Bright and beautiful.

Like a meadow of flowers, Port Desedes was full of life. Even more so after the rain. At night, the black pavement came alive with the colors of overheard advertisements reflected onto the storm-slicked streets. Bright and beautiful, sort of like a meadow of flowers, but much more like the serpents that lay below that blooming fauna, fangs bared in silent wait. In nature, predators learned to be wary of anything that shined. Because outside of the city limits, 'beautiful' was synonymous with 'deadly'.

Does that really matter to humans, though?

Obviously not! answered the crowd of fashion reporters just beyond the velvet cordons, each of them itching for last-minute seats into the evening's venue, the esteemed Heritage Museum.

"Fashionably late is still late, isn't it?" mused Asami to no one in particular, brows knit with frustration as she scrutinized the ticking hands of her wristwatch. She let the heavy door of the dressing room come shut behind her, rounding a hallway. The chaos had calmed some after she spoke to a few of the jittery models who would be strutting along the catwalk any minute now. For the majority of the night, she had partaken in an assortment of rudimentary tasks for her seniors, who had taken charge of the fashion show while awaiting the arrival of their overseer, Professor Branwell.

The back halls were empty, save for a few lighting technicians hauling equipment and some other passers-by, mostly communications students attempting to conduct interviews with the backstage crew. There was a sigh of relief to be had for Asami--she had been helpful enough for the evening, and was speed-walking back to the lounge area where she hoped to have a drink before taking her seat. Tactfully, she managed to shirk any more requests that may have been laid upon her, disarming her aggressors with a well-timed smile and tired glance.

The bartender, handsome but far too old for her, pushed her finished drink across the counter. Taking a sip, her eyes pinch shut as bitterness floods her mouth. "Eugh," she hacked under her breath. It didn't taste as good as it sounded on the written menu. Go figure. Obliging another half-assed taste, Asami self-consciously glanced to the side to see if anyone had spied her suppressed, and admittedly childish, gag.

In life, Matthias Van Aarde had been a restless soul. No doubt, he could've finished a marathon without ever setting a single foot on the pavement with the way he ran his mouth. The way things were looking though, that silver tongue would be staying in its holster. After all, it's a fine line to walk when your objective is to be invisible by merit of your own pitiable, repugnant appearance.

His ruddy, golden locks had been key to this particular penetration. He'd spent days flitting his fingers through his follicles, fastidiously fastening extensions in an effort to convincingly discolor his bangs into a grungy peanut butter chocolate cocktail, obscuring his face behind the carefully curated mop. He didn't mind saying that his efforts to disfigure his hair-do made the stylists who'd prettied him up for the billboards downtown look downright incompetent. He was pretty sure he actually saw some of them in the crowd, actually.

Dozens of perfectly posh people had sloshed through the backside of the Heritage Museum, dizzying and disgusting him, taxing his patience. He'd done little more than spinning his wheels, biding his time from the comfort of his sturdy wheelchair. Everywhere he went, the pretty people gave him a wide berth and looked away, turning up his nose as though his disability were either contagious, repugnant, or some combination thereof. That wasn't a surprise, in fact, that was the point, but never before had he so desperately wanted to see an ugly face. If he could just spot the slightest hint of Branwell's garish getup, he'd be elated.

He had no such luck.

Had one of the others gotten to him first? He wondered, as he rolled up to the bar, deciding that the smell of whiskey on his breath could really sell the illusion of being an invisible, burnt out onlooker. As he approached, he noticed a young girl, just as stylish as the rest of them, choking on a shot of something. A surge of empathy flowed through him as he felt her sandpaper throat attempt to hack up the very drink that had dried it out. It was kinda gross.

He suppressed the urge to throw up himself. After all, that would draw attention. After she was recovered from her drink, her eyes took a tour of the vicinity, a portion of the room that unfortunately included him. Their eyes met.

Was the repulsion he felt visible on his face? He stiffened his cheeks just in case, pretending not-to-care even harder than usual. There would be no talk of it so why would it matter? And so he finished rolling up to the bar, in sync with his rolling eyes, before tossing his hair back with a hedonistic hurrah and triple-patting his palm on the bar, making his wishes known: "I'll have a rusty nail if you got one."

There was an elephant in the room. He took up lots of space, indeed, carting around in a wheelchair that clunky and awkward amongst the sensational, stylish footwear that tipped, tapped, and trod under the vaulted ceiling. He was the only person in the lounge, it seemed, to notice Asami's haggard sputtering.

