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]

Blackness.

Then, just at the edges, a smidgen of - not light, but sensation. Fabric beneath him. Air moving through his lungs.

Awareness. The last thing he remembered was fighting, and it was oh so tempting to sit straight up and keep at it. But he knew better - evaluate your surroundings first.

Listening. The turn of a page; otherwise, nothing. Not alone.

Feeling. Seemed to be on a bed; he felt the sag of the mattress beneath his weight, covers smooth.

He cracked his eyelids. Sight. Yes, on a bed; and a room like any other. What the HELL was going on?

Now he sat up, fingers searching for his weapons. All gone, naturally. Wide, alert eyes scanned his surroundings for a better survey; bars walling him off from the rest of the room, and on the other side - Batou.

Erol got to his feet, paced towards the bars to glare at his captor.

"I suppose there's an incomparably good explanation for this."

[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."

[psychoticracer]

Erol looked up from where he was resting against the bars after his last charge. The downward-tilted angle of his face combined with his dark tattoos and coloring made him look positively demonic.

"Not destructive enough," he declared of the idea of working out, a bloodthirsty smirk on his face. He backed up for another charge.

"And good. Rather not see the motherfucking doctor."

WHAMErol grit his teeth, smothering the low sound his throat wanted to make out of pain as his bruised shoulders rammed up against the bars yet again. It was a rotten substitute but it was all he could get

[electronichound]

Erol looked half orgasmic and Batou made a low 'huh' in his throat. So that was why Erol did such crazy stunts? He was an extreme adrenaline junkie, which would explain why he had this unstoppable craving for sex, violence and general mayhem.

"You know, if you had a cyberbrain I could interface with you and simply reprogram your neurotransmitters to give you that kind of pleasure without resorting to injuring your shell," pondered Batou aloud and picked up a lighter. He flicked it on and inhaled, exhaled. The taste of tobacco was something he enjoyed and the nicotine made his biological brain sing and the world sparkle. "Too bad, but if you want something to give you that kind of high, you're going about it inefficiently."

[psychoticracer]

Erol glared. "Good thing I'm not, then. Sounds entirely too intimate and you're not my type."

The next bit catches his attention though. So Batou thought he had him figured out, did he? Well maybe he did and maybe he didn't. Erol paced to keep moving as he spoke.

"What would you suggest, then. Given that this is all I have to work with." He waves dismissively at the enclosed area.

[electronichound]

Trust Erol to confuse mental intimacy with sex. Batou would roll his eyes if he had them, but the annoyance at seeing his point swish so wide aberth of Erol's head was calmed by the next words out of the elf's mouth. Batou rose from his crosslegged position without using his hands, rising with an inhuman, unnatural smoothness originating in hydraulics and butter-smooth machined joints.

The cyborg approached the bars and looked down at Erol.

"Aldous Huxley once wrote that man is an intelligence in servitude to his organs," he said, and extended his large, steady hand through the bars. "And while I do not have any organs to be enslaved to, there is one force I do seek to satisfy: curiosity. I can give you endorphins through manipulation of pressure points. I want to see if your elf-like body is similar to a human's. Give me your arm and shoulder."

[psychoticracer]

Erol backed up, eying Batou warily and rubbing his bruised shoulder beneath the shoulderpad. The robot could crush him, easily - of course, if he wanted to do that, he wouldn't have gone to all this effort, and he'd certainly not need Erol to deliver himself into his hands.

He just wasn't at all certain he liked the idea. Endorphins through pressure points? Sounded damn suspicious. Also sounded like giving the robot entirely too much power over him, if he could do as he said.

But then, Erol was curious now as well. What exactly was he talking about?

"Endorphins aren't... really what I'm after," he disclaimed. But he cautiously edged forward, and it was a mark of exactly how far his regard for Batou went that he slowly placed his arm in the other man's hand.