View source for Shop Dogs/Tweaker Dave

--| Gabriel - 04:47 PM |--

July 11th, 1995.

Dire Straits' 'Sultans of Swing' starts playing in Medina's office's radio just as the phone rings incessantly. His secretary slash handler passes it to him, says it's something about a contact of his that found the car they've been looking for in a junkyard in Port Houston. Said he managed to stall the guy about to turn it into a sardine can for about three hours, but the man has roughly mentioned being in a hurry to meet some kind of recycling quota.

Now, Port Houston is still in the Inner Houston Area, and one'd take the 610 to go there. And as hurried as this can be, the Shop Dogs have time to make their last minute arrangements to get ready to head to the place.

Now, the question is, how does one prepare to convince a junkyard guy not to destroy that one damn car you've been waiting to hear a peep about?

--| Slouch - 05:21 PM |--

Slouch is halfway under a battered '85 Monte Carlo when the call comes in, legs sticking out like the forgotten limbs of some garage beast. Maarten's sharp voice and the word Port Houston drag him out fast enough to crack his head on the frame. 

"Ow... shit." Slouch rubs the back of his head as he wriggles out, grease streaked across his cheek, eyes squinting in suspicion. He starts to make his way back to the office, speaking, "Wait... that neighborhood? There are some Aryan Brotherhood assholes in that area that make it hell for everyone else just trying to survive out there. I got a buddy who crossed them not long ago." He wipes his hands on a rag that looks more like a discarded oil filter than cloth, then adds, "Guy who lives out that way, same guy who heard about shipment of vintage racing car engines coming into town, could make the trip a twofer."

--| Medina - 05:24 PM |--

Medina gets off of the phone and after he forwards the situation to his present company, he listens, but there's a sort of tension about him that suggests he has something on his mind. Not that it discourages him - just is a factor. 

He opens the door to the office to call Slouch in and update him.

"Yeah, I heard about that. I thought it was Hammerskins, but, ABT sounds about white. I heard they were pimping out there, it's the same area that got torched reently." He gets up and moves to get the keys to the wrecker off the board by the door. "But let's go get that thing. Not wild to hear that too familiar pattern that suddenly there's corporate money moving in to a place full of people who make a point of makin' lives miserable,... But one thing at a time. Our vendor is a tweaker, only discount I know he'd give for sure is if we paid a little bit of the difference in crystal."

"So wait." Medina pauses, then says, "Slouch, you got personal heat there?"

--| Slouch - 05:27 PM |--

"I know a guy with a tent. Not sure if he's still out there, but, ya know. He might be," Slouch shrugs, and slouches.

--| Maarten - 05:31 PM |--

"Anybody preying on the homeless out there deserves a trip to the hospital at the least, or the bay if they're being particularly awful." adds Maarten. "But I have a feeling that going on an ass kicking spree is going to diminish our chances of getting the car out of there before it gets flattened. So let's focus on how to get the yard to give up the goods and we can discuss kicking dumbasses heads in later. We need to make sure to bring tools. If it's anywhere near a drivable state, I'd like to make sure it survives the drive back. Also, where are we keeping it for now? I reached out to the Sept leadership to get permission to use the Auto Shop at the Juniper School, but they haven't decided on that yet."

--| Medina - 05:43 PM |--

"Alright. Well, let's take the tow truck," he says, that much of his intentions already obvious by how he took the keys. "I'll bring cash, we'll try to talk him down nicely, then we'll kindly invite him to think about just how big Maarten is, and if that doesn't work,... Can't both of you get that engine running again through the spirits if we need to just steal it?" He asks. "One of us can try to distract him while you do that. Maybe me, might could give him a bigger problem to fix. I think we could try bringing him some meth less to talk him down and moreso as insurance against him calling the cops if we do steal it."

--| Slouch - 05:50 PM |--

"Right. We ain't gonna talk a guy down in Port Houston without a little persuasion." He gives Maarten a sideways grin. "You bring the real words, I'll bring the weird ones. Between the two of us... and maybe a grease-stained fifty... we'll convince him to let that car breathe a little longer." He pauses, digging through his clutter until he finds an ancient roll of twenties, all creased and greasy. "If words fail, money talks. And if money fails..." He pats the crowbar. "We convince gently." And to the question about being able to drive it he nods readily, "I can drive anything with wheels."

