cityofhex | [open & closed] We walk these streets, but not alone

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[open & closed] We walk these streets, but not alone

1. Open (Nov 4th)

There is a very basic problem that occurs to Kitty towards the end of her first day in Hex, around the time when the candy from the night before runs out: She has no currency on her that would be accepted here, no place to return to in the evening where she will find food, and no way of finding work that she could earn some money with. Even if there is something that she could do to earn money, she wouldn't know what it would be and how to get to do it.

She resorts to shoplifting that evening, but that really only helps for one meal and smuggling food out of a shop is not that easy when you're young and thus turn people's head just by being in the store alone and not in the candy section.

No. She needs to find something better to do. So that night, she can be found out in the streets where there are bars, or even just shady looking backalleys, hoping to find someone who passed out from alcohol and still has their wallet on them. Or who can't resist her searching hands for other reasons, she isn't picky (and doesn't even think to call an ambulance or police because that just wouldn't even be an option back home). It takes all night, and doesn't turn up with much, but she has a few bucks in the morning, enough to last her for a few days. But she's tired, and it was a pretty tedious search with more than one disappointment and one or two unpleasant almost-encounters.

Still, the money doesn't last her long and thus she's out on the nightly streets again a few days later. She almost squeals in excitement when the first limp body that she finds still has its wallet, creepy as the corpse is. Because that is what it is, she notices. It isn't even the lack of breathing that tips her off, it is the unnatural lack of essence. As if someone forcibly removed it... Her head shoots up and she jumps to her feet and dive under some garbage bags that are piled up behind her, just in time as a woman turns the corner. She can hear the woman curse about children (?) and then some shuffling and rustling, and when everything is finally quiet again and she crawls out from under the garbage bags, only enough to peer down the street, stinking and shaken, the corpse is gone.

If nobody finds her there, she will quickly retreat then - not to any specific location, just to somewhere else, further away from the bars, and once a quiet corner is found, sit down there and try to catch her breath. "Drek," she whispers and closes her eyes for a moment. "Drek."

2. closed to Ryoji (Nov 5th)

Kitty is a busy bee during her first week in Hex. Aside from trying to figure out how to eat, she also tries to learn more about two people: Corwin and Ryoji. The former because something is just seriously wrong with that guy, and the latter because ...well, he gave her her phone number and is local. He might be a very useful contact, but she wants to know more about him before she uses this.

It doesn't take her long to find him - knowing that he is a college student helps a lot. She follows him for two days - mostly in her cat shape - before she finally decides that he might be eccentric, but safe enough and calls him. She'll just let the phone ring until he answers, no matter how long that takes.

3. closed to NPCs (Okt 31)

She's been around for a few hours, joining other children while trick-and-treating, and thinks that she has a decent enough grasp on the concept. It's for children that still have early bedtimes and need to be attended by an adult.

So seeing a group of children who are still out and about and who don't have an adult with them, a good while after she has parted with her second group and watched the trick-and-treaters vanish from the street gives her pause and makes her halt her steps just after stepping around the corner to watch them.

Sure, she's still out and about without an adult herself, but that's different. What are they doing here?

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She just grins and turns the screen around. On it, he can see a bulky woman with strongly enlarged lower canines and pointy ears, wearing a uniform that seems to belong to a security service, scream at a human in a suit. The human screams right back - the content of their fight is lost to the lack of sound, though.

"Barney's eye. My friend gave it to me last week. It's pretty good, but they could've cut out the romance. It makes no sense." She's pretty sure that no upper class human would actually date an orc from the barrens, romantic as it sounds before you start to think about it. But that's TV for you.

...Ryoji has no idea what's going on. He must be really behind on TV, but seriously who is letting this kid watch all this weird stuff. "I see... do you like it other than that?" While they talk he'll unpack the bag, each sandwich in its own plastic container. "You can pick whatever ones you want, by the way. I didn't really know what you liked."

The film lies forgotten when she catches sight of all the sandwiches, and she leans over the table to grab the nearest container and pull it over towards her to open it and sniff the contents.

...Right, he asked something. "It's fine. Her best friend is really funny." She tried to get a sense of his reaction to the characters on the screen, but it's not really conclusive. Hm.

She'll have to figure out how to directly ask why pretty much everyone that she has seen so far seemed to be humans. Or well, people who used to be humans or at least looked fairly human. Where are all the other metahumans?

He is getting so many mixed signals off of this girl. She's not lying about her hunger or her movie or... much of anything at the moment, which is possibly more confusing than if she was. She doesn't make a lot of sense.

