Greg thought his lack of thought was perfectly justified. People running after them, shooting guns that went 'pew pew pew', the whole 'running' thing, screaming, shouting, and did he mention the running?
"So uh," He mumbled, trying to form his thoughts in a coherent structure, "Probably should have asked this before, but things were kinda hectic so..." The girl stared at him with a bland expression stamped across her face, "What's your name? I can't very well keep calling you 'the girl' in my head..."
She appeared surprised at his question, before she screwed up her nose in amusement. "Dinah. Dinah Alcott. What's yours?"
Greg froze, brain going a thousand miles an hour as he tried to think up a response. He couldn't very well tell her his real name, for one that just wasn't done in the cape business. Plus, with his changer form providing the perfect disguise there was no way he was going to tie it back to his true identity by using the same name.
Dinahs face lit up in embarrassed understanding, "I didn't mean it like that!" She jabbered out hurriedly, "I meant your cape name... But if you're as new to this as you said you are you probably don't have one..." She cut herself off, averting her gaze as she took to rifling through the trucks glovebox.
"You can call me Void...uh..." Greg trailed off, his go-to screen of anonymity dying on his lips in transit. His online handle that he used on practically everything requiring a username had been for the past several years, 'Void Cowboy'. He couldn't rightly remember where he had come up with it from, the memories from before his father was laid off were jumbled and foggy.
"Voidah?" Dinah cocked her head to the side, having finished her intrusive searching in the midst of Gregs inattentiveness. A small pile lay on the floor of the truck, a mishmash of papers peppered with various junk and trash. Also, a tiny little handgun, like one a stereotypical woman would carry in ones purse. That also joined the pile on the floor, Dinah apparently being unwilling to attempt using the small firearm. Not that Greg knew how to use one either... "What's it stand for?" She asked, finally digging out a pair of worn looking driving gloves.
"Uum..." Greg stalled, trying to come up with a convincing lie. "Just... Came up with it. It sounds cool, right?" Greg gave her what he hoped was a placating smile.
"I don't get it," came the all too quick response. "You might want to give it a little more thought."
"Thats... I... Well what are you doing?" Greg managed to belt out, attempting to cover up his embarrassment as she scooted off the seat and onto the truck floor by his dangling legs.
"Well I'm not gonna touch these with my bare hands, you know?" She retorted, giving the gas pedal an experimental push. The engine revved, but no lateral movement was to be had.
Greg knew the problem immediately, a copious amount of hours playing a bevy of vehicle simulators gave him a frighteningly realistic idea of how driving such a truck worked. It had all been worth the multi hundred dollar setup of pedals and controls. All to pretend he was driving a tractor.
Aaaaaaall worth it.
Not only was the parking brake still engaged, but to Gregs further trepidation he noticed something he hadn't really considered to be all that big of a deal before succumbing to the horrible realization that his current stature wasn't lanky enough to to reach the ground bound pedals. The truck was a clutch based, manual gear system.
"You could just use your feet, you know?" He joked, watching as Dinahs head bobbed in sudden mortification. She quickly adjusted her position, shoulders between Gregs legs as she faced the wheel and leaned back against the seat. "Step on the far left one, all the way to the floor," Greg told her, watching with satisfaction as she followed his instruction. "It's a clutch, so," he reached out, letting the parking brakes own spring loaded switch disengage itself as he grabbed the handle. "You're gonna have to let it off slowly as you rev up the engine. Far right pedal."
"I know how a car works!" Dinah snapped back at him as she let off the clutch too fast, and stalled the engine. "I know how a real car works, not this stupid clutch thing..."
"Just let the engine build up some momentum before you start letting the clutch up," Greg calmly ordered, noting out the corner of his eye as the group of gun toting nutjobs trundled their way into the parking lot. "Not to put any pressure on you, but our friends seem to have caught up," he told her, rubbing the two wires together once more to restart the engine.
"I know, I know!" She snapped, jamming her foot down on the gas. The engine let out a keening roar, before the truck jolted into a general forward path.
Greg had never actually driven an actual car before. His mom had forbidden him from even trying, stating that if she ever got so much as word of him joyriding he would be scrubbing dishes in juvie till he was thirty. He'd try to get his permit once he was sixteen, and not a day earlier.
So it was with a sheepish expression that Greg numbly steered their chosen mode of transportation across the parking lot, skidding along the side and backs of several parked cars before they lurched out into the road proper.
"Do you wanna switch?" Dinah snarked, peering back over her shoulder and giving him an expression that could only be described as 'really?'.
"I got this," Greg assured her, before prompting her through engaging second gear. Their truck slowly built up steam, swerving through traffic and barreling right through a stop light. "Woops."
"Woops? Woops what?" Dinah demanded, having barely seen the stoplight out of the sliver of windshield visible to her.
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"Ran a stop light," Greg suddenly cringed, jamming the steering wheel to the left as a solid 'whud' went through the truck. "Aaaaaand ran over a mailbox. Woops."
Their moment of guilt was undercut by a lance of cylindrical light effortlessly tunneling through the back window, leaving a scorch mark on the front windshield. Greg gave a glance behind, seeing the two CRVs that had closed behind them. In the front car Greg could see a tan skinned man with bared forearms leaning out the passenger window, aiming the weapon that had discharged the last bit of flying superheated death through their window.
"God, they won't give you a break, will they?" He groused, wrenching the wheel to the left once more. He cut across several lanes of traffic, including a couple that had been going the opposite direction. "Rev us up, I want to get to fourth gear now that they're riding our tailpipe. If they get up beside us they could run us off the road!"
Dinah complied, finding it easier to engage the clutch now that the stupid truck was actually moving. Their panicked acceleration was punctuated by several more bursts of light, some of which were getting entirely too close for his comfort.
