Welcome to the Jungle [Open]

[playsin-traffic.livejournal.com]

Tony has honestly been trying to avoid the whole Yeerk trial thing. It was before his time, he doesn't know that much about it, and he generally trusts the command staff and the crew to make the right decision at the end of the day. It's what they do, right? They're good people. He can tell that. Some of them are like people he knew back home. Some of them aren't. But he trusts most of them. Or, at least the ones he knows.

Still, he doesn't want to got up in that bru-ha-ha, so he's decided that it would be good a idea to chill in the Sensoriums for an afternoon. So far, he's conjured up an image of his home neighborhood - he's been a bit home-sck lately, although this doesn't help that much - and he's just been walking empty streets. He could fill it with the people from his memories if he wanted. They'd seem real, but it wouldn't be right. It would feel... off somehow.

Still, this is his home, even if it is run-down. Even if the cops don't like to come through here unless they absolutely have to. That, or they're chasing someone in force; he can't begin to count the number of times he's heard a helicopter fly over his apartment building. And then there was that one time a SWAT team had stormed the aprtment a few doors down. Someone had apparently been dealing crack or some other shit and the Federal government's War on Drugs had come rather uncomfortably close to home. He'd been a kid then, only eleven or twelve. He'd been terrified (although he would never have admitted that to his friends) and he and his family had stayed inside most of that day.

It was a rought neighborhood. There were gangs. People had been shot - hell, he'd been shot at and shot people. He'd gotten into that shit when he was thirteen and it was really only because of his First Change that he'd gotten the Hell out of it (much to the relief of his mother). He still kept close ties with his friends that were in, but... he wasn't going back to that. Aside from the fact that he could eat bullets for lunch now, he really didn't want to go frenzied war-form on a bunch of gangbangers and wake up in a pool of human blood and entrails. Once had been enough.

Besides, he had his own war to fight. The one he was fighting now. Well, would be if it weren't for Stacy. But this was home.

He'd grown tired of walking and eventually had just had Stacy conjure up a car, which he was currently in the process of trying to hotwire - just to keep in practice, of course.

"Come on, come on..." he mutters.

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[toariversodeep.livejournal.com]

Roxie watches silently, hands in two of the (many) pockets of her jean jacket. By whatever mechanism the Sensorium works, her plantsuit's been disguised over with a casual, normal-looking outfit, leaving her seeming almost like an ambient bystander generated as part of the simulation.

[playsin-traffic.livejournal.com]

Tony has ended up in simple jeans and a t-shirt. And just then the car engine roars to life and Tony grins, sitting up triumphantly. Then he notices the strange girl watching him, "Uh. Hi."

[toariversodeep.livejournal.com]

"Hi," Roxie says, looking between Tony and the car. "Why not just make one with the keys already in it?" she asks, clearly having missed the point of the whole exercise.

[playsin-traffic.livejournal.com]

"Well... 'cause that'd be boring!" he exclaims, gunning the engine slightly and carefully pulling the car alongside Roxie, leaning out of the window.

"Gotta stay in practice."

[toariversodeep.livejournal.com]

"Stay in practice stealing cars?" Roxie asks, sounding—well, not quite disbelieving, but the mild snark seems far from unintentional. "You're lucky I wasn't a police officer," she adds, dry but a little more friendly, and recognizing how absurd that statement is, too.

[playsin-traffic.livejournal.com]

"What would they send me to jail for? Stealing an illusion?" Tony chuckles and steps out of the car, "And, yeah stayin' in practice. S'a useful skill set to have."

[toariversodeep.livejournal.com]

"What if the illusion belongs to someone else?" Roxie suggests, taking a moment to peek at the car's interior. "You never know. We might have a stage magician on board who's getting upset someone keeps taking all of them."

She looks up at Plays, face mostly unreadable.

[playsin-traffic.livejournal.com]

"Well, haven't seen no magician yet," he pats the hood of the car - it's nothing special. A four-door, not very fancy. He seems sort of amused.

"So, who are you? M'Tony."

[toariversodeep.livejournal.com]

"Roxie," the girl says, offering a small, delicate-seeming hand. If Tony shakes, though, he'll find that her grip is almost disproportionately solid.

"Why not get a better car, at least?" she adds curiously.

[playsin-traffic.livejournal.com]

Tony does indeed shake. His own grip is firm, but he gives her a curious glance before answering her question, "Well, 'cause I didn't really think 'about that. I was just kinda bored, y'know?"

