#croleplays

It’s not often you go off base, and even less often that you go into town during the evening, as opposed to wandering through in broad daylight. It’s less crowded then, but there aren’t as many stores open.

You want to say that you’re used to the snappy comments and hard looks you get for wearing such blatant Fleet garb, but each sideways glance and clipped word brings you closer and closer to panic. Best to get in, do your business, and leave, as quickly as possible.

After a particularly tense transaction with a convenience store clerk, you’re dead set on getting back to base as fast as possible. Speed, however, is not always beneficial. You exit the little street-side shop like a screechbeast out of hell, and with a glance back, you round the door to hustle down the sidewalk when...

WHUMP

You run head long into a poor pedestrian, your wobbly, bio-mechanical legs the only reason you don’t clatter to the ground. Your mask hides your surprised, apologetic expression, but you’re quick to speak up.

In the Fleet, you were never really off duty, but you definitely had to check in and check out to your posts, so maybe it was like going on to extra duty, and then checking out to less duty?

Whatever it was, Proxid had checked himself onto day duty right on time, like a good fleet boy. The best part about this job, if you could call it that, was that he never did the same thing two days in a row. One day he would be out on the base grounds, pacing the boarders back and forth to make sure nothing odd was happening; he could be in the large ship hangers to make sure everyone boarding was supposed to be on board- no stowaways; and some days, like today, he found himself out at the little check-point booth at the base’s main entrance. He was to check credentials and shipments to make sure everything and everyone was coming in was clean, and he would check people out as they left, just to keep tabs on who was coming and going.

He didn’t complain much, but this assignment might have been his least favorite. He sat out in a little lone booth set between the big outer fence that encompassed the base. He would check in vehicles and foot traffic, argue with recruits that had missed curfew and thought he owed them a cover up, and for most of the day, would stair off into the empty, sun-bleached road. You could see the town from here, but it got harder the further up the sun went.

It was the day shift, but he started that shirt at the very tail end of the evening. The moons were just about set, and the horizon tinged with the impending sunrise. There was a little bit of a hustle as the last few trolls returned from a night out, and once they were checked in and through the gate, he was left alone. It was peaceful, he always thought, and sitting in the little air conditioned guard box wasn’t the worse way to spend his day. 

So, my moirail won’t message me baCK, I thinK he might be busy with something else. (He’s always busy.)

But I’ve been having some weird stuff happen around my hive. I don’t want to jinx myself or anything, but I thinK it might be...

You Know...

(A ghost)

LiKe, I don’t Know if it is or not, but stuff Keeps falling off my shelves, and sometimes it sounds liKe someone is walKing upstairs, but only my lusus is up there, and when he walKs, it sounds totally different. I Keep CatCHing weird smudges when I taKe piCtures, I thinK?

He used to have have a nice hive uptown. It had three stories and a balcony, and even it's own little plot of land! His closest neighbor was up a hill, and the foot traffic was all but non-existant in the nice highblood subgrub.

Things like that were fleeting, however. All it took was a long losing streak, and an even longer streak of desperation before he had slapped down his hive as collateral in a bunk game of cards. He was pretty sure he had been cheated out of it, but when a big blueblood held a gun to your head, it was hard to make a good arguement.

Lycuss still had a hive, but he had had to downgrade a little... Alright, a lot. His new hive was a little rickety little building smashed between an old laundromat and a hivestem that had clearly seen better times. The foot traffic was still slow on the outskirts of town, but his neighbors were much closer, and often times, much less savory. Was it unusual to have three locks on your door? Not when you had a number of loansharks on your back. The front of the hive was a dingy cement, green lichen clinging to the wet stone around the stoop. It was one story, the only window visible a tiny thing above the door that let in the dim light of the streetlamps.

The inside wasnt much better, but that was his own fault. Clothes were left in the basket they had come back from the laundry in, dirty clothes on the floor beside it. There were boxes filled with papers, books, and other junk stacked along the walls, empty bottles and unopened mail cluttering up the single coffee table in the center of his tiny livingroom. A little TV babbled at one corner of the room, the hive's only occupant draped over the little couch at the other side. He wasnt really a home body, but after the previous day's extravagant events, a night in was just enough to cure what ailed him- in this case, a splitting headache and some scabbed up knuckles.

But even that wasnt enough to keep him stuck inside all night. He just needed some fresh air, just to clear his head! He stepped out onto the stoop of his hive, door ajar, hiis back curved in a soft "S" against the doorframe. He took a long breath of the cool evening air, his hands dipping into the pockets of his loose loungey pants for a pack of cigarettes.

You’ve only done this a handful of times so far, and every time you have, you’ve hated it. You don’t like being the center of attention, you don’t like having people look at you, and you don’t like doing something that you aren’t skilled at, especially in front of other people. Every time someone stops in front of your guitar case, you feel hot under their gaze, wondering whether or not they’re just watching you pluck at the cords of your instrument, or if they’re looking at the deep scars carved into the side of your face, or the twisted discolored burns along your side. You’re dressed in a drab grey, almost hoping no one will notice you and only notice the music you’re playing. The only thing flashy about you is the deep green words “This Machine Kills Hemoloyalists” scrawled across the body of your guitar.

You wish it didn’t say that, but in lowblood heavy parts of town like this, you tend to get better reception if people can see it.

