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 Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2012 8:12 pm
 The rumble of cars, the steady hum of humans walking and the murmer of their voices, and the odd bang or rattle of daily city life filled the air, threaded through with the occasional trill of a bird, bark of a dog, or yowl of a cat. It was still light outside, the concrete hot where there was no shade to hide it from the glare of the sun. Everyone complained about the heat, but come winter everyone would complain about the cold. Humans in particular were always frowning and making grumbly sounds at each other more often than not.
Erika peered out of the street from her spot in the dark alley. It was only about noon and the theaters wouldn't open for another couple hours. This would give her an ample amount of time to sneak in to a building and find a good spot to watch from without getting caught.
'Trouble is-,' she thought, giving the metal door next to her an affronted glance, -I'm not sure how to get in without getting caught this time.'
This theater was one she'd been to a couple times before. She couldn't read their writing, but she could tell that when the signs out front changed so did the plays. They had just changed the signs last night, and Erika was keen to get in and see the newest production. She'd used this alley door before, numerous times, in fact, but this was the first time she'd ever seen it locked!
Erika heaved a sign and wiggled a little further back in the alley so a human wouldn't spot her on accident. She settled just behind the bend from where she'd entered, from which turned into a maze of alleys that was her primary source of moving through the city; she didn't much like moving among humans, they made loud, annoying sounds and usually tried to chase her, or stepped on her long tail.
Once she sat on the cool, stone-hard dirt she turned her gaze to the worn bricks of the theater wall, staring at them and contemplating how to get inside.
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Posted: Sun Sep 23, 2012 2:09 pm
Matthais was chased out the backdoor of the little restaurant by a very angry man who wanted his slab of pork back, but knew that even if he had it, there was no safe way to cook and serve it. So, the man chased the red fox with a giant fork of sorts down a few cramped alleys before giving up, fairly out of breath, and walking back dejectedly to his restaurant.
Matthais, meanwhile, reveled in his victory. He slowed down to a brisk trot as he continued to wander down the small paths laid out by the tall human buildings. He rounded the corner of a large, old brick building, idly wondering what the humans needed such a large space for, when he spotted a tan vixen staring at it rather intently.
Remembering the pork still in his mouth, Matthais set it on the unpaved ground before approaching her. He stopped beside her and turned his head to look at the wall and door that she seemed to be studying. "What are you looking at, Miss?" He asked, while still trying to find something interesting about the wall.
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Posted: Sun Sep 23, 2012 2:43 pm
Erika gave no notice that she'd seen or heard the male. He might have been a ghost to come drifting along before coming to a rest beside her. Not the best of states to be in, for the city was a dangerous place and showed no mercy to those fool-hardy enough not to pay attention.
After several long moments of silence the male's voice seemed to penetrate the barrier of intense thought inside her head, but she never once tore her eyes from the building as she replied, in an absent-minded, "I'm making a mental map and trying to figure out how I can get inside."
Finally she swiveled her head around to look at Matthais. There was no awkwardness of strangers, nor startlement or curiousity at how he came to be sitting beside her. An observer would have thought these two might have known each other, or at least had been sitting there together this whole time. There wasn't a shy bone in her body, something she trained into herself so that it didn't affect her acting if she had to perform with total strangers.
"My door is locked, you see," she said, as though it would explain everything.
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Posted: Sun Sep 23, 2012 3:29 pm
His eyes turned towards the door at the vixen's words. "Ah, I do see," he replied, making a note of the door, its handle, material, etc. Locked doors, doors, even buildings in general were a human creation designed specifically to hinder foxes from going anywhere they pleased and at any time. That really bothered Matthais, and he made it his duty to enter every building he wanted to enter. This was one building he'd never been in, though, and he still didn't even know what it was.
The fact that this vixen wanted to get in was reason enough to intrigue Matthais, though. He turned his head to look at her, not at all surprised to see her blue eyes looking back. "In my professional opinion, you have a couple of options," Matthais began, not bothering to gather more information about the vixen or the place. "My first thought is to attempt to pick the lock. There isn't too much success in this choice, but it's an option. It takes a lot of dexterity to get the pick to move just right, and that's if you can find the perfect item to use."
Matthais paused for a moment, turning back to the offending locked door. "We could also try to lure a human out here and sneak in while their back is turned." Matthais hardly noticed the sudden switch in pronoun. As far as this scheme was concerned, they were already partners.
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Posted: Sun Sep 23, 2012 3:39 pm
Erika turned her head back to the building. "Won't work. No guarantee that lock would be easy to pick, and I don't have skill to pick it so I might jam the lock which would mean the humans would be scrabbing around all the time trying to fix it and there goes all my chances of using the door to get in. Trying to sneak around a human won't work, they'll see me go in the building and I need to be able to stay in the building for at least a few hours without having to worry about humans chasing me around."
