Broken car in the rain

Scientia's car gave a final gasp before it stopped moving and began to hiss at him. Scientia got out glaring at the car that was now leashing clouds of what could either be steam or smoke. He could never truly understand why his car would breakdown in some of the oddest locations, as far as he could tell he was on the outskirts of Chicago but with some cities who could really tell? What would really bother him was that the car could be fine in just a few minutes or it could take most of a month mechanic or no. It's like at moments the universe is just trying to screw with me.

Taking a deep breath he could almost taste the rain that was on the way, with his only transportation out for who knows how long and the concept of much shelter dwindling he guess that he was going to get rather wet. Letting out a rather large and impressive string of curses and swears he kicked the tire which resulted in not much more than annoying his foot.

Thomas was on his way to discuss business matters with a friend in Chicago. Driving down the road, climbing to a speed that would grant him jail time, he hasn't even noticed the downpour that had fell upon him which would soon turn out to be a mistake. The slick surface forced Thomas' car to lose traction, and in what seemed to be a perfect coincidence, his car slammed right into a parked car on the side of the road.

Thomas could feel himself turning and flipping. What he didn't feel was two cracked ribs and minor whiplash to his neck. As soon as the car stood still. He got his bearings, but found he was unable to move as his seatbelt was jammed in between crushed metal. He debated simply burning through the wreck with his meta-human abilities, but remembering that there was another car, and possibly another person, he remained stuck and helpless as he phoned His friend and cancelled.

Scientia saw the car coming with just a half a second less then needed to get safely out of the way, leaping away he was spared most of the damage. "Okay, now I know its screwing with me!" Not worrying about his car for the moment he instead tried to see if the driver of the now smashed car was okay. Shit, shit, shit. You better be okay. Scientia pulled at the car but he didn't have the strength to untwist the car to help however was inside out. "If you got some sort of power at this point it would be really, really helpful to use it." Scientia could never be sure who was mundane, meta, magical or a mix with something else so he might as well let them know he wasn't one who cared.

Getting and idea he ran back to his car and saw that the trunk while equally smashed had been forced open by the impact rather than twisted shut. Reaching in he found the crowbar that he had stored in the back for.... well... its useful alright? Grabbing the crowbar he ran back to the car and started using the crowbar to either smash or pull his way through the car.

Getting tired of the helpless man prying at his car with a crowbar, he decided to get his mangled body free. He knew it would probably raise questions, but being an investigator, he knew his fair share of conversation tricks.

He debated warning the helpless man, but decided if he burned to death it wouldn't be the worst thing to happen today. He didn't bother controlling his body temperature, the car was worthless, and his clothes were cheap and dirty. Within seconds the seatbelt had burned, and the plastic dashboard began to melt. Amid the horrid smell of burnt cloth and plastic, a new scent was added to the mixture, steel. The body and frame of Thomas' junk car began to melt as well. Within minutes Thomas was standing in a pool of molten metal, his face the color of a strawberry.

What Scientia first noticed was the odd smell of burning plastic and clothing, once he starting to smell burning metal he pulled back taking his crowbar with him. As the car began to reduced to slag Scientia just made sure he was out of the way of the pool, walked bar to his car where he put the crowbar back where he had taken it from. He watched as out of the once twisted and now melting car was a naked man the color of fruit. Scientia decided to take a moment to check the naked man out and go through a whole litany of "wow you hot" jokes in his head.

"Well that either confirms you are a meta or a fire elemental though my bet would be on meta." Scientia did not look horribly surprised or confused with the situation, compared to some of the weird magical things he had seen meta-humans got up to a 4 on the weirdness scale. "Alright, two questions. One, are you hurt any? Two, do you need pants?"

"You noticed the melting car eh?" Joked Thomas, "Don't worry about pants, I'm covered. As for my body, I think I have a few broken ribs, and my neck seems stiff, but I'm not in pain." He continued to say as he began digging around in the hot metal. "I'm going to assume you deal with metas a lot, or you are one yourself. You seem to be ok with the whole deal." Still digging in the metal and showing mild frustration on his face.

Thomas quickly thought through how he should handle this. From eliminating the man, to cutting him a deal to seal his mouth, he came to a decision before speaking again.

"So can I get a ride?" He asked as he glanced at this man's car. "Maybe I can do some explaining." Immediately after he finished talking, Thomas was excited to find that he finally found his backup set of clothes, of which were flame and moisture retardant.

Scientia chuckled as the man who had hit him mentioned that he seemed pretty clam despite everything that had happened. "After you have seen some of the things that I have seen a man melting himself out a car is just a unusual event." He was glad to hear the man was unhurt, not many people just walk away from a car crash, then again neither of them are what they called normal. "Glad to hear that you are uninjured, if you feel like that changes let me know." Scientia could have just patched the man up but since he was just melted his way through a car he was admittedly hesitant to touch the man especially as he was rooting around in molten metal.

