Summary:A trickster on the run comes across Raven in an art gallery and asks for her help Log Info:Storyteller: None |
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It's the first showing of an up and coming photographer named Zima Lime. Terrible name, but the art is good, neon-soaked cityscapes and vaporwave shots of rain-pelted asphalt. They've gotten a good buzz in the local artzines and social media, but they're still starting out, so it's mostly small-timers here, nobody from the Times or the Bugle, just art-nerds coming to art-nerd.
Chester comes in through the front door in a canary-yellow wifebeater covered with Korean text in black, a baggy set of pants with deep pockets and some sneakers that light up. His hair is currently purple and cut into a bit of a mowawk, the shaved sides of his scalp gleaming above multi-pierced ears, the sharp-eyed young man quickly cutting into the crowd, working his way towards the back door.
Maybe he's running from someone. Or something.
Rachel is one of the first people to turn up at the showing, not really caring about appearances nor worried about what others might think of her for showing unabashed interest in things that engage her in any way. She has to work very hard to be numb practically all the time, to stuff her emotions way down beneath a heavy protective layer of zen-like calm and flat affect that it can be suffocating, if she doesn't find ways to…unwind and release that pent-up energy. One of those things, recently, has been art. Being creative. Wallowing in things that make her feels soar like mad, psychedelic rainbows contained within the blackscape she coats herself in. On the outside, she's placid. On the inside, she's a spinning tornado of emotion — but, focused, constructive, pleasant.
So, when she discovered this new artist, Zima Lime, she cared nothing for the kitschy name. All she spent time on was enjoying the artwork they created. Plus, she likes limes. They smell good, are a source of vitamin C, and they have an unapologetically tart flavor that can add just the right note to some dishes. Thinking of that, Rachel surreptitiously looks down at the limonlime smoothie she got at a corner shop on the way. No, she shakes her head briefly, causing her pitch black hair to shimmer in the mood lighting of the gallery, she wasn't that prone to suggestion, was she? No. Not at all.
It is at that moment, while Rachel is questioning the suggestibility of her own rigidly-controlled mind, that Chester brushes past with decisive movements. There's a general air of apprehension that wafts through with his presence and that piques Rachel's interests briefly. Could this interesting looking person be Zima Lime? She turns her gaze from the piece she'd been observing with relish — a dreamy vaporwave setting with soft pastel colors she, herself, would never wear, featuring a faceless person in an oversized hoodie with rain pouring in the background, soft bokeh used prominently — to look at Chester's retreating form, watching to see where he goes, what he does.
Chester Ha looks back over his shoulder and makes momentary eye contact with the shy-scary-goth-hot-pale-intense-mood chick he brushed against for a moment and finds himself stopping. Damn. He flicks his eyes back towards the door and chews his bottom lip for a moment. Maybe a different tactic might be useful. He tucks into the bathroom, quickly slipping past the door. Thirty seconds later, the door opens and out comes a dreadlocked man in a leather jacket, with big old biker boots and a chain wallet, eyes hidden behind sunglasses. He sidles up next to Raven, giving her a nod.
Then he whispers to her, low and urgent.
"Yo, check it, if you see, like a big ass dude with horns for teeth pokin' around, probably got like some serious hardware strappin', maybe just point him towards the back door, tell him you saw that cute little Asian eyecandy slippin' out through the exit, nothin' to see here, keep on truckin', dog. You don't have to, just if he asks and gets nosy. Buy you another smoothy if he don't come chop my head off?"
Rachel's hopes are quenched whenever Chester disappears into the men's room. His unease must've simply been biological. Nothing like needing a wee when you can't find a place that'll let you use the bathroom, even in cases of emergency. Turning her attention back to the framed, mood-lit pieces, she isn't even given enough time to settle into the next one — entitled RE:vive, featuring a gynoid in a fetal position with neon tubes attaching to her in various positions — before someone is bumping up against her with a series of quick, low, and urgent requests.
