RP Log - Chat About Mech and Other Topics
Who: Jamie and Lockon
When: a few weeks ago
Where: hangar
Rating: G
Warnings: none
Summary: Lockon and Jamie talk for the second time.
Lockon headed into hangar with Haro. The little robot was getting bored, so he thought he'd at least run some checks on Dynames's systems to give him something to do. Haro bounced happily after Lockon into the hangar.
Perched on the Geno Saurer's hind claw, taking a break from some maintanence work, Jamie glanced up as he heard someone enter the hangar. Seeing it was the new pilot (and said pilot's little robot), Jamie called out a greeting. "Hey. How's it going?"
Lockon paused and looked up. "Hey," he called, waving to Jamie. "I'm doing well. How about you?"
Haro flapped. "Haro! Haro!"
"I'm pretty good." Jamie hopped down from his perch and meandered over so the two of them didn't have to yell at each other. "So you're out of the first aid station, huh? Getting settled in okay?"
Lockon nodded. "I've been out of the first aid station for a few days. I've started getting settled," he remarked as Haro rolled over and stopped by Lockon's leg. "I found my hut which is a good first step. I bought somethings to go into it, but its still rather strange."
"Yeah, it takes some getting used to," Jamie agreed with a nod, idly watching Haro make its way over. "Took me a while when I first wound up here."
Lockon nodded. "The room itself is kind of strange since the rooms we had on our base and in the Ptolemy were smaller than that. Also...its rather strange not being near at least one of my teammates."
Jamie offered another sympathetic nod. "Yeah...being away from people you know is kinda tough. Before I came here I'd always had my teammates around, too. It was weird knowing they weren't anywhere nearby."
Lockon nodded. "Well, hopefully they will show up and that problem will be solved," he said with a slight smile. He picked Haro. "I wanted to thank you again...for helping me find Haro."
"Oh, sure." Jamie smiled a bit and bobbed his head. "No problem."
Haro flapped happily.
"So is that your mech?" Lockon asked, looking up at the mech that Jamie had just climbed down off of.
"Mm? Yeah. Well...kind of." He shrugged a bit, half-grinning in an almost sheepish manner. "Her original pilot disappeared and she got left here, so I started taking care of her. After that she kinda...chose me to be her new pilot."
Lockon nodded. "That's interesting. So what is the mech called?"
"She's a Geno Saurer...'s a kind of Zoid. There's another one here, too - the Raynos - but its...pilot took it out, I guess." He said this with restrained and barely-palpable unease.
Lockon nodded and decided not to focus on the fact that Jamie seemed uneasy. "Let me go put Haro in my Gundam so he can start running some tests... would you like to see how Dynames works?"
"Sure." Jamie brightened a bit at that; it was always interesting seeing how the machines from other worlds worked, and he was curious to see exactly how Haro interfaced with the Gundam and controlled it.
"Alright then." He lead the way over to his Gundam. The ladder was still lowered from when he had been in there before. He climbed up, very adaptly for having the carry a spherical robot at the same time. He stopped on the hatch to wait for Jamie.
Jamie followed him up, noticing the ease with which Lockon managed the ladder while carrying his unweildy little partner, and pulled himself onto the hatch. "Have you gotten to look at any of the other Gundams yet?" he asked, peering over into Dynames' cockpit.
"Not yet," Lockon remarked stepping and sitting down in the chair. "There's enough room for you to come in as well," he remarked. Even though he didn't know this. It wasn't as cramped as the other pilots' Gundams.
The size of the cockpit somewhat surprised Jamie, as with the exception of Nobel's, all the cockpits Jamie had ever seen or been in had been small, almost claustrophobic affairs. Jamie stepped in and crouched near the hatch, eyes flicking over the control consoles and noting the similarities and differences Dynames bore to the other Gundams and the Zoids.
Lockon then closed the hatch. At his right was a small circular console with a depression in it. That is where he set Haro. "Okay, buddy," he told the robot. "We're going to run a systems check."
"Roger! Roger!" Haro replied.
Lockon looked back over at Jamie. "I can still show you about Dynames while he does that."
Jamie watched as Lockon set Haro into one of the consoles - he'd noticed it during his earlier examination and had surmised that it was designed to hold the little robot - and nodded at the older pilot's offer. "Okay, sure."
"Well, Dynames is a sniper so," Lockon reached up and pulled down what looked like a spy scope. "This allows me to aim from a viewing port in Dynames's head."
"Huh." Jamie peered at it and nodded. "Makes sense. We've got sniper Zoids back home, but the rifles are built into their tails, so sniping's a little more complicated than this."
Lockon nodded. "Usually Haro controls Dynames when I am aiming." He put the rifle back and started using the console to bring up information about the Gundam. He told Jamie about the capabilities of Dynames as he did.
Jamie listened intently as Lockon explained the Gundam's workings. "Sounds a little different from the other Gundams here," he said when the sniper had finished, "but not too much. 's more similar to their Gundams than Allenby's is, anyway."
"What's Allenby's like?" Lockon asked, pressing a few buttons to check on Haro's progress.
"Mn...well, the cockpit's pretty much empty," Jamie began. "'s because the control interface for hers is called a 'trace system.' She wears a suit that's got sensors built into it that translate her body movements into movements for her Gundam."
Lockon blinked. "That's certainly an interesting way of doing it. It makes sense. It's still just rather odd in my mind."
Jamie grinned a bit. "Yeah, that's what I thought, too. We don't have anything like that where I come from...wouldn't really be practical anyway for animal-shaped mechs."
Lockon chuckled. "Indeed it wouldn't. That might be a bit awkward."
Haro flapped. "Very awkward! Very awkward!"
Jamie's grin widened a little at Haro's comment. "Yeah, probably. So we just stick to regular manual controls like you've got in here."
Lockon nodded. "That's probably a good bet. It seems like it would be easier to me. Of course that's way I've always done it."
"Yeah, me too...'s hard to imagine doing it any other way. Then again, at first it was hard to imagine there being mechs that weren't Zoids, period."
Lockon nodded. "The mech here all look rather different. Even the Gundams from a different universe. I mean there's the basic design in there, but it seems like there are variations."
"Mm...I'm actually a little surprised that the similarities are there at all," Jamie said. "I mean, considering they're all from entirely different worlds, it seems like pretty steep odds that they'd share anything in common, especially considering some of the worlds represented here don't even have anything like Gundams."
Lockon nodded. "That is kind of remarkable. That does seem like a shot in the dark at them having anything in common."
Jamie looked momentarily thoughtful, chewing his lip. "Then again, in a way it's kind of a big coincidence that so many different worlds have just...regular people. I mean, yeah, there's stuff like the Guardians and...other people who aren't exactly human," he hedged, unsure if Lockon had met the resident vampire or werewolf, "but most everyone here looks and acts and thinks like a human."
Lockon nodded. "The only who doesn't fit the typical idea is the werewolf, but he acts fairly human from what I've seen. The only one I know who really doesn't is Haro, but he's a robot with AI."
"Oh, you've met Jon, huh?" Jamie said with a faint grin. "Yeah, he looks way different than anyone else here, but he acts more human than some of the actual humans I've known. And way more human than some of the things here that look human," he added more darkly, thinking of the mazoku.
Lockon hadn't met any of these people yet, but he could tell that this was a subject not to be touched. So instead he went with a reference he knew. "Tieria is kind of the same way."
Shaking off his momentary sour mood, Jamie glanced back at Lockon. "'s he one of your friends from back home?"
Lockon nodded. "He is one of my teammates. Very dedicated to missions. Let's put it this and you can't repeat this to Tieria if he shows up, Tieria would make a cute girl, but his personality is colder than ice."
The corner of Jamie's mouth twitched up in a half-grin at the description, which struck him as more than a little...odd. He recognized the personality type, though. "There's a couple people here like that," he said. "The cold as ice part, not the...'would make a cute girl' part."
Lockon laughed. "I would imagine the cold as ice part. There's always some of those. Tieria...he's something special. Luckily, the other two aren't that bad. Trust me though, if all three of the remaining pilots arrived and I only pointed them out as Gundam pilots, based on my description you'd be able to pick out Tieria."
