Logs:Fuel in Your Blood

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Fuel in Your Blood
Dramatis Personae

Damien, Ion, Rocket

In Absentia


2025-01-01


"I wish you clear trails and only the most fruitful of kabooms."

Location

<NYC> Chimaera Arts - Dumbo


This is just one of the many abandoned warehouses in DUMBO, and like many of them it has recently changed hands. Unlike most of those, however, it does not have some corporate developer's sign out front promising a transformation into luxury condominiums or a boutique shopping center or the latest concept restaurant. Instead it's marked by a piece of weathered but wildly colorful plywood propped up on a stack of broken pallets, which reads "Chimaera Art Space!" above "chimaera.org" in smaller letters.

The warehouse is moderately large and decorated with graffiti art in various styles--some of it recognizable as the work of renowned local street artists. A pair of monstrous scrap metal sculptures, perhaps still works in progress, flank the entrance. The building itself has undergone significant renovation recently, complete with wiring, plumbing, and a modular partitioning system. The grounds, too, have been cleaned up, ramshackle fences torn down and rusting detritus removed in favor of reclaimed (and brilliantly repainted) outdoor furniture ringing an impressively engineered firepit.

It's gotten late, but around Chimaera things are still boisterous. There's some kind of a circus show going on; very queer, very hipster, currently in the middle of a very elaborate aerial silks performance. Ion has not been watching much of this show -- he's only just showed up, blipping with a cracklepop into existence in the Chimaera courtyard.

He is not, himself, looking particularly Hipster or particularly like an avante-garde-circus-enjoyer: grubby white tee, aged sweatshirt slung over one arm, sturdy jeans, sturdy boots. He also looks like he's very much just come out of some kind of mess, eye puffy with bruising, blood still oozing from a slowly-coagulating wound on his forehead; he's actively still wrapping a roll of gauze around a wound on his arm that he wraps and tucks into place surprisingly deftly one-handed. He's making his lazy rounds to say his hellos, stopping to snag a beer on the way in before he lands up near the courtyard entrance of the warehouse where he can observe this show from a distance.

Another person is approaching Chimaera fast fast, expression hidden behind tinted goggles, kicking up dust behind. With an outfit with loud orange separated by patches of blue, and a red scarf to add even more colour to the mix. Upon arriving close enough, the new arrival skids to a halt.

Well, it's not really a skid. It's more like, a spin, almost a tumble if one could not recognize the calm expression of said new arrival. The vehicle is almost like a beetle, if one was to squint at it, kind of fat and squat, with handlebars where the antennae should be. It hovers a few inches off of the grounds still when it stops and then drops down onto the grass, apparently quite light weight. Rocket puts the goggles up onto his forehead and hops off the small vehicle that is perfect for a raccoon sized and shaped rider. He clears his throat once his feet are back on solid ground. "So. Is it a motorcycle, Mongrel?"

Damien, for his part, looks very much like an avante-garde-circus enjoyer, dressed in a plush sapphire velvet frock coat over an iridescent diaphanous poet shirt and tight gold leather trousers tucked into thigh-high boots, a silver sash wrapped around and around his waist with no visible means of fastening, its long tails waving as if in a constantly shifting breeze. He has been here a while, tucked in the middle of a group he has been intermittently but enthusiasticaly conversing with and watching the acrobatics with rapt interest. He is getting up now in search of a fresh drink, and is detouring once he has claimed his beer to veer past the entrance.

He looks just as rapt as Rocket pulls up -- the small bow he makes is to Space Raccoon and Mongrel alike, but his attention is soon turning back onto the hovercraft. "What a delightful vehicle! Is this your own make?"

"Yo, space dog!" Ion is crowing this enthusiastically as Rocket hops off. "Damn this your baby? She sweet as." He's pulling himself away from the wall to step just back outside, circling the beetlecraft with wide eyes. He takes Damien's appearance in stride -- "Eyy, pretty boy, you see this thing. He's gesticulating eagerly towards Rocket's -- "Bike in your heart!" Admittedly he is only coming to this conclusion after he has inspected it for wheels long enough to judge it Not A Car. "You be a badass biker for sure."

"Yep, built this guy with my own two hands," says Rocket, and he nods to Damien, "Couldn't have rescued it without getting my ship back. You sure earned those marbles." He grins and pats the vehicle, "I got to do some tuning up to make it work even better out this way. You've got a pretty mild atmosphere, so I can really get it going!" He scratches his cheek the grin gets slightly more grimacelike, "I'm used to it, but it sure seems to make people freak out when it decelerates, though. Your vehicles all use friction based stopping systems, right?"

