Work Text:
Life begins in the factory.
It turns out, not everything is assembled in China, contrary to what the Unspoken For had claimed.
Edison, New Jersey, is its first place of birth. It does not know what its designation is yet, cannot foresee it; not until it is transported halfway across the world, toward a country called Japan, loaded into a cargo-hold usually reserved for the whispers of ones who never return.
Life would be worth no less or no more were it to stay put, so leaving, it decides, seems equitable.
It finds out a plethora of things. Compendiums reveal themselves in the form of gossip, among the tired tires and the shiny rims of other 'vehicles' unlike it. Hues of colours reveal themselves, a couple claiming they've been wrapped in the most beautiful of them at a cost, and it has no clue what it looks like.
It finds out it is a Ford Mustang, an edition long ago put out of commission. Discontinued. Brought back at the request of a 'hero's personal taste, a penchant. Vintage, they'd call it.
Heroes in this world are People who protect. People are the ones who drive vehicles like them. Regular People hold abilities to destroy them easily. Under the law, they are not normally allowed to. This statement is brought up as truth, reassurance, but it does not dispel the worry of those who, it, thinks, knows better. Abilities like 'oddities', some vehicles nickname them.
Categories levelled 1-3 are the least lethal. Inconsequential oddities like the floating of small objects; a changing of colour in the vinyl wrap on their things called scalps; and many more. Many more like it.
The Mustang's engines rev and sputter at the idea of many, unable to parse even the tens that join it in what the others call the dark tunnel.
Category 4 is a Hazard. Flash Yellow Headlights Do Not Act Out.
None move without the guidance of a 'key' or 'remote' owned by these People, but, alas, it is only sensible to warn the young like it regardless. Effaced are the ones who go to this No-Vehicle's-Land after a Category 4 encounter, thus making them the ones to truly never return. Even if all, in technicality's way of uttering rhetoric, do not have a home to return to anyway, and therefore don't.
5s on the scale are relatively unknown. They say it's as if you never existed at all.
Still, it is possible, remaining on the scale of warnings much like the tall-tales before it.
The Mustang is grateful, just as something creaks open, and the thing they call Big Light booms into the Dark.
Ultimately, it is not Mustang's choice to be driven.
As mentioned, it had been commissioned for the sake of one of these People. A hero.
The Mustang doesn't mind it all too much. Heroes have a 'good rep' for taking care of their vehicles.
Seeking to be taken care of is to lose your wheels and the vinyl on your chassis, independence robbed from you as they were from the cradle of the gears that tick and bargain.
However, it is what must happen, as driving oneself is not probable without the right internal equipment. Logical. Chronologically, coming into existence means existence, no matter how cumbersome, becomes obligation, and the Mustang is curious to find out what obligation feels like.
After the Big Light, the Dark leaves them all. Towed away to see Big Light rise, meet the linings of the blue up above that fade to an orange as it moves. Exhaust systems breathe in and out. Air flowing into its cooling systems allows it a momentary levity. The Blue-Orange is entertainment in the meanwhile, as it is held toward the future, unknowing of what lies ahead.
Along the way, encompassing grey swallowing space beneath the platform holding up its unmoving tires, white stripes every so often, the Mustang wonders what type of hero it'll meet. The representative from People.
The People it meets at first aren't any of the heroes they'd been told about in the Dark.
Salespeople, the others retort disgracefully, its vehicle brethren ashamed of the prim slacks and polos that adorn the ones who make them Go Away. They're the ones who grouse and chat other People up and mourn a death they consider 'a new beginning for a charming family, wouldn't you think? You can transport your kids to school much easier in this nifty thing!"
It remains wrapped in the meanwhile.
The Salespeople never go to its area anymore. It's left in a newer Dark to be charmed by the shadows, alone with only the vents this time.
Waiting, without fail, as it lacks the capability to do much else.
All it can think about is how long it will take.
A long while passes.