((''The group gets in the tow truck to head out.''))

--| Medina - 05:59 PM |--

Imagine the things Medina could get done if he applied himself the way he does when he's behind the wheel. He's got his Ryan Gosling on, my dudes.

--| Maarten - 06:03 PM |--

Maarten is just along for the ride. His knowledge of the streets isn't geographical, so he chooses to stay quiet and focus on keeping a lookout for anything dangerous as he rides in the back of the truck.

--| Maarten - 06:03 PM |--

Maarten is just along for the ride. His knowledge of the streets isn't geographical, so he chooses to stay quiet and focus on keeping a lookout for anything dangerous as he rides in the back of the truck.

--| Gabriel - 06:06 PM |--

Somehow, Medina's crazy Stunt Truck Driver skills get them through the highway such a way they actually saved time. Maybe he went through lesser traveled ways until they got to the actual freeway, but they saved a ton of time and avoided stop signs like he's el conductor loco. And El Conductor knows his shit, but Slouch taps into his urban survival skills to point where the lesser traveled and lesser patrolled roads are, while Maarten helpfully tries to point the address in the city of their first destination. He gets it, but the route he chooses doesn't have shortcuts; it's the straightest line you could possibly conceive, but you still get a traffic stop on the way.

Regardless, that tow truck shows up at the yard and a skinny guy with blond hair and grey eyes looks up at the incoming vehicle, tapping a cigarette out. Beside him, talking quietly, is an attractive lady, mixed-race, perhaps latina and Black, who looks a little bit like Selena but a lot more buxom. She's on her way out before she's glancing up at the incoming truck, on her way to a 1975 Corvette that has seen better days. Of note is that both have a wedding band, so perhaps our tweaker friend is married?

Who knows how that happened.

Either way, there are several piles of cars, and somehow, this guy has taken the care to stack them according to both usefulness/usability/deterioration (the more intact hulls are not stacked), as well as decade of make, in descending order. You can tell by how 'bizarre' the designs get, the older the cars happen to be.

"Howdy," he calls out, sounding a little like those guys you meet typically in trucker and gas stops throughout highways that intersect Texas or Oklahoma. "Y'all are Dean's friends?"

--| Maarten - 06:13 PM |--

Hopping out of the truck, Maarten nods to Medina. "He's your contact, I'll let you run the deal. If you start to fall on your face, we'll step in and try and back you up, or maybe do something else." He waits to let Medina do his shop talk thing.

--| Medina - 06:14 PM |--

Desperate times call for desperate measures, man. That poor woman. 

The vehicle they show up in is not glamorous. It's an International 4700, essentially a dump truck that has been given new life as a flatbed tow truck. Slouch in the passenger seat, gigantic Maarten probably precariously in the back, probably anchored in somehow by the winch housing, who knows. That, or he's hilariously accordioned into the cab, with Slouch in the center. 

Regardless, Medina has a habit of parking in such a way he can rip out of wherever he's going, which is to say, he backs into spaces. It's a bit silly with a tow truck, but habits are hard to kill. 

"Howdy!" Medina looks this man over from feet to face, only after a quick visual sweep of the organized chaos around him. There is underlying method to the madness, thank God, but there's a mildly distracted vibe to Medina at first while he orients. He looks to the man, and just states his business outright. "We're here to take that Country Squire off your hands since it's goin' to the trash otherwise."

((''Sam wants $7,000 for a trash heap! It's such an outrageous price, his very identity is shaken to its core, his name is now Dave.''))

--| Gabriel - 07:27 PM |--

So far, they've been through two rounds of negotiations. Medina has managed to haggle the hull down $1250, which is impressive, because Slouch and Maarten's assistances were really good in cementing this idea in Sam/Dave/Sam's head that this price point is just extremely outlandish. Maybe he knew, that's why he set it so high, but either way, the man's aware he's dealing with some serious hagglers now.

So they're arguing the price, while Maarten continues to impress upon the man that he needs the money to get that little somethin' extra every week, you know. Something in the arguments that Maarten presents really resonate with the man, because he's looking at the Bone Gnawer like he's talking real sense.

Slouch, on the other hand, points out all the possible things that are fucked up in this so-called 'mint condition' car. The leather in the backseat looking ragged. The rust in the under chassis, and what's that right next to the bumper? Well, all of these things make the vendor insecure and defensive, and that's great when you are trying to drive home that he really, really shouldn't be trying to fool these guys.