She doesn't react. Not right away. Not immediately. Most people would back up and stare at the person, perhaps panicked about a stranger getting so close to them, perhaps affronted that their personal space had been invaded. Rachel, though, keeps her eyes focused on the art piece called RE:vive, and murmurs in response, "What makes you think they'll ask me?" She's not asking who he is, because his emotional, psychic signature tastes and feels and smells and, well, /is/ the 'cute little Asian eyecandy' from before. However he looks, now, he's the same person. His distress wasn't from a full bladder, and is, instead, sourced back to a gun-toting horn-toothed ruffian pursuer. "Are you Zima Lime? Did the man loan you some money that you can't pay back?" she asks, her voice calm, placid.
Chester Ha keeps looking back over his shoulder, quick flickers of attention, then goes back to looking at the picture with Raven. "I noticed you. He probably will, too. Ain't no easy reason, just you got that look, all intense and special. Maybe you just a regular girl got a lot of spark, maybe you're a freaky deaky like me. Either way, I figure if I see you, he'll see you and if he sees you, he might talk to you. Hopefully just talk."
He blinks for a moment, "Zima Lime. Ain't that a pussy drink? Also: what the fuck is this a picture of? It's kinda cool, but it also makes me get the burps in a funky way. Oh shit, he's here," he says.
The man who slides in the door is hard to miss, nearly seven feet tall and broad at the shoulders. Can everybody see the tusks jutting out of the side of his jaw, dislocating his lips, making of him a monster? Maybe. It's the Village, they probably think he's just doing a performance. Although the sword on his back is real enough, one of those giant flat superjumbo anime swords. Hardware for sure, but not a gun. He's wearing a floral print Hawaiian shirt and a pair of jorts with flip-flops. This is a weird combination. He peers around the room with piggy eyes, looking.
"If you keep looking over your shoulder all twitchy like that," Rachel murmurs, "I can assure you he'll pick you out, even looking the way you do. So, just look at this and talk about how it makes you feel to look at it." She pauses as Chester already shares his feelings without really thinking about it. Huh. "I'd be explaining what I take from the piece and that doesn't reflect the views of the artist, but… To me, it's a girl who has lost all of her energy, all of her inner power, and the tubes with neon in them is how she recharges. I think she's like an idol. She gives of herself until there's nothing left, just her framework, empty and cold. Then, she's pumped full of happiness and joy, so she can spend it on others. An endless cycle," she says in that same emotionless voice.
Turning her head casually to look at the tusked man with a huge anime sword strapped to his back. He certainly does look out of place in the current outfit he's wearing, not to mention the giant tusks. Her brows crinkle in thought. "He kind of looks familiar. Like I might have seen a rerun of an old cartoon somewhere, where a character looks like him. What does he want from you?" she says in a musing sort of tone. She doesn't appear to be intimidated by this large, menacing individual. "The more you know, after all."
He listens to her explanation and just stands silently for a moment as he takes it in, "Damn. That's some deep shit. I was going to guess it was, like, a robot womb or something. I bet you killed it in art class," he says.
He does keep his eyes forward, clasping his hands, although he tries to keep it cool. He doesn't have cool empath senses to warn him of where the dude is. "Uhhhhhhhhhh, nothing, as far as I know. That doesn't mean I didn't just that, uh, I dunno. I do occasionally get on the bad sides of people, sometimes the kind of people who might just maye hire really big guys with really big swords to try and chop me up into tiny tiny pieces. My feeling is that they usually, if not always, deserve whatever I do to them and, if they don't, I have probably been misinformed. Or maybe I was just too rough on 'em. I dunno. I don't know this mutt personally, but he definitely put a few dents in the artisinal jam shop where he found me." He looks over at her, "What? I can like a freshly pulped blackberry with my morning toast."
Rachel's face doesn't look any different as Chester compliments her, but she's pleased, nevertheless. "Lonestar's?" she asks, completely bypassing what, to most people, would be the most important pieces of information. "Everyone knows that Lonestar's raspberry is the best jam," she says with a completely neutral voice and expression. But, there's a twinkling in her eye that might indicate, to those who know her well enough to notice, that she's just told a joke. She doesn't wait for Chester to get the joke, especially because there IS an artisinal jam place called Lonestar's and they do serve raspberry jam. And, she's not the first person to make the joke, but it's one that makes her insides laugh, so she tells it whenever she finds the opportunity. Which isn't often. "Don't worry, Prince Vespa. I'll help you. But, don't expect me to carry your luggage," she continues in the same vein of dryly-delivered humor. "For now, just keep quiet and pretend to be very interested in this art. If the tuskman cometh, I'll speak with him."
