genessia | [Action | Closed] Motorized mayhem

There was no helping it, with a native Earth full of werewolves and vampires and such, any subarchways the Fae opened would insist on spawning in the redheaded step-child of the cities. One would think Fayren, with the fantastical nature of Faerie business, with castles and dragons and all that nonsense -- but no. Changeling-specific things were far more in Fayren's wheelhouse, but the world he came from skewed it all firmly back into supernatural horror.

Even if a subarchway was just to a five by ten storage unit out in the middle of nowhere, Nevada. Specifically, this had been set to the summer of 2008. That was the year he'd had to put Jethro into storage in order to go into deeper hiding. By the time Barack Obama had won the US election at the end of the year, Tannusen had snapped a sufficient number of necks to be safe enough pull his very distinctive custom bike out of storage and ride back up to Canada. He'd rushed off to meet up with an old carnie friend who needed his help with some spooky business up in Toronto.

But he couldn't bear to see even a fake Isaac again, so it had to be before Toronto. Otherwise, he knew he'd never leave the arch. It also needed to be after he'd paid that nocker village to forge a chimera out of the motorcycle, and that made for a pretty narrow window in the grand scheme of things.

Narrow, but not too narrow. Especially with time paused.

And sure, the Harley V-Rod Tannusen pushed alongside him was a soulless construct... but so was the original. When one was dealing with chimera, souls didn't come into effect. Jethro had always been very much like the natives of this world, except his personality and form had been crafted by other people, not... whatever ran this world.

Tannu looked up when Trahearne drew near, and offered the sylvari a smile. Not astride the bike, he'd chosen to push it from the subarchway all the way to Genessia without turning on the engine. It was less likely to draw trouble that way.

Trouble could come later. It always did.

"Trahearne, meet Jethro. Jethro, Trahearne." Why yes, he did just introduce the bike like it was a person.

Edited 2017-01-30 13:37 (UTC)

Given this was Tannusen's bike, it could very well be a person. Trahearne looked from Jethro to Tannusen and back, trying to determine if Tannusen was pulling his leg again or if Jethro actually was something that cared about names. If it was the latter, it would be rude to ask. He was sure Tannusen had already thought of the confusion this would cause the sylvari.

"It's a pleasure to meet something so valuable you'd open an archway to retrieve it." His arms were folded across his chest. Even if it was a person, it had no hands to offer to shake.

Tannusen held the bike up with one hand on the nearest grip, and stroked the other hand over the bike's false gas-tank... much like one might do to a pet. He still might very well be fucking with Trahearne, or it may indeed be able to feel that. Who knew?

"Jethro was the only friend I had at my back for a long time," uh oh, that sounded pretty sincere. "It was my sister's bike for several years before I got it from her. It's soaked up all sorts of daydreams and thoughts and feelings from the both of us." And a whole lot of nightmares, of course. Neither sibling has had a good run of it.

Tannusen probably had his reasons for petting the bike. Trahearne wasn't going to ask, for a variety of reasons. So he didn't.

"Your sister?" Oh, should he have asked that? Tannusen didn't sound sad when he mentioned her. "Ah, so it is quite important. It must be quite the sight in your eyes."

Trahearne had been enchanted enough at this point to have a basic idea of how the world looked to Tannusen. "It's not that I mind coming out here to meet, ah, Jethro, but why invite me?"

No indeed, Tannusen's sister was doing just fine, last he'd seen her. The one relation he didn't have a problem with.

"Mmhm, she pretty much raised me." Because fuck knows their shared father hadn't been interested in raising a kid. Having one? Sure. Raising it? Ha. Maybe training it, like a pet hound, but not raising it.

"Well, I thought you should meet it before it's just suddenly hanging out in your apartment."

Street parking was for losers.

Also, Jethro was openly a very pretty, custom, expensive motorcycle. A prime target for vandals and thieves, which... never ended well for said vandals and thieves.

"You ever been on a bike?"

"Ah, in the apartment itself?" Okay so it would need a cover, he hoped Tannusen had one. The cats would want to lay all over the thing, of course. And there was claws. He'd just keep the beasts in his room until they figured stuff out.

"No, I didn't even know what they were until I saw them here. Just how fast does it go?" Trahearne eyed the bike warily. Motorized transport was fast but he'd seen just how fast cars went. This didn't even have the decency to have a metal cage around it.

"A factory V-Rod will go a hundred and forty miles per hour, or two hundred and twenty five kilometers per hour," Tannusen continued to pet the false gas tank, like stroking the neck of a horse. Or dragon pony deer. "Jethro is, of course, not factory."

