Isn't Everyone?

[Dr Adjective]

[Heather Klein rolls into view...]

Rolling off of the streets of outer Vegas and into the parking lot, the wasp-patterned Versys gave more a purr than a roar. As Heather brought the vehicle to a stop close to the baseball diamond a short walk from the school proper, the low growl of the parallel twin's unconventional firing order emitted a distinctive throbbing hum at idle. Sat astride it, the tall blonde leaned to her left just a touch, kicking out the stand before letting her boot touch asphalt. Behind her riding pillion was someone perhaps unexpected, and dressed far less suitably, her arms clutched tightly around Heather's midriff.

Whilst she waited for her passenger to dismount, Heather saw to what she could do without having to move. At the turn of a key, the engine's irregular thrum petered out. Next, her gloves came off, stuffed into her jacket's pockets. With manual dexterity restored, she unclasped the fastener under her chin and removed her helmet. Was the dramatic hair-toss thereafter necessary? Not really. Did it have a chance of drawing a cute girl's attention? Specifically a cute girl whose mind she perhaps-vainly hoped to change on certain topics? Maybe. If anyone else attractive in the vicinity happened to be watching, well, Heather could consider their attention a bonus.

As she twisted in the saddle, Heather hooked her left arm through her helmet, letting it hang from her forearm by the chin-bar. With her right, she unzipped her jacket. She regarded Meggy as the other girl dismounted. Watching Cop Girl do for the first time what she'd come to treat as second nature, anarchy's strongest soldier couldn't quite hold back a little smirk. A little condescending, a little flirtatious, a little dangerous.

"Have fun?"

[SharkyTGirl185]

((Meghan Roberts was right behind…))

Behind the buff Heather, arms around her midsection was the much shorter police girl, who was currently breathing heavily. She dismounted, stumbling back a bit as she began letting off a lower pitch giggle, turning into an excited, adrenaline filled laugh as she unsnapped the fastener and ripped the helmet off, her orange hair coming out over her face and shoulder.

“Oh my god!”

Meggy always enjoys imagining being a cop as a child. Rolling down a desert road, blaring lights as she chased a bank robber in a high speed chase. The thought always gave her a thrill. She didn’t realize how thrilling it was being on an actual motorcycle. She gave a giggle as she balanced herself, feeling a bit light-headed as she walked over to Heather, grinning and pushing her hair back “That was so much fun!”

[Dr Adjective]

After Meggy, Heather too dismounted. Much more gracefully, with the practiced ease of someone who’d done so multiple times a day for over a year. Her passenger looked frankly giddy, grinning and giggling like she’d just won the lottery or something.

There was the slightest stab of melancholy for Heather to think that she’d been that excited once. Now the bike was simply mundane. Transport. The taller girl hung her helmet off the nearby handlebar for a moment, freeing her hands to shrug off her coat, leaving just a sleeveless top underneath. The gun show: in town. Tickets: free.

“Not so bad, am I?”

But the stain of black ink on her shoulder too came into view, the eight-pointed star a bold reminder of the distance between the blue line and the black flag.

“Just don’t get too used to it.”

And she held out her hand expectantly, for her helmet.

[SharkyTGirl185]

Meghan stretched and handed Heather the helmet, placing it at her hands “How long have you had this bike of yours for?”

She asked tilting her head as she took a once over at it again. Meghan still felt the rush of exuberance in her stomach as she blanched herself on the balls of her feet, leaning back and then forward.

[ViolentMedic]

((Finn Cooper continued from Wined and Dined.))

Bringing the car to school was not a good idea. It wasn’t officially Finn’s yet. But today held three key factors. One, he needed the car at night for a race, so he’d already paid Jules off to let him borrow it that day. Two, he’d been in the car when he woke up anyway because he hadn’t wanted to go home last night. Three, it meant that he could take Marcy off school grounds at lunch to eat.

In short, fuck it.

The beat-up Mazda rolled into the parking lot. Made roadworthy with Finn’s attention but still scraped and dented to hell, and the boring white – mostly white, anyway – that it had rolled out of the factory in.

In the driver’s seat, Finn had his hands on the wheel but only one was gripping it properly, while he just pushed down with his palm with the other so that he could hold the half-eaten burger in his hand and take bites whenever the car had been stuck in traffic.

Next to him, Marcy was talking full-speed within bites of her own burger about how they could travel past the Hoover Dam on their way to Mexico. She’d been fixated on Mexico recently. Finn would need to make sure he had spare fuel money tucked away.

As he listened, he leaned forward a little to better scan the parking lot for both parking spots and any unwelcome surprises. He found one. Finn could tell Marcy had noticed the pair too from how her stream of chatter briefly paused.

Heather was one thing. She had more problems with Finn than he had with her. She would fit into the gang if she wasn’t stubborn in as specific a way.

Meghan, though… That omnipresent cop badge shone bright. Even Donal didn’t wear his as much as Meghan did.

Finn didn’t say any words, but his mouth twisted and he let a long breath out through his nose.