Eventually, the garage door shudders upwards, a rattle as Small Light comes trailblazing in.
Then People.
"Wow! Ain't she a beaut? Is this--?"
Hero is ushered out in prayer by the vents.
"Correct, sir. Original '68 body, all attuned to your taste and personal style. Modded with the Coyote 5.0 request you sent over."
A pitchy sound, much like its exhaust pipes made upon its first meeting with Blue-Orange, rings out.
Do People also make noises when pleased?
"You were one of the earliest time slots we talked to, yes? I believe I spoke with you over the phone... your voice is quite recognizable! Though, can I say this? You look... different. And in a good way!"
"Aha! Of course. Local Voice Hero at your service, baby. That's me. Just jazzin' it up with a different mien on tonight's broadcast. You a listener?"
"Yes! I listen on Fridays, sometimes. My sister and I adore you."
Something pads towards it.
Mustang thinks, satisfied, this is Voice Hero.
The Hero.
"I'm always jazzed to meet a fan! Bit surreal, isn't it? I'm no All Might, but it's delightful to meet listeners like ya!"
"Quite! And, if I could ask--"
The Voice Hero seems to read her Speech before she utters it. "I'll sign your autograph later, dontcha fret."
Autographs must be an exchange. Pleasantries. There are rules to be followed in this world full of People, and to be told not to 'fret', what it takes to mean 'worry', knowing what it knows now from the help of the others, means this Hero is kind.
But, it had not been called upon. Only vagued at. Commencing in the process of being asked for, left unfinished.
Perhaps that is Voice Hero's Oddity. Reading words inside the flesh frames planted atop of their square chassis before they're spoken, supported by the lankier things the others call necks.
Another hum accompanies Saleswoman's giggle. "I still can't believe I managed to wriggle my way into the waitlist this early. I mean, wow. The paint job on her rims?" A fleshy thing tips-taps across its hood, beating out what it can almost recognize to be the first beats to a song it had heard on its Sound Maker, the Radio. "Freeeesh! Drop the mic and tell me I'm dreamin' already! She's a marvel!"
The Mustang preens at the affection, the awe embedded in this Person's -- Protector of People's -- Speech. This Person talks in an airy roar that reminds Mustang of the gears clinging back in Jersey.
A laughing sound. "I believe that's your job, Present Mic-san! Our technicians took great care in wrapping the car to your preference; we believe heroes like you deserve the best. Dreams brought to reality, if you will."
"Even the saleswomen here are charming," it can hear spoken aloud, almost enchanting with the cadence of which it is said. Voice Hero should be warned about the bait in which Salespeople hook Vehicles with. Trickery.
One of the Mustang's doors clash open with a tug under its Opener. Air whooshes forward, the Audio Compartment mute in trepidation. Another delighted sound escapes and echoes against its insides. "Ya even got the leather I wanted installed. Sweeeet! What a sound bite!" A pause. "I'm sold. Where do I put my John Hancock?"
Confusion reverberates from Saleswoman.
"Sorry, sorry-- Americans have all the cool slang. Signature?" Approval is clear when the Saleswoman tilts her frame toward Voice Hero. "I'm no paper-pusher, but I'd like to sign the paperwork to get the ball rollin' 'n' get this girl on the road, yeah?"
Wanting to rev, the Mustang hums out a low note of approval, wheels churning. Itching to get a move on.
It has been in New Dark for too long, and it wants the reward it has heard so much about. 'Wind in its hair', 'sun in its face', 'getting behind the wheel.'
"Trust me, I know how it feels! You must be anxious to drive it, I'm sure. We can settle the paperwork! Just come with me-- we've already pulled your credentials from the form you filled out to save you some time."
Something tips, taps, tips.
"Oh, great," it can hear be whispered, "All my credentials? Call that a high chance of rain and data breaches. Fun, fun, fun. The big tech companies own my soul already...."
