Yet More Fuzors Fic
Meanwhile, at the Mach Storm base, Sandra walked in on RD and Sweet in the loungeroom, where they grappled with a trio of books that were rarely seen in the hands of Z-fighters.
A Zoid registry, a dictionary, and a thesaurus.
Sandra was silent, watching the two of them. They sat opposite each other across a small table, speaking too quietly for her to hear them from the doorway, occasionally passing a piece of paper back and forth. She held in the urge to laugh when she got close enough to hear them.
“Trinity Liger?”
“Taken. Stratos Liger?”
“Sounds a bit childish to me.”
“Yeah, I guess it does, doesn’t it?”
With a shared sigh silent thought reclaimed the struggle, and Sandra moved closer, able to glance over the now inert sheet with a peek around Sweet’s shoulder. A lengthy list of rejected names and reasons why, probably to refer back to a least disappointing one should nothing acceptable be found.
“Dare I ask who thought ‘Liger Zero Menage’ was a good idea?”
Both of them started with surprise at her interjection, and it was RD who answered, “Helmut took Sigma somewhere else after that one.”
Sandra smiled knowingly, certain that while it was what they’d written down, their spoken objection hadn’t been that the name was ‘too appropriate.’
“So, Helmut’s left, then?”
Sweet turned her head around, “Yeah, he probably won’t be back for awhile, he said they were going to go see a movie or something. Hey, isn’t that Helmut’s mask?”
Sandra reached up with one hand to the mask dangling at her neck. “What? Oh, er… sort of?”
“You proposed to her?!” The other patrons of the café turned toward the shouting, worried about such a shout, because in that tone the word ‘her’ could often be replaced with the phrase ‘my girlfriend’ and this would mean that a brawl was incoming, and one had to decide quickly whether one was going to simply try to get out of the way, or be an honorable Z-fighter and join in just for the fun of it. Then they turned back to what they were previously doing, because only a fool would think of engaging in fisticuffs with Helmut without several pints of raspberry soda in him.
A brawl wasn’t coming, anyway. “Settle down, Sigma.”
“Settle down? How am I supposed to settle down?”
“That’s up to you as long as you do it, Sigma. What are you so upset about, anyway? Sandra and I have had feelings for each other for years.”
“Yeah, and for the last ten of them hers have been madly homicidal!”
“That was all just a misunderstanding. Anyhow, I’m sure we’ll be able to work things out.”
Sweet was wholly absorbed in Sandra’s recounting of last night’s events, occasionally sighing things like “how wonderful,” or “so romantic,” and sometimes giving RD strange little glances that made him feel more than a little worried.
They stood together on a balcony, watching as Zi’s moons chased each other across the sky. Fabric rustled as Sandra shifted in his arms, turning from the stars to look into his eyes.
“Why don’t you take the mask off, Helmut? Not even for me?”
“You asked me that once before. It was the day before…”
“Yes… I remember. You said you’d tell me soon.”
“I needed to think, to decide what to say, to be absolutely sure.”
“Is it that important?”
“Yes, it is. And I was sure the next morning, only that day… I couldn’t tell you then, not after the incident. But I was sure… and I still am.”
“Helmut?”
“Come with me.”
They walked hand in hand over to Helmut’s dresser, atop which were two small, plain boxes. One open, one securely latched. Helmut stayed facing the dresser, both hands on the closed box, with Sandra just behind him.
“My family has a lengthy tradition, and the mask is part of it.”
Sandra stayed quiet, her hand resting gently on his shoulder blade.
“We believe that there is a truer good, a truer right than the mere laws made and changed by people on a whim. That a real, pure justice exists. But it needs to be defended.”
“Its defenders have always been hidden. Warriors of good need to be masked, because deep down, people don’t want real justice. They want tomorrow to be much the same as today, to be told that they don’t have to worry and they can go back to bed. That someone else is taking care of their problems. They are frightened of a good that is always there, not just when there is some crisis, one that wants to right the small wrongs as well as the large.”
Sandra said nothing when Helmut stopped, the sounds of the complicated little latch deafening in the silence, and the sound of something being lifted out of fabric.
“One… or two. I know that in your heart, you believe in justice, Sandra. Is your justice the same as mine?”
He turned slowly, gently placing the mask upon her face, a mirror of his own, “If it is, will you guard it with me?”
Sandra was blushing deeply by the time she finished, Sweet had run out of tissues and had started wiping tears on RD’s sleeve, moving around the table to sit next to him seemingly expressly for this purpose. RD had to admit he found it moving as well, though he certainly wouldn’t say so. To say so would expose his sudden feeling that he really ought to figure out some sort of gesture like that to make for Sweet.
Elsewhere, Sigma kicked over a potted plant. “Will you guard it with me? Man! What kind of sap are you? Get this man a testosterone injection, stat!”
Helmut sighed, “You have no core, do you, Sigma?”
“And you,” he prodded Helmut in the chest, “have no balls! C’mon, we’re gonna catch a movie after all, someplace ought to have a Dirty Shuu marathon that’ll put some spunk back into you, hah! Do you feel lucky? Did I fire twenty-one shots or only twenty? Blow your cockpit clean off! Ka-pow!”
Helmut rolled his eyes, “Sure, why not?”
“Well, what about Triad Liger?” Sandra was trying to help occasionally, but mostly just quietly watching RD and Sweet attack the bulwarks of nomenclature.