"That one's peanut butter," he says, because sniffing them is kind of weird, "This one's tuna salad, and this one I think is turkey? And that one is cheese."

Tuna.

She grabs the container with the tuna salad in it excitedly, completely abandoning the peanut butter sandwich, and sticks her face into it as soon as the contained is open.

Yes, that smells like real tuna, not the awkward soy flavouring. If Ryoji doesn't stop her, she'll totally use her hands to shovel it into her mouth.

That was kind of abrupt, to be totally honest! Back to being concerned about this child's welfare. He'll go ahead and take the peanut butter one, then, munching on it while she absolutely devours the sandwich. He'll give her some time to ear before asking, "So... what's up?" It could be a casual thing, or if she called him out here for a reason...

She swallows the last bit of the tuna salad sandwich and licks her lips for the last crumbs before answering, trying to project as much of a business-like feeling as she can.

"You said you know this place, and that you were born and grew up here. And I'm not from around here and this place is different from where I'm from, so maybe you can answer me some questions.

But some of them might be weird so I want your promise that you won't tell anyone about them before I ask." And now to the bit that seems the most problematic to her. "But I have nothing to pay you with for the answers and the silence, so I'll owe you two favours if you promise me to not tell anyone and answer my question."

The photographer guy worked with favours, too, so she at least hopes that that is a currency that will work here, too. The big disadvantage for her is, of course, that as she knows nobody around here, breaking his word won't have much of a consequence for Ryoji. If she can tell nobody, it can't affect his reputation.

Sorry, Ebru. You're not really looking business like to Ryoji after that particular display. Luckily, not being business like doesn't make him take her seriously. And the way she's planning on wheeling and dealing is... interesting. He's becoming more and more sure that there's something different about her, and whether that something is supernatural or not hopefully something he'll figure out during the course of this.

He feels a little weird, holding favors from a kid, but... it's not a bad trade, really, if that's what she wants to go for. And kids can know way more than more adults give them credit for, so Ryoji nods. "Yeah, ok. What are you questions?"

She almost breathes a sigh of relief when he agrees - he could very easily have not taken seriously or demanded more. She is just a kid, after all, for all he knows. And she doesn't really want him to learn much more. Not at this point, anyway.

But what she needs is vital enough to raise the stakes for her.

"I haven't seen anyone here who doesn't look human, or like they used to be human. Are there really no others here?"

Ryoji blinks at her, eyes slightly wide. He can hear the rattle of Thanatos's coffin wings behind him, a little disturbed by the girls' question and what it implies. Like... where she's from, non-humans are out there publicaly and normal. That's a little bit concerning, from his point of view.

"I... you might need to give me a bit of context," he says, looking over at her. He is definitely taking her seriously, though. "What do you mean by people who look like they used to be human? And what non-humans are you used to?"

"There are all kinds where I'm from. I can't list them all. Like," she peers over at the screen of her commlink. Currently, the human protagonist is in a conference. She stops the feed and quickly zooms in on one of the background characters, an elf in a suit. Unless it was pointed out, it might be missed, but the woman is distinctively too slender, her features too sharp, and her ears too big and pointy to really look human. She's also fairly tall, "her."

"...I saw a vampire last night. And I've seen at least two others who were not really human. But they all looked human." If everyone is so uniform, or at least attempts to be that uniform, there must be strong repercussions if you don't fit in. She'd think that this place just has a weirdly low mana level, but she has witnessed too many signs of magical activity. The place is full of very, very basic spirits, for one.

Ryoji leans in to see the screen, taking it all in. So... it's not just some kind of fantasy series. That's how things look where she's from? "Where are you from?" he mutters, more to himself than to her. And she's already run into a vampire...

He sighs, moving back to look at her. Thanatos rattles more in agitation- he doesn't want to let people into their world, even Ryoji reasons to him that they need it. As long as she doesn't meddle with the dead... it'll be fine. "You're right, we don't have anyone here that looks like... um, that." At least, not on the outside. "But you ran into a vampire? Are you ok?" He doesn't think vampires usually mess with the kids, but some of them are even bigger jerks than the rest.

Instead of answering that, she turns the question back at him. "Where is this?"

She powers the screen of the commlink down. "Is there a reason why you don't have anyone who doesn't look human? And I'm fine. I don't think it noticed me." Or at least she assumes so. There was no sign of being noticed, and wouldn't she have been attacked if it had known of her presence? Especially with how the infected seemed to not have wanted someone to find the dead body there.

"Hex?" Which he would have hoped she'd know by now... especially if she came here. Why doesn't she know any of it? She seems too street smart for that.

