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Peace and Unity March

It's a glorious hot and sunny evening in London when a ragtag group of supernatural misfits turn up at Leicester Square to wave their placards and begin their march for peace and unity among the city's supernatural communities.

Organised by students at the Redbright Institute, the march begins at 6.30pm and ends at 8.30pm outside the Night Council Headquarters in Whitehall. While the march is open to all, the timing is not vampire-friendly which is not a coincidence; there's a noticeable anti-vampire sentiment amongst the crowd.

The human media pay no attention: they've had the far larger Pride march earlier in the day to report on and this event has been billed as a marine environmental awareness campaign to the outside world. No one cares. But the Night Council do, of course, and accordingly the march is policed by Guardians who are dressed as police community officers. They will intervene if the protest appears to get out of hand and stop anyone who attempts to enter the Night Council HQ.

What's the march about?
The official objective of the Peace and Unity March as posted by the Redbright student organiser is to demonstrate support for a unified supernatural community. Despite the name, it attracts a variety of protesters who all want different things. Those attending or observing the march will see and hear support for the following, in rough order of prominence:

• PEACE AND LOVE. We just want everyone to get along.
• STOP THE FIGHTING. Not just pacifism, there's also a general sense of being sick of losing loved ones and driven out of parts of the city due to fights between factions. Some of the more extreme stances also blame the "monstrous" species for inciting violence i.e. vampires, werewolves, fae.
• WE STAND TOGETHER. A stronger message of solidarity and defiance against the Night Council and its perceived biases.
• REPRESENTATION FOR ALL. Also anti-Night Council. This bleeds into discontent against both vampires and witches.
• VAMPIRES SUCK. The vampires are taking over! This is a disaster for everyone and should be stopped.
• WITCHES SUCK. The witches have been controlling London for years! Down with the witches.

There are likely to be some rather heated debates between the protesters themselves as these varying sentiments contradict each other. Some protesters feel that Sylvia Redbright was unfairly ousted from the Night Council and are vocal in supporting her. Others are just cynical about the Night Council in general.

Route
6.30-6.45pm: Leicester Square
The crowd gathers at Leicester Square where the first fifteen minutes are spent gathering everyone together, waving some placards and generally getting everyone ready to begin the march. At this point the Guardian presence is hardly noticeable, though they are watching as soon as the march begins.

6.45-7.15pm: Victoria Embankment via Trafalgar Square
The crowd walks from Leicester Square to Trafalgar Square, then takes a diversion along the Strand before crossing over to Victoria Embankment. They pause at the Hungerford Bridge and Golden Jubilee Bridges to look out across the Thames to Waterloo, which is in Lambeth, a territory controlled by the Islington Nest. A few protesters spit in the river.

7.15-7.30pm: March from Victoria Embankment to Whitehall
From Victoria Embankment it's only a short walk to Whitehall, where the protesters march along the street before eventually coming to a halt outside the Night Council Headquarters.

7.30-8.30pm: Outside Night Council HQ
The remaining hour is spent as a sit-in protest outside the Night Council HQ. There are chants about standing together as one community, about the perceived lack of representation in the Night Council, and about peace not war. A few use loudspeakers to make speeches which are received with varying levels of enthusiasm. A small group even attempt to enter the Night Council HQ but are quickly rebuffed by Guardians who look increasingly menacing as the evening draws on.

At 8.30pm the protesters are ordered to disperse. Anyone who refuses to leave will be swiftly marched off, or even arrested, though for the most part the Guardians are trying to keep the peace.

Late evening: Off to the pub
There's no official gathering after the protest is over, but various groups do disperse to pubs around the central London area to continue the debate and generally have a good time and/or cause trouble. Some of these – the ones that are identified as potential political troublemakers – are quietly followed by undercover Guardians.

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1. On the Sidelines
Desmond has no real plans of participating in the march at all, but he's showed up the way one does when one sees a large group of people in one place, trying to figure out what's going on -- something that doesn't take him very long, once people start shouting at the Night Council. It's loud, to his ears, and naturally he can't help but wince at the anti-witch invectives hurled, but more than that? What's impressive to him is the magic it's got to be taking to keep this hidden from normal human eyes. He can't even figure out how something like that works. The best he can do is convince people not to notice him when he's in a crowd.

As soon as the Guardians start to disperse the crowd, though, he spends too much time dithering about where to go next -- meaning one of the departing protestors shoulders him aside roughly, sending him reeling right into someone else.

"Sorry!" he grunts, trying to pull himself away, steady his feet. Hopefully he hasn't knocked them down or anything.

2. Evening
Finally escaping the crowd, Desmond decides the best course of action after that is to grab a drink. Unfortunately for him, he happens to pick a place where some of the rowdier, anti-Night Council protestors trickle into later in the night. Unwilling to see things turn into an outright brawl, he considers just leaving his drink unfinished, but dammit, he paid for that.

So he'll keep nursing it at the bar, shoulders steadily rising to his ears as he hunches and the voices behind him grow louder.

Edited 2017-07-09 03:05 (UTC)

It's not a random departing protestor that shoulders Desmond- rather, one of the taller of Fagin's boys. The shove is planned, Nancy stepping into Desmond's way just slightly so that he's colliding with her. Nancy plays at getting her balance, and in the process manages to go for Desmond's wallet.

With any luck and quite a lot of skill, she'll be able to slip it back into her pocket without him even knowing.

"No, no, I'm sorry," she says, hands on his rather impressive biceps to steady herself needlessly. "I should have been watching where I was going." Over Desmond's shoulder, her partner in crime disappears. She'll meet up with Georgie later.

