Chapter 48: 'Soul Mate Road Trip' Sounds Like A Song Title
New
Phili
Not too sore, are you?
- Joined
- Sep 4, 2022
- Messages
- 494
- Likes received
- 11,396
Chapter 48: 'Soul Mate Road Trip' Sounds Like A Song Title
January 15, 2010, Friday. Brockton Bay, Protectorate HQ.
Dave arrived at the Protectorate Headquarters via teleportation in his Solid Snake form, and appeared in his designated teleportation closet. He had been offered a larger room after they found a better spot for a teleportation chamber, but he had declined because a teleportation closet was funnier than a teleportation chamber. Armsmaster had shrugged and said they were going to work on a larger room for the planned Teleportation Hub anyways, so he was free to have his own little closet.
For now, he walked out to meet Miss Militia at the parking lot, right next to the forcefield road that led to the city, where they would then make their way to New York.
"Hello Trouble." Miss Militia greeted him from in front of her motorcycle.
"Hey Miss Militia," he greeted back. "So are we taking your motorcycle?" He asked.
Miss Militia moved to shake her head, then paused, remembering the things Trouble had said at their first meeting, then actually shook her head. "No, we're going to take a PRT van." She said instead of addressing the idea of them riding her motorcycle together.
"Aww, I was hoping we could race." Dave admitted.
"Race? Did your power offer you a vehicle of some sort?" Miss Militia asked curiously.
"Yes actually," Dave confirmed, before taking out a pistol to show off to her.
"That's a gun." Miss Militia told him patiently, before double-checking with her power and finding she couldn't copy this particular gun, so it apparently had something unusual about it. She wondered if it perhaps had some sort of propelling effect using recoil that Trouble could combine with his flight from his jetpack that would otherwise be slower than a car.
"No, this is an airboat summoner!" Dave told her proudly, before demonstrating by shooting the ground nearby with it, making a small, one-seater airboat appear.
"We can take this instead if you want," he said enticingly. "You would need to ride on my lap though." He added.
Miss Militia actually considered it for a few moments, before shaking her head in refusal. "I'm afraid we wouldn't make very good time if we took the water route to New York. I don't think airboats travel particularly fast on the ocean either, and might be at risk of capsizing outside the calmer waters of the bay."
In other words, she WOULD do it if it weren't for those factors? Dave thought to himself.
"I didn't mean over the water." He clarified, before climbing into the airboat seat and beginning to 'drive' it around the parking lot in circles. "As you can see, this operates perfectly well on land!" He patted his lap.
"How fast does it go on land?" She asked consideringly.
"Eh, a maximum of like 80 miles per hour." Dave answered.
"And, do you have a license to drive it on land?" She asked with one of her signature eye-smiles.
"Uhhh," Dave answered intelligently, before giving up on a clever response and sadly getting out of his airboat. "It has other features," he tried.
"Like?" Miss Militia asked, apparently willing to indulge him in at least bragging about his new vehicle, though he couldn't tell if she was still considering using it.
"Well, it works similar to some of my other items, so once someone is 'using' it, they can't be removed against their will except by dying," he began. "And they are immune to things that could be considered 'physics damage' while in it. A baby in the driver's seat of that could fall from Earth's orbit without a seatbelt or any safety equipment and land on solid concrete and be completely unharmed… as long as the baby didn't use the 'leave' function to no longer be considered 'piloting' it anyways."
"The airboat itself is indestructible," he added after a moment. "And it goes the same speed on both water and land, and has no care of things like terrain or hydroplaning or driving on a pile of nails or caltrops."
"It has a 'physics mode' where it will interact with other things normally, but when it isn't in physics mode, it could hit someone at maximum speed and it would at most push them instead of actually harming them. It would still kill someone even in 'non-physics' mode if it landed on them from above though." He continued thoughtfully.
"Oh," he perked up, "also, it's mostly idiot-proof! The controls are mental and instinctive, you just decide which way you want to go and how fast as well as how far to turn, and it will do it."
"So… really, there's no logical need for a license or permit or anything right?" He gave her a winning smile.
Miss Militia looked from him, to the airboat, to her motorcycle, to the boring PRT van, back to him, before sighing. "You can ride in the sidecar for my motorcycle." She said at last.
