"FOX IN THE CITY" CHAPTER 1: Before We Meet
Shiro Ogami x Fem!Reader
Summary: Reader is a fox beastman who recently moved to Anima City, working as a spy for the Sylvesta family with a mission to gather info and let Anima City crumble. But that's not how it's going to end.
Content: [Platonic] Michiru x Reader, reader is 25+, she/her used on reader, no use of Y/N or other variant, [Hinted at romance] Shiro x reader, Shiro being wary of reader, reader annoying/teasing Shiro.
A/N: This was requested, but I really wanted to turn it into a series. This is set in episode one. Itami picked up reader after Muichiro, and this chapter is completely in the reader's perspective.
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“See you around,” Itami bids you a farewell as you step on to the docks, “Fox.”
You spare the mink a glance back as she remains on the boat, waiting for you to leave into the city. Even from your current place, you can see the livelihood of it, even at this late at night. Moon high in the sky above you.
“Silent? You’ll go unnoticed,” Itami speaks to you as your unmoving figure and silence prompted her to do so. Even if you weren’t looking at her, you would know she was grinning.
She truly resembled a mink. Cunning, resourcefulness, and stealthy… She does many odd jobs around the city. An easy guess and conclusion to come to. Of course one such as her would be stealthy. But her personality was often blurring the lines of the symbol that many people gave to animals such as the mink and weasel.
Weasel. You teased her with that word on the boat ride over to Anima City from one of the many coasts of Japan. Of course you soon figured she hates the comparison and mischaracterization of what she is. Though, who wouldn’t? You only bothered to ask yourself that after her response to your teasing.
You grin at her words, “I only speak when needed. To whom and when I deem it to be important.”
“Oh? Sassy,” Itami sneers towards you with her words.
You hum, cocking your head to the side before pivoting your face to the opposite direction. The most you could see were alleys and rows of metal containers, lights from stores and high reaching buildings peaking over the mountains they, the containers, created. You head away, officially making your way to the heart of Anima City.
Step, step, step. All you can hear as you walk around, your own steps vibrating through your body from the heel of your shoes. The containers make no noise, nor the chains and locks that hold their doors closed and together. Wind or not, you’re by yourself, and yourself is all you can hear.
It’s safe, in a straightforward statement. The silence is easy on your ears. Manageable. Not bold, even if the bustling, chattering, and scraping of shoes against asphalt graze and make a bass in your eardrums causes a twitch in your ear, it’s still peacefully quiet in a sense. A more than possible opinion.
A false sense or a true one. The sensation of peace and security still remains. To the people, and an uncredited one to you. You know the lies places like this creates and holds, and the schemes it hides. Political or not. Direct or not. A paradise is a terrible place. You terribly and awfully believe that paradise is always going to be a mask, and nothing more.
You hum as you walk. Step by step. The noise and rhythm sneaking up in your throat. One you know well. One you can never remember where you heard it. Its origins are lost in you. You never know it's making its way as a silent song until you're already singing it. Silent and forgotten, but so-so beautiful. No words were known for this rhythm you knew better than yourself. You deemed that to be so, anyway.
The varying lights of many colors, warm and cool, and noise greets you steadily. There is no celebration, and no festival. It’s just a city night. A night in any city can not contrast deeply to what is here and lays itself out before you.
As such, your bag remains over your shoulder. Everything had its place in the satchel, and you knew everything was in its place. The slightest shift the bag had in position. The slightest shift in weight - you would know. You would know if someone, anyone, human, though doubtful, or fellow beastman, tried to rid you of your own belongings.
Your own noise gets muffled out by others. Your own scent is almost hard to differentiate between all the others. All the scents from food, fabrics, dyes, artificial and natural- anything, body odor and perfumes clinging to bodies of skin or fur. It’s not overwhelming. To be honest, your nose was almost resistant to a reaction due to some things. You knew how to individually process a smell and a noise from others no matter how invisible it may seem. Untrackable. That’s the word.
Your eyes were deeply lidded, almost feigning fatigue to onlookers. You looked almost vulnerable. Like a small rodent dragging itself away from somewhere to its hideaway instead of a vulpes. An agile, ready to strike at any moment, fox, is what you were not viewed as by the few who just so happen to look and glance your way. Or was it… a cloudy look? A storm dancing away in the pupils and irises in your eyes. That storm just didn’t want to be seen. Not yet.
Contradicting that deep, dark dance in your eyes, you flow with the light wind on your way to Anima City’s Beastman Co-op. A flower’s petal making its journey to the ground in the mist of the summer, its bud ready to bring fruit to a branch. It is only a few minutes and a few seconds before you stand at the top step. The concrete stairs, only made up of four steps before the door.
You knock. Just a simple action. Simple again, as one of the owners, Gem Horner, answers the door. He swung the door so swiftly that it seemed it was going to break off its hinges that latch onto the wooden doorframe.
“Oh, hello!” Gem greets you, sweating with the awkward rush he gave to the door, the knob still in hand.
You greet him, too. With a light smile, “Hello,” you gently reach out your hand, palm up, waiting for a handshake from the man in front of you.
“Right, right,” Gem reciprocates your smile, shaking your hand as initiated by you. “And you would be..? The new guest?” He lets go of your hand, preparing to step out from under the framing of the door.
“Yes, I am.” As you answer, Gem steps away, calling for his wife as he holds the door open for you to get in. You side step him, allowing your bag to come in with you without it catching or knocking into anything. “Thank you,” you give your small gratitude to Gem for his manner of holding the door open for you to pass through.
“Of course,” Gem clucks out.
