Description: In the wake of Rolento's alternate idea as to how to keep Southtown standing but maintain his goals, Howard Rust, Hinata Wakaba, and Brett Neuer discuss finer details such as 'we might need a new truck' and 'who the hell is going to do it if this certain idea doesn't go through?'
The nightmare isn't over yet. There is a spot of hope of an alternative means of delivering the bomb to its final... er, awakening place. Which is to say, to blow up, but now it's an extraordinarily tense waiting game to see exactly if this other alternative is going to play ball. The skies are relatively clear to cast the shining rays of the sun upon an ashen landscape in a city that is almost completely abandoned to what the greater public fears is the city's fate. Any other elite spec ops searchers - or looters - or really almost anyone else have all but cleared away by now.
It's a waiting game. Howard Rust needs sleep, but cannot find it, nor get it. Not when he has to double check the vehicle he came in with, in case they have to do this the hard way after all. The brakes are indeed shot and severely damaged thanks to that sudden stop by his incredibly powerful, Kyokugen-honed kickin' legs, and there's only so much he can do to fix any of it...
He pulls himself out from under there after a series of coughs to once again wave ash away from his face, reclining his back against the side of the vehicle as he struggles to stay awake. Hopeful. Coherent.
...Coherent is really the longest shot of the three, considering even in a best case scenario, someone is likely to have to sacrifice themselves to see the bomb detonated away from Southtown, and odds remain it could be any one of the three that were told the offer by Rolento himself.
With pretty much little to do but wait at this point, with no word about whether Rust's favor can be called in yet, Brett finds himself...restless. He was clearly the least calm, least settled of the group about the enormity ab out what was to be done, and it shows. With his skate wheels removed, he finds himself pacing and fretting. He doesn't know car mechanics enough to really help Rust on the car, and until it comes to trying to operate something like the earth movers or something, he has nothing to do but worry.
WHen Rust pulls himself out of the undercarriage, Brett stops still, turning the rest of his body toward the older man with his brow furrowed and his hands tugging nervously at the bottom of his shirt at this point. "How bad is it?" It's probably good he's not been in Southtown enough to get the ash as bad as Rust has...
Volcanic dust is no joke! Nobody needs that stuff in their lungs, and considering how much he's been in it, he's probably already condemned himself to serious respiratory disease from here on out. The aging American man frowns at Brett's question as he snorts, head lowering in a sigh.
"I, I hit the brakes, uh... way too hard," he says - he never yet had a chance to apologize to Hinata for nearly running her over in the wake of all this. Still, they found Rolento, Rolento gave them very specific terms to abide by as a means of saving Southtown from destruction while still preserving his ultimate aims in his continued war against government powers and the things they pull behind closed curtains... or... or even in front of them, as the case may be.
He looks up to Brett, slowly raising his chin upward to look him in the eyes as he extends a hand, pointing a finger and waving it... why? Something he wanted to ask... while they're there.
"Wh-while we're here," Rust needlessly narrates the inner narration despite the reader already being aware of the preface as to what he's about to say and why, "you... you said something 'bout, you ran across... l-look, I'm, I'm still on an adrenaline high, what'd you say you ran into..."
Sighing, Brett nods. He might not know mechanics, but he knows enough to know the brakes may well be shot, the way he tells it. "So we might need another way to get there, once we learn the location?" he asks, rubbing his head. He has skates, sure, but that doesn't little good for the others, and he can only skate so fast anyway.
But then Rust stops and points at him, causing the hockey kid to stop still and look straight at the finger, blinking a bit. "Um....which thing I ran into?" he asks a bit, before he finally thinks about what he said to Rolento. "...y-you mean what I ran into in Thailand?"
Howard at least has money and could probably buy a car, if... /they could find a dealership that was still open under the threat of nuclear destruction/. This being Ez- Japan, which has already had a history of nuclear attacks and scares alike... those odds are nil, but, the subject quickly segues to something that perhaps may be of greater import than a (comparatively) mere destruction of the city.