Jamie chuckled a bit. "He's that bad, huh?"
Lockon nodded. "Unfortunately. He holds a grudge if you don't complete the mission exactly. He still kind of distrusts Allelujah to actually complete the mission after Allelujah completely forgot about the mission to save civilians after the section of the gravity ring they were in broke off and started drifting towards Earth. He berated Allelujah for using my assistance in that so he and another craft could push it back into orbit. And..." Lockon heaved a sigh before continuing. "He has threatened to shoot our youngest pilot in the back if he messed up the mission."
Jamie blinked at this last, looking a little stunned. "Uh...wow. Yeah, that...sounds pretty cold, all right," he agreed. "I mean, one of my teammates is a mercenary and refuses to fight if he doesn't get paid for it, but...he's never actually threatened to kill anyone."
Lockon nodded. "Tieria listens to Veda too much... way too much. That's partially why he is so set on our missions. I swear, if Veda told him to wear his glasses crooked, he would."
The teen grinned again at the comment and asked, "Who's Veda?"
"Veda is the computer that gives us our missions," Lockon remarked.
Jamie chuckled a bit at the thought of a computer ordering someone to wear their glasses crooked. "Yeah, guess there's such a thing as following orders too closely," he said, and ventured, after a pause "Kinda sounds like maybe he doesn't know how to think for himself."
Lockon nodded. "I suspect that. When he messes up a mission, he beats himself up about it for a while."
"Tieria! Tieria!" Haro piped up and an image of someone appeared on the screen. This person has shoulder length purple hair, red eyes, and was wearing glasses. At the bottom of the image could be seen a pale yellow button up shirt covered by a pink cardigan.
Lockon chuckled.
Jamie blinked at the image. "That's him, huh?" Jamie had to admit, the guy was awfully effeminate-looking. "I, uh...see what you mean about him making a cute girl." As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Jamie felt a little weird having said them.
Lockon chuckled. "Yeah...He certainly doesn't help change people's image of that." He shook his head as Haro removed the image from the screen. "Luckily, he's the only one in our group...both for being cold and looking like he's a girl."
"Sounds like he's all the cold personality any group of people needs, from what you've told me," Jamie agreed. "Does it bother him that people think he looks girly?"
"Not that I've seen. Most of the time he is either piloting or on the Ptolemy. That's our space transport ship. He hates being on Earth."
"Huh. Why's that? Something about Earth bother him?"
"Probably...he doesn't talk about himself much. We all kept our pasts secret, even from each other. One of the girls on the Ptolemy...her parents were Gundam Meisters before we took over...they died, somehow. That's all she knows."
That reminded Jamie of a few other people he knew... "Mn. Guess everyone's got things they don't like to talk about." He fell silent for a moment or two, looking back around the cockpit. "So...Gundam Meisters. 's that what they call pilots, in your world?" he asked, glancing back at Lockon.
Lockon nodded. "Celestial Beings is the name of the group as a whole. Gundam Meisters are the pilots chosen to carry out the mission. In order of descending age, there's myself, Tieria Erde, Allelujah Haptism, and Setsuna F. Seiei." He paused for a moment. "There were three more, but I really don't count them as Gundam Meisters even though they said they were."
Jamie noted the pause, but wasn't quite sure what to make of it. "...why's that?" he asked, a little guardedly.
"Because they showed up in the middle of our missions, one of them threatened me, and their way of completing the missions was a lot different. They didn't care if they went through civilians to complete the mission. Also the girl's Haro attacked my Haro."
Jamie wrinkled his nose a bit at the description. "They don't sound too nice," he agreed. "How'd the other Haro attack yours, though?" If it was anything like the specimen currently sharing the cockpit with them, it didn't exactly look attack-capable.
"Haro are lightweight for their size and makeup," Lockon explained. "When in space, they float. My Haro was attempting to talk to other Haro and it became unjustly annoyed at my Haro and rammed him, sending him flying backwards."
"Huh." Jamie glanced briefly at Lockon's Haro. "That was mean of it."
"Big brother was mean!" Haro remarked, flapping. "Big brother was mean!"
Lockon nodded. "He was."
"'Big brother'?" Jamie repeated, arching an eyebrow. "Why d'you call him that?"
"I think the other Haro was an older model Haro," Lockon remarked. "There's kind of a hierarchy of Haro. Mine is called 'Big brother' by four other Haro. That's the only reason I could come up with."
Jamie hm'd again, grinning a bit. "Well, that makes sense, I guess. The Geno was based off another Zoid - cloned from it, actually, I think - and she said she was 'descended' from it. Never really thought about Zoids or robots having family relations like that, but it kinda fits."
Lockon nodded. "It does. So tell me some about your world. We've only been talking about mine," he said. The screen said the scan was complete so Lockon removed Haro from his console and opened the hatch so if they could get out whenever.
Taking that as his cue, Jamie moved out onto the hatch. "My world? Um." He paused, gathering his thoughts. Even though he was well accustomed by now to the idea of multiple universes, it was still a little strange trying to describe his own when specifically prompted to do so. "Well, I live on a planet called Zi. It's...really far away from Earth, I can't even remember how many light-years. The first colonists settled there hundreds of years ago."
Lockon got up and headed onto the hatch with him. "That's interesting. Colonists from Earth?"
"Yeah. Well, supposedly." Jamie shrugged a bit, stepping to the side to make more room for Lockon. "I guess a lot of information about life on Earth was lost between the first settlement and now...er, the time I'm from," he amended. "So nobody back home really knows much about what Earth was like. I mean, we know a little, but...not a whole lot."
Lockon nodded. "I would imagine. Especially if it is several lightyears away."
"Yeah...I still get confused when people from Earth talk about it. Feels like I'm out of the loop, sometimes." He grinned a bit ruefully. "They've got all these countries and languages and customs and animals...'s all really different from anything on Zi. I'm a little more familiar with some of it now, knowing all these other people from Earth, but sometimes they'll still say stuff that goes right over my head."
"That happens to everyone," Lockon remarked. "I know that's happened to me before. So what do you have on Zi?"
"Well...we've got Zoids," he started, gesturing across the hangar at the Geno Saurer. "They were on Zi before humans were. We used to use them to fight wars, but there haven't been any of those for a while, so now we mostly use 'em in sporting competitions."
Lockon nodded. "Those are very interesting mech. I kind of wish our Gundams could be used only for sporting events."
"I guess we're pretty lucky that's all we need to use Zoids for," Jamie agreed, somewhat somberly. "'s a lot of people here whose worlds were involved in wars."
Lockon nodded. "I know about this...I wish I knew if the war where I'm from is over."
Jamie nodded a little sympathetically. "Yeah...guess that'd be pretty worrying to think about." He shrugged a bit, looking momentarily wistful, though he was quick to hide it. "Guess everyone wants to know what's going on back home, though." Even though they weren't involved in anything as earth-shattering as a war, Jamie still sometimes wished he knew what his teammates were up to, especially now that Leena'd gotten sent back.
Lockon nodded. "So I assume you fought on a team back home on Zi?" Haro flapped and Lockon set him down.
"Yeah, ours was called the Blitz Team. My dad's friend was our sponsor, and his two kids were on the team for a while...Leon left, but Leena's still there. Or...was, when I left. She was here for a little while, too, but she got sent home."
"Ah. Sounds like it would be interesting. A much better way than we had to do it." He gestured to the Genosaur. "Was that one yours? No, wait, you said it belonged to someone else."
Jamie nodded, gazing at the blue Zoid from their vantage point on Dynames' cockpit hatch. "Her original pilot was someone named Ryss, but...Ryss got sent home and the Geno stayed here. I dunno why." He trailed off, chewing his lip a bit. "At first, back home, I had a Pteras," he explained, smiling fondly. The expression faltered as he continued, "But it got totalled and the Doc traded it in for the Raynos. That's the Zoid that wound up here with me."
Lockon shook his head. "That's a shame about it getting totalled. That's never a good thing."
"Nope," Jamie agreed, still looking a little mournful. "The Raynos is okay and all," he went on, just a little grudgingly, "and I guess I've got the Geno now, but the Pteras was my first Zoid. I still kinda miss it." Well, 'kinda' was an understatement, but he didn't want to seem too senselessly attached to the thing. He got the feeling that kind of affection for one's machine wasn't something many pilots shared.
