by Amarlex » Sun May 19, 2013 6:59 am
The way the cell phone system in the United States is set up, it’s nearly impossible for one particular phone to receive a signal meant for a different one.
Nearly.
In 2012, there was a small error in the programming for a line of smartphones that would make the device think it had a different ID code for short periods of time. It would only change a few numbers in the code, and it would often just not pick up any calls, but, on rare occasions, the phones would pick up messages meant for other people. Although a recent update fixed the issue, a few people haven’t yet downloaded the patch.
Lady Luck is one of those people. As she lounges around on a rooftop in the warehouse district of Advent City, a quiet beep comes from her left glove. She fishes her phone out and, in a few flicks, discovers that she’s recieved a text message from a number she doesn’t recognize:
Van still in city, skipped expressway. Lost it at the warehouse district.
As she stares at her screen in confusion, the faint growl of a car engine catches her ear. She steps to the edge of the corrugated metal roof and peers over the edge...
...and sees a windowless black van rolling down the street. She watches it for a moment in silence, then locks her phone and slips it back into her glove before hurrying after it. Someone who's picked the name "Lady Luck" as her moniker knows not to question serendipity.
----
“I’m telling you, man, you don’t know what you’re getting into, man, you’re - “
“Nonono. Not like that. Try pleading, friend.”
El Etchogon takes a look at the figure in front of him, held by the cuff of his shirt. The folds of skin at the edge of his cheekbones suggest he’s grinning under the mask, hauling the miscreant out of the alley. The man struggles to look over his shoulder at his captor - big white eyes leaking smoke in the fluorescent streetlight - and his mood mellows a bit.
“C-can I go? Just - just trying to get by, I swear, man, just - “
A snort from under the mask. “Lotta money for gettin’ by, amigo.”
“No! I hadn’t even sold nothing - ”
Etch shakes him, interrupting the retort and fastening his grip. “C’mon. I know you’re not that bad, I know you meant well an’ whatever - I’m just gonna let the cops sort you out, yeah? Sort you out. Station’s not too far.” Muffled pleading from the captive ignored, he steps out of the alley, at a brisk pace. Warehouse district was deserted; quiet enough tonight to merit catching this kind of crook. Petty, but something.
He steps off the curb considering the growl of an engine, much closer now than it was five seconds ago. Squirming in the grip, the captive stammers, “Look - hey, mask guy, look!” Etch looks. The van skids to the side to avoid them, but its momentum isn’t changing easily, and in any conceivable future it’s making a path to directly run the red light through the point where Etchogon stands. Etch’s neck twitches to the side, expecting the desperate dealer to be fooling him, but his brow furrows upon seeing the oncoming collision. The captive yelps in terror.
With a brief flick of the arm, the kid is sent ass-first onto the sidewalk in front of them, skidding on his rear before coming to rest, against a brick wall, shocked. Using the resultant backwards force, Etch dives back and to the side, rolling along a shoulder into a crouch, narrowly missed by the van, which swerves back into place and resumes its previous breakneck speed. Etch stares after it for a moment - the other figure gapes across the street.
----
“Hey, dummy! What are you doing?!” Lady Luck’s voice echoes down from directly above Etchogon’s head.
She’s perched on the streetlight, head tilted to the side in a bizarrely predatory little pose. From where she is, she can see Etchogon’s smoldering eyes widen as his brow furrows in a combination of surprised recognition and instant frustration. He begins to speak, his first word already taking an irritated tone: “I’m-”
The girl cuts him off. “Get the van. Go! Get it! Stop ‘em!”
“Why-”
“-Are you still standing there? Good question! Now go.” With that, Lady Luck leaps off of the streetlight and hits the ground with a graceful roll before bounding off after the speeding vehicle.
(The miscreant sits dazed and bruised, frozen between the two figures and pondering an escape.)
She can’t catch up, of course; she’s only human, fit as she is, and there’s no way she’s outrunning a van whose driver has gone so far past flooring it they could be a Flintstones character.
She can slow it down, though. She skids to a stop and the van whizzes away from her, then raises her hand and splays out her fingers.
There’s a flash of light - it’s hard to tell what color it is, really. Some impossible combination of pink and blue that somehow isn’t just purple. There’s a soft, almost sad-sounding wheeze of escaping air and flapping rubber as the van runs over an incredibly inconveniently-placed nail. The vehicle wobbles for a moment as the driver adjusts for the flat, then resumes its course, although definitely a bit slower than before.
----
Etch exhales through his teeth as he rises from his kneel. Whatever. Unmarked black van using a sleepy street as a freeway was important. Probably. The van, swerving unsteadily, turns at the next block, and (after giving a brief sneer to the terrified dealer, who scampers up from his position and runs for his life in the other direction) Etchogon takes off on a diagonal to its new path in pursuit of an interception, straight into the corner of a warehouse block. Just before impact, he jumps, the streetlight shimmers around him - he disappears for a second and is then twenty feet up with one foot on the edge of the roof, taking off across the metal surface.
Rough calculations of speed in his head - he just turned and he has a flat tire, now, so he’ll be a little slower, but still gunning it. Ought to be able to catch up, just in time - with movement less describable as acrobatic grace and more as brute force he pushes himself across the rooftops, boots scraping noisily on the metal and shingles, scrambling over ridges, until he reaches the street again. The van is a good six or seven seconds behind him, and hasn’t seen him at the edge of the roof yet.
Falling down onto the sidewalk with a clatter, he jumps into the middle of the street and rolls a shoulder, estimating the timing necessary in his head. Just as the van driver registers Etchogon’s presence and swerves again to avoid him, Etch pushes off the ground and jumps at the car in a spin, turning his body around in the air - he shimmers again, light bending in smoke around him, just before collision; but collision never occurs, and Etch passes harmlessly through the van. Inside the vehicle, there’s a brief shimmer moving from the front to the back - Etch catches a glimpse of the two figures inside, and rematerializes just behind the van, hitting the concrete with an ungraceful jolt. He curses loudly.
----
“Why didn’t you stop the van?!” The tights-clad woman skids to a stop next to Etchogon and bends over, setting her hands on her hips in her very best scolding pose. “You could have stopped... Whoever was in it.” The girl stops her whining just long enough to sigh in frustration and cross her arms. “Whatever. What did you see?”
Etch scowls at her, unamused. “So I miscalculated, ended up outside it! I didn’t know I was gonna have to deal with this sixty seconds ago. Ugh. Guy and a girl in there, tied up. ‘Sa kidnapping - Wait, you didn’t know what was in that van?” He looks after it quickly. “How were you following it, then?”
Lady Luck slips her phone out of her glove and waggles it in Etchogon’s direction. “I got a text message from a number I didn’t recognize warning me about a van in the warehouse district. And then a black van drove by.”
She shrugs, as if this is a perfectly sound explanation. “So it actually was a kidnapping, huh? I told you it was more important than your date, didn’t I? Dummy.”
“It wasn’t - ” He sneers, sniffing under his mask. “Eh, that stupid kid had a lucky day thanks to you, yeah? Hmf. Guess he gets away free today. You wanna get that van, yeah, try to keep up -” He breaks mid-taunt, breaking into a run to scramble onto a nearby roof again.
“I like to be generous. Besides, it’s a victimless cri- hey!” Lady Luck bounds after him after a moment’s surprise.
“Hey, I guess we’re, like, partners now, huh?”