Meowtopia #1: Prisma's Quest Begins

Chapter 4

Prisma was almost done unpacking her suitcase when she noticed something lying around under her bed. She bent down to pick it up. It was a photo. Prisma immediately recognized one of the cats: It was the blue one she had met before when she had just entered the art school. She smiled happily into the camera. Next to her was another cat who was laughing. She had light pink fur, long, green and yellow hair and wore a white skirt with pink and blue flowers on it and a light gray top.

"Hmm... what could a photo like that be doing here?", Prisma asked herself, surprised and confused. "Maybe one of them is my roommate... Okay, let's hope it's not the blue one", she said, remembering what had happened about twenty minutes ago in the lobby. She was still kinda upset about the others making fun of her, even though she knew that they probably didn't mean to upset her. Prisma's thoughts got interrupted by the sound of a door opening behind her. Prisma, still kneeling on the ground, quickly tossed the photo back under the bed and turned around.

Prisma's curious expression turned into a disappointed and rather angry one when she saw the blue cat walking in. She was looking at her phone and didn't notice her at first, but then she looked up and saw Prisma. She stopped walking and looked at her. "Heh, if that isn't Miss Too-Dumb-To-Open-The-Door!", she said and winked. Prisma got up, took her empty suitcase and pushed it under her bed. "The name's Prisma Colors", Prisma said with a blank expression on her face. "My name is Spray Can, but most people just call me Canny", the blue cat said. "Hey, you're not mad or anything, are you? I didn't mean to upset you, ya know." Prisma spontaneously decided to put herself together. "No, it's okay... I just don't like being made fun of", she replied, folding her arms and turning away so that she could look out of the window. "Hah! Come on, everybody here is being made fun of every now and then, but not in a mean way, ya know", Canny explained while she started to clean up her desk a bit. "I'm sure everybody will have forgotten about that by tomorrow. It was pretty funny though." Prisma turned around and looked at the floor, then at Canny. "Kay then, if you say so...", she said. After a moment of awkward silence, Prisma's view fell on the various graffiti-like artwork on Canny's desk and on the wall above it. Prisma came a bit closer to the desk to take a closer look at the art.

"That looks pretty cool", Prisma said amazedly as she looked at the colorful letters and images. Canny kept stuffing the colorful sheets of paper into a drawer underneath the desk. "Oh, thanks", she said. To avoid more awkward silence, Prisma decided to ask some random stuff. "Did you make those, too?", she asked while she pointed at the bigger graffitis that were on some canvases on the wall. "Uh, yeah, people seem to like that style, ya know. They often hire me to spray their names on their garage doors or something." "Wow, that's cool! No one ever hired me so far. At least if you don't count those creepy kids on the internet that want you to draw their fan characters or something", Prisma said and grinned. Canny laughed. "I totally know what you mean! When I started with my graffiti-thing, everybody wanted me to write their names in that style." She took off her cap and put it on her desk. "And they got like, really annoying, ya know. It's funny how people start liking you as soon as they find out that you're good at something, even if they treated you like crap before." Prisma, who had sat down on her bed, just looked at Canny with a confused expression on her face and didn't know what to respond to that. She looked at the ground for a while, decided to start another topic, and looked back at Canny. "Well, I'm just glad that my friends support me a lot, even though we're pretty different. They're the ones who sent me here", she said.

The two roommates spent the day chatting about random stuff when Canny suddenly found a flyer while she was looking through another pile of canvases and paper. Prisma was lying on her bed and simply looked at the ceiling as Canny started reading the flyer out loud. "Oh, Prisma, look at this! 'Dear Art Students! This year's art festival is just around the corner and as usual, we would like you to prepare some projects to show our visitors your ideas and talent!' This flyer says that we're supposed to work in teams with two to five people unless we've got the permission to work alone, but only students that have proven that they're talented enough are allowed to do so... Well, crap. I'm sure all of my friends already are in teams" Prisma stopped looking at the ceiling and looked at the flyer in Canny's hands instead. "Did you forget about that festival-thing or why didn't you already team up with anybody?", she asked. "Well, yeah... I just found this flyer in this huge pile of stuff I drew and sprayed some time ago, ya know." "You seem like a nice person to work with though, at least to me. I don't understand why nobody asked you to team up with them." Canny's expression turned into a depressed and serious one. She looked out of the window. "Well, I used to have a partner for things like this, and I was gonna work with her this summer, too, but she's... not around anymore." Prisma found this pretty creepy and remembered the other cat on the photo she had found. Could that be the "partner" Canny was talking about? If so, what had happened to her? After a moment of silence, Canny noticed the confused and creeped out expression on Prisma's face. She quickly decided to change the topic.

Canny put the flyer aside and grinned. "Well, why don't we work together then?", she said. Prisma was surprised and looked at Canny. "What? But you didn't even see any of my artwork so far", she said. "And? Just show me some of it now. We still got some time until we gotta go to the cafeteria for dinner", Canny replied. Prisma got up and yawned. "Well, okay... I got this book where I write down everything about my characters and their story, maybe you should just look through that. Oh, I'm a cartoonist and comic artist, by the way. At least that's what I'm trying to be." Canny stood up and walked over to get the book from Prisma's desk. "Wow, this looks amazing!", she exclaimed as she picked it up. "I always liked comic books and stuff, ya know." "You say 'ya know' quite often, don't you?", Prisma asked and smirked. Canny looked up from Prisma's book. "Yeah, that's true... many people notice that, ya know."