"Wooh! Soul mate road trip!" Dave cheered, making Miss Militia flush slightly behind her bandana covering her cheeks. "You can have the airboat if you want." He told her.
When she made to refuse he insisted, "Think of it as part of a down-payment for helping Foxy, while also improving the effectiveness of a local Hero in case you need to chase down any villains, this way you can cut directly across the bay over the water in an emergency, and perhaps get to a scene slightly faster." He said, appealing to her desire to help people.
"I'll give more to the Protectorate and PRT if you agree." He said as a finishing blow, directly tying her acceptance into more stuff for her friend and coworkers, as well as the PRT at large. Naturally, he would do it anyways of course, and he knew that Miss Militia knew that, but given how his power worked, it was better to get the people he was close to used to receiving gifts, and of his current friends and acquaintances, Miss Militia was the most reluctant to receive gifts by far.
"Fine," she agreed slightly exasperatedly, but with a small eye-smile as well, so he took it as a good sign that he hadn't been too pushy.
After he got into the sidecar of her motorcycle and put on a helmet with a radio that would let him easily talk to her over the wind, she said something into her radio, and the forcefield bridge appeared to let them into the city itself, and off they went.
Dave was rather fascinated to see how incredibly well-received Miss Militia's motorcycle was among civilians as they drove through Brockton Bay.
Apparently, Brockton natives could tell based on how fast, or in this case slow, Miss Militia was going (though Miss Militia also said when he asked that she had a siren as well that she used when she was on her way to a fight or a crime scene), that there was no urgent matters or terrible circumstances that led to her being on her motorcycle and driving through the city.
Thus, the Brockton natives felt comfortable waving and occasionally cheering or shouting a comment of gratitude for her hard work when her motorcycle passed, and tourists seemed to take their cue from the locals and took lots of pictures.
"Huh," Dave said suddenly as they began to leave the city. "I guess those pictures will probably be considered my official cape debut."
"Haven't you already been doing hospital work though?" Miss Militia asked curiously.
"Yes, but at first I did those in my Scyther form to develop the power you suggested to make attacks nonlethal—which worked by the way, I can now make it so any attack I make will not kill someone, though it can still injure them. I've only done two hospital visits in this form, which is what I decided to be my standard 'Cape form,' because it looks human and that has a lot of advantages but it also is extraordinarily well camouflaged, and the person it is based off of is thematically fitting for many of my powers." Dave explained.
"Anyways, only two visits in this form means only certain people that have been in the right hospital at the right time in the past few days know I exist, now that a large number of tourists have taken pictures of me, I will be identified for my hospital work within the day, and probably have a wiki page within the week." Dave finished.
"I'm sorry, it didn't even occur to me that you hadn't had a 'proper' cape debut," Miss Militia apologized. "I hope I didn't ruin any plans."
"Nah, you're fine." Dave waved off her concerns. "I didn't have any sort of grand debut plans. With my powers, I am going to get noticed eventually, and while I'm aware PR is one of the most important parts of being a hero—after all, you can hardly save someone that doesn't trust you—I figured Lady Photon's deal with letting the Protectorate help me with my image would cover that while I got started as a hero."
"Oh, well it's good I didn't ruin any plans, I'll talk to the Image department later to see what we can do for giving you a more 'official' debut. You can sign on as a proper Independent Hero too as soon as we get that non-lethality power of yours tested." She gave him a bright eye-smile. Really, those eye-smiles must have been her real superpower, Dave had no idea how she managed to get so much expression out of them.
"By the way," she added, "who is the person you said this was based off of?" She asked curiously.
"Oh, he is a guy called Solid Snake, he is the main character of a video game series from Earth Aleph called 'Metal Gear Solid.'" Dave answered briefly.
"As I said, the camouflage makes this one of my most advantageous forms aside from the smaller ones, and I decided the advantages of 'camo' and 'looking human' were greater than the advantages of 'being small' and 'being cute'. I might make my Pikachu form be a sort of alternate hero persona though, something that can visit sick kids at hospitals and handle low-level crooks and hurt their dignity by beating them up as a tiny adorable mouse based on an Aleph cartoon."
"Hmm," Miss Militia hummed, seemingly still latching onto the idea of Solid Snake. "Do you think the Wards would like to play those Metal Gear Solid games you mentioned? They have game consoles in the Wards lounge, but Clockblocker occasionally complains about a lack of variety in games, particularly games that don't involve Capes in some way."
