maskormenacelogs | she was the fastest thing around ( open )

Entry tags:

she was the fastest thing around ( open )

WHO: rupert hentzau, his brand new bad idea, and you
WHERE: jeopardy
WHEN: second half of august
WHAT: watch a victorian jock evolve into a boy racer before your very eyes
WARNINGS: ~~something naughty will probably happen at some point~~ make outs, bad language, drug references, a car crash

start your engine (if you can) ( open )
car status: brand new (but not for long)

Jeopardy | What's even the point in having ill-gotten gains if you can't spend it all? The sudden influx of shiny American dollars was burning a hole in Rupert's pocket and he was certainly overdue buying something stupid. And so he had picked a Mustang because he liked the name and a G5 because the sound of the engine promised him adventure, and that was the better part of his illicit money gone.

He'd insisted on no questions asked (because the nature of the money demanded silence) which had somehow extended to nobody bothering to check his license. Which was a damn good thing, considering Rupert technically didn't have one. And somehow, one hour after meeting his questionless car-selling contact, Rupert was driving (haphazardly) away with a brand new car.

Getting the car back to Jeopardy 001 was harder than he'd thought. The rules of the road were something that Rupert only vaguely knew of from his brief foray into Bluetube, but the understanding was largely lost on him. But by some miracle - and mostly avoiding traffic cops, cameras, pedestrians and other cars - Rupert rolls up the government-assigned imPort street with his brand new toy. It's a miracle really, not that Rupert has anytime to congratulate himself as he parks the beast half on/half off the kerb outside 001.

What a lark. He punches the horn experimentally, delighted with the angry urgency of the barked reply, and sets the windscreen wipers going just for the hell of it. He tunes the radio to something smooth and jazzy, throwing the volume knob so farto the right that the brassy swell of noise rumbles through the whole chassis (and the street beyond). Just because the car is stationary doesn't mean that Rupert still can't be a bloody nuisance with it.

be fast or be last ( closed to cassidy )
car status: car-length scrape (shrubbery), dented right wingmirror (post box)

Maurtia Falls | Portalling the Mustang over to Maurtia Falls feels like a terrible idea, even for someone as terrible as Rupert. So he thumbs a quick text to his chaos twin, parks the Mustang in a desolate patch of desert outside of town, and neatly tears himself a portal over to Maurtia Falls 002.

Stepping out into the relative coolness of Pennsylvanian street, Rupert dusts a little of the desert off his shirt as he waits for Cassidy to come to the door.

"Hello," Rupert says cheerfully, pulling a pair of obscenely overpriced sunglasses from his face to squint up at the other man with a grin of satisfaction. "Father's bought a new toy. Would you like to play?"

full throttle ( open )
car status: dusty, dented

Jeopardy | In time, Rupert learns how to tame his new creature. A voracious and powerful need to excel drives him to learn everything there is to know about the car, from black-magic-and-science engineering behind the hood to the way the vibrations should feel just so as it moves through the gears. It was a project of sorts, a whirlwind of devouring car-nerd driving blogs at 2am and many, many roadside failures.

He hadn't expected the car to feel so alive; the Mustang is as willful as it's namesake and Rupert's more than a bit in love with it. Encased by black leather and glass, sprawling low behind the wheel, he isn't entirely sure he's the one driving this creature. The car doesn't pull away so much as prowl, a predator on the roads, muzzled only by the fact that Rupert is yet to unleash the engine's true potential.

But he knows it's there. It's what drives him to seek out another taste of that heart-stopping delight as the car roars and plunges forwards with barely restrained power. Taking the Mustang out to the desert surrounding Jeopardy - late at night, early in the morning, whenever Rupert feels a burning need to stretch his (and the car's) legs - has become part of his everyday adventures. It's addictive, and Rupert's quite sure that if he turns the wheel just a little harder with every turn that he could very well spin the car over and kill himself. Not that that stops him, exactly. The intoxicating hit of equal parts fear and primal joy as the Mustang greedily leans into every dusty desert doughnut is just too exciting. There are definitely worse ways to die.

( existing cr, feel free to assume that rupert has invited your character out for a ride! new cr, tell this young hooligan to cut it out (or join in) )

now for something completely different ( closed to cecelia )
some fancy deisgner clothes outlet (car status: grateful for a rest)

De Chima| Rupert doesn't spend all of his free time trying to kill himself in the Nevada desert. After all, there's still a considerable amount of ill-gotten gains burning multiple holes in his pocket. The Masked Man costume had been his only other purchase - other than the monstrous Mustang, of course - and it seemed a shame to just have that kind of money lying around.