"Hm," nodded the bartender in curt affirmation. His smile was polite, but Asami felt a permeating air of disgust waft from the older man's disposition. It was not a smile, but a mask, and Asami's lessons with her father had taught her well enough to read situations, to read people, before they had ever entered his atelier. Even if she sensed malice, even if she picked up on the most palpable urge to kill:

"You must give all people you meet the benefit of the doubt. Do not just treat them with respect," warned Papa.

Mother finished for him, as she always did. "See these people with a heart of kindness, and you will live long."

People. Asami grimaced, contorting her bolded lips at the thought of her parent's advice. They were being too forgiving in referring to their family's clientele as 'people'. It was fear, not respect or kindness they spoke so highly of, that she felt every time the bell over the door rang in that humble shop.

The Enthralling. With talons stretched so thin over society, yet dug so deep into it, Asami was smarter than to assume that none were there, tonight. Still pensive, she boldly watched the barman place the disabled man's drink on a coaster with arrogant reluctance. He turned on his heel to attend to a sour-looking couple down at the other end of the counter.

With the respect learned from her father, and the kindness inherited from her mother, Asami decided to not overlook the poker-faced stranger. In fact, she bolstered an uplifting smile that took the energy of the room with it. She'd been smiling all day, and the apples of her cheeks were sore, but the gesture remained radiant.

"Rusty nail, huh? They always come up with interesting names for these," she wiggled her glass, tacking on. "Are you here to support anyone in particular?" asked the lively 22-year-old with a twinkle. "Or maybe you're here for the art? The theme for the gala is 'Aposematism'. The seniors were very clever with the wordplay, this year, I think." She'd wanted to be memorable, and hoped her charm would help her stand out.

When the young lady spoke, he felt disarmed, having poured days of labor into looking like someone you wouldn’t have time to talk to. With effort, he unstuck his tongue from the alarmingly dry roof of his mouth and reached for words. He was planning on playing the role of a complete nobody, a disposable extra. He felt his eyeballs roll like pinwheels as his brain buffered and lagged before picking a stock character to impersonate.

“Yeah. I d’know why they call it that, but I’ve been at ‘em since before I could shave. My old man used to tell me that if you wanna get anywhere you gotta toughen up. Mind you, I was a scrawny thing. Y’gotta eat nails for breakfast, he tells me. Then that’s about when ma’ went, so that’s how we toughened up. By now I figure I drank enough of the damn things to be as tough as a whole hardware store. Patroned by a kindly demon in the bottle, we are,” he says, slurring his words a bit to lean into his inner lush.

Seeing the sparkle in her youthful eyes, he felt the muscle under his tongue crouch like it wanted to pounce, to scream get away from me but that didn’t really seem like the right approach. Maybe it’d be in character to lash out but it’d also be a super effective way to get a fuckton of attention and a swift escort off the grounds, maybe even a police escort if he was particularly unlucky, which he figured he was, any time that it actually mattered.

“Gonna be honest with you: I haven’t read a book in fifteen years and I don’t know what that word means. I’m here to look at the pretty girls in pretty colors. Nice,” he paused to cough into his rolled fist, “dress, by the way. But the closest I ever really been to an art show before was the bathroom stall down by the 7-11. To be totally honest with you, I think I should probably just go but maybe a few more nails will keep me here,” he said finishing his drink off before slipping it down the length of the bar like a hockey puck and triple-patting the table to call for another, being as intentionally obnoxious as possible before checking around to see if the professor had arrived. Seeing nothing, he turned his attention back to the girl.

“So how about you? Are you a part of the show or do you just really like museums?”

She hesitantly indulged in another gulp of her drink, face pinched as she clung lightly to the stranger's history. Her drink--a French Connection, as per the menu-- seemed far from it's romantic, sweet, namesake. The bitter spice of brandy tickled her throat, and the art student fidgeted, stalling her drink by sliding it around on the coaster. Twenty bucks is twenty bucks. Asami took another sip.

Perhaps the man wasn't as classy as she had assumed him to be. Yet, Asami maintained her chic composure, and even mustered a laugh at his commentary about convenience store restrooms. "Pretty expensive place to be drinking, don't you think?" she murmured, eyeballing the vaulted ceilings from under her bold eye makeup.

All her life, she'd been adept at reading the feelings of others around her. Her therapist claimed it was a trauma response, and Asami simply went with her word. The bartender: tired, irritated; the man to the other side of her: heartbroken. The disheveled man across from her, however...

She came up empty.