So, faster than that.

Not that he expected those numbers to make much sense to Trahearne. So Tannusen glanced up at the near-by traffic, and pointed out some of the cars heading down the road. "That one's going thirty five miles per hour. But I'm not going to open Jethro's throttle in town."

Probably.

Certainly at least not with a passenger. Tannusen threw a leg over the bike's saddle and patted the pillion seat behind him. "Want to try?"

He'd need to get himself a new helmet -- among other things, and a basic passenger helmet... but for this run, this would be fine. They wouldn't go too terribly fast, in part to keep the wind from blinding them both.

This was, by far, not the most dangerous thing Trahearne had willingly engaged in. He used that justification often to make him do things that weren't that sensible at the time. It shouldn't be like getting used to an airship or like being crammed in a charr tank with too many fuzzy bodies. Shouldn't be.

So he swung a leg over the bike to sit and looked around, not entirely sure how he was supposed to secure himself. The logical option would be to hold onto Tannusen, given there wasn't much else to grab. Trahearne didn't like to touch without asking.

"I assume I grab onto something to not fly off this thing?" As it was, his leaves would be a mess after this.

Tannusen reached down past his own leg to turn the key in Jethro's ignition. He then held down the switch near the right blinker control for a moment, and the bike's mortal form growled to life. Not bad, it didn't even sound like a bike that had spent so many months just sitting idly in storage.

The sound made him stupidly happy. He'd missed this!

"Hold onto my waist, and put your feet on these," he pointed out the passenger pegs by tapping them with the sides of his boots, one after the other, before planting his feet back on the ground. He'd be holding the whole mess up until take-off, after all. "You'll want to avoid touching the big shiny tubes," the exhaust, "or anything that moves. All of that gets extremely hot. Other than that, lean the way I lean, when I lean. Easy, right?" Another reason for a passenger to just hold onto his waist, it made matching those leans that much easier.

Edited 2017-01-31 12:37 (UTC)

Trahearne did as Tannusen said, putting his arms around the fae's waist and bare feet on the pegs. Maybe one day he'd wear proper shoes. He never gave it much thought.

"So don't move much except to lean with you." He could manage that, he didn't want to risk moving too much when he only kinda understood how this thing worked. It felt awful vulnerable to be riding around on.

Tannusen took Trahearne's wrists in his gloved hands and moved the sylvari's grip to be a less... nervous one. "You can hang onto my sides, you won't blow off like a leaf. Honestly, you're probably heavier than I am."

The engine of the bike spluttered, just a little tiny bit. Was it laughing at this? Somehow? Or was it just rough from that months-long cold start?

"There's a spot downtown with decent tea, let's go there," once Trahearne was settled into place, the blond pulled in the clutch, shifted Jethro into gear with the tip of a boot, and...

They were off!

Everything felt a lot faster on a motorcycle!

He probably was heavier than Tannusen but- Pale Tree give him strength, this was going a lot faster than he expected! It felt much faster than it really was and Trahearne wasn't used enough to small motor vehicles to really grasp he was going slower than the wind made it feel. He held on tighter instinctively. He wasn't afraid just, uh, taken by surprise.

"Mmm." He wasn't sure if he could even be heard without raising his voice right now.

Thankfully for Trahearne's nerves, downtown wasn't that far from any of those cardinally-positioned arches. The tiger kept them slower than the traffic around them, too, and pulled up at a cute little place that had outdoor seating. So sue him, he didn't want to let Jethro out of his sight for long, just yet! He slid the bike into a spot beside the sidewalk and killed the engine.

"Not too terrible, right? I stayed around twenty."

Out of... a hundred and forty. No, more.

"This place brews a good oolong. Ever been here?"

Trahearne climbed off the bike with more of a rush than he'd like to admit and smoothed his headleaves in a nervous gesture. They hadn't gone fast enough for them to get messy. Messier. His "hair" always looked like a mess.

He looked up at the sign of the little show, trying to remember if he's been by here before.

"Not that I recall." Outdoor seating was nice. "I don't bother much with tea lately, coffee machines are terribly convenient."

When it came to food and drink, Trahearne's first option was always the fastest.

Tannusen had a habit of meeting people in neutral locations when they wouldn't come to Velvet, or when he didn't particularly want them there. So he'd been to a lot of these little spots, all around the main city. Some of the other cities, too, if to a far lesser degree.

That was how he'd gotten poisoned with Nova City's water supply, despite living and working in Genessia. Just tea, taken at an otherwise-innocuous meeting.

