milliways_bar | (no subject)

Entry tags:

(no subject)

Clint's putting an unlit cigarette in his mouth when he enters the bar; he stops for a brief moment before shrugging and putting the cigarette back in its box, tucking it away in his blazer. Unlike last time, he's dressed like an office worker just off work, loosened tie included. If you don't notice the concealed holster and his shined black combat boots, and people usually don't.

He grabs a beer from the bar, and leans back to watch the crowd.

[OOC: Aaaand I am asleep! Slowtimes all around? ♥. No new threads, please.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Clint can't help the grin that spreads across his face. He wouldn't want to, but he also genuinely can't.

"Really properly. If it's some weird alien truck, I'm sure I can get something I'm familiar with running."

There might a super-excited happy squeak there. Maybe. She'll deny it to her dying day. What she can't deny is how she reaches out and grabs his hand to pull him, like a tiny determined little tug boat, towards the elevators.

Cars, Clint.

She's very quick; she manages to be just a shade under the speed at which Clint would automatically break her hand, but he's still a little tense as she starts to tug.

He follows, though, shoulders loosening intentionally as he does. Sure, being tugged around isn't exactly his favorite activity (outside of highly delineated circumstances), but Oswin clearly doesn't mean any harm by it.

Thankfully the elevator isn't far away, and it is fairly fast as it descends down into the garage, Oswin fairly vibrating in place with excitement the entire trip.

The garage itself is practically a cavern, and as the lights come up in sections it seems to go on for ever.

It might, actually. Who knows if it's ever been properly mapped.

"That one there, the... truck thing, that's a truck, right? Or do they all need to have big boxes on the back?" Look, all of her car knowledge is deeply theoretical.

"That's a truck," Clint acknowledges, her enthusiasm keeping the smile on his face. "A pick-up, actually; the back is a cargo bed so you can move things things that wouldn't fit in a normal car."

Thankfully, it's a model he recognizes. The Ford F-150 is pretty normal to the early 21st century.

"That's the one we found the keys in." And the one she's heading towards, though there's enough interesting prospects in this place to keep them busy for days - that row over there appears to be given over entirely to various Batmobiles and Batcycles and Batvehicles of various sorts, there's a heavily modified and beat-up DeLorean down that way, there's a sleek silver 1927 Daimler right next to a green flower-painted Volkswagen van...

The Batvehicles catch his attention, and he slows for a moment before following her. Probably safe to stick with something he knows how to drive.

"Sure." He's cheerful, even though most of his smile's dropped. Hopefully it actually starts; it's been awhile since Clint's had to pull apart a truck and these newer models are all computers.

She has to literally climb to get into the cab (thank the fluffy fates for running boards), and she might be in danger of deactivating the passenger-side airbag as she settles into her seat.

She also, and quite obviously, hasn't the first idea about seatbelts. She's too busy eyeing ALL THE BUTTONS, and trying to remember which ones turned on the Mariachi band so that doesn't happen again.

Clint levers himself more easily into the driver's side, and pulls his seat forward a bit.

"Hey, Oswin," he says, to catch her attention after he fishes out the keys. He's holding the top of his seatbelt. "You got one of these on your side. Put it on, yeah?" He pulls his across and buckles it.

He hopes she crashed at pretty slow speeds before, because he's seen many variations of the aftermath that happens when people don't.

Yeaaah, no. The Alaska went down in a high-velocity impact that drove at least one of the survival pods deep underground. Thankfully, the designers of said survival pods fully realized the pods would be full of panicking, non-military-trained people who couldn't be relied upon to remember things like restraints in the heat of the moment.

Not that any of the lovely technical advances in the pods did much for the long-term survival of the crew.

She eyes the strap with vague dubiousness of 'and what, exactly, is this supposed to achieve', but puts it on anyway. Hey, no arguing with the guy who's gonna show her how this thing moves.

"So, can this thing actually, y'know, move without hitting anything?"

"Here's hoping," Clint says, as he finishes adjusting the mirrors. He starts to F-150 up, and grins when it does. Always nice when your transportation actually works.

He pulls out of the parking space, and starts to drive down the row. On the left, because chances are those're the rules if Earth rules are being followed at all.