Briskly portalling over to the designer boutiques of De Chima, Rupert busies himself with exploring the racks of clothes. This particular shop is painfully minimalist in a way Rupert doesn't understand, dotted with strange abstract art installations and mannequins wearing clothes that seem to be made more of rips than fabric. It isn't Rupert's style - far from the monotone elegance that he often opts for - but he's distracted by a smooth leather jacket that most certainly has his name on --

A short scream and a prolonged crash. It's nearby, a little too close for comfort, and Rupert idly wonders if this is another bizarre attack of some sort, the kind that seems to happen so regularly in this world. Aliens, perhaps. Cryptids. Robots. It honestly could be anything.

Coolly curious, he leans around a rack of artfully torn jeans in search of the source.

wildcard
build your own

( come at me with a starter of your own or hit me up on plurk fizzier for something else! It doesn't have to be car-related, I promise. )

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ FROG FACE. That's so rude. But here he is anyway, brightening when he sees Murphy, even if he does have to look up just a little. Look, he's not the world's tallest dude and he never will be. ]

I, uh. I was hoping I'd have it figured out by the time you turned up, but I'm still not sure.

[ A frog face that is cute. Murphy thinks you're cute, Peter. ]

I'm sure we can think of something. [ He walks around Peter and motions with his head to follow him. ] Maybe jump off a roof of one of these buildings? [ There are lots of them to choose from, Murphy points out the tallest one in their vicinity. ] Or is that too tall?

[ Yeah uh. Peter kind of winces as he cranes his neck back to look. ]

That's ... um, that's a little too much yeah. If I hit terminal velocity, odds are good I'll still die.

[ Murphy doesn't know what terminal velocity is but he certainly has a clue. ] Yeah, I don't want to be responsible for your death. [ That's already happened once. Lesson quickly learned. His attention skates away from the rooftops and down to something a whole lot closer.

Cars. ] You said a train almost killed you, right? [ He doesn't look at traffic for long, attention flicking over to Peter. ]

[ There certainly are plenty of them trundling along. Peter is still looking up at the buildings though, trying to find one that he could jump off of safely. ]

Yeah. Uh - really fast one. I think it was going like two hundred miles an hour? Or something stupid like that.

[ Murphy tips his head up, looking up briefly before returning his gaze back down to Peter. Cars are speeding past them. None of them going over one hundred miles per hour. The speed limit, across the street, says fifty ]. And you heal real fast?

[ Not too fast, plus cars are way smaller than a train. Should be safe, right? ]

Uh huh. I was walking again six hours after the train hit me.

[ Behind them (but not for long) a black mustang roars up the street. ] This is going to hurt a little.

[ With Peter's attention averted and Murphy's heightened reflexes, he takes Peter by the back of his shirt and a little too effortlessly tosses Peter into traffic. ]

Hey--

[ Peter's spider senses go off, sensing danger ... a little too late, oops. Into traffic he goes. And that mustang is coming up way too fast for even his enhanced reflexes to react to. He only has a split second to turn, throwing up an arm to protect his face - annnnd then the car slams into him.

Sorry, car, that's a fight both of them are going to lose. Peter doesn't so much fly as he just kind of. Digs himself into the ground? So he gets dragged forward quite a ways, but also that mustang is gonna get dragged to a halt. It's. Probably also going to have a massive dent in it now, if not some serious damage. ]

[ It's at this point that Rupert finally regrets not wearing his seatbelt.

In a just world, an arrogantly unsafe driver like Rupert probably would have gone through the very expensive windscreen of his very expensive car. But the world is not just and Rupert is too belligerently lucky to have such a convenient example be made of him. For the briefest of moments he registers that there's something - no, shit, someone - in the road that he cannot possibly ever hope to avoid, considering the speed at which they're hurtling down the street. And in the very same moment that he considers ripping a portal - either in front of the car or beneath the person's feet - he realises that it's far, far too late. ]

Oh, fu--

[ He's cut off by the impact: an ugly crunch of metal and glass buckling and imploding, a sound that's felt more than it's heard. The airbags neatly explode in his and Jonas's face as the windscreen shatters into a spiderweb (ironically) of broken glass. Airbags, yes. Rupert's shocked brain dimly remembers reading about those in the manual. Although he's not sure why this model seems to have water in the airbags too? Oh, no, that's blood. From his broken nose. ]

[ Jonas knows what's going to happen. The déjà vu kicks in before either of them even see Peter. In fact, he's turning to tell Rupert to slow down just a split-second before Peter's thrown into their path. The whole thing happens too fast for him to get the words out.

Glass explodes around them. The impact sends a shock through the car. Jonas had the foresight to wear his seatbelt, at least, but he also has his head turned in such a way that he avoids getting punched in the face by his airbag.

In fact, by some strange luck, he avoids injury at all.

The moment he can, he throws off his seatbelt and twists to reach over to Rupert. He's careful, in case Rupert's spine is broken, but there's blood on his face and he's trying to figure out how to stymie it with his hands, all while swearing and hissing in German: ]

Can you breathe? Can you move?