--| Gabriel - 07:49 PM |--

The argument continues. Medina makes great points, but Sam has great pushbacks. That is, until tragedy (for him) ensues. And a piece of a stacked car just somehow rolls all the way down, crashing into the hull, putting a dent on the roof and shattering the left back door's window. It's so loud, so significant, that he looks back and his pupils seem tiny compared to how wide-eyed he is right now. "Well, fuck, uh, make that a twenty-two hundred fifty dollar discount!"

--| Medina - 08:17 PM |--

The timing of the woman's departure has Medina narrowing his eyes just a slight touch, but then he listens. And when he hears the price? He blinks, suddenly very, very still, almost unnervingly so, as he processes the outrageous price. He kisses his teeth in the annoyance that bubbles over the facade, and then he launches into his haggling. At first, he calls the price for the bullshit that it is. Then, he starts putting down that Davesam could just use cash to buy meth with, if he came down to a reasonable number a man carries cash in! And as his buddies help pepper the tweaker with all that's wrong with the car and the pressures of the neighborhood and the police, his patience start to find its limits. 

"Ah, fuck that price, I'm not paying that for a scrap pile! You heard 'vintage' and thought it meant 'jackpot', didn't you?" His gestures are chopping with his impatience as he angles to walk. As his Rage bristles, something about his presence obviously sharpens, his presence momentarily gaining a very clear, urgent intensity. "Mira, it's just as much of a piece of shit as that car over there!" He singles out the chevy, who, with comical timing, unloads its axle right onto the Ford. CEE-RASH. Medina winces and looks on with barely contained destructive glee. 

He hears '2250' amid the sounds of Maarten hefting the axle off and appraising the destruction. Of course he knows the context, but he rounds on the guy with an eager opportunism in a smile better suited for a guy -selling- a car: "Yeah, twenty two fifty. Sold - twenty two fifty's a great price."

--| Maarten - 08:23 PM |--

Walking past the pair of Medina and DaveSam (or is it SamDave?), Maarten walks over to the Country Squire with a huge grin on his face. He starts to examine it, and as Medina begins to negotiate with the man about the car, the giant paces around the car. As the negotiations go on, he chimes in with "Come on, Jeff, we need to get this done before that sweep HPD is doing for meth starts. It's sure to fuck up traffic something fierce and I wanna get started figuring out what we need to get this running again." He continues to pace, eyeballing different parts of the car and needling poor DaveSam about being able to spend his money while there's still time, and pointing out various defects in the chassis.
His tact changes after the freak accident damages the Squire further, moving the bit of the other car off into the ground and examining the damage. "Hey Jeff, this guy's gonna end up selling us a crushed can if he doesn't agree to that deal before too long. This damage is at least another day's work."
As Medina closes the deal, Maarten walks back over to the truck they came in on and starts to unload the chains and gear they'll need to get it up on the flatbed. He shoots SamDave a final smile and says, "You've made a good deal on this, brother. I promise when we get it restored, we'll make sure you can see it."

--| Slouch - 08:23 PM |--

Slouch shuffles forward as the haggling starts, eyes flicking over the battered car like a buzzard eyeing roadkill. His crooked grin stretches wider with every dent and patch of rust he sees.

"Yeesh... look at that quarter panel," he drawls loudly, jerking a thumb at the warped metal. "Buckled like soda can left on a campfire. Bet the frame’s twisted, too. You check the undercarriage lately, friend? Probably flakes apart like old toast." He steps sideways, crouching low and squinting into the wheel well. "Tires bald as my Uncle Jerry. No tread left at all. Shocks are shot, look how she sags on the driver's side. Whole axle’s probably gonna crack the first pothole it sees."

Slouch rises, giving the junkman a pitying look. "Whoever’s tryin’ to haul this hunk o’ scrap outta here’s got more optimism than sense. Might as well sell it for scrap weight now, unless you wanna keep babysitting it until it folds in half on its own."

He leans in slightly, conspiratorial. "Tell ya what. We’ll haul this tired thing off your lot—free labor for you—and put a little cash in your hand for your trouble. Otherwise... you’re stuck with a corpse car that’ll take up space and make your quota guy grumble."