Lockon nodded. "I know what you mean." He put his hand against Dynames. "People get attached to their mech. It becomes an extension of themselves. Humans can't fly on their own, but mech can give them the feeling that they themselves are flying." Haro flapped.
Jamie brightened a little at Lockon's description, grinning tentatively. "Yeah, exactly! 's like...even if you're not all that strong on your own, having a mech kinda makes you feel a little bigger. More...protected, I guess." He shrugged, feeling he wasn't explaining himself very well, but then again this wasn't the sort of thing that could be explained easily.
Lockon nodded. "It's like you can do whatever the mech is able to do. I mean I may be a good sniper, but gravity eventually prevents me from being able to fire beyond a certain distance. With Dynames, I can. And Haro...outside of the Gundam, he doesn't have many physical capabilities, but using Dynames he can do nearly everything I can in the Gundam."
The teen nodded agreement, his smile becoming a bit less tentative. "That's kind of how I feel about being a strategist, too," he said. "I'm not the greatest pilot, but knowing what the rest of my team's Zoids and our opponents' Zoids can do lets me kinda...pilot 'em by proxy, I guess, and maneuver 'em however I want. As much as I like piloting, I can almost do more by creating a strategy than I can when I'm actually in a cockpit." He paused and gave a self-conscious chuckle. "...I dunno if that makes any sense."
"No, it makes perfect sense," Lockon remarked. "Sumeragi...she's our strategist, I get the feeling she feels similarly when she is planning our strategy. She tries to plan what exactly happens, like she is trying to determine the outcome before it happens."
"Well, I think that's what every strategist aims for," Jamie conceded, "but there's no way you can determine one hundred percent what's going to happen in any given situation. It's mostly making educated guesses based on whatever data you happen to have on your opponents. And even the most unskilled opponent is going to do something to throw a wrench in your plans, at least until you get to know their fighting style a little better."
Lockon nodded. "Allelujah and Tieria nearly got captured when one of her predictions went astray. She predicted the transports would keep heading towards the Ptolemy even after Allelujah and Tieria's Gundams had been sent out and then they could circle around an attack from behind. However, two unmanned transports were sent to intercept each of them, which slowed them down."
Jamie nodded, looking intrigued. "The hard part is outthinking your opponent. Even knowing what equipment they have and what it's capable of, or how they usually move, there's always the chance they'll do something completely different just to throw you off."
Lockon nodded. "I know that, but strategizing was never my strong point so I'll leave that to people to who are better at it, like you and Sumeragi."
The younger pilot ducked his head a bit, looking sheepish. "Heh...yeah, sorry. Guess I was kinda rambling there, huh?"
"Nah, it's fine," Lockon said with a chuckle. "I could start rambling too so there's nothing wrong with it."
"Okay," Jamie said, with another slight bob of his head. "I know strategies and stuff aren't all that exciting to most people who aren't actually strategists, so..."
"I understand about strategies and that kind of thing since we needed to know about them for our job. However, I probably couldn't do it as well as some people."
"Well, I guess it's not the kind of thing everyone's cut out for," Jamie admitted, with a light shrug and grin. "Just like not everyone can use a sniping mech properly."
Lockon chuckled. "Of course, of course. It's a skill, just like being a strategist."
"Yup, pretty much. Everyone's got different things they're good at...'s what makes a well-rounded team."
Lockon nodded. "Indeed it does. So what kind of people were on your team back home?"
"Well, there were four of us, plus Doc - that's our sponsor, Leena and Leon's dad. Leena's...mn. Kind of a hothead. She likes heavy artillery Zoids that can make big explosions, pretty much. Her latest one was actually designed for sniping," he said, vaguely indicating Dynames, "but she loaded it down with a lot of missile pods and beam cannons and stuff. It used to be here, but I guess it went home when she did."
Lockon chuckled. "Dynames does have missiles as well, but they are headed in compartments. It would have been interesting to at least what it looked like."
Jamie grinned a bit. "I could try to sketch out a diagram sometime. It was a Gun Sniper...that's a velociraptor type, same basic build as the Geno Saurer, just a lot smaller. They're usually pretty fast and agile, but Leena's had to sacrifice a lot of that to carry as much weaponry as it did."
Lockon nodded, looking over at the Geno Saurer. "Sounds like it. Usually snipers need to be quick in order to not be caught. But I would like to see a sketch of it sometime."
"Sure, I'll see what I can do. I'm...not exactly an artist, though. Just to warn you," he added with a self-depricating grin.
"It's fine," Lockon remarked. "I'm not much of one either so I can't talk."
Jamie nodded, thinking back to Lockon's original question. "So...that's Leena. Leon's her older brother...he wasn't actually part of our team, last I heard - he left about a year before I wound up here, to train on his own and become a better pilot. He's...calm, usually. Really driven, really ambitious. Used to talk a lot about people's 'potential' to do things."
"Ah ha." Lockon nodded. "Sounds like an interesting guy."
"He was. Er - is. I kinda looked up to him." He paused before continuing with his description of his teammates. "Um...I guess Bit's next. He's real cheerful, upbeat...kinda headstrong and impulsive. Leena always said he was an idiot. She was kinda right." He grinned. "He's a good guy, though. And he's the only one who could pilot the Liger Zero...it wouldn't let anyone else control it."
Lockon blinked. "So the mech chose its own pilot?"
"Well, pretty much, yeah. Zoids are alive, and they can sorta think for themselves, but not the way the Liger did. I mean, most Zoids'll let anyone into their cockpit, but the Liger threw a fit whenever anyone tried to pilot it. We thought it was useless until Bit came along."
"Hmm...that's interesting," Lockon remarked. "Anyone can get into a Gundam as long as the cockpit is open. Of course you have to know how pilot it after that."
"Yeah, I guess that'd be the sticking point," Jamie agreed. "The Liger's controls look pretty much the same as any other Zoid's controls, and I guess it handles the same...it just won't let anyone handle it, other than Bit."
"Is there a reason for that?"
"Actually, yeah." Jamie nodded. "It's a special kind of Zoid called an Ultimate X, so it's got what's called an Organoid System permanently bonded to its Core - that's kind of a Zoid's heart and brain," he added. "Anyway, the Organoid System makes it smarter than other Zoids so it can learn from any battle it participates in and act accordingly. And I guess it also gives the Zoid an attitude." He grinned.
Lockon chuckled. "I guess it would. There's been sometimes where I wished that my mobile suit had actually learned from battles that had happened before so I guess that comes in handy."
"It definitely did for us," Jamie said. "Bit and the Liger more or less won the Royal Cup for us...that's a big contest held every four years to decide who gets to move up into Class S. I mean," he amended, realizing how childish it probably sounded to an actual soldier fighting in an actual war, "it's not really all that important in the grand scheme of things, I guess, but...it's a pretty big deal where I come from." He shrugged and offered another self-conscious half-smile.
"It's important for ranking," Lockon remarked. He understood that it was similiar to sporting events on his world.
"Well, yeah." Jamie nodded. "Class S is pretty much the best of the best. The battles are more challenging and the prize money's better than it is in the lower ranks...and, well, there's always the fame." Not that Jamie'd gotten to enjoy any of that before he'd gotten pulled into the desert...
Lockon nodded. "Sounds like a lot of sporting events."
The teen shrugged a bit. "I guess so. Zoid battles're the only sport I really know anything about...we don't have a whole lot more than that back home."
Lockon nodded. "I haven't been to sporting events for a while thanks to the war."
"Mn. Guess fighting in a war would kinda get in the way of stuff like that, yeah," Jamie conceded.
Lockon nodded. "But it happens. I kind of hope the others will show up. They need a vacation too," he said with a chuckle.
"Vacations are always good," Jamie agreed. "And it's nice to have people you know here." He paused. "...what're your teammates like? Other than, uh...Tieria?"
"Well, Setsuna, he's the youngest. He has kind of mysterious personality, one of those people who seem distant and somewhat dark. But he's a good kid. But he refers to himself as Gundam at time." Lockon chuckled at this.