He didn’t need to park near them. But he did anyway, pulling into a spot not far from the two before taking another bite of his burger.

As he felt Marcy stir in her seat to lean closer to the open window, Finn lifted the hand still fully on the wheel briefly in something approximating an unenthusiastic wave, though the palm never lifted fully from the wheel.

[Fiori]

"Do you have to pay for admission to visit Hoover Dam? Like, we don't have to take the tour or whatever, but does it cost anything to just-"

((Marcy Valerio continued from Everybody's Looking for Something))

Marcy had been going on like this for several minutes, all the while slowly making her way through a juicy beef burger. The two lovebirds opted to drop by a local drive-thru for lunch, rather than indulge in the usual 'government mandated slop' as Claude loved to put it. Who needs that when they could enjoy some corporate mandated slop instead?

Granted, this was 2025. The line between the two was growing increasingly thin.

ANYWAY, point being she was spending some quality time with her darling Finn. That alone was totally worth the extra calories she was now packing.

"It would-" she continued, finishing off her patty with a final triumphant bite. "-mmf, it would mean a teeny little diversion. Apparently there's a town we'd end up driving through on the way back to the '95, some backwater called kin-"

She stopped midsentence, a peculiar sight causing her face to scrunch up.

"...the fuck?"

Heather's presence alone was more than enough to sour Marcy's mood. They weren't exactly on good terms, to put it mildly. Few things riled Marcy up as easily as some fucking Californian talking smack about her hometown - Vegas might be a trashy piece of shit city, but it was HER trashy piece of shit city damnit!

That animosity only increased tenfold after Heather started accusing her and Finn of being a pair of posers. Getting called a fake was one thing, but calling her beloved a phoney too? That put Heather squarely at the top of Marcy's personal shitlist.

Still, Heather's arrival wasn't the thing that threw Marcy off. That was Meggy of all people with her arms around Heather's midsection, riding in on the back of an ugly-ass piss yellow motorbike. The hell was police girl doing cosying up to a tryhard anarchist like Heather?

It was all so bizarre, Marcy couldn't help but scoff.

"Huh. Talk about taking 'fuck the police' to a whole new level, right?"

Her aside to Finn was a little too loud. Rather intentionally so.

[Dr Adjective]

The situation was becoming, in a word, awkward. Heather was accustomed to being somewhat unsubtle, her ideas easily transmitted with all the bluntness and brute force of a sledgehammer. But if she wanted to convince Meggy to see things her way? If she wanted to make her not be Cop Girl, make her see that policing was only going to kill or corrupt that good heart she had if she wouldn’t change her mind? That’s less simple than just taking an adversarial stance and telling the girl that all cops are bastards. She’d heard it enough times and hadn’t been convinced, she’d been trained by a compliant culture and education system, not to mention a beloved parent, to believe in the ideal.

It wasn’t like Heather didn’t empathise. Even in her utopian future, there would surely be a place for people entrusted with public safety, a place for detectives and upholders of good order, as someone would always find a reason to come into conflict with others. Humans tended to do that. They wouldn’t be cops, but they might be Meghans.

So how did she approach things, if she had to be delicate?

“A little over a year… listen,”

Heather unlocked her top-box again, depositing the spare helmet where she’d found it. From underneath, she retrieved the small stack of fliers. That would be a start, right? Show very directly that they had some common values and goals, it wasn’t just libs that cared about the wildfires, leftoids like her were contributing on the ground and receiving support remotely from their comrades.

“Thought of a way to re…”

She hadn’t much paid attention to the car rolling up and idling nearby. What did she care who was sat behind the wheel? But when Heather overheard a sarcastic turn of phrase she’d otherwise happily echo, loud enough that she was sure she was supposed to hear it? Well. She was supposed to hear it.

The tall blonde’s eyes flicked over to the ratty Mazda. Finn and Marcy. People who thought that to be punk was to dye your hair and act like an obnoxious contrarian. The sort of people who had any positive for empty pop acts like the Sex Pistols or Ramones because they adopted the right scruffy aesthetics, while the Johnnies both Rotten and Ramone openly pushed conservatism.

So she didn’t skip a beat in raising her left arm towards the windshield, middle finger raised.

“You can help me put the rest of these up.”

[SharkyTGirl185]

Meggy also heard the sarcastic comment by the people in the Mazda, though refused to look who was in the car.

Oh, that’s not…

Meghan cleared her throat, trying to stifle away any embarrassment from the comment as she cleared her throat, focusing back at the table at hand. She looked down at the fliers, her eyes wide.

“Oh! Put them around? I’d like that!” She grinned at Heather “Where should we put them?”

[ViolentMedic]

Finn snorted at Marcy’s barbed comment.

“Not a cop. A cop groupie,” he said, stressing out the last word with all the disgust he could muster.

In response to Heather’s raised finger, Finn held a hand to his chest like he was about to faint in shock.

Once he was done, he leaned on Marcy’s shoulder, partially to look closer and see if he could tell what Heather was championing this time. But also as a reassuring weight that would be behind Marcy on however she chose to take being flipped off and ignored.