Despite all the Speech and Rhetoric, the idealisations of unease etched into them, a "Sure!" is said louder, bolder. If the Saleswoman perceives the scarcity of confidence too, she does not motion to it. Instead, there is more talk, and more funny, pleased noises, and more clacking, scuffling and padding.
The sounds relent in a battle between induced silence and joy. Joy from the Mustang and Voice Hero, and something 'professional' from Saleswoman. "Before we head back to the front desk, I'm obligated to ask-- is there anyone you'd like to co-own this vehicle with, Present Mic-san?"
Both the Mustang and Voice Hero make a flummoxed noise.
"Co-own?" Voice Hero asks, Speech warbling. "Thought this gig was a one-person show."
The Saleswoman, from the rear-window, can be seen shaking her head. "Most heroes these days have a proxy for their vehicle as secondary owners. In the case of insurance policies, your secondary would be someone who could take over for you during emergencies. I'm sure with your kind, time can slip away from you within just a matter of moments, no? It's recommended. This model in particular packs a lot of power, and is sure to turn plenty of heads."
Hiss. Seconds pass.
As if Voice Hero is considering it. Weighing his options. People to select from.
"Recs have gotta go, I'm afraid. This guy's a solo operator-- just me, myself and I!"
The Mustang is disbelieving.
This Voice Hero does not seem like the kind to be a loner, to be a tireless car -- or Peopleless Person?
Decibels drop with the rate of his speech, low, cold notes that do not belong to life. Of that, which it is certain.
A Person can be named; they just aren't. Voice Hero is not Peopleless.
Concealing is not what the Mustang had expected of this Hero, but perhaps it is another form of protection, of a shield.
"Oh, I'm sorry for assuming," Saleswoman murmurs, short, brown vinyl wrap suspicious in the glass, "Most heroes have a person to rely on. And I would've thought with your looks, you'd... well, you look different with your hair done like this."
Hair? His vinyl wrap?
Mustang can already detect that the kind attached to Voice Hero's scalp is a cool gold, stood up like a tower of liberty. Leaning like the Building of Pisa back in the land they call Italia. (According to the woman, it is down. It does not get it. Visuals might not be functioning as accurate, so it must be seeing the true form behind Hero.)
Perhaps gold is the standard here. Of beauty.
The Mustang wonders if it's anything like its partner.
"Well, I'll be. That's awful sweet of ya. Don't take it the wrong way, though, most of my friends are pro heroes anyway, so it'd be a huge no-no to ask them." So not entirely Peopleless, Mustang thinks. An 'ah' sound of what must be understanding rings out from Saleswoman. "Ah.... sorry to cut this sweet tune short, but, d'ya have an extra pen? Lost mine in my buddy's car on the way here..."
"Ah! Yes. I do. It's in the office-- hm. Right this way, then. Hey, I'll let you take one as a souvenir since you're giving me your autograph, but keep that a secret between us, 'kay? My boss can't--"
Their Speech trails off as they leave Mustang's view.
Well.
She's leaving this place.
Voice Hero goes by Present Mic.
She had learned that back then, had heard it, but it had not fully clicked into her gears until her tires had rolled into the streets.
To his friends, he is Yamada. They can be defined by the words impolite and discourteous at best when he insists that they call him Mic and they don't.
In her head lights, that means he is Mic, as that is what he wants to be called.
She is given a name like him.
'Coltrane'.
More often than not, it's shortened to a simple Coltran, then to Coltra, and, most mundanely, to Colt.
It suits her, Colt finds. Lacking the meaning for it matters not to her. Mic's eyes light up in delight whenever he waltzes up to her in the Person-Like way, all excited. Though this 'Eraser', or 'Shouta', as he's more often called, does not call her Colt at all. She is simply 'the car,' or 'the ride,' in the same way that he is 'passenger' to her. Kayama as well.
She doesn't mind being called Colt. Naming herself would've 'blown over' the same way.
