Roleplay City
Administration => Infusco Archives => Archives => Old Roleplays => Topic started by: Existentially Odd on June 29, 2007, 02:14:05 PM
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(Continued from \'Suits and Mohawks (http://www.roleplaycity.com/forums/showthread.php?p=47780&posted=1#post47780)\')
Tau got off Ami\'s bike shakily, and was never so glad to have his feet pressed to solid earth in his life. It didn\'t matter how fast she\'d gone or how easily she\'d taken it on him - he\'d been terrified most of the ride and had only loosened his grip a little when they hit a dirt trail into the woods. He was quite prepared to be bounced off by that stage, for she was going slowly and the smell of wilderness was comforting to him - unlike the stench of the bike\'s exhaust fumes and everything else he\'d been forced to breathe in the city.
He continued to clutch the briefcase to his chest, unaware of the look of horror he was giving her through his exceptionally large blue eyes. He blinked a fe wtimes, but really didn\'t know what to say to her - he was half afraid he\'d squeezed her and she\'d strike out at him for doing so, anyway.
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Ami bit her bottom lip, and took a deep breath in order to keep herself from laughing at those big, blue saucer eyes. The poor guy really was spooked, and she\'d gone easy on him, too. No rolling stops, signaled all turns, looked both ways, all that. She\'d even gone the speed limit.
A chuckle managed to escape as she rocked the bike back onto it\'s stand and cut the engine. Dismounting, she immediately shoved her hands into the pockets of her leather jacket, "I take it you\'ll be walking home?" she joked, smiling thinly, before she looked off into the woods. The sound of the waterfall wasn\'t even audible, yet, through the whispering of the trees.
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"Yes," he told her succinctly, forcing himself to relax in the face of her humour. She was no doubt laughing at him and he didn\'t enjoy that, but he could accept that he was making a bit of a fool of himself, through his fear. He needed to stop that.
He leaned down to place his briefcase against Ami\'s bike, sensing from her body language that she intended to walk and he didn\'t want to be bothered by the unnecessary appendage. It didn\'t have anything too sensitive in it - or anything at all, for that matter. It had been something he\'d bought and begun carrying because one or two of the other employees did, but he still hadn\'t figured out what to do with it. He did all his paperwork at the office and never needed to take anything home.
Straightening, he removed his business shoes and socks, too, following their abandonment with tossing his jacket and tie over the seat of the bike. Stepping up to Ami\'s side, ready to follow her lead, he fiddled with his business shirt as well, undoing the cuffs and rolling them up to his elbows before undoing the top four buttons. He was unfazed by the fact that his shirt sagged open a little, he was just glad to have it away from his throat - it was the only way for him to relax.
"What is it I might help you with, Ami?" he prompted, ceasing the fiddling with his clothes.
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Ami nodded absently, still looking off into the distance. Dragging a hand through her hair, she turned her attention back to the matter at hand; this was no time to go all starry-eyed over the wild blue yonder, there were important things to be learned!
"Mostly general shit. What to look out for. Who to avoid." She smiled humorlessly and shrugged, "How to stay the fuck alive, basically." With a jerk of her head, she began to move up the path, moving in powerful, decisive strides.
Ami burned with an ambient nervous energy, as though she were vibrating at such a high frequency she appeared to be standing still, with nothing but a plethora of nervous motions to give her away.
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Thinking that she had somewhere in mind that she wanted to be visiting, tau kept pace with her easily, though she had him a little jumpy. He could hear water with his feline hearing and he could sense her hyperactivity, too. He left the acknowledgement of these things at an instinctual level though, and did his best to keep his mind on the task at hand.
"Well... how did you find out about the Oligarchy and what supernaturals do you know about, for a start?" he pressed, not able - or willing - to simply leap into telling her everything he knew. That would not please his boss; finding out what she knew and where she\'d found it out from... that would.
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Ami shrugged. She understood that Tau needed to ask this shit , and was glad that he did – if he hadn\'t, she wouldn\'t trust him. She addressed his questions in order. "Found out about it from some guy at Risk." She looked at him askance, "I\'m not a groupie, though. I fuckin\' hate those kids. There are better fuckin\' ways to die, y\'know?" She shook her head, "Anyway. Figured I\'d show. Get my shit together."
