ArchivedLogs:Neighbourhood Watch

Neighbourhood Watch
Dramatis Personae Charlie Torres, Tag
In Absentia	13 May 2015 '
Location <NYC> Lower East Side
Historically characterized by crime and immigrant families crammed into cramped tenement buildings, the Lower East Side is often identified with its working-class roots. Today, it plays host to many of New York's mutant poor, although even here they are still often forced into hiding. Charlie is dressed precisely as one should /not/ be for travelling city streets at night: navy hoodie with the hood pulled close, black scarf covering the lower half of her face, black camping pants over oversized sneakers. At least the weather has cooled once more. An old black backpack slung on her back rattles very faintly with cloth-muffled spray paint cans as she moves. “There's a lot hung /inside/ shop windows. Figured you can get those where most of the rest of us might have to break in, you know? I make some stencils to quick-up the ones I can reach. Want to get as close to /all/ these things as we can.” Tag more than compensates for Charlie's low visibility with his spiral mop of rainbow hair. His light blue jacket has Rainbow Dash cutie mark patches on each shoulder, and bright yellow lightning bolts zigzag down the outseams of his black cargo pants. He has the remnants of a cinnamon roll in one hand and his phone in the other, glyphing. "Real tempting to change up their whole storefront, you know? Just make it a completely different business. 'Wholesale Turds' or 'Dickbags Ltd.' or something..." But his smile flashes quick and bright and without any trace of bitterness. "So what stencils have you got, huh?" He bumps Charlie lightly on the shoulder, putting away his phone. A chuff of laughter puffs the scarf in front of Charlie's mouth, and one could imagine the twitching of her nose beneath. "That'd be fun. Got a handful, different ones for the different signs. Quickest ones're for the just no-mutant and humans-only signs. Little 'Bigots Only!' additions and such, ones with the frowny faces and ones with ironic smilies. The Neigbourhood Watch ones, plan to get rid of the red circles. Underline the 'We look out for each other.' Stencils have some 'This is our home.' to go with. Couple other things, but those were the big ones. Figure the fancier art you'll be able to do. Maybe you got some cuter sayings. You seem like you'd do a cute." "Nice!" Tag brightens. Not his smile, his whole person, from rainbow hair to silver sneakers, literally grows a few shades brighter. "I've been 'improving' those signs when I've seen them, just haven't gone out /looking/ for them. Figure I can spruce up those boring old silhouettes, right? Add some accessories, maybe." He demolishes the remainder of his cinnamon bun and licks his fingers. "Like that one." He nods at a bar across the street, a large, prominent red-circle-around-horned-figure sign wedged between the neon beer advertisements in the windows. The door of the bar itself has another sign, smaller and without art, simply declaring 'No Mutants Allowed'. "You wanna risk the door?" "Yeah, I seen one or two someone done already. Makes a bigger message you can change up a whole /neighbourhood/ though. Figure take one or two areas a night, keep circulating around. Double back on places later if needed. Just...delegitimise the things if /nothing/ else." Charlie's grin tugs at the scarf over her face, wide doe-eyes bright with amusement even under her hood. "Risk nothing. I'm /fast/. Got this thing. Hey...things go totally south, you okay with me picking you up? You're little. I'd still run faster than any human on our tails toting you. Just don't want to feel like I'm leaving you behind if it comes to it." "I'll get the one in the window, then." Tag does not even look both ways as he waltzes out into the street, well ahead of any oncoming cars. "I've sure done my share of running from cops, it'd be refreshing to make a getaway in /style/." There's a nervous note in his voice, but his smile does not fade. Neither does the sign in the window. The red circle turns black and loses its diagonal line, gaining a vivid green check mark in its place. The horned figure gets a shimmering gold tiara that echoes the design of its horns, and a fluttering red cape secured with a gold chain across its chest. "Just carry me with my face pointed /backwards/, if it comes to that." “I'm taking getaway requests now,” Charlie replies in mock dismay, head shaking as she follows across the street. Her approach to the door is nothing of note, neither fast nor slow. Nothing to draw attention. The sign finds itself tagged /quite/ quickly in brilliant neon blue as a bigot haven and just as rapidly the hare-girl has moved on to scout the next target. "I /could/ ensure we do not get pursued at all," Tag admits, mouth quirking unhappily to one side, "but I try to save that as a last resort. Even my thinnest coat of colors takes a couple of days to wear off, and it's really terrifying, not being able to see. So..." He's smiling again, having spotted another sign at the end of the block ahead of them. "...trying not to get caught is my goal, anyway. What're they printing these out in lots?" He's probably referring to the graphical portion of the sign sitting in the window of the greasy spoon on the corner, the horned stick figure identical to the one he had just vandalized. A hand-written sign posted beside the door, however, shows slightly more originality: 'HUMANS "ONLY"!!!!!' "Blinding folks. Terribly effective, though," Charlie opines with a nod before adding blandly, "Must've kept the local Kinkos busy for days." She leaves the graphic for Tag to alter, taking on the hand-written sign simply by adding another set of quotation marks surrounding "HUMANS". "Not that I'm sure how you could interpret the 'ONLY' sarcastically. Think they were having a lot sale on extra punctuation, too. Scoop up quotes and apostrophes in the bargain bin." "Super effective, yeah." Tag tries, but does not completely succeed, in suppressing a shudder. He walks over to the graphical sign, hands clasped behind his back as if he were admiring a work of art. "Man, they must have been throwing the exclamation points in for free." Even as he speaks, the horned figure sprouts a pair of black wings too large for the red circle to contain. The crossbar and the circle itself crack and look as though they will fly to pieces the moment the figure extends its wings. "So what'd you think of New York now?" "You just download them for free on the internet," Charlie returns, chuckling. "They've got 'em to spare." Her eyebrows loft in the shadows of her hood, a nod of appreciation given to Tag's most recent work. "In general or just because of these signs? Doesn't feel much different overall from where I was before. Just...more of us here, yeah? I got more people here and that's nice. Don't know that they're /not/ getting signs like this all over, neither." Eventually, she finds a Neighbourhood Watch sign, bright purple paint adding the promised underline and 'This is our home.' stencil tag. It takes a bit longer to clear out the red 'anti' circle with white and black spray paint. "I meant in general. But signs like this, they gotta feel more personal to you than to me, yeah?" Tag does not face Charlie while saying so, though. His fuchsia eyes scan the street, if not for trouble then for more signs to vandalize. But trouble they do find, in the shape of a woman on the other side of the street, clutching her keys, wearing an expression half-way between disdain and horror as she watches Charlie work. "Hey, let's keep walking." "I dunno about personal, exactly. I mean, other than the fact that they mean to be enforcing it against freaks they can tell are freaks, which is more likely when your 'freak' is on your face." Charlie's head shakes slowly. "You put wings on those, you know who they look like a lot, though. Don't know if that makes it more personal feeling to /her/ or not." The hare-girl tucks her spray paint back into her bag, just eyeing the horrified woman from under her hood. "Yeah, we keep going. Got plenty more of these to do."