Owner	Pose
Jax	Finally. After a few weeks of back and forth, of talking, questions asked and astutely never answered, of minor legal threats and, it must be said, a hefty impound fee... the Jeep is back. Well, in a way. Sort of. As per instructions, it was delivered to the side of the road in the middle of Greymalkin Lane and left there, because the tow truck wasn't going to ask questions. And now, after the joint efforts of several students, the remnants of the Jeep have been pushed into the garage, near enough to its usual stall.     It's seen better days.     For one, it's missing both passenger doors, although they have been left on the backseat, along with one of the hinges that could be retrieved from the scene of the crime... or, as Jax's lawyers keep insisting, the scene of retrieval where the stolen car was found. Also found near that scene was one of the camshafts, a rather essential part of the engine that is most commonly found inside the engine block. But it would appear that it made its escape via the number four cylinder, past the crankshaft, out through the oil pan of which at least two bolts were retrieved. Take into account the numerous bulletholes, the driver's headrest that has been blown away by something heavy and, likely, high caliber, and the knife sticking blade first through the windscreen is no more than an accent piece, a coda to the symphony of destruction that was played on this once steadfast vehicle.     The pressure in the near side tires is probably a tad low too...     Normally not one to lose his smile, Jax nevertheless stands there, looking at his car, as if someone who has just lost a distant relative. The smile is there, but fraying slightly at the edges, and the ears are not quite perked up as high as they usually go. And all he seems to be able to manage are monosyllables and vaguely mewling sounds as he surveys the wreck.
Samuel Guthrie	Samuel Guthrie is here as the car is brought in. He would have offered to help get it in, but he let the younger man deal with it. He walks around the vehicle slowly looking it over "Ok, well, I got to say.. I have seen worse, but normally when they have been, they were not brought home.
Jax	Mutely nodding, Jax opens the trunk and seems oddly not too surprised when the hatch parts with the bodywork and he's left holding up just over two hundred pounds of metal in one hand by the handle... which then, also, breaks. When the clatter has died away, the cat mutant sighs and puts the hatch against the side wall of the stall, one handed, while he checks the trunk for what's left. Then, suddenly, his smile returns, his tail floofs out, and he holds aloft the treasured vanity plates ('BILL JR' registered in Buffalo), as if he has just won the superbowl "Alright! Most important thing survived!"     Honestly, it would have cost him maybe twenty bucks to have those transferred at the DMV.     Giving the car another look, he kicks the rear nearside tire, and is rewarded with a soft hiss... the car slowly sinks a bit lower as the tire deflates. "I mean... it's been two years, probably time I got a new one anyway, right?"
Samuel Guthrie	Samuel Guthrie looks to the other and says "Well, Ah am used to rick kids having new ones every year or two, but Ah take it this one had a bit of sentimental value to you. He says "Let me check something." He grabs one of the wheeled boards and moves to slide under the vehicle to look at the frame to see if it is bent, or salvageable.
Jax	"It's my first car, y'know." And with some tenderness, Jax puts the license plates down on the hood, hears the warning creak, and quickly swipes them off again to place them on the floor. Much, much safer! "It was a birthday present, and kind of a 'sorry we gotta send you to a school away from home' sort of present too. Dad picked it." Yeah, there's memories in that car. It's the one he drove solo from Buffalo to Westchester with his parents in the car behind, towing the u-haul with his bike and other stuff. This is the car he used to give rides to other students into the city, or when he was off gallivanting with his friends. This is the car that picked up Kit. It's the car that saved his life.     The damage assessment below is easily made and just as devastating: it's a total loss. The frame has been bent and buckled on the nearside, but curiously bulging out rather than in. Whatever happened to it twisted the frame members and short of a new frame and a complete overhaul of the suspension, this thing is never going to road legal again. That's not considering the gaping holes in the engine block, and way the steering rack has been nearly sheared off the steering column. It's a mess.
Samuel Guthrie	Samuel Guthrie slides back out from under it, and says "Well, I would suggest getting a new car, or we can strip her down and maybe salvage half a dozen smaller parts, and build a new car around them, if your wanting to keep part of her in it. That or consider the plate the important part and get a new car behind it."
