"Fine!" she hisses, peeved at being shaken like a baby, tossing the cat vaguely towards the bottom of the pile. She takes a sip, this time from the green vial, and the anger fades away.

"Heyyy so I was thinking, are you, like..." she attempts to lean closer, her voice a whisper. "Me? Are you also beholden to the fickle muse?"

"Perhaps I can offer an alternate arrangement then," she says, still holding on to the cat. "Whatever it is, I need it. How about..." she pulls out a vial of vaguely luminescent green fluid, extending it out in the vague direction of the cockpit. "I can give you this. It will make you less irritable and angry for no reason."

There's a glance at the growling mecha, before she takes a worried sip. "I think your bear sculpture is angry for some reason. I don't think this'll work on it :("

There's a pissed off little hiss as Starving Artist finds herself lifted up from the pile by her foot, and the diminutive tinker finds herself glaring at the mecha and the Mecha within.

"I'm very glad for you," she says petulantly, before taking a hearty sip from a vial, that irritation and anger gone in an instant. "But I need these. Without the bits inside the muffler—" it wasn't a muffler "—i can't make my Art. Would you truly deny me that?"

From the top of Mount Parts, Starving Artist snatches up the catalytic converter, clutching it to her chest like a prized stuffed animal. Her attention is caught by the hollering lady down below, telling her to get down?

With a disdainful sniff and a sip from one of her many drug vials, she begins descending from the mountain, making it approximately six inches before getting distracted by a splendid a/c compressor which she immediately begins digging her ways towards, the angry lady completely forgotten

Starving Artist was on the prowl, there was a delightful little idea brewing and bubbling in her head. The only problem was, she needed bits. And not the easy bits you could get from the fun aisle as the hardware store, these were difficult bits.

Which was how she ended up at Bob's Bits and Bobs, the fourth-worst junkyard in the Denver Metro area, looking around completely fucking lost. She takes an angry sip, fucking under yet another rusted out hulk, looking for a catalytic converter that was nowhere to be found.

Finally, after what felt like hours (15 minutes) she stumbles upon gold, a mountain of spare parts, and right at the top, just what she was looking for! Quickly, she scuttles up the pile, her eyes fixated on her prize.......

Powerplay raises an eyebrow as her newfound sparring partner sinks into the rooftop, floating back a couple feet before giving Nereid a glance.

"Useful power for when you drop your phone under the seat while you're driving," she quips sarcastically. "Should we be, like, calling this in? Does this count as stopping crime? Is it actually fighting if we're both into it?"

"Oh, you wanna?" Powerplay's cocky smirk grows. "I mean, I'd be down for a little spar." There's a little glance towards Nereid, the more observant might note a hint of a questioning expression...

"Oh yeah, I feel you there. Days can stretch on too long, yeah? That cabin fever to go break some kneecaps or whatever right?" She laughs. "But maybe that was just me, you should see what this bad bitch can do when you really piss her off." There's a gesture towards Dolphin Nereid.

"So I guess it's just polite to ask, whats your idea of fun when you're not cosplaying as a chain-smoker?" The floating hero leans forward, a cocky smirk plainly visible, almost daring...

"Oh hey, a motherfucker," Powerplay says, mostly to herself, as she redirects along with Nereid towards the figure.

"Hey buddy, how's the rooftop brooding going?" she calls out, trying to sound friendly-ish.

"Suit yourself," she replies, taking a hearty sip, before strolling vaguely in the direction of the van. "Can I get her red carpet treatment instead? I'm very interested in your...recruitment tactics..." She smirks at Zippo, uwu

"Lets fukken goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo," Powerplay hollers in direct contrivance of PRT Image Regulation 6.32(a), as she shoots off after the Nereidolphin.

"Oh hell yeah! That's cool as fuck dude!" Powerplay grins. "As for me, yeah, basically shit I get hit with I absorb and send back at 'em. There's more to it than that but honestly you get the picture. And of course I'm down to do some flying, that shit never gets old :)" She takes the opportunity to show off her vertical, leaping up into the air and doing a little circle above.

"You know it baby," Powerplay says, shooting a fingergun before slightly awkwardly returning a handshake. "Cool shit. You do, like, turning into Sea World shit yeah? Like fishes and stuff? Sorry, they keep throwing more and more files at me expecting me to remember every single cape from here to Vegas."

"Yo," a voice says from above precisely 36 seconds late, and descending from the heavens is Powerplay, a young lady in a flashy dazzle-camo costume. She lands next to Nereid with an alarmingly rough thump, nearly spilling the to-go coffee she was carrying with her.

"Sorry, had to get in some last-minute being yelled at. So what's the plan?"

