Prompt: Joy Ride
An explosion off to their right took them by surprise.
The hell?
Joker looked down at the sensors, his stomach plummeting to somewhere in the vicinity of his toes. "A gunship?" he asked incredulously as the ship's bullets began knocking out nearby cars. "In traffic?"
The 'Sun's were bad news, sure, but he hadn't realized how bad until they were hired to kill him.
"Can't this thing go any faster?" Ashley demanded from the backseat.
He studied the controls. "Uh." Taxis had built-in security systems that prohibited tampering - most of the time. A quick scan of the system as a speeding car further up ahead ricocheted off the side of a building and narrowly missed them proved that this particular make and model would be fairly easy to override, but -
He shook his head. "It's a taxi," he told her, gesturing at the controls. "It's got a governor switch. Tamper with the wrong system, and we could fall right out of the sky."
"And this would be a bad thing?" Ashley questioned. "We're over water. We could -"
"Yeah, drowning in a taxi sounds like such a fun way to go," he argued, popping a panel and eying it. The VI gave a warning signal, and he glared over his shoulder at Ashley. I told you so.
She huffed. "And becoming a fireball would be better?"
His response was another glare.
"Just hack the thing," she ordered.
A rocket impacted an aircar further up the way, and the decision was made. He popped another panel - got another warning - and felt more than saw Ashley's triumphant smirk as she handed him a canister of omni-gel.
He was too busy crossing circuits and rerouting subroutines and shook his head. This way was definitely faster. "System's too delicate for that stuff."
"Shepard and Alenko used to swear by this crap," she murmured, re-attaching the canister to her utility belt.
"I'm not Shepard or Kaidan. And I don't have a handy-dandy make-it-go-boom kit if it doesn't work."
Ashley produced a Mark 6 hand grenade, and Joker shrank back, horrified and emphatically shaking his head.
"No. Uh-uh. No way." She didn't take it away, merely held it over his shoulder. "Please, for the love of God, put that thing away. Explosions are only cool if I'm not in them."
She frowned and put it back on her belt.
He felt the need to continue his diatribe as he hacked the taxi's systems to make it go faster. Maybe then she wouldn't feel the need to give him another heart attack. "Watching explosions on spy-vids is awesome. Sovereign exploding was more awesome. Getting blown to ribbons by a grenade set off from the inside a flying car would not be awesome. It would suck."
"I get it; I get it," she complained.