Getting hot in her jacket in the warm night air, she rummaged through the pockets, stuffing things into her jeans pockets, which slowed her walk. Nonethelss, she continued, "Vampires, I know of. Never been bit, never want to. Knew a couple shifty-ass Werewolves. Least, that\'s what they called themselves." Once everything was transferred, she paused and shrugged off her jacket, casting a quick look around to imprint the surroundings in her mind, she hung the garment on a branch.
She stretched, the muscle bunching and flexing liquidly beneath the tattooed flesh of her arms, and the bare slice of flat belly that showed under her T-shirt before she slumped her shoulders again and moved on, hands jammed into her back pockets, "Shifters, too." She nodded in his direction, showing that she\'d remembered his name, and what he did.
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He had the grace to raise his eyebrows at the shifter reference and it momentarily deterred him from asking about she\'d found Risk in the first place. It didn\'t surprise him she\'s had a lot to do vampires and some \'shifty-ass\' lycans there, either.
"You\'ve met shifters? What sort? Did they transform for you?"
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Ami nodded, "One, a kid. Could turn into a cat. Somethin\' was fucked about \'im, though." She shrugged, shook her head, "Don\'t remember that much. I think the Wolves were shifters, too, \'cause Real Werewolves only change with the moon, right?"
She looked at him, one brow raised, hoping for some kind of confirmation. She heard the thunder of the waterfall, now, over the other usual night sounds, and she quickened her pace. Almost there; New moon, tonight, and she was anxious to see it, away from the smog of the city.
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"Correct," he agreed, "lycans are goverened by the moon and when they change... they don\'t look like wolves. You would have to have seen wolf shifters. The child, though - the one that turned into a cat - why do you say there was something wrong with him? Or was it a her?" he asked, his interest very obviously piqued by the notion of another cat shifter.
"What sort of cat did they become?" he added, busy looking at Ami, impressed that she was a challenge to keep up with but fascinated moreso by the conversation.
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Ami, once again, shrugged her shoulders noncommitally, "Housecat. Tiger stripes, or whatever. I think so, anyway. He was like...stuck, halfway in between," She shivered, and rubbed her arms – though she obviously wasn\'t cold, "Gave me the creeping willies. Felt sorry for the kid, though."
Finally, they came \'round a last meandering bend in the path, and trees opened up to the waterfall. The path diverged, here; you could take one fork down into the cave behind the waterfall, hollowed out by years of spray – or you could go upwards, to where the ground plateaued into rocky outcroppings around the top of the waterfall, "Up, or down?" asked Ami, turning to her companion.
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"Up," he said, pre-occupied with thoughts of a child stuck mid-transformation. He could recall no such being on his lists, but it concerned him greatly. As they began heading in the direction he named, he was compelled to ask for more information on the topic dearest to him.
"This child; he was here, in this city? Or elsewhere? And do you have a name or location for him?" he pressed.
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Ami tilted her face up, toward the sky, and shook her head, "Naw. Different city. Place we were before. We were there for a couple weeks, got mindfucked, then booked it for the next town." Soon, they\'d reached the top of the path, where the air was heavy and cool with mist from the waterfall.
"I forget what the city was called," she said, stopping to admire the view, "Kid\'s name was...Shit I forget that, too. Somethin\' with a K. Friend of mine got close to \'im. I kept my distance, though."
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"Oh," Tau uttered, watching her intently. She didn\'t have any useful information for him, really, and other cities were certainly beyond his jurisdiction. After a few moments, he looked away from her, since he\'d begun admiring her features beneath the effects of the environment and he didn\'t feel that was at all appropriate.
"The Oligarchy protects supernaturals of all forms. Governs their actions here, too, for the betterment and protection of every species housed within this city," he told her, looking up at the sky now and sounding a little like he was repeating something he\'d been told (because he was). "They have human liaisons but they guard their existences carefully and are unknown to the human race generally. The Oligarchy monitors as many non-supernaturals as they possibly can - those who have knowledge of such things, anyway - but they can\'t be everywhere. This is why everything about them is guarded so carefully; protection," he informed her.
