[HOLIDAY-R] Bring Down the House [Diesel/Sylvite]

[Indigo_Plateau]

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Prompt 6: There's something on the roof. It has no energy signature, so it can't possibly be a youma or any powered vigilante, but something's on the roof. It sounds like it's clopping around. If you go outside and investigate, there is a deer on the roof. A fully sized deer, staring down at you. The moment you blink, or look away, it's gone; if you investigate further you will find that there are tracks left in the snow atop the roof--but none around the house. It looks like it just showed up there--and just disappeared.

Diesel thought he was starting to get the hang of all this nonsense.

Though he still had routine patrols with his brother, during which Diesel didn’t get to explore much or do anything beyond just what Rakovanite told him to, they were still helpful in determining what exactly he was capable of. He’d gotten a brutal crash course during October, but it was nice to be on his home turf, experimenting in a more familiar environment around forces that didn’t seem quite as… deadly (he’d been told there was plenty to be wary of in Destiny City, but he hadn’t seen much to be actually frightened of. The ‘enemy’ barely felt like it was more than an opposing team at a school sporting event- And Ellian was familiar with those. ...He was good at winning against those).

Rakovanite kept him on task when they were together, but Diesel was getting a little bolder with deciding when it was appropriate to power up. He didn’t think he was being reckless. It wasn’t like he just broke into his senshi guise in the middle of school or anything.

But during the early evenings and into night, after he’d told his parents he was going to bed, or assured them he would just be watching tv until he fell asleep, or maybe convinced them he was going to a friend’s house to study- whatever the excuse was- that seemed like the optimal time to finagle with his senshi powers. They were good for getting him around town, to places farther than he could walk, to areas he’d never been able to access before: rooftops, fenced courtyards, back alleys that seemed too dangerous to delve into without magic to protect him.

But he had that now, so really, what was stopping him from going wherever the heck he physically could go?

Diesel wadded up his long hair into a dense, messy bun and shoved it down the back of the oversize, baggy black hoodie he kept in his subspace pocket. As much as he liked to stand out during the day, he wasn’t trying to be a beacon of attention at night. Shrouding himself in dark, ‘normal’ clothes and hiding his vibrant hair would at least keep standard normies from noticing him. It didn’t do much to hide his aura, but what did he care about that?

His favorite place to go at night was downtown, toward old DC. He could come here in his car at any time of day or night, but he ran the risk of having it keyed regardless of how early or late it was. He had the impression that anyone who looked like they came from a reasonably well-off family wasn’t super welcome down here, and maybe that was why all the brightest, most elaborate graffitis hung out on even main street walls.

No one bothered coming around to clean it up.

And on a chilly, snowy night like this? He doubted anyone would be around to even see him. Diesel was by no means talented, but he did sure like to put his name everywhere. And now he could even put like a cool… fiery looking emblem by his pretty freaking awesome senshi name. He leaned back against a brick wall down an alley, pulling a small scattering of spray cans from subspace as he surveyed the area that would be his canvas.  

[stari_maga]

A lot of Alexa's college friends talked about how they couldn't wait for winter break to like, see their pets again, or sprawl out on their giant beds, or have some more privacy than they got in the dorms.

Alexa loved the holidays. She liked seeing her family, but her bedroom was tinier than what she got at school and had thin walls. Worse than that, it had also been half converted into an office space for her mom, who was way more into the sleek, minimalist aesthetic than Alexa was.

If Alexa stared at the room for too long, with its plain, warm gray walls, and all of the cute stuff she'd left behind shoved under her bed, her head started to spin. She'd brought a few of the strings of fairy lights up from her Negaverse office to make things look a little more like she still lived there, but she also tended to just use the room as a crash pad and to go out walking when she needed a little bit of time for herself.

Powered up, of course. She wasn't stupid. Even without all of the senshi and youma and other magical danger she might run into, she only lived a couple blocks from where the pretty cheap, slightly sketchy apartments turned into really cheap, really sketchy ones. Yeah, she could have gone towards the nicer side of town instead, with the parks and stuff, but all the fire escapes and squished-together roofs around here made for way better exploration and climbing around.

She wasn't expecting anyone else to be in the area, so the corrupt senshi's aura was a fun surprise. She stopped right in the middle of a round of rooftop flips to go track it down. It took a little bit, but eventually she was pretty sure she sure she saw a figure in the alleyway below.

"Hi," she called , waving, before she jumped down herself. The first thing her eyes were drawn to was the can of spray paint in his hand. "Are you doing, uh, art?"

