The Parking Lot On The Causeway, Wednesday Afternoon

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

Arden didn't know if Raiden had called Castor yesterday after class or if it was just a coincidence, but towards the end of her shift, Arden had gotten a message saying that her car had been delivered. Right. Her car. Her luxury car. That she couldn't even drive. But had been her birthday gift from Castor, mostly because he'd had too many. Again.

Being rich was still more alien than being a half-human, half-angel hybrid who was cursed with a deadly sin, just saying.

But she'd followed the instructions in the message, which involved picking up her key where it had been couriered to Midnight, and then texted a bunch of people inviting them to come check out her very weird generous birthday gift. Who knew? Maybe one of them knew how to drive (who wasn't Gray, sorry, babe, but also no) and they could go joyriding? That was what you were supposed to do when you got a car, right?

And then she set off to the parking lot to find her car. It wasn't hard to spot. You just had to look for a luxury car that was basically cosplaying the Ratmobile and, as she discovered when she got there, had a vanity license plate that said FINCH.

"How am I supposed to pay for all this?" she asked, staring at her car with a shake of her head.

[Open to all!]

Comments

[single_man_tear]

"Have you considered credit card fraud?" Dean asked as he approached Arden and said card. Seeing the vehicle he let out a long low whistle of appreciation. "Well, now that is a fan-cy ride there, Finch. When are you going to start heading out and start fighting crime?"

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

"Well, I am now," she said. "Might not be enough credit cards to defraud to afford the taxes on this thing, though." She turned slightly to give him a crooked smile. "Hi, Dean. So I'm not crazy, right? This totally looks like the Ratmobile?"

[single_man_tear]

"You're just missing a snappy sidekick and a cape," Dean said now circling the car to get a better appreciation of the whole vehicle. "How'd you score this?"

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

"I'm Ratman," she said in a decent approximation of the weird growl-whisper from...one of the movies. Goddess only knew what iteration because she sure didn't.

"It was a gift," she said in her own voice a second later. "You know Gray or Raiden?"

[single_man_tear]

"I made out with Raiden not long after I got here," Dean said pausing a bit to think. "And I think I dropped by for pizza a few times. He's the nephilim, right?"

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

"One of them, yep," Arden said. "Gray's his brother. And their brother Castor gave me the car for my birthday."

As one did.

"It was his first, he didn't, like, buy it for me or anything," she added quickly, like that possibility was what would make it weird.

[single_man_tear]

"That was mighty generous of him," Dean said finally finishing his circuit around the car. "You're going to make a stunning appearance when you show up at Wegman's to pick up groceries."

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

"Yeah," Arden snorted. "Just as soon as I learn how to drive, I'll be happy to go around in my everyday errand Corvette."

[single_man_tear]

"You have this," Dean said gesturing to the car. "And you don't have a license?"

Dean shook his head.

"Have you even had a driving lesson?"

[napking]

"Oh, hey," Gray said when he showed up after, quite possibly, a nap on the sidewalk on the way here. (No, he had definitely had a nap on the sidewalk on his way here. You could tell from the imprint on the side of his face. It was fine.) "It made it!"

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

"It did!" Arden said. "And Castor took care of the registration, thank the goddess." Because guess who knew nothing about the DMV! This girl. "Which means I can't ask you if you're sure he's sure because..."

She gestured to the car. And the license plate. And the...everything.

[napking]

"He's sure," Gray assured her. "Half the time once he gets something he's not interested in it any more, anyway--Greed is satisfied by the acquisition--and even if it's not that Alastair won't let him take it back. That would be rude. It was a birthday present. You can't take back birthday presents." It was a rule, he was pretty sure.

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

Arden had clearly grown up with a bunch of rulebreakers. And that went beyond Callista, Duke, and Grimm, even!

"Did he get rid of enough to let the other cars fit in the garage?" she checked.

[napking]

Gray had a very different and trauma-informed relationship with rules, but that was neither here nor there.

"There was some argument about whether or not Ray's car needed to be able to fit, since he's not even in California to drive it," Gray reported. "So Alastair threatened to get rid of the Lykan Hypersport, and Cas picked 'not that' in a real hurry."

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

Arden nodded, like she had even the least idea what a Werewolf Hypersport even was. "...Okay, but why doesn't he just park his cars on the street? Or are his all, like, significantly nicer than everyone else's?"

Sorry, Cas. You had given your car to a philistine.

[napking]

"I dunno," Gray said, "I don't know cars like some of the others do. I know the Hypersport is special because they only made seven of them," because Castor wouldn't shut up about it when he was in the process of getting the thing, "and they launched one of them out of a skyscraper in that one Fast & Family movie." That wasn't a real car, but Gray didn't know that. He just remembered the strangled traumatized sound Castor had made, because it had been hilarious.

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

"Oh! I know exactly what car that is now," Arden said, because she loved that franchise. So, so much. "I'm just saying, if Alastair makes him give up his cars when other people's have to park outside the garage, he can't say anything if those cars are Castor's, right?"

Game the system, Cas!

[wildgalegirl]

"This is awesome!" Charlie said delightedly. "Where did you get - How did you get such an awesome car?"

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

"Birthday present!" Arden called back with a laugh and a wave. She was trying to play it off like this was a very normal thing, but yeah, there wasn't a way that was happening. "Nineteen is the year for ridiculous cars, didn't anyone tell you?"

[wildgalegirl]

"Hey, something to look forward to for next year," Charlie said with a laugh.

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

"There you go," Arden said. "...Are there other superheroes that have ridiculous cars besides Ratman?"

[wildgalegirl]

"Huh," Charlie said thoughtfully."I mean there's the woman with the invisible plane, but I'm not so sure about cars. I watched more sci-fi movies, so if you wanted to know about cool space ships I'd be better at that."

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

"That's way more a Cal thing than a me thing," Arden laughed. "I know there are spaceships parked in the junkyard, but I don't know if any of them are gonna be birthday presents."

[wildgalegirl]

"Oh Lord, let me get a meta for Firefly ship for my nineteenth birthday instead," Charlie said. "That would really be something!"

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

"I have no idea what that is!" Arden said with a laugh, since it had aired three years before she'd been born - and TV hadn't been high on Callista's priorities. Arden was lucky she knew the 2Fast 2Family franchise. "Is Lightning Bug a movie...?"