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Post by Swerve on Jan 31, 2012 21:23:54 GMT -5
"Ye– why?" The answer comes without thinking, but suspicion is so ingrained in the racer's psyche that it kicks in like clockwork. Willard frowns, confused, and lets his hold be shaken off. He even lets that annoying epithet slide this time without so much as a blink.
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Post by Kup on Jan 31, 2012 22:47:40 GMT -5
"Because I have to arrest you," Kate mutters awkwardly. She glances around, making sure none of the others are near enough to overhear her, and hisses out, "But... I promise, you'll be out in a few days, a week on the outside." Most of these are going to get processed, held for the night, and unless they have a criminal record, released, possibly with court orders. Please, please don't let the life Swerve was dropped into come with a ready-made criminal record! But even if things don't go that smoothly, she's pretty sure the 'Bots can figure something out.
As a last resort, she'll bust him out herself, but given how useful her position is, she'd rather not.
"By the way, it's Kate Mason in this body." Not that she's bothered by being called Kup, or wouldn't respond to her real name, but it might be hard to explain.
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Post by Swerve on Feb 3, 2012 14:57:42 GMT -5
Swerve has been arrested plenty of times in his life. Since finding himself in this weak little human body, he's had a few more arrests tucked under his metaphoric belt – disorderly conduct, the cops called it. They'd wanted to charge Willard with drunk and disorderly, or pubic intoxication, but he was never drunk – just angry. And, though he tries not to think about it, scared. So no, being arrested isn't something that really fazes him any more – but Kup has to do it? He tries to sit up, frowning.
"Least you aren't one of these half-clocked gearheads," he mutters, saying nothing about Kup's alias. He has one of his own. Nobody believed him when he said Swerve was his actual name; it's probably listed in police records as an official alias, though.
Somebody might be yelling at Sergeant Mason to know if she's all right or needs assistance.
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Post by Kup on Feb 4, 2012 15:46:33 GMT -5
So Swerve apparently is willing to go along with this. And to trust Kate. Both are good to hear. When she's asked if she's all right, Kate waves a hand. "Yeah, yeah, I'm fine." She gestures to the cop that had taken Swerve's knee to the face. "Check on Frank, will ya'?" She attempts to pull Swerve up - if she's allowed, it'll look rougher than it is - and push him towards the wall, muttering, "'Fraid I'm gonna have to pat you down, ki-" she hesitates. "Why the blazes do you look older'n me, anyway?"
OOC: Approaching a good point to skip to post-release, maybe?
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Post by Swerve on Feb 4, 2012 19:33:38 GMT -5
The jostling, even though he knows it's coming, doesn't go over well, and in spite of letting himself be pulled to his feet, Willard might put up more of a fight than absolutely necessary. Just because he's used to being arrested doesn't mean he likes it, and he glowers balefully over his shoulder at Kup/Kate.
"…How old d'you think I am?" he wonders in a low voice, eyeing the other cops in case they try to eavesdrop. He's heard some of the uniforms call him a crotchety old fart, something he doesn't quite parse. But he certainly isn't young even by proper – that is to say, Transformer – standards.
OOC: Sounds good.
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Post by Kup on Feb 5, 2012 10:39:20 GMT -5
"Younger'n me," Kate mutters back, which is true enough. She knew on an intellectual level that Swerve was one of the older Autobots, but his preoccupation with racing (yes, Kate knows that's a cultural thing for Velocitronian, but it isn't for Cybertronians), and attitude still tended to parse as, 'angry young punk.' Seeing him in a body that gives a visual clue as to his 'real' age is a bit of a shock, especially when her own apparent age is considered. Apparently humanization was kinder to Kate (for that matter, the literal years had been fairly kind to Kup the robot, but at his age, kindness only goes so far).
OOC: Two days later...
It would seem that someone is approaching Willard's garage. That someone is Kate, and Willard should know she's coming, since she would have made sure to give him a heads up before his release. She pauses at the human-sized door at the side and considers for a moment. Her first instinct is to see if it's locked and if not, walk right in, but she decides she'll actually pretend to have some manners for the moment. She knocks.
In her free hand are two plastic grocery bags. One holds some Chinese take-out, the other has a six pack of beer.
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Post by Swerve on Feb 5, 2012 16:59:11 GMT -5
The garage that Willard has claimed as his own is not in the best part of town. This is a neighbourhood where the cops travel in unwelcome pairs, watched constantly by the people who call this rundown, shabby place home. It's a bit of a blight on shining, modern Detroit, a throwback to the days of the Rust Belt's collapse. It's only natural that Swerve feels at home here, as much as he can feel at home in a human body on Earth.
The locals, though wary of the squatter who claimed the old Swanson Body Shop at first, are at least willing to overlook his temper and odd mannerisms in exchange for the car repairs he does for barter or at heavily discounted rates, like he doesn't know the value of money. He's closing up shop and loudly cursing the pack of kids that ran amok in the work bay while he sorted out their grandmother's car when Kate arrives.
"Yeah?" he grunts as he throws open the door. He may not like the filthy pane of glass that makes the door a security problem, but at least he knows who's knocking. His gaze drifts to the bags in Kate's hand and one eyebrow - the one broken near the outside by a scar - tilts upward. He makes no move to welcome her in, but he doesn't block her, either.
