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Perrie was high as balls tonight, and determined to stay that way. He was good at maintaining a high, waiting until he could feel himself coming down before reloading by eating another magic mushroom sandwich. He'd already had two tonight, and was carrying a third in his pocket, and by this point he couldn't feel anything. This made him very happy, as it had been a weird few days. First he had powered up as Sailor Parsifal for the first time since the wreck, then he had met his very first Negaverse agent, and then he had met a Negaverse General who had pink hair. He'd sort of fought the first guy, but he talked and hung out with the General and that was fun! Mostly. He had to remember that these Negaverse people were out to hurt others and steal their energy and sometimes their starseeds.

But this wasn't the time to think about that. This was the time to think about colors!

There wasn't anyone else out in the Arts District tonight, so Perrie had the street to himself, watching the prismatic halos around the street lamps change and pulse along with his heartbeat, and he played with them with his hands, the multicolored contrails coming off his fingers interacting with the halos and making all sorts of patterns and colors that don't exist in nature. He leaned against the wall of an apartment building and looked at the lights and flowering plants, how intense everything looked, how fun and dazzling.

He knew it wasn't safe, being out at night, what with youma wandering the streets and Negaverse agents trying to steal your soul. But at the moment, Perrie didn't care.

Momentarily startled by the voice out of nowhere, Perrie looked around until he spotted the young man coming toward him. He burst into a grin and a light laugh. "Mostly broken," he replied happily. "Why, are you broken too?"

The pink-haired young man pushed himself off the wall and straightened as best as he could. Tilting his head, he sized up the other, not much taller than he was and young-looking too, except for the expression on his face, which was weary beyond his apparent years. "I like your coat a lot. Super fancy. And your boots." As high as he was, the colors of the youth's coat looked rich and jewel-like, glowing and moving with a life of their own, almost like a banked fire.

Gravity got the better of Perrie, though, and he leaned back against the wall, slowly sinking to the pavement still wearing the grin. He waved a finger in a spiral-ish pattern in front of his face and watched the rainbow trails it left behind. "Sorry, I'm just really high…"

"Whoa, you really are on fire," Perrie said as he stared at the guttering flame in the guy's body. Somewhere in the back of his mind, a warning beacon went off -- this might be a Negaverse guy, or even a youma-monster -- but he was too high to really do anything about it without endangering himself further. For a moment he wished he'd come down a bit, thought about it, and forced his mind to try to focus.

"Woah, wait, hold up a minute. Before you start taking my energy, which I would give you freely," he said, waving his hand as he struggled to his feet, "I got something for you. Hold up." Reaching into his front pocket, he carefully removed a clingfilm-wrapped sandwich and held it out to the man. "This is the s**t," Perrie half-whispered. "The good s**t. These are primo finest kind -- they're what got me staring at the colors around the streetlamp. Better than acid."

Holding one hand up, he pushed the sandwich at the stranger's hand. "Go on, take it. I'm already too ******** high… I don't need to dose any more tonight." He looked at the eyes of the guy, as he steadied himself against the wall, his own eyes dilated beyond all need even in the dark of night.

Perrie grinned at the strange man. "It's got honey and butter on it so it doesn't taste like you're eating dirt--" He stopped and stared as the man opened a grate on his abdomen and tossed the small sandwich inside. "Whoa," he breathed, "that's… kinda cool. Weird and cool and creepy at the same time." That was one way to not taste the mushrooms. Thinking this might still be a hallucination, he waited for the iron door to clank shut -- which it dutifully did, with a surprisingly solid clank -- and shuddered slightly. He hoped the shrooms had the same effect ingested that way instead of the more traditional way.

Still, with the threat of not waking up after the man was done with him hanging over his pink head, Perrie put on a brave, if stoned, face. "That s**t'll get you there, trust me," he nodded vigorously, which made him dizzy enough to lean against the wall. "It's had me going all night. Of course, I was re-dosing whenever I felt myself coming down -- I think this last time, though, I overdid it." He could feel the effects of the last sandwich piece starting to wear off; his efforts to maintain a clear head were paying off.

"You should start to feel it in about fifteen minutes or so -- well, maybe quicker since you, um, didn't have to ah, eat it."

"There's a guy here in the Arts District who throws like raves, except he calls them 'Happy Hippie Parties' cause the music is all like jam-band and s**t. I think he grows the mushies himself, cause they're real potent. Shrooms are usually what's going down, but sometimes E and Special K and of course THC and acid. Super chill atmosphere." Perrie felt kind of guilty for spilling his source like this, since Bud (haha Bud) specifically requested that things be kept low-key as far as spreading the word, but this was a unique situation. Kind of life and death.

Perrie again nodded vigorously, this time without getting quite so dizzy. "Oh <******** yeah I'm gonna remember this. I always remember everything that goes on when I'm high. Been doing shrooms since my first and last year of high school, so I've gotten really good at remembering." Besides, he thought, who could forget meeting a guy with a furnace in his gut?

"You gotta promise me though that you won't tell the cops, okay? Please? And don't tell Bud -- haha Bud -- who told you, okay?" Perrie gave the man his best puppyface -- not that he really thought it would do any good, but it never hurt to try.

Perrie's eyes went wide? "My ID? Um yeah, sure, hang on." He rifled through the many pockets of his second-hand raver pants until he found his wallet, then opened it up and held it out to the stranger. "See, I'd be legal if mushrooms were legal here, which we're working on! But it hasn't happened yet…" His ID sat next to his jockey's ID for work, but he didn't consider that letting this man know where he worked was a grade A Bad Idea; he didn't even remember it was there, he was so used to just flipping his wallet open out of habit when he reported to the racetrack; everyone knew him already, so they rarely checked it.

"Wait, you -- want me to not remember? I can do that too! Like this whole thing never happened. I'll wipe it from my memory, chalk it up to a weird trip. Which won't be hard, it HAS been a really ********' weird trip…" He was babbling now, more out of nerves than for any other reason, the effect of his last little shroom sandwich fading. There was still enough in his system, though, that he could still see the rainbow prismatics around the streetlight -- barely, but he could still see them.

"You feeling anything yet? I promise they're really potent…" He prayed they had an effect on the man, or he figured he might be toast.

Oh no, though Perrie, this is it… He watched with horrified fascination as a malignant violet orb formed in the strange fiery man's hand, the last vestiges of the mushrooms making it seem to be alive. Or maybe it wasn't the mushrooms; it seemed to pulse and swirl with his pounding heartbeat.

"Izzat… is that me?" he asked, feeling the answer to his question in his weakening body. Perrie slowly leaned against the wall again, sliding down as he felt his legs begin to give out beneath him. He knew the man was taking energy from him, like he'd said he was going to -- question was, how much would he take? Head spinning, he allowed himself to slump on the pavement, resting against the wall, watching his life force being drained from him. It was a weird sensation, and not a pleasant one. He looked up one last time at the prismatics around the street lamp, watching them fade away to nothing. "Bye, pretty colors," he mumbled softly, feeling his eyelids grow heavy. "See you on the other side, I hope…"

And with that, Perrie closed his eyes and went limp.