"Thailand, that's, ah, that's where... the water froze over, killing... all the fish, uh, you said something 'bout... shit," Howard rubs the side of his head. It's impossible to remain calm and completely rationalize why he was asking him about this, but maybe it's just to pass the time and keep him awake...?
"I, I forgot what you said, but, but you said somethin' and I got thinkin', uh, a little," only a little since they were trying to talk Rolento down from nuking Southtown which is kind of an urgent issue that still can't fully be sidelined even now, "what... what happened, ah, over in... look, j-just... what'd you say to him 'bout..."
'Bout what?
Brett frowns, Rust's increasing incoherency making it hard to figure out what he really wants to know. It's not as if the whole thing in Thailand was hunky dory for him either, nor completely clear to him. "Yeah, the sea was completely frozen over, to the sea floor," he says about Thailand, trying to lean somewhere just to keep himself from slumping down to the floor again. .
"You mean about the....things causing everything? Those...spheres?" he asks, a bit more trusting of actually saying WHAT the thing he ran into was, considering Rust isn't the maniac that Rolento is."
While the car was being examined Hinata found herself up by the main road, a good dozen meters or so from the rest of the group. Not altogether easy to see in the current lighting conditions. Cars are not in any way Hinata's area of expertise; home-ec was the far more exciting option in school, considering it gave her the opportunity to get some baking in during the school day. What she is good at is never seeming to run out of energy, which was all it took to nominate herself to explore for some backup plans.
Aside from the rubble left by Rolento's tank, the road out here is fairly empty and boring. Whatever people were able to move easily, such as cars and trucks, has mostly cleared out of the city. As far as the rest of Southtown's population knows right now, it's guaranteed to be taken away in the upcoming nuclear detonation.
Howard nods along as he listens to what Brett says, albeit with some sort of increasing urgency in the nodding. He is interested in what he has to say - time is at a premium if the backup plan does not pan out, and they have to make good with what time they have if any or all of them are about to be atomized in the name of saving Southtown. Every second, in a sense, counts for any leftover information there is to grasp and share in regards to the (somehow) greater problem of... time. Space. Existence.
His eyes light up as Brett mentions spheres, a certain thing said to him coming right to the forefront of his mind, snapping his fingers and pointing at Brett.
"Spheres! That's what she sai--" He composes himself. "'scuse me, someone, ah... while back, mentioned... something 'bout... 'bout time spheres."
That he forgot to mention them at all during his inane rambling at the vortex... well, it'd be giving him too much credit to say he intentionally withheld that bit of information as a filter to see who was coming forth with something real or something not, but this, and it's clear in Howard's eyes, cements Brett as the genuine article. (The look in his eyes may also make Brett reconsider if he actually isn't as much of a maniac in his own way, but...)
"Shit, I, I've been... lookin' for someone, ah, like you, you, you've seen 'em, uh... time spheres, right?" Didn't Brett just confirm that by describing them without a giveaway prompt for him to latch onto?
"Y-You gotta tell me... tell me everything, I mean... please, j-just been trying to... trying to, get a handle on, on all this..."
Frowning as Rust seems to know about the spheres, Brett looks a bit more intently toward the older man, a scowl coming to his face. He wonders who this 'she' is, but it's clear the spheres thing is not exactly a comfortable subject for him to begin wtih. Sighing, Brett slumps down, his expression turning darker and darker as his head droops.
"I had one of the with me, before. It was on this empty island in Thailand. Except it wasn't empty. There was this...spear guy who called himself a guardian of it, and said that he...'they'...I guess there's more than just him...were going to use them to remake the world. Something like that. The old man who helped me went crazy trying to grab it...and when I touched it, I felt like....I felt like all the bad in this world was just about to up and crush me."
Sighing, he lifted his head back up. "He said the sea freezing over was a side effect, not something they meant to happen. Whatever it did...whatever THEY do, it's causing things to happen whether they mean to or not. And if all that unnatural stuff is happening elsewhere in the world, I'm pretty sure they're related."
