Smoke #2

[Smoke]

It had been several days since the fire that he and Ward had witnessed on the ride home from Rack-Its, and the days had been enlightening to Smoke. He thought about the firefighters that he'd seen in the building, and how they risked their lives by stepping into the fire. He thought about the fire itself. Someone had started it, and then it had just gone on doing what it did. That didn't make it malicious, or a tool of evil.... But it could be manipulated and used as a weapon of hate and destruction by those so inclined on that route. He thought about them. Whether common crook or champion of evil, whether figure of myth and legend or figure on Skyline City's Public Enemy list, they all had a motivation of some kind. What drove them in their pursuits.... Smoke stopped suddenly, his mind freezing as it asked itself a new question. "Why do you care, Smoke?"

There was a minor twitch in his face, and suddenly he seemed to fragment, even shaping him visibly as multiple faces seemed to overlay over where one face should rest. The voices. There were too many voices in his head.

"They're atrocious!"
   "Maybe I can find them and stop them."
"They deserve to be punished."
   "I just want to stay away from them."
"They know something I don't."
   "I just want to go home."
"Watch and learn. I'll show them what taking what want means."
   "I will never be like them!"

The front door to Ward's apartment creaked open, the sound ripping Smoke out of his internal flood of thoughts. "Carter? You in?"

Smoke blinked a few times, dismissing the chorus of voices sounding in his thoughts as a human might a bad dream.... What had that been? He'd felt like he'd been pulled in so many different directions.... Some of them not places he wished to go. "Y-yeah. I'm here." He shifted to an upright position more than stood before walking in towards the front door of the little place.

"Good. I was hoping so. Listen, I've got some students that need a hand. They drove their car off the side of the road, and they're stuck in the ditch. I was going to go and pull them out with my truck...." He looked at Smoke as though that explained everything. Smoke felt like he was being tested.... He racked his brain for what his friend might be getting at, before deciding on a guess....

"And you want me to go with you?"

"Yeah...." Ward looked a little put off by the reaction. "I mean, unless you're busy... doing... whatever it is strange men made of... smoke do.... I thought an extra pair of hands would speed things up."

"Not at all. I just wished to be sure I understood you. I'm ready to go. Are you?"

Within a few moments, the pair were out in Ward's truck, and Smoke was musing idly again....

"Ward, you sleep an awful lot." Smoke was greeted with an offended "Heyyy" from his friend in the driver's seat.

"No really. If you struggle with not having enough time in the day for your work, why don't you just try sleeping less." As a being of energy and will, Smoke didn't sleep. And he wondered at times what it was like. Human beings did so much of it, but complained at their lack of time? It made little sense to him.

"I don't sleep that much, Carter." Ward growled under his breath, though Smoke was beginning to suspect that it wasn't true anger he was seeing here... maybe.

"About six hours every night." Smoke fired back. He'd watched. And timed it for consistency. Even searched for hidden patterns in how many breaths the man breathed before waking up. So far, he hadn't found a pattern.

"Well you try going without sleep some time." Ward snapped back at him. Things were quiet in the car for a moment, then he conceded. "Actually, I haven't seen you sleep a wink since you first woke up."

"I rest sometimes." Smoke volunteered helpfully.

Ward just shook his head and muttered under his breath about if he "could do that...."

Ahead, Smoke and Ward could see the car in the ditch. A mournful shade of faded red on a small sedan. Ward pulled off to the side of the road and parked his truck nearby before shutting off the ignition, and pulling the keys loose. They were out on a little road near a some hills and mountains popular with campers. Some even braved the caves nearby to go spelunking.

"Do you see them, Ward?" Smoke asked, reasonably sure that he knew the answer before he asked the question.

"Nope."

[Smoke]

"Honestly. Of all the times to wander away, they had to pick now?... Give me a moment. I'll try to call them." Ward said in a tone that Smoke was fast coming to recognize as complaint, or griping. It seemed like his friend did quite a bit of that. It must be "in vogue". He listened to the sounds in the air, taking in the soft mountain breeze and the fresh clean air. It felt different out here than it did in the city, and sounds seemed to travel more freely. He heard the voicemail message click on as Ward was calling them, before he closed down the call with another gripe.... It was really making Smoke want to try out griping himself.

"Is there a better time for them to wander away?" The will-bound cloud couldn't think of a good time for such an occurrence, but maybe Ward knew things that he didn't. The puff out of his friend's mouth suggested not though.

"Not when I'm trying to rescue them from the ditch, for starters. Here. Lets get the chains out and hook them up." They set about the relatively simple task of getting the truck hooked to the car, chatting as they did so. Smoke quickly grew distracted though, and let his attention spread. As he kept the main body of his form with Ward and working on pulling the car out, he let some of the wispier parts of himself spread out across the area. He wandered, taking in the sights around the place, even as he remained focused back at their vehicles. They got the car out, and still no sign of Ward's acquaintances....

"I'm going to call them again." He muttered under his breath as he and Smoke waited by the roadside. The car, while certainly not in stallar shape, seemed to be running fine. That was a blessing at least. It just needed its drivers. The ringing dialed out, and Smoke heard it ring a few times as Ward held it up to his ear, waiting for a response. A few rings, and then Smoke found himself twitching at a sound somewhere out in the green, off the road. He bent his attention onto it, drifting himself towards the sound, only to find a phone laying on the ground, vibrating feverishly. Smoke bent enough will on the wisps by the phone to turn it over, and see "WILLIAMS" labeled on screen.

Returning his attention back to his body near Ward, he spoke up, getting the man's attention, letting the rest of him drift apart again. "I found something, Ward. You should follow me." He headed off into the green, hearing an incredulous Ward behind him question where they were going and then gripe some more. He seemed fixated on the idea that Smoke hadn't moved from helping get the car up and running again their whole visit. That seemed a foolish and naive thing for someone to assume. They reached the place where the phone was, and ward simply quieted, as Smoke pointed out the phone to him. Ward called his student one more time for confirmation, and is started buzzing in his hand as soon as he called. "Yep. That's Todd's phone." He looked a little lost, and a little worried now, and started looking around the area.