[ Nobody's gonna check on the kid you hit? That's rude. Though, honestly, it's fair to assume that there's no way he should have survived that hit. He's on the ground now, dazed and not moving for a hot second. Just. Sort of. Putting himself together mentally. Because despite his sturdiness, that hurt. His head is bleeding profusely, his arm is definitely broken, and his back is a total mess, courtesy of his impact and subsequent bloody drag against the pavement. The sweatshirt he was wearing is completely shredded in addition to being hella bloodied up.

He stands, slowly, stumbling back onto his feet. Head reeling from a probable concussion, swiping the blood out of his eyes with his not-broken forearm. And finally gets a clear look back at the car that hit him. Well shit, he did a hell of a lot of damage. And at least one of the occupants look injured? Shit, shit, this was such a bad idea. He's going to yell at Murphy so much once he's done with this.

But - for now, they're blocking traffic, and if another car hits them he is not gonna be able to forgive himself. So he moves awkwardly to one side of the car, broken arm limp at his side. He heaves the uninjured shoulder into the side of the car, shoving it awkwardly towards the shoulder of the road one step at a time. Gasping and exhausted by the end, but hey, at least they won't get hit by anyone else. ]

[ Well.

Shit.

Murphy hadn't thought this through if he even thought at all. Stoping to think hasn't been a strong suit of his. React first, think later. But that's what gets him in predicaments just like this one. The crash happens instantaneously, the second that he tossed Peter into the goddamn street. All he can do is watch, grimaces at the crunching sound of metal.

His heart rate spikes, leaping up into his throat and his skin pricks with the needles of his anxiety. This is his fault. No false accusations this time.

Shit! The car is moving, lurching to the side of the road. In the back of his mind, something shouts at him to fucking do something. He jerks, leaping over to the driver's side (since it was closest to him). Hands grasp the door that had almost folded in on itself. His fingers leave indents, yanking open the door. There's just too much going on for him to notice that he'd tore it off. ]

H-hey! Hey! What do I do! [ He yells, ducking his head inside the car. ]

[ Once the ringing in his brain has calmed down and he's remembered how to breathe, Rupert realises distantly that Jonas is saying something. Something useful probably, although the hands smothering at his bloodied nose and mouth are considerably less helpful. Rupert battles past the airbag to shakily shove Jonas's worrying hands away as best he can. ]

Not with your fingers up my nose, no, [ Rupert snaps in German with uncharacteristic venom, spitting blood across the slowly deflating airbag. He can just about breathe, sure, but it hurts like the devil. And his nose definitely feels like it's in two pieces. The rest of him... remains to be seen.

And then there's fucking Murphy at his door, somehow, yelling a bewildering amount, and Rupert just gives him a bloodied stare of indignant rage as he demands in English: ]

Where the hell did you come from? And what the fuck did we just hit?

[ And, God, his shaken brain suddenly remembers he has a passenger -- he turns back to Jonas. ]

Christ - are you all right?

[ Then back to Murphy at his door to demand again: ]

Seriously, damn it, where the hell did you come from?

[ Well, at least the blood seems to be coming from Rupert's nose and not anywhere else on his head. If he's coherent enough to yell at Jonas, then he's probably not dying within the next minute. Probably. ]

Fuck. Fuck...

[ He draws back, shoving the passenger door open (of course, of fucking course it would be his side of the car that's unscathed), and he considers going back. Just a couple of minutes would be enough, but then, would it make a difference? With his luck, he'd be the one who caused the accident in the first place.

Returning his attention to Rupert as he backs out of the car, Jonas assures him: ]

I'm fine. I'll go get...

[ He hasn't finished the sentence, but he's already coming back. From... somewhere. Climbing back into the passenger seat with an ice pack and bandages that have appeared seemingly from nowhere. ]

[ So the car's out of the road and the passengers are getting helped out of it. Or getting the door torn off, or whatever needs to be done. Good. That's great.

He really ought to help with first aid here, and he moves to do that? Except as soon as his feet hit pavement nearby he finds himself wobbling. Oh right, he did just get hit by a car. He just sort of collapses to the ground for a hot second, waiting for his body to knit itself back together. Or at least for his arm to not be in two pieces? If he can get that going for him, he'll at least be functional again. ]

[ Murphy is desperately trying to catch up with his brain that's cycling rapidly through his thoughts. ] The sidewalk! [ Murphy spits out. He doesn't mean to yell but he's panicked. There's a slight relief that both the driver and passenger are alive and conscious.

And then, and then something hits him. He's left Peter in the road somewhere. Oh god, please let him be alive, Murphy thinks as he rounds around the front of the car. He drops down onto his knees, falling next to Peter. ] I'm picking you up. [ Is the only warning Peter has before Murphy is scooping him up. One arm slides under Peter's once Murphy has him on his feet and has Peter leaning on him. ]

[ Rupert's scrambled brain puts two and two together and comes up with orange. Did they hit the pavement, was that it? Is the car on the pavement? Was Murphy on the pavement? Did they hit Murphy? Where has his door gone?