The illusion may keep a straight face, which allows Chester not to, the sound of his stifled chuckling audible even though the face he's wearing doesn't seem to move. Tricky tricky.
"I see your Schwartz is as big as mine," he says.
Then the tuskman does indeed cometh and Chester straightens up just a bit, squaring his shoulders as Raven will find the mug-faced giant leaning over and peering at the picture in front of them. "Not bad," he says. "Girl in black, you seen a boy around? Tattoos, piercings, muscles. Pretty like a girl. Might've grabbed your ass. He and I got a little bidness to do," he says. He sniffs at her hair in a rather rude fashion, snorting a bit. "You smell familiar."
"You couldn't possibly know that. I keep my Schwartz hidden from prying eyes," Rachel replies briefly, her words dying just as soon as the tusked man steps up next to her. It does make her smile a little inwardly that the brute tries to soften himself for her sake, pretending to like the art. It's quite palatable, as far as mass marketing goes, so it's not surprising to hear that the man doesn't find it boring or worse.
Simultaneously, with the snuffling, Rachel leans away from the swordsman and rights herself as he draws back, just enough to keep the same amount of space between them as possible. She's so calm about it that it's almost comical to anyone who might witness the exchange. "I'm sorry to say it, sir, but no one's grabbed my ass in quite some time, for fear of pulling back a stump. I did, yes, see an attractive Asian person who went through the gallery. I'm unsure of their gender, so I'll leave that box unticked, though your assertion that he's 'pretty like a girl' might lend weight to the person I saw being the one you seek. I thought they might be Zima Lime, the artist of this showing. But, they went out the back door over there," and, here, she points at a door in the distance, past the bathrooms, and definitely away from where Chester stands. "They were looking behind them a lot, very suspiciously. It seemed so to me, anyway. But, that was about eight minutes ago. I know because I time how long a piece keeps my attention," she continues, her voice pleasant and neutral. And, it seems she's not planning on stopping, anytime soon.
"As to my familiar smell? I think it's my perfume. My grandmother always told me to put a dab of vanilla extract on my pulse points and I'd always smell like cookies to people. I believed her, as a child, and it seemed to work. It became a habit. Very familiar scent, vanilla. Perhaps it's that. This piece reminds me of my grandmother," she gestures to the framed work in front of them. A neon sign, straight out of Tim Burton's Batman, once read 'Hello There,' and has two letters broken, so it reads 'Hell here,' with harsh, panicky neon flared light. "Her favorite song was The Sound of Silence, by Simon and Garfunkel. Do you know it?" she asks. Without waiting long for a response, she continues, "My grandmother was plagued by fear of the future and what sort of horrors it would bring with it. My grandfather suggested she should write her nightmares down, just to get them out of her head. She ended up writing the lyrics to that song, if you can believe it. Nice royalties from that song, if I'm honest. I'd never be able to afford living in the city, otherwise. I'm thinking of buying this piece. What do you think?"
The big monstrosity's eyes slowly glaze over as Raven continues to address him, a mixture of befuddlement and disappointment on his face. He ruffles his hair and generally seems quite out of his depth as the verbose gothling rapidly reduces him to a stuttering and slightly dazzled state. All without superpowers, no less.
"I…no…well…I…" he mutters, "Thank you for your help," he says.
He starts to turn and walk away but, in so doing, bangs his meaty shoulder into her seeming friend only to knock him sprawling on the floor, where the illusion of his identity flickers for a few moments before sliding back into place. Broke his concentration there.
"There you are!" the trollish man roars, reaching back for his blade, "Time for some Korean BBQ!!!!"
