrete wall has changed; where the door was, there's a metal sheet, machined with faint circular patterns, seamlessly integrated with the concrete. Banging a fist on it produces a solid sound, as though the metal was at least an inch thick. Though there is a feeling of being watched in the alleyway, no one will approach until they leave it, not even a passerby walking the not-quite-yet-dark street at either end. Until they step out of the alley, it's as though they don't exist.
And there's a good amount of foot traffic passing the alleyway by. Though it tends towards people in a college student age bracket and people in a vaguely street punk sort of fashion with odd accessories, neither is an absolute rule by any rule. Following the flow of traffic leads to a run-down park that's mostly skatepark with a few picnic tables and a small greenspace that's been taken over for a dancefloor. The tables are covered in odd junk and there seems to be some trading going on.
Haseo and Ryoji will both have better knowledge of what the place is, and have standing invitations to the party that's starting up as the Sin-Eater trading post winds down.
Elsewhere: On a beach bordering the bay, a group of changelings holds a bonfire. Periodically, someone throws a papercraft skull into it with extreme prejudice; almost all the skulls are inhuman in some way, though the craftmanship of the paper-mache makes it difficult to tell at times. Those in the know have to be aware that such an overt display won't pass unnoticed by the Autumn King... But the tall and built woman who seems to be the center of the festivities shows no fear in the season of fear.
In the Residential District and even a few places in the Sixth, trick-or-treaters are as much a feature as they are every year. Children in costume run about with little concern for who they approach, while their parents maintain appropriate wariness from sidewalks or cars. A small group of children, however, galivants with no supervision - and there is something uncanny about the trio. It's best to give them a treat if they approach you, else you might find yourself the recipient of a cruel trick in return. Unlike the other trick-or-treaters, they're out and about well past midnight; nearly to dawn, in fact. When the sky begins to lighten, however, all three stop immediately in the middle of what they're doing and - with the sound of mad, fey giggling - bolt off in the direction of the farming district.
The prompts from the Test Drive also remain available for interaction.
The rest of the week:
Weather forecast: Though Halloween is a clear night, clouds steadily roll in for most of the rest of the week, hanging overcast in the sky with occasional breaks and sprinkles of rain slotted in. Mornings are foggy and chill, warming slightly in the afternoons but not varying all too much in temperature. Frost has yet to set in, though, making it possible to sleep outside if you have adequate cover, but it won't be very fun.
Moon Phase: The 30th was a New Moon, so Halloween's sky is decorated by a fingernail crescent that grows to almost a half moon throughout the week.
The Clean-Up: After Halloween, of course, everything must slowly go back to normal. Most folks clean up their own messes throughout the first morning of November, but shards of gutted and thrown pumpkins can be found most everywhere, and at the park where the Sin-Eaters partied, a lone Security Officer inspects the aftermath for signs of unusual activity. Aside from the remains of pumpkins, which are mostly left to rot, decorations vanish over the course of the week and all but a few are gone by Thursday morning.
The College: Though enrollment for the fall semester is over, the deadlines for winter are fast approaching, and there are a number of tables set up in a large area to entice prospective students. Most of them are manned by undergraduates, but the English program's table is staffed most of the time by a single Tired Professor with mousy brown hair. Occasionally, the Tech Student at the next table over takes pity on the man, bringing him a hot-chocolate to help warm his fingers.
[Feel free to use this post as a jumping-off point for logs and interactions! You are also welcome to post your own logs to the community as needed. Mods will be available on plurk and discord to answer questions, and can be hailed for exploration logs off this post.]
It's sunset on Halloween night; a night of celebration for the dead and the once-dead, a night of wariness for those bound closely to the spirits. Everything seems to move more freely on this night; the sensation of boundaries crossed is almost palpable.
A handful of those native to the city will certainly feel such. Between one step and the next, there's a feeling of pushing against something, something you didn't know was there before - and it gives. Physically, nothing changes, but you now know something is wrong, as though waking from a dream. Something has slipped, and you remember. Hajime will feel the sensation most keenly, as the things he recalls lack the sharp details of a demon's memory.
