Won't You Be My Neighbor?

[electronichound]

Characters: Batou, Erol [Closed]
Location: Batou's cabin
Date: Present
Rating: [PG-13, because Erol's got a dirty mouth]

Won't You Be My Neighbor?The metal cage was strong, sturdy and reasonably spacious. It wasn't as if Batou needed a lot of room to stretch his legs, so he was fine with the idea of letting Erol's confinement take up a full third

Comments

[psychoticracer]

"Hmph." Erol left off the bar for now. He'd go at it more later. For now he paced. Easier to concentrate on what he was saying that way.

Growing up... what DID he want to be. "Always wanted to race zoomers, I suppose. Skipped school to watch street races." A smirk flitted over his face. That had pissed off his parents. They were paying for the school, after all.

Erol had never cared about what other people thought.

"Got what I wanted when I was fourteen. Finally big enough to reach the handlebars. Damn miracle I didn't get killed... had the fucking time of my life." Not the best time EVER in his life. But up until then, yes. He had never had as much fun before... the wind in his ears and hair, obstacles coming up with only a split second to decide what to do, jostling with other kids for first place... making them crash.

He supposed that likely counted as his first murder. Erol was mildly surprised it had happened that late - he was shooting a gun at twelve, after all. Others followed quickly, often in arguments about times. Other racers quickly learned not to dispute when his lead was close.

"Counts as my favorite hobby, too. Accomplishments..." Erol slowed in his pacing just a moment, weighing over the events in his life. "Promotion to Commander, most likely. Other than that, the Dark Warrior project, though I didn't even know that WAS a success until I came here.

"No family."

He began tugging at the bars again.

[electronichound]

"What did you like to do the most, when you were alone?" Batou asked, storing all this information away. He liked novels and he liked characters, and he liked having a fuller picture of the man who fairly gnawed at the bars and clawed his fingernails off to be free. What kind of life created a man like this, so full of passion?

For a cyborg like Batou who was passionless, it was captivating.

"What kind of media did you like to consume? What was your favourite food? Who was your favourite lover?"

More, more, tell him everything.

[psychoticracer]

"You're full of bloody questions, aren't you." Erol eyed him sardonically before backing off five steps, taking a steadying breath, and rushing the bars to ram hard with his armored shoulder.

Naturally, they didn't budge. But that wasn't the point. Erol felt the reverberation through his collarbone; the sting eased the burning restlessness that twisted under his skin. Rolling his shoulder a bit, Erol resumed pacing.

"Any free time, I raced. Or practiced shooting. 'm a damn good shot, you know. Well... not that you'll ever know unless we dig up some Mar-damned firearms." Though Erol enjoyed using knives on his victims and was a competent knife-fighter - not spectacular, but competent - his real love for combat was his pistol.

Loosing it had been bad enough. But now he had neither blades nor guns. To someone who practically slept with his gun under his pillow - and did sometimes, especially away from home - being completely without weapons was intolerable.

Yet another thing burning under his skin, urging him to win his freedom no matter what the cost.

"Don't care about media. 'cept when they covered the races, but I was at all of them anyway so I saw what was to be had. We got bad reception from Kras, but sometimes I'd check in on them.

"Food is fuel. Though I'm partial to coffee..." Was that giving too much? Eh. Fuck it. Whatever good it would do Batou, he was welcome to it. Erol didn't care about anything except getting out.

"Most of my lovers qualify as victims. Didn't start out that way of course. But by the time I was... what, eighteen? None left without injuries." Maybe Erol knew his face bore a sadistic smirk. Maybe he just didn't care.

[electronichound]

"Did you want to be famous?" asked Batou, watching Erol with great fascination. This would be an instructive few days, he could feel it from deep inside. Erol was going to teach him a lot about passion from this detached vantage point the cyborg held, and Batou was eternally thirsty for knoweldge.

"Coffee, I see. Surely you had one lover who was kind to you, who you were kind to?"

[psychoticracer]

Erol shrugged. "Being famous was a bonus. I just love to race."

And not being able to here was driving him slowly and steadily mad... comparatively speaking. He satiated the drive with violence for now, but - he'd been here over a month. He was used to practicing every day. Erol was starting to worry that he would slip out of practice.

"Kind?" Erol gave Batou a flat look. "What's the point?

"Although." He ran his finger along the bars as he paced. Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap. "Flin did take a shine to me, back on the streets. Taught me a good many things. He was my first.

"I killed him."

[electronichound]

"How intimate," said Batou, a smile curving his lips. He couldn't narrow his eyes, but the skin around Batou's eyes blank eyes crinkled a bit and he chuckled, deep in his throat. "I had a comrade in the war like you. He said that when you fucked someone, you had been with them in a way no one else could ever duplicate. Same with killing. He counted his first kill as the first time he lost his virginity."

Batou shifted, hung his hand off his knee and tilted his head again at Erol. "He said that he was a whore."

[psychoticracer]

Erol glanced at Batou through the bars. The strange movie-projector effect caused by the passing bars as he paced.

Step, turn, pace. His fingers were sore from the bars. He soaked it up.

"Sounds like a nut job," he declared dismissively. He supposed there was similarity in both killing and taking someone's virginity, but Erol didn't need to make up fancy theories about it. He liked them for the same reasons, to be sure. For the pain and emotion he wrung out of his victims.