Dave thought about it. "I don't know the rest of the Wards all that well, but Vista would probably like it. It's got guns and conspiracies and giant robots and cyborgs and terrorists. Vista seems to like more 'adult' and 'mature' stuff, so she'd probably appreciate it. I bet Kid Win would like it because it has lots of things that could inspire him as a Tinker."
Then he shrugged, forgetting that Miss Militia had her eyes on the road and couldn't actually see him shrugging. "But I don't know what sort of games they have already, and I haven't actually played the games myself, given I am only two weeks old in terms of memories and all, plus how busy I've been. I can say Shielder was the one who showed me the series after he recognized who this form was, so apparently he enjoyed it."
"I see, I'll look into it," Miss Militia said. "They need more ways to have fun and be kids, and most of them are too proud or too independent to ask for things in terms of entertainment, so things that will let them enjoy their childhood a little longer are always things I like to be on the lookout for." Miss Militia said, truly proving why PHO labeled her a 'Cape Mom', along with Lady Photon, though notably PHO had not labeled Brandish as a 'Cape Mom'.
Author's Note: So begins the trip to New York. Honestly, I didn't like this chapter too much, Dave kinda came across as a bit of an asshole that wouldn't take a no or a 'let me think about it' at face value from a prospective romantic partner.
Note from just before posting: Having reread this chapter now, I like this current version a lot better, so I must have done a good job on my early editing to remove the pushy asshole-ness, which is good because being a pushy asshole is out of character for Dave. Back to original author's note after this sentence.
Now, as much as I love Miss Militia, unless a whole bunch of readers are desperately shipping her with Dave, I'm probably going to let up on the jokes from her being Dave's soul mate from the Romantic role.
Honestly, if Dave had actually looked like Solid Snake, and was anywhere from mid-20s to mid-40s in age, he and Miss Militia probably would have genuinely started dating by now. It wouldn't have gone anywhere very quickly, as Miss Militia strikes me as the type to be rather slow and steady in her relationships, since she is a rather rational person who isn't led by her emotions very easily.
Note: There was more here, but I'm moving it to the Behind the Scenes 3 because it got rather long and somewhat off-topic. If you are interested in the romance stuff and want to know my plans there, check that out when it comes out.
January 15, 2010, Friday. Brockton Bay, Protectorate HQ.
Dave arrived at the Protectorate Headquarters via teleportation in his Solid Snake form, and appeared in his designated teleportation closet. He had been offered a larger room after they found a better spot for a teleportation chamber, but he had declined because a teleportation closet was funnier than a teleportation chamber. Armsmaster had shrugged and said they were going to work on a larger room for the planned Teleportation Hub anyways, so he was free to have his own little closet.
For now, he walked out to meet Miss Militia at the parking lot, right next to the forcefield road that led to the city, where they would then make their way to New York.
"Hello Trouble." Miss Militia greeted him from in front of her motorcycle.
"Hey Miss Militia," he greeted back. "So are we taking your motorcycle?" He asked.
Miss Militia moved to shake her head, then paused, remembering the things Trouble had said at their first meeting, then actually shook her head. "No, we're going to take a PRT van." She said instead of addressing the idea of them riding her motorcycle together.
"Aww, I was hoping we could race." Dave admitted.
"Race? Did your power offer you a vehicle of some sort?" Miss Militia asked curiously.
"Yes actually," Dave confirmed, before taking out a pistol to show off to her.
"That's a gun." Miss Militia told him patiently, before double-checking with her power and finding she couldn't copy this particular gun, so it apparently had something unusual about it. She wondered if it perhaps had some sort of propelling effect using recoil that Trouble could combine with his flight from his jetpack that would otherwise be slower than a car.
"No, this is an airboat summoner!" Dave told her proudly, before demonstrating by shooting the ground nearby with it, making a small, one-seater airboat appear.
"We can take this instead if you want," he said enticingly. "You would need to ride on my lap though." He added.
Miss Militia actually considered it for a few moments, before shaking her head in refusal. "I'm afraid we wouldn't make very good time if we took the water route to New York. I don't think airboats travel particularly fast on the ocean either, and might be at risk of capsizing outside the calmer waters of the bay."
In other words, she WOULD do it if it weren't for those factors? Dave thought to himself.