"I'm here for extra credit," she admitted, after bowing her head in acknowledgement of his comment, a silent thank you. Perhaps he had hit on her, but she was entirely used to it. Despite his haggard appearance, she doubted that he'd be capable of anything while stuck in a wheelchair. "I'm not really part of the show, but..." she trailed off, thinking at how she'd spent the last several hours trotting around in her dress. Running errands, finalizing seats. Asami'd even spent a good hour on her knees, holding back the hair of a stranger who had her face buried past the rim of a toilet, the poor girl wracked with anxiety. All for a passing grade, which is what she'd have to settle for in Branwell's cutthroat class.

"The teacher's kind of a hardass," she groaned, teeth grit at the thought of her professor's stubbornness. She twitched the drink coaster along in front of her. "People online tell you that all you gotta do is ask for a little grade bump and most of your teachers'll help you out but," she rolled her eyes, "not this guy. And I've been here since noon taking care of all the little details, hoping maybe he'd take notice but now he's probably off canoodling with Jean-Paul Gaultier and the paparazzi." Her watch angled towards her face, and Asami scrutinized it with narrowed eyes.

"Shit, it's nearly time," she quipped. "Would you like help getting to your seat, Mister, er...?" The young woman tilted her head, her expression softening into a saintly smile.

“Wow. Sounds like the guy must have a real stick up his ass, huh. Probably too preoccupied with his goddamn Indian ink and his Italian leather to get off his high horse and run his own show,” Matthias chortled into his glass, as if expecting it to refill itself.

When she came around to asking if he needed a hand getting to his seat, he felt a beam of pride shine from his eyes. “I appreciate it, I really do, but my seat found its way to me when that school bus hit me,” he looked down, feigning self-pity. “Stupid kid threw his fucking iPod at the bus driver when she told him that devices aren’t allowed. As if I needed another reason to hate children,” he said, throttling his chair’s spokes. “But yeah, I’ll be alright. Have fun getting whatshisfuckface to carry his own dead weight” Matthias chuckled wryly. “Guy sounds like a parasite to me.” Chucking the peace sign with his fingers, he added “Nice meeting you” before setting off on his merry way.

He figured it was time to be a bit more proactive about getting his answers. Rolling down the aisles, he kept a healthy margin between himself and the soulless husks that sat in the audience to his left. Rounding a corner, he spotted a couple rent-a-cops standing in the hallway. Confidently, he rolled right past them, soliciting an inquisitive gaze before one of them—quite reasonably--piped up.

“Excuse me, sir. This area is off limits.”

“Yeah, I know. That’s exactly why I’m here, actually. I already cleared it with the director.” Stamping his thumb into his breast pocket, he pips “Department of Ecology. We’re two months behind schedule on surveying the toxicity of the antique infrastructure. Leftovers from when they used to drink mercury and snort asbestos. They won’t let us take it out since it prints money like hotcakes, so whattaya do? Yeah, anyhow I’m just gonna skid in, swab some tiles, and roll out. Yeah?” The security detail nods something vaguely affirmative, so he answers himself with another, “Yeeaaah” before turning tail and continuing to roll on his way.

If there’s one thing that self-important pricks like Branwell hate, it’s people who aren’t on their knees, he thought as he coasted down the empty halls, slapping his still knees as he blew past a silent auditorium. As he came up a big metal door, he threw his neck back, popped a wheelie and threw it wide open with the fore of his steel toe boot, revealing an intensely practical, generic concrete hallway. The door splashed into the wall and a snap-hiss washed down the way in its wake, soliciting a gasp from around the corner. He’s probably jacking himself off in some closet rehearsing. Unless he’s got somebody for that. Rounding the corner, he stepped off the wheelchair and took the case in hand, zeroing in on the nearby orientation room where he heard the tap-dancing of papers slapping into a briefcase.

“Excuse me, Mr. Branwell,” he says from beyond the door, putting on his best upstanding young man voice. Stepping into the dark room, he asks “Is everything alright?”

“Yesyes, absolutely. I just had some last-minute business to attend to but I suppose it shall have to wait. Oh, look at the time—the processions should’ve begun by now. Would you mind helping me with my case. Seems we’re a bit beyond the point of being fashionably late,” the geriatric gent said, slapping his pockets and tapping his foot as he frisked himself before spotting his walking stick.

“We haven’t even gotten started yet,” Matthias said with a wry smile, slowly shutting the door while peering into the professor’s eyes.

“Young man, you smell like you’re wearing a jacket made from my anus. I’m not interested. Thank you but no thank you. I absolutely must be on my way.”

In an instant, Matthias snatches the cane. The professor takes a knee. The wall flashes scarlet and eyes go wide. Approaching the bastard, Matthias places his foot on his back before stomping the cane’s rubber bottom onto the hind hem of Branwell’s britches. “Well would you look at that!” Matthias grunts through an audible grin. “I just knew you had a stick up your ass.”