Jax	There's a shrug. Jax is sentimental, yes, but in the end... well, it's a car. Cars can be replaced. People can't. "Eh. I'll put the plates on another Jeep, probably. Strip the seats out of this one, get a new headrest made, call it good."     But, of course, he also wouldn't be Jax if he didn't have something extra in mind. "How 'bout I donate the car to the school? Put it on the rest of the mechanic project pile, and then someone else can build their own Jaxmobile. Plenty of students who'd love to get their hands on a free car, especially when they're learning to drive." Which, to the best of his knowledge, is quite a proportion of the school. He knows he's been lucky in life, and if that means he can give a few less fortunate teenagers a leg up, so be it.     "Gotta say, Mister Guthrie, I was kinda worried you'd be a bit more upset about this." Oooh boy.
Samuel Guthrie	Samuel Guthrie looks over and says "Well, Ah am saving that till, Ah hear exactly what happened, and figured you would be too distracted to talk about it until you got this settles, as for donating, it, only way this car is going to be salvageable at all, is if we get someone like Lorna to come in here and straighten and strengthen the frame.
Jax	"So, I'm not gonna get away with saying mysterious lady, killer robot, stuff happened?" Jax attempts, with his most winning and disarming smile. It's the kind of smile kittens give when they're sitting next to the shattered remains of a potted plant, or a few yards of savaged toilet paper. It implies that while, yes, the evidence may suggest something has occurred and, indeed, he was in the vicinity and likely involved when this did take place, wouldn't it be a crime to mad at a face this cute?     It was worth a shot!     "I mean..." and he hops up to sit on the hood, as he always does, causing the front suspension to give way entirely and the whole front end of the Jeep to hit the ground, both front wheels rolling a few yards before bumping into the side walls of the stall and falling over. When the noise ends, he resumes as if nothing whatsoever has happened. "... it's given me a few thing to think about."
Samuel Guthrie	Samuel Guthrie looks to the other and says "You do remember, Ah was once the young kid around here, and while Ah was the one who usually tried to keep us from getting in trouble, my best friends foiled that plan at pretty much every turn. So, how about you start at the beginning." He does shakes his head with a smirk at the tires, and leans against the wall listening.
Jax	"I was at the Rockwallz gym." Jax begins, pulling his legs in and draping his tail across his lap. It's the classic campfire story telling pose, with added tail and ears. "Y'know, sometimes I feel the need to climb stuff, an' I'd just gotten out of the first meeting of the Columbia Lions. I really, really needed to climb something." The Columbia Lions, of course, being the college team of Columbia university, and notorious as being the worst team in the whole CFL. They are, in fact, the only team ever in the history of the CFL to have once managed three whole years without a single win. Why Jax plays for them rather than the Buffalo Bulls may forever be a mystery.     "Anyway, I was on my way to the car when I took my ear pods out an' I could hear an owl shouting a warning. Big predator nearby, y'know? Lots of dogs howling a warning too. Now, they don't do that when I'm around, so I was kind of on my guard. Next thing I know, this guy comes out of nowhere and starts shooting. So I get in the car, back outta the space, an' floor it for the exit of the carpark. Then this woman appears in front of the car, I just manage not to hit her, she jumps in and tells me to drive if I wanna live. So, y'know, I drove."     It was, in fact, the first ever high speed chase in which indicators were conscientiously used, and no speed limits were broken.
Samuel Guthrie	Samuel Guthrie 's brow raises a bit bit he listens to this and waits to hear more what the young man is saying, but he does move to get a battery cart moving near the car while he listens.
Jax	There's a slightly shift in position while Jax reaches over to pop the external hood latches for Sam and then shimmies back to sit on the buckled roof. All without actually standing up... "And it was the strangest thing, Mister Guthrie, but that guy kept up. Then the woman started shooting back at the guy and it kinda got a bit out of hand." Y'don't say?     "Then the light ahead turned red, I slowed down, and the guy actually jumped into the car through the back window. I mean, I thought that was about as weird as it was gonna get, but then the woman shot the guy in the face and he didn't even blink. I mean, he couldn't blink, 'cause he had no eyelids left, but his head was this... chrome skull with red glowing eyes. She yells that we gotta take out its CPU, screams at me to drive, so I floor it. He falls back, she gets her second gun, then he gets back up and tries to stab me in the neck."     It sounds like the plot of a bad action movie.
Samuel Guthrie	Samuel Guthrie hmms and hooks the battery up to the car, and the moves to hook something else up. While Sam is just average on computers, we have some pretty smart and inventive people here, so sam hooks up a device that should download anything the vehicle's computer recorded, from GPS, to any camera and such it might have. "Ok, sounds like something Ah have fought, but not very often seen them on human scale." He admits.