Jamie grinned too, a little. "...why's he do that?"
Lockon shrugged. "I have no idea. He just does. Then there's Allelujah. He's rather quiet most of the time. And usually he's a good person. But sometimes...I guess the best way to put it is to say he has a split personality."
"Hallelujah! Hallelujah!" Haro said.
At this, Jamie blanched, his eyes widening. Realizing how he must look, he hurriedly schooled his expression into something more neutral. "Uh...really? Th - um. That's, uh...interesting."
Lockon didn't seem to think anything about Jamie looking surprised. "He's not crazy, honest. It's more a part of him is, but his personality is dominate most of the time."
"Aheh. Nothing crazy about that." Jamie smiled a bit nervously. "I guess it...happens. Doesn't make him a...bad person, or anything."
Lockon shook his head. "He's a good person. From what I've noticed, he's the one of our group who doesn't want to hurt people. His alternate personality is kind of that other side of him... Please don't think he's crazy if he shows up." Lockon said, rubbing the back of his head.
Jamie blinked, looking a bit startled and just a little guilty. "...oh. Oh! Yeah, I, um...I won't. I mean, I know how - uh. I mean, I understand. I'm sure he's a nice guy. Really." He tried to offer a more sincere, less neurotic-looking smile to replace the antsy grimace he'd been sporting just now.
Lockon nodded. "Thanks. Sorry if mentioning that made you kind of nervous."
"Ahh...it's okay. Didn't mean to, y'know...freak out on you there." Despite the fact that Lockon would almost certainly find out about Wild Eagle sooner or later, particularly now that the two of them had been separated, Jamie still felt uncomfortable admitting to his alter's existence, and being confronted with the possibility put him on the defensive.
"It's fine. Let's forget I mentioned it." He knew they wouldn't forget, but hopefully it would take the emphasis off Allelujah's condition.
"...eheh. Okay." Jamie fidgeted a bit. "Um...so who else is on your team?"
"That's everyone who are Gundam pilots. There's also other people who work on Ptolemy. There's Sumeragi, our strategist. Christina, Feldt, Lichtendahl, Lasse, they all work on the bridge of the Ptolemy."
"Sounds like you have a lot of support crew," Jamie commented, relaxing a little now that the topic of conversation had changed. "Ptolemy's your transport ship?"
Lockon nodded. "It is. That's where our Gundams are stored and repaired. We also have a couple Haros than just this one that assist with repairs and other various functions. Techinically, this one belongs to Celestial Being, but he usually assists me," he said gesturing to Haro.
Jamie grinned a bit at the orange robot before looking back to Lockon. "Our transport's called the Hovercargo...it's a snail-type carrier Zoid. Doc designed it himself. We have a base where we keep our Zoids most of the time, but the Hovercargo's got better eqipment to make repairs and stuff...and of course we use it to move the Zoids from the base to the battlefield."
"Hmm...interesting. I would imagine it doesn't go very fast, though."
"Not too fast, considering its size...a little over four hundred kilometers an hour, tops, but keeping it at that speed for very long'll put a lot of strain on it. Just running it at its average speed, most of our Zoids can outpace it pretty easy."
Lockon nodded. "It makes sense. That can happen. Usually transports are slower since they are the ones carrying more than their own weight."
Jamie actually chuckled a bit at this. "Funny that you put it that way...one time a bunch of Sinkers were attacking the Hovercargo and Doc actually told Bit and Brad to take their Zoids out and fight because they were weighing the Hovercargo down and making it harder to escape."
Lockon chuckled. "Sounds like it, considering their size," he said nodding to the Zoid that was present in the hangar.
"Yeah...most Zoids aren't as tall as the Gundams, but they're a lot heavier. I dunno about yours, but the other Gundams weigh something like seven tons...the Raynos weighs thirty. Not really sure how much the Geno weighs..." He trailed off, frowning in thought.
"Gundam Dynames is 18 meters tall and 59 metric tons," Lockon remarked.
"Oh...really?" Jamie blinked and turned from his contemplative stare at the Geno to look back at Lockon. "That's a lot heavier than the other Gundams...makes more sense, to me," he added with a slight grin. "What's Dynames made out of? The others here are made out of something called Gundanium...'s why they're so light for their size."
Lockon shrugged. "Possibly because they are from a different world?" He wasn't quite sure why that was. "But Dynames isn't the heaviest. Tieria's Gundam Virtue is 66 tons."
"Mn...yeah, that's a possibility." Jamie blinked again, chewing his lip. "Our heaviest Zoids - wul, the regular combat-class Zoids, not the transports - weigh over two hundred tons, and they're just a little taller than Dynames." He grinned a bit. "So to me, your teammate's Gundam still kinda sounds like a lightweight."
Lockon blinked. "I can't imagine one that would way two hundred tons. That...that's kind of shocking."
"Guess it would seem that way, 'f you're not used to that kinda thing," Jamie agreed, and lifted one shoulder in a shrug. "Just like I was surprised to find out how light the other Gundams are."
Lockon nodded. "I guess it works both ways." He looked at the mech in the hangar. "Certainly are a lot of them." He half hoping to see one of the other pilot's mech, but none of them were there. "Do you have any family?" Lockon asked after a moment.
Jamie, following Lockon's gaze around the hangar, nodded once. "Just my dad," he said. "He was a Zoid pilot, too, for a while. Flew a Raynos like mine."
"Ah. Must have been interesting, having a father who was a pilot as well."
"Mm, yeah, kinda." Jamie's mouth twisted into something that was not quite smile and not quite frown. "He stopped piloting when I was still a kid, though, so I don't really remember what all he did as a pilot." Other than...crash, near-fatally, and even that was a little hazy. No point mentioning that, though. He glanced back over at the older pilot. "How about you? What's your family like?"
Lockon sighed. Even his teammates knew by this point so he might as well tell Jamie. "Both of my parents and my younger sister are died. Died in a terrorist attack."
Jamie winced, having effectively stepped in it twice, now. "...ah. I, um...I'm sorry. That must be pretty rough."
"It was rough," Lockon remarked. "Don't worry to much about having asked," he told Jamie, having noticed his wince. "I asked you first. And it was my choice to tell you."
Jamie managed a small smile. "Well - yeah, I guess." He paused and shifted uneasily, unsure what to say next, groping for a safe topic of conversation. "So um...have you been around the village much, yet?" he managed, somewhat lamely.
Lockon nodded. "I've gotten some stuff for my room, gotten some more clothes, wandered about with Haro, been to the cake a few times."
Jamie nodded. "Have you been assigned to a job yet, or found anyplace you wanna work?"
Lockon shook his head. "I haven't been assigned a job yet. The only job experience I have is military related and involves being a sniper, neither of which would help me here...so I'm not sure what I'd like to do."
"Well, a lot of the other pilots are working at the school or in the shops..." He shrugged a bit and offered a vaguely reassuring smile. "I'm sure there'll be something you can do."
Lockon smiled. "Thanks. This all still kind of new to me...the waking up and not having to jump in my Gundam to fight part I mean."
Haro flapped.
Jamie nodded. "Being here is practically a vacation for a lot of people," he agreed. "They don't have to fight or rule their countries or live up to anyone else's expectations while they're here. I can see how that'd be a nice change of pace."
"It is nice," Lockon agreed. "I'm not complaining about the vacation. It's just trying to tell my mind I don't have to constantly watch my back."
"Trying to convince yourself to relax, huh?" Jamie offered a small smile. "That can be tough to do, sometimes."
Lockon nodded. "I really haven't done that for a while. Been worrying about teammates, my brother, basically the state of the world as a whole."
"Sometimes it's way too easy to worry about stuff," Jamie agreed. He paused, shifted minutely and then ventured, "...your brother?"
"Oh, I forgot mention him before," Lockon said with a sheepish smile. "I have a brother...an identical twin."
"Oh." Jamie blinked a bit and nodded. "What's he like?"
"We have kind of similar personalities," Lockon remarked. "I haven't talked to him for a while... since I joined Celestial Being."
"Mn. 's too bad. What's he do for a living?"
"Not quite sure what he is doing at the moment," Lockon remarked. "It's been a while since I've talked to him."