[toariversodeep.livejournal.com]

"So it was about the means, not the end," Roxie muses a little. "So what are you going to do now that you've won?"

[playsin-traffic.livejournal.com]

"I dunno," he shrugs, "Maybe drive around a bit. Maybe try again with another kinda car."

[toariversodeep.livejournal.com]

"Seems kind of like going around in circles," Roxie says. "Why not do something you're not used to instead?"

[tasted-death.livejournal.com]

Oh, look, an abandoned neighborhood, definitely from the wrong side of the tracks. It's not exactly where Marcus grew up, but it's close enough that it doesn't actually matter. And an empty car in said abandoned neighborhood, which probably means that someone's trying to hotwire it. He walks up to the driver's-side window and is proven right when he sees someone concentrating on a tangle of wires below the steering wheel.

"Not that wire." Marcus says, pointing to one of the ones in the hotwirer's hand. "Not for this car, anyway." ... he's just trying to be helpful, and this is something he's actually good at.

[playsin-traffic.livejournal.com]

Tony is busy concentrating and so he's understandably a bit startled when someone starts talking to him. For a moment, there's a sharp stab of panic until he remembers he's not at home and he's not about to get fingered by the cops for doing this. He shakes some hair out of his eyes and looks up curiously, "Really? Thought it would work. Worked on a similar model an' make anyway."

Hey, someone else who comes from a somewhat criminal background!

[tasted-death.livejournal.com]

"I think they changed it after the '97 model year, and this looks like a '98 to me." Marcus says with a shrug. "Didn't get a great look at the car, though, and we're in the Sensoriums. Even if it doesn't work in the real world, it'll probably work here."

Yay, criminal backgrounds!

[playsin-traffic.livejournal.com]

"Could be, could be..." Jacking cars used to be a past time for him (who needed a license anyway?). Provided some money, although most of the time he and his friends had just gone joyriding for a few hours before ditching it and taking anything of value. He tried a different combination of wires, and...

The engine roared to life.

"Hey, I got it!"

[tasted-death.livejournal.com]

Sounds like Marcus' story, basically, except substitute 'brother' for 'friends' and 'shot two cops' for 'turned into a werewolf'. (He did have a license, but it was almost certainly fake.) "Nice. Not much to do with it, though."

[playsin-traffic.livejournal.com]

"Could always joyride it," he grinned, "S'what I used t'do, anyway. Hell, we could even through in a few fake cops."

And he'd done it a few times since his change, mainly to get away from gribbly nasties that he and his packmates couldn't fight. He wasn't the best driver, but he did know how to hot wire them.

[tasted-death.livejournal.com]

Again, sounds like Marcus' story, except for giant killer robots in place of anything supernatural. ... well, that wasn't often, and it only happened after he died, but still. "... keep the cops out of it and you might have a plan." Marcus says, grinning in response.

Maybe Marcus should drive, though.

[playsin-traffic.livejournal.com]

"Alright, fine, no cops!" Tony laughs and gestures to the passenger side door, "Get in!"

Hey, Tony can drive just fine. His parking needs some work, but he can drive.

[tasted-death.livejournal.com]

Marcus' last car exploded in a fiery ball of gasoline, so maybe not. "This your neighborhood?" Marcus asks, climbing into the passenger seat.

Seatbelt? What seatbelt? Seatbelts are for a: law-abiding people, b: humans, and c: a combination of the above, and Marcus is d: none of the above.

[playsin-traffic.livejournal.com]

"Yep," Tony nods and does, in fact, buckle up. Even if this is fake, he has no desire to find out how much pain Stacy can simulate if something goes awry. He eases the car forward and then floors it, burning rubber and peeling out with a screech of tires.

"M'Tony!" he yells over, "Nice to meet you!"

[tasted-death.livejournal.com]

That's possibly the only benefit of being a robot, as far as Marcus can tell: not much pain, even when getting shot or thrown off of a flying prisoner transport so hard he skipped like a stone. "Marcus! Nice to meet you!" he yells over the noise of the engine.

[playsin-traffic.livejournal.com]

He takes a corner at ludicrous speed and clips a mailbox. The car fishtails for a moment before he gets it under control. He's grinning like mad and the adrenaline is pumping through him. Hell. Yeah.

"I don't think I've seen you before! Are you new?"