He swerved right onto another street, wincing as another shot came close enough to sear the right side of his face. "Nyeeeeeaaah, friggin jerk wads!" He yelled back at them. They probably couldn't hear him, but yelling almost always made him feel better. Certainly helped when facing off against a veritable army of nine year olds from earth Aleph on Call of Duty. The subscription costs for transdimensional connection was triple that for local lines, but Greg thought it worth it.
Another shot traced it's way through the back window, scorching a small hole through his now bushy hair. With a restrained snarl of barely repressed frustration, Greg could feel him reaching back... Back past his fingers, past the truck, past the space in between their two vehicles. He felt... something in him grab onto something behind them, something that reeked of coins and gutters. He pulled, and felt that something jerk in his grasp.
The sensation faded, leaving Greg once more desperately weaving his way through various traffic. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a curious sight in their rear view mirror. The man that had been leaning out of the passenger window was doing his best impression of Alexandria, fingers tight around his weapon as he flew out of his car. He landed bodily, disappearing from view as the distance between them lengthened yet further.
"Holee-cooooow," Greg muttered, as the cars behind them let out squeezing peals of rubber as they tried to avoid the downed man. One large semi in particular, came to a screeching halt as it swerved off the road. "... I'm sure he's fiiiiiine."
"What happened?" Dinah barked, looking back at Greg as she let off the gas slightly. "I can't see anything from down here, what's going on? Did we lose them?"
Greg let her have a brilliant smile, brightness ratings : MAX.
"I have more pooooowers!~" he trilled, before hurriedly swerving through a crosswalk to avoid the people attempting to walk through it. "Magnikinesis! I yam de mastah of Magnesis, Magneto! Bwaaaahahahaha." He slowly ended in a deadpan tone.
"Should I call you that instead of 'Voida'? Or are you going to change it again in five minutes?" Dinah joked, feeling the telltale jitters as their truck made its way up, over, and back off of a sidewalk.
"No!" Greg quickly spat, before bashfully waving to a poor old woman who had abandoned her bag of groceries in his errant path. "I mean, I dunno. I was trying to make a joke. Like, Magneto? Marvel comics?"
"My mom doesn't like me reading 'frivolous' things," Dinah admitted, marveling at the odd turn their conversation had taken. Being chased by gun toting super villains, and somehow they had ended up talking about comics. What wonders next?
"Friv- comics aren't, Nyeeah!" Greg yelped, weaving past one of their pursuing cars. They had somehow managed to cut them off, putting themselves in their immediate path before Greg shot their truck along a sidewalk. A sidewalk which up to that moment had been a crowded sidewalk, but was now surprisingly devoid of individuals to run over. They had apparently decided that the open road was a far safer place for them to take cover.
Dinah suddenly tensed, her body constricting in a rictus of pain. Greg looked down and could see her contorting, eyes screwed shut as her mouth opened wide in a silent scream. Her hands curled upwards, grabbing at her forehead. She shot ramrod straight, jamming the gas pedal straight down to the floor.
"Dinah? Hey, Dinah! Hey! What's... Shit! What's happening, is something wrong?" He asked, looking desperately around for a place where they could stop. If Dinah was having a seizure or a stroke, there was frighteningly little that Greg could do to help her. Not that as of the moment they would be able to stop, what with her plunging the pedal down to the metal. A fact that the quickly tiring engine was only too happy to share with them.
Dinahs eyes opened wide, and Greg watched as they flashed a brilliant tinge of blue. She closed her mouth, then strangled out a single word.
"STOP," she intoned, and Greg felt a ripple of... Something pass over them. A curious sense of dejavu, that passed just as quickly. Dinah shook her head, her eyes quickly shifting back to their neutral brown shade.
"Uh... Really?" Greg choked out, shaking off the alien sensation. "Cause they're still chasing us, just so you know?"
She shook her head once more, peering up at him with an expression that clearly stated she didn't understand.
"What? I don't... UGHN. What just happened?" She asked.
"I dunno, you looked like you were having some sort of attack, then your eyes glowed blue, now they're-"
A bevy of shots followed them, quickly turning the passenger seat to a flaming briquette.
"The heck?" Greg muttered. "I mean, I'm glad they aren't the aiming at my head anymore, but did the seat insult their mom or something?"
Dinah grew still, letting up off the gas as the engine started groaning in protest. "Eighty Five point Oh Six Percent." Her gaze whipped back up to lock eyes with Greg, "They're aiming for me," she muttered.
"Crud," Greg muttered, weaving again through comparatively slower cars as they tried to pull off the side and away from their joyriding rampage. "Just... Just stay down there. I think I have an idea. Take the wheel!"
"What? No! Get back down here! Voidah!" Dinah yelped, clasping blindly at the suddenly vacant wheel.
Greg stood up on the seat, peering backwards at the trailing cars as they effortlessly matched their current speed. If only he could reconnect that feeling from before, if only he could reach out and grab it...
By now the upper portion of the cab was little more than metal and glass Swiss cheese, more material gone than was still left. Greg reached back with one hand steadying himself with his other on the seats high back. He reached out, desperately grasping for the forward part of the leading car with his power.
He felt it slide over the internal mechanisms, and tried lifting the entire car. The weight near buckled him, slipping out of his grasp as if it were coated in butter. It was too large. He'd have to go smaller. He reached out once more, grabbing at something, anything he could grab onto. A small knob of metal met his grasp, and he yanked.
The lead cars engine let out a metallic screech, smoke billowing from the hood as it swiftly slowed to a halt.
"HA! Take that you-" Greg cut himself off, sparing a glance back down at Dinah. He had managed to not get caught swearing so far, he couldn't very well lose his stride now... What could he yell out though? All his best insults were straight swears, what was decidedly child friendly?
"You... Clods!"