hasthehighground | Kind-of-an-OOM: Car adventures!

She squeaks in alarm, clinging with one hand to the door. She goes silent though, when they slide past the two flanking velociraptors, their dagger-like claws on clear display. She twists in her chair when they turn, staring through the rear window.

"Clint, they're chasing," He probably already knows, but there's a primal, hind-brain fear that rattles through her words and she says them anyway. "Oh, my stars, Clint, faster."

Clint doesn't even nod. The raptors still on the road are too close to them, and he's just starting to hit a speed where they're no longer gaining. 70 miles per hour, seriously?

He's not comforted by the fact one of them's gone; there's a large curve in the road coming up.

Clint snags Oswin's left hand and the P30 in one motion, putting her hand on the steering wheel. "Keep this steady if I let go," he says, as he puts the P30 on his leg for easy access. This would be a lot easier if he didn't have to keep the car intact as protection against dinosaurs. "And put in your earplugs."

He turns off the hearing aid closest to the window before starting to roll it down. His audiologist is going to be pissed, but is he supposed to do -- freak Oswin out with temporary deafness?

She holds on tightly, unprotesting - what exactly could she say? Don't let go? That's just idiotic. She fumbles with the earplugs, and instantly hates them the moment they're in (She can't hear, she can't hear, how can she fight them stop them if she can't hear?) but she promised and somehow doesn't rip them out the second she's got them in place.

Something flashes across her screen as the system finally cracks under her assault.
"The Mesozoic Experience!" She calls out, "Sound familiar?"

Clint barely registers the comment, the raptor calls vying for his attention as they round the bend.

There's more than one raptor waiting for them; some of them are still a ways out, but there's a -- a pack circling in. On seeing the car, there's a stillness, and then one of the raptors on the right side of the car lunges towards them, trumpeting loudly.

Clint doesn't veer left; he doesn't veer left because he's holding the steering wheel steady as he raises in his seat. He shifts around, and rules out the raptors who've been chasing them. They're not on fresh legs; they're less dangerous that these ones who are staring at the car with a dangerous sort of curiosity. Chasing, but he's starting to think they're chasing just fast enough to keep up with the car. Trying to wear it out.

He glances forward again, then raises his P30, turning off his other hearing aid.

The first shot takes out the closest raptor, through the eye; they don't scatter until the second one goes down with a bullet through the soft pallet as it opens its mouth to roar. They break and scatter, falling out of close range, and Clint pulls back into the car, and turns his right hearing aid back on.

"What?"

He's rewarded with a thin sound that had the definite potential to be a scream if she'd remembered to take another breath. Her left hand is still locked around the steering wheel, knuckles white. Her tablet is tucked between her body and her knees which are pulled up tight, her arm wrapped around her head in what might be a slightly effective defensive gesture if she'd stop staring out the side window and put her head down.

There's dinosaur blood on the glass.

She's a little fixated, at the moment.

Well. Shit.

Clint can't exactly say anything to comfort her or snap her out of it, with her earplugs in. Touching her is probably a terrible idea, but her hand is locked around the steering wheel and he'll need her to let go and focus on what she was finding in the system.

What they need is information.

He covers her left hand with his right, fingers wrapping around her thumb. He's just holding, for now, but with the intent to pry her fingers off once she relaxes enough that he won't cause damage.

There's a short startled shriek at that, her heart jamming into her throat and going triple-time, but her head catches up soon after and registers that the touch is warm and if it's warm it's not reptilian and if it's not reptilian it's...

"Clint, this movie really sucks." Her voice is shaking so hard it's almost unintelligible and it's a bit too loud because she's entirely forgotten about the earplugs and is compensating but she manages, somehow, to let go of the steering wheel.

"James Cameron has a lot to answer for," Clint agrees, grin tugging at the corner of his mouth despite... everything. He glances to her, and taps his ear lightly, to remind her about the earplugs.

There's a blink of pure confusion on her part before she gets his hint. Then she's digging out the muchly-hated earplugs and reveling as sound returns, whilst trying to remember that breathing is good.

