Felixentric

Scene 6: Painting. Violently.

Where would Felix have gotten a newspaper? He took a more timid stance at this, folding his arms over his vital organs and crossing his eyebrows at Hen.

"Oh, come on!" Hen threw his hands up and barked, "Are you telling me you've haven't heard of my upcoming superteam? It's only for the most useful and powerful of Jupiter supers! Ughkkk." He took a deep breath, as if to ease himself off his invisible pedestal. "Now I look quite stupid, don't I? I didn't think I'd have to explain why you'd want to join; I thought you just would know and be wishing for this day that I ask you to come along. Silly me; I already knew you don't know much at all about anything."

Felix grit his teeth. "Is there a point to this?"

"Fine, fine!" Hen was throw his hands in every which way at this point. He really was a gesture-driven creature. Kind of like a clown, except for the talons and tattoos and sharp teeth. He was just as jolly, though. Finally, he stopped waving his arms and folded his hands neatly into a triangle to point at Felix, like a businessman of sorts. "Thing is, if you help us, we'll help you. You want to suck the soul out of everyone in this place, right?"

"How did you-."

"There will be six people in the group. Joining will make your journey six times more productive."

"You'll help save them?" He couldn't breathe at the thought.

"We'll help each other." And then, without waiting for the rest of the conversation, Hen started walking away.

Felix ran up without unfolding his arms. "Where are you going?"

"Well, you have to do the interview first, silly."

Finally, he took his arms away and threw them out in an exasperated gesture. "I didn't agree, yet!"

"Why wouldn't you? We're providing an easy way for you to complete your life's work."

Felix still wasn't sure what that "easy way" referred to. Whatever it was, he was sure it wasn't going to be easy at all. To get there, he'd have to cross the city limits, which wasn't something that made him anxious to the point of a panic attack, but it haunted him.

There would be real, adult humans over in their own habitat, not in Felix's. He shuddered.

Hen had his eyes on Felix. "Unless you did have a reason..."

But what did Felix expect would happen as he got older? There would be a time one day when there would only be so many people left in Jupiter and, by then, they would be smart enough not to enter the forest. He would have to go into the city to catch them, anyway.

"No," Felix said. "There's no reason. What's the plan?"

+++

When Hen had said they were going into a public place for the mission, Felix had imagined it would be a little more public. But after he hit his head on a rack in one of the museum's janitorial closets and blanched in pain, well, expectations weren't anything to live by.

On his way out of the closet, he rolled a wheeled cart, pyramided high with giant buckets of paint that he'd been told to choose like "gems in a room of treasure." It would be great to have them all, but he could only fit so many on the rickety, metal platform. He came out with light green, a moss green, a dark blue, and a blood red, plus a handful of thick thistled brushes, a hand rag, a sponge, and a carafe filled with what smelled like dish soap.

Hen had supplied the shelf of thirty different colors to choose from. He said something along the lines of, "It's important for you to decide your own colors in this creative process." Of course, Felix didn't object, despite the obviousness that his small frame would make it hard to transport the cart all the way across a few of the long hallways.