( open ) experience has made me rich and now they're after me

[unionized]

WHO: Rufus Shinra (unionized) and various (including YOU)!
WHEN: April
WHERE: All around Etraya!
WHAT: Open top-levels for various prompts including dreamshare, general interaction, and potentially mission-related things once those become available.
NOTES\WARNINGS: The usuals for FF7: potential discussion of shitty parenting, parental death, mass murder, unethical human experimentation, less mass-y but still severe murder, ecoterrorism (both ways) etc. etc.

Comments

[unionized]

[One thing rapidly becomes apparent, as they hurtle their way to the end of the open lot and onto the narrower track of the course proper: that one neat trick wasn't an isolated incident. The way the blond is handling the car even in the minute aspects and details speaks to either the fact that he's driven this specific vehicle enough to know precisely what he can get away with while handling it, or he's simply a skillful driver in general. He takes turns at speeds that a more cautious driver would be slamming the brakes at; he follows lines that make the car veer back and forth from one side of the track to the other like he knows how to compromise an objectively shorter span of distance in favor of a longer one that will let him keep his average speed higher without risking a spinout.

As they progress along the track, the warehouse buildings gradually disappear into the rearview mirror, replaced by scrub brush, open plains, and the occasional rock formations; a short distance up ahead, the air ripples in a heat mirage that looks almost like a lake, but in fact is likely the first stunt driving interlude of the course.]

Every obstacle missed is a ten-second penalty.

[Also we're just going to pretend he cites a relevant number here because fuck if I know the average time of a tactical driving course and Google is, perhaps understandably, not being forthcoming about this sort of thing.]

And casualties are game over. Obviously.

[..."Casualties".]

[equivo]

[ With parameters locked in, Krouse nods, sliding his feet higher in the footwell for a firmer brace. He doesn't blink at 'casualties', even if he doesn't have context for what that could mean here yet - he's assuming that's not a clever way of referencing their own possible imminent demise, given how valuable this stunt driving teenager seems to be.

But he could be wrong, and it wouldn't matter. If he dies here, it doesn't make a difference. He'll wake up eventually.

Right now, the rapid shifts of momentum and the thrum of the engine under the hood are still holding his attention, and his heart is picking up in something other than anger or fear. ]

Obviously.

[ He glances sideways from the shimmering obstacle up ahead, smile tightened to a sharp, competitive line. ]

I guess you'd better not miss.

[ The time quoted is staggering, given the length of the course he can make out already, which isn't even inclusive of whatever they'll have to face out there. But he believes it's doable, for no reason except that he believes in the electric focus radiating out of the driver's seat. ]

[unionized]

I never do.

[They're close enough now that the first array of obstacles becomes apparent: a smattering of pylons and spike strips designed to force the driver through a series of tight precision maneuvers of varying difficulty. The pylons are forgiving enough; run one down and it'll give way, leaving only shame behind. The spike strips, on the other hand, pose a considerably more real and present danger, when certainly the last thing a pair of teenage boys want is to blow out their tires and have to summon assistance — or worse, end up walking back.

The blond, however, seems reasonably unfazed; he evidently knows the course well enough to not have to think very hard about what he needs to do in order to complete each maneuver, relying on reflex and familiarity as much as quick tactical thinking. Tires squeal and the asphalt picks up darker marks from the rubber left behind, but turn by turn they navigate the slalom deftly, and begin to pick up speed again as they exit the obstacle and back onto the connecting straightaway — a narrow tongue of road flanked on either side by smatterings of large boulders.

And it is, evidently, a bid to prey on the driver's complacency, because they're not far out of the obstacle — close enough to still be crowing about it — when an audible thunk resounds off the side of the car, and a few droplets of bright orange spatter fleck up onto Krouse's passenger window.]

Shit —

[The blond boy puts the hammer down, but he's still not fast enough to avoid another thunk, this time near the rear driver's side.]

[equivo]

[ This obstacle course is like something Krouse has only seen on screens - reruns of a test driving show that played endlessly on hotel televisions when they'd head down to visit his cousins, or part of the opening scenes of a movie about spies whose job involved a strangely conspicuous amount of introducing themselves by their real names and car chases in tourist destinations.

Which is to say that it's a hell of a ride. Krouse doesn't want to distract the intrepid driver from dodging those spike strips, so he keeps his mouth shut, but the arc of his grin only grows with every hairpin turn and skid of tires burning friction to propel the weighted inertia of the car in the right direction.

When you're just driving a car from point A to point B on a city street, it's easy to forget how many hundreds of pounds of metal are wrapped around you. There's no forgetting it here. Any wrong move, and all of that momentum careens out of control, dragging you along with it.

But for all of his focus on that - as if he can influence success on the course by paying it close enough attention - it's an easy snap to key up in a different direction himself when the paint hits his side of the car. He flattens back against the seat and slides lower before he registers that it's just paint, and he's already back up by the second hit. ]

They're shooting at us?

[ There's a bright ripple of excitement at the prospect, once again for no real reason at all. ]

[unionized]

Keeping you on your toes, remember? Glove compartment!