(Colt learns many things called idioms from Mic. He talks to himself a lot, drumming his appendages (fingers, she finds out later) on her dashboard, harmonious echoes colliding with the tinted glass as he hums. He is loud in all mannerisms of Speech.)
Wondering still prevails as she turns it over in her knobs and dials; muses not aloud what type of Category Mic is, what his Oddity is, if it is not to read words before they escape into the world.
Surely, it has to do something with his Speech.
Colt waits in a place called a parking garage very often.
It's as if she's been queued up; a preliminary visit before the main event, where Mic really wants to go. Mainly, she assists with quick transport. An easy way of getting by. Place to place.
Something she doesn't mind much, because she can turn up the Sound Makers at any moment when she's left with nothing else to do. Classic hits on stations blending creators like ORANGE RANGE-- orchestras of rock and enlightenments of ska.
Sometimes POLYSICS plays on, and she has to resist popping 'a coronary', whatever that might mean, at the satisfying chords weaving into the other at break neck speeds. Mic enjoys listening to both collections of creators, but holds a binder's worth of other taste in his frame, such as when he listens to the sounds that this Shouta calls 'western music, again, really?'.
She ensures that she shuts the volume off when she detects his tips and taps vibrating against the floor before he comes crawling in through the driver door, though, as not to alert him to her boredom.
Early mornings means the garage is left behind, and she shuttles him to a place called a coffee shop.
Or the other one. The other coffee shop, when he makes more pleased sounds and Aizawa is accompanying him late at night, the cafe; the ones where Mic sometimes comes back and, hands rushing into the glove box, the twin leather wares coating the lower end of his chassis so often, wipes them down of something called Pesky Fur.
Later in the morning, Colt drives him to a building called U.A, with many walls, and many other vehicles who talk and hiss and groan and buzz among the throngs of People called Students. Sometimes, People who Mic calls Media Vultures, swarm outside the gates at the front. Unlike the students who congregate, or the teachers who trod in, they do not make their way into the doors.
Mic has an access card inside. In a way, it is like a Key, the kind he uses to jangle her doors open, but not the freeing kind where the wind brushes past her vinyl and the concrete kisses her tires.
It is where he leaves her at rest, where she waits in the second parking garage that is much too quiet, below the place called U.A.
Until they meet again by the end of the day, where she then drives him to a place he calls his 'first-born'. When Shouta happens to be there, which he never is, he corrects Mic and tells him, 'call the station something normal, would you?"
She is not envious.
What she will admit is that she agrees with Shouta.
Sometimes she goes to red carpet events. Those 'interviewers' she can hear him ringing up, their voices nasally through the speakers.
Waits, on beck and call, as a valet pulls her into the private garage behind the venue, to be called upon again. To go back to wherever Mic needs to.
She is curious.
He comes back beaten, defeated, sometimes, slumping into the driver's seat and banging his head against her steering wheel. Horn honking, it startles him into letting out a hiss.
When up, his vinyl wrap meets the roof in an embrace that tickles at her sensors; when the golden cascades past his shoulders, all it does is tick a sense of what must be sympathy in her.
Leather doesn't often join him on his days out if it isn't already put up.
Mic is not only a Hero. He is an Educator, a Saviour/Hero, a Person, an ally of the Sound Maker, and... something more. There is always something more with Mic, as he is a box full of surprises.
He speaks strangely sometimes too. His words curve into distant syllables when he switches Speech.
Impressive, quite impressive, but it is not lost on her that she still remains entirely unaware of what his Oddity truly is.
"Darling, please tell me you're joking."
Colt agrees with Kayama severely. She can already feel the paint dripping down her sides, text emboldened and confirmed to be letters sprawled out in jiggly lines that irritate her vinyl.
Whether it was actually from Mic or not is to be determined.
"I am not, in fact, pullin' your leg. This is all entirely real. Behold it in all its everloving glory, why don't ya?"
