[The Cave, Jacksonville, CAS. April 12th, 8:30pm 2076]
The music got louder as you rose higher in the stairwell. At first, it was just the thumping bass, penetrating through the layers of concrete to reach your ears, but after a few floors, you could start to hear small melodies from horns, electric guitars, and unknown instruments. By the time you reached the floor beneath, you could make out words, mostly in Or'zet, mostly of a violent and vulgar nature, but always on beat and rhyming well.
There have been people here since about six, but it's only really started to fill up in the last half hour. Most are orks and trolls, but all metas are represented in the crowd to some degree. The focus of the evening seems to be a series of rap battles. It's all only done in Or'zet, so those of you unable to speak it are rather left out of the whole thing, but the beats are really cool. None of you are really sure who's the better rapper, but the rest of the crowd sure seems to be, and they are emphatic about their approval or lack thereof. After every bout, the crowd roars in approval of one contestant or the other and most of the time, the loser is shamed and booed relentlessly, especially if they're a non-ork.
The sun went down about two hours ago and the wind went with it. Now that there's nothing to keep the swamp gas at bay, it has utterly enveloped the city. Even the nicer areas of town aren't immune. The only two places where you can get away from it are indoors with expensive AC, which few elite folks have access to, and on a rooftop higher than about 6 floors up, which luckily, is exactly where this meet is happening. Not only is the smell better up here, but there's a teeny bit of wind, making it two-three degrees cooler up here than it is on street level. That, combined with the fact that no-one up here is armed make it a really relaxing sort of environment. The rooftop is set up with a "beach party" sort of motif, old weathered and faded. Coconuts, tiki torches, surfboards, things like that mark the tiny little bar, manned by one overworked ork bartender serving only beer and bottled water, the DJ booth with it's line of about 4 young men with baggy clothes and expensive commlinks, waiting for their turn on the wheels, and the entrance to the rooftop proper, with its three or four elf women collecting money for admission after people get up the stairs. Everyone pays 10¥ to get in. These ladies don't care who you are or who you know.
Before you got to the roof, you walked up seven flights of stairs and unless you're in good shape, your legs are still killing you from the walk. Smokers and drug users among you are breathing heavily by the time you reach the top. The floors you pass by appear to be an old parking garage, left to rot on the edge of the downtown area, now turned into a squat for about 20-30 families who live here at the moment. As far as squats go, it's not bad and the opportunity minded among you plan to remember this place if things should get rough one day. There was no security whatsoever to search you for weapons, and the elves at the door didn't even ASK if you were packing, but after looking around for a while, you can tell that no one else is either. It's strange. Despite being surrounded by a crowd of young male orks, threatening to shoot one another to the beat of an insanely loud drumbeat, NONE of them have the means to do such a thing at the moment.
One67 is immediately visible as soon as you step out onto the roof. Despite the cheap respirator on his face, he's immediately recognizable as the tallest human in the place, taller even than the shorter orks and elves. From the ground up, he's wearing worn brown fuzzy slippers, white athletic knee socks, a pair of purple basketball shorts that come down below the knees, a green paint stained t-shirt with holes in it and the stitches starting wear out, and of course, the white, paint flecked, disposable respirator. He's got one of those "white-boy-afros" from shaving his head a few months ago and trying to grow it back out, but it's shaved on the sides with a false baldspot shaved into the back, making him look simply ridiculous. His hands are covered in paint of all sorts and he's got a spliff behind one ear. He, along with about 9 other people, of varying metatypes, but mostly ork and dwarf, are painting with old school spray cans on the exposed walls.
No matter what time you arrive, he greets you with a quick hug and a "Chillin chillin chillin yo, chillin!" but won't really stop working on the painting he's busy with until all four of you have showed up, at which point, he takes a short break from his work, circles the rooftop once to gather you all up, then leads you toward the door to the DJ booth. The DJ, a young filipino human kid, turns to look when the door opens and smiles when he sees One. "Whaddup WRIST!" says One before bumping fists with the kid. "Put on that peanut butter mix and give my people some space, wiz?" He then motions for you to enter. He only pokes his head inside to say, "Aightchall all get all acquainted an drek for a lil bit. I'm finna bang out this outline right quick rightchyea' and then pass it off to my man Zane for the ill fill in," through his respirator before closing the door and going back to the wall. Nodding his head, the kid makes a slight motion with his hand and the music begins to change. It stays the same tempo, but it's clearly a different beat now. Once he's got the new beat on and the old one is no more, he nervously avoids eye-contact with the four of you and leaves the booth. Surprisingly, it's really nice in here. There's AC and the music is still playing, but at a reasonable volume. Plus, you can't hear the vocals of the men on stage rapping in here, only the beats. It's a great place to talk.
You may not know much about street graffiti and probably can't read any of the words being written on these walls, regardless of what language they're written in, but you know what an outline is, and from the rate at which this strange, lanky, human fixer is working, you've got about ten minutes or so before he's finished.
