ic Drugs & Death, Inc

[R. Bluefish]

Starlight snorted a laugh. "I like that. I like that a lot." She squatted down on the other side of the yuppie scumbag, so he had Fast-Forward on one side and her on the other. "How about you, ---hole? What do you think of that? You can go down in history as the guy in a cheesy PSA." Her eyes flickered with light again, just for a second. "Consider yourself lucky you're going down in history at all."

She rose up and looked around. "Nice place, though. Must have been doing pretty well for yourself. Selling poison pays good, huh?" She paced a slow circle around the room, examining everything in an impressed sort of way. "No idea how much all the crap in here must have cost you. Hell, just the stuff in this room. And how much is the rent on this palace? Or do you own?" She completed her circuit and returned to the scumbag. "Shame, really," she said, looking contemptuously down at him. "Now you're just a cautionary tale."

She leaned against the wall once more and closed her eyes.  She was silent for a long moment, then said to Fast-Forward, "Oh, and if you do make that PSA, I want somebody who goes to the gym to play me."

[Raveled]

Miras sped upstairs, relishing the fact that she was tracking sewer muck all over this guy's nice, white carpet. She quickly located the master bedroom and headed in the opposite direction, poking her head in different rooms. It wasn't long until she found one with a plastic shroud covering the entrance; inside was a number of plastic tables set up with lots of glass beakers and Bunsen burners. She counted at least three nearly-identical set-ups. The mage didn't know the first thing about chemistry, but she was able to spot the input and the pipet that dripped a pale yellow liquid out at the end. She made a slow, cold anger tingling in her at the sight of so much antiseptic death staring her in the face, but she resisted the urge to smash it. After all, the police would need it all for evidence. She did rip down the plastic shroud, through, wrapping the door so it couldn't be missed.

An eyeblink later she was back in the basement, her cellphone in her hand. "Yeah, the guy's got his Breaking Bad playset up there. Bet your maids are paid not to go upstairs, huhn?" She nudged the dealer with her own boot. "Well don't worry, the cops will take plenty of pictures, so you can show all your inmates how awesome it looked." She dialed 911 and was soon dictating the street address for the operator. Before long the house was swarming with police, and the three heroes were standing a block away, watching it happen. Miras hoped the anonymous tip wouldn't be traced back to her cellphone, but her budget wouldn't exactly stretch to an endless line of burner phones. She'd just have to deal with it if it did.

When she saw the police taking the dealer out of his home in handcuffs, she turned away, feeling the tension drain out of her. "Well," she sighed, glancing at the other heroes. "That was a hell of a night. Anybody going to join me for a coffee before I collapse into my bed?"

[R. Bluefish]

Starlight shrugged dismissively. "Eh, I've got a busy schedule ahead of me. Going to go absorb some delicious moonlight and collapse on a park bench until the sun comes up. Lap of luxury. But thanks for the offer." And coffee would probably kill me.

She watched the handcuffed yuppie for a moment longer, as though hoping he'd try to make a break for it. Hope they keep him locked up for longer than they did me. "Did pretty good tonight, I think. That guy's done selling his wares. On the street, at least." She fingered one of her earrings and said quietly, "No more Allisons."

[Raveled]

"Wait, collapse on a park bench? Hold up a second." Miras reached out and grabbed Starlight, pushing her hood back and searching the other woman's face. For the first time that night, the photokinetic got a good look at the magus's dark skin and intense blue eyes. She was silent for a long minute, doing her best to try and determine if the bench had just been a joke. Someone else might have just assumed it was and brushed it off, but Miras had been down the long, dark well of addiction, and she knew that Starlight was at least familiar with that lifestyle.

Finally, Miras broke the silence, shaking her head hard. "No. You're not going to spend tonight outside. Listen, I... I've got a couch, and a quilt, and I'm sure I can find some pillows or something. It's not much but dammit, it's a roof. Please, let me help you."

Edited April 26, 2015 by Raveled

[R. Bluefish]

Taken aback only momentarily by the other woman revealing her face, Starlight automatically started to tell her that she didn't sleep, didn't eat, and didn't need her pity, but something made her words stop in her throat. Maybe it was the frank sincerity in Miras's face, maybe it was the long night they had all had, or maybe it was just the promise of something soft to curl up on, but she found herself nodding. "Yeah. Okay." Been a long time since I've gotten out of the elements. Maybe I'll give a hoot, read a book. "Just, you know, for a few nights."

