God.

She'd heard the place was an armpit, but nothing had prepared her for this.

Rae swept her dark hair away from the back of her neck, and cast her eye over the maze of buildings. It was amazing that anyone still lived here, really. It was the sort of place that she imagined a natural disaster could actually have improved. Except..well, there'd been one, and it hadn't washed it away, ready for a fresh start. Buildings and people had clung here stubbornly. Only the toughest had survived, and from the looks of it, they'd held on with their teeth.

It was a world away from the bright, clean streets and pastel colours of home. Another world away from the glass-fronted buildings of her college. And not far enough away from the clanging doors and catcalls of prison.

It wasn't like she was a bad person. She didn't exactly go around running over nine-year-old girls on purpose. Have a few drinks one time, get in a car drunk one time, hit a nine-year-old girl one time, and suddenly you're a bad girl. Nevermind the fact she'd been drinking because she'd just caught her boyfriend of four years in bed with her best-friend-forever, never mind that she'd got into a fight with her parents when they decided they wanted to put her grandmother into a carehome, never mind that she'd been volunteering at an animal rescue centre until the 7pm that night, helping to care for four kittens who had been tied into a carrier bag, thrown in a dumpster and left to die.

Apparently sometimes, you're judged by your one-offs. She supposed that guy who killed Kennedy could argue that it wasn't very much like him to kill presidents at all, in fact, he'd only killed the one. People tended to get funny about stuff like that.

So here she was, in this armpit of a city, looking to start again. To be a good person in a bad place, instead of a bad person in a good place. Maybe she could help to rebuild the place. Voluntary schemes. That sort of thing.

Already, she'd landed a job. Nothing exactly earth-shattering, but working at an arcade, kicking machines when they broke down, shouting at people trying to steal things out of the vending machines, keeping the place tidy, cashing up. That sort of thing. She'd started yesterday, but her shift had been pretty dead. ..as in. Completely dead. Not one punter.

She'd roamed past the burger bar - seen a few people hanging out. Hadn't quite worked up the courage to talk to them. There was something sort of weird about barging up to people and giving them your life story. So she'd explored a bit, then started her shift. Within an hour the incessant chirping of the games machines made her want to take an axe to them. But there was a skate ramp outside. She was hopeful of hot skater boys showing up at some point so she could watch them on the half-pipe.

Maybe.

Hopefully.

It was still better than home, with the disappointed stares and the awkward silences. It was still better than college, being whispered about.

And anything was better than jail.

--

((I just wanted to say hi. And zomg, forums. I love that you have forums. I'm reasonably new to SL, but not to RP - I've been RPing in MMOs for about six years now, which is either depressing, or awesome, I'm not sure which. I haven't had much luck finding dark/grown-up and good RP in SL, so I was thrilled to find this group.

I know it can be hard to ingratiate yourself into a new RP group, so I wanted to say hello, and that if anyone sees me wandering around aimlessly, please come and say Hi. I've never quite worked out that whole thing where you go marching up to people and just start talking. I know I sure as hell don't do that in real life, but the alternative I guess is to stand around and watch everyone else RP around you. If any other newbies here wanna set up some RP or writing, that'd be superawesome.

Anyway. Hope to meet some of you soon. Thanks for accepting my application 🙂 ))