The slight pursing of Rachel's mouth is all that she allows her disappointment to be displayed visibly. It's unfortunate that the man couldn't be bored away by her overly talkative patter. If only Chester had taken the opportunity to just sort of…meander off…while she distracted him. But, no. Porkins bumps into him and things sort of spiral downward from there. She steps back moving out of the general danger zone, as most normal people would do. Meanwhile, she uses her TK to ensure that the mig has /real/ trouble pulling his blade from its scabbard on his back. It's stuck like Chuck, my friend. Meanwhile, she uses her empathic powers to cut the rage from the guy, allowing him to be calm and numb when he finds he can't pull his sword out for the purposes of serving up some 'Korean barbecue.'
Chester Ha may have lost a few cool points by getting knocked down, but look, that guy is friggin' enormous. Plus, he got kind of sucked in by Rachel's diatribe, too, watching her with a bit of amazement and mild mesmerism that resulted in him maybe not paying enough attention to where trollface was shifting his big and wide shoulder.
Oh well.
Chester kips back up to his feet and assumes a martial arts stance as he shakes off his illusory appearance and manifests as himself, his lean muscled arms inked as he cocks his elbows, "Look, I don't know who you are even, tall can, but maybe we could try and talk about this like nice grown freaks and not, just, hit each other because…are you having trouble with your sword? Cause it looks like you're having trouble with your sword."
The big man grunts, tugging fruitlessly for the moment at the hilt of his sword even as his rage is getting quashed, "I…look…it's not personal, I just…can you…I'm sorry, alright, just…I gotta swat you, I'll try not to…Aw, crud."
Rachel maintains her focus on the big man who begins to flag under her influence. She keeps her eyes and ears open, but the majority of her attention is on the man who can't seem to get his sword free, and is rapidly losing sight of why he cared so much about finding Chester in the first place. Does anything matter? It doesn't seem like it. There's not much point to anything, anymore. Just lying on the ground feels like a burden, the weight of gravity seeming to increase to the point of feeling trapped in one's own body. "Poor guy. He seems depressed," she says without much inflection to her words. Just an observation.
It's definitely working, the troll's arms not even pulilng very hard at the sword and then finally falling at his side. He seems listless, looking back and forth between Rachel and Chester. "It's hard to find a gig in Earth realm, man. Like, none of the accomodations work. The food sucks. I broke four toilets last month. My landlord's gonna shit himself when he finds out. I can't afford no more new ones."
"Who hired you?" Chester says, wary.
"Scratch Baggins," he mutters, shamefaced.
"The fence? Why? I'm one of his best suppliers."
The big guy shrugged, "I dunno, man, I'm just the…"
And then he's cut off suddenly as a black arrow flies in from seemingly out of nowhere and rips through the troll's throat, sending a gush of blood all over Chester and embedding its point in the re:Live picture, right in the cyberfetus' cute little tush.
Rachel starts to feel kinda bad for the guy. Sometimes, when people get depressed and stop caring, they open up like flowers blooming. Sort of like a last ditch effort to get some sustenance, some warmth from /someone,/ from /something./ And, that's when this poor dude, Porkins as she's taken to thinking of him, gets an arrow through the throat. Rachel's eye twitches a bit, a sort of wince in the face of unexpected gore and violence. "We need to leave," she says to Chester. "I've already left a post-it with contact info for the piece I want," she says as she hooks her hand in his crooked elbow, and begins dragging him along with her. "Quickly, before the people who matter notice," she says calmly. A calmness she doesn't quite feel inside. She's not freaking out inside or anything, but neither is she happy about what she just witnessed. Also, kinda blood spattered, which needs to be remedied quickly. People tend to notice if you're covered in blood.
"OH SHIT!"
Chester isn't nearly as calm about what he's just seen as Rachel, kicking his legs in the air in a rather parodic fashion, doing tae kwan do at enemies that aren't even there, "What the hell was that? Somebody did a drive by on that poor…shit…" he says, looking around.
He nods as Rachel keeps her head, th ough, and takes her hand, "C'mon, I can get us outta here," he says. He leads her quickly to the crowd and out of the back door and makes a gesture like he's putting on a hoodie. As he does, the thing itself materializes over him, giving him the appearance of a soft butch white girl with a pink-tinted buzzcut. Rachel's appearance changes, too, shifting into that of a Japanese girl with rounded hair buns and glitter on her skin. "Just walk real calm like, a'ight? My bike's like two blocks away. Keep your eyes peeled in case Robin Hood pops their ass back up."