Indigo_Plateau

 

[Indigo_Plateau]

He shook the can, causing a loud, metallic rattle as the paint was agitated, but something gave him pause before he could make his first mark. Diesel thought he felt a prickle of something drawing near, and he may have recognized it as an agent. It had the same sort of dark and wispy undertones that his brother had when they were together and a similar sort of pressure. It might have even been Rakovanite, for all Diesel could be sure of, except he thought it might be a little... There weren't exactly words to describe the little shifts in aura sensations, but he thought it might be sharper, like somehow inexplicably more than Rakovanite's aura.

His eyes pinched in thought, and he paused to try and see- Oh, he was pretty sure it was coming closer. Destiny City was a lot bigger than the little village he'd gotten most of his powered experiences in so far, where there hadn't been a lot of room to not feel when someone was nearby. But Diesel was pretty sure if he focused on it, he could feel a subtle shift in that strange 'pressure' from before, like it was drawing near.

He waited, arm still raised and holding the spray paint, head canted very slightly to the side as if angling an antenna, and then-

A girl was in the alleyway next to him. So it definitely, one hundred percent was not Rakovanite, then. But she seemed friendly enough. She looked pretty young, with bubblegum pink hair curling around her face. He started shaking the can again.

"Nnnah, not really," he admitted with a grin and a shrug. Since it was another agent and not like, a cop or an Order kid or something, there didn't seem any reason to be too worried. They could have a casual conversation and it be fine. "I'm not a very artistic type. Not great at all the painting and things like that. But I've been practicing a little. It's a good chance for everyone to see my name. I've got such a cool one."

stari_maga

 

[stari_maga]

Sylvite was definitely a captain, but she definitely was not in serious business mode. She crossed her arms lightly in front of her and tilted her head way to the side as she looked over the senshi in front of her, already smiling a little. He was probably a teenager. She could tell that much, and she could tell that the parts of his uniform that were sticking out from under his hoodie were pretty cute.

"Yeah, art is hard," she said, her shoulders relaxing just a little bit as she let out a small sigh. "I had to move away from doing, like, paint art, 'cause I got way too into the putting the paint down on the paper part, and the mixing stuff together part. There was one time I used like twenty dollars worth of paint and just ended up with a gray blob. It was bad. "

She didn't seem too discouraged about it. Her voice was bright and the words came quickly. Her smile went even bigger as she said, "I don't think anyone would trust me with spray paint, so you've already got me beat at least."

She could totally get better at painting if she wanted to, but she was way happier learning to make her cute jewelry and modifying cheap clothes and just watching paint mixing videos instead of ruining pieces of paper.

"But anyway," she said, leaning forward and rising up on her toes, "Tell me your cool name! Mine's Sylvite."

This guy had confidence, and didn't seem worried about having a little fun. She liked that.

Indigo_Plateau

 

[Indigo_Plateau]

"The thing with paint is there's not like, an undo button. Whatever you put down is what you're stuck with. You can cover it up, but the materials are still gone, y'know?" And paint was such a heavy art supply. Things blobbed up really easily. 'Cover-ups' could be just as messy and unappealing. Diesel shrugged, anyway. "It's not so bad when you only do the one thing, though. Lots of practice."

He glanced back to the wall, then down to the can in his hand. "I'd trust you with it," he said with a grin as he extended it toward her in offering. "I've got some more, and I don't do the big, fancy graffiti stuff some people can do. I'm not that good. So I wouldn't mind if you just wanted to uh- 'put the paint on the paper,' so to speak."

He beamed at her.

And then there was just the briefest waver of hesitation. An agent would have an agent's name, of course. Sylvite. It was cute. It sounded like a little fairy. He wondered fleetingly if he should give her his 'agent' name instead of his senshi one. It wasn't cute. It wasn't cool. Cervantite. That was what his brother called him. Said it was supposed to make him feel more like he was part of the Negaverse. It didn't. It just made him feel shitty. He wondered if Sylvite preferred those 'agent names.'

But he'd said he had a cool name, and it was one he liked and wanted to tell people. The hesitation lasted a milisecond, no longer than it took for the thoughts to rapid-fire across his mind. "I'm Diesel. Pretty great, right?"

stari_maga

 

[stari_maga]

"Yeah," said Sylvite, nodding. "I mean, I still do lots of artsy stuff. I'm a fashion student. There's still tons you can mess up with like, thread, or jewelry or whatever, but there's usually something you can salvage." She sucked her cheeks in and stared blankly at the wall in front of her. "Also, they almost never turn to gloop."

High school art class had been a time.

