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

[runs]

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?

Comments

[dangerouslyinlove]

"Still don't have it." Sorry kiddo. Wifi is a thing, bodyware is not. Get used to it.

Ryoji can't even remember all those letters, like, two seconds after she says them. "No? They are people who are killed by vampires and then given a vampire's blood to turn them into one." He's pretty sure that's how vampires do that. (It involves death, he's at least more aware of that part.)

[runs]

That is so weird and backwards. But the whole place is strange.

Which makes her a bit more inclined to believe that seriously out there idea about how vampirism is transmitted. Ridiculous as it is. "So they aren't related to ghouls and wendigos and nosferatu and goblins and banshees and stuff? Or do you not have those at all?"

[dangerouslyinlove]

Ryoji screws up his face, thinking, "Nosferatu and ghouls sound kind of familiar?" he says, "I can't tell you why, though. None of the rest of those ring a bell, though. Sorry." Looks like they're dealing with completely different things. "...I don't understand how everything is so different where you're from. How did you even get here?"

[runs]

"I don't know. I was walking with my friends, and then someone shoved me and I was here."

It just makes no sense. She can't think of a single way in which it should have been accomplished. Unless this is a hallucination and she started hallucinating a while before showing up in Hex. It feels very real, though.

[dangerouslyinlove]

That explains pretty much nothing, but it's not really her fault. It's pretty hard to picture, but... it would be a really weird thing to lie about. "This is so weird..." Ryoji sighs, "Um. Well, do you have more questions about everything here?" Since apparently you might really need it.

[runs]

The next... she isn't even sure how to start asking about it. So she'll try to take an indirect inroad.

"Does everyone here have a citizenship?" There is a distinctive difference between a slum where the majority has one and a slum where the majority doesn't, she's found. Like the relative amount of interest that the government takes in the safety and well-being of those who live there - close to negative amounts or or decidedly negative amounts. And all that follows from that. And Hex seems to be missing the second kind of slums.

[dangerouslyinlove]

"Yeah, they should... unless that means something different where you're from." He's not taking any chance. "I mean, you might since you're not from here, and I'm sure the vampires and people who live for longer than normal humans do something tricky to make them not look suspicious on records and such, but..." This is kind of nitty-gritty thing he knows almost nothing about.

[runs]

"But they still have them, or the government acts like they do. There aren't many people who don't have one and the government knows about it."

Or, to rephrase and come a bit closer to what she actually wants to know: "Almost everyone is official and legal and has rights, at least on the surface." That's not quite the same, but it comes close enough to meaning the same. "Right?"

[dangerouslyinlove]

Under that specification, Ryoji nods. "Yeah. All 'humans' are legal and official, unless they came here without the right stuff I guess, and that's what most people pretend to be even if they're not. I guess it's different for you, then." This time he's not outright asking her to explain it if she doesn't want. He has a feeling there's a lot about her home that's different and he's not sure he'd be able to keep track of it all.

[runs]

"So they only have legal and official jobs, too?"

And here we've almost arrived at the core of her question. Does the kind of work that she does back home exist here?

[dangerouslyinlove]

"Not all of them are legal and official jobs." He can think of a great many that aren't, actually.

[runs]

"What kind are there that aren't legal and official?"

That is a super broad question, but she just doesn't know how else to ask about it.

[dangerouslyinlove]

"Stealing things. Selling stuff that isn't legal. Things like that." He's getting a feeling he might know why she's asking...

[runs]

"...That's all?"

She looks rather disappointed, really. Because she is, and she's ...not that good at hiding her emotions, really.

[dangerouslyinlove]

He doesn't know what do with you, small child. "I mean, there are probably other things... what kind of things are you thinking of?"

[runs]

The way he responds and asked, she gets the feeling that what she's looking for doesn't exist here. After all runners are, many other things aside, also a part of the pop culture, much in the same way as pirates and gangers. Groups of people that are cool until you're at the other end of their guns and blades. He would have mentioned them earlier with how she was asking if she asked...