Jax	Despite it being a Jeep, the OBD port is exactly where a mechanic would expect it to be. That's only because it's a legal requirement, because everything else is just ever so slightly different. As mechanics say, it's a Jeep thing. Everything that was recorded can easily be downloaded, and Jax isn't stopping Sam from doing just that. Besides, it's not like he's going to make an insurance claim on it.     "Yeah, I thought Sentinel too at first, but I've seen the pictures and the videos, and this thing was... I dunno, it didn't even speak. Just... just wanted to kill me. And it knew my name, my full name. Which is weird too, because most people know me as Jax, y'know?" Which is, of course, a contraction of Jake Alexander, his legal name. Yeah, even his grandmother calls him Jax.     "So, anyway, the thing tries that overarm stab move that we trained on so much, so I grabbed it by the wrist and threw it back into the back seat. It ehmm... I think it was a bit surprised at that. Dunno, but then it threw the knife at me, so that's usually a sign things didn't go as planned." He dutifully taps the side of the blade sticking out of the windshield, thrown with enough force to bulge the laminated glass outwards.     "Then I saw in the rear mirror that it was going for another gun, so I asked the lady if she could drive. So I put the Jeep on cruise control, jumped out of the driver's side window, swung around, came back in through the passenger window and drop kicked the thing into the door on the other side." Which would explain the way the frame twisted and bulged.     Exactly how strong and flexible is Jax?!
Samuel Guthrie	Samuel Guthrie hmmms and nods a bit to this and says "So, did you get a name of the lady or a part of the robot you were fighting?" He asks the other man as he continues to download the stuff, and listen. "And did not think maybe should have sent a report in soon as ya got home?
Jax	"About that..." the way Jax smiles again and scratches behind his right ear, probably time to confess something. "I kinda grabbed the thing and held it out of the window..." Okay, not that bad.     "We may have been going through a really narrow alley at the time." Less good. Does explain the scorch marks on the side of the car, and the blobs of molten metal adhering to the bodywork.     "It... kinda... lost its head over it, y'know?" Another smile at that weak pun, which slowly fades as the moment ticks uncomfortably on. "So, yeah, anyway, the woman said she was Sarah, an' that she recommended I'd run before the police got there. But, y'know, my plates are on the car, so where was I gonna run? Besides, I hadn't actually done anything illegal aside from running one red light."     By the letter of the law, technically correct. Which is, as his lawyers pointed out multiple time, the best kind of correct.     "So, y'know, the police asked some questions, I didn't answer, they arrested me, I called the family lawyers, got out a few hours later with all charges dropped. But they didn't really buy the whole art project story about the headless robot, so they impounded that. An' then when I got back it was really early in the morning, and I went to bed. Day after, I thought, well y'know, it all happened the day before, so why worry anyone?"
Samuel Guthrie	Samuel Guthrie frowns a bit and says "Well first off if it knew about you it might know about other students, and we are more able to protect you and others if we know about threats coming in. Two, if you had told us then we might have been able to get someone in to get the robot out so we could have examined it. Finding this Sarah would have been much easier if she was not given a head start. We could have made sure nothing was tracking you or the car back to the school. Need more reasons??
Jax	There's a serious of dejected nods, and Jax is studiouly avoiding Sam's eyes. "I know... sorry."     Deep breath.     "But I just had a killer robot try ot kill me, didn't wanna think about that too long. An' the car's registered at home, my parents are on holiday. I even had the tow truck deliver it halfway down the road so they wouldn't know which driveway it was going to." At that last bit, he does look back at Sam, somehow more determined.     "I've dealt with undersea volcanoes, angry gods, mage hunters... all sorts of stuff, never bothered me. But it's the first time someone actually tried to kill me, an' not just because I happened to be nearby. I... kinda, sorta panicked. I'm sorry."
Samuel Guthrie	Samuel Guthrie nods his head a bit to this and says "Well, Jax, your getting to the point where your going to need to start trying to think things through you maybe in college but if your not sure you can still ask for help." He tells him. We will need to get you a once over to make sure things are ok, you seem so, but Ah would prefer we make sure."