His gaze shifted back to her face now. "The fact that you know, that you\'re aware, is a liability for you, but since you were... educated... in another city and learned such secrets elsewhere, you shouldn\'t be in danger. The Oligarchy cares only for those here." He stopped talking, to let her digest this information - which likely wasn\'t anything she didn\'t already know but he didn\'t quite know how to answer her other requests without having her voice them again, or singularly.
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She lowered her eyes from the moonless sky, and found his face, "So unless me and mine stir shit up, we\'ve got nothing to worry about from the Oligarchy?" She nodded. They could handle that.
Well, most of them could.
Okay, about half of them could.
"But what about the rest? The shifters and the were-whatevers and the Vampires. I don\'t know anything about any of \'em, other than they know how to hurt." She sighed, and sat down heavily, resting her back against a boulder. She sat with her knees up, slouched, masculine, and unrolled a battered pack of cigarettes from one short sleeve.
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He turned to watch her sit, eyeing her steadily. "Well... that\'s the most important thing," he told her flatly.
"You won\'t always know you\'re in the presence of a supernatural because you don\'t have the senses to gather that sort of information, but the fact that you\'re aware of their existence gives you an advantage most people in this city don\'t have. Of course... the fact that you frequent a club like Risk... that\'s going to raise your chances of exposure to danger, because it\'s a known haven. Specifically to vampires and their prey, but to supenaturals looking for somewhere to relax in general. Are you sure it\'s a place you want to go?"
If she wanted to know how to stay safe, then he believed avoiding the nightclub was steo number one, but he wasn\'t going to state it outright. His implication was clear enough.
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"If I had a choice, I wouldn\'t." Ami fiddled with the pack of cigarettes, her eyes intent upon her busy hands. She was craving a smoke, but she wasn\'t about to light up here, in the city\'s last wilderness. "I\'m part of a punk-folk band. We\'ve played there once or twice. The money\'s damn good, and the drinks are free, so what can I say?" She shrugged.
"I think they like us there \'cause the older ones were around when this shit was written, y\'know? First time we played Risk, one of my bandmates met a guy who\'s first language is Gaelic. Fucking Gaelic. That\'s ancient." She shook her head in vague wonderment, and raised her eyes to look at him, "Just blows my mind, sometimes."
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Tau nodded. "I understand that feeling. Vampires are extremely... unsettling to me." He wasn\'t sure he\'d describe it as having his mind blown, but the scent of undeath and age when he encountered some of his colleagues was enough to raise the hairs on the back of his neck instantly.
"So you\'re... in a band you say?" he asked after a few moments, trying to subtly lead into get more information about her and her companions out but not doing such a fabulous job at it. He was very new to this reconnaissance business; an Oligarchy spy he was not.
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Ami raised a brow a fraction of an inch. The man\'s powers of deduction were astounding. She was speechless.
"Yeah," she said slowly, "Called Wild Hunt. We\'re kind of a motorcycle gang, too. \'Cept without the gang part." Not that they didn\'t see their share of violence, though; they were young, and often homeless, and not exactly low-profile. As a group, they didn\'t go looking for fights, but they managed to find them; most often individually.
"Do a lot of travelling," she summed up, "We\'re in town indefinetly, though. Like I said, the money." As for her bandmates? She wasn\'t about to part with that information readily. When it came to her friends, Ami held her cards close to her chest.
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"Any particular meaning to the name Wild Hunt?" Tau asked curiously, intrigued by such a primitive sounding title. The fact that Ami wore a stag\'s mask on her belt hadn\'t been missed by him so he wondered if they perhaps chose to bear the likenesses of animals when they performed and enact a hunt, as it were.
He would be interested in seeing such a performance, given his predatory predilections. "How many of you are there in the band?" he further enquired, envisioning which members might play the hunters and which the prey; not to mention how many of each. Ami obviously had an affinity for prey.
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"There are five of us in the band," Ami answered. If tau was expecting full personell profiles, or something, he had his work cut out for him.
