hashtag_chocobro | The Danger Shop; Monday, Lunchtime [05/27].

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The Danger Shop; Monday, Lunchtime [05/27].

There was a part of Prompto that was really wondering if they could potentially get in trouble for doing this, but it seemed, to him, that the danger shop should definitely be free use for a couple of teachers for Very Important Things during school hours when no one else was using it, right? Right! Besides, this was a guy who had the prestigious honor of being one of the few students that had gotten detention at this school in recent years (albeit much more recently for the school than for him!) for all sorts of rule-breaking shenaningans, so, really, if anything, acting first and apologizing later when it came to school property was ultimately just on brand for him.

Besides, it was easily going to be the best way to teach Liliana all about cars and driving, and he'd meticulously put together a whole program to do so, and he was hoping it didn't go too much to waste. But, while the rum being set out for the squirrels had more to do with the fact that this whole driving thing was meant to be a surprise for Ignis, it didn't pass his notice that it would probably help a little if them doing this was actually a big fat no-no.

Only time would tell! If anything, they could at least get in a lesson before getting thoroughly busted and reprimanded, and that was what counted. So he was just going to be taking some time to check over his mock-up of the Regalia he'd programmed in and also the motorcycle he'd added in case they wanted to take a stab at that, too, and then just waited for his student to show up, with a wistful sigh toward the motorcycle.

Man, he really should look into getting one of those...

[[ for the budding Death's Driver and NFB, por favor! ]]

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If anyone asked, she'd say it was in deference to the barbeque that was happening in town, but Liliana had dressed in Casual Modern today, with a pair of tight jeans and a t-shirt. She was absolutely not a t-shirt kind of woman, but there were times when exceptions could be made and that t-shirt (and this lesson) happened to be among them.

"Prompto," she said crisply, striding into the Danger Shop with the usual sharp clack because obviously she was still wearing her boots (and also the soft chime of the Chain Veil because obviously she was wearing that, too), "thank you for coming. I see you've been very busy."

Her eye was caught by the Regalia and that cut through some of her business, leaving her tone a little softer when she added, "I hope it wasn't too much trouble," with her fingers trailing over the lines of the car.

She had a better understanding now, of what the Regalia had meant.

Edited 2024-05-27 17:19 (UTC)

And Prompto had debated with himself...a lot...about his choice of car, especially since he himself had never actually worked on the Regalia and most of its recreation in the danger shop was based solely on general knowledge and conjecture; he hadn't even been there, when they finally had to say good-bye to her in Gralea, since he was, you know, kind of busy being tied up and tortured and being used as bait and all. But it was with the Regalia that Ignis had given him driving lessons, and Noct, too, and pulling up those old chocobo photos for his class earlier had made him feel even more nostalgic than usual.

They were doing this for him, after all, so it just....sort of felt right.

"Not at all," he said, giving her a soft smile back before it flowed into a soft snort. "Well, I mean, we'll see how I feel after we're done, but, yeah, no, sorry it took so long to get around to finally doing it, but....think you're ready to get started?"

His eyes did, however, trail a little bit skeptically toward those boots which, yes, did look absolutely fantastic, but hardly seemed the most--

--and then Aranea Highwind showed up in his brain to give it a nice smack and several graphic threats of what could happen when underestimating what a woman was capable of doing in any circumstances even in the most ridiculous of footwear, while Cindy Aurum just laughed.

Aranea and Cindy were right, dammit. These boots were older than Prompto, and Liliana had done many, many more ridiculous things in them than learn to drive a car. Or even a motorcycle!

And these weren't even her most ridiculous shoes!

"Indeed," Liliana said, looking up at him from her contemplation of the car, though her fingers still moved over the soft fabric of the seats. "I already have a number of questions." Because of course she did. "Why doesn't this one have a roof? Is it like a landau, where sometimes it has a top and sometimes it doesn't? Or more like a phaeton in that it never does? Why are there only two pedals, where's the third one? Where is the screwdriver to start it? Is this because it's an Eosian car? Should I learn on an Earth model instead? I really ought to practice with the third pedal more."

Look, he was just worried about the heel getting stuck under one of the pedals! It was an absolutely fair concern!

Although the beauty of doing this here was that it could also be an important lesson!

