A Doug Person

Nobody ever talks about anything important in the Repenta Diner parking lot unless it's three in the morning, and when it's that time, the things that are important are about to be punched in, or out, of whoever said them.

It's a little bit earlier than that, yet, and Frye's still raring and coherent - still standing up straight, even! His expert grip on the beer can defies any whim of the asphalt to taking a sip, like he was born holding it, or else forged in a New England blacksmith's shop to be just so adroit.

"'Auto-Run' - get real! Back in my day, they just called that cruise control."

"We had the same day, Frye," Doug reminds him with a chuckle, bottle held securely by the neck. "And after all, mims can only auto-run at one of two speeds. They can do pretty much anything and everything else, but not that."

"Says the guy who couldn't shoot TP in a barrel," Seren stage-whispers, disappearing into the thinning throng again at the crack of an affronted look upon Doug's brow. "Hey, what's that supposed to- ugh, they're right, though." Just like Lin would be. Oddly similar, those two. "Infinite Overdrive is a stranger to me."

Frye chuckles himself, though a part of him hates to do so at Doug's expense. "You're just gonna let that go? Like you don't have to crunch through the same prep battles I do when I go hunting with them."

"Well, yeah," Doug allows, roundabout, "but at least they keep it, when they get it. Seren doesn't even need L to trash-talk me..."

Yeah, yeah, and Frye trained them to have such a big mouth, probably. He doesn't hear Doug blaming him, necessarily, but the thought is there. Doug's usual company is Lao, but then on the flip side...

Well. Enough said about that.

"Oh, you're gettin' me down, man! C'mon, cheer up. You're not the primo Harrier for nothin'."

That gets a reaction. "Hey, I know what you say about Harriers when you think I'm not listening."

"Whatever," Frye waves him off. "Enough about that. Tell me about your sweet ride."

Doug snorts at the thought that Frye even cares. "You're just saying that."

"No, I mean it! I'm a guy's guy just like you - I love cars. Cars with a bit more oomph to 'em than what NLA's got going, but a car's a car."

Another snort. "What, you're telling me you don't drink and drive?"

"Well, not never, but." Frye makes an opaque shrug that Doug chooses to read as but it made Phog really upset one time when I came back all messed up, besides what our father had to say about it, not to mention the car itself, so, you know, never again, even though I told myself I didn't care, because I'm not a monster, c'mon, whaddya take me for?

And what does Doug take Frye for? Sort of a nutcase, sure, but there've been bigger nuts in smaller cases. He doesn't doubt for a second that it's complicated, though he has a sort of good faith feeling about it.

So he changes the subject, as Frye had requested. "You'll laugh at me, but it was electric. Not so classic that it ran on gas."

Imagine that - the combustion engine. Their parents' parents had been the ones to proudly assert that they'd in all likelihood die without ever once driving another type of car. Stick to manual to automatic? Yeah, of course. But not a vehicle that didn't take twenty bucks on 89.

"Okay, I hear ya," says Frye, grinning. "No shame here."

Doug's quick to point out that, despite ubiquity, "It wasn't a Tesla, though! Some of those things were real tin cans."

Says the Skell test pilot guinea pig, master of the tin can. If a tin can were alloyed with a tank. And look whose tin cans are now no more than vestiges, at Grenada, with even more openly vile villainy to crow about it.

Doug seems to be thinking the same thing as he reminisces.

"Superman throwing a Cybertruck... I mean, that's like beautiful poetry."

"Well I happen to think it's like beautiful poetry that he was throwing any cars at all," Frye crows. "You ever imagined yourself just picking up a car and then throwing it - at someone or not! It's crazy, man, crazy."

"Americana... You know my folks had a Ford Flex? Nothin' so huge that you'd slosh around without a seatbelt, but there was a cover on the backseat and a leash clipped to the headrest at all times. That was a family car."

But Frye could care less about the boxy MPV that got discontinued and replaced by knockoff Jeeps more times than he can count. No, man's best friend is afoot.

"Leash? What kinda dog'd you have?"

Probably a golden retriever, or a German Shepherd lab. Maybe even a husky! Not a police dog, but somethin' big and bulky, just like Doug would one day grow up to be. Man, but Frye misses the dive bar's bouncer's dog. Cheesecake, a hundred and sixty pounds of pure love. Nothing like his foxhound Atlas, but what or who could ever be?

Doug, meanwhile, just shakes his head. Two words that could put any daydreaming dog-lover reminiscing on pre-teenage hunts right out: "Golden labradoodle."

"You're pullin' my leg. Seriously?!"

Doug's smile is almost as broad as that twice-mixed poodle's must have been every time the Ford started up and rolled down its windows. "And we called him Red, just 'cause we could."

Frye can't even remember what half of the mim dogs are named, if any of them even are. The only cat he's actually gotten acquainted with is Aisha, since Mathias's Gwin's bud, and her clone that Seren tried out around the barracks that one time. Thankfully, they quickly remembered reason and switched to Cerberus.

"I'd lost my dog" (no sense saying "our" since Phog would have disagreed mightily) "long before I got my license." Frye doesn't say "started driving" because obviously the license wasn't the thing getting in the way of that. No, Daddy Christoph had his own mind about it.

"I had a Mazda 3," he continues. "Rotary engine, console shifter, moonroof and a bucktooth plate. Real cruiser." Four-seater with just as many doors, but who had to know?

Not to mention a pair of LED headlights brighter than any Ganglion base's work spots. Doug's not sure whether he'd recognize it better from the front or the back.

Important question about that, actually. "Gasoline?"

"Gasoline. And considering that Earth was gonna get blown to bits anyway, I'd say it was worth every penny - every last stinkin' drop."

It's been a while since Doug's stopped to wonder which is more flammable in the event of a crash; a full gas tank, of any size, or a charged lithium-ion battery, of any capacity. And of course, how does either compare to a detonated and/or actively detonating Skell?

Lin'll probably get him on figuring that out soon enough. Maybe it'll help her finally get that flight pack road-ready. Well, sky-ready, that is.

Frye can be unexpectedly morbid, when he wants to be. There's always a certain gravity about him that Doug can't deny. It's not like Frye's one of those people who seems to be alive despite the odds, who should have been killed by a small-time indigen like a particularly unremarkable Grex two months ago, first foot on the field.

Even without the Sakuraba Medium that's looking (and feeling) a lot more like Heavy, the Killer Ostrich is undestructible. That's why the Interceptors all count on him, right?

"Actually, come to think of it, Frye, I would've pegged you for a Kawasaki." Even if he doesn't have the hair to go streaming in the wind behind him. More than Doug's got, though!

"Nah, man, I gotta have some wheels under me! All four, gripping the road for all she's worth."

Sure, makes sense. "Music, or no?"

"Classic rock! And I mean actual classic rock - no Green Day, no Foo Fighters. They've got their place, but I'm talkin' about the real old stuff, on the other side of the millennium."

"Screaming into the wind, huh? Yeah...kinda miss it myself." Pretty rare that Doug takes a mission fluffy enough to allow for joyriding, anyway. Maybe someday. Maybe...in about a thousand years or so. Maybe sooner, if Frye can get his stubborn old one-track brain wrapped around it.

"Keep your Auto-Run," declares Frye, grin splitting his scar. "Gimme a Skell radio that doesn't have an Eleonora channel."

Yeah, yeah. Doug'll tune right in to Frye's channel, and keep on listening for the Killer Ostrich to ham it up.

this has nothing to do with the genesis of the fic but it's real good and it was shown to me a week and a half prior