Despite the rant she'd been going on about paint, her face still lit up like she'd just been given a kitten for Christmas when he offered her the canister. "Really?" She took it and held it away from herself for a second, turning it over in her fingers. Then her grip tightened. The canister rattled as she shook it up. An almost wicked grin spread across her face at the sound. "Okay," she said.

Sylvite didn't notice his hesitation. She was busy squinting at the wall. She held the paint can in front of her with both hands. Yeah, she could do this. She tapped the trigger, just enough to paint a dot, then lowered the can again.

"I was wrong earlier. I can be trusted. Looks like I'm the master of self restraint now," she said.

She smiled, even though it wasn't gonna last and she knew it. Her fingers were already tapping at the metal, itching for more, and also the wall just looked so empty all the sudden. "Although, bigger is better, right?"

His name was cool. It sounded kinda familiar, like she'd read it in the database or something., but not familiar enough that she remembered all the details. "Diesel? I like it," she said. She glanced down towards his sash thingy, with the orange in it. "You're a senshi, right? Does that mean you're a fire senshi? Or, like, a truck senshi?"

She knew most spheres were a little bit more abstract than trucks, but it would also be really useful to be able to throw a semi at someone.

Indigo_Plateau

 

[Indigo_Plateau]

"A fashion student? What's that about?" Diesel asked with a little head tilt. Even if he still had a handful of months left as a senior, it was definitely getting (or beyond it, even) to be that time where he should probably at least start the process of parceling out what he was going to do with himself after he graduated. He wasn't big into fashion or art- besides the name spraying thing, but that didn't mean he couldn't keep his options open.

He did like weird clothes, hair dye, and bright colors. It wouldn't be that bad to do something with it. And it was probably more interesting than anything his mother could come up with, and she was bound to get worse and worse about harping on him as each day passed.

...It did seem like he'd probably have to have some skill, though, and as Sylvite was about to find out right here and now, he really lacked that with a spray can.

But her complaint about gloop made him give a bright laugh, because he at least didn't have that problem. He flashed her an encouraging thumbs up as the cannister left his fingers.

"Bigger is better," he agreed enthusiastically. "Like, real big. We've got a whole wall here, and no one around to do anything about it." And even if there was, it wasn't like it'd be hard for Diesel and Sylvite to get away. ...Or make something of it, if it came to that. "I've got some other colors," he offered, gesturing to his little stash on the ground next to them. "A shimmery, pearly color, and some neons, and black, if you want. Like, if you're a student, make something extravagant."

There were two of them, so four hands could surely lay down a lot of paint.

Maybe not well, but did it really matter?

"It's combustion," Diesel corrected. "So I can like, make explosions and s**t. They're just little, though, and I can't do very many." But judging what he'd heard from his time with Narcissus, his magic could've been 'make people sad,' and that would have been L-A-M-E. "I'll definitely take it. It suits me." The long, bright hair, the boisterous magic. Yyyyeah. He could get with it. "You got a weapon or something, right? What is it?"

stari_maga

 

[stari_maga]

"Fashion school's fun. Way better than high school, that's for sure. A lot of it's just, like, learning to sew things and to make things, or learning tricks for design and what looks good."

She'd come a long way from when she was fourteen and cutting up and bleaching every free event t-shirt she could get her hands on. Not that she didn't still enjoy a good upcycle project, but she had way more skills and options on just how to upgrade sad clothes, these days.

"Although it's getting to the point now where it's more, like, how to make money with all this. Do you wanna work for corporate or do you wanna try to go indie without Etsy taking all your money? I wanna go indie, personally, 'cause I'm more into the alt stuff, but," she shrugged.

It could be hard to get off the ground, and when she thought about that path, she kinda saw herself ending up working part time retail shifts the rest of her life. Which, that might be worth it if she got to make the stuff she wanted to? It all got complicated.

Not that she was here to worry about that stuff at all. It was break. It was the holidays.

It was time to spray paint this wall.

"Shimmery! I want the shimmery," she said, and basically tossed her current canister to the ground so that she could grab the shinier one out of his hands. With his encouragement, she was quick to shake that one, and then open it, and then, using all of that fashion-school creativity, she spray painted a heart. She added a bigger heart and a smaller heart. They all sat together in a cute little shimmery heart clump.

Maybe it wasn't shockingly creative, but it did make the wall a lot cuter, and she even managed not to get the paint to glob up too much.

"Explosions sound awesome, by the way. I bet you'll get to the bigger ones as you power up more," she said, smiling over at him once her hearts were done. "Like, I used to just have lollipops, which were cute, but now I've got knives that are cute and pointy."

Indigo_Plateau