On the subject of the monicker, however, Ami was more than happy to divulge. "The name comes from an Anglo myth," she smiled slightly, leaning back against her rock, "Richard II\'s best hunter – Herne – heard about this white stag that people had seen ghosting about the woods. Ol\' dick wanted to see if there was any truth to it. Wanted to kill it. So they hunted it. Found it. But the king got cornerd, and Herne was hurt bad before he brought it down." at this, her hand dropped to beaten copper mask he\'d noticed at her side, "Saved the king\'s life, though, so he had a local wizard bring back the Hunter\'s health usin\' magic. The spell involved tyin\' the dead stag\'s antler\'s to Herne\'s head." Her fingers brushed over the pointed tips of the mask\'s antlers, protruding gracefully from the forehead, "Came at a cost, though," she continued, "Herne lost his hunting skills. Drove him insane. Ran into the forest, antlers still in place. They found him the next day, hanging from a tree.
"It\'s said that his ghost leads a Wild Hunt across the sky," she went on, "With his host of Yell hounds, forgotten Gods and valiant dead." Her smile widened, and her fingers laced in her lap, still for a moment, "Seeing the Wild Hunt was said to herald catastrophe. War or plague, at worst. At best, I guess, the death of the guy who witnessed it. Mortals who got in the path of the Hunt could be kidnapped and brought to the land of the dead."
She shrugged, "Thought it was pretty epic."
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Tau\'s head was tilted curiously as he listened to her tale, thoroughly fascinated by it. He hadn\'t expected anything so involved and although he didn\'t completely understand her final reference to it being epic, he did appreciate the tapestry of the story.
He blinked when she finished speaking, his head righting. "Impressive," he said, in as enthusiastic a tone as he\'d ever used. "So... would you say that you are part of the Wild Hunt, driving mortals insane with your music, or just already insane and playing bad music?" he asked innocently, doing his best to close the gap between her story and why the band had been named after it.
He was pretty impressed with his reasoning and his expression was open and inquisitive as it watched her, not understanding that he\'d likely insulted her band\'s musical talents. He\'d picked up on the key word \'insane\' and run with it in a way that his colleagues had been trying to demonstrate through conversation for months now. Inference was not a cat\'s greatest skill.
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Ami eyed the other critically for a moment, unsure of whether to be offended. The look on his face, though, so curious and goddamn innocent, put a smile on her lips, and wrung a throaty laugh deep from her chest. "We are the Hunt. The heralds of our own storm," she explained, smiling a tiny, secret smile, "Leavin\' chaos and madness in our wake. The Hunt brings the thunder, and we\'re gone before anybody can wrap their heads around us. We\'re ghosts."
Her smile faded, and she looked at the space between her knees, "\'Least, we were. Looks like we\'re holin\' up here for awhile." The punker picked up a small, flat rock from the dust at her feet, and rolled it in her hand, flipping it over her knuckles. Looking up suddenly, she pursed her lips, "What about you? What\'s your story?"
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Tau blinked, surprised that she turned the conversation on him so easily. It startled him doubly because, not only did he expect to have (to him) wily questioning overthrown before he\'d got any good details out of her, but he was unused to anyone asking about him in such a confronting way. Well... possibly it was the prospect of explaining himself that was so confronting, rather than how she said it, but it amounted to the same thing; he was put on edge.
At least he now understood how she felt, with all his questions. It convinced him that he would be wise to answer her, to promote their connection and prompt further talk that would lead to him understanding her and her supernatural-aware band more.
"Oh. Well," he frowned, fighting back a few moments of being flustered and trying to decide where to begin. It wasn\'t in his nature to lie but he knew he wasn\'t supposed to go about telling just anyone his story, either. Still... she knew he was an Oligarch and she would know that he wasn\'t mortal because he\'d just told her that they had no representative in the coucil\'s ranks. "I\'m a were-shifter," he explained. "I spent most of my life in my animal form - as a cougar - but decided to try living as a human about... a year ago, now. My brother was with me at the start and he earned us some unfavourable attention from the Oligarchy. When they offered me the job of Shifter Oligarch, he went back to the wild and I... didn\'t."