[Avenger Assembled]

"Yeah that sounds pretty good," said Fast-Forward, glad that Miras had handled the situation with the unhappy-sounding heroine. "Here, let's all exchange numbers," he suggested, "and we can stay in touch if we hear from scumbags like that guy in the future." He handed the ladies two business cards he produced from his jacket pocket - high-end corporate stuff that bore the cheerful words RICHARD CLINE, AKA FAST-FORWARD "THE FASTEST MAN ALIVE!" with a contact number and email address. "It's mostly my wife who gets the email address," he offered as he quickly wrote down the numbers from the ladies, "but we'll make sure to message you back ASAP. You kids gonna be all right?" 

[Raveled]

Miras snorted as she scribbled her phone number and Twitter handle on the back of the card. "It's been a long damn time since anyone called me a kid, Richard Cline." She handed the card back to him, saving one and putting it somewhere inside her robe. "Thanks, for tonight. I'm sorry I I thought you were some kind of ghoul. This night..." She took a deep breath, breathing in the cool air. "I wish I got there an hour earlier. I wish we were around Alison's hospital bed right now. But we put the guy away and there's not going to be anymore Doze in this town. That's good enough, for tonight."

She waited for Starlight to say her goodbyes and then set off, carefully keeping her speed low enough for the flying heroine to keep up. They ended up back at the building they had entered the sewers at. During the chase, Miras had discarded her robes and hood and was now dressed in a leather hoodie, worn jeans, and combat boots. She gave Starlight a crooked smile as the woman landed. "When we're not busting drug rings, you should probably call me Asli." She held out a hand to be shaken. "Asli Saddik, in fact. Now come on up and be underwhelmed."

The building was dark, the lobby only lit by a single flickering bulb, but the walls and floors were scrubbed to within an inch of the lathe. Asli led the way up the stairs, her breath coming hard by the third floor. Most of the doors were decorated in some way, either by a banner or painting on the lintel or even in a few cases by crude drawings in crayon. They didn't pass anyone else out and about at this time in the night/morning, but it was obvious that if the tenants lacked money at least they had pride in their meager dwellings.

Asli's apartment was on the sixth floor, and she unlocked it smoothly. Directly inside the room was carpeted in something dark and berber; the walls were covered in posters for all different bands, except for one conspicuously clear square with a simple, blank picture frame hung on it. There wasn't a closet, but on the right was a metal rack; Asli shrugged off her jacket and hung it up with the solemnity of a knight doffing their armor. On the left was a small, clean kitchen. Opposite the kitchen was a sagging, overstuffed couch that took up most of the wall.

Asli walked in, giving Starlight plenty of room to walk in. Underneath the coat she was dressed in a plain black shirt that covered her from neck to wrists. "Well," she said lamely, "that's just about it."

[R. Bluefish]

Starlight had raised her eyebrows when she took her back to the exact same place the Doze had been coming from, but had diplomatically declined to comment. As they ascended to Asli's apartment, she felt an increasing sense of deja vu at her shabby surroundings. Just like home. She smiled crookedly to herself. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

At the doorway, she stood in the hall for a moment, uncertain, then entered, doffing her jacket and hanging it up on the hook next to Asli's. "Beats my old place," she said truthfully, massaging her aching shoulders. "Fewer syringes, at least." She scratched her arm, then sighed. "And uh...Samantha. That's my real...my original name. Sam." It had been so long since she'd used it, the name sounded almost unfamiliar to her.

She wandered around the room, studying the countless music posters and trying to see if she recognized any of them, before coming to the blank picture frame. She looked at it, then turned to Asli, pointing to it questioningly. "What's with this?"

[Raveled]

"That is west, and a little bit south," Asli clarified. "Shows me where Mecca is. Hold on, I'll see if I can find that quilt." She ducked into her bedroom, which was pretty much the polar opposite of her neat, dry front room. There were a pair of the same model of clothes rack off to one side, and lots of hangers hanging off the racks, but all the clothes were either in the overflowing hamper or in one of the two laundry baskets underneath the clothes racks. Her bed was rumpled and unmade, the comforter kicked roughly to the foot and almost falling off. The walls were covered in crude, DIY shelves covered in books, CD cases, a few vinyl albums, scattered photographs, and enough locked boxes to be suspicious.

 

Asli checked the only closet in the apartment and found a folded quilt and a dusty pillow. She beat the pillow and grabbed them both before stepping back into the front room. "Okay, this should about do it," she said, holding both out to Sam. Asli suddenly wished that she had another chair or something, because she ended up pacing nervously as she considered how to breach the next subject. "Uh, rules. I'm not going to say 'don't go into my room,' because you kind of have to, to get to the bathroom. I am going to say 'don't read any books without asking me.' What I do is magic, and it's learned from those books, and it could be very, very dangerous if you don't know what you're doing. Other than that, clean the kitchen when you're done cooking and don't play loud music after midnight. And try not to bring the cops around, unless it’s for hero stuff."

