JUST BLAZE [POPTART]

[[A shameless celebration of my 420th post. @"Poptart" ]]

Sid stretched his arms over his head, feeling his shoulders and back burn lightly as he walked into one of the seedier parts of Manta Carlos. The sun was setting on the horizon, painting the sky in a flurry of blues and pinks and reds. He'd been invited ever so graciously by Thorn to have a small party at her place. He'd thought it would only be gentlemanly of him to bring the stickers the Cabel had given him at the party, which he'd been saving up for an occasion like this.

"Are you sure it's okay for me to come?" DJ asked, holding three bottles of liquor in one arm and one bottle of soda in the other as she walked alongside Sid. Well, to be more accurate she was trailing a little behind him, because he had longer legs and was very pointedly not helping her carry any of the alcohol. "It's not like your friend invited me or anything--I don't wanna take up any of her drugs if--"

The drow gestured at her to calm down as he reached the door--broken lock, just like she said--and opened the door to a stairwell. It smelled musty and it creaked. He glanced over his shoulder to see if DJ was alright, but she looked unfazed--perhaps her background made her used to this kind of thing. Sid took a few bottles from her and they started their trek up to Thorn's apartment.

It didn't take them too long to find it, though it did take a lot of guesswork, since half the apartments' numbers had fallen off.

He gave the door a few quick knocks.

"Ay, Thorn? Ya home?"

"Are you sure this is the right place?"

"You've asked that like. 14 times now. I counted. 14."

DJ shifted the bottles in her arms, cocking her hip to one side and resting the bottles there as they steamed with condensation and made her shirt wet. Sid had insisted that it would be just a little affair, a tiny little get together between friends and that there was no reason to dress up. He seemed to take that to heart, wearing the same tight-ish shirt she could have sworn he'd been wearing three days ago and loose pants with more pockets than he had checkmarks on his bang list.

Which was more like a phone book of the island, now that she gave it a little more thought.

But she hadn't thought that it would be this kind of casual. Even her in a sleeveless shirt and skirt felt overdressed.

"Well, maybe if you'd give me an answer I'll stop asking you that question."

The two of them stood outside the door for a moment before it swung open and DJ was so shocked she nearly dropped the bottles on the floor. Which would have been a travesty because it had been good medium quality alcohol that she bought with Sid's money after he paid her for her DJing services at his most recent party. It was a good thing she had good reflexes.

But still. Once she got over her initial shock, her surprise became incredible fascination. She'd never seen anyone that looked like that, fully mechanical and whirring. The Technomancer inside of her was stirred, and she was really interested in seeing more of how he worked. Maybe she could convince him to let her see him put himself together and take himself apart again. To what extent was he able to disassemble himself? Obviously there were parts of him that he couldn't take out that were important to function, like the brain and heart and the like...

But what of everything else?

Sid wasn't one for getting scared of things, but he was a little intrigued. He'd never seen someone with just... bits of themselves missing, walking around all mechanical and whatnot. DJ seemed to be silently losing her shit in the nerdiest possible way next to him.

"Moooom, there are weird people at the door."

Hearing Thorn welcome them in, Sid gave DJ a push into the apartment, where she popped out of her stupor and gave him the nastiest glare she could manage. She set the alcohol on the table with the chips and dip and took a moment to familiarize herself with the apartment space where she would be spending the next several hours in an incredible haze. She also took a moment to look at Thorn, the friend that Sid told her about.

When she moved closer her ears could catch the acute song of metal and technology inside of her too, though it was a quieter, simpler sound than the boy that had greeted them at the door. She wanted to listen.

The drow sat her on the couch, seeing that DJ was really happy to meet Thorn and her... friend he was pretty sure he'd never met.

"Thorn, this is DJ. She was the mastermind behind the music at my rave."

"Oh, yeah, that's me." She said.

Sid reached into one of his pockets. "Cabel slid me something at the rave that I was saving to try. He said something about not takin' too many or I'll be cummin' rainbows, so I figured bringing em t' a little friendly get together would be the perfect use for em."

DJ smiled and nodded in thanks. This month was like, compliments month for her. First there was that flying boy on the beach, and now Thorn. Thorn, though, was significantly cooler than the guy on the beach, so maybe her thoughts were a little misaligned there. "Thanks. Mixing music is just about the only thing I do well anymore." She said lightly taking a few chips for herself and munching on them. She didn't mention her inherent fascination with Thorn and the other guy. It had been a long time since she'd laid her hands on any tech other than her mix-board, and even though her fingers itched for it, she accepted that she was likely way out of practice.

She hadn't even used her powers for anything other than maintenance since she left school. God, at times like this she missed it.

"Oh?" DJ asked, raising one of her eyebrows and glancing over to the drow sitting next to her who had the presence of mind to look at least a little sheepish. Well, almost. One of his hands covered the grin that his stupid cat tattoo mimicked so well. She had to resist the urge to punch him. "Well, you're an amazing artist. Sorry about him popping up unannounced then."

"Hey, I paid good money and tipped. The pleasure was all mi--oh Jesus could you maybe not?" He ground out as her fist made solid contact with his bicep just under the tattoo it sported. It wasn't fair--he's made it his entire life never really being bothered by anything in darkness that spawned him, but somehow the woman's punches really, truly hurt. He was supposed to be an incredible apex hunter of the Underdark and yet.

Fucking bullshit evolution.

Still, DJ seemed cowed by his presentation of Cabel's notorious stickers.

"Stickers?" She echoed, looking over Sid's shoulder at the baggy of stickers he had. They were colorful and all seemed to have the same bird-like image on them. All in all, it looked like the kind of thing that Tev would slap onto his toys or the TV or the wall when he wanted to try his hand at redecorating. "What's so great about stickers?"

