Curiosity

[Luna Moon]

(Reserved for Existentially Odd)

Alacer stepped out of the cab, looking at the rundown hotel in front of her. This is where he told her to go. She paid the cab driver who looked at her suspiciously. She turned back to take a look at the hotel in front of her as he drove away. The man who told her about it said that it used to be a retirement home, changed into the quarters of this thing he called the Oligarchy. She remembered sitting there waiting on a cab to take her to her new home and the man just walked up and started talking to her about the Oligarchy. She had listened intently to him, somehow he knew she was a shifter and told her. He said that they had a representative from every supernatural species. That had sparked her curiosity. The idea that a city was s o full of them that they needed keepers of order kind of people intrigued her.

The man had said a few other things about it she couldn\'t remember. Alec shook her head and walked up to the old building. Two doormen were standing there watching her, she blushed as she went by them into the old building. She entered and looked around the inside. The dark wood floors and open ceiling made a good combination to her. She ignored the chair and looked at the spiraling staircase. She noticed there were elavators in the back and a reception desk to the right. She looked around uncertainly, a feeling telling her that she might get in trouble if she wandered around on the upper floor. She almost wished someone would come.

Alacer was thinking about leaving when she saw a bell on the receptionist counter. She looked around to see if anyone was around before making her way over. she looked at the bell and bit her lip, trying to think of the worst that could happen from ringing a bell. It was larger than an ordinary bell and appeared to her, particularly ominous. She sucked up her nerves and hit the bell. It sent a ringing, that she thought the whole building could hear. she jumped back from it as it sounded, startling her. She looked up to the elevators to see if anyone would come out of them.

[Existentially Odd]

A fine mist that was beyond sight for any human and most supernaturals floated from a doorway behind the exceptionally long counter, making its quite speedy way to the spot just opposite Alacer.  Since she wasn\'t looking over the counter, only her animalistic senses of knowing that a supernatural was in her presence (via tasting the air, most likely) would trigger her to look back before the mist materialised into something a great deal more substantial.

An exceptionally tall and thin man suddenly stood there, hands clasped before his taut body sedately, his pale skin quite challenging plaster in the intensity of its pallour.  He was naked, blonde and sombre, his genitalia hidden from view by his enormous hands  - and the reception counter.  His face was very long and stony, his grey-eyed gaze steady as he stared at the Shifter before him.  "How may I help you?" he asked in an incredibly deep voice that was not at all rough or growly for all that it inhabited the impossibly low octaves of sound (that voice would advertise him as supernatural if nothing else about his strange, drawn appearance did).

[Luna Moon]

Alacer watched the elevators, wondering of anyone would make an appearance there. Suddenly she smelt something. Alacer opened her mouth slightly and ran her tongue behind her teeth, subtly tasting the air. A supernatural was near her. She looked over her shoulder where a man was suddenly standing, she blinked, trying to figure out when he had popped up.

"How may I help you?"

Alec blinked again. His voice was deeper than any human could ever achieve. She noticed he was naked and that he had himself covered with his hands behind the counter. Looking up at his face, she attempted to answer him, "I heard about the Oligarchy, is it? I-I was a little curious, so....I came to see it." Her last sentence came out as a question, as if asking permission to be here, or something of the sort. She looked at his face patiently and waited for his response.

[Existentially Odd]

With a very long and protracted gesture, the gentleman\'s nostrils widened as he sniffed in her direction, obviously scenting the air around her, so as to ascertain her species.  His mouth became a moue of thought as he figured her out, but he said nothing for perhaps a minute, staring at her with his grey eyes before he decided it was time to speak.

"Follow me," he instructed, turning abruptly to face the open end of the counter and striding forward.  He kept his hands primly covering his groin but didn\'t appear to mind that his muscular back and beautifully-rounded ass cheeks were displayed to her as he led her to the elevators at the far end of the cavernous room.  Almost as soon as he pushed the button, the doors slid open and he entered the small box, spinning to face outwards as Alacer joined him.

