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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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

WHAT DO WE WANT?

Werewolf Representation on the Night Council!

WHEN DO WE WANT IT?
RIGHT NOW.

Of course, Laura had yet to actually join in any of the chants, but she was behind the sentiment 100%. It's a good idea to keep an ear to the ground, see where others seemed to stand on similar subjects.

Besides, someone's got to watch out for the younger members of the pack around here, right?

Ghoul's actually standing at the moment, but he's still scrolling through that fucking phone.

To his credit, he is paying attention. Sort of. He's listening, and after a round or two of chants, he's come up with his own version. Each time what do we want? rolls around, he's taken to murmuring, "To overthrow the Night Council," in response.

That's just as good as werewolf representation, isn't it?

"Overthrow the Night Council?" Laura asks with a raised eyebrow. How anarchistic of him.

"And what would take their place?" She'll humor him. Besides, she's curious about the thoughts of her fellow pack members.

At first, he answers with a questioning-sounding hum, glancing up at Laura. Then he forces a polite half-smile on his face that tries a little too hard at coming across as harmless, and he shrugs. "Dunno. Somethin' better. Maybe nothin' at all." Perhaps they all need a break. Y'know, be single for a while. Figure themselves out.

"Can't keep building on a bad foundation, though. Sometimes you gotta tear it down and start over."

"And you think the foundation is bad." She hums a little herself.

"I think it'd be easier to start a bit smaller, work your way up to a total new system." So, you know. Representation.

Starting small must not sound so great to Ghoul, because his face wrinkles up in disapproval. "And what're you s'posed to do when the small stuff don't work?"

Because he doubts it will. Too many people who don't like them hold power. They can either flat-out reject them or string them along with false promises until the end of time.

...Although, maybe if a few of them were removed from their seats, things could maybe progress smoothly. Ghoul suddenly looks more thoughtful than doubtful. And that is legitimately a terrible thing.

"What's to say that it doesn't work, Ghoul?" Laura asks, "We won't know until we try. And then if it doesn't work, we'll look at what further actions there are to take."

At least the London political system was far smaller than the one back home.

"But for anything to stand a chance of working, you have to have hope."

"Really?" His voice is as flat as flat can possibly get, right before he exhales loudly with a shake of his head.

"You make it sound all sweet and shit." His smile is brief and not necessarily something positive, but he doesn't sound mean about it. This is, apparently, just her style. It's... different. Too clean and by-the-books. "You makin' Katherine nervous yet?"

He's bitter, and she can understand that. Laura keeps a small smile on her face, a nod in thanks for her being sweet. More or less.

"We've spoken." Katherine hit her hand and insulted her quite a bit, but they'd come to an arrangement.

Ghoul is suddenly paying a whole lot of attention. So they've talked, and Laura's still in one piece? He grins, blatantly fishing for details when he asks, "You been thrown yet?"

"Not even close." She smiles perhaps just a little bit too deviously.

It's not that she's surprised to see Laura here, except-no that's exactly it. The protesting has been peaceful enough and she gets why any of their kind would get into the sentiment, but Laura seems so together to be out here.

"Didn't think you'd be in to this kinda thing." When in doubt, go with honesty.

"Me?" Of course Girl is talking to her.

"Why? Too old for this sort of thing?" She's making a joke at her own expense, she knows how ancient she must appear to the younger members of the pack. "I like to keep my pulse on how other members of the community feel, and I thought I'd come to support the idea of equal representation on the Council."

"That's not what I meant," she says quickly, waving a hand in front of her face. "Just that- I don't know. You seem all professional and whatnot. More like someone who'd be holdin' a press confrence than all this yellin' and marchin'."

Girl scratches at her face, grimacing. "Yeah? You think all this support is gonna amount to much? That they'll listen?"

"I know, I know- I'm just giving you a hard time," Laura assures Girl. "You'd be surprised- I've been arrested a few times. And held more than a few press conferences." She smiles, it's always nice to surprise young kids.

"I truly hope so, but there's no way they will work if we don't try to make them listen.

"Arrested?" Her eyes widen. Some of the others that would be easy to believe about. If Ghoul were to start telling prison stories, she'd just start laughing. But Laura- "No way. Why? What could you have done to get arrested over?"

"Don't they have to want to listen first? I don't know, but I think if they were at all interested in what we had to say, they would have put someone like us on the council 'lready." She chews on her lip, sighing. "I always thought the people who had power felt like they didn't need to pay any mind to the people that had none. How they kept it all."

Laura laughs, shaking her hair out of her eyes. "I was a long younger, and I was at a protest much like this one. Things got out of hand, and I found myself in handcuffs. I think I was sixteen." So nothing on her permanent record, thank goodness.

"That's what we need to change. We deserve representation, just as everyone else does. While it's not a perfect system, we can work to make it better. And that includes an even distribution of power."

"What were you protestin'? How'd it get out of hand?" It was only a year older than her and for a moment it made Girl feel a little bad that she'd considered not coming at all. Mostly, though, it just awes her. It's exactly the kind of story a teenager raised by half feral types would find entertaining.

"I'm not disagreein' with you," she says carefully, "We ought to have someone on the Council, it's the only way to make anyone care 'bout us. But there's a vampire in charge now and they hate us. Even if they listen and do somethin' for the other groups, they might not for us."

She doesn't know the man well enough, or at all, to say where his politics lay. Maybe he doesn't care for a feud between species. But she's spent most her life being told vampires couldn't be trusted. Old prejudices were hard to break.

"It was a rally for legalizing marijuana." She'll be open about it. She doesn't see anything wrong with partaking. "Some protesters got drunk and started a fight. The police came in and arrested a bunch of us. If they'd stuck with just pot none of it would have happened." Laura laughs, shaking her head. "It was a long time ago."

It's good to know that Girl agrees. "If we have others on our side, they'll have to listen."

And that's not what she expected from Laura. The appraising gleam to Girl's eyes may just be showing a newfound respect. "Never would have taken you for the type," she says, smiling. "Rebel past and all. How 'bout that."

The smile drops. "Maybe. If they'll stick on our side and not just try to help themselves."

"I have always lived a relatively calm life," she explains. Calm, but filled with unexpected twists, like her arrest record, and sleeping with important people in the magical government. Oh, and her regular enjoyment of canway, the magical equivalent of marijuana, even now.

"Which is why you offer to help them in exchange."

"Got a feelin' we got some different definitions of calm," Girl says, lips pressed together to suppress a smile. An arrest doesn't sound calm. Neither does turning a wolf.

"Mmm. But I thought our Alpha was more interested in allyin' with the witches."

"Other than that, I mean," she amends. She'd said relatively, at any rate.

"There are more witches than just in Daybreak," Laura says with a small smile.

She huffs out a quiet laugh, a little amused and shaking her head. "Are you talkin' 'bout specific ones? Cause I know there are, but I'd think they'd stick with Daybreak against us, right? Sisterhood or somethin'?"

"No, no one in specific. There's a cross-over, of course, but, let's just say there have been meetings." She'd spoken with Sylvia Redbright herself, about an alliance in the days ahead.

"And there are those who dislike the Mother of Witches enough to go against her."

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