When asked if he could give the man a ride he turned towards his smashed car. "If it starts I have no problem with it, reason I had just parked it was because it had decided to not run any further. Must have known you were coming." Scientia joked slightly but with his car he could never be quite sure. Walking over to the still open hood, he tried to close it where it refused. He tried again and it once again refused, now angry Scientia slammed the trunk down as hard as he could and it seemed to close... it was no probably stuck. "So where is it you plan on going anyway?"

"I guess I hit it pretty good," said Thomas as he made his way closer to see what he had done to this mans car. Then, glancing back at his pool of a car, he said, "I was on my way to meet a, uh, friend who also travelled to Chicago. That was the midway point for both of us."

Now noticing the rain beginning to let up, he leaned on the strangers car after making sure he had cooled down." Seems like this rain started up just to mess with the both of us." After a short pause, "so how much do you think I owe you?"

Scientia had been a bit busy to realize the rain had started going on around him, now that the problems had been resolved however he found himself quite wet though at least now the rain was letting up. The searching for the word friend sounded a touch... sketchy, Scientia wasn't overly worried about it though he kept in his mind for reference if he needed later. "Well you better find a place for you and your friend to meet up so that I can take you there." When the concept of cost was brought up Scientia shrugged, his car was over a couple of decades old and it wasn't like he really used insurance. "You owe me as much as it takes to put it back together, no more. Its a pretty old car so you didn't damage anything critically that can't be replaced with basic tools."

Scientia got into the car and hoped that the man he was giving a ride wouldn't look to carefully in the back seat as it held some of his equipment for when he was working magic, that and a sword. As he turned the key the car made a sound that sounded like a rebuttal. "If you don't start I swear I will let this guy melt you into a gutter." Scientia turned a the key again after muttering his threat under his breath and the car started. Sometimes you just need to know how to talk.

"Well I won't be meeting him anymore, I called him before I melted my car and cancelled, and he wont be hanging around too long. I sure could use a ride to the city though." Replied Thomas. "If your not in any hurry, I have some spare time now, we can hit up a mechanic if you like, I may know a guy."

As Thomas finished talking and hopped into the beaten up car, he did what his instincts told him to, check the back seat. Living in the underground world, he picked up a few tricks in order to keep himself safe. Then, noticing the sword, and other unknown materials he began to talk jokingly before thinking, " are you a ninja or Samurai?"

Scientia laughed a rib shaking laugh when it was asked if he was a ninja, for starters the sword was European style. "Well of coarse I am a ninja, didn't you see how I stealthily placed my car right in front of yours so that you would crash. Now I am taking you off to my secret, fire-proof lair where I can dispatch you... probably shouldn't have told you that though huh?" Scientia's tone and minor hand gestures made it clear that he was making jokes. "In actuality I don't like guns and have ended up in situations where they either don't work or cause more problems then they could solve. Sword are mostly uncovered by weapon laws, don't require ammo, and are quite scary to those that don't expect them." Scientia could think of a couple of times when the intimidation factor of the sword has been enough to scare a would-be attacker off.

Since his passenger had canceled his plans with his mysterious friend and had offered to have the damage looked at he smiled and nodded. "Sounds good to me, I am a bit of a drifter so if you might know a guy it is better than me who doesn't know any guy at all." It was then that Scientia realized that he did not know the man's name, nor did the man know his and considering the current situation it would seem like names should be exchanged. "Hey I'm Micheal by the way, I would say pleased to meet you but yeah." It felt a little weird for Scientia to use his actual name, he almost never spoke it since he ran away but he thought it might be easier then having to explain the name he more commonly used.

Thankful that Michael was not going to slice him up, he replied, "I'm Thomas, nice to meet you." Then, trying to get a conversation started before they set off, he continued, "my friend I was talking about is a swordsman as well, though he uses katanas, so I guess he's more of a ninja. You don't want to get caught in his line of fire however, he can be quite trigger happy when he has a firearm in hand."

Thomas wasn't sure how much info he should give, but it wouldn't matter anyway, at the instant Thomas began to speak, a single bullet pierced the passenger window and flew right by his cheek, peeling a thin layer of skin off, and blazing past Michael. In an instant Thomas had ducked down and was looking around for his glock, soon realizing it had melted with his car. A pistol wouldn't help regardless, the sound quickly identified the weapon as a long range rifle, and judging by the sound delay, the enemy was far out of range. In a panic, Thomas yelled, "how fast you think this can go?"