All I Have to Do is to Press the Pedal [Open]

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

Thump.

"God damn it!" Howard hops out of the car he's been practicing parking in and runs behind it to check what he hit. Just one of the cones he set up, thank goodness, and there's no damage to the car, but after four hours of this he's getting beyond frustrated. He sets the cone back up and gets back in the car.

The car itself is, in the kindest form of the word, a junker. Howard considers it a minor miracle that between pouring over the manual and putting pieces of it together with duct tape and dried bubblegum he's managed to get the engine running. Granted, he doubts it can handle more than ten miles an hour, the brake lights and turn signals don't work, and the windshield and rearview window are missing, but he isn't looking for a permanent vehicle here. He just needs something to practice in.

Normal fifteen year-olds take driver's ed, right? And he's always done better learning on his own than listening to lectures. So after reading through a few books on driving and watching some tapes in the Media Library, not to mention having driven around a few times back in the FAYZ, he thinks he's about due to do something this normal. Scratch that - the universe owes it to him. So that's why he found a mostly empty street in the city to set up a little driving obstacle course.

He does, however, wish he could have found an automatic junker to salvage. Clearly the inventor of the stick-shift only created it so he could mess with Howard. And with those poor traffic cones.

Thunk.

[OOC: bendied to before foodplot and survivalist plot.]

Comments

[zouichi]

"...What are you doing?" Zouichi pulled his bike to a stop beside one of the traffic cones, looking first at the junker, then at Howard.

Howard, why would you rather drive a broken car than a giant robot?

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"Parking," Howard snarls as he runs over another cone. It does not look like parking. It looks like an attempt to subjugate a small race of conepeoples. He hops out of the car again and rights the cone back up, although it refuses to stand straight now. "And I'd be doing a great job if this wasn't a stupid stick shift."

He kicks the front tire to emphasize his point, and the bumper swings dangerously, as if the whole thing's about to fall off the front of the car.

Zouichi, right now, would you trust him with a giant robot?

[zouichi]

How could you, Howard? What did those conepeoples ever do to you?

"You could call up an automatic shift in the Sensoriums," he said, ever-so-helpfully. He wasn't going to offer to get into the car. Not just because it looked like a death trap, but because junkers just weren't his style. He was sure Howard understood.

Also, Zouichi would totally trust Howard with a Zaku! Mostly because he didn't pilot one.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

Well, at the moment they're just ruining his favorite color of orange.

"I figured it'd be better to learn with the real thing. Especially since if I ever have to steal a car on a mission, with our luck it'll be stick shift. And haunted." Howard understands. A car this crappy cannot contain that amount of badass. A car this crappy would look at Zouichi's motorcycle and either burst into car-tears or spontaneously carbust.

[zouichi]

He didn't know Howard's favorite color was orange! Guess what Zouichi's favorite color was?

The car got another dubious look. "Are you sure that car's not haunted? Maybe I could have Hana come by and exorcise it for you."

And there was this: "Where'd you even find it?" Zouichi was clearly not familiar with the idea of the cinderblock junker. Or any of its cousins.

[governorkang]

Kang recognized that type of driving. There was a distinct difference between someone learning to drive automatic and stick, and this had the latter written all over it. He could even hear the clutch grinding every now and then. Frankly, he was surprised the damn car was even running, the way it looked.

He still wasn't very pleased with Howard, but it was amusing to watch, and he didn't have anything pressing to do at the moment. "Stick is always a pain in the ass to learn."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

Howard jumps out of the car again (seatbelts are, apparently, for tools) and slams the door. The bumper of the car gives a screech of metal on metal and falls off. Howard looks like if he could set something on fire with his mind, this chunk of street would be an inferno.

"Who invented this crap? Who in God's name decided that a clutch pedal was a good idea? Why don't we all still ride horses? Son of a..." He drags the bumper off to the side. "You know how to drive a stick?"

[governorkang]

Kang winced at the screech of the bumper, and snorted, "Yeah, I can. Calling in your favor?"

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

Howard exaggeratedly strokes his chin, then shakes his head. "Nah, you couldn't fit in the car and without a demonstration, you can't tell me anything I didn't already read in the manual."

Besides, he wants to keep that favor handy in the event that he needs Kang to spit lightning at a bad guy or something.

Get ready for the worst teacher in the world

[thewunderkind]

"Wow look at that pile of junk," a voice said behind him, as Lash watched from the nearby rocks. The Neoneo(honestly at this point who knew how many neos she was sticking in front) was parked on the upper parts and she watched the car struggling to move.