Meanwhile, somewhere in the Sixth, the New Arrivals all also find themselves taking steps - the first thing the group will become aware of in the city is being shoved out the door of what seems to be some kind of broken down factory. The alley they step into is wide enough to get a truck through, but shows little sign of human habitation; only a cardboard box, half-dissolved by rain, and a few bits of stray glass from broken bottles can be seen. Their phones and any other communication devices they possess all beep loudly, once, after the door slams shut.
Except... What door? When they next blink, while there's still a vaguely door-like outline, the concrete wall has changed; where the door was, there's a metal sheet, machined with faint circular patterns, seamlessly integrated with the concrete. Banging a fist on it produces a solid sound, as though the metal was at least an inch thick. Though there is a feeling of being watched in the alleyway, no one will approach until they leave it, not even a passerby walking the not-quite-yet-dark street at either end. Until they step out of the alley, it's as though they don't exist.
And there's a good amount of foot traffic passing the alleyway by. Though it tends towards people in a college student age bracket and people in a vaguely street punk sort of fashion with odd accessories, neither is an absolute rule by any rule. Following the flow of traffic leads to a run-down park that's mostly skatepark with a few picnic tables and a small greenspace that's been taken over for a dancefloor. The tables are covered in odd junk and there seems to be some trading going on.
Haseo and Ryoji will both have better knowledge of what the place is, and have standing invitations to the party that's starting up as the Sin-Eater trading post winds down.
Elsewhere: On a beach bordering the bay, a group of changelings holds a bonfire. Periodically, someone throws a papercraft skull into it with extreme prejudice; almost all the skulls are inhuman in some way, though the craftmanship of the paper-mache makes it difficult to tell at times. Those in the know have to be aware that such an overt display won't pass unnoticed by the Autumn King... But the tall and built woman who seems to be the center of the festivities shows no fear in the season of fear.
In the Residential District and even a few places in the Sixth, trick-or-treaters are as much a feature as they are every year. Children in costume run about with little concern for who they approach, while their parents maintain appropriate wariness from sidewalks or cars. A small group of children, however, galivants with no supervision - and there is something uncanny about the trio. It's best to give them a treat if they approach you, else you might find yourself the recipient of a cruel trick in return. Unlike the other trick-or-treaters, they're out and about well past midnight; nearly to dawn, in fact. When the sky begins to lighten, however, all three stop immediately in the middle of what they're doing and - with the sound of mad, fey giggling - bolt off in the direction of the farming district.
The prompts from the Test Drive also remain available for interaction.
The rest of the week:
Weather forecast: Though Halloween is a clear night, clouds steadily roll in for most of the rest of the week, hanging overcast in the sky with occasional breaks and sprinkles of rain slotted in. Mornings are foggy and chill, warming slightly in the afternoons but not varying all too much in temperature. Frost has yet to set in, though, making it possible to sleep outside if you have adequate cover, but it won't be very fun.
Moon Phase: The 30th was a New Moon, so Halloween's sky is decorated by a fingernail crescent that grows to almost a half moon throughout the week.
The Clean-Up: After Halloween, of course, everything must slowly go back to normal. Most folks clean up their own messes throughout the first morning of November, but shards of gutted and thrown pumpkins can be found most everywhere, and at the park where the Sin-Eaters partied, a lone Security Officer inspects the aftermath for signs of unusual activity. Aside from the remains of pumpkins, which are mostly left to rot, decorations vanish over the course of the week and all but a few are gone by Thursday morning.
The College: Though enrollment for the fall semester is over, the deadlines for winter are fast approaching, and there are a number of tables set up in a large area to entice prospective students. Most of them are manned by undergraduates, but the English program's table is staffed most of the time by a single Tired Professor with mousy brown hair. Occasionally, the Tech Student at the next table over takes pity on the man, bringing him a hot-chocolate to help warm his fingers.
[Feel free to use this post as a jumping-off point for logs and interactions! You are also welcome to post your own logs to the community as needed. Mods will be available on plurk and discord to answer questions, and can be hailed for exploration logs off this post.]
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This isn't a conversation he wanted to have with anyone, much less a kid.
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Is she going somewhere with this? She might be. Or not. She isn't quite sure herself and not exactly thinking ahead.
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It takes her a heartbeat to realize that she's kind of offering, but ...she barely knows him, but he seems trustworthy enough, honest, helpful and doesn't pry more than necessary. And he's not properly human, too.