--| Gabriel - 08:29 PM |--

He's hammered about technical details from Slouch. Dave/Sam/Dave barely has any arguments, because he knows the thing is crap. He just heard of their urgency and thought 'well, if the juice is worth the squeeze'. And immediately day dreams of buying Roxanne something nice and way out of his league and also spending the rest in the good shit filled his mind.

Then Maarten does his best to convince that the police is ON TOP OF THEM. And what happens if they find his crystal in that drawer? He's fucked, that's what.

He stands his ground bravely for a solid two minutes of negotiation, until the house of cards starts falling down when the axle of the thing broke. He was mid-argument with Medina, who had already talked the price down significantly, when he blurted out that number. And then Medina says 'deal', and he's kind of hating himself at this point, but he resigns himself with a: "Fine. Fuck."

He will have to choose between crystal or expensive thing for Roxanne.

"Just git tha' damn thing outta here."

Now they are on the road. They drive by the car shop with the vintage goods but it's closed. Turn around and time to go to the port. As they go there...

--| Gabriel - 08:37 PM |--

As Medina, Slouch and Maarten drive by the port, they see a few comical and tragic things happening, all at once. First, the latch securing the hook on a portside winch seems to voluntarily open itself up as the chain with the hook falls violently on a container. A horrible sound echoes in the surroundings as a plume of smoke lifts up to the air, all at once. Some shouting is heard too, and no one could ever know that a man could squeal quite as high as some dude just has.

Regardless, things seem to be calming down until there's more shouting, and one shout becomes two, and two shouts becomes four, and then there's an alarm for some reason.

--| Brent - 08:42 PM |--

Brent curses, with a stutter, and runs as hard as his legs can take him. "I-I k-knew I-I sh-shouldn't h-have sk-sk-skipped l-l-lunch!" He quickly kicks a random drum over hoping itll slow them with...what ever it is they keep in there. "I h-h-hate r-r-running!" he shouts as he runs.

<OOC> Gabriel says, "BRENT, you have got to hold on to what you've got. It doesn't make a difference if you make it or not, you got each other (the engine), and that's a lot, for love!"

<OOC> Gabriel says, "You'll give it a shot!"

<OOC> Gabriel says, "RUN"

<OOC> Gabriel says, "Aka, you manage to break into a run, but..."

<OOC> Gabriel says, "well there's 6 dudes coming up, but--- give me a good pose of running out of that fucking port with a huge crate in hands"

-| Maarten - 08:44 PM |--

Seeing his packmate, in Glabro, running toward the car carrying a car engine in a crate, Maarten knocks on the glass of the truck cab and says, "Slow it down, uhh, Mike. Bob is coming with the engine!" He's really bad at fake names in case bystanders hear anything, but he kneels down on the truck bed to get some stability and try to pull the box and Brent up onto it.

--| Medina - 08:48 PM |--

"What the FUCK!" Medina? PISSED. Ripshit pissed! But does he have a choice, as he drives his tow truck that has his DOT number and his company name on it? No, he pretty much ...

Well, in all honesty, yes. The gas pedal never felt so tempting, in the wake of his indignation. 

But he does, in fact, maneuver the vehicle so that they can pick up Brent.

--| Brent - 08:52 PM |--

Brent tosses the engine into the truck and tries to scramble into the bed, "G-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-go!" he finally stutters out!

--| Maarten - 08:59 PM |--

Crouched down between the cab of the truck and the hulk that will soon be occupied by the General Lee, Maarten smacks the roof of the cab as soon as Brent slides on and is stable. "PUNCH IT MIKE!" is all he shouts over the sounds of the people yelling and cars starting. He watches as the cars start to pull out of the port and tail them and then shouts, "Who's got a good idea on how to stop those cars? Anybody?" He starts looking around for something heavy and unimportant to throw into the road.

--| Brent - 09:00 PM |--

Brent once inside the cab pants heavily, and tries to focus on shifting down to Homid, "I...I f-f-f-found...an...an e-e-engine!"

--| Medina - 09:00 PM |--

"What the -FUCK!-" Medina yells in protest, but in Spanish. It matters not: the sept understands each other, and Medina is somewhere between shocked, excited, and furious. Either way, he's punching it, and it's not just a matter of driving fast, but finding a route to lose whoever's chasing him.