“Ah, hi! Please, sit on the couch and make yourself comfortable! We’ll have your room sorted shortly,” Melissa, Gem’s wife, takes small steps to you, hand pointing back to the couch in the lobby area.
“Right, of course,” you followed where Melissa had pointed, and walked the short distance to the couch. You turned, only a little, and let your bag slide away and off of you. You caught it as the top of the strap hit your palm, and dropped it by your feet. Placing your hand down on the cushion first as you tilted slightly forward to sit down on the soft, just barely worn couch.
Gem and Melissa followed you with their eyes as they stood close together by the now closed door behind them. Melissa quickly blinked, zoning back into the world around her and Gem. She spinned around to the small shelf that was used for paper storage, and doubled as a shrine to the silver wolf, grabbing the few papers that were stapled together for you to sign and fill out. “Do you have an ID registered in Anima City?” Melissa asks as she walks over to you.
As she does so, Gem shuffles through the keys, trying to find the one that led to the unoccupied room they set aside for you upon your news of coming here shortly.
“I do not. Apologies,” you bow your head in an apology to Melissa as she walks to the couch in front of you on the other side of the coffee table before sliding the papers across it to you.
“Oh, my! No need to apologize! Just head down to the registration office in the morning,” Melissa reasons with you before reassuring you, “You can still fill these out and your room will still be given to you tonight.” Melissa smiles at you, before fumbling, feeling around her pockets to find you a pen. “Here you go,” she laughs lightly at herself, you soon joining in her joys.
“Found it—!” Gem celebrates as he dangles the room key in front of his face before turning back to you and Melissa, “–Ah, sorry?” Gem apologizes before shuffling his feet against the wood flooring, going towards the stairs, jogging up and heading to your about- to- be room.
“It’s– it’s okay,” you let out to Gem before he fully makes it up the stairs in a small fit of giggles, the back of one of your hands covers your mouth, as you reach for the pen Melissa lets roll on the table, sliding the papers towards yourself, as well.
Melissa still giggles as you. You both quiet down after only a few moments, smiles sticking to both of your faces.
All that can really be heard are the small sighs of breathlessness you two take, the small click of the clock hands moving, and pen against paper as you sign, check, and fill things out in all the right places. You read everything closely so as to not miss even one needed signature, and even the smallest detail in the already printed text.
It was already getting late, almost reaching 9:30pm and from the long day behind you, it was only natural for the small, tired sting to grab at your eyes as you finished filling out the last page. Gem, soon coming back down, ready to give you your copy of the room key.
As he reaches out his hand, key resting in his palm, you take it into your own hands, “Thank you.” You smile at him one last time for the night, handing the papers back to Melissa.
“Your room is just on the third floor, at the end of the hallway. It’s the best we could do for now,” Gem explains to you as you begin to stand up, looking at him as he verbally guides you. You grab the strap of your bag, taking it off the ground as you listen to him.
“I understand,” you walk around Gem, stopping to turn and stand near the coffee table, “Goodnight,” you give a farewell to Gem and Melissa. They echo out your goodbye, watching you leave before looking back to each other, going back to their own business and matters.
You walk towards the stairs, taking one step after the other to the top - the beginning of the second floor. Turning around the newel post, going up another flight of stairs. Now to the beginning of the third flood.
Turning, and twisting the key into the door, and with the light clunk of the lock, you wonder in the mostly vacant room. It’s a little more than decent size.
A queen bed right by a big window; it wasn’t a ceiling- to- floor- window big. But more on the wider than taller side. A light brown wood for the cold, stained, wooden floor, and a soft shade of orange painted on the walls. A couch almost in the middle of the room right along with a coffee table. A T.V. right across from it and a fake fireplace right under it. A desk and a dresser line the opposite wall, a darker wood used compared to the floors. The same goes for the two night stands on either side of the bed, as well as the bed frame. The bed did not have the classic white - everything: comforter, sheets, pillows that were more than stiff, and pillow cases. They had color, and it looked nice.
The Beastman Co-op is only supposed to be a temporary home for new Anima citizens. Even with the light sting begging your eyes to close, you do not sleep. Not yet, at least. You let yourself fall onto the springy bed, bouncing a little from the small impact. Your bag, still on your person, laying with you on the mattress.
All you do is lay there in wonder, mindlessly fiddling with your bag in any area that catches your fingernails. You sigh, exhaustion slowly clawing its way from the very tips of your toes to the very top of your head, and you let it. It is carving its way to your eyes and playing images in your head as your eyelids begin to flutter. You began to drift off.
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You awake with a BANG coming from beyond the ceiling to your room. Then a rumble of something being pushed to the other side of it. You have a noisy upstairs neighbor, that is for one thing. One that shocked you awake with a bang of something falling. Something big. And muffled yelling.. Muffled in the sense of, you can’t make out what they are saying to one another. Or what one is saying to the other, but that does not make it any less loud.
Sighing, you sit up rather too quickly from laying down, staring at the ceiling. Grabbing your forehead, you moan in annoyance. You stand up just before your dizzy spell dissipates from your head. Stumbling only slightly, you look back to the bed— your bed, side eyeing your bag. It wouldn’t hurt to look half way decent before giving your upstairs neighbor an unrequested QnA. So you reach for your bag, digging through to find what you need; toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, the works; before going to the room above yours.
What a way to start your morning.
You ran into– or rather saw the Mayor of Anima city just as she was about to knock on the door of the room directly above yours. “Uh, good morning,” you say to her, sleep still barely etching itself in your voice. You wave, small and slow. The movement barely having any movement at all.
“Good morning to you,” Mayor Rose speaks to you, a smile shows on her face. A gentle one, but her eyes barely squint because of it.
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