(no subject)

[gone_byebye]

The door opens onto an alleyway between two buildings- one residential, one not. "Here we are," Ray says, stepping out and holding the Firehouse door open behind him. "Home sweet- uh, hang on a minute, I need to check the year."

He trots off to the newspaper box on the curb, then gives Kitt a thumbs-up.

Comments

[gone_byebye]

That was all right. By Ray's lights, that was pretty damn cool technology; after all, he'd been driving a completely analog vehicle for quite some time, and his one experience with a digitized car interior in the past five years was when he'd had to rent something at an airport and wound up with a Pontiac Aztek. "All right," he said, setting his hands at the nine and three positions, and silently willing his arms to relax while his fingers still held on. He had Mace Windu's teachings to thank for that.

And then the pedal went down underfoot.

"Oh, wow...."

He held on. His reflexes were screaming at him to slow down, or steer straight, or something, but this was Kitt and he trusted the car. Somehow, he managed to stifle the urge to do more than dig his nails in a little tighter-

-well, no, that wasn't entirely true. He did let out an involuntary squeak when the Ski Mode transition happened. Otherwise, though, he managed.

"... that's the jump thing, right?" he answered when Kitt mentioned the turboboost. "Uh..."

Stantz, you are never, never, ever going to get a chance at something like that again unless the Bar shoves you into the wrong continuum. Take a deep breath, you nimrod.

"... sure. Let's do it."

(( OOC: The icon is from an episode of the Ghostbusters cartoon where Winston was driving. At this point in the episode, Ecto was running on two wheels as Winston took a corner particularly sharply. ))

[steadfastknight]

It was Ray's choice. That meant it was no longer on his proverbial head. The turboboost button lit with a soft beep, and then the car was launched into the air at a high angle, nearly weightless for a good length, before landing front-wheels first. The suspension was built for such jolts. Bonnie had even added an independant suspension under the driver's seat to lesson the impact. But there was still a jar as the car landed fully, and Kitt screeched them into a turning stop, leaving tiremarks behind.

"Now you can see more what I can do."

[gone_byebye]

"...."

Somewhere in the back of Ray's head, the Ride of the Valkyries began to play.

It didn't have time to run for long, of course, but for a few glorious seconds- oh, wow was that ever the coolest freefall he'd ever imagined!

"Sir," he said as they rocked to a stop and his utterly boggled spinal nerves started reporting in once again, "I admit it, I am impressed. That was massively cool. You do- and are- incredible work."

[steadfastknight]

"Thank you," said Kitt, preening just a bit. He was more than a little proud of his abilities - and he thought he had right to be. "Bonnie would be glad to hear it. But now..."

The mode shifted back to Normal Cruise.

"We'll begin teaching you to do a few things that I can do."

[gone_byebye]

Ray nodded, foot on the brake, and took a moment to wipe his hands on his shirt. "All right," he said. "I'm ready. What've we got first?"

[steadfastknight]

"We'll begin with quick stops and turns," Kitt said. "First, I want you to accelerate down the runway to slightly above the usual speed you use on your calls. Then, perhaps two hundred yards out, imagine the truck as you mentioned before. You'll need to stop before it strikes you, so cut the wheel to the left while pressing the brake. Too far, and you'll manage a full turn. I want you to stop at ninety degrees."

[gone_byebye]

"Gotcha," Ray said, looking around for something to serve as the approximate two hundred yard marker- ah, there, a leftover fencepost; that would do nicely. He took a deep breath, let it out, and brought his foot down on the gas. Kitt's acceleration was considerably quicker than Ecto's, but he'd been prepared for that. It was more a matter of dividing his furtive glances between the speedometer and the side of the runway. The majority of his attention was on the road ahead, in the space corresponding to two car-lengths out-

Oop, there, that was the post- truck simulation time.

Ray brought his foot down on the brake, hard, and turned. An old driving-instructor memory cut in at exactly the wrong moment, and he caught himself going hand-over-hand on the wheel.

[steadfastknight]

Except there was no wheel to go hand-over-hand on. The gullwing afforded only two grips, and when Ray released, Kitt took over, bringing himself to a stop there in the middle of the runway.

"You were doing quite well until you let go," he said.

[gone_byebye]

Ray sighed. "Sorry," he said. "Unfamiliar controls and a very old bit of driver's ed. It won't happen again. Can we try that one more time?"

[steadfastknight]

"Of course," Kitt said, changing cruise modes again. "That's the point of learning, isn't it?"

[gone_byebye]

Ray smiled. "Yeah, I suppose it is," he said.

And this time, at least, he got it right.

((OOC: Shall we pause here for the evening?))

[steadfastknight]

((That's fine with me.))

"You're an apt learner," Kitt congratulated on the success, and asked, "Now, can you repeat it?"

