savetheearth | plot: car monster in locke

Entry tags:

plot: car monster in locke

Who: Characters in Locke, most pertinently the characters chosen for the takedown, and Geoff Benwick
When: May 31st, Saturday, around 4PM
Where: The streets of Locke City's urban areas
What: A car monster is on the loose in Locke, rampaging the streets, destroying property - and showing no further consideration for the citizens of the city.
Warnings: Violence, death.

[ OOC: For an overview, please see this plot post. Evan's player is organizing a failed takedown attempt here for anyone interested! Remember that there are two human casualties as a result of the car's rampage, including Network teenager Kaworu Nagisa.

The car monster is rampaging without concern for damage, either to itself or to anything around it, but it is avoiding damage that will take it out of action. Ramming property, causing car accidents, and leaving the road entirely to continue its race along the streets are all kosher. Geoff Benwick is in aerial pursuit, attempting to coordinate with reincarnates and law enforcement alike. ]

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"Right. Right, to the left," Doyle says, and starts picking his way through traffic.

He tries to regain the same speed he had before, but that moment of rest seemed to sap the strength right out of his arms and legs. Breathing made his lungs sting and his head felt a little light, but goddammit, he wasn't that out of shape! He was just panting really hard as he loped down the street and around slower cars because this was an intense chase! And it was warm out! And because he had a stitch in his chest! And because his arms ached!

Unsurprisingly, the car gains more and more of a lead as Doyle loses more and more of his pace, going from running, to jogging, to maybe a brisk walk as his breathing gets harder, until he stops entirely. His neck curls down and his head lowers, nearly upside-down, and his front legs bend slightly, the quadruped version of that brace-your-hands-against-your-knees recovery position.

"Huh-hold on - I gotta -" Whatever else he was going to say is lost as he just keeps huffing and puffing for breath.

Look, considering what his life used to be like before he turned into a dinosaur, running for that long was pretty impressive, okay?

"Are you all right?" Torin is peering down at Doyle in a bit of concern. "Should I get help? Or go on ahead?"

Several of the very few people who are still on the street at this point are starting to stare. After all, it's not every day a dinosaur gets winded in the middle of the street like this, even in Locke. Some are even taking pictures. One upset little boy yells, "Don't die, Mr. Dinosaur!"

This is the worst day of his life. Worse than the time his shorts fell down in grade five gym, worse than always being the last one doing warm-up laps in middle school, worse than that time he threw up after the Beep Test (though at least the other kids had his back on that one, fuck the beep test).

There's a lot of things Doyle could or should say right now: Yes I'm fine, don't get help, sure go on without me if you think you can catch a speeding demon car, no kid I'm not dying (except I'm totally dying jesus god i'm out of shape).

Instead, his ears are zeroing in on that camera-app shutter noise, and they flatten back.

"Get 'em to stop - taking pictures - or I'm gonna eat them," he growls. A pause, and then he clarifies: "The phones. Gonna - slap 'em outta - their hands."

It's subtle, but on the pavement, the edges of his shadow start twitching.

(Through this, his heart keeps pounding and doesn't feel like it's going to slow down)

"Please! No photographs! He does not wish to be photographed!" Torin is not really sure this is getting through to the crowd. "He will smash your cameras if you continue to disrespect his need for privacy!"

Yeah, he's not going with that whole threat to eat them. Humans don't handle that well, and he doesn't want a panic.

Whether or not Torin's pleas to the crowd are actually doing any good is debatable.

"Go on, Mr. Dinosaur! YOU CAN DO IT! I BELIEVE IN YOU!" At least that one little kid was still willing to cheer Doyle on.

The kid cheering him on is heartwarming, really, but unfortunately his heart is preoccupied with beating real hard, pumping the raw seething hatred he has for everything in that moment throughout his veins.

He hates crowds, he hates people, he hates running, he hates iphones, he hates camera apps, he hates technology and most of all as he hears it tear down another street, HE HATES POSSESSED DEMON CARS.

There's one heartbeat stronger than the others, and maybe if he wasn't so damn mad he'd recognize the pulse, and notice that breathing gets a little easier after, that his muslces don't hurt, that he doesn't feel tired at all. He begins to stand up straight and steady on all fours again, but slowly, his back and neck curving and those red spines raising slightly, seeming to get brighter. He doesn't notice the rolling growl in his throat, or that he's levelling the bystanders and their obnoxious phones with a toothy scowl and slitted eyes.

He does notice the sound of a revving motor and squealing tires, and the reek of burnt rubber and exhaust (and he hates cars). His head snaps towards the direction it's coming from - and getting closer. Taunting him, it seems, by circling the block. Sure enough - it rounds the corner, even louder and more obnoxious now that he's got a straight view of it.

"Hold on," he growls, crouching on his hind legs before he springs forward, heading in the same direction as the car, to get something of a head start before it passes them.

Which it does in seconds, but Doyle doesn't look too concerned this time, taking longer and stronger strides and honestly keeping pace better than they were before.

"Ah," Torin starts to say, but he quickly decides that hanging on would be the wisest course of action. He does, however, approve of Doyle's recovery and change of attitude. Yes! Let's take down the evil car!

"Hooray, Mr. Dinosaur!" Even if Doyle got really scary there, the little kid still thought he's really cool--even cooler now--and is perfectly willing to cheer Doyle on as he goes.

A lot of things have changed for Doyle in these few moments. He hardly even feels his muscles working as he runs - and he's less careful about how he runs.