"Right. So. So." Here's one thing a whole year under Dalek mental attack will do for you - reshuffling one's brain from scrambled to functional almost becomes easy with that much practice.

"So. Mesozoic Experience, educational park with truly horrible computer program design, kind of broken at the moment, and there's a gift shop." She sums up, and then shows him the screen of her tablet.

"At least there's a map."

Meso -- great. Not only is there apparently someone else willing to make a carnivorous dinosaur amusement park, his (admittedly incomplete) memory of Jurassic Park probably won't help.

"Okay," he says. "Okay, awesome. Anywhere on there look like a garage?" He flicks a brief look at the screen; he's not quite sure where they are relative to the buildings on the map.

"Mmmmm..... yeeeees." She draws the word out, squinting at the admittedly deeply rudimentary map. "Right next to the..." She pauses, then makes a frustrated noise of 'really, who drew this nonsense?' that probably isn't reassuring. The map and portal to the island's computer system are shuffled off to one side of the screen as she pours over her work again - in a world without a wide-spread and omnipresent internet, she's a wolf in an unguarded flock of sheep.

"Luckily, the natives are a nosy lot." She adds on a few moments later when she manages to get a hold of a satellite with a spy camera, and diverts it from it's assigned job of taking pictures of suspicious sites in North Korea. Someone, somewhere, is going to be having a very bad day, and Oswin can't be bothered to care.

With the line drawing and the real-time photo side by side, things suddenly get a lot clearer.
"There, that set of buildings there - looks like the main headquarters, and we're.... here." She points out helpfully.

Edited 2013-09-14 14:01 (UTC)

Clint knows what imagery from spy satellites looks like; he doesn't know of anyone who could access one that fast and sort through the data. Her tablet's probably some sort of Milliways magic, but --

"I could kiss you, Oswald," he says, taking a right at the fork.

A computer very much from the future, along with someone who can use computers very, very well - that's a magic all by itself.

"We survive this, and I just might hold you to that." She promises, head bent over her tablet again as she delves further into the computer systems that once held this place together.

Edited 2013-09-15 03:37 (UTC)

He breathes a laugh.

A movement puts him on edge until he realizes there are rats in the trees. He's pretty sure rats didn't live when the dinosaurs did, but with how much traffic there must've been to the island -- signs posted on the road with speed limits he's ignoring, advertisements for the building up ahead offering snacks and souvenirs -- it'd be more surprising if rats hadn't made it.

"This the one we're looking for?" he asks, as the building comes into view. It looks wrecked, and Clint shifts his estimate of how long the place has been abandoned to somewhere past ten years. Things degrade quickly in damp environments, but it's... surprising.

"I... Think so." She frowns at the picture she found in the archives, a simple shot of the gathered staff smiling in front of the brand new main building.

"Clint? Shouldn't we... make sure no one's out there? Survivors?"

Clint looks at her, thinks: there's no way they haven't died by now.

He looks back to the building. "Well. Any honking will alert any of the raptors that haven't followed us --" just because the dinosaurs have disappeared from view doesn't mean Clint in any way thinks they're not being followed, "but a human from the 90s knows what a car horn sounds like."

Clint's quiet another long moment. "The building looks stable enough to drive through, as long as we don't upset the supports. If we unlock the doors, we might be able to get survivors in before the raptors reach us."

He looks over. "But I think they're dead, Oswin."

She bites her lip, worrying at it in a gesture she never quite grew out of. She knows what he's saying. She knows he's probably right. They'll be risking their lives for ghosts, and for no good reason.

"Sometimes there's survivors." She mutters at her computer, deleting the picture and going back to searching through databanks to find more useful information.

"Yeah," he agrees, quietly.

Clint's thinking. He's not currently on any critical missions. He's apparently integral to the overhaul of the security on the NASA project coming up, but they could pull Park off of the SIS project if they really needed to.

Fury would know what happened. Natasha... Natasha would be fine. She has a strong safety net with her Chicago coworkers.

He's paid his bills for the month.

"Okay," he says. "Are there garages on the other side?"