And she has tried the being alone thing for a couple of days now and realized that while she likes being alone, she only likes it on her own terms. When it becomes a forced state of being, it gets lonely.
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... Maybe for now, at least. There's... he still doesn't know what she is, and he wants to know, and he knows he can't trust anyone, but she's not possessed by a Strix. And she's different, too. "We need to get you set up, first."
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"What do we need to do to "set me up"?"
They've almost reached the entrance now and are about to step out onto the street, and something - Oh. She stops abruptly and reaches inside her coat to produce a small black item. Contact lenses, she almost forgot to hide her eyes again. As abruptly as she stopped, she crouches down, balances the container on her knee and starts to pick the contacts out and insert them into her eyes.
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He notices that she stops, and waits, smiling slightly. "Well, first we've got to find you a puffy jacket. You'll want one when the snow falls, and it's easy to hide things under it. I'll also see if I can snag a tent from somewhere... even if you don't end up using it, you can use the material to make a lean-to so wind stays out."
He hesitates, before letting out a long breath. "Or you can come to the tent city in the central district with me... if you can avoid asking people there questions. The one rule there is that you don't push people for answers. They'll tell you if they want - and if they don't want to, don't push them."
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A tent city where nobody wants questions to be asked in the central district. She hasn't been there yet, having stuck to the areas that had significant amounts of houses out of habit and an unease with going into even more unfamiliar territory than this city already was. She's only ever been out of the sprawl for runs, and that was ...different. She wasn't alone then.
It sounds a bit like a place where the SIN-less and those that fall through the cracks go. Which sounds an awful lot like herself right now. She doesn't like the thought. But as long as she's with Tobias, she will at least not be without an anchor.
"I can avoid asking questions when I shouldn't." She doesn't like it, but she probably wouldn't be alive anymore if she just ran about asking everyone about everything. Some things you learn faster than others. "I'm not dumb."
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Not that he has a ton of money to spare... but she should at least get a good meal in her before she has to fall back on not so good food.
So this is happening on the 6th of November, if that's okay with you?
"I am."
Food is always good. She is actually quite hungry now, the money that she "found" a few nights ago having run out on her and the last proper meal that she had having been the sandwiches that Ryoji gave her - cat food is better than nothing, but a shapeshifter just needs a lot more than a regular cat. Not that she would have turned food down if she wasn't hungry, she needs to be very ill to turn down the idea of food on principle. Though sometimes texture or flavouring might make her do that, but that's down to the individual food.
"I only had this much," her hands form a circle, thumb to thumb and index finger to index finger, indicating the size of the portion, "today." And well. It was cat food, even though that still seems to be of higher quality than the regular people food back home.
That works!
Maybe he won't be able to eat tomorrow, but she's still growing. She needs it more than he does. "Don't worry. You'll be okay." ... He can only hope, at least.
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"I will. I have you now to ask how things work, after all."
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"... Sure. Do you have a phone? I can probably see if I can let you have one of my spare ones." It'd be good to be able to check up on her.
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She fishes the commlink - the device really just looks like a fancy smartphone - out of an inside pocket of her coat. People in this city exchange numbers, she found out on her first night here, and strange as that is it prepared her to eventually exchange numbers with someone.
"If you give me your number, I can send you a text so you have mine."
She tried it out with a random kid on a playground before. It works that way.
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He gives her his number, and grins a little bit. "Feel free to call or text me if you ever need anything. I'm awake at night a lot, so you can just call whenever."
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He'll get a text after a few seconds, containing a waving smiley. Thank the heavens for voice recognition. Numbers are the only thing that she can read and write, but she's still too slow with that to keep up with people telling her strings of numbers.
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There's another problem. "I don't think I'd fit in most boxes."
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And the trick is that it's open on top and you can get out any time, or it wouldn't be relaxing at all." The advantage of having hands is that you can take off all latches and other things that might be closed. It's not funny when someone closes your box. "...Or is the problem that you couldn't spread your wings?" It's a bit hard to step into a bird's shoes, but she could see that being an issue.
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That can describe pretty much anything. She assumes that he means something along the lines of flight, fight or shake in a corner, but it could mean anything else, too.
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"Was it ever locked up in such a space?"
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It's dangerous to give her the impression that she can ask questions. Because she will ask all of them, until she loses interest. And she probably won't lose interest in him anytime soon.
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