His nails scratch the pavement, his tail clips parked cars and newspaper boxes as it swings to keep balance, but Doyle's completely unbothered - his head stays steady, tracking that stupid, obnoxious car, and when it changes lanes and makes like it's about to turn, he doesn't slow down to think about it - he hops up onto another parked car. This one collapses under his weight as well, but that doesn't knock him off balance this time. He seems to use the spring in the car's shocks (what was left of them) to help him leap diagonal across the road, cushioning his landing on another empty car and hardly breaking his momentum as he continues pursuit of the obnoxious speeding demon car.

Screw other people's property, he's mad!

"Excuse us! Sorry about that! Pardon us!" Torin is, at least, attempting to play damage control of some sort. "Please, get out of the way!" Though he's a perfectly happy parrot, brandishing his little sword in excitement.

Yes, get out of the way, humans! And the hideous, clunky metal boxes you rode in on!

Doyle attempts to run on the sidewalk, but it slows him down marginally as he needs to keep himself narrow and step over or around obstacles (inanimate and living). So with a snarl (wordless, just a noise of frustration), he glares at the shadows cast by said obstacles up ahead. They peel off the pavement and condense enough to shove everyone living to the side, away from the road, clearing a route between him and the road again.

There's another parked car here, but he doesn't bother to jump it this time. He lowers his shoulder and checks it, shoving it into the road. It misses the demon car by a bit, but whatever, Doyle's got a clearer path to it now.

"Careful there!" Torin protests. "We don't want to cause just as much damage as the car we're trying to stop!" Because while he can see stomping on one or two cars as an accident, this is getting out of hand.

"Who cares?!" Doyle snaps. Oh boo-hoo, someone's going to have to rely on the godforsaken Locke Public Transit system instead of taking their stinking hand-me-down chevy to work! The environment will thank him, or something. He honestly could not care less.

It's more or less straight on from here, but of course that doesn't make things better, not when the peanut gallery is honking at them as they take up their precious road in this moronic chase. They're next, after he finishes with the dead car driving up ahead.

"I don't see you doing anything!" he adds, and maybe that's a little needless but as soon as this car is dealt with the sooner he can go back home away from the noise and stink of the city.

"That's enough." Torin lightly thwaps Doyle on the head with the flat of his blade, just to get the dinosaur's attention. "You are acting like a child--and causing just as much damage as what we're fighting!"

He barely feels the thwap, since the parrot is using a letter opener and Doyle's scales are pretty hard, but he still feels it enough to know it happened. His head raises a little in surprise, before he tilts his head in an effort to at least see the little parroty pest out the corner of his eye or something.

"How dare you!" he shouts, and really, how dare he ride Doyle all over this godforsaken city and then order him around when they're finally making progress!

"I've been busting my scaly ass trying to catch this thing, and you think you can perch pretty up there and tell me I'm doing it wrong?! You think I'm being childish about chasing this stinking, screaming scrapheap all over town on foot?!"

"Causing this much damage does nothing to help." A lesser parrot would probably back off pretty fast after irritating a gigantic reptile who could swallow him in one gulp. Torin, however, merely sighed the sigh of an adult witnessing a toddler having a meltdown--and actually shifts his perch to Doyle's shoulder so that the dinosaur can see him. "You are the only one of us with the speed to keep up with the monster car properly, but when you are stomping on all the other innocent cars that have done nothing for no other reason than that they are in your way, you might as well have stayed home."

There is stern disappointment evident in the tiny, letter-opener-wielding parrot's voice.

Good, with the parrot on his shoulder, he can glare at him properly. Unfortunately it's a little trickier to run with your head sideways, so he stops. He's too mad at Torin, anyway.

He snorts angrily, and his teeth are bared when he talks: "Oh, who even cares if a few cars get wrecked? You'd rather I waste time to protect the poor, delicate cars? I'm sure the people that thing hits will be so thankful for our consideration!"

As if that's what he was actually thinking when he crushed those cars, but he's mad now and possessed car was out of reach, and here was an uppity little avian telling him he should have just stayed home (which he would have wanted to do if he'd been awake and coherent at the start of all this!).

"If you don't like how I'm doing things then you're free to just take off and find your own way after it!"

Edited 2014-08-11 13:05 (UTC)

"I can do no such thing," Torin says primly. "Not until you settle down. I'll not see this city torn up by two forces of destruction today." Sorry, Doyle, you're stuck with the parroty equivalent of Jiminy Cricket for the duration.

Two forces of--

Doyle growls, starting low in his throat but rising as he leers his head closer to this parroty Jiminey Cricket.

When he was little, he always kind of wondered why they didn't just step on the bug.

"So, what are you going to do, poke me with your letter opener?" he snarls, teeth bared and pupils slitted, shadow churning beneath him--

There's a hollow, pulsing feeling in his chest - another echo, which should make him even more angry, but the deja vu he's hit with is like a splash of water.

He's angry still, and frustrated, but this is familiar and much like before(?), he feels like he's hit a wall he can't push past.

He wants to ~~solve this with one bite~~ knock this smug, do-goody birdbrain off his shoulder, but... He can't. ~~and he's right, anyway.~~

Torin wordlessly holds out a hand, palm pointing outward at some rubble from either Doyle's rampage or the car's--it's hard to tell--and fires a blast of gold energy at said rubble. "I do have more than just a letter opener," he says mildly. "Calm yourself, Doyle."

Really, he should probably be more worried that a dinosaur might eat him, but no. The parrot is perfectly calm. Perhaps he has attained parrot zen at some point in his short life.

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plot: car monster in locke

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I should be sorry for this tag but I could not resist the ridiculous

good you shouldn't be sorry this tag is beautiful

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after 10,000 years I'm free!!

TIME TO CONQUER EARTH

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