The button for floor four was pressed and then the gentleman stood, immobile and silent while the elevator lifted.  Unless Alacer spoke to him, in fact, he would remain motionless and unresponsive until the lift doors opened once more and he led her to the right, down a long corridor filled with closed doors on either side.  Some of the doors had plaques on them - people\'s names, as well as things like \'Stationery Supplies\' - and the man stopped in front of one that bore the label \'Tau Leander\'.

"This is the Shifter Oligarch\'s office," the white-skinned demon told Alacer mysteriously and then, with a short and perfunctory bow, he spun on his heel and headed back down the hall once more, leaving her before a closed wooden door.

(ooc: moved you a lot to get you to this point but figured I\'d better let you have some input here - just let me know if she wouldn\'t have followed and I will revise my post!)

[Luna Moon]

Alacer looked at him and noticed his nostrils widen. She guessed he was taking in her scent as she had done his. He stood there staring at her, and Alec didn\'t know what to do, she didn\'t know if he wanted her to speak or something. Whilst she was thinking of this he spoke.

"Follow me."

He turned and walked out from behind the counter toward the elevators. Alec saw his ass but kept her eyes on his upper body and head. He pushed the elevator button and the door slid open immeadiately, the man walked forward into it and turned as Alec herself walked in. The man pushed the button for floor four. He didn\'t move or say anything, Alec couldn\'t take it. Right before the doors opened she looked at him curioously and asked, "Where are we going?"

The doors opened and he led her immeadiately to the right. She looked to the sides as she walked beside him. There were plaques on some of the doors, different names and rooms. The man stopped in front of a door whose plaque read \'Tau Leander\'.

"This is the Shifter Oligarch\'s office."

Alec watched him again as he bowed and walked down the hall. "Th-thank you," she said to him as he left. she thought maybe she should at least thank him. She looked at the closed door in front of her. Should I really be here? she thought to herself. Alec took a deep breath and knocked on the door.

[Existentially Odd]

It opened a few moments later, to reveal a tall, scruffy-haired brunette with deeply-set blue eyes and a very serious demeanour as his gaze settled upon Alacer.  He wore a navy blue suit with white pin stripes, a white business shirt with a broad collar beneath and a striking indigo tie that somehow brought out his light blue eyes more starkly.  On closer inspection, his hair was more curly than scruffy but it needed a cut to tidy it up; she also wouldn\'t figure that out until he\'d sat, due to his great height.

Tau looked her over, tilting his head to the right as he did and scenting... something cold about her.  He knew she was a shifter, for only they were ever delivered to his door, and she was also not in trouble, for he wasn\'t meeting her in the boardroom, but at his office.  Beyond that, he couldn\'t be certain what sort of shifter she was until he asked.  His serious expression lifted as he smiled gently at her.  "Come in," he invited without preamble, standing back and gesturing with a hand for her to precede him.

The room Alacer would walk into was once a relatively normal corner hotel room; there was a bathroom to the immediate right as she entered (though the door was closed) and the rest of the room beyond had been converted to a plush office with vast windows filling the outside walls and bookcases lining the inner ones.  There weren\'t too many books in them.

A large, dark-wooded desk dominated the room, with a green studded leather executive chair behind it and two low-backed armchairs facing it from the opposite side.  A couch covered with the same dark green fabric rested against the wall to the left as they walked in, the expansive window behind it offering a modest view of other nearby office buildings, due to the cream-coloured curtains pulled open on all windows.

"Please, take a seat," he offered in a deep, cordial voice as he stepped past Alacer and headed for his own chair with feline grace, sprawling in it once he reached it.  there was very little on his desk; a dark green ink blotter with a laptop (open) sitting on it, two empty filing trays in the corner and a couple of closed files sitting to the right of the computer.  A pen holder stood empty closest to Alacer\'s side of the desk, its sole resident left (obviously just clocked closed and put down so that he could answer her knock) upon the closed files.

"I\'m Tau Leander," he introduced himself once he was sitting, watching the female with glittering, curious eyes.  "You are?"

