an short interlude from the everyday
As the rain fall down the Earth, Cope watched their visage wash away under the torrent, lightning flashing the city.
"Just. Beautiful." The violent yellow bands raced along their arms, fully visible to the world at large. Nothing they can do about that now, because some fucker stole their damn hoodie! "Awesome!" Fishing around in their pocket, Cope smiled to themself as they dug out their cigarettes. "This is the best fuckin' day ever!"
"Language." A stern voice scolded. Whipping around, Cope saw a short child standing in front a makeshift stand full of handmade charms and bracelets and other ugly trinkets only a child could make. Their face dropped, but not their grin.
"Sorry, didn't realize the LDPD gave a shit about swearing~" Sticking their tongue out might've been childish but they were talking to a child. Matching energies! Wasn't that what they always said to do?
"I'm not a cop." She said, monotone and flat as a calm pond in the winter.
"Could've fooled me."
"I'm ten."
"And I'm apparently nineteen, so what?" With the rain falling, the cigarette stood no real chance of being lit. But it still filled a space in their mind, helped to shake off that old visage of a hapless failure. Dumped. Clothes stolen. Caught in a storm. Not much different from themselves really...
"You changed." Confused eyes took them in, and it was less of a question than it was a statement. But, that was what happened when rain could ruin all your plans. The paper even said bright skies, all day!
"It's called being boosted." It was the West Coast, boosts felt like a dime of dozen at times. It couldn't be the first one the girl ever saw. Cope walked closer to the stand, looking at the trinkets. The new closeness didn't improve the quality any, and the girl didn't move at inch either. Her black hair hang straight as a tarmac road stretching into the desert.
"What's with your tattoos?" Her nose scrunched up in her curiosity.
"Just the remains of a terribly misspent youth." With a wide smile, they held out their arms to show off the tattoos more. 'Treat them as mundane and people will follow suit.' It was the first thing they learned after escaping: nobody ever gave a damn about the tattoos because nobody gave a damn about re-genes to begin with.
"Dad had tattoos like that." She said, turning her attention back to Cope's face.
"Like mine?" But her eyes just rolled, made more cutting under another flash of lightning. There were probably a string of thoughts flickering around, mocking their intelligence.
Mirs would've been able to tell.
"No." Slow, deliberate, definitely mocking. "His were black, and real pictures too." What a little shit. "But he got them done in his youth too, and didn't like people seeing them."
"Yeah, it happens." Sometimes the past was more trouble than it was worth, life too. Cope didn't get why anyone would want this, dream of it. It was dreary, annoying, too many conflicting rules to truly manage. They snooped over the charms and trinkets again. Trite garbage. Not worth anything, let alone someone's time and money.
Still, their eyes caught a orange beaded bracelet with a skull in the middle and refused to leave it. Of course.
"How much?" They pointed, looking up at girl.
"It doesn't go with your hair." A bark of a laughter left their chest, loud and uncharming.
"Don't I fuckin' know it~" Stupid. It had been years since they pushed Mirs down that laundry shaft, years spent thinking they died in the Mojave. Until— "I still want it."
"Why?"
"Why? Aren't you running a business? Just shut up and take my money, you'll be more successful." Moving to a better side of town would help too, but that's all the free advice she'd get from them.
"This is not a business." She glared, frowning. "This is a shop of dreams."
Another bark of laugh left their lips. "Sorry, just that sounds..." Honest? Earnest? Naive? She still looked horribly unimpressed but that didn't take away from the complete sincerity in those eyes. Years collapsed in on themselves, and Cope found themselves staring at another unimpressed but blindly naive and optimistic fool. "Stupid. You can't eat dreams."
"I disagree." She said, mirrored against another. Long hair, both of them. One real and straight, the other fake and mismatched. Brown was never their color.
Cope didn't bother saying anything in return. You couldn't fight naive stupidity, they knew that much. They could tried before, and if this girl was anything like Mirs, she'd die after throwing herself out of a window trying a help a city that never gave a damn.
Never volunteer for anything. It was the Golden Rule. Cope didn't knew why they made such a habit of disobeying it. Just to see the world? Be apart of it? Cope didn't know.
The orange beads sang out to them again.
"I had a friend once, from work. That was their favorite color." They offered, a memory for a shop of a dreams. "They were an idiot, naive as fuck, but..." They didn't know. Bright? Unrelenting? Impossible to comprehend? There were rules. Follow them, and you wouldn't be recycled. It was the best life any of them could hope for.
Still, Mirs wanted more.