"I mean," Prompto said, with a faint chuckle and that slight pallor creeping into his skin that indicated he was starting to feel maybe a bit out of his element here (but it was cool! It was fine! He was going to try and channel his best Driving Instructor Iggy for this with a touch of Cindy charm!), "you absolutely should practice with the third pedal more if you get the chance, knowing how to drive a manual is really helpful, and I can definitely get one of those set up if that's what you prefer? But I'm more familiar with an automatic, myself, and, to be honest, especially for a beginner, it's, like, a million times easier....and, yeah, it's, uh, exactly? Like a landau? I think? In that it's a convertible, you have the option to have the roof up or down, I figured we'd start down just because it's nicer that way, and, I mean, if you want the best experience, especially for...."

He stopped himself, though, blinking and shaking his head.

"We should probably just take it one thing at a time," he suggested. "Starting, first off, with the fact that it sounds like you worked with an automatic before, yeah? Three pedals, gear shift..." His brows furrowed on the one thing he wasn't really as clear on. "Screwdriver?"

"That was how Dean turned the car on," she explained. "He put it into that bit with the hole in it there--" she pointed to the ignition "and twisted it to turn it on and off." She furrowed her brow. "Is that not how you make cars turn on?"

She was going to rend Dean into bars of soap.

"But yes, that was what the car had. Three pedals and a gear shift. It was very confusing and complicated, but I don't know, that might have just been the quality of the instruction. I would very much prefer to learn on something easier, if that's all right. Again, I've now only been in a car once, which means I am also learning literally everything else people know about cars and driving at the same time - like what a fucking curb is - and simplifying at least one of those tasks will hopefully make learning both that much easier."

If she sounded cranky, it was because she still remembered the 'curb' argument vividly. And the horn argument. And--look, they'd had a lot of arguments.

"What, like a key?" asked Prompto, squinting a little and trying to think, in all his exposure to Earth culture or even other cultures more broadly, he'd ever heard of a key being referred to as a screwdriver or if she meant, like, an actual screwdriver, which, you know, you had to hotwire a lot of rundown cars in the Apocalypse, but why would...?

It didn't matter, especially since Liliana was still talking and Prompto was going to focus on everything else she said with his brow still furrowed and a little bit of a nod of his head and then a deep breath and another.

"Alright," he said, "okay. Cool. So, what I'm thinking might be a good place to start, then, with your....one experience with a car that may or may not have its ignition started with an actual screwdriver...is to start with the basics. The very basics. Let's start then, by introducing you to the car. Liliana, this is a car. This specific car is modeled after the Regalia, which was literally, at one point in time and probably still, the finest automobile in all of Eos. Well, okay, the Nifs probably had some pretty sweet cars, too, I mean they had airships, but I digress. Now, when it comes to a car, you're going to have several different points of importance, starting, of course, with the wheel and the dash...."

And were you here for a very thorough breakdown of all the various specific parts of what that included, Liliana? Because if you didn't stop him now, Prompto was absolutely going to be going into a very thorough breakdown of all the various specific parts unless you stopped him, although he was also pausing on occasion to glance her way and see if her eyes were glazing over or if there were any questions popping up, because, if given the chance, he would go on, probably with several tangents...

Because Dean had hotwired the car he'd been teaching her on, Prompto. The car that also happened to belong to his alternate universe stepmother. Who was also the Principal. Thus making Liliana an accessory to stealing her boss's car, yes.

She needed to find a better threat than simply rendering him into soap.

Contrary to his expectations, Liliana actually looked relieved when he started explaining the various parts of the car. Because now she would know what he meant when he said things like 'check your mirrors' (check them for what, Dean?!). Not only were her eyes not glazing over, she'd actually pulled out a notebook and had started taking notes. She did interrupt with questions every now and again, usually to ask why something did what it did, and also occasionally asked him to pause or repeat himself. If he ever glanced at her notes, he'd see that a) they were not in English, and b) there were several different diagrams, like something straight out of a science textbook, with various parts labeled and amended.

"And yes, it was definitely with a screwdriver," she said when they were talking about the steering column. "I was going to ask how to know what kind of screwdriver to use, if the car came with them, or if you could just use any old screwdriver you had lying around."

"I mean," said Prompto, "there are definitely going to be some screwdrivers that are way better than other screwdrivers for that sort of thing," Prompto admitted, because, again, a lot of his life in the ten years prior to returning here had been all about making a lot of run down old vehicles capable of getting people through incredibly dangerous territory for survival purposes, "but ideally, you're not using a screwdriver at all, you're going to be using a key, which the car will come with, although I guess if you've lost it, a screwdriver could work fine, but also, there are locksmi--"

Prompto shook his head, waved his hand, a gesture he had a feeling he was going to be doing a lot of during this lesson.