This dumpy looking middle-aged man has seen, experienced, and been told a lot more than he might let on, no doubt. He flexes out one of his legs to get rid of a kink in his knee which looks as though he may be kicking at thin air, but his motions slow as Brett's mood seems to take a darker and darker turn with every passing moment - some absolutely serious crap had to have gone down. He can tell, looking at him. The hesitation in which to speak up on this...
Howard holds up a hand as if to ask for calm as Brett explains that he doesn't have it now, but before. Where it was, what there was... spear guy, guardian, mentioning that... remaking the world, Howard nods along as he soaks it all in, but scratches the side of his head as he mentions the freezing being a side effect.
"N-Not what they meant, uh... doesn't... doesn't sound like they'd... they'd care, if, if that's what they're doin'," it's all kind of a blur putting together everything he's been told, as just about everything has been told to him in a vacuum of high stress with no real respite to be given in-between. Matching exact words told to him to names... is nigh-on impossible at this point with the lingering nuclear threat hanging over their heads. Well, underground. Somewhere.
"Y-Yeah, I... I got no doubt," does anyone really have any doubts by now? As the last racehorse crosses the finish line, Howard stands up, laying a hand against the vehicle he came in on for support as he stands up.
"I, I ran into... two different people, uh... one name... one name started with the letter 'M,'" Howard elucidates, looking down to the ground - then off to the side as he catches a glimpse of Hinata. He'll likely fill her in ASAP on what they've been discussing, if she doesn't eavesdrop or wander in herself.
"One... uh, Jiro - he's, ah, he's someone... displaced in time, or, or something, 's a long story," he segues without stopping to explain this long story, "was, was pretty sure the guy wasn't, ah, human... Muh... gah... ki? Magaki-- yeah! Yeah. M-Magaki!" Howard exclaims the name like it's a revelation. "He, uh, he was so good with... y'know, the lights, chi, he could... he could just... t-touch it, twist it without throwin' his own at it, 's like... well, he, he uh, supposedly ran this Gaia Tournament thing, and..."
Howard shakes his head. "L-Later, much later, ran into a, a bigger guy, like... black, as in, black-black. Coal black, and... 's like, stone. No, like... diamond. Harder, uh, maybe, laughin' 'bout how there's... there's nothin' we could do to, to stop what was coming, and... I got one last name, I, I dunno if you know this," who does, but he gets the idea it's a name that should not be spoken lightly...
"Mentioned, a, a guy named... Saiki, callin' the shots," he says as he leans in closer to Brett, "does, ah, does... any of that ring a bell?"
Frowning, Brett remains slumped on the ground, arms propped up on his knees and curled up, the talk about the spheres still making him feel....well, it makes him remember what he felt holding the sphere. It's not a good feeling, and one that nearly sends him back on the brink again.
"THe guy's name was....Shion or something. I don't know if there's any kind of connection or pattern for any of that at all. I just know when he decided to leave, he...almost like flipped the entire world on us. Up was down and down was up, until we were dumped in some black crystal cavern where the sphere was." Shaking his head, he looks back up again. "I never heard of Saiki or whatever. Just...something about...from the past or something."
While a lot of vehicles and other property had been cleared out in the evactuation, there were some people with too much to take with them. As she gets slightly off the road, Hinata manages to make a small discovery near a now abandoned gas station: a tow truck that apparently wasn't made a priority in the evacuation.
A smile now forming on her face, she reaches up for the handle and gives it a pull and... it's locked. A frown lightly creases her brow as she gives the vehicle a once over, even going around to the other side to try the other door. Still locked.
Well, if nothing else, it's at least a possibility if Mr. Rust can't get his car working.
"Oooooooi!"
It doesn't take Hinata long to appear back on the side of the road, waving her arms enthusiasticly as she tries to get the attention of the rest of the motley crew. "If you didn't get the car working, there's a truck over here! I don't think it really counts as stealing if we need to try to borrow it right now!"
