The Day After the Lottery - A Weekend at Kerroway Heights [open to everyone!]

The world seemed to move at leisure. It hummed with the chitchat of people moving across the Heights, the fluttering of English cocktailed with spritzes of Novelic, Flint, and other occasional languages of Kepler. If there was any place to hear the musings of cultures, it was the Rainmerrow District. Tourists raised phones to the shore, across the straight to Southwark, down the shoreline to Kilead. The stores flooded with people, shopowners gleefully trying to trick foreigners out of their recently-exchanged quid.

Clancy sat by the statue of Joseph Kerroway, on a fruit crate, glancing up at the pigeon shit caking the dead architect's shoulders, wondering when the street cleaners would come at make it spotless. Oh, the "street cleaners." What a fucking joke. How could he have believed such a lie, with the backroads and alleys littered with garbage, or Kilead's precarious highrise. No one was cleaning anything.

Well, except him. He was now a "street cleaner." He had received the letter the day before. He didn't know how he got the drive to get out of the house.

The Reset Night was Wednesday. He was supposed to report to the Headquarters by Monday, wherever the fuck that was.

The 14-year-old boy grasped an instrument in his hand, a violin. He pursed his lips with a dry smile. It was time to forget everything, to make some extra pocket change. He would need it.

With horse string in hand, he began to play, the crowd rushing by him, most only stopping to glance for a few moments before carrying on.

Aleks was dumbfounded at the huge crowds here.  He never really LEFT his little 'mining district' besides the occasional lacrosse tourney and now as he was trying to find his way to the HQ of his new party he stood in the lion's den.  This place was the exact opposite of the quiet he had in Southwark.  Nobody knew each other, everybody was pushing past each other as they were busy or wanting to see more sights of the large high rises and dirty alleyways.  He moved too slow, people began to push his shoulders and bump past, then he moved too fast, the people in front of him didn't move at the same speed his long legs let him move and he found himself staring at store after store and corner after corner, how the Hell was he supposed to get around this city?

Aleks started to set landmarks for himself, so that he would be able to tell if he was walking in circles which he was almost certain he was.  A bright pink storefront, a street named Earthen lane, a statue of some long dead man who was now being disgraced by birds and their feces.  His ears picked up a rather high but pleasant sound.  A stringed instrument playing a melody.  It was a familiar sound, a lot of the old coots in Southwark could play most any instrument.  He followed the sound which emanated from the area of the statue and he saw over some heads a teenager, sitting on a crate and playing the sweet music.  He offered a bright smile while he followed the flow of the crowd which the boy sat nearby to.

Aleks stopped and attempted to pipe up in his rather quiet and smooth voice for his size but was constantly interrupted by a shove or some remark in an accent that seemed rather alien to his own.

"Hey yo-I li-Can yo-"

Aleks huffed as he allowed himself to frogger his way past the crowd and reach the boy sitting on the crate and playing.  He adjusted the sleeves on his shirt as the skirmish to get through the crowd hiked them up, he hastily covered the wristband that glowed it's dim blue and approached the boy on the crate with a smile, speaking in a distinctly different accent for the area "I was trying to ask what you were playing, friend."  his voice was calm and quiet, barely heard over the bustle of the crowd.  He smiled warmly once again at the violin player as he awaited him to finish and, hopefully, answer.

Oliver trudged through the area with his hands shoved in the pockets of his leather jacket as he pushed through the city, the adults too tall to notice him until he had already shoved past them. He loathed being as short as he was. He was walking by a statue covered in bird shit when he heard a violin playing and he stopped. It was an unusual thing for the boy to hear as his parents had never allowed him to play music and the only music they allowed was the opposite of classical. The music intrigued him, and he pushed through the gathering crowd to get closer so he could hear better. Oliver ignored the "hey's" and "watch it's" and kept going through the small mass of people until he was at the front. He kept his hands deep in his pockets so the bracelet that had recently been given to him remained hidden. The boy didn't want any of the opposing parties to know where his loyalties lie.