When: a few weeks ago
Where: hangar
Rating: G
Warnings: none
Summary: Lockon and Jamie talk for the second time.
Lockon headed into hangar with Haro. The little robot was getting bored, so he thought he'd at least run some checks on Dynames's systems to give him something to do. Haro bounced happily after Lockon into the hangar.
Perched on the Geno Saurer's hind claw, taking a break from some maintanence work, Jamie glanced up as he heard someone enter the hangar. Seeing it was the new pilot (and said pilot's little robot), Jamie called out a greeting. "Hey. How's it going?"
Lockon paused and looked up. "Hey," he called, waving to Jamie. "I'm doing well. How about you?"
Haro flapped. "Haro! Haro!"
"I'm pretty good." Jamie hopped down from his perch and meandered over so the two of them didn't have to yell at each other. "So you're out of the first aid station, huh? Getting settled in okay?"
Lockon nodded. "I've been out of the first aid station for a few days. I've started getting settled," he remarked as Haro rolled over and stopped by Lockon's leg. "I found my hut which is a good first step. I bought somethings to go into it, but its still rather strange."
"Yeah, it takes some getting used to," Jamie agreed with a nod, idly watching Haro make its way over. "Took me a while when I first wound up here."
Lockon nodded. "The room itself is kind of strange since the rooms we had on our base and in the Ptolemy were smaller than that. Also...its rather strange not being near at least one of my teammates."
Jamie offered another sympathetic nod. "Yeah...being away from people you know is kinda tough. Before I came here I'd always had my teammates around, too. It was weird knowing they weren't anywhere nearby."
Lockon nodded. "Well, hopefully they will show up and that problem will be solved," he said with a slight smile. He picked Haro. "I wanted to thank you again...for helping me find Haro."
"Oh, sure." Jamie smiled a bit and bobbed his head. "No problem."
Haro flapped happily.
"So is that your mech?" Lockon asked, looking up at the mech that Jamie had just climbed down off of.
"Mm? Yeah. Well...kind of." He shrugged a bit, half-grinning in an almost sheepish manner. "Her original pilot disappeared and she got left here, so I started taking care of her. After that she kinda...chose me to be her new pilot."
Lockon nodded. "That's interesting. So what is the mech called?"
"She's a Geno Saurer...'s a kind of Zoid. There's another one here, too - the Raynos - but its...pilot took it out, I guess." He said this with restrained and barely-palpable unease.
Lockon nodded and decided not to focus on the fact that Jamie seemed uneasy. "Let me go put Haro in my Gundam so he can start running some tests... would you like to see how Dynames works?"
"Sure." Jamie brightened a bit at that; it was always interesting seeing how the machines from other worlds worked, and he was curious to see exactly how Haro interfaced with the Gundam and controlled it.
"Alright then." He lead the way over to his Gundam. The ladder was still lowered from when he had been in there before. He climbed up, very adaptly for having the carry a spherical robot at the same time. He stopped on the hatch to wait for Jamie.
Jamie followed him up, noticing the ease with which Lockon managed the ladder while carrying his unweildy little partner, and pulled himself onto the hatch. "Have you gotten to look at any of the other Gundams yet?" he asked, peering over into Dynames' cockpit.
"Not yet," Lockon remarked stepping and sitting down in the chair. "There's enough room for you to come in as well," he remarked. Even though he didn't know this. It wasn't as cramped as the other pilots' Gundams.
The size of the cockpit somewhat surprised Jamie, as with the exception of Nobel's, all the cockpits Jamie had ever seen or been in had been small, almost claustrophobic affairs. Jamie stepped in and crouched near the hatch, eyes flicking over the control consoles and noting the similarities and differences Dynames bore to the other Gundams and the Zoids.
Lockon then closed the hatch. At his right was a small circular console with a depression in it. That is where he set Haro. "Okay, buddy," he told the robot. "We're going to run a systems check."
"Roger! Roger!" Haro replied.
Lockon looked back over at Jamie. "I can still show you about Dynames while he does that."
Jamie watched as Lockon set Haro into one of the consoles - he'd noticed it during his earlier examination and had surmised that it was designed to hold the little robot - and nodded at the older pilot's offer. "Okay, sure."
"Well, Dynames is a sniper so," Lockon reached up and pulled down what looked like a spy scope. "This allows me to aim from a viewing port in Dynames's head."
"Huh." Jamie peered at it and nodded. "Makes sense. We've got sniper Zoids back home, but the rifles are built into their tails, so sniping's a little more complicated than this."
Lockon nodded. "Usually Haro controls Dynames when I am aiming." He put the rifle back and started using the console to bring up information about the Gundam. He told Jamie about the capabilities of Dynames as he did.
Jamie listened intently as Lockon explained the Gundam's workings. "Sounds a little different from the other Gundams here," he said when the sniper had finished, "but not too much. 's more similar to their Gundams than Allenby's is, anyway."
"What's Allenby's like?" Lockon asked, pressing a few buttons to check on Haro's progress.
"Mn...well, the cockpit's pretty much empty," Jamie began. "'s because the control interface for hers is called a 'trace system.' She wears a suit that's got sensors built into it that translate her body movements into movements for her Gundam."
Lockon blinked. "That's certainly an interesting way of doing it. It makes sense. It's still just rather odd in my mind."
Jamie grinned a bit. "Yeah, that's what I thought, too. We don't have anything like that where I come from...wouldn't really be practical anyway for animal-shaped mechs."
Lockon chuckled. "Indeed it wouldn't. That might be a bit awkward."
Haro flapped. "Very awkward! Very awkward!"
Jamie's grin widened a little at Haro's comment. "Yeah, probably. So we just stick to regular manual controls like you've got in here."
Lockon nodded. "That's probably a good bet. It seems like it would be easier to me. Of course that's way I've always done it."
"Yeah, me too...'s hard to imagine doing it any other way. Then again, at first it was hard to imagine there being mechs that weren't Zoids, period."
Lockon nodded. "The mech here all look rather different. Even the Gundams from a different universe. I mean there's the basic design in there, but it seems like there are variations."
"Mm...I'm actually a little surprised that the similarities are there at all," Jamie said. "I mean, considering they're all from entirely different worlds, it seems like pretty steep odds that they'd share anything in common, especially considering some of the worlds represented here don't even have anything like Gundams."
Lockon nodded. "That is kind of remarkable. That does seem like a shot in the dark at them having anything in common."
Jamie looked momentarily thoughtful, chewing his lip. "Then again, in a way it's kind of a big coincidence that so many different worlds have just...regular people. I mean, yeah, there's stuff like the Guardians and...other people who aren't exactly human," he hedged, unsure if Lockon had met the resident vampire or werewolf, "but most everyone here looks and acts and thinks like a human."
Lockon nodded. "The only who doesn't fit the typical idea is the werewolf, but he acts fairly human from what I've seen. The only one I know who really doesn't is Haro, but he's a robot with AI."
"Oh, you've met Jon, huh?" Jamie said with a faint grin. "Yeah, he looks way different than anyone else here, but he acts more human than some of the actual humans I've known. And way more human than some of the things here that look human," he added more darkly, thinking of the mazoku.
Lockon hadn't met any of these people yet, but he could tell that this was a subject not to be touched. So instead he went with a reference he knew. "Tieria is kind of the same way."
Shaking off his momentary sour mood, Jamie glanced back at Lockon. "'s he one of your friends from back home?"
Lockon nodded. "He is one of my teammates. Very dedicated to missions. Let's put it this and you can't repeat this to Tieria if he shows up, Tieria would make a cute girl, but his personality is colder than ice."
The corner of Jamie's mouth twitched up in a half-grin at the description, which struck him as more than a little...odd. He recognized the personality type, though. "There's a couple people here like that," he said. "The cold as ice part, not the...'would make a cute girl' part."
Lockon laughed. "I would imagine the cold as ice part. There's always some of those. Tieria...he's something special. Luckily, the other two aren't that bad. Trust me though, if all three of the remaining pilots arrived and I only pointed them out as Gundam pilots, based on my description you'd be able to pick out Tieria."
Jamie chuckled a bit. "He's that bad, huh?"