Erika sighed dramatically, like a woebegone maiden denied her heart's desire. "I probably won't be able to use that door tonight, so we'd need to think of another way to get inside."
Erika was also using the pural now. It wasn't that unusal to her, foxes wanting to break into threaters. Most foxes who lived in the city had artistic tendencies of some kind; Romulus also liked to sneak into theaters. Having a partner in crime tended to make things interesting.
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Posted: Wed Oct 03, 2012 10:13 am
Hm, obviously this vixen had been sitting here long enough to think all of that through, and more, but on the information Matthais had alone those were the only viable options. "In which case, we should probably circle the building to see if there are any other entrances," Matthais suggested, "unless you've already done that?"
His eyes drifted up and around the building once more. "Roof access might be a good idea, too. These buildings are really close together, and just as tall as the theater, it seems," he noted, indicating to the building behind them. "If we can't get to the top of this building, perhaps we can climb up one of these and just jump over."
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Posted: Wed Oct 03, 2012 10:27 am
Now Erika craned her neck back, eyeing the roof with interest. "The thought hadn't occured to me yet," she admitted. "It's quite viable. Most of these older buildings have roof access with proper doors. I'd be willing to bet the theater has something up there."
Erika wasn't much of a roofwalker herself, more of an alleyfox, so she'd never tried climbing on any of the buildings around here. She'd have to remedy that later in case she ever had to climb anything for her acting, but for now she turned to her new expert. "What would you recommend we do to get up there?"
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Posted: Sat Oct 20, 2012 1:21 am
Matthais smiled, proud that he had struck upon a useful idea. "Perfect," he replied, standing up. "If you think it will work, then I would first suggest we circle this building and see if we can climb up to the roof from some other side. I've known some tall buildings to have little metal ladders." Matthais had never seen any humans on these metal ladders he spoke of, so he would often get away with climbing up to the roofs of random buildings. The city was quite the sight from up above.
Matthais brought himself out of his thoughts, his eyes returning to the vixen he had, on a random whim, decided to help out. "Well, then," he started, turning his back on her and facing the direction he had originally arrived from, toward the series of alleyways as opposed to the more crowded streets behind the other fox. "I suppose we should start now. Unless, it doesn't matter to you when you get in this building?" He turned back to face her at the last part, raising an eyebrow in question. Matthais still have absolutely no idea what was going on in there.
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Posted: Sat Oct 20, 2012 12:53 pm
Erika shook her head. "As long as I can get in without human detection I'm cool with however the plan goes down," she said, giving her shoulders a careless shrug. It wasn't like she hadn't already been in and around all sorts of weird situations before that had required a bit of cunning.
"No metal ladders over here," she said, indicating the wall she'd been staring at. "No need for one cause there's no windows." She jerked her head to the side to indicated the building they were hiding behind. "This one does, but I think the gap might be too far to jump. Not sure what the other side of the theater looks like though." she added thoughtfully. "Never been over there before. Might be worth checking."
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Posted: Mon Oct 29, 2012 12:33 pm
Alright then, good to know the vixen wasn't picky. Matthais nodded in agreement regarding the gap between the buildings they were currently standing it; it certainly was one of the wider alleys, and he doubted they could leap that distance. Without actually saying another word, then, he turned and led the way toward the back of the building.
The width of this alley was much smaller than the previous one, but in this case there were no metal ladders on either side. "Hm," he said, raising an eyebrow at the situation. "Pity we can't combine those two walls." Matthais shrugged, and kept walking. Maybe that building had a metal ladder on one of the other sides, and if; they could see about that later.
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Posted: Mon Oct 29, 2012 6:54 pm
“Let’s see if the building next to it has a ladder,” Erika suggested as though picking up on the male’s thoughts. “It’s mostly store stuff on the bottom, but I think humans live in the upper floors. Where humans live high up there’s usually a ladder somewhere.
Thankfully the alley they were slinking through continued down for a fair distance. Doors were set in the backs of the buildings on either side of them, with trash cans and dumpsters every couple buildings. This was clearly the service alley where the trash was dumped and collected.
“Score,” Erika sang out as they came in view of the other side of the building, spotting a rickety metal affair affixed to the brick. She carefully crept forward and looked up at the metal rungs way above her head. How did humans get up there? The bottom run was easily nine feet up, and very few humans that she’d ever seen could jump that high.
“Whatcha think, should we give it a shot,” she asked, turning to look at her accomplice.
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