Newsies Road Trip AU (nope, no creative title)

Part 1: Morning.

***********************************************************************

Lower Manhattan, NY.

Day 1.

4:00 AM.

***********************************************************************

JACK KELLY was exhausted. For what felt like the first time in his life, he had been promised the chance to get a decent amount of sleep and had planned accordingly. Because of this, he was completely unprepared to be jolted awake at this hour by a loud car horn. Sighing heavily, he dragged himself out of bed and landed with a loud thump on the scratched wooden floor.

"'Morning, Jack!" Crutchie was already up and fully dressed. He glanced at the small window. "You know why there's a van outside honking at us?" There was something in his expression that told Jack that he already knew but wasn't going to tell him just yet. "It's been out there for at least five minutes, but I thought I should wait until you were awake before I told you." He smiled crookedly. "Doesn't do much good to ask a half-dead lump for help."

Jack dressed at the usual breakneck pace that he employed on mornings like these (that is, mornings when there was something strange and obnoxious that he needed to either resolve or beat into submission) and stepped outside. It was a beautiful morning, he briefly noted, sunny and unseasonably warm, but with a bit of a chill lingering in the air. And here he was, awake at four in the morning and not enjoying it from his bedroom like any sensible human being.

"Hi, Jack!" Davey waved from the driver's seat of the old, scratched-up van. "You ready for an adventure?"

"What the heck is this?" was all that Jack could think of as a reply.

"It's the Jacobsmobile!"

"Well, what's the Jacobsmobile doing in front of my apartment making this much noise at four in the morning?"

"Jack Kelly," Davey began, grinning in that strange, watch-me-do-a-trick way that Jack had only seen him use once. "Prepare yourself for the journey of a lifetime."