A/N: I use this map: welcome-to-night-vale-maps/#0 for reference when I'm talking about the different places in Night Vale.
Chapter One
Leon found himself walking through a housing development. All of the houses looked the same. They were arranged in little rows, with white vinyl siding and expertly trimmed hedges. It all seemed normal—eerily normal. He slipped his hand under his light jacket and felt the handgun that rest in its holster, right under his left armpit. It gave him a sense of security, even though there really seemed like there was nothing strange going on.
He passed a house in particular, and thought he saw something out of the corner of his eye. He turned to it. The house was sided with white vinyl, just like all of the other houses, and the house had perfectly manicured hedges, just like all of the other houses, but there was something about this house that was distinctly different. Leon took a step toward it.
"You don't want to mess with that house," came a voice from behind him. He turned, and there was a man in a tan jacket standing at the curb. He held in one hand a plain briefcase.
"Why not?" asked Leon. He looked the man over, but he didn't seem to be dangerous in any way. He didn't seem to show any signs of malicious intent.
"Because," said the man in the tan jacket, "it's not really there."
"What?" asked Leon. He turned back to the house, and he could see it, with all of its normalcy, but he could tell that there was something uncomfortable about it. He turned back to the man, and he was gone. Leon looked up and down the street, and he did not see the man. He turned back to the house, and a sudden feeling came over him, as if something deep down inside of him didn't want to go near that house. He felt an emptiness, like nothing he had previously experienced.
"Maybe not…" he muttered to himself as he walked back to the street and followed it. It went down to an intersection, and he took a left, following the street down to a large, low brick building. A sign in front of it boasted it as being the "Night Vale Elementary School." Leon zipped up his jacket, despite the heat. He didn't need to be seen with a firearm around school premises.
He tried his best to look nonchalant as he walked along the sidewalk in front of the school. He could hear some tiny voices talking and screaming, and he soon came along the chain link fence that surrounded the playground next to the school, where the kids were outside, playing during recess. He walked with his head down, quickly, but not so quickly that he would attract attention.
A ball was kicked over the fence, and it landed in the road next to Leon, a couple of yards away. He looked at the kids in the playground, and he looked at the ball in the street. He jogged over to it, picked it up, and, walking back over to the sidewalk, tossed it over to some of the kids that were congregating, waiting for it.
"Thanks, mister!" said one of the kids, waving to Leon. Leon gave a small wave back, but his eyes caught on the holster strapped around the small boy's chest. It was not unlike the holster he himself was wearing, under his jacket. Upon closer inspection, Leon could see that most of the kids on the playground had some sort of firearm with them. Some had handguns, many had some sort of holster, and some even carried submachine guns. This was not the sort of firepower that Leon was used to seeing out on the streets at all, much less carried by small children.
Leon walked away from the school as quickly as possible, and found himself underneath a split-lane highway. He found his way underneath the bridge, where the highway went over the road, and retreated underneath it to get out of the sun a little bit. He pulled out his comm device.
"Hunnigan, are you there? It's Leon, and I think you're going to want to get a load of this." He looked at the device, and punched in a few commands, but his at-home partner didn't seem to be showing up on the small screen. "Hunnigan," he said. "Hunnigan, can you hear me?"
He punched in a few more commands and tried again. "Hunnigan. Are you there?" He pressed another button, and he glanced at the top of the screen. There seemed to be no reception for his device. The bridge was blocking it, of course, how could he not have thought of that?
Leon crept out from under the bridge and chastised himself for panicking over the small issue of the communication disconnect. He flipped on his comm device again, once he was out in the hot desert sun.
"Hunnigan, are you there? Hunnigan, come in." He did not see her face, but he received some static, and then a man's voice began to speak through the device.
"… and the Sheriff's Secret Police declined to comment on what sort of person this intruder was, but they insisted that he was armed and maybe dangerous. Probably. They don't know. What, is it their job, all of a sudden, to keep tabs on who's dangerous and who's not? Do that yourself, you lazy bum. This stranger, wanted now for violating the Helicopter Color Coding regulations, recently passed by the city council and Mayor Pamela Winchell, and for causing an aerial explosion on a Tuesday. I for one welcome this stranger, and am interested to see how he plans to invigorate our humble town's economy. And I thank him for choosing our sunny utopia over that festering, rotting sore that is our neighbor, Desert Bluffs."
Leon pressed some buttons, and tried to communicate with Hunnigan via a different frequency. No matter what he tried, he was unable to receive anything but this one man's voice, coming through his comm device. He wasn't able to make any sort of calls outward, though the cell network or through the radio waves.
"Though I can't be sure what sort of intentions our newcomer might have for our town, I can say, with all honesty, that we could all use a look at the weather…"
The man's voice gave way to a song, mainly two guitars playing, one taking the rhythm, the other taking the main part, composing a little melody. "Weird…" said Leon, adjusting his comm device some more, but unable to get anything other than the song to come through it.
He stood up and climbed up the incline to the side of the split-lane highway, and gazed out over the town. He could see the downtown to the east, with different fast food restaurants and chain stores' lights casting a neon glow, even during the hot daytime. To the west was the elementary school and another building, which Leon could only guess could be the high school, with a sports field out back of it. To the south was the housing development that he had passed through earlier, and another neighborhood. To his north, he could see a building with a tall radio tower rising from it. The tower was topped with a glowing purple light.
Leon looked back at his comm device. If he was able to rig it up through the communication grid at that radio tower, he might be able to get a signal out to Hunnigan to report on what he was finding in this strange town. He slipped the comm device into his pocket and descended the slope again, back to the road. He kept a mental map of what he had seen from the hill in his head, and started north, to the radio station.