Lockon nodded. "Unfortunately. He holds a grudge if you don't complete the mission exactly. He still kind of distrusts Allelujah to actually complete the mission after Allelujah completely forgot about the mission to save civilians after the section of the gravity ring they were in broke off and started drifting towards Earth. He berated Allelujah for using my assistance in that so he and another craft could push it back into orbit. And..." Lockon heaved a sigh before continuing. "He has threatened to shoot our youngest pilot in the back if he messed up the mission."
Jamie blinked at this last, looking a little stunned. "Uh...wow. Yeah, that...sounds pretty cold, all right," he agreed. "I mean, one of my teammates is a mercenary and refuses to fight if he doesn't get paid for it, but...he's never actually threatened to kill anyone."
Lockon nodded. "Tieria listens to Veda too much... way too much. That's partially why he is so set on our missions. I swear, if Veda told him to wear his glasses crooked, he would."
The teen grinned again at the comment and asked, "Who's Veda?"
"Veda is the computer that gives us our missions," Lockon remarked.
Jamie chuckled a bit at the thought of a computer ordering someone to wear their glasses crooked. "Yeah, guess there's such a thing as following orders too closely," he said, and ventured, after a pause "Kinda sounds like maybe he doesn't know how to think for himself."
Lockon nodded. "I suspect that. When he messes up a mission, he beats himself up about it for a while."
"Tieria! Tieria!" Haro piped up and an image of someone appeared on the screen. This person has shoulder length purple hair, red eyes, and was wearing glasses. At the bottom of the image could be seen a pale yellow button up shirt covered by a pink cardigan.
Lockon chuckled.
Jamie blinked at the image. "That's him, huh?" Jamie had to admit, the guy was awfully effeminate-looking. "I, uh...see what you mean about him making a cute girl." As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Jamie felt a little weird having said them.
Lockon chuckled. "Yeah...He certainly doesn't help change people's image of that." He shook his head as Haro removed the image from the screen. "Luckily, he's the only one in our group...both for being cold and looking like he's a girl."
"Sounds like he's all the cold personality any group of people needs, from what you've told me," Jamie agreed. "Does it bother him that people think he looks girly?"
"Not that I've seen. Most of the time he is either piloting or on the Ptolemy. That's our space transport ship. He hates being on Earth."
"Huh. Why's that? Something about Earth bother him?"
"Probably...he doesn't talk about himself much. We all kept our pasts secret, even from each other. One of the girls on the Ptolemy...her parents were Gundam Meisters before we took over...they died, somehow. That's all she knows."
That reminded Jamie of a few other people he knew... "Mn. Guess everyone's got things they don't like to talk about." He fell silent for a moment or two, looking back around the cockpit. "So...Gundam Meisters. 's that what they call pilots, in your world?" he asked, glancing back at Lockon.
Lockon nodded. "Celestial Beings is the name of the group as a whole. Gundam Meisters are the pilots chosen to carry out the mission. In order of descending age, there's myself, Tieria Erde, Allelujah Haptism, and Setsuna F. Seiei." He paused for a moment. "There were three more, but I really don't count them as Gundam Meisters even though they said they were."
Jamie noted the pause, but wasn't quite sure what to make of it. "...why's that?" he asked, a little guardedly.
"Because they showed up in the middle of our missions, one of them threatened me, and their way of completing the missions was a lot different. They didn't care if they went through civilians to complete the mission. Also the girl's Haro attacked my Haro."
Jamie wrinkled his nose a bit at the description. "They don't sound too nice," he agreed. "How'd the other Haro attack yours, though?" If it was anything like the specimen currently sharing the cockpit with them, it didn't exactly look attack-capable.
"Haro are lightweight for their size and makeup," Lockon explained. "When in space, they float. My Haro was attempting to talk to other Haro and it became unjustly annoyed at my Haro and rammed him, sending him flying backwards."
"Huh." Jamie glanced briefly at Lockon's Haro. "That was mean of it."
"Big brother was mean!" Haro remarked, flapping. "Big brother was mean!"
Lockon nodded. "He was."
"'Big brother'?" Jamie repeated, arching an eyebrow. "Why d'you call him that?"
"I think the other Haro was an older model Haro," Lockon remarked. "There's kind of a hierarchy of Haro. Mine is called 'Big brother' by four other Haro. That's the only reason I could come up with."
Jamie hm'd again, grinning a bit. "Well, that makes sense, I guess. The Geno was based off another Zoid - cloned from it, actually, I think - and she said she was 'descended' from it. Never really thought about Zoids or robots having family relations like that, but it kinda fits."
Lockon nodded. "It does. So tell me some about your world. We've only been talking about mine," he said. The screen said the scan was complete so Lockon removed Haro from his console and opened the hatch so if they could get out whenever.
Taking that as his cue, Jamie moved out onto the hatch. "My world? Um." He paused, gathering his thoughts. Even though he was well accustomed by now to the idea of multiple universes, it was still a little strange trying to describe his own when specifically prompted to do so. "Well, I live on a planet called Zi. It's...really far away from Earth, I can't even remember how many light-years. The first colonists settled there hundreds of years ago."
Lockon got up and headed onto the hatch with him. "That's interesting. Colonists from Earth?"
"Yeah. Well, supposedly." Jamie shrugged a bit, stepping to the side to make more room for Lockon. "I guess a lot of information about life on Earth was lost between the first settlement and now...er, the time I'm from," he amended. "So nobody back home really knows much about what Earth was like. I mean, we know a little, but...not a whole lot."
Lockon nodded. "I would imagine. Especially if it is several lightyears away."
"Yeah...I still get confused when people from Earth talk about it. Feels like I'm out of the loop, sometimes." He grinned a bit ruefully. "They've got all these countries and languages and customs and animals...'s all really different from anything on Zi. I'm a little more familiar with some of it now, knowing all these other people from Earth, but sometimes they'll still say stuff that goes right over my head."
"That happens to everyone," Lockon remarked. "I know that's happened to me before. So what do you have on Zi?"
"Well...we've got Zoids," he started, gesturing across the hangar at the Geno Saurer. "They were on Zi before humans were. We used to use them to fight wars, but there haven't been any of those for a while, so now we mostly use 'em in sporting competitions."
Lockon nodded. "Those are very interesting mech. I kind of wish our Gundams could be used only for sporting events."
"I guess we're pretty lucky that's all we need to use Zoids for," Jamie agreed, somewhat somberly. "'s a lot of people here whose worlds were involved in wars."
Lockon nodded. "I know about this...I wish I knew if the war where I'm from is over."
Jamie nodded a little sympathetically. "Yeah...guess that'd be pretty worrying to think about." He shrugged a bit, looking momentarily wistful, though he was quick to hide it. "Guess everyone wants to know what's going on back home, though." Even though they weren't involved in anything as earth-shattering as a war, Jamie still sometimes wished he knew what his teammates were up to, especially now that Leena'd gotten sent back.
Lockon nodded. "So I assume you fought on a team back home on Zi?" Haro flapped and Lockon set him down.
"Yeah, ours was called the Blitz Team. My dad's friend was our sponsor, and his two kids were on the team for a while...Leon left, but Leena's still there. Or...was, when I left. She was here for a little while, too, but she got sent home."
"Ah. Sounds like it would be interesting. A much better way than we had to do it." He gestured to the Genosaur. "Was that one yours? No, wait, you said it belonged to someone else."
Jamie nodded, gazing at the blue Zoid from their vantage point on Dynames' cockpit hatch. "Her original pilot was someone named Ryss, but...Ryss got sent home and the Geno stayed here. I dunno why." He trailed off, chewing his lip a bit. "At first, back home, I had a Pteras," he explained, smiling fondly. The expression faltered as he continued, "But it got totalled and the Doc traded it in for the Raynos. That's the Zoid that wound up here with me."
Lockon shook his head. "That's a shame about it getting totalled. That's never a good thing."
"Nope," Jamie agreed, still looking a little mournful. "The Raynos is okay and all," he went on, just a little grudgingly, "and I guess I've got the Geno now, but the Pteras was my first Zoid. I still kinda miss it." Well, 'kinda' was an understatement, but he didn't want to seem too senselessly attached to the thing. He got the feeling that kind of affection for one's machine wasn't something many pilots shared.
