Owner	Pose
Jax	New York! The big apple! A place that famously never sleeps and it is said that if you can make it there, you know your way around a tired cliche! But that doesn't stop quite literally millions from trying their luck in the city vying for Humanity's Closest Attempt At Ant Heap. Millions come with hopes and ambitions, millions go slightly wiser and usually a good deal poorer and minus a few hopes and ambitions... but always millions ready to replace them with new hopes, new dreams, new ambitions, and eventually new New York. In the city that never sleeps, you need to wake up pretty early to get ahead. It's probably safer not to go to sleep at all.     Of course, it helps if you have a bit of help on the way. Or, in some cases, get dropped in at somewhere vaguely near the top of the social heap. There's millions of those too, and when these do leave the city, it's often a great deal richer in ambition and, let us not mince words, lucre. You'd have to try pretty hard to fall from the top when you've started there to begin with.     Firmly within that category is the ambulant cloud of good cheer that is Jax. After years in New York, after months attending a college, and after a lifetime of being, well, Jax... there's something indomitably immutable about the cat mutant. For one, he doesn't seem to care about the mutant thing. It's probably only one of a very great many things he doesn't care about.     But whatever odd spring that powers this cat's step, fact remains that late in the evening, he ambles out of RockWallz gym with a gym bag slung casually over his shoulder and towards a Jeep parked nearby. A sensible man would worry about muggers, or half a dozen other hazards, but Jax is too busy listening to whatever tune is playing on his in-ear headphones to worry about danger. And when you're nearly six feet of alpha predator, you can probably get away with it.     But in New York, there is another truism...     There's always a bigger predator.
Sarah Connor	Sarah was driving along a side street. Frankly, everything was quiet this evening. Which was great for Sarah. Or worse, it could be the lull before the storm. She knew which one she preferred. Which almost meant it was going to be a humdinger of a fight. Yet, so far, so good. She parked herself near what looked to be a gym, turned off the engine, and watched the late night session let out. In the distance she heard crickets - probably the last ones of the season. Frankly, she was going to give it a little bit more, before packing it in for the night. A lone owl hooted, and fell silent.
Jax	Crickets, owls, pigeons, a myriad of wildlife still inhabits the city. Granted, the wildlife isn't particularly wild anymore, but it thrives by being accustomed to humans and trusting humans to keep away the more dangerous of predators. So when an actual predator enters the biome that is New York, it's always easy to pinpoint their location by the sudden absence of sound.     In the background, crickets stop their chirp, owls flap urgently away, and even pigeons go silent. Nothing that is small, furry, feathered, or otherwise used to being hunted by bigger and more dangerous things, wants to make any sound or draw attention to itself. And for those attuned to the sounds of nature, the absence of nature is a reason to go on high alert.     There's no change in Jax's step, because although the sudden shift in background noise would have certainly given him reason to be cautious, he's still listening to music as he opens the door to the Jeep and slings his gym bag in the back seat.     From a nearby alley, a man has just appeared. Not quite literally, although he seems to be moving oddly silently for his build, and moving with a sense of purpose that is... well, predatory.     On the near deserted street, even the rats scurry to get away.
Sarah Connor	The owl was the first clue. Not a very big clue admittedly, but a clue it is. Then again, owls are usually silent when someone - or something - crosses their path. Same with crickets. The chirup than they made was hushed. What wasn't normal was the absolute silence which permeated. It seemed everything went silent and stayed that way, except for a stray dog pack. Which started to bay, and yelp. And grow quiet. Or more precisely, were shut up, permanently. Not that Sarah knew that yet. Still the hair at the back of her neck stood on edge. And she decided to get out her guns - just in case.
Jax	Despite the look of him, despite the fact that he has been a teenager with his own car as soon as he was of legal age to drive, and has a fairly powerful car to drive... Jax is actually a very careful driver. That means that, before he opens the driver side door, he turns off the music and removes his earphones. It's a reflex, a habit.     A habit that, hypothetically, has saved his life many a time by making sure he was paying attention to traffic. It just so happens to save his life now in the more immediate and practical sense as well. The hoot of the owl, though meaningless to most, carries an urgent message.     Run!     Hide!     Fly!     Then there is the yelp from the pack of dogs... the sudden, urgent silence.     Suddenly, Jax's ears swivel around, like radar dishes trying to track the incoming missile, and they hone in on the discordant note in the background chorus. What was that?! As Jax swivels his head around, without bothering to move the rest of his body, he spots the man. The man with no heart beat. The man that doesn't sound, or smell, like a man.     The man that is coming right at him!