OOC> Gabriel says, "You find... a roll of high end duct tape. What the fuck is that doing in your glove compartment, Jeff?!"

<OOC> Gabriel says, "Wow damn, Brent, you found this blue toolbox that Medina was looking for the whole week and it's full of fucking power tools worth 300 dollars or so"

<OOC> Gabriel says, "And Slouch finds a pair of screwdrivers"

<OOC> Slouch says, "These are mine now."

<OOC> Brent says, "and I"m stuck in Glabro for the round XD"

<OOC> Gabriel says, "Maarten, you're not quite sure why there's a roll of dimes next to the gear shift, but it's there."

<OOC> Gabriel says, "Small mass + high acceleration can be deadly by the way."

<OOC> Gabriel says, "Just a physics thing"

<OOC> Maarten says, "Not planning on killing the drivers, just maybe trying to throw something in the road to screw up the cars. Like a bunch of screwdrivers and nails and stuff."

<OOC> Slouch says, "Not my screwdrivers..."

--| Brent - 09:06 PM |--
Brent groans as he realizes he isn't shifting down yet, and glances to the side, "M-M-Medina! I f-f-found y-y-your t-t-toolbox! I T-T-TOLD y-y-you J-J-Jerry d-d-didn't s-s-steal it!" He tries, AGAIN to shift down.

<OOC> Maarten says, "Maarten reaches into the cab, takes a bunch of the tools out of the toolbox Brent found, and throws them into the road and toward the chasing cars, hopefully popping tires, puncturing radiators, or busting windows on the lead vehicle to bring them all to a stop."

--| Slouch - 09:08 PM |--
Slouch starts digging around in the footwell looking for something that can help them in this situation and he finds a pair of screwdrivers, which he promptly pockets and then goes back to opening glove compartments and digging along the side of his seat, "Why is your car so fucking CLEAN man? Don't you have a road gun or an emergency shank under the floormat?"

--| Medina - 09:08 PM |--
Medina's truck is loaded down with wolves and the car, but it was designed to haul something heavy in the first place, and so it cuts through the street like butter. Butter with too much momentum: he's still driving a wrecker, not a sports car. All the same, he knows how to thread the needle, and it's hammer down in the hammer lane now. Fuuuuck. 

"PUT YOUR FACE BACK IN YOUR FACE BRENT," he says, scarcely registering wahtever the Metis even has to say. Whatever the hell that's supposed to mean. 

Medina says, "Because I have standards!" as to why it's clean, but he drives with one hand momentarily as he provides Slouch with his pistol that has been hanging out concealed on his person.

--| Brent - 09:11 PM |--
As bone crack and reforms, and muscle grows and contracts Brent becomes a bald man

-| Gabriel - 09:17 PM |--
Three cars seem to come out of the parking lot, all of them with the same logotype. They don't look German, though; this may be some kind of smaller-grade high-end company made to cater to more expensive vintage tastes. Of course, they pick up speed but then they start trying to force Medina into a Fast and Furious kind of situation.

That must've been when things started going south for the fine folks at RITTER AUTOWERK...

--| Brent - 09:20 PM |--
Brent growls out, "W-WHAT T-THE F-F-F-FUCK T-T-THAT D-D-DOES E-E-EV-E-Oh, n-n-never m-m-mind y-y-your t-t-tools a-a-are g-g-gone." He says as he watching Marteen through the expensive tools, a small tear running down his face, "S-s-so m-m-much c-c-cheese-w-w-wiz m-m-m-m-money..." He then also looks around for something else to throw.

--| Maarten - 09:21 PM |--

Opening the little window on the back of the cab, Maarten leans down and sticks his giant arm down to where Brent put the toolbox, pops it open, and grabs a handful of random tools. Standing up and bracing against the hulk of the car on the flatbed, he begins tossing the shit at the cars and into their paths. "Fucking move it, MIIIIKE. You should be able to lose these guys. If we can't lose them quick I'm gonna toss your extra set of chains into the street, hooks and all. That should stop them.

--| Slouch - 09:21 PM |--
“Don't mind me, boys," Slouch mutters as he takes the gun from Jeff and cocks it, checking the safety, "Just savin' us a headache." With a grin that's all crooked teeth and bad ideas, he leans out the window frame, squinting down the iron sights at the front tire of the front car behind them.

BANG!