[Fiori]

Marcy simply smiled, offering Heather a little wave and a flipped bird of her very own.

There was a small part of her that remained skeptical about the peculiar pairing. Granted, Marcy's gaydar was infamously terrible - it wasn't until months after the fact that she realised Clarissa and Meggy were a thing for a while - so if she of all people could see the sparks, there had to be SOMETHING going on.

"I mean, I guess it makes sense when you think about it..." she continued, turning away from the odd couple to focus on her Finn.

"Like... Look at her! She's an aryan superwoman! Die ubermensch! No wonder all the fascists wanna bang her..."

Again, a little too loud. Not entirely intentional this time, but Marcy didn't really do quiet.

[Dr Adjective]

“Notice boards, library, wherever people might see one?”

Heather shrugged. She didn’t expect a lot of success, but the point was at least partially to be seen trying, too. Maybe people would donate, maybe they wouldn’t, but they’d see that mutual aid orgs were a real thing doing real work too. Still, she had to live in hope, giving in to the assumed inevitability of failure, the pervasive despair that loomed large over the Canon administration… that’s exactly what ghouls like the new president wanted. So fuck that. To the daring belongs the future.

As she went to continue, more heckling from the cheap seats reached Heather’s ears. So instead she deposited the whole stack in Meggy’s waiting grasp and, with her hands freed, finally shrugged off her motorcycle jacket. Beneath, a somewhat tight sleeveless top and a surfeit of muscle.

“Marcia, please, I’m flattered.”

The so-called Aryan übermensch turned her full attention to the car, enunciating good and clear.

“If you wanna fuck that badly, just ask me out, okay?”

[SharkyTGirl185]

Meghan grunted as she stepped back, holding the stack of papers in her hands as she lifted them up a bit.

Another taunting jeer. This one annoyed Meghan. Not just for the fascist comment, she can take the insults. But she doesn't like people harassing others. Regardless of the person being bullied could ABSOLUTELY take care of themselves. It was the principal of the matter.

She took a deep breath as she placed the stack gently on the hood of a nearby car, taking one off the pile. She took a breath, giggling at Heather's comment as she promptly turned, boldly walked to the Mazda, and lifted up the windshield wiper, sticking the paper under it.

"Spread the word!" She gives a jaunty grin at the two, tapping the hood on the Mazda as she turned on he heels again and walked back to grab the stack of papers.

[ViolentMedic]

Finn’s mouth twisted a little, then he tilted his head as he shrugged once in a ‘well, I didn’t want to say it, but--’ way.

He sat up a little straighter when Heather took off her jacket. As anyone with eyes would. She would be fun to fight. Based on mass alone, Finn would definitely lose. But it would be fun.

As Meghan lifted the windshield, Finn jammed his finger against the wiper button to jettison the flier she was tucking there off his car. He wished he’d been fast enough to catch Meghan’s fingers with it.

Then he leaned back on Marcy again, perhaps with a hint more pressure than last time after Heather’s comment, staring both Heather and the cop down.

[Fiori]

There was an incredulous smirk on Marcy's face when Heather removed her jacket. Pff, was she supposed to feel intimidated or something? OOooh, I'm Heather, look at me! Check out my bulging müscles! I'm an anarchist, y'know? Can't you tell by all my tats? Totally not gonna regret getting 'em done twenty years from now when I grow up to become a republican soccer mom!

Anarchism. Marcy had heard plenty about it from all the time she's spent with Beelz. Truth be told, it was an ideology that almost resonated with her. Almost. She'd never say this in front of Beelie, but at the end of the day she felt the same way about it that she did about all political movements: Total horseshit, doomed to fail like the rest.

Buuut, she was way too sober to start THAT particular rant.

For now, it was her turn to place her hand against her chest, feigning a swoon as she draped herself back against her boyfriend's chest.

"ALAS... Afraid I'm already spoken for" she teases, before turning her head to give Finn a smooch on the cheek. "Not really my type, anyway~"

[Dr Adjective]

Watching the flier flip up into the dry air and flutter back down with the mildest of interest, Heather gave a little hmph and draped her jacket across the seat of her bike. It would go in her locker eventually, but for now, other priorities. Nobody would be stupid enough to steal it from right in front of her anyway. Shame about the flier, but Meggy’s idea had been pretty clever at least. Pretty funny.

Heather’d had a few years to learn this game by now, how to strike someone back without literally striking them. Plenty of time verbally sparring online and off, inside her imagination and out. She liked to think she’d gotten good at it. If they strike once, then you just hit ‘em twice as hard. So over she sauntered to Finn and Marcy for the parting blows. She came up upon the window, crouching down a little to equalise the relative heights. She was reasonably sure the terminally online kids called doing this deliberately “mogging”.

“Probably shouldn’t flirt right in front of him then, he’ll feel inadequate.”

Heather gave the smuggest, most punchable smirk she could muster. And a sarcastic little wave.

“Hi Finn.”