[b]Orange:[/b]

Starlight’s not supposed to bring her work home with her, and she tries not to. Her home isn’t as secure - [i]clearly[/i] - and her work is meant to be collaborative and directive. Her job isn’t to [i]do[/i], it is to make sure it is [i]done[/i]. The only thing she should be doing from home, then, is emails. 

No video conferences, either. It was easier to solve the problem of commuting than figure out how to make webcam conversations not suck. 

This should suit Orange just fine for her purposes. She’s not trying to infiltrate the web itself, has no specific case of Ms Bandaras that she’s trying to learn about. She is trying to learn [i]Ms Bandara[/i]. What she talks about when she’s trying not to talk about work [i]is[/i] the honeypot. 

Here is what Orange learns, before lunch. 

Ms Bandara is deeply broken. There are no photos of Sarah’s sire, no momentos, no evidence of a shared life. Not at first. But clean her ensuite, and see that there are still two toothbrushes, two hairbrushes, two towels. Only one side of the queen bed gets used, only one night table, only one side of the room, only half the wardrobe. 

In common areas, like the kitchen, there’s less obvious aspects. The spacious island counter that looks out into the living room, where Sarah is babygated. She is not allowed TV time, but the floor is covered in educational toys. Not mainstream ones either - one is a pillow that’s covered in straps and buckles, another is a pair of gigantic boxes of wooden blocks, most covered in fingerpaint marks. 

More recently, a big box of animal toys, and next to it a rubberized book with buttons to play animal sounds. Watch Sarah bang the button with the toy, then hold it close to her eye and, with a big smile, try to imitate the sound she heard. The cow goes “ooooo!”, the horse goes “nnnnneh”. Watch her get bored and wander off to another of the expensive, doctor-approved toys. Still, care has clearly been given to what Sarah likes, and not just what her mother wants her to like. 

This was meant to be an adult entertaining space, for wine and charcuterie. The floating counters of the kitchen are too spacious for even the most messy of home-cooks to take advantage of, you could plan a defense-in-depth strategy with the three tiers of them. There is only gravedirt where there once was a herb garden. This hosting and entertaining space has been given entirely to Sarah. 

Messy divorce? Bad breakup? It would explain the lack of sentimentals, but not Starlight’s unwillingness to reclaim personal spaces. No. What’s more is a contradiction in her behaviour. She is clearly devoted to her daughter, but even on a day off, Starlight is barely seen in the living room. She hides in her home office. She calls out to you, routinely, for tea and coffee every half an hour or so. But she apologizes each time that she didn’t make it herself, and she means it. 

Your mind is keen enough to find the significance in this data and extrapolate from it. Starlight Bandara was deeply in love, and whoever she loved - Sarah’s other parent - must be dead. Her daughter remains as a living memory to this absent partner. Starlight would do anything for her daughter, but it is painful to be around her. 

Combine this with what is overheard, the conversations she has. Starlight Bandara has few friends outside work, and struggles to talk about hobbies. Attempts are made, but she is always listening to other’s interests and never expressing her own. There is obvious relief in her voice when she gets to talk about work, even if it’s in vagaries. 

Her job must have been the one thing she did not share in her life, the one area of safe retreat. This is likely how she has achieved such a promotion at such a young age. 

You were right in your initial read. To a woman like this, a maid uniform might as well be burlap. But [i]children[/i]? They have not learned the complex mores of social hierarchies, of the connotations of a uniform. They just think you’re very pretty. Sarah certainly does. She loves to say “eow” at your headband. 

There is an angle of approach, here. There is a way to leverage being good for Sarah into being part of Starlight’s social network. And her social network [i]is[/i] her work network. She has failed, and continues to fail, to make a distinction between the two. 

It would not be enough to be just be a good babysitter. Clearly there have been maids and babysitters before, and otherwise there may be ones that come after. If, however, you can find a way to be a connection between Sarah and her mother, Starlight would cling to you. Expect repeat jobs, and a trust of vulnerability that would place you as a worthy confidante. 

It could be like with Ms Everest again, in a way. One person with a position of power who sees you as invaluable. And the rest of a room that you would remain invisible to. 

Certainly, it shouldn’t be wrong to exploit a hole you didn’t cause? What reason could White have to see werewolfing in being a very good babysitter - especially as part of the mission to see Dad?