[gone_byebye]

Ray chewed on his lip for a moment, then nodded. "Think so. Let's give that another shot, shall we?"

It was easier the second time, though perhaps not as precise. Beginner's luck was not something with which Ray could claim much familiarity. Beginner's terrified nervous tension? That was another story. Having conquered that particular sensation, he could steer more easily now- and breathe more easily, too.

[steadfastknight]

"You're doing better," Kitt encouraged. "Visual cues, more often than not, will be the only sign you have to correct yourself in the place of an accident. Training yourself visually - especially in depth perception - is a very important part of being prepared in driving. That you pick out visual targets is important."

Something he'd noticed Ray doing, too. He was really very appreciative of that.

"Once you have the ninety-degree stop down, we'll work on turning it into a one-eighty."

[gone_byebye]

"I'm used to being divebombed on the way to a bust," Ray confessed. "Gotta keep my eyes open if I don't want something to dive through the windshield and try to eat me. We don't have weaponry for inside the car, so evasion's the only answer- and you can't evade what you don't see coming."

He nodded, resettling his hands on the wheel. "Let's try that again?"

[steadfastknight]

"We have all day and an empty runway, and tires that can't be damaged," said Kitt. "We can do it as often as you need, until you have it down."

Meanwhile, he was gathering statistics on their runs so far. He figured that it would come in handy, perhaps, for Ray to have a hard copy once the day's lessons were through.

[gone_byebye]

"Great," Ray said with considerable enthusiasm, and picked his point out before bringing his foot down onthe pedal again. He'd love the statistics eventually, but right now the possibility was very far from his mind. Better to concentrate on what he was doing and what was around him.

[steadfastknight]

The LEDs of Kitt's spedometer climbed, the numbers displayed, rolling by quickly - the lights climbing their arc along the dash, as RPM was measured to the right. The turbine's counterpoint grew alongside the V8's rumble - a sound that seemed like it meant pure power.

The fuel level hadn't dipped at all.

There was no visible odometer. All the better, or Ray might've been more than surprised at how many miles Kitt had racked up in just under a year. Being on the road constantly tended to do that.

And as a car, the Trans Am was more than responsive to every touch that Ray gave. A nudge to the gas brought the car faster. A tap to the brake and the speed immediately dropped. Just a twitch to the wheel and Kitt swerved. Knight Industries had done a miraculous job with their supercars.

[gone_byebye]

As it stood, the performance gauges Ray could see were an amazing sight. He didn't let himself look at any of them for too long, though- not at this speed, and not with the stop coming up. He could confirm what he'd seen on the tach later, most likely. Right now there was a stop-and-turn to practice- no, more than one, until he got it right. The numbers could occupy a place of prominence in his mind later, when he was in a position to genuinely appreciate them.

[steadfastknight]

With every time Ray performed the stop, Kitt encouraged. He could see a rise in accuracy, a rise in precision, with practice. It wasn't something that was often used (by people other than he and Michael, anyway), but it was better to not need it and know it than be ignorant.

"You are improving," Kitt said. "Soon, I'd like to teach you the one-eighty."

[gone_byebye]

Ray paused to consider this, the image flashing through his head of doing that with Ecto. He could think of a few times when that kind of stop/about face combo would've come in really handy. "Sounds good to me," he said. "Is it much harder than what you've got me doing now?"

[steadfastknight]

"No. It's simply a matter of not depressing the brake pedal so far and turning the wheel a bit more quickly. It's easier done in rear-wheel drive cars. A reverse one-eighty is nearly impossible in a front-wheel drive car, and I'll teach you that, once you've gotten used to reversing at speed." Kitt had already given an example of that - going from at-speed reverse into a one-eighty and then into drive.

[gone_byebye]

"Probably not something I'll be able to pull off in Ecto at all," Ray said, "though I'd still like to learn it. It's just that there are very few streets in New York where a twenty-one-foot-long vehicle would have enough room to maneuver like that. Still- you never know. There's highways and things."

[steadfastknight]

"And it's better to know it if you needed it than be without it," Kitt said. "You should begin by accelerating to speed and, at two-hundred yards, depress the brake - not hard enough to stop as you have been doing, but enough to severely slow. Bring the wheel around as hard as you can, and accelerate when you see you've managed one-hundred eighty degrees. Essentially, it's a fishtail with a purpose."

[gone_byebye]

Ray thought the maneuver over, fingers rippling absently along the edge of the wheel as he laid the procedure out in his mind. "Kind of like a backwards, advanced form of what my driver's ed teacher used to say to do to get out of a skid. Turn the wheel in the direction of the skid to bring the car out of it- but in this case we're trying to follow through with the skid and power it up when we face the direction we want to move in."