In between being absolutely in love with that engine noise, and being super excited about moving (the truck rumbles, how cool is that?) she's watching him like a hawk.

...

The driving certainly doesn't look hard.

The truck has pretty good traction. He glances back at her out of the corner of his eye. "We could take this faster, if you want."

Or find a road. A road would be great.

"I am definitely in favor of faster." Oswin grins, nodding her very much happy agreement. "I think there's more room over there." She points off to the left, where the ground-based vehicles start to give way to things like shuttlepods and solar wind surfers.

He nods, and takes the turn fairly quickly but slow enough to remain smooth. He likes rear-wheel drive, and just because you can drive tactically doesn't mean you should.

But it's fun.

He speeds up, but given it's a parking garage -- even a seemingly deserted one -- doesn't go faster than 40mph.

She whoops at the change of speed - sure, she's been in faster vehicles, and fancier, more technologically advanced vehicles - but this is fun. There's a series of miniature explosions that's making this thing move, and if that isn't brilliant, nothing is.

Oswin leans as far forward as her seatbelt will allow, peering at the engine in puzzled fascination - all that noise, and the... shell, for lack of the proper term, isn't at all disturbed.

"If we had a road," Clint says, grinning again at her enthusiasm, "I could show you what these things can do. Well, I'd probably grab a car for us."

The sights are pretty extraordinary, now; entirely out of the realm of what he considers normal transportation.

"... But aren't these bigger?" Bigger shinier machine means more impressive, right? "But that's what I don't get about these - you can't drive here, or fly here, so where did they all come from?"

Why gather up all of the multiverse's vehicles if they're just going to sit there? (And, you know, entertain tiny geniuses)

"Like that, that shuttle looks just like one of the ones from... the... Alaska..." She had been going in full babble mode until the implications of what she'd been saying caught up.

And, you know, she caught sight of the Alaska's emblem blazoned on the hull. Yup, just like.

Clint's about to reply with something facetious ("teleportation?") when she recognizes the shuttle; he slows the truck.

"You want to go back and get a look at it?"

Yeah, no, no way in hell hit the gas and get them out of here...

"... Yes." Because Oswin Oswald doesn't believe in ghosts, and she's not going to let this one best her.

Clint gives her a long look, then nods. He puts the truck in reverse, and rests his hand on the back of her seat so he can look over his shoulder as he backs up.

They end up stopped just next to the shuttle, though Clint puts the car in drive and just keeps his foot on the brake instead of parking it.

"Shouldn't be here. Not like this - the fire started in the shuttlebay."

After a moment of fiddling with buttons she's figured out which one unlocks the door, and she's managed to slither out of her seatbelt and out the door before she can think better of this plan. Her I'm-not-thinking-about-it momentum gets her to within touching distance before she wavers, distant memories of what should have been the worst trauma in her life conflicting with the smooth grey metal.

Then, chin up and faking fearlessness for all she's worth, she takes the two steps necessary to the airlock and taps in the crew code on the security pad.

And very nearly jumps out of her skin when it works.

With a comment like that preceding her departure, Clint can't do anything but put the truck in park and turn it off, leaving its emergency flashers on as he pockets the keys and gets out.

Oswin's approaching the security pad as he rounds corner of the truck; he's a couple steps behind and to the side of her when the airlock opens.

"That supposed to happen?" he asks. He's not comfortable with the state of Oswin's nerves. He doesn't expect danger, but his awareness of both the situation and her is keyed up.

"... Only if it's real." She scrunches her nose at the door, and at her own stupid nerves, there's nothing here to be afraid of, just a shuttle that should be burned to a crisp, or, alternately, smushed by non-powered crash into the planet. Cautiously she steps inside, and it's exactly like she remembers - this was a passenger shuttle, designed to get paying customers to the ship in style. She kneels, and rifles through one of the cabinets.

... Ah.

Clint leans against the frame of the airlock, facing out as she looks through the cabinet. He'd known Oswin was freaked out about something the first time they spoke, but not what.

Either something really creepy went down on her ship, Alien-style (or HAL), or the ship itself shouldn't exist anymore. The latter of which kind of implies Oswin herself might be on borrowed time, like that William kid talked about.

Least he can do is keep watch.