Startled, she looks up at him, because he can't have meant what she thinks he means.

The guilt in her expression at finding out she's right is horrible, but the gratitude is just as fierce. She's going to get them killed, but... maybe. Just maybe. This time the rescue can be not-too-late.

That'd be really good.

"Um. Yes." She's utterly flustered but her computer and data is grounding, so she focuses on that. "Through the main doors, left at the giant skeleton, right just past the restrooms, through the emergency exit at the end of the hallway, and a sharp left leads to the garage."

She blinks at the file for a moment, before adding:
"The one that has electrified gates. That are off. But still reading as functional."

He looks over her shoulder at the blueprints. The hallways should be wide enough, but they might have to take the last turn on foot. He'd really like to avoid that. "Have those ready to go."

He drives in through the space the main doors used to be in, pulling into the lobby.

Clint unlocks the door, rolls down the window, and lays on the horn for five seconds. "Car in the lobby!" He calls out the window. "We're leaving in 90 seconds. Give a sign!" Clint takes a breath as he lays on the horn again, then repeats himself in Spanish -- adjusting the time down.

He rolls the window most of the way back up.

Now they just have to wait.

Edited 2013-09-16 07:59 (UTC)

Every noise seems magnified, now that they are listening. Creaks and groans that could just be the building continuing it's steady decay could be someone deciding if they believe in miracles... or another one of those creatures looking for lunch. There is (was) an internal camera system, but it's long-dead, refusing to even pretend to come online for her.

Seconds slip by without an answer, and she feels like more and more of an idiot. But it is good, to check, she clings to that... because what if they'd been wrong?

This place is crawling with Daleks.
Yeah. Kinda why I'm anxious to leave.

Edited 2013-09-16 13:40 (UTC)

There's a sound, very much like a heavy footfall, from above, and the balcony up to the right -- out of sight -- creaks precariously.

Clint steps on the clutch, hand to the gear stick. "Who's there?" he calls.

There's silence, and then something crashes onto the roof. Clint flinches back as it dents, but it's only about as far as it would if a full grown man hit onto it.

There's a thick, reptilian tail down the windshield. Clint reverses with a sharp jerk.

Edited 2013-09-17 05:39 (UTC)

For a moment, a brief shining moment, Oswin thinks that the gamble actually paid off.

And then, you know, there's that tail.

Clint gets a rapid introduction to swear words of the future as the roof dents further, and receives the lesson again in a more panicky key of 'augh' when those dents turn into rents, and the raptor's talons rip through into the cabin.

"Door to your left the ceiling is lower there door just go now now now!" Oswin yalps, sliding lower in her seat, her attention divided between the schematics on her tablet and, you know. The velociraptor above her head.

Clint follows her directions, smashing back through the doorway -- just slightly too small, but thankfully not that sturdy, the steady thunk of flesh against a hard object as the ceiling catches the raptor by surprise. Unfortunately, it just clings harder as they back up, swinging around so its lower legs are scrambling for purchase against the back window, blocking the view.

In front of them, now that Clint can see, is the remains of a gift store. They've managed to knock over enough of the racks that the path back to the door isn't clear. "Get down," Clint says, as he takes the path anyway.

When the raptor isn't shaken by them pushing back out, he adds, pressing the P30 against the roof: "Cover your ears!"

He doesn't have time to see if she's going to comply, or to turn off his hearing aids. They turn themselves off after the first shot (smart tech), but his brain is already ringing. His audiologist -- fuck, he's so dead.

He moves the gun slightly, and shoots twice more in quick succession.

Edited 2013-09-17 06:13 (UTC)

She has just enough time to wedge her fingers into her ears before the gun goes off, and the noise of it is still brutally loud. Three quick shots, followed by a heavy thud against the roof of the car. Oswin ducks lower, but the talons don't follow.

And that balcony is creaking again.

"That hallway, there, that's the restrooms, go!" She urges, before the light dims behind them. She twists in her seat, just in time to be able to stare into the unseeing eye of the dead velociraptor that's slowly sliding its way off their roof.

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