Chapter 51: 54. Respite and Disturbance Part 4

“Where did you hear that?” Angelidis says, while narrowing her eyes, confused.

“I heard someone in the crowd talking about them coming here.” Ajax says, remaining slightly vague.

“Fuck you, no they aren’t.” Sigvor says with incredulity.

“It’s what others are saying, so I’m not sure.” Shaula says, her eyes darting around, trying to think about what their best course of action should be. But, she doesn’t know who these statue marchers are.

“So, who are they?” She asks, looking at Angelidis.

“They’re… a human supremacist hate group that normally has a march every month, always ending with them building a statue using earth magic and dancing around it. Their last protest was about six weeks ago… it should be too soon.”

Shaula is confused for a second, but remembers that, in Omicron, there are ten weeks in a month.

“They build statues?” Ajax asks.

“It’s normally of someone who upholded slavery in the past or killed a lot of beastkin or draconids… That wouldn’t be something people would pay attention to normally. They’re fucking fools. But…”

“...” Shaula waits for her to finish. Angelidis has a pained expression on her face. Dzan finishes her thought with some anger in his voice.

“The cops have a mandate to protect protests in the city, you know? As long as you have the permits. Beastkin marches and women’s marches sometimes get the permits, depending on where they march. Labor marches never fucking get em. But, the statue marchers get them every single time.”

Dzan scoffs and shakes his head. He repeatedly taps the spot on his cloak where his dagger holster is. He starts pacing back and forth, almost neurotically. Sigvor sits with her legs crossed and continues for Dzan.

“The statue marchers walk around and incite people to start shit with them. They insult demihumans with slurs, shove people around, spit at us and start destroying property. It’s normally small scale stuff, but a nuisance. Obviously they get a lot of people, demihumans, mad at them. We get provoked. I mean, wouldn’t you, if someone shoved you around and spit at your wife and kid? But, when any demihuman fights back, men, women, children, the cops start arresting them and use their weapons.”

Angelidis holds her head in her hands, and talks about her own experience with the marchers.

“At the last statue march, the cops killed three people. I was there and everyone just started running away. Sometimes, there are demihuman groups who actually fight back against both the cops and the statue marchers. But, that kind of thing just triggers a crackdown… The city institutes curfews and the cops start patrolling demihuman neighborhoods even harder, until they weed out anyone who would join groups like that. No matter what anyone does, the cops and the statue marchers always win in the end.”

“Why do they do the statue marches? What’s the point?” Ajax says somewhat naively. He continues.

“If they’re that obnoxious in public, who’d want to join them?”

“Ajax, be serious. Of course, demihumans wouldn’t join them, but humans would be spurred on by the racial conflict. Especially when the police are on their side and protecting them.” Shaula responds sternly. She’s seen situations like this on Earth as well.

“It’s not like you’ll hear about how shitty the marchers behave in any newspapers either. Those are all owned by rich humans as well.” Angelidis adds. She raises her head as she realizes something important.

“Fuck! There are so many people attending the festival today, so many parents with their kids… even some old people! Isn’t this place about to be crashed? Ajax, Shaula, who did you hear talking about marchers? How did you even hear… No, nevermind, just point them out to me, we gotta get confirmation. This festival needs to be evacuated before the cops get here and start looking for an excuse to cave in some skulls.”

“Honestly, I still don’t believe it. No fucking way they’re having one so soon.” Sigvor argues. Dzan seems to agree with her, but both of them look like they aren’t certain.

“Point them out.” Dzan tells Ajax and Shaula.

“Shaula, can you lead us to them?” Ajax asks. Ajax wasn’t paying attention to their faces, but Shaula was.

“Sure.”

The group walk with Shaula as she leads them to the road where the statue marchers are supposed to walk into the festival. Shaula casually scans the crowd looking for one of the three. She knows that even if two of them went to another location, one of them would keep an eye on this area no matter what.

After a couple minutes, Shaula notices who she wants to find. The woman, Prisca. She is currently wearing a white dress and a thick baggy jacket. Her long, red hair is parted in the middle and combed back. Her animal ears are twitching constantly.

Anyone watching her can see that she is on edge. Shaula points her out to Angelidis. Angelidis and she walk over. Ajax, Dzan and Sigvor stand slightly off to the side just within earshot.

“...Can I help you?” Prisca asks after noticing Angelidis and Shaula walking towards her. Angelidis has her hands in her pockets. Shaula has her arms crossed. They’re both wearing head wraps. Prisca can tell that Shaula is human and she assumes Angelidis is as well.

Shaula can hear her heartbeat start to rise. Angelidis notices her start to tense up. Prisca is thinking about running from the two of them.

“Hey, calm down. We’re not bad people. Look.” Angelidis says. She walks slightly closer to Prisca who takes a step back. Angelidis doesn’t break eye contact with her. Prisca notices Angelidis’ circular pupils shift to her slit-like pupils that appear during stressful situations.

“...Oh.” Prisca can see that Angelidis is a draconid. She knows one or two draconids who are part of her church. Their slit pupils are an obvious indicator. Angelidis smiles widely, letting Prisca see her sharp draconid teeth, another indicator.

“We wanted to ask you something.” Angelidis begins. Prisca looks over at Shaula, a human, with some trepidation.

“Don’t worry about her. She’s my friend, Prisca.” Angelidis smiles.

“How do you know my name?” Prisca asks with slight suspicion on her face.