Lockon nodded. "I know what you mean." He put his hand against Dynames. "People get attached to their mech. It becomes an extension of themselves. Humans can't fly on their own, but mech can give them the feeling that they themselves are flying." Haro flapped.
Jamie brightened a little at Lockon's description, grinning tentatively. "Yeah, exactly! 's like...even if you're not all that strong on your own, having a mech kinda makes you feel a little bigger. More...protected, I guess." He shrugged, feeling he wasn't explaining himself very well, but then again this wasn't the sort of thing that could be explained easily.
Lockon nodded. "It's like you can do whatever the mech is able to do. I mean I may be a good sniper, but gravity eventually prevents me from being able to fire beyond a certain distance. With Dynames, I can. And Haro...outside of the Gundam, he doesn't have many physical capabilities, but using Dynames he can do nearly everything I can in the Gundam."
The teen nodded agreement, his smile becoming a bit less tentative. "That's kind of how I feel about being a strategist, too," he said. "I'm not the greatest pilot, but knowing what the rest of my team's Zoids and our opponents' Zoids can do lets me kinda...pilot 'em by proxy, I guess, and maneuver 'em however I want. As much as I like piloting, I can almost do more by creating a strategy than I can when I'm actually in a cockpit." He paused and gave a self-conscious chuckle. "...I dunno if that makes any sense."
"No, it makes perfect sense," Lockon remarked. "Sumeragi...she's our strategist, I get the feeling she feels similarly when she is planning our strategy. She tries to plan what exactly happens, like she is trying to determine the outcome before it happens."
"Well, I think that's what every strategist aims for," Jamie conceded, "but there's no way you can determine one hundred percent what's going to happen in any given situation. It's mostly making educated guesses based on whatever data you happen to have on your opponents. And even the most unskilled opponent is going to do something to throw a wrench in your plans, at least until you get to know their fighting style a little better."
Lockon nodded. "Allelujah and Tieria nearly got captured when one of her predictions went astray. She predicted the transports would keep heading towards the Ptolemy even after Allelujah and Tieria's Gundams had been sent out and then they could circle around an attack from behind. However, two unmanned transports were sent to intercept each of them, which slowed them down."
Jamie nodded, looking intrigued. "The hard part is outthinking your opponent. Even knowing what equipment they have and what it's capable of, or how they usually move, there's always the chance they'll do something completely different just to throw you off."
Lockon nodded. "I know that, but strategizing was never my strong point so I'll leave that to people to who are better at it, like you and Sumeragi."
The younger pilot ducked his head a bit, looking sheepish. "Heh...yeah, sorry. Guess I was kinda rambling there, huh?"
"Nah, it's fine," Lockon said with a chuckle. "I could start rambling too so there's nothing wrong with it."
"Okay," Jamie said, with another slight bob of his head. "I know strategies and stuff aren't all that exciting to most people who aren't actually strategists, so..."
"I understand about strategies and that kind of thing since we needed to know about them for our job. However, I probably couldn't do it as well as some people."
"Well, I guess it's not the kind of thing everyone's cut out for," Jamie admitted, with a light shrug and grin. "Just like not everyone can use a sniping mech properly."
Lockon chuckled. "Of course, of course. It's a skill, just like being a strategist."
"Yup, pretty much. Everyone's got different things they're good at...'s what makes a well-rounded team."
Lockon nodded. "Indeed it does. So what kind of people were on your team back home?"
"Well, there were four of us, plus Doc - that's our sponsor, Leena and Leon's dad. Leena's...mn. Kind of a hothead. She likes heavy artillery Zoids that can make big explosions, pretty much. Her latest one was actually designed for sniping," he said, vaguely indicating Dynames, "but she loaded it down with a lot of missile pods and beam cannons and stuff. It used to be here, but I guess it went home when she did."
Lockon chuckled. "Dynames does have missiles as well, but they are headed in compartments. It would have been interesting to at least what it looked like."
Jamie grinned a bit. "I could try to sketch out a diagram sometime. It was a Gun Sniper...that's a velociraptor type, same basic build as the Geno Saurer, just a lot smaller. They're usually pretty fast and agile, but Leena's had to sacrifice a lot of that to carry as much weaponry as it did."
Lockon nodded, looking over at the Geno Saurer. "Sounds like it. Usually snipers need to be quick in order to not be caught. But I would like to see a sketch of it sometime."
"Sure, I'll see what I can do. I'm...not exactly an artist, though. Just to warn you," he added with a self-depricating grin.
"It's fine," Lockon remarked. "I'm not much of one either so I can't talk."
Jamie nodded, thinking back to Lockon's original question. "So...that's Leena. Leon's her older brother...he wasn't actually part of our team, last I heard - he left about a year before I wound up here, to train on his own and become a better pilot. He's...calm, usually. Really driven, really ambitious. Used to talk a lot about people's 'potential' to do things."
"Ah ha." Lockon nodded. "Sounds like an interesting guy."
"He was. Er - is. I kinda looked up to him." He paused before continuing with his description of his teammates. "Um...I guess Bit's next. He's real cheerful, upbeat...kinda headstrong and impulsive. Leena always said he was an idiot. She was kinda right." He grinned. "He's a good guy, though. And he's the only one who could pilot the Liger Zero...it wouldn't let anyone else control it."
Lockon blinked. "So the mech chose its own pilot?"
"Well, pretty much, yeah. Zoids are alive, and they can sorta think for themselves, but not the way the Liger did. I mean, most Zoids'll let anyone into their cockpit, but the Liger threw a fit whenever anyone tried to pilot it. We thought it was useless until Bit came along."
"Hmm...that's interesting," Lockon remarked. "Anyone can get into a Gundam as long as the cockpit is open. Of course you have to know how pilot it after that."
"Yeah, I guess that'd be the sticking point," Jamie agreed. "The Liger's controls look pretty much the same as any other Zoid's controls, and I guess it handles the same...it just won't let anyone handle it, other than Bit."
"Is there a reason for that?"
"Actually, yeah." Jamie nodded. "It's a special kind of Zoid called an Ultimate X, so it's got what's called an Organoid System permanently bonded to its Core - that's kind of a Zoid's heart and brain," he added. "Anyway, the Organoid System makes it smarter than other Zoids so it can learn from any battle it participates in and act accordingly. And I guess it also gives the Zoid an attitude." He grinned.
Lockon chuckled. "I guess it would. There's been sometimes where I wished that my mobile suit had actually learned from battles that had happened before so I guess that comes in handy."
"It definitely did for us," Jamie said. "Bit and the Liger more or less won the Royal Cup for us...that's a big contest held every four years to decide who gets to move up into Class S. I mean," he amended, realizing how childish it probably sounded to an actual soldier fighting in an actual war, "it's not really all that important in the grand scheme of things, I guess, but...it's a pretty big deal where I come from." He shrugged and offered another self-conscious half-smile.
"It's important for ranking," Lockon remarked. He understood that it was similiar to sporting events on his world.
"Well, yeah." Jamie nodded. "Class S is pretty much the best of the best. The battles are more challenging and the prize money's better than it is in the lower ranks...and, well, there's always the fame." Not that Jamie'd gotten to enjoy any of that before he'd gotten pulled into the desert...
Lockon nodded. "Sounds like a lot of sporting events."
The teen shrugged a bit. "I guess so. Zoid battles're the only sport I really know anything about...we don't have a whole lot more than that back home."
Lockon nodded. "I haven't been to sporting events for a while thanks to the war."
"Mn. Guess fighting in a war would kinda get in the way of stuff like that, yeah," Jamie conceded.
Lockon nodded. "But it happens. I kind of hope the others will show up. They need a vacation too," he said with a chuckle.
"Vacations are always good," Jamie agreed. "And it's nice to have people you know here." He paused. "...what're your teammates like? Other than, uh...Tieria?"
"Well, Setsuna, he's the youngest. He has kind of mysterious personality, one of those people who seem distant and somewhat dark. But he's a good kid. But he refers to himself as Gundam at time." Lockon chuckled at this.