He turns to Jonas in an attempt to try and figure out at least a few of these questions before belatedly realising that he'd just -- gone somewhere. And was now returning, armed with all kinds of helpful things. ]

--The hell did you just go? [ He demands in German once more, his voice a little fainter now as he realises just how utterly bewildering all of this is. He gestures weakly at the ice packs and bandages in Jonas's hands. ] What... where did you find those?

[ Then, more importantly, he vaguely remembers a dark shape in the road. ]

What the fuck did we hit?

Does that really matter right now?

[ This not the time to be going over the finer details of causality. He dumps the newly-acquired supplies on the center console. ]

Use those if you want.

[ Scrambling back out of the car, he rounds it to find Murphy dragging Peter - oh, fuck, they hit a person - and immediately joins in to take some of Peter's weight on his shoulder. He addresses Murphy, finally in English: ]

Is he dead?

[ Peter makes a noise of protest, both at being dragged along and at being asked if he's dead. Does he look dead to you?

... Okay maybe he kind of does. He's sort of a bloody mess right now, and there's more where that came from on the pavement too. But despite all that blood, his body isn't especially mangled. The arm is the worst of it - clearly broken, given the awkward angle - but the rest of his wounds are slowly sealing over. Already the superficial scrapes on his legs have closed up, leaving only bloody marks in their wake. ]

Careful - ow, my arm --

[ Yep. He's alive. ]

He's alive. [ Peter didn't get hit by a train going two hundred miles per hour or whatever speed Peter had said. His memory is a tangled mess and there's no time right now to tease it out. ]

He'll be okay. [ As if Murphy knows what the hell he's talking about. He's hoping that Peter will be okay sometime soon. Murphy looks at Peter once they've dragged him to the safety of the sidewalk and slowly lowers him down so he can sit.

Murphy stays crouched in front of Peter. ] You're healing, right? [ His eyes are ticking around, Peter is all banged up and his arm jutting at a weird angle. ]

[ Left to his own devices in the wreckage Rupert slowly begins to take stock; he tries to dab at his face with a haphazard fistful of bandages and hisses an oath at the bone-sharp pain that comes with touching his broken nose. Not good.

With a grunt of pain he fights past the sagging airbag and swivels his feet out of the open space where the door should be. Standing is slow, painful work - every single joint seems to have seized up in protest, his muscles feel like they're made of gravel - but eventually he's upright, leaning on the chassis as he stares at Murphy and Jonas on the kerb, with another bloodied and battered boy between them. The words he'll be okay dimly register and Rupert nods vaguely to himself in relief. Good. That answers his next question. Now on to the next problem: ]

We need to leave, [ He insists in a voice only just loud enough to be heard by the trio, as his gaze pointedly sweeps past them and onto the passers-by, some of whom are stopping to watch this latest imPort fiasco unfold. One of them has a cellphone in their hand, upraised and clearly recording this literal carwreck of a situation. Not fucking good at all. ]

Now, preferably.

[ As soon as Peter has been safely deposited, Jonas backs off and leaves his care to Murphy. Who... seems to know enough about the kid to not be caught in the grip of a panic attack. Unlike Jonas, who's shaking and trying to remember how to breathe at a normal rhythm.

At the sound of Rupert's voice, Jonas's attention swings back to him. ]

Can you even teleport like this? Shouldn't we just call an ambulance?

I'm healing, I'm healing.

[ Not quite as fast as he would like - he only has so much healing factor, and healing multiple injuries at the same time is such a pain - but he is healing. It's really just the arm that's giving him some trouble. Ugh, he hates broken bones. ]

Can you hold onto my wrist for a second? I gotta reset this.

[ He says, gesturing for Murphy to take the wrist of his injured arm. Of course he's furious at you for all of this, but. One step at a time. Oooone step at a time. Speaking of which - he looks towards the two people who were in the car, way more concerned about them. Peter knows he's gnona heal. He's pretty sure that dude has a wrecked car and a broken face. ]

-- Are you two okay?

[ Right, one step at a time. ]

Y-eah. [ Gently, Murphy takes Peter's offered wrist and then he curls his fingers around them to keep his arm steady. ] I'm glad one of us knows how to relocate bones. [ Not a good time to be sarcastic but that's the only thing he knows what to be. His sarcasm and his stupid little jokes are just things that Murphy is made up of.

His attention flicks over Jonas and Rupert. ] Where the hell are we going to go exactly, [ Murphy hisses out. That's when he focuses in on anything else that didn't involve the car crash. And spots a cellphone, obviously being recorded. ]

Fuck.

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