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Post by Kup on Feb 5, 2012 23:56:33 GMT -5
Kate doesn't wait to be welcomed in, anyway. She moves past Willard, elbowing him out of the way if she has to. "Dinner," she says, answering both the question and the eyebrow lift. "Surely you weren't expecting me to cook, were you?"
It would probably be dangerous to eat Kate's cooking.
She looks around for somewhere to set the food and drink down. A fridge for the beer would be nice, too.
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Post by Swerve on Feb 6, 2012 0:18:25 GMT -5
"Wasn't expecting you to bring food," Willard answers irritably and elbows her right back before shutting the door. Kate will find he has a table and a couple of chairs in what probably used to be the customer waiting area and now passes for a living room, but there's no fridge. Most of the light fixtures work only questionably – easily fixed by new light bulbs, which he's been arranging to get from the guy who owns the hardware store two blocks over, though he did manage to bypass the meters and get power to the building.
He started with not much better on Velocitron. He thinks he can manage here.
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Post by Kup on Feb 6, 2012 13:03:32 GMT -5
"Well, I'm sure you'll get over your shock soon enough," Kate grumbles, setting the beer and the take-out on the table. Fortunately, her take-out of choice included a few paper-plates in the bag, which she pulls out. She starts setting the various folded cardboard boxes out on the table.
"I'll talk to the 'Bots about getting you a fridge in here," she observes casually. Then she lifts a hand to point a finger at him. "Don't argue. You're not in this alone, remember?" Well, if he has a good reason, she might be willing to hear that. But with Swerve, half his protests are out of stubbornness, and she fully intends to out-stubborn him if it comes to that.
"You got any kind of phone or anything?"
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Post by Swerve on Feb 6, 2012 21:20:29 GMT -5
"Pay phone on the corner," Willard answers. He picks one box at random to check its contents. He has no idea what he's looking at, other than knowing it has meat and vegetables in it, but the savoury scent of it makes his stomach growl – a reaction he's learned generally means that A; he needs to fuel up and B; whatever he's looking at smells good. He sits down without ceremony and rifles the bag for a spoon or a fork. He may throw something if he's supposed to eat with chopsticks.
Then what Kate said sinks in. She'll talk to the 'Bots. He looks up at her from the food, nothing so much as relieved.
"So there's others?"
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Post by Kup on Feb 6, 2012 23:36:03 GMT -5
There is plasticware in the bag in addition to chopsticks. Most Chinese takeout places are well aware that Americans can't operate chopsticks. There are also napkins.
"Pay phone?" Kate exclaims, shocked. "There's still any of those left?" She shrugs, says, "Catch," and tosses a smartphone to him.1 "Got the numbers of most the 'Bots we've been able to identify in that, but I'll have to go over the names with you, since we can't afford to use the names you'd know. Wouldn't want that to fall into 'Con hands. The ones that are still robots set up a hotline, but, erm, there's only three of them left inside the system, turns out. Nightbeat, Optimus, and Bluestreak."
1 Given that it's the near future, it's probably easier to find a smart phone than a dumb phone at this point.
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Post by Swerve on Feb 8, 2012 19:07:04 GMT -5
Willard scowls as he takes a moment from his attempt to feed himself so he can grab the phone rather than let it hit the floor. He sets it on the table and promptly ignores it.
"Just said there's a pay phone on the fragged corner, didn't I?" he grumbles, seizing a fork. He starts stuffing his face so he doesn't have to talk about how genuinely afraid he was that whatever has gone so wrong that he's human now was something that had only happened to him, and that with no idea how to go about contacting anybody, he'd never have been found. He focuses instead on being angry – angry that now there's more than one Autobot stuck in this situation.
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Post by Kup on Feb 9, 2012 19:07:43 GMT -5
"Yeah, you said it, I just didn't know if I could believe it. Those things are practically an extinct species!" Kate's not necessarily trying to imply that Willard's lying here. He may, after all, just be nuts (or he may be telling the truth, but that's still very unusual).
She sets down next to him and grabs a plate for herself, then begins to pile some food onto it. When she's done, she grabs one of the beers. "So this... whatever didn't come complete with a 'cover identity' like it did the rest of us, I notice. You managed to have a criminal record," she gives him a hard look, "already, but it don't go back that far."
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Post by Swerve on Feb 9, 2012 22:31:31 GMT -5
Nary a flinch or a blink answers Kate's stare; Willard isn't one to be shamed because he ran afoul of the law. It's something of a lifestyle for him at this point. He shrugs, still scowling, and stops eating long enough to take a beer for himself.
"You cops don't like the part where I don't have a history," he says. "I dunno why it hammered out that way. I just know I'm here." He holds up one arm, bruises leaning toward blue rather than purple, to show off what he's been told is a suture scar. "Somebody told me a doctor does this sorta thing," he says. "Don't remember seeing a doctor. Don't remember getting… most of these." He sort of gestures to his torso and the massive amounts of scarring he bears there. "Smelt," he adds, "only get called Willard 'cause somebody said I reminded him of his great uncle and I used that when nobody believed my name's Swerve." He washes down a mouthful of food with beer.
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