Random Encounters

[thebrownacid]

[This is a casual rp starter for scenes with Jen Daring, the world's most harmless Malkavian Antitribu. It serves as a warmup spot for character ideas for the After Gehenna game.]

San Francisco was a fishing village now. Bay water lapped the bases of the surviving skyscrapers, so clear now you could see down to the shattered street. Some brave divers went for artifacts down there: jewelry, surviving tools, random items to decorate their chambers with and claim bragging rights just for surviving. An old hubcap could cost you your life now that the Farrallones and the Bay were wed in one stretch of water over the drowned city. Sharks--the main risk in the area and also the main livelihood. They might get a fisherman now and again, but most nights in the high village with its precarious catwalks, it was they who became dinner.

When the sun went down the fishing crews lowered ropes down the side of the buildings and hauled up the boats along with their catch. The hard, ugly end-of-the-day work was necessary, for one breed of shark hunted at night and could take out even the few old yachts they had left.

The grunts and creaks of the ropes and thunk and scrape of the rising boats were the first thing Jen heard when she woke that night. She opened the closet she was curled up in and spilled out, yawning hugely. The outer wall of the hotel room she was squatting in had shattered outward, and a huge, battle-scarred gray cat crouched among the bricks, messily dining on a pigeon the size of a football. He looked up at her with his one good eye and meowed conversationally.

Within half an hour they had both eaten, and Jen was sitting quietly on the edge of the cracked rooftop plaza of the hotel. Other villagers, human and otherwise, milled on the rooftop by torchlight, enjoying a barbecue out in the cool night air. The cat sat next to her, keeping watch. Jen was a little unfocused, distracted by the blobs of golden and royal blue light dancing through the air. She knew something was going to happen soon and she should be here for it, but not what.

Comments

[thebrownacid]

Two days after the affair with the sharks, things have come as close to back to normal in San Francisco as they do. The sun is just setting, throwing a few last glimmers of red light over the rooftop plaza that now serves as town square. The lights and the turbine have been retrieved, repaired or replaced; the rubble, seaweed and water have been cleared away, tables replaced, and with some effort, a pizza oven built from rubble, cob and fire brick.

The product it is cranking out is plain and uninspired by predisaster standards. Simple garlic basil and tomato sauce, little bits of cheese from one of the town's few cattle, veggies, chunks of barbecued pigeon. But it is food, and enough for all, and the people quietly come in to eat as one of the locals saws away at a fiddle for entertainment.

Jen stumbles out as soon as the light faded, yawning and stretching, and ambles around looking for anyone she knows. Her cat trots after her, keeping his one good eye on her so she doesn't wander into trouble.

[tookhishand]

Hey, where there's cheese... He hasn't so much as seen a healthy cow in a year or two. (And he used to love cows. Especially Miss Gene, such a friendly animal... for a cow.)

There is cheese and one Donald trying to hold himself back from inhaling it all. These days he eats like a starving teenager, loads and loads and loads. All fuel for the transformations and incredible burning metabolism.

He's tempted to join in with the fiddler and sing something silly. Music, food, company, it's a very nice night.

[thebrownacid]

The cat arrives first, a slice of pizza in his mouth. "Rmm," he mumbles around it companionably before plopping down across the table and starting to chew on it. He looks to be in good shape despite having been flung around ingloriously several times during the fight.

Jen is wandering around invisibly, forgot that she is wandering around invisibly and thus gets knocked into by a passing server and stumbles back into visibility nearby. "Ooops! Hiiii!"

[tookhishand]

"Rrrm yourself." He can't do cat noises, and that was a miserable try. Then, a Jen. "Good evening. Why are you sneaking around?"

[thebrownacid]

Growltiger eyes him briefly and lashes his tail, then goes right back to nomming.

Jen blinks, then looks down. "Oh right, I was invisible again. Hee hee hee hee...sorry!" She wanders over and props her chin on top of her cat. "How are you doing?"

[tookhishand]

"You were. You wouldn't be bumped into if you weren't invisible." He feels that he can joke--that she won't mind.

"I'm fine. Glad to have pizza. How are you?"

[thebrownacid]

"That was silly of me, wasn't it?" she rocks on her heels cheerfully as her kitty noms away.

"I'm glad you guys have something good to eat. I don't think anybody realized how much goes into stuff like pizza til they had to make everything including the pizza oven.

"I'm doing a show in a little bit, once people have eaten." She winks.

[tookhishand]

"I'd say the majority of the work goes into the cows. Believe me, I've taken care of one myself, before... this."

Of course, they know he's not from this world by now, surely... but there was a cow! Named Gene!

"A show? A play, or a song...?"

[thebrownacid]

"Oh yes, the cows take a lot of work. They have their own floors, like the chickens, and their poops and some cheese get traded for cut grass and straw bales from the mainland. I had a long talk with them yesterday. They don't mind living in buildings, but they kind of wonder where all the grass and dirt went."

She zones out for a moment, staring at nothing apparent, and only comes out of it when he asks his question. "Um...it's...different. It's full sensory." She waves her hands around vaguely. "With music and stuff."

[tookhishand]

He writes the 'cow talk' off as something drug related, utterly unjudgemental. Because he's been there, and it's fun.

"I don't follow. What will you be doing?"