Honestly? He preferred the torture and rape to actual killing. When you killed, it was over. Killing was a way of disposing of them. He killed casually, but took his time on the rest of it. That was the good stuff.

Mind you there was something to be said in watching the life fade from someone's eyes.

Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap.

"You killed?"

[electronichound]

"Of course. I was special forces in the military, a government assassin in a battle-class robotic shell, sent into warzones to kill enemy leaders, our own agents who went rogue, and now I'm a cop. Anti-terrorism," Batou wiggled the fingers that are hanging off his knee as he spoke about all the lives he'd taken easier than breathing. He could remember every single one with the perfect clarity of a photographic, electronic memory.

Every eye bulge, every last gasp, every crunch of bone under his foot, every time he'd taken a shower post-death and found a fingernail in his hair from the hand that'd clawed in desperation down his neck.

[psychoticracer]

"Mmm. Coulda used one of you back home. Though -" he eyed Batou through one wide, bloodthirsty eye, smirking - "Dunno how you'd stand up to Dark Eco. And an Ele-beast might fry your circuitry, f'we tried you on the Island. But it'd be worth a try."

Pace. Pace. Tapping starting to blend into one sound. The sting on his fingers isn't helping much, isn't easing the restless twist beneath his skin.

"Y'ever enjoy it?"

Erol didn't have a photographic memory. But he did know tell signs, nervous twitches, the things people did when they were thinking. The things they did when they were trying not to say. For the most part, Batou was a brick wall, but... He filed away the finger-wiggling as a potential.

[electronichound]

"I'm not a bloody toaster," Batou said and laughed again, his baritone, rumbly voice truly amused by the idea of electricity frying him. He had plenty of safeguards against such a primitive method of attack, and could survive electrical attacks that would fry biological humans. "And I sometimes enjoyed it."

Batou's lips curve in a smile again as he observes Erol pacing, pacing, like a caged tiger. Batou suddenly gets to his feet and starts digging around in the desk drawers for the packs of cigarettes he's stashed there. The nicotine still affects his biological brain and the sensation of inhaling the hot smoke is soothing.

"You can't do what I did and not enjoy it."

[psychoticracer]

Erol smirks at Batou's laugh. "Hah. Maybe you just could have done it. Maybe not." He'd still be willing to bet that a Metal Beast would chew him up and spit him out. Of course, those were Wasteland Metal Heads. Wouldn't have run into them in a direct Nest assault.

Moot point now. Jak took care of it.

Erol backed up until the wall was at his back. "So. There a concrete difference 'tween you and me?"

Focused - rushed forward, leading with the flat of his shoulderguard -

WHAM

Oooooh motherfuck that hurt.

"Or... just that I don't hold back," he panted against the bars, more from the impact than from exertion. Erol let himself rest there for a minute, up against the cage, letting the shock settle into his bones.

[electronichound]

"The difference between us is very fine," the cyborg said, smiling as he pulled a package of cigarettes out of the desk drawer and bringing two to his lips. Batou lit one and then the other, then tossed the one from the left side of his mouth at Erol without looking. The smoke sailed through the air, between the bars, landed perfectly an inch from Erol's booted foot. Batou returned to the book and settled down where he had been before.

"In the same way that a counterfeit and an original can be similar."

[psychoticracer]

Erol glanced scornfully down at the cigarette. Wrinkled his nose slightly.

"Not certain I want to hear which one of us you consider to be the original."

Placed his sole with precision on the lit end and ground it out.

"Make me short of breath. Interfere with my racing," he declared dismissively.

Resumed pacing, flexing the arm he'd led with on his last charge. Next time would be harder - or he'd do two in a row. And more, and more, and Precursors-fucking more.

He'd get out or beat himself to a bloody pulp trying. One or the other.

[electronichound]

"Neither are the original," said Batou, mind flitting back to the Stand Alone Complex, to the Individual 11, to Locus Solus. He and Erol were both copies without an original, they were...

Living standalone complexes?

Odd.

Batou tilted his head, mind internal as Erol backed up and prepared to break several bones.

[psychoticracer]

"Hmmf. That's a new one."

Erol paced a few more times, but the movement wasn't cutting it anymore. Wasn't doing the trick. Mardammit, he needed his fix, and it wasn't going to come from nicotine.

He backed up, far as he could get. Narrowed his eyes. Focus. Treated them like a starting line. He could smell the eco fumes, taste the potential for blinding speed harbored by sleek engines, feel the handles and turbo grips beneath his hands.

3... 2... 1...

GO

WHAM

It hurt like fuck but his armor blunted the impact just enough so he didn't damage anything. Well, relatively speaking. He'd have bruises, especially at the side of his unprotected arm which took part of the hit his shoulderpad didn't. But nothing was broken, wrenched or cut, and his armor did what it was supposed to do.

The pain was good. In the run towards the bars and the spike of pain, he could taste what he needed. And by Mar he'd fucking get it.

Erol pushed off the bars, backed up for another hit.

[electronichound]

Batou watched him for a few moments, trying to figure out just what the hell Erol was getting at.

"Why are you doing that? The bars won't bend. Are you just working out frustration, because I suggest pushups if you're feeling anxiety."

Was Erol trying to hurt himself?

"I won't take you to the doctor if you injure yourself, so that's a bad strategy."