"Anyway, we're spending too much time on the screwdriver, I think we need to just move past the screwdriver. Hopefully, the car you're driving has a key so it's not an issue. This one," he held it up, with a little Crownsguard emblem keychain dangling from it, "definitely has a key."

Which he was now tossing to Liliana to catch.

"Ready to get behind the wheel?" he asked, reaching over to then open the driver's side door and step aside with a gesturing bow of invitation. "Or you want me to start and show you?"

Look, the screwdriver had confused her a lot, okay?

Liliana caught the key and slid in the driver's seat. And, in contradiction to her earlier internal sass about mirrors, did properly adjust them and the seat beneath her until she could see the sides properly and was comfortable with how her feet hit the pedals.

There had been a few times when Dean had been useful. Technically. She supposed. Not that she'd be admitting out loud.

She held the brake down and inserted the key into the ignition. It turned much easier than the screwdriver had and the car turned on. She tried not to show any nervousness when the engine rumbled to life, but her knuckles did go a little white as she held onto the wheel. "It's going to start moving once I take my foot off the brake, right?"

Just think, Prompto. You got to introduce Liliana to the wonder that was Park in automatics.

And here Prompto had bounced on over to the passenger side and was about to launch into all that about adjusting everything, only to land in his seat (who needed to open a convertible door when you could just hop over it and there were no Ignises around to yell at you for doing so?), only to find her already doing so? So Prompto got grinned a little, settled into hid seat, and shook his head.

"Not with an automatic," he said, "that's where this baby comes in. See that? P for Park. The car's not going to move until you shift that to either Forward or Reverse. And when you do that, it's probably a good idea to just slowly ease up on thr brake and slowly press the gas pedal to really ease into it, especially at first, and get ready to press the brakes again if it feels like too fast or too much, you know? Niiiiiice and slow's the way to go!"

Liliana stopped. Turned to face him, jaw a little slack in shock.

And then started laying on the horn.

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP

She was mad at Dean again.

"YOU CAN HAVE CARS THAT JUST DON'T GO UNTIL YOU'RE READY FOR THEM TO DO THAT?!?" she yelled. "I NEARLY PLANESWALKED OUT OF THAT CAR BECAUSE I THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO DIE!"

Don't mind her, Prompto. She's just going through some things.

At first, Prompto was confused, when Liliana stopped everything just to sort of stare at him.

And then he was really confused, but also wincing as he wondered why he'd bothered to keep the horn authentically in with a sim and then Liliana started ranting, and, hey, you know what? That was fine, it was alright, he had a year-and-a-half-year old daughter, he could deal with sudden tantrums and outbursts and knew how to just ride it out and let her get it out of her system, and then waiting a moment to make sure there wasn't a sudden quick follow-up.

"There's a lot of different kinds of cars," he offered, and he wasn't holding back a chuckle, honest! He wasn't smirking! That was just a thing his face did sometimes! "But, yeah, there's a reason why not a lot of people bother with manual transmissions any more. Automatics are just way easier....."

And safer, too, apparently!

"Added bonus to the danger shop is you definitely won't die in here, either, but, give it a try. Go ahead and shift into forward and then switch your foot from the brake to the gas....lightly...and see how it starts moving, and, if you want to stop, press the brake petal again. Lightly, if you can, but sometimes I get that you really gotta stomp on it..."

It wasn't a tantrum! It was righteous anger at having discovered that she'd clearly been set up to fail. Because why else had Dean deliberately chosen a car a hundred times harder than he'd had to? And given her terrible instructions?

She finally stopped laying on the horn and turned to Prompto to say--something. And took in his face as all the color drained from hers, save for two spots of red high up in her cheeks. The purple in her eyes blazed before she turned back to the steering wheel and took a loooong moment to debate something internally.

And then, in a voice that was light and airy and smooth and oh-so-recognizeable to Ignis, she said, "You said to shift into forward then? Of course."

Well. If there was one way to wipe the barely-held-back smirk off of Prompto's face, it was definitely a reaction like that, blinking a little before staring back at Liliana. And letting out a slow breath once her attention shifted off of him and back onto the steering wheel.

And then it was his turn to take a long moment to debate something internally.

"Now, hold on a second," he said, probably not exactly wisely, but that had always been Iggy's expertise, anyway. He shifted a little, sitting up in his seat with his attention now focused in and a hand lifted almost placatingly. "Take a few minutes, count down from ten or something like that, because you're all upset and tense, and that's not good. Shake it out a little, a couple deep breaths, and then, yeah, shift into forward, and slowly apply a little gas with the gas pedal. Ease it into going, nice and steady."