As Brett's mood lowers and lowers with Rust's desperate pressing, there has to be a point where the man picks up that maybe this is too much, too fast, in a situation where everyone here has to deal with the possibility that one of them may have to make the ultimate sacrifice if the backup plan doesn't, well, come and provide the proper backup.
He puts a hand on Brett's shoulder in a gesture of sympathy at last, if he lets him, the aging man nodding his head as he finishes up talking about the whole experience.
"It's... it's good you're sharin' this now," Howard says with what he would probably intend as a reassuring nod, but it is somewhat indistinguishable from any other nod he's displayed so far, probably because emotions are just running so high among everyone right now, "w-worse comes to worse, we, we gotta get all the... all the notes compared, call your, your friends, and--"
Hinata calls out. Howard looks over his shoulder as she grabs their attention over the idea of a truck. He looks down at the ground for a moment, before looking up.
"'m gonna... gonna go take a look at the truck," he says as he starts to amble in Hinata's direction at a speed that doesn't pass a medium-paced jog. Especially not with one of his knees acting up as they are.
Resting his head on his arms, rested against his knees, Brett just finds himself not willing to talk anymore. Slumped down, he hides his face, even as Rust tries to sympathize with him. It doesn't seem to get through very well, at least not by the time Hinata calls the older man over about a truck.
As Rust starts to leave however, Brett speaks up. "Is one of us really going to have to die?"
Howard stops mid-jog to the question that still has no definitive answer of any way, shape, or form other than an unqualified 'yes' to it. It gnaws at him even as he tries to stay afloat with a variety of other pieces of conversation material in which to pass the time, towards the solution of something that even he's not guaranteed to see the very conclusion of. Of the three of them, given what brought everything to this point, he may well have already drawn the short straw just by /being/. After all, through his action - or perhaps better to say, in action - this is the situation they're all now in.
...Only if, and it's a big if, the alternate plan doesn't bear fruit, but it's only an alternate idea.
"The... the bomb has to... go off," Howard says, without looking back behind him to Brett as he stands where he does, taking in the sight of the empty streets of Southtown. In his mind, he can see the people walking around here again... going back to their usual routines. How much would really change, in the end, even after so many disasters that have changed the world landscape forever? Sometimes... it feels like everyone forgets what's happened roughly a month or so after it occurs.
Would they remember him if he were the one to take that one-way trip to oblivion, if it comes to it...?
Howard bows his head slightly.
"We'll... Brett, we'll... we'll cross that, that bridge when it's time," he says, as he starts to pick up the pace, fighting the fatigue of mind, body, and soul after so many days without relief from one crisis after another.
"I-I'm comin', hold up," he calls to Hinata as he jogs after her.
Once Rust starts to make his way back up to the main road, Hinata's already bouncing impatiently on her feet. Once it clear he's on his way up, the girl's already darting back to the other side of the street. This is who Hinata is after all; she really doesn't have it in her to sit still when things are happening. That's how she ended up in charge of a Resistance movement. How she ended up out on the streets hunting for Rolento. It's why she went off to go explore for another option when Rust announced that his car may be out of service.
The simple fact of the matter is... right now Hinata doesn't know if she'd be able to get herself moving again if she let herself stop. The last 36 hours had been an absolute blur of activity, and if things help up, she'd likely end up having to keep up for a full 48 before things were done.
And so it is that when Rust gets back up the hill, she's at the edge of the gas station, bouncing impatiently as she points toward the small tow truck.
"It's just over here. We might need to break a window and... do that thing in the movies where you start it without the key, but it looks in good shape!"
The hill is hell, even after all the Kyokugen training regimen that sees him doing an exorbitant amount of warm-up exercises on a given day. He's started to lag behind on account of having lost track of time in a haze of chaos, confusion, and frantic bids to figure out something to solve the problems that seem well out of the grasp of much of anyone to fully grasp, let alone fix.
All they've got are spheres, people from the past, a vortex, and some nefarious plan involving time restarting - how does it all fit together? Such things are pushed aside when Rust is directed over to the gas station that Hinata points at.