She returns the handshake, before herself floating over to a chair and plopping down with her feet up on the table. "So you do... blue stuff? Sorry, I haven't had time to read any of the uhhhhhh...what do you call the who does what files? Man I got like ten binders of shit they're making me memorize."

"It is fine, but it could be better," Starving says excitedly, a smile evident in her voice. "Maybe some artistic flair, to help you catch the criminals?"

"And you should definitely come with us." Sip. "I hear they'll roll out the red carpet for you to try and indoctrinate you. Milk it a little even if you have more important things to worry about."

Starving Artist sighs, dipping a bloody finger into her can and licking it, before shaking her head and taking a sip from a vial.

"You're right, that's all this is. Chemicals. A waste. I would sooner jump in a volcano than share this travesty with anyone." Once again the paintcan's contents contribute to the growing Superfund-level groundwater pollution around her, and she tidies up her things with the energy of a cat who just got spray bottled for scratching on the sofa.

"Is the weird one coming with us? I would love to craft something up for her in your delightful little lair." Starving Artist does a little spin, twirling her giant paint roller on a stick. "A shame that with all the wealth of your ivory tower, your muse torments you with such pedestrian..." She looks over Zipdash. "Accoutrements." Sip.

"Yes, brutes." Sip. "Horrid term, but language is fickle like that. Hmm." Another sip, as she ponders the creation she was working on. "I said I'd go with you if you tried my art. She tried it, which made me very frustrated but her canvas is so interesting. Not brutish at all. Beautiful. What isnt beautiful---" Sip. "Are the mixed messages. Now you want me to leave? Or do you want me to do your stupid thing? I'm..." She pauses to take another sip, hands trembling. "Very confused as to what you want."

"You should see the other guy," she quips, making a little wince. She floats over, dropping her box of shit on a table and grabbing a cookie, seemingly unphased by the piping hot melted chocolate dripping onto a finger. It isn't until she pops it in her mouth that there's a mumbled "fucking hot" and the traditional oh fuck to hot need to eat fast thing.

"Powerplay," she says uncomfortably, extending a non-chocolatey hand. "Or Heather if you want, doesn't matter to me."

A young lady floats into the common, a cardboard box tucked under one arm, looking around at the room with the vibe of someone who hadn't been there before. Other than the broken nose and black eye that Image's makeup was wearing off to reveal, she seemed relatively nondescript, a t-shirt and basketball shorts for attire.

"Someone cooking?" she mutters to herself.

"Oh, that's not right," Starving says, taking a sip as she intently watches the response to her Art. "Hmm. No, not at all. What an interesting canvas to paint upon." She pauses, thinking, before flinging the half-made mess in one of her paintcans into the street (wow thats a loud sizzle), and sitting down cross-legged to start anew on...something?

"I have some things to try. Shouldnt have caused vomiting. Made it inhibit that, actually." Sip. "But you overcame that. And it was supposed to last far longer." Sip. "Some sort of..." she stares up at Zipdash. "What do you call the strong ones?"

Starving Artist blinks exactly twice as the young lady takes the vial she had been extending to Zipdash. For a moment, Denver's most popular methhead seems genuinely stunned, staring at Jane with a strange expression. It isn't until her bleeding hand begins trembling hard enough to spatter blood on those nearby that she shakes herself out of it, and takes a glug from one of her vials.

"As I said," her attention returning to Zipdash. "Everyone not like us who's taken it just pisses a bunch." Sip. "That's why I---" She pauses again, and sniffs the air. "ah."

Jane would very quickly find herself overcome by a burning nausea tearing at her stomach as the drug takes hold. But it's only for a moment, and then she is floating away as a cacophony of senses assault her. She can every detail of the grass, the smell of the chemicals in Starving's paintcans is overwhelming, but still barely there she can sense the chlorine of the pool clear as day and behind that the smell of exhaust baked into the pavement. The quietest sounds are amplified, screaming in her ear, but not painfully so. She is hyper-aware of her surroundings and herself, but there's a detachment there, as if she were a passenger in her own head experiencing this. Her mind is a tiny being that has just found the world unfurl open around it, a bacteria enlightened and uplifted to sentience. She sees in colors that don't exist, experiences emotions far beyond mortal reckoning, feels the fabric of reality shifting around her and imbuing her with knowledge. She is a thousand minds, all as one, a writhing mass of ego and cognition swirling around a black hole before being pulled in, feeling every molecule of her soul being ripped apart and reforged into something else. She is fury, peace, ecstacy, agony, love, apathy, joy, grief, all of it at once, and she is nothing, an empty void floating in space as something forgotten swirls around her head.

Meanwhile, in reality, Starving Artist shoves past Zipdash, to (assuming she isnt stopped) grab the injured young lady and lower her gently to the ground so she doesnt bump her head while likely spending the next 20 minutes talking to God.

