[ti]Ep 2.5[/ti]Bandit's Travelogue: Earth is 94.7% desert.

[Bandit]

... But I have been accused of being prone to hyperbole before.

(Week 2, Day 2)


An iridescent green motorcycle came to a stop at a sleepy intersection in Jasper, Nevada. The driver put his feet down on the road beneath him, and shifted his helmeted gaze to the stoplight hanging above the intersection. The light shone green.

The rider looked around Jasper, Nevada, and reached into his jacket to draw out a small object, half blue mottled fur, half scorched plastic. The rider held it before his helmet, and the small device came to live, a small plastic beak wiggling as it cooed at the rider.

“Ewuuuuuu,” it said. Its buggly plastic eyes blinked, not quite in sync.

The rider cocked his head. “... really? Starting with that already? You’ve been nothing but a guttermouth since I took you to that burlesque on Cantor VI.”

“Briooool,” came the squeaky response.

“Really. This is your homeworld, Chauncey Pilkington, I’d think you’be a bit more glad to see it.”

Chancey Pilkington, itinerant Furby, closed its eyes meaningfully. “Beeeeroop.”

“Clean it up, we might run into your family,” the rider chastised, casting another glance around the empty intersection.

Chauncey Pilkington replied, “Rooplop.”

“You think *I’d* embarrass *you*?” The rider stiffened up, a bit taken aback.

The strange exchange was mercifully cut short by the angry honking of the vehicle that come up behind the stopped motorcycle. The driver of the vehicle gestured angrily behind the console of the car indicating the motorcycle, the rider, and the traffic light.

“The natives are restless, Chauncey Pilkington,” the rider said, glancing at the stoplight. “Wait. Green means stop on Earth, right? I could swear it means stop on Earth.”

Chancey Pilkington said "Erruuuuuu.”

With a final honk, the car and driver passed around the motorcycle and its rider, and the driver bestowed some kind of single finger gesture that was probably complimentary. The rider of the motorcycle shrugged. “Now I can’t remember of green means stop on Earth or if that’s one of those things I made up. I mean, I’m a big mech, I’m not afraid to admit when I’m wrong, and that angry native definitely was a tick in the ‘wrong’ column.”

“Yes,” Chauncey Pilkington said in a voice that was several octaves too deep and accompanied by a guttural growl, before shutting down.

The holoform of Bandit, former Autobot, shook his head as he stowed Chauncey Pilkington away. “Everyone’s a critic. Most just aren’t so creepy about it.”

Bandit waited until the light was red before he left the intersection. Better to be safe than sorry, he thought.

[Deleted]

♫ Got my motor runnin’
Headin’ out on the highway
Lookin’ for adventure
And whatever comes my way
Yeah Darlin’ gonna make it happen
Take the world in a love embrace
Fire all of my guns at once
And explode into space ♫

Panhead was a happy cruising femme. She’d been bar hopping so to speak, parking up outside random bars and listening to the live music from some local band issue forth. It was killing time. Her real destination for the night was a concert by the up and coming “NeuroSis”. An all female thrash metal band promoting their first album “Gigathump”. Pan had been listening to the album on repeat most of the day and she like it. A lot! She was also excited to hear some new songs they were expected to play tonight. In short she was happy, a little relaxed and a lot excited. Until…

She had been cruising, a couple clicks just below the limit. As she approached an intersection, she caught the relected glow of an orange light about to pop red, meaning the red she was approaching was about to pop a green. Pan didn’t intend to slow down as the briefest mental calculation had her bang one second after go time. She entered the intersection just after another biker from the side did. Two wheels on tarmac locked and she slid sideways to a halt facing the direction the other biker had come from. The rider – a fair approximation of Gal Gadot wearing the leathers from her appearance in the Fast and Furious franchise and a bonus steel helmet stylized like a German WWII helmet – planted a foot down for stability.

“YO Dumbaft! Use your optics before ya pounce on a RED! What planet you learn to ride on anyway?” Though Pan was annoyed, she was hardly angry. No harm no foul was possibly one of her mantras. She had a few. The femme biker gave little chance for the other rider to answer her words before she was spinning rubber and continuing back on track.

If the other rider was in anyway conscious, they might notice that while Pan spoke perfect English, albeit with some unrecognisable accent, the exact words she’d used were not ones any English speaker on native to Earth would have chosen.

[Bandit]

Bandit paid this latest yelling Earther no mind; instincts honed over eons let him filter out people just yelling at him (which happened a lot) from those that meant him violence or harm (which also happened a lot).

“Ah-HA,” he proclaimed triumphantly, and took a faintly illegal turn across several lanes to make his way over to the parking lot of a franchised fast food chicken-like eatery. The rider got off the bike and took off his helmet, revealing a handsome dark-haired human with green eyes and a rakish smile. Anyone looking closely might have noticed that the helmet disappeared as soon as the rider took it off, but who looks that closely these days?

“That’s the problem,” he said to no one in particular as he made toward the glass doors of the place. “People don’t notice the little things anymore. Everyone’s so wrapped up in themselves that they just can’t see the forest for the trees and -- wait, did she say ‘optics’?”

Bandit thought about the other motorcycle rider who cussed him out a bit. “Damn, I thought I had a little time before I started running into the locals.”

[Deleted]

Panhead got about three mintues down the road before she realised the stream of traffic travelling in the other direction was picking up way more than it should have any reason to. Curious in the way any junkion on a new planet would be, she waved down another biker.

“Hey Yo! What’s the down low on the get go?” She yelled over the traffic noise.

“OH JEEZ! It’s friggin’ brutal! Lead chick Felicity knifed the bassist. It’s a total shutdown! Everyone is going bar raiding; maybe get some Kentucky dead hen first though. Hey, you keen?” The biker enquired back.

“Maybe, I’ll think about it. Thanks for the pit stop though.”

“Yeah it’s cool man.” The biker replied before riding past her.

Panhead pulled off to the side of the road and recalculated her destination. Looks like it’s open season on live bar music again she mused. She decided that trailing some of the humans that seemed to have a backup plan was as good as any for her, maybe eavesdrop at a good hangout. Pan recalled the human saying something about heading to Kentucky dead hen. There wasn’t any place called that on her gyps so she guessed it must have been slang for some place selling human food, likely chicken. There was one place back the way she came on her gyps so she headed back.

Three more minutes later she was back at the very same intersection where some idiot biker had previously ran the red light cutting her off at the time. In fact, she wasn’t one hundred percent sure but she was looking at the car-park of a chicken eatery and there was a suspiciously familiar biker.

[Bandit]

Bandit's holoform was leaning against his altmode in the parking lot, sipping fizzy sugar water through a straw and not-so-silently fuming after an unsatisfactory encounter with chicken eatery personnel.

"'Making a scene' my arse," he murmured. "'Oh, look at me, I am a human, watch me digest and respirate and shed dead epidermal cells all over the damn place.'"

Bandit watched the distinctive motorcycle form he had noticed earlier pulling up, the driver's gazing directly at him. "Well, lovely. Don't look now, Chauncey Pilkington. There's the one we met before, who yelled a bunch of uncomplimentary nonsense at us."  

He eyed her potential approach warily from behind his over-sized drink cup.  "What do you think?  Red or purple?  Is it going to be a fight or a lecture?"