"As much as I enjoy being told to calm down, Prompto," Liliana said in that same light voice, "I assure you, I'm fine." Dean would probably recognize those CALMING TONES anywhere.

She did, in fact, immediately shift into forward and slowly pressed down on the accelerator, because she'd taught herself how to do that during her first lesson, too. Because it had been that or get motion sick from the stop-start-stop-start from the press-and-release she'd started with, because Dean hadn't bothered explaining further.

"We'll see about that," murmured Prompto, shaking his head and sighing a little as he braced himself, because, sorry, Liliana, you didn't practically murder him with a look like that and get away with trying to convince him that everything was fine. But since she insisted on just moving on (in more ways than one), he could suck it up and try to focus on the lesson while wondering if this really was actually a terrible idea.

And he breathed out with relief when it did seem to go smoothly.

"Okay," he said, "good. Now just roll along until you're comfortable with accelerating by pushing the pedal more, but, you know, slowly. Get a feel for it. Up ahead, I've set out some cones, do you see them? Roll us out to there and then see if you can stop at or near them, yeah?"

"Would you like me to do that exactly as you've laid out, or would you mind if I did some brake testing before we get over there?"

There was a pause, before Prompto answered, a bit of a hesitation, and then an annoyance that he'd even felt the hesitation in the first place. She'd asked him to teach her, right? So he was going to stick with his gut, especially since his gut was also being influenced on the principles of What Would Iggy Do?

"Exactly as I've laid out," he said, with a small, even-slightly-Iggy-like nod, "if you could. When you get to the cones, try the brake, so you can see how they respond in, like, a measurable distance."

"Ah, yes, I understand," she said with a slight incline of her head. "My appreciation for the explanation."

There were several times when her foot got a little heavy on the gas pedal, but she managed to pull it back, though whether that extra gas was due to temper, a desire to try something before reminding herself that she was following directions, or simply a natural inclination for speed was anybody's guess.

But they rolled and the cones approached and Liliana stomped on the brakes, hard, bringing them up short with a painful rock. Look, that was all the practice she'd gotten in with brakes in her first lesson. "Hmm."

And now Prompto was left wondering if that really was just a lead foot or intentional.

"Good!" Prompto said. "Very good! And now, you see, it doesn't take much at all for it to brake. Now, let's shift her into reverse, back up to the cones back where we came from, and try again. Now," Prompto prepared for a nice ~~conveniently handwavey~~ explaination, "reverse can be a little trickier, but if you just..."

"Does a brake work like the gas?" she answered, still frowning, not yet quite ready to move on to the intricacies of reverse. "A little bit at a time, too?"

"I mean," said Prompto, "pretty much, yeah. Well, not in what they're doing, really, but how they respond. With the gas, you're feeding the engine with with air and gas to make it move the car forward, and with the brakes, you're basically applying pressure to the wheels go stop them from turning. So if you press the pedals softly, it'll be a slower start and stop, and if you press the pedals real hard, then you go and stop hard, too."

Hm. A little like life, huh?

A brief moment of an almost protest, followed by a flicker of incredible frustration before her face smoothed out and she nodded. "And you were saying about reverse?"

Prompto wished he could tell if those flickers were moments he should go back and ask about or not, so he could explain in a better way, but, at the same time, she seemed pretty set on moving on.

So he explained it again, almost exactly the same as before, almost too nervous to deviate any further than necessary.

Well, at least for now, her expression had turned into one of intense concentration. She backed up and backed up, over and over again, like she was there was a riddle that could only be solved by doing it.

If Prompto had given her a place to aim to, she began by trying to head there, but eventually summarily ignored it in favor of turning the wheel in various directions and seeing what happened--

Until at last something fell into place and her face cleared. "The pivot point." And then she went forward again, her braking still rough and uneven but getting better, and maneuvered into whatever spot she'd been originally told to aim for. It was far from perfect, of course. She miscalculated a bit and overshot, hadn't really internalized using the mirrors, but the theory was there and the rest was a matter of practice.

At this point, reverse was probably Liliana's favorite part of driving.

Well, Prompto's intention was to just have Liliana go directly straight back in reverse for now...look, he'd been working a lot in terms of literal baby steps these days...so that was a little frustrating when that didn't quite work out, but she seemed to figure it out anyway, so yay? He guessed?

"Good," he said. "Good! Kind of getting the feel for it, right? And the more you do it, the easier it gets."

It's almost as if she wasn't a baby.