Howard walks slowly as though he has more time than he actually does (well, some hours, that's still a good amount of time), mumbling something incomprehensible as he moves along over to the tow truck.
"I... I dunno, l-lemme look down," Howard doesn't finish the sentence as he crawls down low to the ash-covered ground, cursing something as he realizes that he's getting himself covered in the fine dust that has been a real drag for as long as this craziness has been going on.
"I, It could've been this... this might've never started, o-otherwise I think, ah... well, they'd... they'd drive this off, but, it... it looooooks, uh," his voice trails off again as he wedges himself into that open space between the car and the ground, "n-nothing seems... wrong... s-so far... tires look okay, uh, d-doesn't look like... like any of 'em are... saggin', or, or anything, right?"
"People don't always think about everything in a crisis. Maybe they had another car that was better," Hinata offers in a counter argument to Rust's suggestion. Somebody needs to be optimistic, and it might as well be the Sunshine Girl.
She starts to make another pass around the truck, focusing on the tires, even giving them a light kick, like she'd seen people do in TV shows while trying to inspect an unfamiliar vehicle... not that she knew what was supposed to happen when the tires were bad. They looked like normal tires, as far as she could tell.
"They look fine to me... They probably left it because it doesn't have a lot of room for carrying other stuff, you know?" Hinata says as she crouches down next to the truck, tilting her head enough to be able to watch Rust as he examines the potential ride out of the outskirts of town.
"Careful," Howard warns from under the guts of the truck they are all conspiring to commit grand theft auto with, "d-don't... don't kick holes in 'em," he murmurs as he pulls himself out from under the truck, pulling himself up to press his head up against the window to have a good look at the inside of the car to the best of his ability.
Could he hotwire it? Almost certainly. Other things come to mind that aren't quite vocalized. What if this thing needed an oil change? Does it actually even have any gas in it? Was it stripped for parts under the hood? Everything looks clean for now, so far, as he moves towards the hood to lift it open. Last thing he wants to see is a missing engine, after all.
"Well, I, I guess... there, there could be, uh, a, a couple left over," he mutters as he considers the high possibility that this truck could very well be the one he rides to his death to if the other idea doesn't work. One is crossing their fingers they will - well, all of them are at this point, no doubt.
"H-How're you holdin' up," he suddenly thinks to ask as he looks out from under the hood, to face Hinata directly, eye to eye, for the first time since he was brought up here, "I... I don't mean nothin', but, uh... you're, ah, you're takin' this... really well, for, for someone your age..."
He shakes his head. "You... you, ah, got mixed up in some... some bad stuff before, huh." Who in Southtown hasn't?!
With no other task assigned, Hinata goes right back to that impatient bouncing as she watches the middle-aged man go to work on the truck. Waiting really is the hardest thing in the world when your instinct is to keep things moving. And then her bouncing catches for a moment as Rust manages to stammer out his question. It's just a brief hitch before she goes right back to it, although now moving a bit less enthusiasm.
"...You used to teach in Southtown, right? You must have heard about what happened with Justice High. When Hyo brainwashed all those people?" She pauses, giving Rust some time to process what she's talking about. "Well, I was one of the students who went out there and stopped him. I was also part of that tournament awhile ago... the one on a boat? My first round I got paired up with a Russian mobster. That wasn't fun."
She looks up toward the sky, trying to make out the moon through the clouds in the sky. "And when Honoka declared herself Empress, and killed all those people with Rolento... I was the one who called everyone together in Southtown to fight back. I made the annoucement where I said Honoka needed to hold Rolento accountable, if she claimed he was responsible for all the deaths..."
She slowly looks back down to her feet. "And in the press conference where Honoka was murdered... she was trying to offer me a position in her cabinet. I was trying to make her realize that her plan was a mistake; that it would only make things worse... and a girl who'd helped us in the Resistance... Ibuki... she just killed her. I couldn't even catch her when she was running away... And then Rolento announced he was going to blow up the city..."
