Fantasy 𝕾𝖍𝖆𝖕𝖊𝖍𝖚𝖓𝖙𝖊𝖗𝖘 - a shapeshifters rp

[femslasher]

𝕾𝖍𝖆𝖕𝖊𝖍𝖚𝖓𝖙𝖊𝖗𝖘
femslasher and captain_bumblebee closed rp
OCs Adaliya Hydara and Joshua Carter will be played by captain_bumblebee
OCs Minnie Castro and Quinn McFree will be played by biwheels.

They did not exist in cambian laws, and thus any harm to them wasn't unlawful. For all intent and purposes, they did not exist.
When Cambio's president-turned-king brought up the royal history of his great-great-great-grandfather being a beast hunter and the importance of keeping non-humans (ungodly) separate from humans (godly), the people saw a paranoid old man growing insane from too much gold and too much societal power. He had, after all, overthrown democracy after claiming his birthright and his newly built castle brought in hundreds of citizens who begged, on their knees, at the royal court. Cambio was bending over backwards to return to medieval ages, rejecting modern norms and customs. But this disbelief did not stop the king or his family; they instead used it to turn regular legends into legends of terror. Manipulating the media to associate what he called shapeshifters -- beasts who wear the face of men for malicious trickery -- with bad luck, gruesome anecdotal stories, and paranormal horror. People started seeing shapeshifters as an it, not humanoid or worth sympathy. Movies, comic books, even crime shows used them as creepy props. Teens went shifter hunting to scare one another. Shifters were mere cryptids, paranormal, mundane. But the king smiled at his success.

This could have been mere delusions to keep citizens in line... instead, hundreds of very real young shifters now found themselves hunted by curious fanatics and royal guards. Discarded into wilderness at birth. Villages burning so-called shapeshifters were brushed off as cults gone wrong. "Proof" was mocked. Any video-taping was staged; any shifter body found was a frankensteined human corpse; any live specimen was a magic trick; any believer was a fool. There were no consequences to harming shifters, as they are not real in Cambio. Still, the rest of the world watches. Many neighboring countries with many legends as well. Their own shapeshifters, although privately guarded, are seen not as curses but as mythical beings blessed by the Gods. Protectors of humanity and wildlife. Community leaders, even religious leaders. Even secretly presidents. Faced with such heinous cambian crimes, neighboring countries do not consider war. Far from it. They send over angels of peace, packaged in talented shifters who lived lives of prosperity amongst humans. But... is human-shifter cohabitation possible world-wide? Is human sympathy even possible in Cambio? Will the truth bring peace or destruction?​

 

[femslasher]

Beep. Brrr. Beep. Brrr.

"45 Augean Road, Borba city, Cambio. Branha district. 20km away," her animal rescue emergency alarm mechanically repeated on the seat besides her. It looked like a padger, but its buttons were shaped like a dog's paw and it blinked and buzzed incessantly when she was needed. The organization she was affiliated with had insisted on distributing them to all their on-call vets and animal patrol staff, as some people's phones proved to be unreliable. This meant she had even less of an excuse to be late to emergencies such as this one, and they could even track how fast or slow her car went... bringing it up to every staff meeting to make "improvement suggestions," of course. Minnie didn't mind it too much, being an early-riser and overly-reliable person anyway. It took all of fifteen minutes to grab some avocado toast, get dressed, brush her teeth and her hair, and run into her car. No sweat off her back. Still, the beeping and recorded voice was irritating. It would only stop when her GPS showed she had arrived at the precise address where she was needed. The struggle of working governmental jobs... it always involved such a high amount of surveillance, and was almost always some sort of emergency.

