joining { THE WORLD ENDS WITH YOU }

[fancypost borderwidth=0px; width:430px; font-size:7pt; line-height:120%;]Everything was so desolate. The towns and cities no longer roamed with twolegs and now never roamed with anyone at all, so deserted they'd been. Mice hardly counted. Monsters lay to the side of the roads, empty and old and increasingly weather-bitten. Buildings stood stoically but were entirely uninhabited; maybe some lights were even still on, for all the lack of attention they received. Still as a corpse, and the streetlights had never been turned off; paws made scarcely any sound crossing the streaks of painted white in rectangles over the concrete, wireless headphones a distinct indigo pinning triangular ears and throbbing a quiet indiscernible beat all the way as the cat trawled up to the library just about as giant as a state building.

At least, they were quiet, until static juddered over them and the headphones screamed out a hideous warble of cacophonous, maniacal laughter to the world as clearly as though it was a person itself, as though it wasn't restrained to the headphones alone.

"Be quiet! Get out of my way! SHUT UP!" it chattered to air, hysterical and shrieking.

The howls cut off a second later, fizzing back into indistinguishable but just as distinctly audible white noise the cat scarcely reacted to, albeit the volume it had to have been at, before it tapered back to its previous quiet pulse. Whitenoise stopped at the doors of the library, expression placid and impersonally dispassionate - he rose a blue gaze up to the entrance, thin tail sweeping once before he hunched his shoulders in a habitual movement like he was trying to push his headphones closer. 'Hello?' the tom called concisely, ambivalently quietly and features set in invariable calm. Maybe it was just indifference.

It hardly mattered, though.
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[fancypost borderwidth=0px; width:430px; font-size:7pt; line-height:120%;]The tomcat's direction was diverted off to the side instead, then, at the appearance and inquiry of a silvery fox from where they'd been lingering; Whitenoise only inclined his head, placid, accepting and not particularly challenging at all. It would've pulled off "respectful" if only his expression had been anything more than muted interest. 'I had a hunch,' he answered - almost impolite with his clear lack of any particular reverence, even to a stranger that had in every sense more sway than he did in this unfamiliar place, but remaining purely neutral; furthermore his head keeled to the side while another fox approached, head high and obligatorily inquisitive. 'It's Whitenoise.'

The jagged clicking thrum of his music jerked, clicked with feedback and blared unabashedly, unbridled wails of, "Fake! You're disgusting! Why are you even TRYING?"

To the first fox - who'd offered a question easier to answer, though acknowledging the second as well, 'A place.... to stay. It's getting harder to find somewhere safe.' "You're a coward." Blue eyes scrolled over the two, Whitenoise blinking nonchalantly with no heed to the curious stutter of his headphones. He dipped his head with the request in the caricature of humbleness, drawing his tail closer to wind about a hind leg. 'If you accept anyone.'

Foxes could just as much leave any regular cat alone as they'd leave behind their remains, clawed beyond imagination and rendered just about unrecognisable.

These two were both foxes. Small sample size and maybe there was low validity, but if there was anyone here that was not a fox then Whitenoise hadn't the faintest.

His headphones cackled.
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[fancypost borderwidth=0px; width:430px; font-size:7pt; line-height:120%;]Never mind, hypothesis disproved as the sandy loam of another figure parted the drab scenery (lit with only dead fast cars and flickering street lights, of course) - his head canted higher at a liger's appearance in a casual hello, headphones plainly giggling and shrieking all the while. 'Hey. That's good, then. I won't get in the way,' he said, though his voice was almost entirely stifled by the glitchy cacophony of, "LIAR - liar - you think you're so smart?"

Whitenoise's head cocked to the side, a paw lifting to prod at one of the circular earpieces, before he let it fall and asked accordingly, 'No questions, but ...' The feline deigned to pause, glancing away for the briefest moment. 'I'd like a tour.' 'That's all.' 'It's nice to meet you.' 'It's good to be here.'

'And,' he corrected himself unobtrusively, 'it's no big deal. I can take it from here.'

"You're full of shit," the garbled voice murmured, and scattered into thunderous cackles while Whitenoise slipped past the three ex-strangers.
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