She takes in a deep breath, and as she lets it back out a smile spreads back on her face. "But now we have a chance. We can save the city. It might cost me my life, but... you know there would be lots of other people dying with all the refugees. I'd prefer it if Rolento was rotting in a jail cell, but you have to take what victories you can find."
Howard nods along about having taught in Southtown, and... yeah, the Justice High incident, boy was that thing talked about while he was part of the faculty of Pacific High's Southtown chapter. Talk about that incident on a boat, with a Russian mobster... he winces. Certainly, very interesting people often end up with one another in organized events, but...
His expression softens as she goes on to much more recent times and happenings, what with the craziness over the coup that saw Japan turn into Ezo for a short time, and... to be there directly for her assassination, to see and identify the assassin in question... the name 'Ibuki' does ring a bell, but to be fair, that's not exactly an obscure name. He brings a hand up to his forehead, the fingers of his gloved hand brushing against the abomination that rests upon his scalp.
She seems... desensitized, somehow, to all this. Wouldn't a lot of people in Southtown by now? It is one of the roughest places in the world to live. Well, was. Now it is again, what with it about to be nuked unless a certain sacrifice is made. He runs his hands over the internals of the truck that can be checked from under the hood, up until she says the thing that leads to the head bump heard 'round the world.
Even Brett could hear it, way over there.
"No." Howard says as he recoils from lightly headbutting the hood. "No," he repeats, waving a finger as if scoldingly. No, it is. "Y-You're not... you're not the one who's going to do that," he speaks up through the usual stuttering and muttering and wheezing and coughing... no, wait, there's a cough. Never mind. He pats his chest. "'scuse me."
"I, I'm not 'bout to let someone who, who... who ain't even old enough to drive a truck like this just... just drive off to die!"
All of this discussion has left Hinata somewhat distracted. Southtown hasn't been the easiest place to live. Sure, tons of bad things happen all the time... but it's where she's met almost all of her friends. The cake shops she'd meet up with Natsu, Sakura, and Kei after school almost every day. The school where everyone tried so hard, where people were always counting on her to help out when their team was a little shorthanded for an event...
And then she jumps out of her thoughts with the distinctive thunk of head meeting hood and turns to look right back at Rust as he seems to be doing his best to take on the tone of an authoritative adult... it would work a lot better without the stuttering and coughing, but the spirit is clearly there, shining through.
"Well... I mean, I was the one who suggested he just kill somebody instead of having to blow up the entire city. You can't back down after you say something like that. I'm not going to just pass it off for somebody else to have to make a sacrifice I suggested."
"I don't care that, that it was your idea!" Would he really be this opposed to the idea of someone else other than him being the one sent off to die as the time comes to do or/and die? He shakes his head, throwing up his hands. "Be-besides! You... d-do you even know how to drive, what if, what if you... you jump a curb, crash, or... or there's, there's someone else 'round for god knows what reason," he runs down the gamut of thoughts and worries and improbable but worrying scenarios because... honestly, who the hell would skulk around Southtown with the threat of a nuclear device detonating?!
"If... if you crash the truck, if, if that's what we're down to, that's it - Southtown goes down and... and I don't even have to say what'd... happen to you, you're j-just..."
Howard's head droops, shoulders sagging, hand on his face. Unless a miracle happens or there's some other means to get the bomb there and get the hell out in time (which the backup plan may help with, if it even comes to fruition), if Southtown is to be saved, one of these three people are to die in a worst case scenario.
Alright, that's a valid point. Hinata doesn't even have a learner's permit. It's easy enough to get around Southtown by foot or train most of the time. As any of her plans to take over this herself start to get dashed to pieces with a minor application of reason, she looks down at her oversized sneakers somewhat sheepishly.
"What else am I supposed to do? The two of you were still standing around like it was the end of the world. Somebody has to step forward and keep things going, you know?" She gives an uncomfortable kick at some nothing on the ground in front of her as she responds.
After a brief pause where the awkwardness of the moment begins to percolate, she turns back up to look him in the eyes. "And, honestly, if I weren't here... if it was just you. Would you be thinking about just letting the bomb go off? I wouldn't. I'm not now. If I'm the only one who's positive that they're willing to go through with it, then I should go through with it."
