ArchivedLogs:Go

Go
Dramatis Personae Clint, Ion
In Absentia	2016-01-12 '
Location <NYC> Brooklyn
The most populous of the boroughs, Brooklyn has nothing if not character. With a thriving music and arts scene, and a distinctive New York slant to its stereotypical gritty accents, Brooklyn ranges from the high-cultured to the very much working class. From botanical gardens to beachfronts, Manhattanites might like to think their borough is the only one that matters, but Brooklyn has a lot to offer of its own. There are many sectors of the city that are seriously hurting for business. In the wake of destruction, rebuilding is not one of them. While many stores and offices are still closed, bankrupt or broken down or their employees dead and gone, there's a whole lot of the city needing fixing up, putting back together, and Ion and his coworkers have been hard at work today on site of what will, eventually, be an office complex. Eventually. For now, just the skeleton of a building in a mostly deserted section of a ruined part of Brooklyn, sad and half-gutted with a lot of its business and residents alike fled since the plague. That was then, though. /Now/ Ion has shed hard hat and safety vest and, in heavy boots, thick jeans, leather jacket, fingerless leather gloves, black cap pulled down over his head, /frowning/ up at the fat wet flakes of snow swirling down from the sky, he's heading off from site (not without a lot of hugs and back-pats and fist-bumps from his crew) to tug on his helmet, hop onto his bike, pull away from the curb and, for once, actually /stop/ at a red light in the slushy empty streets. Probably only because he's adjusting his helmet, buttoning /up/ his jacket against the drifting snow. Amidst all the ruin, a Pizza Hut still thrives. It is from this weed of a restaurant that Clint has come, sweeping the newly fallen snow from the saddle of a sleek purple and black Yamaha parked in front. He's dressed in a black motorcycle jacket with purple trim and heavy black jeans, a black sling pack across his back. His eyes track over Ion's chopper, appreciative. Donning a helmet (which matches his jacket), he starts the bike (quiet!) and, turning, pulls it up alongside Ion's. He turns and gives the other rider a nod, his own expression invisible behind the faceplate. Then he looks up at the red; down the abandoned street in front of them; back at Ion. Ion has finished buttoning up his jacket when the other bike pulls up beside his. He /was/ starting to rev his motor again, red light be damned, but this stops when another bike pulls up alongside. His own expression is similarly inscrutable behind his blank black faceplate as his head tips, down-up, looking over the other bike. Other rider. The bob of his head is definitely a nod, though. His head tips back up. Looks over to the light at the cross-street from theirs. Looks back toward Clint. Back up the street. Leans juuust a little forward as the other light flips green to yellow. The bounce of Clint's shoulders looks like a chuckle even if the telltale noises is hidden by his helmet. He hunches down over the glossy purple fairing of his bike and hits a button on the dash. The very instant the light goes green he guns the engine hard, only fishtailing a /little/ as he tears out into the intersection, parting the dancing snow in picturesque vortices to either side of him, accelerating all the while. There's a similar shake that goes through Ion's shoulders, though his is drowned out by the throaty purr of his engine. As the light turns green, his engine thrums louder, a spray of grey slush cast out from his back wheel as he shoots out. Zooming across the empty intersection and gunning it hard into the empty street beyond. Clint eases up just enough to regain full traction, then opens up the throttle all the way. Ion has the lead coming out of the intersection, but Clint catches back up to him until the two bikes are cruising side-by-side at increasingly unsafe speed down the just-above-freezing road. He flattens himself down even more in a bid to pull ahead. Ion leans down, a faint and highly improbable shiver of sparks skittering down off his bike and dancing out along the slushy street as he noses a hair ahead of Clint. His posture tightens, hands clench, head just that much lower, shoulders tensing, as the purple and black bike inches back out ahead of him. Then his Harley pulling back into the lead -- -- though not for long, skidding for just a moment on a patch of ice as they approach another intersection. Red light. Not that Ion is /planning/ on stopping, there's surely enough time to make it through before -- -- a long grocery delivery truck is /also/ pulling through the intersection. Probably enough time for Clint to make it. Ion's skid has cost him enough time that now his path takes him on a collision course right up to -- -- no, make that right /through/ the other truck? There's a long blast of horn, but the black-and-chrome Harley does not, in fact, crash into the broad side of the truck. It was certainly /about/ to, but a moment later, another skitterspread of sparks, and rider and bike both have vanished, leaving only the sparks to fade away into the slush. If Clint saw the truck coming, he didn't give any sign of panic or try to avoid it despite its driver frantically leaning on the horn and slamming on the brakes. It is only when the two motorcycles are screaming through the intersection and the headlights hit them that he turns his head far enough to see it. But then it's a fraction of a second later. He has missed the truck by mere inches and is turning, skidding, almost spilling, and coming to a stop just beyond the white line on the other side of the intersection. He yanks his helmet off and searches the street (and the front of the truck, as it finally skids to a halt) for his opponent. Then, with a slow shake of his head, he laughs. And keeps laughing, alone on the empty street, beneath a cone of light filled with swirling snow.