Sarah Connor	Jax is on the other side of the parking lot. So the terminator is easier for him to see. Even so, with several guns in tow, one ready to use at will, Sarah climbs out of the truck, and orients her position to where everything stopped. In the parking lot, there was just the one street lamp. And like the noises, it went suddenly black. "Damn." There was as good as any way to start looking: the burnout lamp in the parking lot.
Jax	Fun fact: cats can see extremely well in near total darkness. So when the lamp blows and plunges the parked jeep into darkness, there's no fumbling for the door, or awkward bumping of head against door sill. No, Jax opens the door and practically leaps into his Jeep, which roars into life shortly afterwards.     Now there is a new point to aim at: the rear lights of the jeep as it reverses out of the parking spot. Unfortunately, aim is exactly what the man with no heart beat does, and a bullet shatters the Jeep's rear window, exiting the vehicles somewhere through the hard top roof that promises to be a pain to repair later.     A sensible man would run the gunman over with the Jeep, a rugged four by four that would probably make short work of the encounter. But for whatever reason, Jax stops short of actually hitting the man, and flooring the accelerator to drive towards the exit to the parking lot.     He has to hit the brakes hard to avoid running over Sarah, who likely gets a closer look of the license plate than she would have liked... BILL JR, registered in Buffalo.     A few more shots ring out, pinging through the cab and deflating the spare tire that is, in true Jeep fashion, attached to the rear hatch.
Sarah Connor	Sarah goes blindly towards the place that she *thinks* the trouble is. And sure enough trouble is right there, shooting at the only other person in the parking lot. Which is, frankly, a bit strange. The terminator is trying to kill someone else? Of course they do have other victims, but what are the odds that she would be there? None. That's the odds. Quickly Sarah caught up to the Jeep, aiming her gun at the terminator, and opened the passenger door, "Put it in gear, and boot it if you want to live!" All the while, she fired shots over the back end hoping to give them a chance get out of here.
Jax	There is a time for questions. There is a time to ask who gets into your car and exchanges shots with someone who, just a few moments before, was trying to ... to what? Rob? Steal the Jeep? Kill Jax? At any rate, there is a time for questions. This time is not now. The cat mutant may not be an X-man, but he's had the classes. Every mutant at Xavier had... when in danger, don't hesitate. Go. Leave. Run. Figure out the why later. And call the cavalry as soon as you can. Because the danger may very well be a Sentinel.     This did not sound nor smell like a Sentinel.     Nevertheless, Sarah has barely laid out her plan for survival when the engine roars and Jeep takes off at full speed, turns onto the street... and slows down.     There is the persistent click of the indicators being used. Jax may very well be the first person in the history of heroics that is trying to run from danger without breaking the speed limit.     Undeterred, and staggering only slightly under the repeated bullet impacts from Sarah's display of marksmanship, the man follows the car... and starts to run.     It's a very distinctive run.     And he's gaining.
Sarah Connor	"Damn." Just what Sarah was thinking of. She still wanted to know why this boy was a target. But for now, she didn't have time to have a chat with him. As they ran through the neighbourhood, the lights flickered, but for the most part stayed on. Good. He was easier to shoot this way. Not easy, but easier. "Keep it steady, while I get a few good shots at the head." While was the only way to get it away from Jax. And ultimately, Sarah. She thinks.
Jax	There has, probably, in the history of flight from a Terminator, never been a driver who actually stopped at a traffic light. It would be a death sentence. It also just so happens that the light at the next intersection is very firmly red, and the Jeep slows down even more, slowing to a crawl even. Luckily there's little other traffic around, and anyone who wonders about a Jeep driving along a Manhattan road while someone is firing a handgun out the shattered rear window at least has the common sense to find cover first before thinking about dialing 911. Which, this being New York, means there's a better than even chance nobody will actually call the police at all, because why bother when the danger is already gone?     The Jeep stops at the traffic lights.     The Terminator jumps, and grabs onto the back seat of the Jeep, pulling himself up and in.     Only now does Jax seem to realise the danger they're in, ears flat against his head... gun shots are loud! The Terminator rears up, a knife in hand.     Jax floors it, blasting through the red light for the first time in his life, and over the squeal of the tires comes the thump of the Terminator falling into the back seat, still focused on one thing and one thing only.     Killing Jake Alexander Miller.