His story telling was awkward and he paused occasionally, as if he wasn\'t sure of what he was saying. In truth, he was frequently debating whether he should elaborate or cut information out - in the end though, he decided he\'d only know by her reaction and he waited for it when he thought he\'d said enough.
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The stone rolled over the punker\'s knuckles as she listened, raptly intent on his words – only to be held firmly in her palm for a moment, then dropped, after he concluded. "Sucks, about your brother," She commented. The words sounded callous, but their intent was anything but. Ami just wasn\'t the greatest at expressing herself.
"So," she continued, after a pause, "You can change your form at will? I thought being a Were meant you didn\'t have any control over it? The moon. All that."
In truth, she\'d thought that the only Weres were werewolves – silver bullets and all. But, obviously, that wasn\'t true.
It may have seemed uncaring of her, to persist in her questioning, even after the advent of such a personal story, but it was simply how Ami operated. Everybody had pain – but the two of them were from such different worlds; it was difficult for the punker to relate to most people, much less someone of a different species.
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His lips tightened marginally and his answer was quick and polished - as if he\'d had to say it numerous times before. The only other visible sign that he was annoyed by her question was in a slight stiffening of his shoulders; they were pushed back and he held himself straighter.
"We are very different from werewolves, if that\'s what you\'re thinking. The word \'were\' is believed to be from Old English and mean simply \'man\', so it would translate to \'man-wolf\' or, in my case, \'man-shifter\', which is accurate. Shifters take the forms of a very varied range of animals; lycanthropes are simply humans cursed with a disease that turns them wolf-like every month," he informed her; in truth, he sounded a bit prissy while delivering this little speech.
It was obvious that there was no love lost between his species and the lycanthropes. The fact that he was feline-based and lycans were canine-based was likely lost on Ami but, with some thought, she might realise that he didn\'t appreciate being bundled in with out-of-control supernaturals for that reason as well. "Were-shifters can change whenever they feel like it, yes."
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Realizing very quickly from his tone and body language that she\'d made a mistake, Ami nodded tersely, and let the subject drop. "Got it. Sorry."
She was silent for a long moment, thinking hard about how to phrase her next question. In the end, she chose to be blunt; it was the only way she really knew how to be. "Can you tell me anything about the Oligarchy?" She paused, Fingers stretching toward the ground, trying to find something to fiddle with, but the stone was just out of reach, and she curled her hands into fists instead, "Nothin\' major. I just wanna know where they stand with folks like me. You said they could put the hurt on us, for asking questions. Steppin\' wrong. I wanna know where we aren\'t welcome."
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He nodded, giving it a few moments\' thought and deciding he could tell her a little. The process was pretty transparent in this regard and it should keep her a bit humble - or at least careful - if she knew more.
"I\'ll file a report on you and your band. I\'ll note your awareness level but, because it happened prior to coming to the city, a note should be as far as it will go. As long as they don\'t find you sharing your knowledge with others who aren\'t as aware, you shouldn\'t have to know any more about the Oligarchy than that. A passing knowledge is best, believe me."
He didn\'t say how the Oligarchy would know if Ami shared her knowledge but the implication that they would was, hopefully, clear to her. He deliberately left the consequences of that eventuality vague.
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Ami nodded grimly. The Oligarchy sounded like a dirty kind of organization – the less she had to do with them, the better. Tau was a nice enough fella, on his own, but maybe that was just because he was new.
"So I shouldn\'t expect to hear anything from them, then. Supposing I don\'t do anything stupid?" asked the bassist as she stood and stretched, signaling the end of their meeting.
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"That\'s correct," Tau agreed simply, following her lead and standing as well. When it became clear that their meeting was over - concluded almost as quickly as it began - he gave her a nod of farewell and headed for the city.
Even though she offered him a lift, he politely refused her kindness and told her he preferred to walk (suppressing the shudder that ran through him at the thought of getting on that motorcycle with her again quite effectively, he thought). He set off at a loping pace, carrying his belongings with him, and soon disappeared into the darkness.