[Luna Moon]

Alacer looked up to see a very tall man. He had scruffy-curly brunette with very light blue eyes. On the navy blue suit he wore, the white pinstripes seemed to stand out brightly, along with his eyes. And indigo tie and white shirt shown underneath the suit, the tie the reason his eyes shone out a little more. The man looked her over and suddenly Alec was self conscious, she watched him tilt his head to the side. Alec opened her mouth slightly and ran her tongue along her teeth, tasting the air again like before. He was definitely a supernatural and according to the man, demon she guessed, he was the shifter Oligarch.

Suddenly his seriousness disappeared and he smiled at her, slightly surprising her. Everyone here seemed so serious.

"Come in."

He stood back and gestured for her to walk in ahead of him. Alec walked slowly forward and stopped in the room. It still looked like a hotel room, the only exception that it had been converted into an office. The walls consisted mainly of windows and bookshelves, the latter not having many books upon them. The windows showed the office buildings around them outside, not really much scenery to desert-born Alec.

"Please, take a seat."

He walked by her with a certain grace and sat down in his own chair. Alec walked forward slowly with almost no sound from her feet and her body almost didn\'t move as she moved forward, almost gliding with a certain fluid quality, only her feet moving. She sat down in a chair across from him and looked over the contents of his desk. Not much, a laptop, some empty filing folders, closed files with a pen laid upon them, and an empty penholder.

"I\'m Tau Leander, You are?"

She noticed his eyes glittering with curiosity. She sat up straight as she introduced herself. "I\'m Alacer Ferito. I am truly sorry to have disturbed your work," she said, gesturing to the files and laptop on his desk. She looked up at him a little curiously for as what to do next.

[Existentially Odd]

"Well, Alacer," Tau answered slowly, frowning a little, "you are my work, so there\'s nothing to be sorry for.  You\'re a were-shifter, correct?  What do you shift into?  Are you new to the city?" he asked, the questions following one another so rapidly that she didn\'t have a chance to answer them immediately - but not so fast that they would have left her reeling or confused.

His eyebrows lifted as he fell silent, head tilting once more - much like a cat would, when contemplating something curious.

[Luna Moon]

He questioned her quickly, asking her one question after another. After he finished she looked up at him. "Yes, I\'m a were-shifter, and I shift into a Western Diamondback Rattlesnake. As for being new to the city, I haven\'t even been to my home yet." She smiled slightly at the end of her answer. She ran her tongue across the back of her teeth, now she was sure she smelt it. He smelled like a cat or something. "What do you shift into?" she asked with curiosity looking back up at his face.

[Existentially Odd]

His smiled broadened as he leaned back in his chair, folding his long fingers over each other and rocking slightly.  As he wavered before her, his fingers began to fiddle with one another, chasing around and over as he looked at her.

"A cougar," he said, interested in the fact that she became a snake - that explained the coolness he\'d detected in her.  He couldn\'t help but look her over again, wondering what she\'d look like in snake form and how her lithe body would change; head first?  Legs to tail first?  Skin to scales first?

"So what brings you to the Oligarchy\'s chambers, Alacer?  You\'re just wanting to register yourself?"  His gaze shifted to the laptop\'s screen, as he tried to recall how he entered her onto the system himself.  He wasn\'t very good with anything technological and had been abused twice already by the record keepers and once by the systems administrators for... whatever buttons he\'d pushed.  Frankly, it was challenging for him to use a pen and paper and note her details... but it was probably safer that he did that.

[Luna Moon]

Alacer tilted her head to the side. "A cougar? That\'s interesting." No wonder he smelled like a cat, she thought to herself. She was consious of the fact that he was looking at her again. She looked up at his question.

"I\'m not sure. I only heard about the Oligarchy today. I haven\'t seen a lot of other shifters so I was...curious." She looked up at him and twitched her finger, a sign of her nervousness. She wasn\'t sure what to do here. "What am I supposed to do?" she asked, curiosity leaking into her voice.

[Existentially Odd]

His extensively broad shoulders lifted beneath his suit, causing the expensive material to wrinkle ever so slightly before it settled snuggly back upon his muscular body.