You shrink a little when people approach, only making eye contact long enough to murmur a quiet “thank you” for getting a few bills dropped into your open guitar case. You’re seated on the cement just behind it, and though this isn’t a great part of town, the number of lowbloods living here make you feel a little more secure. If you were to play anywhere nicer, you were sure to get harassed, or best case scenario, asked to leave.

You would have liked to wait until you were a better musician before preforming for any sort of live audience, but after your third week in a row of living off rice and overly salty noodle cups, you decide that the embarrassment is worth the money. 

You know a number of songs, and though you have a decent voice, none of them have words; you haven’t even sung for your matesprit yet! You focused on learning songs that are fast and complicated, ones that rely heavily on the musician’s ability to switch cords quickly.You tend to fumble on those more often than the slower songs you know, however, and though remembering the cords isn’t hard for you, your body has yet learn the muscle memory it takes to actually /play/ them. The bandages on your hands suggest that you’re still trying to work up the calluses on your fingers, and every once and a while your instrument gives a quick screech when you press on them the wrong way as jerk your hands away in pain.

Your brow furrows, and you try your hardest to concentrate on the cords that you’re playing and not the people around you. You just need enough money to buy a couple of essentials, and a good meal, and from the glance you take into your case, you’re not far off!

When someone gave you their handle, you were supposed to wait three nights before you messaged them. Two made you look desperate, but four made it seem like you had forgotten! So exactly three nights after his meeting with Lilitu, Lycuss sat down at his desk, staring at the name he had typed into the chat window on his husktop. All he had to do was open the window and talk, he'd done it a million times! Why was he so nervous?

-- stockpiledFortune [SF] began trolling  eternitysRequiem [ER] --

SF: Hey! How'$ your night going? SF: Oh, uh, thi$ i$ your ol’ pal Lycu$$! Ju$t, you know, checking in SF: Not that I have anything to check in about, thing$ are all good! Nothing to worry about! ;)

Oh god, he sounded so lame. He bumped his head onto the desk once to try and jog his brain, and then looked back up.

SF: Ju$t, you know, making $ure I have your handle right $o that when $omething crazy come$ my way, I can get it to you a$ap! SF: $o... What are you up to?

Quince didn’t consider himself a “member” of this city.

The trolls who crammed together in tiny hivestems or in shoved together hives in crowded subgrubs were the ones who actually lived here. He always thought of himself as a renter, or a visitor. Sure, he had a hive here, and he had been here nearly his entire life, but he didn’t abide by all of the rules that the city enforced. Not that he was the only one, but he was the best at being a delinquent.

Or at least, he liked to think so.

It was usual for goldbloods to have their hands in the tech world, fingers naturally made for programming or electronics; or electricity itself, in a lot of cases. But again, Quince figured that he had always just been a step above everyone else in that regard. It wasn’t hard to get in touch with him. His handle was plastered on forums and hidden on mass downloading sites, word of mouth and self advertising. He was known for his knack at piracy. You needed the newest version of that art program that cost thousands of dollars? He could get it to you for half of that. You wanted to see that new highblood movie because they wouldn’t let you into the theatre? For a little more than the price of a ticket, you could own it. You wanted every song that they had ever played on your favorite radio station? It would cost you an arm and a leg, but he could get you a couple dozen CDs burned by tomorrow.

Some trolls asked him for more; programs and pictures and files that could get you culled for having in your possession? Those were the big ticket items. They would cost you favors and money and blood, but he could get you those. He could get you anything!

And because of that, he liked to give back a little. Sure, it was a power trip watching trolls fight each other over clues and pour over his puzzles like ancient explorers, but if they were clever enough, they could get some pretty decent booty. They called it geocaching. He called it treasure hunting! Nothing was ever in the same place twice, and nothing was ever easy to find. You had to find clues and make it through traps, but at the end there would be a prize; programs and files for the taking, things that you could never obtain on your own!

So on this fine night, he had gone out to hide his latest clue. He had left hive a little late, hustling down the back streets to find just the right place to put it. His long, dark duster billowed a little as he walked, the coat that he wore under it a dingy gold with a hood pulled up around his head. It had little holes for his horns to poke through and came down low over his brows. Around his neck and pulled up over the bridge of his nose was a black bandanna, hiding what features the hood allowed to peak through. The only thing visible was his eyes, one hidden under a patch, the other a piercing yellow.

He always hid his boons a few nights before posting a vague hint online. If everyone playing had any brains, and all the previous clues, they would already have what they needed to find it. Just in case, though, he gave out a hint after a few nights for new players, or those who were a little slow.

Tonight, it would be hidden in an alleyway of a long abandoned hivestem. He had chiseled out one of the old bricks near the dirty concrete between a dumpster and a stack of old wooden pallets. He was in the process of replacing it with a brick-shaped box of his own, laying it in the hole and securing it in. On the front was a slot for a single USB to be inserted, a neon yellow “X” painted across its face to mark the spot.

This wasn’t the prize. No no, this was the seventeenth clue in this particular hunt that would eventually lead his players to an undisclosed prize. Once they found this clue, just like all the others, they would be able to put in a device of their choice, and it would automatically download a number files and pictures and audio clips, always signed from “The One Eyed Captain.” If they were able to puzzle it out, they would know the location of his next clue.

The only noise he made was a little bit of scraping and the occasional “fucking shit”, his crouched form shifting about as he shimmied the box into its new home.