Sarah Connor	"What the?!?" "Listen kid, when I say floor it.." And the rest of Sarah's diatribe is lost when the terminator catches up to them, and Sarah is forced to take immediate action. "Fuck. Off." Her one gun jams. Thank god she has another. Switching quickly, she taps the gun two times in the head. BLAM.. BLAM..
Jax	What remains after the two shots to the head can no longer be called a face. It is, in fact, a chromed skull with several severe dents and scuff marks. A pair of glowing red eyes stare malevolently at Sarah as the thing shifts its attention for a moment. Another knife flashes, coming down in a rapid arc, aimed squarely for Jax's neck.     It never gets there.     A furred hand grabs the terminator's wrist and seems to keep it there, despite the attempts of the robot to finish the attack. The remnants of the face are no longer capable of showing surprise, but there's a good chance that it would have shown exactly that.     Someone just beat the speed of a Terminator, and seems capable of at least momentarily restraining the robotic arm, before it is deflected to the side, sending the thing tumbling down into the back seat again.     "This thing is wrecking my Jeep!" It's the first words Jax has spoken since all this began, and they're remarkably steady. And for some reason he's reaching across to open the rear windows from the controls in the driver's side door... with the wrong hand, as if spines happen to other people.
Sarah Connor	Sarah really shouldn't be so snarky. But she is. "Poor you. I'll pay for it to be detailed." As if. "Hold it. I've got to hit it just so, and then.." And then had to rip the CPU out of it. But first of all, getting a shot in the right place was imperative. She'll ask him 'who are you anyways' later.
Jax	"Eh, it's two years old, time to..."     Whatever it was time to do, Jax never gets a chance to tell. Another knife is thrown with lethal accuracy, and the cat mutant gets his head out of the way as if he was dodging a stray football. A good thing too, judging by how the force of the throw causes the blade to punch through the windshield and stick there. The whole thing is rapidly deteriorating in who can kill whom faster. Luckily, the Terminator is laser focused on the driver, the cat mutant, and utterly ignoring Sarah for now. Where it finds the second pistol is anyone's guess, but as it turns from its supine position, it's suddenly wielding a heavy caliber ... well, hand cannon really.     "Can you drive?!" Jax calls over to Sarah, as he lowers the driver's side window and hits the car's cruise control.     No way.     He wouldn't?!
Sarah Connor	"Fine." Sarah grabs the controls of the JEEP. If the terminator want the boy.. It doesn't feel right, but one thing that is beginning to creep up on her, was, some people were able to hold their own against the terminator. And Jax was one of them "You need to give it a knock on the head, to put it in standby mode. And from there we will have 90 seconds to rip the CPU from its head, or else we do it all over again."
Jax	"Can do!"     And with that, Jax is gone. The headrest of the driver's seat disintegrates a fraction of a second later as the Terminator's shot goes for the position the mutant's head was less than a heartbeat ago.     But Jax is already on the move, having flung himself out of the Jeep with his left hand holding onto the door stanchion. The fibers of the headrest are unraveling in slow motion, the slowly spinning bullet gracefully exits through the front windshield, and Jax reaches the widest point of his swing, starting his return to the car. It's a move that would have made a Mexican Luchadore weep with joy had they been there to watch it.     Like a coiled up spring, Jax swings back into the car, feet first, through the off-side passenger window. His body unwinds just as his feet hit the chest of the Terminator, in a practical display of leverage and momentum. The Terminator is only just now registering that its shot has missed, and that a hundred and forty pounds of muscle and bone, propelled by the speed and force of an apex predator, have just hit it in the chest.     Time resumes its normal hold on things.     The Terminator is flung against the nearside passenger door with enough force to dent the frame outwards. Jax drops into the car and pounces, grabbing the Terminator by the waist and heaving up and forwards...     "Hard right!!"
Sarah Connor	Hard right he says. Hard right she does. A very hard right. In fact Sarah has switched her seat to the driver's side so that she can floor it. When the terminator smashes into the passenger window, the whole JEEP follows it. It's just Sarah's good driving that saves them.
