AN: OMG, so glad to have finished this chapter. It was the last one I came up with, and I had a heck of a time deciding what I wanted it to be about. One last little spot of humor before the final stretch, which is mostly pretty angsty, and all written except for the final chapter. Huzzah! So expect those in the next day or two.
54. Training
"I SAID THE BRAKE!" Hopkins roars as the car goes careening around the empty car park.
"WOOOO! But it's more fun this way!" Jordan whoops, then sags in disappointment as the old man stomps down on the trainer's emergency brake and brings them to a screeching halt.
"Awwwwww, come on!"
"It's not supposed to be fun, laddie buck, it's supposed to get you where you're goin'!"
"Well, we WERE getting where we were goin' before you stopped us," J points out.
"No more of that lip! Now let's do it again, and this time I don't want to see that meter going over 25 kph!" Hopkins barks, jamming his hat (a rather squashed-looking green affair with a faded orange lure hanging from the brim) more firmly down on his bald head.
"TWENTY-FIVE?" he protests, dismayed. "SNAILS are gonna be passing us!"
"Well if you're so worried about them, then you better use your turn signal so those snails know where you're going."
"Good thing we not ACTUALLY goin' anywhere, we'd gotta leave alla five hours early just to get back to the House afore dark," Jordan grumbles, jerking the stubborn gear shift back into first.
"A little slower probably won't hurt," comes Lazlo's strained voice from the back seat.
Jordan glances back over his shoulder, grinning. Lazlo and Faris are both wide-eyed and tight-mouthed, gripping the seat. The way he figures it, he had to tolerate THEIR putt-putt driving—first Lo and his ridiculously precise turns and agonizing over every little wobble of the steering wheel, and then Faris crawling along so slowly that it was probably the slight downhill slope of the car park and not his actual foot on the accelerator that was keeping them moving at all. It's not going to kill them to do things HIS way for a little bit.
"KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE ROAD WHEN YOU'RE DRIVING!"
They swerve (the slowest and least dramatic swerve EVER, Jordan thinks, which certainly doesn't justify the sounds of alarm coming from the back seat) and jerk to another stop as Hopkins, with a great deal more speed than one would expect from him, simultaneously brakes and yanks J face-forward again by the ear.
"OW! Hopkins, we in the middle of a GIGANTIC abandoned car park. Million miles on EVERY SIDE and nothing to hit, what difference it make?"
"Our lives?" Lazlo suggests irritably under his breath.
"Which HELLO, aren't at RISK here—"
"It's still a good habit to get into, so keep your damn eyes on the environment and off the peanut gallery back there!" Hopkins interrupts.
"Peanut gallery?" Lazlo objects.
"Clap your traps shut back there, this is a driving lesson, not a tea party! If you don't have anything to say that's not about driving or automobiles, I don't want to hear it. Now keep your eyes on the road, lad, and drive the way I tell you and not like some hooligan tripping acid on the Autobahn!"
Matron Marta, Jordan thinks as he stifles a snigger and struggles with the gearshift again, would probably fry Hopkins alive if she ever observed his teaching style in practice. Or at the very least go storming to the Warden to demand that Addison or one of the aides take them driving instead, which, really, would be too bad. Despite the old man's harshness and general distrust of all things that have been invented since he was thirty (which Jordan figures is like, EVERYTHING other than dirt and cars), Hopkins often proves to be a gold mine of interesting and useful information and hilarity. The best advice tends to come when he starts off with a scoff and the leading line, 'Let me tell you something about _, laddie buck!' A week after the fact, J still cries with laughter whenever he remembers their first driving lesson and F's scarlet face when Hopkins graced them all with his 'Let me tell you something about women' lecture.
"I wasn't goin' THAT fast," Jordan says, hoping to distract the groundskeeper as the speedometer eases upward again. "Besides, Gao said THEY got to do car chase simulations! When we gonna do THAT, eh?"
"When you can pay attention and get the basics right!"
"What, I know where the brakes ARE, I think I got the brains to figure it out—"
"Don't think I don't notice you speeding up, SLOW IT DOWN! And let me tell you something about brains, boys," Hopkins growls. "Turn left, laddie buck. And use your SIGNAL! Brains are only as good as the use you put them to. I once knew this corporal, not much older than you young twigs—"
What follows is a rambling and rather bloody story peppered with the sort of language that Ma Marta considers to be best removed with soap and several blaring directional commands at Jordan.
"—splattered all over the bunker! And a shitload of good his brains did him there! Common sense, boys. They teach you common sense in classes?"
Neither Lazlo nor Faris, who are looking a little green (whether from Jordan's driving or Hopkins's story is not entirely clear), seem about to risk being sick by opening their mouths, so Jordan answers, "Nope!"
"Damn straight they don't! Because you can't learn it in class, you've got to experience it. Brains and common sense, you remember that!" Hopkins punctuates this assertion with a hard-knuckled rap on the dashboard. "Point is, when you're behind the wheel, PAY ATTENTION!"
"You betcha," J agrees blithely, letting his foot sink down on the accelerator again.