"Unexpected but not unwelcome," she says, a giddy tone belying her calm demeanor. "Please do not ruin her experience with your recruitment propaganda."

Starving lets off an angry sound, something between a cat with its tail stepped on and an exasperated huff, and there's a crunch as she squeezes the vial she's holding and it shatters.

"I can fix it," she hisses under her breath, looking down at her bleeding hand before disregarding it and drawing a new vial to sip from. "But fine. I'll do your stupid little thing, but you get to do something for me too." A sip, and the anger is gone, like it never happened. "I've created another masterpiece, but it only works on... us. Us? Powers. The enlightened. Everyone else just pisses a bunch." Sip. "I don't have anyone to share it with."

With a flourish, she pulls out yet another vial, one filled with cotton-candy blue fluid that seemed to glimmer in the evening light. She extends it to Zipdash, but as she does her eyes go to the injured youth, and that dazed look is filled with... concern?

"Hurt. I can make the pain go away, help your canvas rebuild itself anew. It's okay to say no, I understand." Sip.

There were definitely not normal paints, if the fumes and rancid smell and everything else was any indication.

"I do mind," Starving says petulantly, pausing to take a sip from a vial, thinking, and then dribbling some of the same vial into the horrid cancer soup she was whipping up. "He pulled a gun on me, he should be the one under investigation. And I'm trying to help dissolve the gun." Sip.

"He was yelling something unimportant, and when I looked at him he went for his gun." Sip. "I put it in the pool, the concentration of chlorine is low but it should corrode away in a few years."

Then she pauses, thinking, a look Zipdash at least would find very familiar. "I could make it corrode faster, that way the pool can reopen." She reaches down to her paint buckets, and excitedly starts pouring concoctions together...

The alleged artist did not appear to have a gun on her, merely a dizzying array of vials, a big stick with a paint roller on the end, and a couple pails filled to the brim with glassware, bottles, and even a little portable burner.

She waits patiently as Marceau goes through his notebook, giving her name ("you can call me Starving Artist") in response to his, and a little sigh at his criticism before she takes another sip from one of her vials.

"No, you're right. I don't know why I'm bothering, the inspiration flew away on the breeze the moment that—" she stops to take a sip, brief fury on her face replaced with serene calm, just in time for Zipdash to arrive.

Without saying anything to the captain, she flings jar of liquid at the would-be mural, and the air is filled with the acrid stench of acid eating away at the paint and brick below.

"There is no statement other than abject mediocrity and the fickle nature of the Muses," she says sadly. "He pulled a gun on me." Sip. "Being shot is a bigger crime than making someone sleep. That means I did negative crime, I'm basically a hero. You should give me a job."

At the mime's throat clear, the young woman stops her spray-painting, taking a brief sip from a vial before turning her attention to them.

"Oh, hello," she says, voice unsettlingly friendly. "I don't think I've seen you before. Are you---" she pauses, picking up the tail end of the panicked radio call, and takes a very hearty sip, before pulling a respirator up to hide the lower half of her face.

"He was going to shoot me," she calls out, voice muffled slightly. "So I made him sleep. He's not hurt." A dismissive sniff. "You on the other hand..."

Jane would find that the man was, in fact, not dead, and was breathing normally, although attempts to wake him were seemingly futile. Were it not for the broken vial and dampness on his uniform---and the fact that he was in the middle of the sidewalk by an abandoned cop car---he seemed like he was just in a very deep sleep.

Meanwhile, nearby, a young lady in a black-and-lime jumpsuit hums to herself as she paints an abstract mural on a brick wall, taking a moment's break to sip from a vial before continuing...

Evening. The sun had just finished its descent below the mountains, and the blistering summer heat was giving way to a cool evening breeze. At one of the many community pools, the smell of chlorine is accompanied by...spray paint?

It was an adequate canvas. Brick, rougher than ideal, but clean. No need to work around the work of those who lacked inspiration.

Sip.

Frustration slips away, bliss flooding in. They were of no concern. Only making this world a better place than it was yesterday. Maybe if they saw beauty instead of hate, felt ecstacy instead of terror, the problems would go away. If---The blare of a siren interrupts her thoughts.

Sip.

Cop. Walking towards her. Shouting something unimportant. She turns, resisting the urge to take another sip from her vials, and the cop freezes in place, hand going to his waist---No.

In a single, fluid motion, she slings a vial at him, and it shatters on impact, dousing him in a fuming amber fluid. The gun is drawn, but before he can aim, he stumbles, and collapses onto the sidewalk.

Slowly, she walks over, picks up the discarded gun, and flings it over the fence and into the pool. Nasty thing. Sip. But gone now. With a flourish, she leaves the man where he lay, and returns to her art.

bloop

Hello, Nashoid :) (take two)

Hello, Nashoid :)