 

Asli paced a bit more, before perching on the edge of the couch. “Listen, I don’t know all of your story, and I’m not trying to say I do. But..” She pushed her sleeves up almost to her shoulders, exposing stretch marks and a web of fading bruises in the crook of her elbow. “I want you to come with me to Narcotics Anonymous. I’m not saying you have to, whatever you want say I’m going to let you stay. But I think it’ll really help.”

[Avenger Assembled]

When the girls were off to Miras' apartment and the bad guy was getting hauled off to jail, Richard went for a run, stopping at the top of the old St. Jehosephat's Church to look out over the Fens. The old neighborhood was still bad, he knew; a place of poverty and petty crime that had never really recovered from the economic catastrophe of the 1993 Terminus Invasion. But things are better than they used to be. I'm better. He thought back to running these streets with Paige back in the day, high as a kite and loving every moment of his misbegotten life. He thought about that urge, there like a spider in the back of his head, to take Doze up his nose to just to see what the new stuff was like. The urge that, from what the shrinks said, would probably be with him until the day he died. But I'm a better man than that. Now. When he was done, he ran home, finding his daughter there to meet him with Paige still at her thing at the library and Will on patrol with his buddies. 

At the sight of his little girl sitting on the couch and playing on her phone, Richard zipped up and hugged her. "Surprise!" 

"Aah, Daddy!" She picked up a pillow and nearly threw it at him. "You scared me!" 

"Love you too, baby girl." 

[R. Bluefish]

Starlight nodded. "Don't screw with your Necronomicons, clean up after myself, don't be a jerk with the music. I can do that."

Her expression didn't change when she saw Asli's track marks. She only glanced down at her own arms, a quick, almost involuntary motion. They were as smooth and unmarred as if she had just been born. Another side-effect of her powers, as far as she knew. As well as a damn lie.

"Yeah. All right," she said. "I'll go. But..." she hesitated. "One thing you should know...I'm not entirely...human anymore. Even by our standards, I think. I don't need to eat, or sleep, or drink, or breathe. And I can't be poisoned. At all." She said the last part quietly, pausing to let it sink in. "That's why I stopped, Asli. I didn't kick it, I didn't decide to better myself, I physically couldn't use anymore. God knows I tried."

She tucked a strand of hair back into her ponytail. "So I'll go to the meetings. But I don't know what good it'll do. I am currently in - ha - zero danger of relapsing. And I doubt I'm going to be of any help to the others. What am I going to do, say 'all you need to do is get superpowers, then you'll be clean for life?'"

[Raveled]

"Addiction isn't just about getting high," Asli insisted. "There's a whole psychology of it. I didn't start using because I thought heroin chic was a really great idea, I started using because it stopped me being scared and alone, and later it stopped me being depressed and angry at myself. I'm not worried that you're going to get on cocaine or something again, but there's other things to get addicted to," she pointed out. "A whole big wide world of temptations and assholes trying to pull you off the path to --" She stopped herself. "Sorry. I'm preaching. I shouldn't be preaching, it's just..." She sighed. "Just don't think you're invincible, Sam. Addiction teaches you to define yourself by a whole mess of stuff outside of you, and you can't control the world outside of you. The best thing you can learn is to define yourself by what's in here." Sh reached out and tapped a finger against Sam's breastbone. "Not by what anyone else says, maybe not what other heroes say. If you can live by that... Well, people might be able to hurt you or even kill you. But the can't beat you."

She stood up, rubbing at her eyes. "Man, am I making any sense? This is what happened when you get a sleep-deprived rapper working off adrenaline. I'll let you get some sleep, Sam, and we can talk about things in the morning." She walked into her bedroom, closing the door behind herself. She barely had the presence of mind to take her boots off before falling into bed and falling into a deep, deep sleep.

Edited April 27, 2015 by Raveled

[R. Bluefish]

Starlight stood quiet in the living room in the dark, leaning with her back against the wall. The couch beckoned, an indistinct, comfortable-looking shadow. Some residual instinct made her go to it and lie down, pulling the worn quilt over her and shoving the pillow under her head. She breathed out once, slowly, and didn't breathe back in. She waited for several long minutes, but her lungs waited with equal patience, without the slightest hint of protest.

Eventually she gave up, sucking in a useless breath and closing her eyes, nestling deep into the warm depths of the couch. Sleep didn't come, it never did, but a strange sense of peace came over her regardless. She wondered how long it had been since she had last laid down. It was dark, and quiet, and safe.

"They can't beat me," she whispered in the blackness.

A smile tugged at the corners of her lips. Good day.