"They thought the world was beautiful, despite all the scars. I want to see that world, at least once." It was why they left, seeing a chance and running blind into the desert. The idea that maybe there was something worth leaving Hell for, worth dying for, worth leaving Hell for again. Despite everything.
But Cope just couldn't see it. The world was rotten, from its core to its rind.
"What's your name?"
"Copacetic Morrow." Stupid joke, asked them for a word and they said copacetic with a laugh. Joking. Ill-fitting in every sense, but they kept it nevertheless. You just don't toss away gifts.
The girl frowned to herself, rocking her head from side to side. And then, she grabbed the bracelet and placed it into a small gift bag. "For you, Copacetic Morrow." Deadpan. Unimpressed. Brimming with too much hope for this drowned street-way.
"Thank you." They wasted no time slipping it onto their wrist, the skull grinning bright at them. "Your business still sucks."
"It's not a business!" Huffed up like a peacock, just like Mirs. It was so easy.
"Shop of Dreams~" They laughed, flourishing out their arms in a jest. "May your days be as fulfilling as the last." A quick salute, and they turned on their heel to leave.
"You should talk to your friend again." The girl called out, stopping Cope's steps. Sadly, the dead didn't talk, at least not with their boost. No point in dwelling on those thoughts. Flipping her bird over their shoulder, Cope continued on their way home.
The rain still fell in sheets, making it useless to pull out another visage. Stick the original for the time being. And thankfully, the orange beads caught their eyes more the obnoxious yellow bands did.
Maybe it would for others too, heh. Cope smiled to themself, watching the lights of Los Diablos twinkle across the city. Shots rung out over the rain along with sirens, a cacophonous choir of the world's rot.
'Eh. Still better than the Farm.' They got that much of the appeal at least.
===
Welcome to an Interlude! I fucked up the number of weeks in May, so Copacetic is here early (sorry not sorry)~
You may remember them as the lying boyfriend (they weren't, technically speaking), or forgetting they had no money (money is still weird), or for getting their hoodie stolen (fuck you Daed). It's been a day, so to speak.
Cope is a cuckoo on the run, trying to find some sense of joy in the world. The on the run part is helped by their boost, shapeshifting! It's both solid and fragile as fuck at the same time. There's not really any restrictions to their shapeshifting outside of 'just vaguely human' and it requires no concentration or focus. Sleep and getting knocked out won't reset their visage, so they'd be great for deep undercover work. Except water will reset them back to baseline damn near instantly, and rain is tragically unpredictable at times.
I do imagine the Farm tried to see if Cope could build a tolerance to water but it never did much besides increased anxieties at times. Not around rain though. Rain is good, rain just means no work for a spell~
Unless Cope has a reason to keep a specific visage, they do prefer changing things up on the regular. They don't really feel like they have a true self. There's the baseline one, but that's just that. They don't feel any different when they changed looks (outside of the weird naturalness of the gesture itself). They especially like playing around ages, getting to be a kid they were never allowed to be or someone elderly with a face of wrinkles and well-worn laugh lines and crows feet~ It's interesting to see how people treat others of their kind, especially the type of people the Farm never really allowed them to be.
Cope also was kinda Vendetta's one maybe friend from nir farm days? Friend might be too strong a word? God, they really couldn't get along in any other setting. The grounded realist who can't see any worthwhile versus the eternal dreamer in love with the world, but trauma and isolation is a weird combo sometimes.
Other Random Facts!
» Aggressively unparanoid, lol. They know how much people are willing to look away in favor of mundane reasons or for not rocking the boat. They don't show off their tattoos everyday but they don't panic if they're seen. Panic just makes things worse~
» Hasn't found much that excites them 'in the real world' yet, but they do love going to fancy cafe with baristas and seeing how they make coffee~ The drawings in the milk shit are so stupid, but cute. They like~ <3
» Very sardonic, and enjoys they can let that flag fly nowadays. Most people don't love that side of their personality though (go figure), so Cope puts on a dopey Stepford Smiler face a lot. And they hate it~ :D
» 'Copacetic Morrow' as a name is just a bit of a joke and a bit of a a promise. Cope really wants to find something something worthwhile in this world, and that requires waking up and seeing each new day with an open mind. Semi-open? Sort-of open? Look, they're up and seeing shit. That's gotta be good enough.
» Ran away roughly around the same time as Shroud and Arde did, weird that!
» If they had some type of TBR, I think they could expand the shapeshifting to non-human entities and creatures. But a) it's not like Cope could communicate with said creatures/entities and b) this is Cope. Cope is not interested in stretching themself any more than they have to. No. Go away. That's dumb.