Streetlight rave!
--
It is telling that Daisy did not have to go to any particular trouble to find a hazard-orange jumpsuit. There was one stuffed in the bottom drawer of her dresser. The hard hat, though, was an expense, and the goggles nearly cleaned out Keene's credit card, which, as Daisy found out recently, is actually taken out in Hiro's name.
All things form a perfect circle, if viewed at a certain resolution. As above, so below.
Digressions aside, Daisy herself, carrying a toolbox under one arm and looking perfectly conspicuous, is wasted out of her mind. The urban jungle is a real 'urban jungle'. Quetzals fly overhead. Peccaries dart and squeak underfoot. Bankers seen out of the corner of her eye sport jutting penis-gourds.
Hiro does not look particularly 'better' in a canvas proletarian's uniform. The hard-hat -- off-white and stamped with a faded municipal seal -- doesn't do much for him, either. He looks, really, like an overweight city technician ... which is the entire point.
Carrying a satchel made of the same rough material as his overalls, Hiro enters the financial district on foot: joining the throngs of workers milling about during their lunch break. His own eyes are concealed behind opaque Unibomber shades -- a measure to conceal his own condition, evidenced by his dime-sized pupils. The shiteating grin, however, is more difficult to obfuscate.
Disguise is not Daisy's strong suit. Disguise is especially not Daisy's strong suit when amped to the gills on any number of high-grade disassociatives, entactogens, and stimulants. The best that can be said for her disguise -- which, to her credit, manages to resemble in most details an anonymous proletarian -- is that any passers-by will describe her eyes as being entirely black, when in fact they are brght blue.
This cunning adaptation is achieved by swallowing a palmful of pills of various description, and could likely not be accomplished again.
Daisy's box contains exactly three things, in fore-to-aft order: a portable speaker (left), one (1) Walkman containing a mix tape courtesy of Hiro, and a portable speaker (right). The latter bears a Ramones sticker, which is the sum total of Daisy's contribution to this idea.
Proferrs
Shoulder to shoulder with the neverending stream of salary men, Hiro does not jostle through the crowd: he moves with the casual, bored demeanor of a working man. This is because he is concentrating, largely, on walking in a straight line: moving any faster than 'sluggish' would require more willpower than he currently posesses.
A cop car rolls past: thankfully, he doesn't even notice.
Coming to a stop at the primary intersection, Pigboy weasels his way out of the crowd of people waiting for the crosswalk signal to change; swerving towards the olive-drab traffic control box. He pauses to stare blankly at the archeologic strata of stickers and tags: retrieving a cigarette from behind his ear, and lighting it with a quick flash of a bic lighter.
Daisy and Hiro are not in the same place.
Daisy is in a primordial wilderness. Concrete totems rise up around her. The man in front of her is a duck-billed lumbering thing, and she does double-dutch over his swinging tail to avoid it. Needle-nosed pliers twist, warp, and deform in her hand, and eventually disappear entirely if not held in her peripheral vision. She has not dropped them, but their reality is, regardless, uncertain.
Coming from the other direction, she stumbles up to Hiro. Her mouth is simultaneously dry and sticky, and the air tastes like cheap salsa. Her greeting comes out as a torrent of disconnected syllables that tumble over each other in their rush toward fresh air.
" 59 6F 75 61 69 69 67 68 74, 44 61 7A 65?" Hiro's lips move soundlessly against the backdrop of urban noise: a dry buzzing serving as audial backdrop to a side-vision scroll of nuclear green HEX. Subjectively.
To the rest of the street, Pigboy drags on his cigarette, uttering a perfunct query as to Daisy's well-being. He looks back over his shoulder with the inquiry, his cigarette's cherry glowing rough textured sandpaper.
The problem, Daisy realizes, is the goddamn goggles, which are covering her eyes. This is keeping her from hearing Hiro correctly. Pushing them up on her forehead, she realizes why she put them down: her pupils are black holes that have completely swallowed her irises.
Wordlessly, she holds the needle-nosed pliers at arm's length. Twisting her wrist gives the pliers enough angular momentum to be noticeable by her still barely-functional peripheral vision. Having confirmed that they still exist, she turns back toward you.
" This is going to fucking kick ass," she claims.
" I think I'm wearing Keene's shoes," Hiro responds, staring down at the black penny-loafers that have supplanted his usual footware. He hits his cigarette again, exhaling in twinned streams from his nostrils. A sharp sniff, and he holds a gloved -- swaddled might be a better term, considering that the only gloves he could find were a size and a half too large -- hand out. "The inshtrumehnt, Mish Moneypennah."
Daisy lowers her goggles. This turns the world a uniform, monochrome shade of green; reduces its complexity; makes it much easier to see. Spinning the pliers around her finger like a gunslinger, she proffers it, tip-first, to Hiro.
" Quickly, boy," she murmurs. "There's not much time."
The bolt on these boxes is a complex affair -- requiring a specific tool engineered for the purpose of opening telco and traffic control switches. Unfortunately, the engineers never foresaw the might of a pair of Stanley stainless steel electrical pliers with ridged polyurethane grip - (c) 2007, patent pending.
Hiro bows his head to accept the pliers two-handed, cigarette dangling from his lip. The pliers fit neatly around the edges of the recessed bolt, twist, and the case pops open with a muffled click. 'Holstering' the pliers in a hip pocket, he bends to unzip his knapsack; back to the crowd, cabinet open just enough for his torso to block.
" Their defenses are no match for our iron crane technique," he drones, cigarette tilting upwards as he inhales: tip again flaring to life.