"The main thing you are supposed to do is to keep your species a secret from everyone in the city, unless you know for certain that they are aware of supernaturals.  If they approach you and ask questions, you should be wary; a couple of years ago there was a... supernatural rev... revolution here.  The current Oligarchy head took over the city.  After a while, the mortals got control again and a story about a chemical leak making people del... delision... um, imagine things was released.  Anyone who was around then just thinks it was all imaginary and that is the way things should stay."

His deep voice had become stern by the end of his speech, the couple of hiccoughs throughout his warning likely telling her that he wasn\'t all that confident with complicated words but he did know what he meant to say.  Giving up on embarrassing himself by writing in front of her, he decided to take the risk of angering the technical people in the building by filling out a profile sheet then and there.  He knew exactly where to find them, he just had to remember to save it into the right spot...

"As for us, we like to have records about all the supernaturals we have in the city, to protect them, mostly," Tau told the girl opposite him evenly.  He sat up from his slouched position and rolled his chair forward so that he could begin tying when she began speaking - his right hand was clicking the mouse connected to the laptop though, finding the correct template to fill in.  He was quiet for a few moments while that happened, then he looked over the raised screen and into the tawny-coloured eyes opposite him.  "Would you like to slowly tell me your full name?  I\'m not very good at typing."

[Luna Moon]

"A revolution?" Alacer asked with wide eyes. She had known about a lot of supernaturals here, but she didn\'t know they had had a revolution against the mortals. She shook her head. "How did the Oligarchy take control and how did the humans that found out handle it?" she asked, tilting her head to the side with curiosity. She had tensed up slightly in her chair and now her messenger bag was pulling on her neck. She pulled it over her head and sat it on the floor.

She smiled slightly as he asked for her name, she was one of the only people to know that it was a latin string of words. Leaning back, she adjusted her t-shirt and crossed her legs. "My full name?" she asked, hesitantly, "Well, it\'s Alacer Subtilis Ferito." She said it slowly because of his request. "Can you spell it? Not a lot of people can." She didn\'t want it to be hard for him. She bit her lips slightly, tasting the air and heat in the room. If she got any cooler she would have to put the sweater she carried on.

[Existentially Odd]

Tau had trouble spelling the simplest of words, so he was glad that she offered to do it for him; with every letter she declared, he hunted and pecked the little keyboard in front of him, having none of his usual grace with the little keys and his enormous hands (well, they felt enormous when using the laptop).  Eventually, her entire name was filled into the top of the form and he remembered that he needed to save the document with a different name, so as not to destroy the template.  Unfortunately, he saved the profile into a place he would never be able tofind it again, but he wouldn\'t figure that out until much later.

Deciding he needed a break from typing (because it was so arduous), he sat up straighter and directed his intense gaze at Alacer instead of the screen, deciding it was a good time to answer her questions.

"Well, I was not here, then," he explained evenly, "but Lazarus has told very fond stories of how the city was walled up and the supernaturals ruled.  The mortals were openly hunted and there were no secrets about what lived in the city.  Demons flew, vampires stalked and shifters went about in their natural form if they felt like it.  From what I hear, the mortals lived in terror.  Somehow, Lazarus got bored, however, and the entire city was brainwashed when the Oligarchy took over.  That is how they came into power, though there was a different Luminary then.  He is gone now.  Do youhave a home address?" he queried, ready to type again and not waiting for any sort of pause between topics so that Alacer might adjust her thinking.

[Luna Moon]

Alacer bit her lip at his question. "Not yet exactly. I am looking for a home." She looked up with slight uncomfortableness. "I don\'t really know how to get a home yet. I never had one." She was starting to get cold, and she knew if she didn\'t put her sweater on her blood would start to cool. She leaned down, searching through her bag for the black sweater with a few designs and stitching on it.

Alec pulled it out and slipped it around her shoulders, the main design showing. A snake around part of the front and neck, it\'s fangs bared and tail curled. She smiled apologetically at him. It was bad enough being a cold-blooded human. She leaned back in her chair and looked at him curiously. "An entire city brainwashed and supernaturals running amuck. It\'s hard to imagine, but completely possible considering all the different species. All we would have to do is band together but with all the differences that poses a problem too I guess."