“My friend Shaula here overheard your conversation with those two other guys. She seemed to have heard that a statue march is going to be crashing this festival. Is that true?”

“...Yes.” Angelidis, Dzan and Sigvor receive their immediate confirmation. Sigvor has a shocked look on his face while Dzan looks even more upset and fearful.

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“How do you know that?” Shaula asks.

“I have friends who learned that they started their march far from the festival just a while ago. They’re moving slowly because they’re bringing cops along with them. He told my friends and I and others in our congregation.”

Congregation? It seems to Shaula that Prisca and her friends are devout members of the Church of Osva. Shaula had always thought that the Church was fervently anti demihuman?

They had done the work to free demihumans from slavery. However, they had compensated the slave owners greatly, while providing no reparations to the enslaved. They didn’t even apologize for slavery or work to make the lives of demihumans manageable. For most demihumans, their discrimination didn’t change much.

Why would this beastkin woman be a worshiper of Osva?

Angelidis doesn’t care about that point. Her voice lowers.

“There are kids here. Families. Old people. Why haven’t you tried to evacuate everyone?”

Prisca lowers her face in a frown. Her knuckles become white. Shaula can tell that she feels slightly guilty.

“We won’t be believed, and we’re not certain yet. We only guessed that the festival is the termination of their march, we’re not certain yet. My friends and I are here while others are checking the situation at different possible end points for their march.”

Shaula can understand that. Prisca and her people might be able to guess the general direction of the march. But, it isn’t as if the marchers have to end their festival here. It is a good spot though. It already has a spot for everyone to gather around an effigy. The marchers would probably like to set up their statue in Maz square.

“We also didn’t want to interrupt the festival too early. If they don’t show up here, then we’d have disrupted the festival for no reason… They started their march an hour ago and we got to the festival just thirty minutes back. It’s definitely possible that they’re not gonna end their march here… I hope.”

Prisca lowers her eyes to the ground as she bites her lips. It is possible that things could end well today.

“Ugh. Whatever, we’re here now and I can’t just sit back and do nothing.” Angelidis mutters quietly to Shaula. She turns to Prisca.

“Prisca. How exactly can we help?”

“...” Prisca crosses her arms as she thinks.

“What can you two do?” Prisca asks.

“I’m a strong fighter, I’m draconid after all. Shaula might be about as strong as me, maybe stronger.” Prisca opens her eyes wide at Angelidis’ high evaluation of Shaula. A draconid calling a human as strong as them was not common at all.

“Guys, come on over.” Angelidis calls over Sigvor, Dzan and Ajax. Prisca notices the members of her group. She feels less hesitation, seeing that their group has beastkin among them. Shaula hears someone approaching quickly and turns back to see who it is. She recognizes him.

“Hey!” A man yells. Shaula and Angelidis see the man yanking Prisca back and standing in front of her. He seems to be defending her from… them? Shaula recognizes Cel, Prisca’s comrade.

“Who are you all? Why are you crowding around Prisca?” Cel asks, taking a defensive stance while standing in front of a confused Prisca. He is naturally wary of strangers. He knows the faces of all the people who are with him and Prisca for their church. These people are not familiar to him…

“Wait, Cel. Calm down.” Prisca holds his shoulder and looks at him with slight exasperation.

“These people are friends. They know about the statue march and–”

“Ok, good then, whatever. Prisca, it’s time to get moving.” Cel says hurriedly, knowing now that these people aren’t going to get in their way.

“The statue marchers are definitely coming here, they’ll be here in a few minutes. They’re surrounded by more cops than usual. Fuck. We gotta get everyone evacuated. Come with me to the square. Let’s announce it there.”

Prisca and Cel run quickly into the square with Sito joining them, as well as four other people Shaula doesn’t recognize. Ajax and Shaula, Angelidis, Sigvor and Dzan watch from a distance as the seven of them reach closer to the effigy.

There are a number of people already gathered there, other than the security guards. The guards notice their group walking quickly and brace themselves for a disruption. Just so long as they can stop people from prematurely burning the statue, their job is done.

“Everyone! There is a group of statue marchers headed over to this festival! Please, you need to get out of here! There are a lot of cops coming with them! If you have children with you, it’s going to be dangerous!” Cel yells loudly.

The people, most of them demihumans, start talking amongst themselves.

“What’s it going to take for them to be believed?” Ajax asks, perplexed at the crowd's slow reaction.

The seven messengers are efficient however. They quickly split up and start shouting for people to evacuate at various points within the square. The square is quite wide and holds multiple clumps of crowds. The people slowly start listening to them. Some of them start talking amongst themselves to leave while others start walking.

Angelidis thinks for a moment before deciding that it’s enough standing around.

“We should help them. They’re all gathered in the square as a group, probably because it’ll be the easiest way to get the news out to the most people. Let’s each go to the roads and shout the news ourselves too. Sigvor and Dzan, you take the road where the marchers are going to enter through. You’re gonna be trusted more easily by the other beastkin. We three will each take the other roads.”

Angelidis makes this quick plan and sprints away before the group can accept their tasks. Sigvor and Dzan sigh as they walk back down the road and start notifying the gathered crowds. Ajax and Shaula look at each other for a second before they both start running to their designated roads.

[You’ll be alright shouting it out, Shaula?]

[Fuck off, I may be quiet, but it’s not like I’m scared of people…]

[Alright, alright… Fuck, today started off so nicely, you know?]

[Let’s face it, Ajax. God just doesn’t like giving us good days…]

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