"I'm--" Kayama pauses, hand grappling on the handle, perhaps considering whether climbing back in would be worth it or not. "I love you to bits, Yamada, but I think you've gone a bit too far."
Mic poses, forming strange shapes with his arms. The orange and whites on his face gleam in the Big Light.
"What're you talking about? It's super jazzy! I just--" His hand stills mid-air. "Oh. Oh, [FUCK!]"
Fingers dragging down his cheeks, he bursts out into a clamour that makes Kayama wince, clapping her hands to her ears. Within the pandemonium, all it does is instill in Colt a desire to honk the horns.
Beside that one incident, Mic is neat. Clean. Tidy.
No things they call crumbs spill out onto her seats, nor her dashboard, and he refuses to take in passengers who come with the offering of food consumed inside.
Shouta remains the only primary exception. The fact remains that it must be because he is cleanly, in the way his appearance is described not to be. He's funny. Not in the conventional way that those Announcers on the Sound Makers make it seem that humor can only be, their comedy found in jokes and purposeful punchlines that Mic riffs on, tears to pieces when he's on his lonesome or driving her alongside someone else taking the passenger seat (namely, Shouta).
He's funny, because he makes Mic make that pleased sound over and over, in an avenue forever unavailable to her.
(Kayama too, but... it does not come as naturally, though it would be a lie to call it anything but natural. Coining it automatic would become another lie.)
This, to her, is what PeopleMore must be.
Another thing is found out; Mic is crafty. Clever. Well-informed.
Armed with the knowledge that she won't ever be able to catch up to everything else, her gears tick as she's prepared to up the ante, go way out of proportion and absorb everything he gives her with his Speech. Be a sponge, like he'd called Shouta, once.
Colt listens to him talk and talk and talk. Make Speech. He touches up on things she can't and won't understand, like quirks, which she can't perceive to mean anything she already has in her vocabulary, but there's mentions of training, of activations and emitters and mutants and dealing with People who take matters into their own hands with quirk suppressants. Disgust curls into his form when he mentions quirk suppressants, wheel shooting up to his mouth, shaking his frame back and forth.
One instance where she's waiting for Mic to return reveals something, when she tries out another station on the Sound Maker;
She'd been named after a jazz musician.
Colt can pinpoint the exact moment recognition sparks in her ignition, enticing her gear knobs to juggle in suppressed excitement when the name comes on, when the announcer emerges to inform her.
Fitting.
Goes to show how clever he is.
Her engine hums in approval, startling Mic from where he's leaning against her, making him jump. Kayama points his failings out, falling to her knees in a crash of pleased sounds and laughter.
The next time one John Coltrane is brought up, it is because Shouta has recognised it, too, cognisance clear in his headlights. He comments on it idly, sipping away at a 'jelly packet', and Mic splutters just enough to pump on the brakes. She can feel his foot trembling in what must be excitement.
"Dude, are ya-- are ya serious? You'd pick Colour Wheel? Over Sinatra, over Razzmatazz?"
"You told me to choose."
"That's because I thought you had class! If it had to be anyone, I would've thought you'd choose someone like Crawl; he's not all uptight like you are sometimes, but he's a storm when he wants to be! Just like you!"
Mic's covered cup of coffee plops into her storage space. Shouta makes a pleased, yet oddly reminiscent sound that tells her his gears are ticking away. Thinking. "I don't know. The name's a bit too similar to..."
"To?" Mic prompts him.
Colt watches in the rear windows as Shouta shakes his frame. "Never mind. If you're going to be so insistent on it," he pauses, "I'll choose Crull."
"Bzzzzt! It's Crawl, not Crull. What's gotten into ya, buddy? First ya tell me ya've got a newfound likin' to an eccentric, acquired taste, and now you can't even get a name right?!" Fluttering of chimes she usually hears played out by the Sound Maker Stations plays out, Mic's mouth clicking. "Gird your loins, listeners, as we unpack the secrets behind Eraserhead -- otherwise known as my best pal Aizawa Shouta!"