What a result, though. Certainly not the one he'd been hoping for from that particular outing...

...And look at how empty that outdoor seating was! They could pick their spot, no one else wanted to freeze their butts off outside in the dead of winter. First, though, tea. Tannusen led the way indoors to place his part of the order.

"Yeah, I got scolded over how bad you are at cooking," he told Trahearne once their orders were in. "Apparently it's a crime I haven't taught you a bunch of cooking you'd never use."

"Mm, it came in handy. I looked helpless enough to take his mind off things." So maybe he'd played it up a bit, no one needed to know that. Trahearne just couldn't make himself care about cooking, there was too much else cluttering is mind to through food into the mix. It all ended up the same no matter how nice it tasted.

Tannusen picked the place but Trahearne decided he was picking the seating. There was a table with shade if you wanted to scoot a chair and plenty of sunlight otherwise. While he'd never ever let Tannusen know, sitting in the sun was revitalizing for the sylvari. Right now it would just look like he was trying to warm up. Even if he didn't feel the cold sharply the sunlight was pleasant.

He glanced over to Jethro, contemplative. "Are you going to introduce Cassian to your old friend here?"

The bike had moved when no one was looking. About three feet to the left; closer to their seating.

"Of course," Tannusen, of course, wasn't alarmed at that discovery. To his eyes, the chimera wasn't a bike at all, after all. "I doubt I could avoid doing so even if I wanted to." Which he didn't.

Trahearne wasn't even surprised at this point. It belonged to Tannusen, of course it could move on its own. It probably looked pretty weird from Tannusen's point of view and eventually he'd see its other form, whenever the tiger was bored and enchanted him again on a whim.

"How well do you think he'd take to a ride? His 'good' half was, mm, very nervous. Made me think of Bracken but with a temper." Less stuttering though.

...Tannusen just tried very hard to not die, having just inhaled a sip of searing hot oolong tea.

Trahearne watched him with a carefully blank look. Sure, he could be worried, but this was Tannusen, he'd be fine. It was harder not to laugh at his brief misfortune. The tiger was wearing off on Trahearne.

"I don't suggest you try that again without gills," he commented blandly.

Tannusen's coughing fit ended with him half out of the chair, but it did pass. "...Yeah, the good half was a mouse." Cute, sure, but nervous as hell. And lacking a lot of the usual punch, literally and otherwise. "I have no idea, honestly. He's as old as dirt, but he's modern enough, I wouldn't be surprised if he's been on a motorcycle or twenty before."

Then again, he kept assuming Cassian had done things before that he hadn't. But come on, he had to be right eventually. Right? Right. Maybe not.

Edited 2017-02-04 12:13 (UTC)

"I hope it goes well, either way." Really he was hoping that Cassian wasn't used to motorcycles. Not because he wished the priest any discomfort but there was something terribly amusing about the idea of Tannusen having to deal with all that yelling. Trahearne smiled and sipped his cheap coffee. At least he could have that mental image.

"It makes me nervous enough, in part because I'm not sure all what you've hidden in the thing." Magic wise, that was.

Tannusen gave Trahearne a suspicious look, but didn't have enough of a suspicion to do more than that. Then his gaze shifted back over to the motorcycle. And to its large, travel-worn saddlebags. Of the two largest bags, one held a tightly-rolled survival sleeping bag, and the other... stuffed into a dark, zipped-up pillow case to avoid suspicion...

"What, in the bags? Nothing too dangerous," Tannusen took a cautious sip of tea, trying not to resume choking on it. "My old pelt and skull is bundled up in one of them. After I broke free, I found the poacher who took me out last time. Needless to say I wasn't going to throw his 'trophy' in the dumpster."

He'd considered burning it, a time or thirty, but no. It had so much chimerical potential...

What was that look for? He was totally innocent! Totally. He wasn't smiling at your potential annoyance Tannusen, perish the thought.

"That's not exactly what I meant-" Trahearne paused, wait what? "Your old pelt and skull? You mean that quite literally?"

Tannusen's eyebrows raised at Trahearne's surprise, and he wordlessly set his tea down to get up and walk over to the motorcycle. He opened the relevant saddlebag -- the largest of the bunch, more of a large canvas duffel bag strapped down to the back fender -- and pulled what seemed to be a very lumpy, huge black pillow out.

That was all that fit in there.

He brought it back over to the table, sat back down, and held the thing out for Trahearne to inspect. The 'pillow' was way too heavy, even for its considerable size.

Edited 2017-02-09 12:51 (UTC)

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