"...But I would need some help figuring out how to drive the truck."
He had been stuck in the same spot for a while, but the slam of Rust's head on the underside of the hood definitely caught Brett's attention. Slowly pulling himself back up to his feet, he still looks like everything wrong in the world is on his shoulders. Lumbering around toward the truck toward them, he looks on toward both of them. Furrowing his brow with a concerned look, eyes reddened, he looks to the truck and then to Rust.
"I can drive it. I....I'm the only one that doesn't have any attachment here, and...I...that sphere. I lost it, maybe because I wasn't worthy. Maybe doing this might be able to help make up for everything I've been failing at since..." He offers. He doens't look at peace with that offer, considering his eyes, but...it's obviously something he's not offering lightly.
Howard looks much more animated and livid than he has any right to be given how infamous he is for having to often fight his joints when they lock up. It's nothing short of a miracle he's become as physically powerful as he is regarded as being now - one of the premiere 'tough guys' of the world today, despite appearances entirely to the contrary. This is probably because his appearance doesn't lie - he's a middle-aged man who continues to be in well over his head, who somehow stumbles into just about everything he shouldn't, now just talking Hinata out of being the one to drive...
"I-If you have to have someone else drive that, that means... that means... t-two people, not one, two, have to--"
Brett marches up to all but volunteer himself in a show of grim determination, of calling himself unattached despite crawling along into the middle of the whole scene to try and speak Rolento down, as though treating the whole failure to keep a time sphere thingamabob in his grasp a crime worthy of death, as though--
A flash of rusting metal suddenly whizzes through the air as Ol' Rusty is drawn from the toolbelt pocket, the tip precariously pointing towards Brett's face. It is an unspoken gesture to say 'stop talking.'
"Enough." Rust speaks up. This is the man who, either through sheer toughness, pluck, or maybe even delusion, carried a rusted length of pipe up against the likes of Vega, or the elemental incarnation of fire itself, or what have you... and still lives to wave that thing around like it were a weapon designed for the use of fighting others and not /being a pipe/. How does he wield something balanced so poorly for that kind of task like he does...?
"I, I'm not gonna have... any... any of this, this fatalist... bullshit. Not, not right now." Howard says as he lowers the pipe down away from Brett. "We... we don't know if, if it'll work yet, but... the, the Empress herself gave me a... a boon, 'n, 'n I'm crossin' my fingers there's, there's still people over there who'll heed it."
And play ball with Rolento's power play to paint himself as a man to fear, a true danger that stands equal to the nuclear powers of the world with his own arsenal - something no one here would want to do if they could help it, but given the alternatives when Rolento has plenty more nukes and can't really be easily tracked at all...
"If... if we're lucky, we, we might get a... a helicopter," and someone who can actually pilot one because among his voluminous list of crafting skills across an improbable number of disciplines, he sure isn't one of the people who could, and he knows neither Hinata or Brett can, "we, we might have a shot at... look."
He looks to Hinata. "I, I want to keep a good thought too, that, that maybe... maybe this, this can be done without... y'know." He doesn't need to finish that thought.
He looks over to Brett. "I... I'm not gonna have another... another god damn word out of your mouth over, over... y-you lived to, to get past that... that Shion-whoever and tell others 'bout the sphere, that's... that's... that's a huge help, 'n we need to, to get that word out."
Ol' Rusty is finally put back into the toolbelt.
"I... I don't know 'bout you, but, but I'm holdin' fast there's gonna be an after to this," he gestures to the world at large, "a world where... where a, a mass extinction happened in Thailand 'cause of the freeze, where... Metro's gone, where... a, a nuke causes more trouble near here... or, or where people just, just disappear for no reason... or a world where, where god damn Rolento has... nukes, a sub, and wants to, to play villain!"
"We'll... we'll talk 'bout who goes before, before the heads up comes in, 'n... no sooner. Got it?"