"I didn't mean over the water." He clarified, before climbing into the airboat seat and beginning to 'drive' it around the parking lot in circles. "As you can see, this operates perfectly well on land!" He patted his lap.
"How fast does it go on land?" She asked consideringly.
"Eh, a maximum of like 80 miles per hour." Dave answered.
"And, do you have a license to drive it on land?" She asked with one of her signature eye-smiles.
"Uhhh," Dave answered intelligently, before giving up on a clever response and sadly getting out of his airboat. "It has other features," he tried.
"Like?" Miss Militia asked, apparently willing to indulge him in at least bragging about his new vehicle, though he couldn't tell if she was still considering using it.
"Well, it works similar to some of my other items, so once someone is 'using' it, they can't be removed against their will except by dying," he began. "And they are immune to things that could be considered 'physics damage' while in it. A baby in the driver's seat of that could fall from Earth's orbit without a seatbelt or any safety equipment and land on solid concrete and be completely unharmed… as long as the baby didn't use the 'leave' function to no longer be considered 'piloting' it anyways."
"The airboat itself is indestructible," he added after a moment. "And it goes the same speed on both water and land, and has no care of things like terrain or hydroplaning or driving on a pile of nails or caltrops."
"It has a 'physics mode' where it will interact with other things normally, but when it isn't in physics mode, it could hit someone at maximum speed and it would at most push them instead of actually harming them. It would still kill someone even in 'non-physics' mode if it landed on them from above though." He continued thoughtfully.
"Oh," he perked up, "also, it's mostly idiot-proof! The controls are mental and instinctive, you just decide which way you want to go and how fast as well as how far to turn, and it will do it."
"So… really, there's no logical need for a license or permit or anything right?" He gave her a winning smile.
Miss Militia looked from him, to the airboat, to her motorcycle, to the boring PRT van, back to him, before sighing. "You can ride in the sidecar for my motorcycle." She said at last.
"Wooh! Soul mate road trip!" Dave cheered, making Miss Militia flush slightly behind her bandana covering her cheeks. "You can have the airboat if you want." He told her.
When she made to refuse he insisted, "Think of it as part of a down-payment for helping Foxy, while also improving the effectiveness of a local Hero in case you need to chase down any villains, this way you can cut directly across the bay over the water in an emergency, and perhaps get to a scene slightly faster." He said, appealing to her desire to help people.
"I'll give more to the Protectorate and PRT if you agree." He said as a finishing blow, directly tying her acceptance into more stuff for her friend and coworkers, as well as the PRT at large. Naturally, he would do it anyways of course, and he knew that Miss Militia knew that, but given how his power worked, it was better to get the people he was close to used to receiving gifts, and of his current friends and acquaintances, Miss Militia was the most reluctant to receive gifts by far.
"Fine," she agreed slightly exasperatedly, but with a small eye-smile as well, so he took it as a good sign that he hadn't been too pushy.
After he got into the sidecar of her motorcycle and put on a helmet with a radio that would let him easily talk to her over the wind, she said something into her radio, and the forcefield bridge appeared to let them into the city itself, and off they went.
Dave was rather fascinated to see how incredibly well-received Miss Militia's motorcycle was among civilians as they drove through Brockton Bay.
Apparently, Brockton natives could tell based on how fast, or in this case slow, Miss Militia was going (though Miss Militia also said when he asked that she had a siren as well that she used when she was on her way to a fight or a crime scene), that there was no urgent matters or terrible circumstances that led to her being on her motorcycle and driving through the city.
Thus, the Brockton natives felt comfortable waving and occasionally cheering or shouting a comment of gratitude for her hard work when her motorcycle passed, and tourists seemed to take their cue from the locals and took lots of pictures.
"Huh," Dave said suddenly as they began to leave the city. "I guess those pictures will probably be considered my official cape debut."
"Haven't you already been doing hospital work though?" Miss Militia asked curiously.
"Yes, but at first I did those in my Scyther form to develop the power you suggested to make attacks nonlethal—which worked by the way, I can now make it so any attack I make will not kill someone, though it can still injure them. I've only done two hospital visits in this form, which is what I decided to be my standard 'Cape form,' because it looks human and that has a lot of advantages but it also is extraordinarily well camouflaged, and the person it is based off of is thematically fitting for many of my powers." Dave explained.