"I... because humans are the normal thing? Most humans don't even know that non-humans exist." Which might be something he needs to warn her about right now so she doesn't get herself in trouble or accidentally start a panic. "I'm glad you're ok. I don't think they would have messed with you, but you can never be sure."

"No. What," what division to start with... uh, "continent and country is Hex in?" Maybe she'll know it.

"Why do you think that the vampire wouldn't have messed with me? And I know that humans think that they're normal, but," not knowing that others exist? That's ridiculous. Nobody can be that deep in denial. It sounds like a happy fever dream of the Humanis policlub.

"Why does nobody else at least try to get civil rights, too, instead of pretending to be human?"

...What. "Um... it's not? It just... is." When he thinks about it more, how could she not be from here? This is making less and less sense the longer this goes on.

"It's... not so much civil rights," Ryoji says carefully, trying to figure out how to explain this when her worldview makes literally not sense to him. "For some people it's kind of... well, it would be really scary for them to find out about everything that's actually going. People who do find out sometimes try to kill everything not human. Which, you know, not humans probably try to want to avoid." Dying is not super fun, he can attest to that. Thanatos rattles in agreement. "And for some, it's better for them that humans don't know about it and can't stop them from doing what they want to do. A lot of groups have rules about keeping secrets, I think."

At first, none of that makes sense to her. But as she thinks about it ...looking at the human-only propaganda of Humanis, looking at what Natascha, former team member and Orc, told her about the internment camps for orcs and trolls that she was born in, looking at how Quebec tries to exterminate shapeshifters, she can see where Ryoji is coming from. Looking at how harshly regulated magic is, too. The dictum about shooting the mage first is different, probably, but it still speaks of (healthy) fear.

"So everyone just managed to hide the moment they showed up?"

Because she can't really believe that people would just forget while people and critters are still around. Things don't just turn into legends and myths within a year or two of keeping your head down, and a she figures that a lot of people and critters needed to keep their collective head down.

"I guess?" Ryoji shrugged. "I don't know how long each thing has been around. I don't even know what they all are." Vampires and werewolves, Sin-Eaters, mages... that's about it for his knowledge. He kind of knows about Changelings, but not really. He just knows there's a lot even he's missing. "Maybe they all were hidden from the beginning, or maybe they've just turned into stories. Or been forgotten all together."

"Which ones do you know about?"

She knows they have vampires here, too. But the others... the one that felt toxic, the one who smelt like the gears in the walls, and the one whose soul had been eaten by something that feeds on nightmares. She won't mention any of them, but maybe what he can describe to her will give her an idea what they were.

"What isn't around anymore turns into stories, and some of them are right and some are wrong." She is allergic to silver, but the moon does nothing to her. Things like that. She grins. "And sometimes people take myths and make them become reality because they mean something to them." Like Tír na nÓg. "Did they forget about what you are?" It's an absolute shot in the dark. She has no proof that he is anything not human. But going by what he said she is sure that he is something.

He'd been wondering, when she would get around to that. It was pretty obvious that he knew more than a 'normal' human should too, after all. Ryoji will go ahead and forego the first question for the moment- he'll come back around to it, but there's some things he would like to know first, too. "Maybe," he says, which is a failure of an answer but it's kind of true. The Sin-Eaters don't really have an agreed upon Mythos like some others, "How about we trade for this one? I'll tell you what I am if you tell me what you are."

She nods slowly. "And you will tell nobody what I am, and I will tell nobody what you are."

Being a cat is something that she keeps close to her chest, normally. Her teammates know, but close to nobody else does. It's just a lot safer to let people assume that she's just a very talented little shaman. Not that that is particularly safe.

"Right." He's glad that's understood. Thanatos is inclined to make her go first, knowing how soft Ryoji will be about it if she doesn't keep up her end. But she is the one who asked. "I'm what's called a Bound. Long story short, I died, but there was a spirit around who could let me live again if he could tag along with me. What about you?"

Okay that's... well, there is a clear moment of side-eyeing him. "Are you saying that you're a possessed corpse?" That sounds about as ridiculous when she says it out loud as when she was just thinking it.

"No!" And he sounds distinctly offended by the implication. Thanatos isn't much for it, either. "I am alive now, just as much as any human. And I'm not possessed. We work together."

"...So he's something like a guardian spirit?

And were you a corpse in-between?" Enquiring minds want to know. She has heard rumours about Aztlan mages, but really if you believe half the rumours about Aztlan mages the whole country would have to be covered in fifteen metres of blood, to start with. Still. They say they rise the dead... It could be possible.

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