“If we wanted to declare ourselves part of Nyxian organized crime it’d be good.”
Sweet threw down her pen in frustration, “Agh! I can’t deal with this anymore! We’ve been at this all day!” Sweet gave RD a leer that caused him a welter of various emotions, “Maybe we should go for a ride, something might come to us if we’re actually in the Zoid.” RD definitely felt confused, he was used to thinking of… er… that, as a solution to boredom, but the prospect of Sweet doing so was profoundly unusual. “Why don’t you come with us, Sandra?” Ah, it was simply that Sweet was thinking of playing with his head as a solution to boredom.
Sandra blanched, avoiding eye contact as she answered, “Umm, isn’t the Liger only a two-seater at the most?”
RD shrugged, “The Liger itself, yes, but there’s the cockpit from the jet falcon as well.”
Sandra tried, and failed, to smile, “No, thanks for the invitation, but I can’t.”
Sweet looked at her quizzically, “Why not? Waiting for Helmut to get back? He and Sigma are likely to be gone for quite awhile yet.”
Sandra was visibly trembling, “No, I… I’m not allowed to ride in a zoid.”
RD stood up in a sudden rage, “What? Helmut’s said you can’t ride a zoid? that doesn’t sound like ‘defending it together’!”
Sandra bit her lip, “No, it… wasn’t Helmut.”
Sweet’s tone was gentler, attempting to be comforting, “Who, then?”
“Gummy, actually.”
RD sat down slowly, “Can… can you tell us what happened?”
“I… I think so.”
“You think so?”
“Well, have you ever seen a really old zoid and sort of felt the sense of history in it? Like you can hear all the battles it must have fought?”
“Well, yeah…”
“It… it was something sort of similar.”
RD and Sweet looked at each other, agreeing with silent nods that, at least at the moment it was important enough to find out what happened to keep pushing. Sweet put an arm around Sandra gently, “How so?”
“I… after I said yes, and after we-“ Sandra stopped suddenly, blushing deeply.
Sweet set aside her usual reserve, “It’s alright, we can guess that part.”
Sandra looked at her speculatively, “I suppose you can at that… they grow up so fast.” She shook her head briefly, “After that, it was like I could hear someone whispering to me, constantly, talking of defeated villainies and righted wrongs, until it became an overwhelming urge and… I jumped off the balcony.”
They said nothing, hoping the expectant silence would incite her to keep explaining.
“I… I kicked in Sigma’s window, and threw his computer out to crash down into the street… in the name of justice.”
Sweet suppressed a chuckle, “Well, I guess it’s true he doesn’t pay for very many of his games…”
RD, however, had thought of something, as they say, completely different, “You… did that jumping straight out of bed, after…?”
“Yes.”
RD swallowed nervously, “Well, that does explain a few things.”
Sandra stared at him in horror, “It does?”
“Don’t worry about it, I’m sure Helmut’s fixing it. What happened after that?”
“If… if you say so. I… after that, I started climbing down the building, I’m not sure how.”
Sweet interrupted, “Down the outside?”
“Yes.”
“But it’s completely flat! There’s nothing to climb by!”
“I did say I’m not sure how… I don’t know what happened after that. The next thing I remember, I had the mask in my hands, wrapped in a blanket, and could see Gummy yelling at Helmut a little ways away. He… he explained what he could on the way home.”
Sigma was halfway through the largest bottle of raspberry soda he had been able to find. “So… So it didn’t mean anything?”
Helmut sighed, “Right, Sandra wasn’t really in control of herself… I should’ve expected it, really.”
Sigma grunted, “Why? It’s not like you go off crazy about it. The masks can’t be that ‘full of justice’ or whatever.”
“Yeah, but I’ve worn mine all my life, it’s not much more than having, oh, an extra large conscience, or something. But it came at Sandra all at once, and I didn’t even think to warn her properly.”
Sigma squinted at Helmut, “I thought I was the one who was depressed, and you were the one getting married, do you need this?” he gestured at the remaining half-bottle.
“It’s not that simple, Sigma, I… I got the report from Gummy this morning. Thankfully, nobody recognized her because they simply couldn’t believe what they were seeing, but… She attacked people, Sigma. Someone she saw jaywalking ended up substantially worse off than if a car -had- hit him, and that was just one! It’s just lucky I wasn’t too far behind when the PKB caught her.”
Sigma glowered at Helmut as he sank into despondent gloominess, and then squinted, and with a swing that would be called calculated were it executed by anyone else, but for Sigma could only be called damnably lucky, hit Helmut over the head with the soda bottle.
“Ow! What was that for?”
“Lookit yourself, Helmut! We’re Mach Storm! Whatever happens, we find a way through it! So your fiancée turns into a rampaging crusader when she puts on the ring, work on it or something! Don’t just mope!”
Helmut stared at Sigma for several seconds, then nodded with a laugh, “You’re right. Thanks buddy.”
Sigma grinned, “Don’t mention it. After all, you’re buying.”
Helmut looked at Sigma. At the now nearly empty bottle. And then at the significant pile of empty glasses at the other table they’d commandeered for the purpose earlier while Sigma had still been inconsolable. “Is it too late for me to take you up on the offer of the rest of that bottle? Nevermind, I see that it is.” He thought for several seconds before waving to the bartender, “Another, please.” He paused to think some more, “And one for me, too this time.”