The revolver gun in his hand, the report sharp in the damp, metallic air. The distant truck shudders as the front tire explodes in a spray of rubber and dust, sagging drunkenly onto its rim. Slouch chuckles low in his throat and then gags on a laughter as the car runs off the road, “Shit, shit, don’t explode!” He calls out the window, like that might help, some of the color drained from his face as he takes a second in the chaos to ask the others, “You think that guy is dead? Who are these fucksticks?”

--| Brent - 09:23 PM |--

Brent in response to slouch, "I-I d-don't kn-know! I j-j-just h-heard th-they h-h-had an e-engine w-we c-c-could u-use s-so I uh...t-t-took it! I th-th-think th-their g-german? A-a-aren't th-they th-the b-b-bad g-guys??"

--| Medina - 09:34 PM |--

Medina's International thunders down that road like a steel god damned avalanche with delusions of grace. His hands command the wheel with seasoned concentration and confidence, but even he can feel the Country Suquire's weight trying to turn every curve into a painful lesson about physics this high school drop out never did stick around to learn the easy way. 

Behind them, those cars move in through Port Houston's industrial maze, closing fast, engines screaming, but Maarten's improv artillery creates a percussion symphony of metal on asphalt (that is arguably almost as awful on the ears as that nine). Angry chrome hail! Medina keeps it pushing as a wrench catches one of their windshields just right and spiderweb cracks bloom across the glass, Slouch's revolver cuts through the rubmle and Brent's stamemring panic. That front tire's rubber shreds paint the asphalt in so much b lack confetti through the chaos, and the International keeps on rolling, carrying its quarry and its growing burden of increasingly complicated questions of what the fuck is happening right now.

--| Gabriel - 09:38 PM |--

One car's windshield caves in and shatters, and the squeal of tires has it smack into a wall. Thankfully, the squeal also meant a sudden hand-braking that miraculously did not flip the car over. The occupants both crawl out of the car, disoriented.

The shot that Slouch fired pops a wheel and then they sort of veer off to the right, smacking into a lot of things on the sidewalk before impact into a street corner is inevitable. Those guys survive, too.

Finally, a third tries to give chase, the windshield broken but not shattered as a guy with an Uzi slides out of the left side to shoot at the truck - except the driver's not feeling too good and distance is gained, the day is won.

As the Shop Dogs earn their prize and a little something extra, they will be able to tell there're a couple of police cruisers heading in the opposite direction of theirs once they take the freeway. Then two more, then what appears to be a truck with a K9 unit.

Well... fun day ahead for Port Houston, that's for sure.

--| Maarten - 09:38 PM |--

Once it's obvious that the flatbed truck has lost the tail, Maarten crouches back down between the cab and the Country Squire. He leans over to the window and says, "I think we're good boys. We just need to drop this somewhere and let the General know we got him a nice home. Well, nice once we get it fixed up, but a home none the less. Let's drop it at the garage at your house, Jeff, and we'll keep it there until I work out the auto shop thing at Juniper. Hopefully I'll have an answer by the day of the Alpha meeting."

--| Medina - 09:38 PM |--

"BRENT." Medina growls, his voice cold fury, "When we get home," he says, like an angry dad as he goslings this truck through Houston's industrial corners, "I'm going to kick your ass so hard you're going to have to roll down your socks to take a shit, do you -fucking hear me-?""

--| Slouch - 09:39 PM |--

As Medina starts to yell at Brent, there is a moment where it looks like Slouch expects to be the one getting yelled at and he starts to protest- then his face screws up in confusion and he turns to look at Brent, "You can stay, you're messier than I am."

--| Brent - 09:42 PM |--

Brent looks at Medina incredulously, "W-w-why th-th-the f-f-fuck am I th-th-the one in t-t-trouble?! Y-you up a-and l-left B-B-BEFORE th-the t-t-time y-y-you t-t-told m-m-me t-t-to!!" He shakes his head, "I-I sh-should k-kick y-your a-ass..." he mutters under his breath, but maybe a bit too loud.

--| Medina - 09:48 PM |--

Medina is, in some ways, still not really used to his demotion to Cliath. And so when Brent talks back, a spike of Medina's own fury nearly makes him brake check the whole god damn car. "DID YOU JUST - " But the wind of righteous indignation sails right out of him as his brain catches up to the truth of the matter, and says, "Whatever! I'd like to see you try."