Pobble stomps along the road, looking a wee bit unhappy at something. His flashy new dress flicking about his legs in the breeze. He drags a cardboard box close behind him - it being attached to his arm by a sturdy peice of string, and apparently supported by a skateboard. Still, its slow going, what with the people and the unweildy nature of the box.
Contrary to her description, Daisy is dressed in a hazard-orange jumpsuit, canary yellow hard hat, electric blue nailpolish, and nuclear green goggles. She calls this a 'disguise'. She presumably hopes to blind anyone who doubts her questionable credentials as a line worker.
She takes up a lookout position. This largely involves her sitting on her toolbox and smoking a cigarette, nervously working her fingernails into the heels of her hands.
A few people walking down the street pause to look at the strange pair, but they are trained by life to avoid strangeness, so they wander by.
Luck would have it that Pobble happens to be on the same side of the street as the daring duo. Either their disguises are too elaborate however, or he's too engrossed in personal thoughts to recognize them. The latter is suggested by the stamping of the boots against the sidewalk.
The box wobbles on its wheeled perch, bumping up as it hits uneven ground but settling out once more.
The device -- a patchwork amalgam of electronics -- is lovingly removed from the knapsack, and Hiro sets into fitting alligator clips against contacts: snapping them into place around the metal studs of individual lights' controls. He hits the power test on the timer, the cheap LCD flashing 88:88:88, 00:00:00, 00:15:00; thumbs on the drum-kit to set it to 'breakbeat', then 180 BPM. His cigarette waggles back and forth as he works, ash scattering across the front of his jumpsuit.
Daisy Inscrutable and Pigboy leap into action.
As Hiro wires together his Frankenstein of capacitors and consumer electronics, the young punk girl flips open her case. Two (2) gloves. One (2) cans of spraypaint, red. One (1) portable stereo. The gloves go on her hands. The spraypaint goes in her hands. The stereo, on the other hand, goes in the nearby trash.
There are exactly fifteen minutes of dead air on Hiro's mix tape. Then: street rave.
Flash. 88:88:88. 00:14:59..58..57--
--Hiro fixes the device in place with a strip of jagged, hastily ripped duct tape, taking pause to look back over his shoulder again. No truncheons aimed at his cranium? Good. A glance down at his wristwatch, then up to the flashing LCD display: he synchronizes, then slams the cabinet hastily shut.
" Sound system, Ms. Inscrutable." He loops a hand around the strap of his knapsack, shouldering it, and flashes a V-for-victory high-sign in Pobble's direction.
" We got ten. Let's get a big mac," he invites, eyeing the streetcorner McDonalds.
The bedressed man quirks a brow at the neon street worker. Slowing his walk as if trying to place the fellow. The momentum of the box on wheels behind him causes it to bang into his legs, and he spins about. This makes him yank the string which pulls the box off the cart. Someone says 'Ow.' in a London accent, and with string wrapped about his legs Pobble trips onto the skateboard and finds himself heading into the wall, face first.
" Ow." Is reiterated.
With a single smooth motion, Daisy drops to her knees and slams the junction box closed with her elbows. She swings both arms around in symmetrical arcs, then adds two, slightly more jerky arcs, in the middle. A short, sharp slash follows.
Red spraypaint stains grey sidewalk. It's a symbol everybody understands: a hex nut surrounded by a circle. A slash through the circle.
NO HEX NUTS, it reads, and then Daisy's signature: DI.
Exit, stage McDonalds.
-- Purchase: One Big Mac with cheese.
-- Purchase: One bathroom token.
-- Loss: One hazard-orange jumpsuit, stuffed into the toilet tank.
Hiro is gone for some three to five minutes.
Daisy exeunt.
-- Purchase: two cheeseburger meal.
-- Purchase: one bathroom token (womens).
-- Loss: one hazard-orange jumpsuit, stuffed in the toilet tank.
-- Loss: one pair goggles (expensive). Likewise in the toilet tank.
-- Loss: two cans spraypaint, two gloves. Not in the toilet tank; rather, in the
trash with the sound system.
Total cost? Fifty-five dollars.
Outside McDonalds, Hiro emerges with a hand-held camcorder; flipping the viewscreen open, and thumbing throught the options menu. "Pobs," he calls, blinking repeatedly in the impromptu drag queen's direction -- he crosses the sidewalk to thump the Brit in the shoulder with a fist, grinning like a lunatic. The Unibomber shades are gone, and his pupils have the rough appearance of twin black holes. "Call us a cab, m'man. We got an appointment - anywhere but here."
Pobble points along the street, "I'm parked just nearby as it goes mate. Was just out dress shopping." He takes hold of the edges of his dress with each hand to show off the fine appareil.
The box must've been nocked by something since it topples back to being right way up. The brit picks it up and places it back on the skateboard. "This way.." he murmers, bringing a hand up to dab at his bloody face.
Following shortly behind is Daisy, who, in the interest of disguising herself as 'not a line worker', has painted her lips anoxic blue, her face death-white, and her eyelids bruise-black. This does not prevent her acne scars from showing through.
" Let's roll, kids," she mutters.
Sure enough, just around the corner is the big huge fat fucking Pobble-hair blue Hummer v2. The transvestite cockney digs some keys out of somewhere and pops the locks ready. It flashes its lights, like a beast awakening from slumber.
Snagging the passenger-side door, Hiro hauls himself up into the industrial-grade hooptie, still fiddling with the camcorder. The door thunks solidly shut, and he looks up; waiting for Daisy and Pobble to clamber on board.
" Park't at the corner, Pobs," he requests. "I wanna get this shit on tape."