The wallet Lydia's fingers manage to liberate will feel disappointingly light -- the contents are just a few receipts (the backs scribbled with practice pentacles) and a punch card for a cafe (with three lonely punches). A healthy amount of paranoia about his personal belongings means you don't tend to keep anything valuable on your person within easy reach.

Still, Desmond feels someone sliding the wallet out of his pocket; it's just that it's hard to tell who, exactly, has gotten it. But he doesn't get a chance to dwell on it, or catch the offender, because hey, there's a girl shoved right into him.

"Little hard to do that here," he grimaces, as indeed they're still in the middle of a whole bunch of people moving around.

Of course, Nancy won't stop to look at the wallet until she's far from the actual scene. She doesn't want to risk it- looking right away is a rookie mistake.

So Nancy laughs, because he doesn't seem to notice anything, and pushes a lock of red hair behind her ear. "Yeah, tell me about it. I'll have a dozen bruises from all the shoving that's been going on around here. It's not usual for London, I'll tell you that much."

She assumes he's a tourist.

'Tourist' is close enough. Desmond may be a witch, but when he isn't actively using his powers, it's hard to tell that trace of magic unless you're looking for it.

"Yeah?" Desmond's nearly shoved forward again, this time by a rowdy werewolf, and he shakes his head. "I guess people care a lot about the marine environment." He grins, even as he says that.

"Careful!" She puts her hand out to try to steady Desmond, block him from falling into her again.

"They certainly do- have you ever been near the Thames? It smells awful!" She wasn't sure it exactly was technically marine but it was a joke, anyway.

Luckily for her, Desmond's better about keeping his feet this time, and he pulls back again with a short huff of laughter, appreciating the joke.

"Not exactly as glamorous as I thought London would be," he admits, and finally starts stepping away, moving towards the fringes of the crowd. "You want to get out of here?"

"I can't go too far," she tells him, but moves with Desmond. It's probably stupid to go with him- she's got his damned wallet in her purse right now. "I got brothers in the crowd. Can't abandon them."

They could find their way back to Saffron Hill with ease. But that didn't mean she wanted them to have to.

"Lots of people say that." London was dirty and filled with history and absolutely amazing. But it wasn't glamorous. "I've never been anywhere else, so I can't tell."

"How about there?" he points at a corner of a building, just out of the way of the main flow of traffic. "You could probably spot your brothers from there easier, too."

Regardless of how she responds, he'll start moving towards there anyway -- he wants to get out of this rush, if nothing else.

"Sure." Nancy shrugs and follows him over toward the corner. Crowds are easy for Nancy to navigate, turning her body left and right so as to move through the crowd seamlessly. She'd long ago learned how to blend in with a crowd.

"Luckily, I'm not too worried about my brothers. They know the way home. I only took 'em as a courtesy. I like spending time with them, too, mind you."

Speaking of rowdy anti-Night Council protestors, one of them shoulders through the noisy crowd at Desmond's back and climbs up on to a bar stool immediately beside him. Literally climbs, too- because high bar stools are rude.

"Well, shit." Does Desmond recognize that voice? Probably not. But he will soon. "If it ain't my favorite new friend. How the fuck are you?" Ghoul rests his elbows on the bar as he leans forward, eyes fixed on Desmond and grinning in a mildly menacing way. He hasn't even had a drop of alcohol in him yet. He's just naturally this obnoxious.

It would be hard for Desmond to forget that voice, all right. You don't usually forget someone who shoves you down in an alleyway, after all. His shoulders jerk up to his shoulders as soon as recognition hits, a little grimace pulling at the scar cutting across his lip, before he glances over, fingers curled loosely around his beer.

Even this idiot wouldn't start a fight in public, right? He'd seemed pretty keen not to, before.

"Alive," he shrugs, after a beat, instead of going for the smartass not drunk enough for this. "Looks like you are too."

"Yep." So far, anyway. "Nice of you to notice." Although Ghoul's death can't even save Desmond. He's relentless enough as a living being. Just imagine him dead, possessing the ability to float wherever he wants, whenever he wants, without requirements for leaving to sleep or eat or anything else lame like that.

He doesn't seem to be looking for a fight, but he is looking for something. He twists around and does some glancing around, clearly scoping out the area around the both of them. "Where's all your friends?" Surely Desmond has established some kind of buddy-system by now. Witches are almost as bad as wolves when it comes to sticking around their own kind.

'What friends?' Desmond might joke back if he was interested in looking pathetic, but he isn't. He suspects Ghoul would pounce on the chance to take the piss out of him regardless of what he says, so he might as well not make it easier for him.

So, he shrugs. "Probably at home. This isn't really their scene -- they say beer's empty calories and shortens your lifespan." Bar-hopping, as it turns out, is kind of a wrench in healthy witch activities. Pub food isn't exactly fitting in with the diet they prefer, either. Desmond can feel the judgement whenever he makes his own dinner.

What.

"...What?"

No, really, what? Ghoul temporarily freezes in place, wearing the same sort of unsure expression as someone who's just found out that their conversation-pal believes the government is controlling the weather with chemtrails. Nothing makes sense in the world, and he can't figure out how this combination of words has managed to come from someone's mouth.

"Do you fucking hang out with trendy internet moms?"

Desmond blinks back. This, of all things, is what throws this guy off?

"None of them are actually moms, as far as I know," he supplies instead, after a beat. "I mean, unless owning a dog counts. They jog with them in the mornings and everything."

Is he joking or is he being literal? Hard to say, but he seems dead serious right now.

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Peace and Unity March

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1- hope this is okay!

works for me! hope this is okay, too

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