The drow wrapped an arm around her shoulder, bringing the baggie close enough to touch her nose. "That's Cabel's magic, Deej! If ya wanna take a trip ta Wonderland while yer on a long plane ride or smuggle somethin' good across a border or two, ain't nobody gonna think anything a' some low-quality stickers."

She swatted him away. "So what do they do then smart guy?"

"Iunno. Never tried these."

Sensing her apprehension, he dug around in his pockets, tossing out a bag of with a seemingly random assortment of pills, two medium sized vials with corks in them--one containing a clear liquid and the other navy blue and seemingly full of stars, and another baggy, this one with a grayish powder.

"I made these myself. You trust me don't you?"

"Barely..."

The reemergence of the mechanical man made DJ's ears twitch. She watched with fascination, but for all her tech-mindedness it was rare that she was able to actually articulate her ideas on the subject. Mechanics were just like music to her, they sang and talked to her. And the music from Thorn and this other guy was so interesting that she couldn't help but wonder.

The DJ wondered what it would sound like to touch one of them.

She felt Sid swat her back, and held out the vial of stars once he had her attention. "Bottoms up Deej."

"What's it do?"

"That's the fun ain't it?"

A beat of silence.

"It ain't nothin' dangerous, promise. Tested it on m'self. I know how much ya like music."

DJ took the vial and popped the cork, taking a small mouthful before corking it again and putting it back on the table. It had a... buttery aftertaste. Meanwhile, Sid cracked open one of DJ's bottles of alcohol. He liked to be drunk before he tried getting high.

DJ smiled at Thorn's insistence and placed a hand on her chest. "Well, I do make delicious moqueca and pão de queijo. My son loves it."

"Speaking of that," Sid piped up, suddenly interested at the mention of food. "Tell me when you make that mookeka next time, I want a bowl or three."

She elbowed him. In the arm. "This son loves it too."

The Brazilian woman could have sworn she overheard him sullenly muttering that he was older than her, but she didn't think anything of it. As slowly as drow mature he could have been her younger brother for all his years worked for him. Still, both of them watched as Thorn described the attributes of each of the falcon-stickers in relation to their closest relation. Once the three had been described, the drow plucked the sticker that was like acid from the pile, flicking a stimulant at DJ. She looked at it with mild apprehension.

It wasn't that she had never done drugs before--her Papai thought that it would be a good skill to be able to resist the effects of some drugs (her Mamãe, bless her college-educated heart, had tried to explain that that wasn't exactly how drugs worked but it took a while for that to break his thick skull)--it was just that she was leery of magical drugs and especially wary of anything that Sid said was okay. He was fucking superhuman. The asshole could breathe underwater, that's how deeply his survival powers ran and that was some grade a treta if she'd ever heard it.

Still...

As the buttery after taste of the vial started to fade. she started to stop being able to see. The apartment became a soundscape, a weird mix of a low dirge and a bossa nova beat. Every sound she heard seemed to add to the mix that her world had become. The sound of water running became the song of wind chimes, and Thorn's laughter became an aria even the occasional gunshots that rang out became the beating of a low drum. It was a beautifully surreal experience.

In the real would, Sid side-eyed DJ, watching as she lost herself in the music as he drank from the bottle. After all, DJ was out. She couldn't tell him what to do. He'd downed half of it in one glorious go, finally reaching over to tap her arm. No response.

Yep. She would be gone for about an hour. The trip wasn't designed to last too long.

"Shit man." He said, feeling his body warm up as the alcohol sloshed in his stomach. "That's the smoke you were talking about, aint it?" He knuckled his eyes, one red iris flicking over to the kitchen. "Ay, is homeboy ai'ight in there?"

As soon as he thought that, another thought occurred to him.

"Reminds me--who is homeboy anyway? Don't think I ever seen him before."

The drow watched the exchange the same way one would watch something on daylight television. It just seemed to surreal and funny to him, and he wasn't even high yet. That thought occurred to him as he finished off DJ's bottle and set it heavily on the table, leaving forward to take a big hit from Thorn's bong. He'd save Cabel's sticker for the end because if he was going to be jizzing rainbows then he wanted that to be how he finished the night, not how he started it off.

Actually, now that he was super relaxed and feeling lazy as hell, his eyes slid around the room in slow languid loops. He wasn't exactly picking up the minute intricacies of the walls or anything like that, but something about the room he was in felt suddenly amazing. Like, why the hell hadn't he been here before? This was like, the greatest place he'd ever been in.

Well, greatest in the sense that he was pretty sure he'd never been anywhere worse, but work with him here.

"Haha, I feel that." He said, giving DJ another nudge his lazy grin still in place on his face. She still didn't quite respond, but she didn't tip over as if she was boneless, which was a good sign. "Me 'n Deej here go way back. I knew her way back in High School when she didn't know a lick a English. Can you imagine how hard it is bein' buddies when English ain't neither of yer first languages? It's a fuckin' pain!" For some reason that made him laugh. Not that Sid was one for particularly deep introspection even when he was sober. Actually, he preferred not to think about the reason he liked to do things. If he dissected his emotions and shit that took out all of the fun of his favorite games.

Actually, he hadn't jumped off a building recently.

Maybe he should do that before he got sober and thought better of it.

He glanced over to Joker and tilted his head at his question. "My deal?"

Maybe it was the high, but for some reason Joker's question made literally no sense to him. His deal? Was he... was he selling something and he didn't know it?

"Eeeeh... I came to the island because my family tried to have me killed and sacrificed to spider she-satan." He said, fishing into his pocket. He was drunk and high and about to make some really bad text choices. It was times like this that he was thankful that he had a smart phone. For some reason he could operate this much better while under the influence than his old one with buttons. "Uhh... I also like long walks on the beach, head pets, sugar, pina coladas and snow."