"Your marbles have served me very well." Damien sounds very earnest in this, just as he does in: "-- and these humans lose their composure at all kinds of trivialities. Though I do understand that their vehicles going --" His finger is describing a tumbling circle in the air, "-- is often quite hazardous. A leading cause of damage to them. I don't think they handle the deceleration force with the same elegance as yours." He's looking over Ion critically now, examining the cuts and bruising for the first time. "Did your cycle bring you to harm?"

"She went full spinning! Do that on a earth bike --" Ion is nodding his agreement with Damien. "-- most-us real squishy and our bike built for one plane." His hand, palm-down, is pushing in a flat path in front of him. "Yeah-yeah the hydraulics they move the pressure, put the friction on the pads. How you get that," he waves his hook towards Rocket's bike, "do it whole thing, not chuck you off?"

For a moment he looks perplexed at Damien's question -- like he's full forgotten the fresh injuries he's sporting. He turns his eyes upward and rubs the back of his hand against his bloodied forehead. "Hell no I handle my bike good. Wednesdays for throwing down."

"Yeah, those looked like, 'get drunk and punch it out' injuries, not 'vehicular accident' injuries. I'm something of an expert on both," says Rocket. Whether his emphatic fist in his palm is his giving credentials in being punched or crashing is anyone's guess. He taps the his vehicle-- nay, motorcycle-- with the toe of his boot, "It's force based, you could say, like making a big cushion. But the angular momentum goes haywire. It spins on about my center of gravity, so falling's not a problem, and even if it was, the force field'll keep me in place."

He spins around once as if that is some kind of demonstration of what he's talking about. "With friction, the center of the spin is the point of friction." He puts his heel on ground and kind of hops around while keeping said 'point of friction' in place, much less elegantly, "So you can get-- whoosh, tossed around like a ragdoll!"

"I don't quite understand why you all are so very attached to your vehicles when so much of what they do is harm you." Damien is leaning back against the wall about in the same spot Ion had vacated. "Oh! That is much nicer, then, a good rumble can be quite refreshing." He is watching Rocket's demonstration thoughtfully, though his attention seems to linger more on the animated body motions than the actual words. "Are you intending to join his pack, then? You two," his gaze is skipping between the little space raccoon and the wiry mutant, "seem alike enough to be half-kin already."

"Shit, these things freedom." Ion's hook waves towards Rocket's hovercraft bike, his expression warming. "Little getting toss-around it's worth it, have a baby gonna zoom you where you want to zoom. See more the world, see more your people." His hook has gone -- fwoosh! -- zooming through the air in explication here. It's after this that he laughs, peers down at Rocket. "Damn, you right, I see lil family resemblance. Got gasoline in your blood -- shit, no, wait, I'on even know what your shit fueled on."

Rocket looks incredulously at Damien, "Life's too short not to risk a little kaboom here or there! I'd rather explode than just spend my whole life not living." He points to Ion in agreement, "I've seen all kinds of crazy shit, and it's only 'cause of machines that only sometimes have tried to kill me. If that's not a good deal, I don't know what is." Rocket then looks up towards Ion more appraisingly, "Hope you can teach me how to grow tall like that, cousin. I see way more resemblance than these goddamn--" He waves his hand in a direction. "Raccoons! That people are always comparing me to."

"A trade," Damien muses; he's giving another thoughtful look at Rocket's bike as though something has just clicked into place for him. He straightens and tips his hand out toward the other two."I do not know about blood but, certainly, something in the spirit. Not all raccoons appreciate a good adventure."

"The fuck is life without some-bit danger," Ion's answer is almost overlapping Rocket's. He is only finally, a little reluctantly taking a step back from the little beetle-bike, head shaking. "-- should bring that by Hellhound some time, my dogs go wild they see this work." He is chuckling, tossing a curious and not entirely skeptical look to Damien: "How many raccoons you chat with?"

"Yeah, I'll swing by. Some of you guys have got some beautiful machines that I wouldn't mind a closer look at,," says Rocket. He pauses for a few moments and tilts his head in Damien's direction, "Of the three of us, I know where I'd place my bets on who has the most active raccoon social life, anyways."

Damien seems altogether obvious to the dig, just a touch rueful as he admits, "Fewer than I would like." His eyes are straying back inside to the intricate aerial dances. He pulls himself away from the wall, and gives a small bow to the others. "Dog, Space Dog --" There's an oddly courteous tone in this salutation, carried through before he slips back away to, "I wish you clear trails and only the most fruitful of kabooms."