"It's the pivot point," she said again, forgetting herself briefly in her excitement of having figured something out for herself and proven she was, in fact, intelligent. "It's higher than I originally thought - it's not right above the hips, it's like just below the shoulders because it's only the front wheels that are actually turning."

That...sure was an explanation, Liliana.

In his defense, she did have a whole rant about nit knowing hardly even the first thing about it!

And now she was talking about pivot points!

"Well," said Prompto, with maybe a faint, tentstive sort of smile, "I guess that covers a good chunk of turning, which I was going to get into after we kind of mastered back and forth and going and stopping..."

And Prompto was doing an excellent job of not giving her esoteric orders based on the presumption she would know what he was talking about. And having been in a car even one time also helped. ~~Okay and so was some of what Dean had taught her. Some.~~

"But going straight backwards was hard," she said, as if this made obvious sense. "I had to figure out how the car moved because otherwise, the slightest shift out of alignment and I didn't know how to put it back. Thinking the back wheels pivoted when going in reverse like the front ones do going forward meant the car wasn't doing what I expected it to do. I had to figure out what it was doing, and I wasn't going to figure that out just by going back and forth."

"Why do I suddenly have the feeling that you just skipped right over the crawling stage and went right to running?" Prompto asked.

Look, his frame of references was very specific at this stage in his life.

"We would have gotten there. I'm trying to make sure no stone gets left unturned."

He was being thorough! That's what Iggy would do!

"It's like all anatomy," Liliana said, tone cooling as she recollected herself. "You can teach about things in discrete pieces, like a hand or a foot, but when it comes to movement none of that is actually helpful unless you look at it holistically. How it all fits together. Walking isn't just legs and feet, it's hips and centers of gravity and balance and swinging arms which leads to shoulders...I have built and rebuilt enough bodies to know what to look for when it comes to figuring out movement."

"Well," Prompto countered, "I haven't rebuilt any bodies at all, but I've rebuilt a lot of cars and trucks. Never taught anyone to drive one before, though, so I guess we're both learning. You wanna play around with turning and things now?"

He was kind of wondering now what his whole role in all this was supposed go be if she was just going do her own thing....

....guess how to answer questions in a way that didn't cause her to just glare at him, he supposed.

....gods, why did he agree to do this, again?

She still didn't know what she didn't know, Prompto! Like that reversing was a thing at all.

"Okay." She looked at him expectantly. "What do I need to know about turning?"

Yeah, but he didn't know what she didn't know, so how was he supposed to know how to help her know it without awkwardly stumbling over things she did know???

Prompto looked warily back at Liliana, took in a deep breath, and decided to just info dump everything he could possibly scrounge up about turning, tip to tail, anatomy of the car and offers to slip under the carriage to show her, even, with an extra emphasis whenever he referenced the pivot point, acceleration points, blah di blah blah blah and leave it up to her to decide what was useful.

Which, like, he knew she had a phone,did that phone just not have google?

Using Google required knowing what to look for, and how, and what sources were trustworthy, especially now that Google was forcing AI search results, and then also skill at translating something read into something physical.

Just because she was making connections that you didn't expect and not following your exact plotted course didn't make your teaching not valuable. Noctra might skip ahead to reading not long after learning her ABCs, but that didn't mean she instinctively grasped the concept of vowels.

Once again, she made him pause so she could write everything he was saying down, sometimes interrupting with a barrage of questions, sometimes making him repeat certain things until she was sure she understood it and could repeat it back to him in her own words. She took him up on his offer of the undercarriage and while it was clear she didn't give a fuck about the overall mechanics of the car, learning about how certain things affected how she could control the car were deemed necessary and important.

And once they got back into the car, she seemed much more confident and comfortable behind the wheel, sometimes muttering to herself little snippets of what he'd said to match it up to what was actually being done.

Well, a look at the undercarriage would surely lead to a peek at the engine, too, so hopefully Liliana brought plenty of paper to write on. And then Prompto was left wondering what other parts of the car he was failing to mention as he settled back in.

"So I guess...now we work on turning?"

She had a whole notebook! Liliana was a nerd and very notebook-oriented.

...Though, admittedly, she took fewer notes about the engine, seemingly content with 'engine makes cars go,' with the occasional interesting bit here and there.

They worked on turning, which mostly involved Liliana asking Prompto for turning-related goals that he wanted her to achieve and the parameters she needed to achieve them in. Regardless of anything else, she was going to get an A+ in driving. She was very determined.

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The Danger Shop; Monday, Lunchtime [05/27].

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