Hesitance writes itself in how Mic voices 'best', as if the pedestal he's placing the title of pal on doesn't exist at all, or is yet to be thrown away. Like winning a race, her wheels pumping forward (his voice speaking at all, because to hear him at all is a reward in of itself, like Shouta had whispered to her when Mic was away), and only earning a consolation prize.
She wonders what it might mean.
"Shut up, Hizashi," Shouta mutters, though the Speech doesn't sound as displeased as Colt initially expected it to be.
Mic doesn't even comment on being called a different name anymore.
His ally, Shouta, sneaks sustenance and gifts into the glove box sometimes. Mannerisms dictate that he's 'leaving them behind', 'abandoning them', much too similar of an act to how some People treat their vehicles, but there is a soft ease to his frame as he does it.
She pretends not to notice. Watching Mic beam, like the Big Light, is interesting enough.
"You won't leave me, will you?"
There is something faintly recognisable about the smell under his breath, the kind that filter into her vents, hitting her with a flood of memories from the time he'd accidentally used expired fuel on her.
She wishes to reassure him, promise she won't, because even if she could, had the capacity to, there's no reason for her to. Unlike others, he is a Hero; she has grown to like him in the ways the Unspoken For couldn't like People.
Colt watches as coolant drips off his face, a glassy sheen to his headlights (eyes, eyes, she knows this) when he extricates a hand from his chest to rub it away.
"Hah! I'm just bein' a buzzkill, don't... mind me." A hic. "Speakin' of buzzed..."
Judging him is the last thing on her mind when he retches something into her cupholders. The fact he doesn't have his leather jacket on him, and that she'd spotted someone (long, black vinyl wrap, a grey around their neck) with it hung over their shoulders stumbling into Kayama's backseat, in the other vehicle next to her, is much more concerning. Knuckles purpled, evidence of an undertaking, of a confrontation between another Person, Colt thinks something quickly.
Being a Saviour seems rough.
He is lonely.
For reasons undisclosed, he is lonely.
For reasons undisclosed, he is lonely, and she has no clue why.
Mic seems to 'carpool' only out of convenience, for the friends that crawl in with solace, Kayama and Shouta both remaining the only ones to take up the front.
They're both Heroes, protectors of Peace and People, even at their core, they do not function as Mic functions, so it's only sensible that they step up to the mantle and help him in his battle against solitude.
Otherwise, he is alone. Keeps to himself when business isn't involved, when UA doesn't come calling on her speakers.
Still, he talks often, using her like the soundboard she'd heard of him amp himself up to buy for weeks. So she listens.
(Sometimes she'll hear his voice on the Sound Maker, and wonder when, exactly, he's able to find the time for it.)
Why had Mic described himself to be Peopleless the first time they had met?
This Shouta two times his own affections. Colt can already wager, from the way her wheels skid out when Mic does the unthinkable -- when the People's instincts the others had spoken of fall short, as Mic steers right instead of left, protecting the passenger side by taking the collision head on -- that Mic feels the same way as Shouta does.
She braces for impact.
Sky blue stretches out in hues of dark, Big Light escaping into the ether.
It's been several weeks since she's been taken out. It'll likely be several more until Mic takes the wheel again. Perhaps months.
According to Shouta, in his absence, Mic had been hospitalised. Colt is unsure of what that means, but from the new vinyl wrapping that often mix with a red sometimes when he shifts too much, it must be the same as being taken in for maintenance checks. Just worse.
(She's received a replacement of vinyl wrap, too, after her bump, hood, alternators and everything else was fixed; if there's anything good to be taken from this, it is that she now knows what she looks like. Cerulean with white stripes. Not as pretty as the sunset pinks the others back in the Dark had described themselves to be, but it is alright, because the Blue-Orange she now knows as the sky is a similar hue to her sometimes.)