What was infinitely more irritating than her alarm was her destination. Borba was a mess of a city, and its streets were narrow dirt paths. She almost wished she had been going to the capital instead, as much as she disliked that city too. Minnie had lived in Gulbia city for most of her life with the exception of college, a city cousin to the cambian capital Caminho with its tall buildings and even taller Castle. Despite Gulbia city and Caminho city being so close to one another, she had only seen the Castle in various pictures and videos. You might expect the Castle to stand out in an England, stones and bricks, rustic sort of way amongst the hyper-modern city... but instead, it embraced excessively futuristic looks. It didn't just look modern, it looked almost eerie. Metallic, in an almost white shade of grey and tall statues at its entrance, alongside an artificial garden. Its doors were painted with masterpieces, and its interior was almost fully white. You'd think it was a strange, huge church, hiding between buildings. But it was the most highly guarded building in all of Cambio, with guards in white masks patrolled all around it. You could only enter with an invitation, and the neighborhoods around it were filled with wandering guards. Maybe that put Minnie on edge to even be in the city -- she feared stepping on the wrong tail and ending up in royal jail. As dumb as that sounded. Luckily, or unluckily, Caminho was definitely not where she was headed today.

Compared to Caminho, her true destination was a sewer. Even Gulbia paled in comparison to Caminho, but Borba was... well, basically a lifeless garbage swamp. It was home to large forests, filled to the brim with Caminho's military garbage disposal and rather toxic swamps. While Minnie loved nature, loved wildlife, and loved helping neighboring cities, no one could ever really want to go to the Branha district. Need to, maybe, but never want to. The first thing that made the city a pretty useless destination for her was that there was almost no wildlife left. Truly, they had all migrated to other forests in neighboring cities, especially Gulbia's forests. This was a huge question mark for scientists in the region and for Borba officials, as nature always found a way to thrive in anything, no matter how radioactive or destroyed. But it was as if all life had just up and left. Humans included, except for a few at the very border of the city, where the toxicity and dangers lessened and they could do business with tourists passing by on their way to Caminho.

This job involving going to Borba city made her drive there a stressful, but nevertheless intrigued her. What animal in danger would be in Borba? Did someone abandon it there? Was it lost on its way to another forest? It had been years since she'd received a call from Borba, nevermind the Banha district. It must be an especially risky and urgent situation, for the emergency button on her pager to be flashing like that. Not that there were many people living there to be put in danger in the first place.

She pressed a button on her pager to contact her superior, an easy way to be briefed on the way to a job. It rang, then hit voicemail. Ugh, how unsurprising, she thought, swerving into a new lane and driving past the welcome to Borba, the countryside paradise! sign that had been rusting away for over ten years. Toxic was graffitied over the word countryside. The sleepy voice of her superior, a greying man she rarely met face-to-face, spoke through the voicemail, telling her to speak her message after the beep alongside her full name and agent number.

"Agent VT22805, Minnie Castro. Hey Patty," the nickname still feeling odd on her tongue, despite him insisting on it during their last call, "On my way to Augean Road to retrieve the animal. It just said large canine, are we talking dog, or coyote? Fox? Guess it'll be obvious, like it always is once I get there. I'll assume you have a van parked at the address already to hold it. Send any information my way, okay? I don't want to stay in Borba any longer than I have to. Thanks." She pressed the hangup button and threw the alarm pager back on her seat, where it began repeating the same address and beeping intermittently.

Hopefully by the time she got there Payton... Patty, as he preferred, would debrief her on what the hell she was looking for, and what methods she should take. She knew she should be up for anything at this point, after almost 50 on-call jobs like this one, but it was beyond her how they could give so little information yet expect her to work miracles. What if I pick up the wrong animal, she always asks herself... and yes, in the end the animal always seems out of place enough that it's unmistakable, but what if? The royal government, and the specific royal facility she was affiliated with, always needed to shield the jobs in a cloud of mystery. One day she'll come back with someone's stray cat instead of a jaguar, and of course she'll be the one in trouble. Not her can't-be-bothered superior.

"45 Augean Road, Borba city, Cambio. Branha district. 10km away." The alarm pager repeated itself for the millionth time. The roads were becoming harder and harder to navigate in her small car unused to dirt paths, bumpy with rocks, as well as empty cans, trash bags, and other unsightly things. She rolled up her window at the smell. At this point it wasn't a question of if she was going to get a headache, but rather when.