[So he says, with the sort of look of someone who's already calculating how to reach over mid-maneuver and do it himself, but recognizes that achieving it would take probably a lot more focus and motor control than he's really got to spare right now. But even without that focus, the implicit lesson is already dawning — he didn't check the car before he set out. If there's a weapon in there, and he rather expects there will be, he would've found it if he'd done a proper check of the car first. Verdot might call him careless, cocky. Chide him for not paying better attention.

Well, he thinks with a flash of spite, so long as we handle it by the time we're back, then he'll have nothing to say, will he?]

They won't aim for the windows. Too risky for a drill. But it's open season as soon as you roll it down.

[And should Krouse, in fact, get the glove compartment open, he will indeed find a paintball gun of his own, loaded with bright blue ammunition, just waiting to be utilized as behind them, a pair of black dots enter the track and begin gaining fast.]

[equivo]

[ Krouse is on the glove compartment as soon as the other boy says the word, moving with urgency that doesn't cross over into carelessness. He might think to be critical of having not been informed about it earlier if this was real, or if he had enough context to jump to the conclusions Rufus is about the intent of putting it there, but here - for all he knows, there wasn't a gun in the glove compartment at all until just now.

He listens to the rest as he checks the weapon over, snapping the glove compartment shut again as he does.

There are rules he can assume. Even trying to avoid the windows, there's another element of live risk being added to the mix here. Combined with the spike strips and the pursuit, he has a decent idea of the risk band they're operating in. Don't try to fuck the other guys up on purpose, but otherwise, play for keeps. Trust the competency of their opposition like the opposition is testing theirs. ]

Got it.

[ Krouse undoes his seatbelt, woven fabric retracting in a hissing whisper as he pivots in his seat and goes for the window. As soon as it starts to roll down, the sandy air whips in, dry turbulence stinging his eyes and whipping his hair around his face.

He leans out of the window without hesitation, like this is something he's done before. He technically has, although not armed with a gun. The gun was always an emergency fallback, something to bring into play only when the risk of escalation was outweighed by necessity.

But he knows how to brace himself in a speeding vehicle and line up a target, and he knows how to shoot. Marrying the skills together isn't hard.

At this distance, with ammunition he's not familiar with and a gun he's never used, the first shot is a test. A flash of blue explodes on the course behind them a short distance in front of the leading car, and vanishes under its hood as the driver accelerates. Krouse pulls back in as the passenger leans out, processing feedback in the split-second pause. Orange splatters on a pylon ahead of them, a fortunately missed return shot. ]

How much do we care what happens to the other cars?

[unionized]

[If this were reality, and not a dream, there would be all manner of inconsistencies about this encounter to question — like how long is this track, really, and where did their pursuers come from, and how could anyone have known that this would happen to prepare for it. But none of that matters, really, when it simply seems logical that what should be happening now is a high-speed shootout, and so it is, with a course that goes on as long as it needs to, with obstacles present wherever they're expected, and a vehicle whose limitations are ambiguous but more about the encounter than about physics.

As Krouse is returning fire, the blond boy continues to watch the course — but now there's a new, and even more entertaining, element of the run: not just how to clear the obstacles, but how to use them effectively to deal with an unexpected threat. It's a rush of adrenaline that's made him sharp, tempering his recklessness away from teenage hubris and into something far more calculated, riding that perfect knife's edge of "if it's stupid but it works, it isn't stupid".]

If they're hit to incapacitate, they'll pull out.

[Presumably there's a system in place that would indicate when a paintball has incapacitated a vehicle. Dream logic says no one needs to worry about how this works.]

If we're hit to incapacitate, they'll remotely kill the power to this car. Game over.

[He flashes a tight grin.]

Better them than us.

[equivo]

[ The other boy is a better driver than Krouse is. That was an understanding he started to form early in the obstacle portion of the track, and it's confirmed beyond a doubt now as Krouse tracks what he's aiming to do with the landscape of the course itself. This realization doesn't come with (much) envy, but more of the admiration of a talented amateur watching a professional fall into rhythm.

The implicit challenge is keeping up, and it's one Krouse is happy to take him up on.

He grins back, close-mouthed, a sliver of reckless anticipation. ]

Always is.

[ And for a second, he almost feels the rush of those moments where everything wasn't a grim cascade of fuck ups. The times when things lined up, everyone in their grooves, the tumble of chaos something he could skim on top of instead of being dragged under by. When it clicked, and the world transformed to a flow of possibilities from second to second, the threads around his throat so light he could barely feel them at all.

He slips back out of the window off the beat of the return fire, popping into view as the passenger is still hanging out of his own window in the leftside vehicle, and takes three swift, nearly instinctual shots at the windshield. The first one goes wild - the second pings off the side, catching the passenger in a cast off splatter of blue droplets - and the third smears directly over the driver's view, sunk where a real bullet would have put a permanent end to his career aspirations.

The car drops back, cutting acceleration, and the righthand vehicle surges to the middle of the track. Krouse ducks back into cover and laughs, a crackle of bright sound. ]