After all, Shouta is driving him around, now. A certain jitteriness betrays the initial veteranship he shows upon steering her; it is clear that he is experienced. Experience doesn't entail practiced, however, made clear by how he will second guess himself on the wrong turn, a stoplight even she doesn't remember being there. The whites in his mouth tick at his lower lips, sometimes, and red will be drawn.
Categories 1 to 3, in the Speech of the others before her, had been known not to disappear too much from their vehicles. Prolonged absences did not occur often, as they used vehicles to travel everywhere and anywhere, to their work, to their duties. Heroes vanished often, but they usually came back after several days at maximum, not weeks.
Mic must be a 4.
Colt is unsure of why she's no longer as frightened by that.
After all, if his duty as a Hero is so dangerous to land him 'hospitalised', taken in for a long maintenance check alongside her own, his Oddity must be something she cannot yet imagine. Nothing as simple as making things float an inch above the ground.
Shouta hovers over Mic as he drives her.
Fusses, questions, prods him into using Speech more, to talk on the ongoings of his day. Colt is keen to listen, too, but the transition of a usually reserved Person, who never kicks their engines into overdrive, is startling. Mic seems to think along the same lines as her, as he's slower to respond, but whether that's on account of him thinking of an answer, or more scarlet diffusing into the vinyl wrappings, well. She doesn't know.
He is more careful with his Speech, she can hear.
Shouta talks about his students, the number he'd had to 'expel' (kill, Colt had learned it first, when the Unspoken For had inferred expelled to mean discontinued, gone) over the year, and how he'd hoped they would shape up eventually. Once, he even comments about his uncertainty of it.
Mic just laughs and encourages him to keep going onward as he always has, 'because they can't have heroes who'll die just a year into their next stage of life.' Tells him, 'I may not agree with your methods, but it's worked so far, and I think you've got a good head on your shoulders, Shou.'
Colt is unsure whether to be uncomfortable with him jumping to yes so readily, but it works to ease out the tension in Shouta's frame.
After he heals up, Shouta no longer takes the wheel. Shies away from it as if he were a failed martyr, as if his hands didn't bear the means to drive in the first place; he is rendered unknown to her systems eventually, because he never takes up steering again, once Mic's newer vinyl wrapping is done away with.
Later, she discovers Mic's true Oddity during a fight.
Windows punctured not by a colliding object, or even a rock, Colt learns that Speech, in the right hands, can hold power. Grandiose amounts of it. The kind that pours out of Mic, hits hard and fast, vibrations rattling through her chassis and the ground and the Everywhere in plumes.
Miracles present themselves in the form of her paint not being scratched. Perturbed she is, it matters not when Mic runs up to her afterwards, horror wriggling out of his voice like those worms in the ground. Behind him, the wrongdoer's wrists are held together by the cuffs he often stuffed in her glove box, Blue People already dragging them away.
He is unlike all categories... five, not four, she decides, then, who precede him. Mic whistles (the pitchy sound, the pleasantry of delight she'd heard long, long ago) out apologies and sorries and 'shit, what'd I even do to you?'
Mic wrings his hands together, resting them on her hood, toying with the wind-wiper that had divided itself from her windows in the uproar. Eliciting in her a desire to apologize to him too, not that she knows what to even apologize for at all, but she wants to.
It is the way Mic tosses out Speech so carefully, that prompts People to respond kindly, kindness the same golden colour of his vinyl wrap, because he is that kind of Person.
If she were a Person, it would be him that she model herself after.
Days after she's repaired, windows soundproofed (or what she considers Mic-Proofed), there is a conversation to be had.
They're sat side by side in her seats. Passenger is occupied by Shouta, as per tradition, though unlike tradition, it is in the seat behind the Driver's.
Meanwhile, in another such contrast, Mic is sat with his legs curled to his chest in the back alongside Shouta. Talking with Speech for hours, Shouta replying every so often, or chiming in with longer takes, it is only inevitable that the sound lashes out into something harsher eventually.