Jax	"I've been thinking..." and yes, he does fling his arms wide and then fall back into the roof of the car, theatrically. If you can't make it a performance, why do it? That's a cat thing. "... you know, about the whole hero thing."     Cue the sudden perk of ears, the swift flip-up, and the jump to the ground. "When I grabbed that thing by the wrist, I wasn't even thinking about it. And, y'know, I'm pretty sure there's not a lot of people who can do this..." by which he means picking up the back hatch of the car one handed, lifting it at arm's length, and putting it down again. "B'sides, I've been going to a karate class with Kit, and I think that maybe, y'know..."     Deeper breath.     "... maybe I wanna give it a shot. 'cause I only panicked afterwards, not during. That's a good sign, right?" The hopeful look is almost pathetic in its intensity. And he hasn't said no to a check-up, which in and of itself could be termed suspicious.
Samuel Guthrie	Samuel Guthrie hmms and nods a bit to this listening, but not speaking at least not till Jax finishes "So, tell me what are you wanting to get out of doing the hero thing?" He waits to see what the man's answer it.
Jax	It's exactly like throwing a spanner in a running thresher. Like taping a brick to well balanced helicopter blades. Much like, not too put too fine a point on it, placing a bit of tinfoil on a cat's head. It's clear that the theatrics come to an abrupt end. There's the sag of the tail, the flick of the ears, and the earnest creasing of that furred brow.     It's a poser alright, and for once we're not talking about Jax.     At length, he looks up, still with that frown. Even his voice sounds slightly different, on a normal tone and volume rather than the usual exhuberent pitch. "'cause I don't want this kinda thing to happen to my friends. Or anyone, really." He nods his head towards the wrecked Jeep.     "Besides, think about it. My plan in life, so far, is to be a football player with a side line in business. My dad's about the best in the whole league, and he's got maybe a few years left in him at the top before he's too old to compete. Then what? I don't wanna be an old football player when I'm thirty five, Mister Guthrie. Or a failed businessman that has to do commercials to pay the bills, living off old fame. It's fun wile it lasts, but... it's not real. This sorta stuff is."
Samuel Guthrie	Samuel Guthrie nods a bit to this and says "Well first of all it is all real, you will still need a job of sorts to pay your bills being a hero does not pay the bills. While Ah enjoy working at the club, it is also a way to make money as well." He tells the other young man "The wanting to help others is good, but you got to realize there is real danger in this, we have lost friends while helping people in the past.
Jax	"All my friends are mutants." Jax counters, tilting his head in a very feline way. "Something can happen to them every day, just for who they are. My best friend has mage hunters after him, for no other reason than that he's a mage and a mutant. So I can stand by and not do anything, or I can try to do something about it. And just sitting around doing nothing isn't..." he catches himself just in time "... okay, so sitting around doing nothing is my style, but that's only when there's nothing to do. And with college and football, there's plenty to do, and I can use that to help people down the line, but I also kinda want to help them now. In the short term. Not just changing attitudes, or running sports camps for mutant kids, which is great over a really, really long time, but now. Today. Tomorrow. Next week."
Samuel Guthrie	Samuel Guthrie nods his head a bit to this and says "Well, we can give you some training, and see where your at and what we can do to help, but you are going to think spring training is a walk in the park." He warns him.
Jax	The smile on Jax's face is worth seeing. It's as if a switch has been flicked, from serious mode back to Jax mode, and there's the unmistakable impression of boundless energy being barely contained.     With a grin, he sketches his own impression of a salute. "Won't let you down, coach!"
Samuel Guthrie	Samuel Guthrie looks to the other young man, and says "Oh Ah aint so sure your going to be so happy in a few days." He will smirk, and says "Your first chore, will be I want this jeep took apart down to parts by tomorrow this time, and put in usable and unusable piles." Yea he is giving him a bit of busy work but it is a bit of a test to see how dedicated he is.
Jax	Ehmm... what? There's the statue that is Jax, the only thing moving at first are his eyes. They swivel towards the Jeep. Next are his ears, and as if that's a trigger for his head, only then does his head turn towards the wreck. The rest of him? Stays put.     There is the uncomfortable moment when he realises three things. One, he has no idea how to even start. Two, he brought this on himself. And three, he understands why he's being asked to do this. Going out of his comfort zone is not just an expectation, it's a prerequisite.     Ah well, he's used to this with other coaches. And they usually find that Jax, though so laid back and relaxed you could fold him into a sock drawer, has the same stubborn streak born into every feline.     So his head snaps back into position facing forwards, his ears follow, and then his eyes. Like a spring being wound back. "Yes coach! One huge pile, one itty bitty pile!"