"Anyways, only two visits in this form means only certain people that have been in the right hospital at the right time in the past few days know I exist, now that a large number of tourists have taken pictures of me, I will be identified for my hospital work within the day, and probably have a wiki page within the week." Dave finished.
"I'm sorry, it didn't even occur to me that you hadn't had a 'proper' cape debut," Miss Militia apologized. "I hope I didn't ruin any plans."
"Nah, you're fine." Dave waved off her concerns. "I didn't have any sort of grand debut plans. With my powers, I am going to get noticed eventually, and while I'm aware PR is one of the most important parts of being a hero—after all, you can hardly save someone that doesn't trust you—I figured Lady Photon's deal with letting the Protectorate help me with my image would cover that while I got started as a hero."
"Oh, well it's good I didn't ruin any plans, I'll talk to the Image department later to see what we can do for giving you a more 'official' debut. You can sign on as a proper Independent Hero too as soon as we get that non-lethality power of yours tested." She gave him a bright eye-smile. Really, those eye-smiles must have been her real superpower, Dave had no idea how she managed to get so much expression out of them.
"By the way," she added, "who is the person you said this was based off of?" She asked curiously.
"Oh, he is a guy called Solid Snake, he is the main character of a video game series from Earth Aleph called 'Metal Gear Solid.'" Dave answered briefly.
"As I said, the camouflage makes this one of my most advantageous forms aside from the smaller ones, and I decided the advantages of 'camo' and 'looking human' were greater than the advantages of 'being small' and 'being cute'. I might make my Pikachu form be a sort of alternate hero persona though, something that can visit sick kids at hospitals and handle low-level crooks and hurt their dignity by beating them up as a tiny adorable mouse based on an Aleph cartoon."
"Hmm," Miss Militia hummed, seemingly still latching onto the idea of Solid Snake. "Do you think the Wards would like to play those Metal Gear Solid games you mentioned? They have game consoles in the Wards lounge, but Clockblocker occasionally complains about a lack of variety in games, particularly games that don't involve Capes in some way."
Dave thought about it. "I don't know the rest of the Wards all that well, but Vista would probably like it. It's got guns and conspiracies and giant robots and cyborgs and terrorists. Vista seems to like more 'adult' and 'mature' stuff, so she'd probably appreciate it. I bet Kid Win would like it because it has lots of things that could inspire him as a Tinker."
Then he shrugged, forgetting that Miss Militia had her eyes on the road and couldn't actually see him shrugging. "But I don't know what sort of games they have already, and I haven't actually played the games myself, given I am only two weeks old in terms of memories and all, plus how busy I've been. I can say Shielder was the one who showed me the series after he recognized who this form was, so apparently he enjoyed it."
"I see, I'll look into it," Miss Militia said. "They need more ways to have fun and be kids, and most of them are too proud or too independent to ask for things in terms of entertainment, so things that will let them enjoy their childhood a little longer are always things I like to be on the lookout for." Miss Militia said, truly proving why PHO labeled her a 'Cape Mom', along with Lady Photon, though notably PHO had not labeled Brandish as a 'Cape Mom'.
Author's Note: So begins the trip to New York. Honestly, I didn't like this chapter too much, Dave kinda came across as a bit of an asshole that wouldn't take a no or a 'let me think about it' at face value from a prospective romantic partner.
Note from just before posting: Having reread this chapter now, I like this current version a lot better, so I must have done a good job on my early editing to remove the pushy asshole-ness, which is good because being a pushy asshole is out of character for Dave. Back to original author's note after this sentence.
Now, as much as I love Miss Militia, unless a whole bunch of readers are desperately shipping her with Dave, I'm probably going to let up on the jokes from her being Dave's soul mate from the Romantic role.
Honestly, if Dave had actually looked like Solid Snake, and was anywhere from mid-20s to mid-40s in age, he and Miss Militia probably would have genuinely started dating by now. It wouldn't have gone anywhere very quickly, as Miss Militia strikes me as the type to be rather slow and steady in her relationships, since she is a rather rational person who isn't led by her emotions very easily.
Note: There was more here, but I'm moving it to the Behind the Scenes 3 because it got rather long and somewhat off-topic. If you are interested in the romance stuff and want to know my plans there, check that out when it comes out.