[b]Pink and Persephone:[/b]

York blinks, and takes another sip of his cider. Puts it down. “This is the talk we’re having?” he cocks his head, stretches his arms and pops his shoulders. “Alright.”

“Prometheus spent the rest of a long life getting eaten alive.” He pulls out his phone and switches it off, then takes the battery out. He holds the power button down until the last of the diodes fade. “Some things are worth it, though.” He sniffs around the room. “I’ll take that coffee now, yeah?” He scratches scabs on his neck while he thinks. 

“Every day, the site saves lives. The site’s ended careers and swung elections. Gift of fire? You’re talking about using the site like a molotov, and molotovs don’t survive getting thrown. It needs to be worth losing every small good we do, every day. And everyone needs to agree to it, you’re asking Junta and Numb to risk losing their only support network. You’re asking me to lose the platform before I can end Ed Huxley Junior.”

“Don’t give me Excalibur or Hrunting. Tell me this is as big as the Wyatt-Tversky paper. Tell me we can make an inferno big enough that Earth will smell the burning bacon.” He looks over to where Marco sleeps. “Give me an interview they’ll write history textbooks about, so I have something to read in thirty years when my liver’s still being pecked out. When’s it safe to wake… Marco, you said?”

[b]3V et al. [/b]

Sirius Drinks has a charming sign. The building is two stories tall and three times as wide, with its frontage done in all matte black. The sign is a large dog at a water bowl, done as constellations - silver reflective paint for the linework, flecked with shimmering chrome, and its points and corners lit with white lights. 

It’s got the air of a place that would have music pulsating through the walls, rattling your bones all the way out on the street. But no. From outside you hear nothing. 

Inside it’s easier to tell why. Three different dance floors, three different DJs, all working with active sound-curtains. Sound manipulation tech is what’s really come far in the last sixty years, benefited the most from room-temperature superconductors, electromagnetics and brilliant innovators. Mist-like curtains hang in sheets around the quadrants, barriers of microscopic charged particles that act as shock-absorbers, dampening the vibrations passing through them. Three simultaneous music acts, not interfering with each other.

This isn’t normal nightclub stuff, this is totally extra. But music’s always been a big part of the furry subculture, and Sirius Drinks wants to showcase as much of that as it can: According to NumbToNothing, the DJs rotate often, and are always from the community. While the acts usually aren’t paid, it’s wrong to say it’s because Sirius Drinks ‘pays in exposure’. It pays its crews and technicians fine. It’s understood that the performers are doing it for the pure love of the gig, for the love of giving back to an audience they’ll be a part of again after a few hours. It lets the bar hack the risk of constantly hosting the unknown and the deeply experimental. 

The drinks are overpriced, but the food tries to justify its price tag - unlike other pricey places, the vegan options are pushed here. The fox-in-the-henhouse burger is a patty of fried maitake mushrooms, herb aioli, provolone cheese on toasted brioche. But the menu makes it clear it uses synthetic proteins for all its egg-and-milk ingredients. At this price point, usually it’s the opposite, emphasizing ‘real’ or ‘organic’. 

The carnivore menu shines with dishes where the meat is used to full effect. House marinade rack-of-ribs, harissa lamb, sous-vide scotch filet with garlic and rosemary butter, steak tartare. Nightclub fare? Hardly. It’s first-date fancy-restaurant food. 

And here’s where it clicks. Three dancefloors with different sets, but the adjacent booths are quiet enough for conversation? A bar with cheap fruit juice but ludicrously overpriced cocktails? A dirt-cheap fries platter next to steak tartare? This isn’t a place that can’t decide what it wants to be; This is a place that wants to be available to every kind and every stage of a relationship. Everything from a casual night out with friends and looking for hookups, to an anniversary with a fiance. 

Check the crowd. What you can see of it - the place is deliberately dark, only spotlit, like floating in a void. Most here have traded their birthday suits for something a bit more Liberace. Maybe between a quarter and a fifth are ‘vanilla’, counting the here-with-friends, the chasers and the too-broke. The rest are post-human. Not all of them are wearing clothes. A fairly cut blue wolf is jamming out hard in only a mesh shirt, and nobody’s batting an eye. Some are batting eyelashes, though. 

Welcome to Sirius Drinks. [i]You are safe here[/i]. Be yourself.