That's certainly a way to change the tone of a conversation. Once the pipe starts flying around, it's pretty challenging for Hinata to even remember what it was she was talking about a moment ago. It's not so much that a weapon has been pulled (she's seen a lot of weapons), it's that Rust seems to have shaken off all the layers of everything that was dragging him down. And when it comes to enthusiasm, Hinata's not one to be left behind.
"Yeah! Always think positive!" She chimes in, her arms up in a fighting posture as a brilliant smile comes up across her face.
Without another thought, she moves over to Brett, clapping both hands down on his shoulders and looking him in the eye. "You remember all those people who were Honoka's friends, right? It... it sucks what happened to her, but all of them seemed like they were helping because they believed in her... because they wanted to help. Right?"
She jumps back enthusiasticly. "We've also got a truck that probably works. We managed to force an angry nutjob to change his plans without even throwing a punch." Hinata adds a bit of ironic emphasis by giving a quick jab with her right hand.
"Everyone here has said they're willing to do it if it comes to making the call, right?" She glances between both Rust and Brett, giving them a moment to consider it before taking off again. "So now it all comes down to what we actually need to do. So, let's get this truck running!"
She whips her hand over to Rust. "I mean, you get this truck running... I'm going to go leave a note for the owner to explain why we needed it!"
Brett's almost startled a bit as Ol' Rusty is shot out of Rust's belt to cut him off before he can say anything else. His brow furrowed with concern, frowning, he shuts up long enough to let Rust finish up, and take in his words. Then Hinata tries to bring back her usual cheerful optimism, hoping to shift the conversation away from the glum fatalism that had hovered over their heads since ROlento's ultimatum.
"Yeah...." he says, letting Hinata handle the note for now, sighing a bit before turning away. He's unfortunately taking the whole 'prepare for the worst' part to heart, knowing the chance is still that one of them will have to sacrifice themselves.
"Th-this truck," Howard speaks up again in the wake of Hinata's optimism and plans to make good for the real possibility that someone's truck is about to become a savior of Southtown from turning into a crater, "that's, that's gonna be if we can't... get their help," Howard reiterates as he digs into his pockets to pull back out that silver chain bearing the mark of Ezo upon it.
This could be their ticket to getting the bomb delivered and then back out alive, if they can play ball... if they will. This is the crux of the matter - if there's any remaining organization among them ready to mobilize and make the delivery, then... the call was placed earlier. They're just waiting for a sign, any sign, that ball is about to be played with.
His shoulder is also waiting for a sign to have its pressure relieved, as he rolls it once to work out another series of kinks. That said... best or worst case scenarios, it remains a waiting game where all three are being pushed to their limit as time ticks on down...
Getting this truck ready to go will be largely a trifle, especially if the nearby gas station has some spare parts for use just in case. He casts a look over to Brett, to Hinata... and to himself, from what little reflects off of the symbol of Ezo. They still have to be ready for the worst possibility - Brett isn't wrong to think that.
He won't let a kid as young as Hinata die, if he can help it.
He won't let Brett do himself in in a fit of depression and fatalism of his overall self worth.
...But would he be ready to pick himself if it came to it...?
And then Hinata's suddenly left with action being "later," the smile on her face fades, althought it could have been a simple trick of the eye given how bright it seems to be again once she nods. "Alright, then we'll wait. But we should probably make sure it works at least an hour ahead of time. If there's a problem, we don't want to be caught off guard."
She undoes the straps holding her back on her back and crouches down next to the truck as she rummages around for a few moments... and then suddenly pulls out an assortment of wrapped snack cakes, quickly tossing one each to Rust and Brett.
"Since we're going to be waiting awhile, you should get some food in you. Not having food makes you grumpy and tired... and we've got a lot of waiting to do." Quite content to take her own advice, she unwraps a strawberry cake roll and starts to take small bites out of it. After a day like this, she really does take the time to savor every single bite. "Mmmmm..."
Log created on 15:34:40 10/06/2014 by Rust, and last modified on 00:53:21 10/08/2014.