...correctly. Maybe she needs to go the other way around. "If someone wants a thing stolen, an information gathered or altered, a person extracted, killed or shielded, a place protected or damaged or anything like that, is there a ...well-established, fairly easily accessible market of people or groups of people offering such services out there?" She assumes that the answer will be no, at this point, but one last try.

[dangerouslyinlove]

Now Ryoji is incredibly worried about her. "Uh... no, not really. Unless the mafia count, but I'm pretty sure they only do most of those things in the movies." Or maybe secret agents, but that's not really an 'easily accessible' market by pretty much any definition. Still, Ryoji isn't stupid so he thinks he sees what she's getting at. "...Is that what you used to do, back home?"

[runs]

"No, not the mafia. Crime syndicates are clients, sometimes, but that's it. Runners are free." That's the ideology, and from what she has observed it is also a necessity - if you stop being free, you stop being a runner very quickly, one way or the other.

"...Yeah." It's obvious anyway, isn't it? "If it isn't a thing here, I'll have to find something else, though." Especially since she has no plan to fall back on, here. At home, she could always just return to being a kitten if things went terribly wrong, until Chantalle dies one day, anyway. Not that she would want to by any means, being human gives you so many more things to do, but the option would be there. Here, she has to figure out food and shelter and all that all by herself.

[dangerouslyinlove]

"...How old are you?" He... supposes she could look younger than he is, but that sounds like a kind of dangerous job for someone her age. Which doesn't mean he doesn't believe her, he does and it would kind of explain a lot, but it raises some other questions too.

"But... no, nothing like that really exists here, that I know about. And a lot of places aren't likely to actual hire someone that looks your age, if nothing else." ...She might have to just steal, which is not really a thing he wants to encourage but...

[runs]

"I don't know. Probably eight." She has no idea how many years passed before she ran into her team. Ivokat did some research and told her that she is probably a bit younger than she looks, and since they made her (better) fake ID personas be nine, she'll make herself as old as possible going from there.

"A lot won't hire kids my age, or all won't?" That's a rather important distinction.

[dangerouslyinlove]

"Probably?" This is really not helping Ryoji's peace of mind over her life, ok.

Ryoji hums, having to think over that a little bit. "...A lot. Most," he says, sighing, "You might be able to get a job delivering newspapers or something simple like that, but most other places that would even consider hiring you would be illegal and not at all safe."

[runs]

"I don't know when I was born." She shrugs. It's not that weird, is it?

Illegal doesn't bother her at all - she would by default be unable to ever become a party in any kind of legal contract back home, and really, many things and people in her everyday life aren't legal one way or the other. But she wonders about the 'not at all safe' part.

"What do you you mean with that they wouldn't be safe?"

She'll have to look into the "delivering newspapers or something similar" thing, even though she assumes that it wouldn't earn her enough money to even eat.

[dangerouslyinlove]

It's a little bit weird. But then again, Ryoji's still assuming she's human.

"Well, some people might be nicer to you because of your age, but a lot wouldn't. They'd send you out to situations where you would get hurt, or try and hurt you themselves if they thought it would help them." He's being vague intentionally, because while he knows way, way more bad stuff than most people think he would, he still has a suspicion he doesn't know all of it. "And if something happens to you, telling people is harder because you'd get in trouble too."

[runs]

She wants to discard the thought at first, but... sure, she can't go to the places that people usually mean when they talk about reporting something back home, either, but she has friends, or at least teammates that she's rather close with, there. They would be the ones that she would go to.

Here, she has nobody like that.

She'll have to look into the newspaper thing, boring as it sounds. Assuming they don't want to see any proof of identity. Or maybe something different. ...Some kind of stealing, probably, considering her general options.

"Okay." She looks around and, upon spotting some infrastructure, points to the offending wall. "Describe that wall to me."

[dangerouslyinlove]

She has Ryoji! (Ryoji likely doesn't count.)

"Um..." Ryoji turns to look at it, regarding it and not at all sure what she's on about now. "It's a plain brick wall? Kind of reddish brown, with concrete in between the bricks. There's ivy growing up it on one side...?" Is that kind of what you're looking for?