Layla & Laurie | Friday morning

[x-mandelbrot.livejournal.com]

Not thinking a protest should resemble a field trip at all, Layla heads into the city on her own with Laurie to hit up the protest at the Genoshan embassy.

It was a beautiful day for driving, or so thought Laurie who was currently tapping her fingers on the wheel in time to the song on the radio. She glanced briefly over at her driving companion before turning her eyes back to the road in time to see someone cut in front of them from the side lane. She hit the break, gearing down and swearing softly to herself as she used the horn, just a typical day driving in New York traffic but it never ceased to surprise her just how stupid other people on the road could be.

"What station is this?" she asked, not taking her eyes off the road.

Layla shrugged. "Dunno, I just hit scan until I found a decent song. Miscellaneous rock station? Don't get too attached, they're probably gonna play something that sucks soon and I'll be hunting again. What is it with radio stations? Do they have like a quota of really fucking shitty music they gotta play every hour? It's like you find a station and then it rocks and then it's like...I dunno, some nu-metal bullshit. Or Nickelback or something." The teenager sighed and slumped down in her seat.

"That's why God invented mix-tapes, or in more modern parlance, mix-CDs," Laurie replied with a grin, using her indicator as she slid into another lane to pass the driver who had to be going at least 20 under the posted speed limit. "If you look in the glove compartment, there should be a folder of CDs in there, just pick one you like."

Laurie probably couldn't see the shifty look Layla gave her as she opened the glove compartment. "Damn girl, I didn't realize you were so old. Mix tapes? Mix CDs? What're you, like thirty-five? Playlists. God invented playlists to get around shitty radio stations." Without much hope of finding anything good, Layla went flipping through the CDs with the dedication of one with less doubt.

"Hardly that old, I just happen to have had a very precise education, and very little time to update my colloquialisms," Laurie murmured, pulling back into their previous lane once she'd checked her blind spot. "And don't look so doubtful, I'm almost sure you'll find something in there you'll like."

Layla's nose wrinkled. "Yeah, if you weren't schizophrenic. Like, I'm sure liking everything ever is like admirable or something but these songs totally don't flow into one another." At least not in Layla's opinion, which was clearly what mattered here. "You think this protest is gonna be big?" She might as well make conversation while silently passing a boatload of judgement on Laurie's music tastes.

"I think so," Laurie replied, hitting the gas to make sure they weren't stuck behind the slow traffic trying to merge onto their lane. "All the blog sites seemed to think it would be, anyhow. What exactly is the point of music flowing into each other? I just pick what I like and stick it on shuffle."

"Because no flow means it's disjointed and kind of jarring to listen to. You need one song to flow into the other smoothly so it doesn't fuck up your vibe or mood or whatever term you wanna use. There's totally a point to the order artists put songs in on their albums and shit, you know?" The teen shook her head and hit the button on the radio to search for a new station. "Like getting arrested big or just like crowded big? I've never actually gone to a protest before. Mostly because I sorta didn't give a fuck about what they were protesting usually."

"Why would there be a shuffle option on players if it isn't meant to be used?" Laurie asked in reply to Layla's point on music flow, slowing back down now that they'd passed the on-ramp. "Getting arrested big, at least, I know there's going to be police there, but we can hope that nobody is going to do anything stupid enough for it to come to that. I think some of the Anonymous types are going to be there, I'm just hoping none of the militants turn up, we really don't need a riot."

"You are so not musical, are you?" She shook her head again and gave up on the CDs. They were too random for Layla. She'd rather flip stations on the radio. "I thought Anonymous were more hacktastic? I mean, I guess they're real people so they show up places and shit but it's not like anyone knows them as them, you know? They're just known as this like collective hacker squad or whatever. Anyway, can I like not get arrested? Not like I'm gonna do anything to get arrested but still. That is such a buzzkill. Maybe I should've gone with Ms Frost for like anti-arresting cred or something. Only I think protest as field trip is like...way not on."

"They've been getting into mutant rights lately," Laurie noted, slowing down as they hit traffic, which she'd been hoping they'd miss but no such luck today, obviously. "I guess it's not all that surprising, since with a group like Anonymous, they must have at least a few mutants among them and they've been describing themselves as 'hactivists' for awhile now, at least some part of them anyhow. My musical taste is...eclectic, but I've never learnt to play an instrument so no, not very musical."

"I'm putting down your total like ignorance about music, rhythm and now not to tank a vibe down to you not being musical, mkay?" Layla finally settled on a station playing Florence and the Machine. "I know they're hacktivists, but that's my point. They're hacktivicists, not activists. They do their shit via the world wide interwebz, dude. So like showing up at a protest is cool for solidarity and stuff but in terms of being Anonymous it doesn't do anything. If they wanna hacktivize their way into Genosha's like government databases and shit, though, that could get some like seriously useful stuff out there."

"You'd probably get more about that out of Sarah or Doug than me," Laurie admitted, ignoring Layla's comment about her musicality. There were things in life that Laurie considered of value, music was not one of those things, at least, not beyond being good for white noise while she studied. "I'm going to park at my Dad's by the way, so we'll have to walk from there but it's not too far."

"I used to live in the city, walking doesn't bother me. We talking like a mile not far or like three miles not far?" Somehow the idea of having to walk less than a mile simply did not occur to Layla at all.

"Less then a mile, actually. I figured we could take the subway, unless you wanted to walk the _entire_ way," Laurie replied, noting idly that they'd finally reached the Henry Hudson bridge, which meant they shouldn't have too far to go to her father's place near Central park.

The look Layla gave her was part disappointment and part disbelief. "Dude, are you serious? You want me to take the subway for less than a mile? Fuck that, why would I wanna pay to go like three blocks? I can walk, thanks. But if you wanna take the subway just make sure you look out for dudes trying to cop a feel when they walk by, 'kay?"

"How about we both just walk then?" Laurie replied with a grin, not willing to let Layla go off by herself in a big city, whether she'd previously lived there or not. "I didn't know the New York subway was that bad."

"There are perverts everywhere," the teenager stated as a matter of fact. "But you only get to tag along if you can keep up. More than one person's been taken out by trying to play dodge the slower pedestrian with me and you've been at the mansion a while. And you drive places. I'm not convinced you can keep up on foot." Layla was smirking. Her expression really screamed smartass.

Laurie snorted, eyes alive with good humor as she risked a quick glance at Layla before she turned back to the road. She shifted up again as traffic started to move, leaning further back into her chair back as she relaxed into the drive.

"We'll see," she finally said with a grin.