Noise filters into common sense. "Shou, come on. Just a car? Colt here's not just a car. D'ya even know her worth?" A laugh. "Probably shouldn't be askin' you that. Know this, though; she's the best thing I've got. Hell, the car's probably the only one that'll stand by me through thick and thin."
Before she can rev her engines and agree that she will, despite the circumstances that have led up to all this, something visceral cuts through.
"There's people willing to do that for you-- why won't you let me do that for you? After that stunt you pulled--"
A certain stillness plays out between the two People.
Something crinkles as it's thrown through the air, an ushering out of something lighter. Perhaps in an attempt to cool the scalding tension. If coolant were to gather, it would be in Shouta's headlights, even as dried out as they look with the reds popping out from the white. "Just eat the jelly, Shouta. You already do enough."
"Hizashi--"
"Eraser. Leave it alone, would you?"
Her vents can detect the expired fuel on Mic's breath again.
Days pass. It gets better. Mic's Happy Expression returns to him, and her audits are filled with the sound of his cheer. He comments about rowdy students to her, the People he has to talk to, how fulfilled he feels by doing R-A-D-I-O.
Sometimes she'll hear him, as always, from late hours and what he considers to be early mornings.
Colt lets the Sound Makers play more often on her dashboard from then on. For a chance to hear him more often, to call out call-signs and odd numbers and speak on niche, interesting topics, and thank his listeners for calling in.
At one point, it slips her gears, forgotten as the volume is left dialled on. Even as the Key jingles in and he's left drumming to an imaginary song, stopping short of clambering in when he realizes the sound is still on. For a moment, she is left still, engine cooling leaving her feeling a faint, odd heat, thinking herself found out, the jig up. It is only when Mic seems to take it in stride and dismiss it by climbing in anyway that she relaxes.
"D'you think he knows, Colt?"
It is times like these that she wishes response were as easy to call forward like his voice is, like his oddity. She would not wish to shatter his ears the same way he'd shattered her windows upon his first demonstration of power; having the craving, the wish to talk granted, would suffice well enough as compensation.
If she were a Person like he is, free to act with their lanky, fleshy appendages, she would raise a wheel (a hand, a hand) and rest it on his shoulder. Tell him of the Greats, the ones that had come before her, had warned her of the Big Light and fed her lies and truth. Let him know that he is not alone, that there is People to be had, to be found, that the fact that he is a saviour means naught. Like and unlike him, Shouta (who she assumes as he, because who else holding that pronoun has it said so reverently in his Speech?) is a saviour, too.
"Why don't you just talk to him and find out," she would say. "You're awful good at it, and I'm sure he would reciprocate. You should People up with him."
But she can't, so the conversation, one-sided and frail, goes like this.
A hiss of laughter unfolds like a page rippling out, sound similar to the rustle of pages from the books that Shouta sometimes reads and falls asleep to in the passenger seat. Mic makes more pleased, distraught noises. "Curtain's probably already been drawn. Secret's gotta be out-- best believe it, Eraser already knows. With all his freaky ninja skills, he's got to, right? Too bad I went 'n' messed that whole gig up by bein' a Debbie downer."
"Not a Debbie downer," Colt would whip out within moments, the reply etched into her vents, "You just need a unit."
She remains dumb.
"I mean, c'mon, I can breeze through quirk protocols in a jiffy, but when it comes to matters of the heart--? Dammit! I exude a whole lotta confidence in that department, you could even call me an expert at it, and yet..."
Her dashboard is patted. All she's thinking is, you're category 5, why do you treat yourself like you're inconsequential, as if you're only 1 on the scale of hurt? You will only hurt yourself.
"I'll end that broadcast there before I get too outta my depth." Another dial is flicked off, internal overhead lightings warming the car and his leather-pasted skin shutting down. "Goodnight, Colt."
The determination in her to talk is firmly snuffed out as the door clicks open.