Chapter Text
For criminals, i-man was a smooth driver. Maybe he was just trying to blend into the late-night city streIets, but that didn’t explain why he refused to pull the car out of park until everyone was buckled. So yeah, probably just a careful driver.
Is it better to have a careful driver or a reckless driver? On one hand, a careful driver can probably blend in better and definitely gets to use the car longer, but then if their car is known specifically, careful driving doesn’t come in handy…
Jimmy is broken out of his musings by Tango awkwardly clearing his throat from the front seat, the enthusiastic guy left to sit in the backseats with Jimmy. “So, uh, introductions maybe? Something to break up this silence?”
Enthusiastic guy ruffles Tango’s hair from the back teasingly, “Top can’t handle all this pressure.”
Top?
“Ignore him,” i-man said fondly. “My name is Impulse, his name is Skizzle, and you already know Tango.” Then, gesturing in turn, “I handle transportation, Skizz does the rich people networking, Tango does the engineering.”
Neat little system they’ve got. “I’m Jimmy, I got arrested for God-knows-why and shoved into Tango’s cell as punishment for being annoying.”
Tango whipped around in his seat with disbelieving eyes, Skizzle’s teasing forgotten. “I was a punishment?! But- why? I’m not that bad of a roomie.”
“Well, you did drag him out with you, so dunno, you could be considered a bad roommate,” Impulse jabbed at him, receiving a mild swat for his trouble.
Jimmy shook his head at the oddly domestic sight, “no, said they would put me in with the most violent person in there. Either that was a complete lie, or you guys are awfully misleading.”
The car seems to go quiet with that, suddenly tense with anxiety.
“Jesus- do you guys kill for a living or something?” Jimmy asks, wiping what are likely stress lines from his forehead.
“Well- no-” Impulse goes to say.
“We have a whole rebellion we’ve been building up but to keep it secret they mark off their violent acts as Tango’s.” Skizzel bursts out, earning a well-earned glare from Tango and Impulse, the latter looking in the rear-view mirror briefly before returning his eyes to the road.
Tango sighs, seeming over this conversation. “Yeah, what he said. You should join since Skizz let the secret out.”
Jimmy shrugs, “feel like I have to now, so sure.”
“Great!” Impulse exclaims. “What did you do for work before your arrest? Assuming you worked, of course.”
Jimmy shrinks on himself slightly, knowing how his job is perceived. It’s not a kind role, not even something he has to do. It was like tax collectors back when they were a thing; hated but deemed “necessary for the good of society.”
“...Quality inspector,” he quietly admits.
Impulse in the front seat furrows his brows, glancing at Jimmy in the mirror before returning his eyes to the road.
“That could actually be useful,” Tango says aloud, too deep in thought to notice the exchange. “We’ve been having issues with how to store food properly to keep it from going bad. Hypothetically, you’d know how best to prevent that, right?”
Jimmy blinked owlishly for a moment, not expecting any respect to come with his job. Instead, here he is, being handed leadership over a very important resource.
Even Impulse seems to have second thoughts about Jimmy’s potential role in this situation. “Tango, I don’t think that’s such a good idea-”
“Oh relax Dippledot,” Skizzel interrupts. “He’s harmless! He’s like a very tall twig, he can’t cause that much harm. And if he considers it, I’m sure he’d also consider how much we wouldn’t appreciate that.”
Ok. Yeah, super cool. Yep, terrified. Definitely wasn’t planning on doing anything and won’t be in the future. For such an excitable guy, Skizzel could be really intimidating.
“Relax yourself, Skizz. How about this,” he proposes to the full car, “we place him under Grian’s watch for a few weeks, prevent him from getting into trouble.”
“Pairing him with Grian to keep him out of trouble is certainly a decision…but I guess that could work.” Impulse relents.
The car drives into another garage, plunging the group into darkness as Tango prattles on about the statistics on why it might actually work, “I dunno, Jimmy seems like a high anxiety guy, he might keep Grian out of his usual antics, and Grian will teach him…”
But Jimmy isn’t listening to the conversation. In the darkness of the cavern, he can see glow in the dark spraypaing lining the walls; intricate murals and texts lining the walls, though the car is moving too fast to make out any of said details. He thinks he spies the worlds rebellion and corrupt, but they seem to be rapidly accelerating.
Rapid acceleration?
“How fast are we going?” Jimmy interrupts Tango’s tangent with urgency, suddenly verging into panic.
“Just relax, dude. This is the fun part of the drive.”
Just then, they emerge into a wide open cavern, dimly lit by lanterns dangling from stalactites reaching varying heights through the cave. At the bottom of the cave, there seems to be a bustling village, not quite a city, with it’s own lights and bustle.
The road they were on seemed to go into a shallow decline before reaching a steeper incline, which Jimmy determined you probably wanted to approach with speed. It would kill momentum pretty quick, though not completely and would get you into what seemed to be a town-wide parking lot.
“Welcome to Hermitcraft,” Tango said, fondness in his voice. “Me and a small group of people like Impulse and Skizz have built this up over the years. It’s our little home underneath the place that biases the richest of us.
“I don’t get it,” Jimmy says, looking out at the beautiful city. “You say that this is an escape from the place that biases the richest, and yet you seem to be part of the richest that you’re hiding from.”
Tango hums, clearly displeased. “It’s more complicated than that; you have to have the right kind of money up above. My parents had money, but not the right kind.”
Jimmy decides not to press for the rest of the night, feeling the effects of a long day. Hopefully, they would have a bed for him, maybe even a separate room. In old movies, dystopias like this would house in barracks in which everyone slept in the same room, but Jimmy hopes, perhaps foolishly, for a lone room for him to lay in silence for the night.
The car, after the admittedly mild upward incline, is fully parked by now. “Let’s go meet your advisor,” Tango says, changing the topic. Jimmy follows everyone else in getting out of the car, following them further as they walk toward an elevator.
As they ride the elevator down, Tango types a message on his communicator, replying a ding in response as he gets an immediate answer.
“Alright, Grian should be waiting for us at the bottom of the elevator.” He says, more to the other two than to Jimmy. “Quick introduction, then we’re going to bed. Jimmy, you’re free to explore the town after you get assigned a room as long as you stay with Grian. He knows the town better than you do and will stop the passive-aggressive comments.”
Passive-aggressive comments?
Before he can ask what they’d even ask about, the elevator doors open. On the other side stands a man with shorter stature, his hair a dirty blonde and a pesky smile painting his face. Jimmy would recognize that face anywhere, and it seems the man recognizes him too, the grin rapidly fading from his face.
“Timmy?”
“Xelqua?”