"What are you doing with those controls?" Lash may not have learned to drive a car per se, but she knew her vehicles and had helped repair a car with Starfire here. She knew her vehicles and that was...a sad thing, all things considered. "How much gas you got left?"

A fitting match for such a student!

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"Hey, be nice to my pile of junk." Howard leans out the window and glares at Lash and her Neonununeonommything. "I'm fine on gas. It's just this stupid clutch. I keep not depressing it enough and then the whole car goes pbbbbt."

'Pbbbt' is accompanied by the requisite facial expression.

[thewunderkind]

Also accompanied by Lash doubling over in laughter.

"Tee hee hee! Well that's what happens when you don't step on it on the right moment, genius. What you've never...actually I bet you never have! But it's pretty simple once you understand the basic of it."

Pretty simple if you're Lash anyway. Without waiting for his 'okya you can come in' she hoped over to the over-worn seat next to him and gave a kick to the glove compartment, just to see if anything fabulous or secret that Howard hadn't seen was inside.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"You really don't want to-" Howard tries to stop Lash just before she kicks the glove compartment and can't manage it in time. The glove compartment falls open...and then that section of the dashboard crashed down on Lash's feet.

So much for dried bubblegum. Maybe next time he needs to use glue.

[arespectablesoldier]

Oh look, somebody has a car.

Grif watches for a minute or two before the urge to say something sarcastic overwhelms him.

"You know you're not supposed to hit the cones, right?!" he calls.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"Shut up!" Howard's very tempted to try and just back up into Grif at that, but instead he just backs up into the curb. Dammit. So instead he just opens the door, picks up one of the cones, and chucks it in Grif's direction.

[arespectablesoldier]

Grif's armor flares up with light as the energy shield comes on to take the clearly disastrous blow of the traffic cone, which proceeds to bounce off him.

"Is that it?"

Grif fails to be intimidated.

"Seriously though, what are you doing and how is it going that wrong?" He peers at the vehicle. "I mean, besides the car. That part of the problem is pretty obvious."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

Howard tends to have that effect on people. The 'fail to be intimidated' effect. He's considering trademarking it.

"I'm trying to parallel park, which is really hard to do without rearview mirrors, so yeah, it's all the car's fault. Entirely. Totally."

[beyondgotham]

"Wow," a somewhat astonished Terry said, approaching the little set up of cones. But he wasn't 'wow'ing at Howard's driving skills (or lack thereof). He was impressed by the car.

"Oh man," he approached the car, trying to take it all in. "That thing is way retro."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"That's one word for it." Howard pops his head out and then delicately opens the door. Delicately, because the door is partially held on with a jump rope. "I'm thinking 'garbage' is the better word."

[beyondgotham]

"Well, yeah, sure, it's garbage. But it's retro garbage." He was starting to walk around the car now, resisting the urge to poke at things. "I mean, it's probably got a gas engine, right? That alone would make it a collectable in Gotham."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"It's got gas in the engine, which makes it a luxury back home." He pats it and the bumper falls off again. Whoops. "What does Gotham use, electric?"

[dailybugleboy]

And now there's some sort of garishly colored red-and-blue cross between a dune-buggy, an F-Zero machine, and the hover-converted DeLorean from Back To The Future passed by. Peter was putting it through its paces since he and Kory had needed to repair it after SHODAN's attack.

The car backed up, and Peter got out, staring at Howard over the roof.

"..Y'know, you'd probably do better if you weren't driving something that looks like it's about to fall apart in the next five seconds."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

Howard fixes Peter with a glare that communicates very clearly that they are Not Friends.

"Is there some Obvious Department on Stacy that you just happen to be Captain of? Because last time we ran into each other you tried to explain what a lynch mob is to me, and now you're pointing out that my piece of junk car is, in fact, a piece of junk."

He is very purposefully not looking at Peter's car or feeling even a twinge of jealousy. Look at how little he cares, Peter. "Unless you have some reason to be here besides to feel superior, beat it, Sherlock."

[dailybugleboy]

"I only gave personal experience after you told me I didn't know what one was. If you're gonna give me crap for what I said, at least give me accurate crap." Peter said, mildly ticked off.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"Okay, accurate crap is you were still explaining to me what lynching is, and that makes you an idiot. And that was after you accused me of trying to rile one up. Do you want me to pull out the transcripts to prove how much you're deep-throating your own shoes on that one?"

Naturally, his car chooses that moment to have the passenger's side of the dashboard cave in again. Which totally emphasizes his point and doesn't make him look dumb at all.