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The clouds that blotted out the sky were fat and gray with rain, and growled discontentedly with thunder every so often as they poured cold water onto the city.

The bus had left the stop in front of the library only minutes ago, but rather too soon for at least one studious individual, who'd been left, as a result, to wait in the cold and wet.

Falco didn't normally pick up hitchhikers, especially not when he was on his bike, and especially not in the rain, which made driving more treacherous... but just this once he figured he might make an exception. He did have an soft spot for the underdog... and Zac, the shortest, most locker-sized kid in his class, was for all intents and purposes, a born underdog, regardless of his frightening natural aptitude for pretty much anything he decided to try out.

He slowed to a halt, the wheels of his motorcycle, (a new Kawasaki Ninja he'd done into a custom red and white paint job, with the words "Radio Flier" on the gas tank.) his tires kicking up rooster tails of water as he pulled up next to the curb and lifted the visor of his helmet.


"Missed the bus?" He called out. Zac he figured, was sharp enough to recognize his voice even if he didn't pull off the helmet. No sense getting any more soaked than he had to.

Falco would have cheerfully discussed that one of the perks of being an adult was that you got to decide what to do with your own savings, and in this case, it had been the bike, an upgrade to an older street model he'd passed along to someone looking for a reliable bike. It had been a good trade off, in his mind, and he was enjoying the new machine, which he admittedly had picked for being, by a slight margin, supposedly the fastest street legal bike out there at the moment.

"I've got an extra helmet." he pointed out, gesturing to the somewhat limited storage he'd added on. It was an unfortunate fact of life that he usually needed to drive with things, instead of just going hell bent for leather the way he'd have preferred, and it was only by fortune that it was the extra helmet in there (actually on it's way back to Marks Motors) instead of supplies for school, or an empty lunch bag. "I'll give you a lift if you want. Not gonna get any drier but it'll be faster."

Falco, for good or ill, was among those people who were either too unobservant, or too uninterested to have any particular awareness of his students preferences in relationships, and the thought in question hadn't occurred to him. Instead he wondered if Zac perhaps thought he was in trouble of some form, or if Falco had a secret tendency to kidnap children in his class and chain them up as slave labor at the mechanic shop.

"Hop on then, the Helmets right behind." He shrugged "Make sure it's fastened. That's the rules on this ride. If you want to ride without one, You can fill out your own will and get your own bike."

"Smart man." He flashed a grim smile under the helmet as he waited for Zac to buckle into the helmet. "I assume I don't have to tell you to hang on?" He added.

He pulled away from the curb again when he was sure Zac wasn't just going to launch clean off the back of the motorcycle, craning his neck to make sure he knew where the other vehicles on the road were, especially since it was raining, which added to the distracting background noises.

Zac was tense, he couldn't have missed that with a sensory deprivation field. It reminded him why he didn't take passengers often. Pride wanted to dismiss it as inexperience with the way the motorcycle rode, but the ghost of old fear kept whispering in his ear that Zac was a smart kid. Might, just might, have noticed something that he had not. It was a bit distracting when he didn't care to be distracted, and it made him go a bit more slowly, a bit more cautiously than he might other wise have, though on every straight away he itched to open it up a little, let the bike fly in spite of the dangers of the rain.

He really didn't need to traumatize the kid though. The last thing he needed was an angry parent calling the school board. He could always work for the garage full time, but much as he hated to admit it he kind of liked his job. He liked teaching the kids something real and honest they could do with their hands. How to build and rebuild an amazing machine, and liked to think that a few of them might find a future in it, the ones who weren't interested in, or might drop out of, "higher callings" at the university. Callings like that were as high as you let them be. Better to be happy than rich, in his book. God knew there were enough rich idiots in Destiny City producing I'll behaved children who ended up at St. Maggies or Hillworth to be reminded that money could only fix so much.

Eventually you had to suck it up and fix the rest yourself, or end up muttering to your flea bitten dog in the gutter, swilling cheap whiskey. Maybe not in a year, but eventually.

He didn't slow down fully until they approached the school, the motorcycle growling and gurgleing hungrily as they pulled up to the curb and stopped, Falco putting a foot out in lieu of a kick stand, waiting for Zac to disembark.

" Shouldn't" Falco assured with a slight shrug. "Unless your folks have a serious problem with motorcycles that I don't know about."

That was an unfortunate possibility, but he'd been careful for a reason, and hoped he hasn't just given the braniac unfortunate ideas about blackmail. He wasn't entirely sure what he'd do about that, but he would cross that bridge when he came to it.