Jamie grinned too, a little. "...why's he do that?"
Lockon shrugged. "I have no idea. He just does. Then there's Allelujah. He's rather quiet most of the time. And usually he's a good person. But sometimes...I guess the best way to put it is to say he has a split personality."
"Hallelujah! Hallelujah!" Haro said.
At this, Jamie blanched, his eyes widening. Realizing how he must look, he hurriedly schooled his expression into something more neutral. "Uh...really? Th - um. That's, uh...interesting."
Lockon didn't seem to think anything about Jamie looking surprised. "He's not crazy, honest. It's more a part of him is, but his personality is dominate most of the time."
"Aheh. Nothing crazy about that." Jamie smiled a bit nervously. "I guess it...happens. Doesn't make him a...bad person, or anything."
Lockon shook his head. "He's a good person. From what I've noticed, he's the one of our group who doesn't want to hurt people. His alternate personality is kind of that other side of him... Please don't think he's crazy if he shows up." Lockon said, rubbing the back of his head.
Jamie blinked, looking a bit startled and just a little guilty. "...oh. Oh! Yeah, I, um...I won't. I mean, I know how - uh. I mean, I understand. I'm sure he's a nice guy. Really." He tried to offer a more sincere, less neurotic-looking smile to replace the antsy grimace he'd been sporting just now.
Lockon nodded. "Thanks. Sorry if mentioning that made you kind of nervous."
"Ahh...it's okay. Didn't mean to, y'know...freak out on you there." Despite the fact that Lockon would almost certainly find out about Wild Eagle sooner or later, particularly now that the two of them had been separated, Jamie still felt uncomfortable admitting to his alter's existence, and being confronted with the possibility put him on the defensive.
"It's fine. Let's forget I mentioned it." He knew they wouldn't forget, but hopefully it would take the emphasis off Allelujah's condition.
"...eheh. Okay." Jamie fidgeted a bit. "Um...so who else is on your team?"
"That's everyone who are Gundam pilots. There's also other people who work on Ptolemy. There's Sumeragi, our strategist. Christina, Feldt, Lichtendahl, Lasse, they all work on the bridge of the Ptolemy."
"Sounds like you have a lot of support crew," Jamie commented, relaxing a little now that the topic of conversation had changed. "Ptolemy's your transport ship?"
Lockon nodded. "It is. That's where our Gundams are stored and repaired. We also have a couple Haros than just this one that assist with repairs and other various functions. Techinically, this one belongs to Celestial Being, but he usually assists me," he said gesturing to Haro.
Jamie grinned a bit at the orange robot before looking back to Lockon. "Our transport's called the Hovercargo...it's a snail-type carrier Zoid. Doc designed it himself. We have a base where we keep our Zoids most of the time, but the Hovercargo's got better eqipment to make repairs and stuff...and of course we use it to move the Zoids from the base to the battlefield."
"Hmm...interesting. I would imagine it doesn't go very fast, though."
"Not too fast, considering its size...a little over four hundred kilometers an hour, tops, but keeping it at that speed for very long'll put a lot of strain on it. Just running it at its average speed, most of our Zoids can outpace it pretty easy."
Lockon nodded. "It makes sense. That can happen. Usually transports are slower since they are the ones carrying more than their own weight."
Jamie actually chuckled a bit at this. "Funny that you put it that way...one time a bunch of Sinkers were attacking the Hovercargo and Doc actually told Bit and Brad to take their Zoids out and fight because they were weighing the Hovercargo down and making it harder to escape."
Lockon chuckled. "Sounds like it, considering their size," he said nodding to the Zoid that was present in the hangar.
"Yeah...most Zoids aren't as tall as the Gundams, but they're a lot heavier. I dunno about yours, but the other Gundams weigh something like seven tons...the Raynos weighs thirty. Not really sure how much the Geno weighs..." He trailed off, frowning in thought.
"Gundam Dynames is 18 meters tall and 59 metric tons," Lockon remarked.
"Oh...really?" Jamie blinked and turned from his contemplative stare at the Geno to look back at Lockon. "That's a lot heavier than the other Gundams...makes more sense, to me," he added with a slight grin. "What's Dynames made out of? The others here are made out of something called Gundanium...'s why they're so light for their size."
Lockon shrugged. "Possibly because they are from a different world?" He wasn't quite sure why that was. "But Dynames isn't the heaviest. Tieria's Gundam Virtue is 66 tons."
"Mn...yeah, that's a possibility." Jamie blinked again, chewing his lip. "Our heaviest Zoids - wul, the regular combat-class Zoids, not the transports - weigh over two hundred tons, and they're just a little taller than Dynames." He grinned a bit. "So to me, your teammate's Gundam still kinda sounds like a lightweight."
Lockon blinked. "I can't imagine one that would way two hundred tons. That...that's kind of shocking."
"Guess it would seem that way, 'f you're not used to that kinda thing," Jamie agreed, and lifted one shoulder in a shrug. "Just like I was surprised to find out how light the other Gundams are."
Lockon nodded. "I guess it works both ways." He looked at the mech in the hangar. "Certainly are a lot of them." He half hoping to see one of the other pilot's mech, but none of them were there. "Do you have any family?" Lockon asked after a moment.
Jamie, following Lockon's gaze around the hangar, nodded once. "Just my dad," he said. "He was a Zoid pilot, too, for a while. Flew a Raynos like mine."
"Ah. Must have been interesting, having a father who was a pilot as well."
"Mm, yeah, kinda." Jamie's mouth twisted into something that was not quite smile and not quite frown. "He stopped piloting when I was still a kid, though, so I don't really remember what all he did as a pilot." Other than...crash, near-fatally, and even that was a little hazy. No point mentioning that, though. He glanced back over at the older pilot. "How about you? What's your family like?"
Lockon sighed. Even his teammates knew by this point so he might as well tell Jamie. "Both of my parents and my younger sister are died. Died in a terrorist attack."
Jamie winced, having effectively stepped in it twice, now. "...ah. I, um...I'm sorry. That must be pretty rough."
"It was rough," Lockon remarked. "Don't worry to much about having asked," he told Jamie, having noticed his wince. "I asked you first. And it was my choice to tell you."
Jamie managed a small smile. "Well - yeah, I guess." He paused and shifted uneasily, unsure what to say next, groping for a safe topic of conversation. "So um...have you been around the village much, yet?" he managed, somewhat lamely.
Lockon nodded. "I've gotten some stuff for my room, gotten some more clothes, wandered about with Haro, been to the cake a few times."
Jamie nodded. "Have you been assigned to a job yet, or found anyplace you wanna work?"
Lockon shook his head. "I haven't been assigned a job yet. The only job experience I have is military related and involves being a sniper, neither of which would help me here...so I'm not sure what I'd like to do."
"Well, a lot of the other pilots are working at the school or in the shops..." He shrugged a bit and offered a vaguely reassuring smile. "I'm sure there'll be something you can do."
Lockon smiled. "Thanks. This all still kind of new to me...the waking up and not having to jump in my Gundam to fight part I mean."
Haro flapped.
Jamie nodded. "Being here is practically a vacation for a lot of people," he agreed. "They don't have to fight or rule their countries or live up to anyone else's expectations while they're here. I can see how that'd be a nice change of pace."
"It is nice," Lockon agreed. "I'm not complaining about the vacation. It's just trying to tell my mind I don't have to constantly watch my back."
"Trying to convince yourself to relax, huh?" Jamie offered a small smile. "That can be tough to do, sometimes."
Lockon nodded. "I really haven't done that for a while. Been worrying about teammates, my brother, basically the state of the world as a whole."
"Sometimes it's way too easy to worry about stuff," Jamie agreed. He paused, shifted minutely and then ventured, "...your brother?"
"Oh, I forgot mention him before," Lockon said with a sheepish smile. "I have a brother...an identical twin."
"Oh." Jamie blinked a bit and nodded. "What's he like?"
"We have kind of similar personalities," Lockon remarked. "I haven't talked to him for a while... since I joined Celestial Being."
"Mn. 's too bad. What's he do for a living?"
"Not quite sure what he is doing at the moment," Lockon remarked. "It's been a while since I've talked to him."