Jax	Battered and, let's face it, probably due for the scrap heap by now, the Jeep shudders as Sarah regains control and then sends the car into a right hand turn that practically sends it skidding around on two wheels. It just barely clears the narrow entrance to the alley.     The alley is, in fact, so tight that the Jeep also loses both wing mirrors. With concrete walls on each side, the back walls of a museum and a private art gallery respectively, it's not a good time for anything that's too wide to fit the narrow squeeze... something like, say, a Terminator being dangled out of the passenger window.     There is a loud thump and a shudder as something heavy hits a wall and nearly slews the Jeep around to the right, and then the horrid sound of metal rending and shattering, of something metallic being ground down against concrete.     Sparks fly, bits of Terminator break off, shatter, obliterate, or just plain melt from friction. By the time the Jeep hurtles out the alley on the other side, the Terminator's torso has been ground down to its shoulders, the rest of it a glowing metal stump.
Sarah Connor	"Take out the CPU, dammit. We only have a minute and a half." Of course, Sarah hasn't got a real look. It might be that the head has flown off. Which is a new problem. She slows the JEEP almost to a crawl. And then it coughs, back fires, and refuses to go any further. Hopefully they can open up the terminator's head and do the deed. As it is, Sarah probably will have to run the boy closer to his destination after this. Since the JEEP was totalled, Sarah turned her body in her seat to help him if necessary.
Jax	"Where's the CPU?" Ever helpful, Jax is looking at the remains of the Terminator, and the gaps that have been shot into its torso. Incidentally also holding the inert remains of the killer robot up as if it's a ventriloquist's dummy... albeit one without a head. From the cooling, fused remains of its neck, it's fairly obvious that anything that's missing has been well and truly destroyed.     "Chest? Abdomen? Arms, legs? Where?"     There is a very final sounding *CLONK* when the Jeep comes to a halt, indicative of something fairly important having finally given way somewhere. Could have been the transmission. Could have been the cylinder connecting rods. Could have been the crankshaft... could even have been the engine block itself, finally calling it quits after all this abuse. But at any rate, the 'check engine' light comes on, and the digital readout under the speedometer prints the message 'Maintenance required'.
Sarah Connor	"In its head. Behind the left ear. Uh.. Oh." Sarah tried to keep calm. but then again, the terminator didn't have a head. The CPU might have flipped out while Jax obliterated the head. Or, most hopefully, it was in the parts of the head the Jax had managed to rip into little bits of nothing. Looking around, Sarah decided that she hoped for, and take off before the police were called in. "Look. You can stay around for the police, but they aren't usually the one who would take your story at face value. I would tell you to high tail it out of here. I can give you a lift part of the way home, depending where you live." She gets out and begins to return to her truck, with her guns slung over her shoulder. "Are you coming?"
Jax	After a short while, Jax drops the Terminator and gets out of the car. That it's in no shape to go anywhere else is evidenced by the fact that the door falls out as he opens it, although that doesn't stop him from picking it up and putting it back in, as a token effort.     It falls out again.     "I mean... I was due a new car anyway, but man..." Yup, he stands there, scratching his head, and then sighs. A shrug, and the smile that he's most commonly associated with returns. "Hey... ehmm... the name is Jax, by the way. Thanks for the help."     But he's not moving. Then again, the car still has the license plates on it, custom plates that are going to be traced back to him regardless, so it's probably useless to run. "Thanks for the offer, but..."
Sarah Connor	"Your funeral." Sarah shrugs. She, however, was booting it out of there. Of course, with the name 'Jax', John could look him up. Which she planned on, to make sure that was a one off attempt because he happened to be right by her. Not that she believed that one hundred percent. But she really couldn't be worried about random strangers. Hell, she didn't have friends for just that reason! She waved without turning her head. Until next time..
Jax	Sirens eventually approach from the distance, and an observer from above would be able to see the sudden ring of emergency services converging on the trashed Jeep, as well as seeing Sarah slip through the cordon with ease.     But one thing that is certain about New York... it's that strange things happen all the time. Strange things involving an art project of a headless robot mannequin in a stolen Jeep. Odd happenings that arouse suspicions, which can never be substantiated once the right to remain silent is embraced, and an expensive lawyer descends on the precinct. Tow trucks ordered to put a totaled jeep somewhere next to the road in Greymalkin Lane, Westchester...     Because those at the top of the heap tend to stay there.