(no subject)
The Return of Savage Hammer
The Seismosaurus had sat inviolate since the day of its defeat in the old docklands district of Blue City. It was not that it lacked anything worth salvaging, far from it, in fact. The problem was, that while its legs had been broken, as had its neck, tail, and primary control center, its core remained perfectly functional, along with most of its internal antipersonnel defenses.
There was only one person who knew the layout of all the lasers, all the turrets, the mines and gas sprayers, the passwords and keycodes and hopscotch patterns on colored tiles to get safely through the whole range of ways for someone to die by going where they probably shouldn’t. And despite several months of solitary confinement in the deepest hole Green City Incarceration Center could find, he somehow didn’t feel like sharing.
“Intruder alert! Alert cancelled. Intruder alert! Alert cancelled. Intruder alert! Intruder cancelled. All intruders, please report to the detention center.”
Hmm. Maybe two people.
Luke swore as he attacked another power relay with a wrench. He wasn’t very good at it, neither the swearing, nor the deliberate destruction. “I know I built you with a properly speech capable AI, quit it with the idiotic game quotes!”
He wasn’t even really here to salvage anything, as much as to destroy things he really didn’t want to take the risk of anyone else getting their hands on, like the black box amplifier that enabled the ‘Zenebas’ super charged particle system. It was the least he could do to make sure it only existed in his own mind. He’d prefer if it didn’t exist there anymore, either.
“L-l-l-look at you hacker, a pitiful creature of flesh and bone, crawling through my metal body.
“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!!” Luke punctuated his yells with swings of the wrench. There was silence, the main computer of the secondary control center nothing but twisted scraps of metal and plastics. It had been worth the detour.
He’d sabotaged and destroyed the systems in a very specific order, in order to leave the showers for the 4 companies of troops the Seismosaurus had been designed to be able to house on deployment were left operational, so that as he walked back through town, no one would suspect that the heavy bag full of computer parts he carried came from anywhere but a shop, nor that there was a set of heavily stained and torn clothes underneath.
He thought he recognized someone as he passed the community center’s soup kitchen, turning around to look again.
“Rastani? Is it really you? What are you doing here?”
Rastani, former leader and financier of the Black Impact Z-fighter team, looked around suddenly, his eyes wide, red surcoat worn nearly through, its once copious gold trim faded and frayed to nothing at all. Then he saw who was speaking. “L-luke?”
“Rastani! It’s been almost a year now, hasn’t it? What’s going on? You look terrible!”
“It’s, er.. it’s a long story…” and from his tone of voice, one he didn’t want to tell.
Luke looked around. Yes, Rastani had definitely come out of the soup kitchen. “Tell me about it over lunch?”
“I don’t need your pity!”
“It’s not pity, it’s manners. I’m hungry, and it’d be rude of me to make you watch me eat, but I’m not leaving without an explanation.”
Some minutes later in a small restaurant, Rastani reflected that he liked Luke better before he was sure of Blake’s intentions and had all the assertiveness of a wet sponge. But he wasn’t going to say that in the face of free food that had been rationalized in a fashion that let him keep his pride.
“Out with it, Rastani, what’s happened to you? I know you joined the Z-fighter union that formed after Alpha’s defeat, they should have funded you getting a zoid to replace the Blade Liger you lost by now.”
Yeah, definitely liked him better without the assertiveness. “Erm… they didn’t because I have a zoid. What I get from the union is only barely enough to pay for someplace to store it.”
“Store it? Why aren’t you using it? You’re a very skilled pilot, I’m sure most any zoid you could manage to start working your way back up!”
“I, er… I can’t get any work in it. No one takes me seriously.”
“There has to be something… what zoid is it? Couldn’t you have at least worked with Billy and Jackie when they started up the Black Impact courier service in their new Helrunners?”
Rastani coughed embarrassedly as he finished his food, “Yeah, there’s a bit of a story there…” he paused, mentally flipping a coin, and then shrugged, “If you’ve got a half hour for the walk, I can show you.”
A few minutes, and a few blocks, later, Luke sighed, “So, if I understood most of that, it was basically pride that was why you kept entering sweepstakes rather than just getting a loan from the union to get a new zoid.”
Rastani balked, “Well, I wouldn’t put it exactly that way-“
Luke interrupted, “But that’s basically the gist of it.”
“Well, yes. The important one was when they announced they were going to give away half of the first run of mass-produced Energy Ligers.”
Luke’s eyes widened, “You have an energy Liger? But why wouldn’t you be able to get work in one of those? Even though they aren’t as strong as Dr. Pierce’s prototype, it’s still an amazing zoid!”
Rantani gave Luke a bitter look, “Because you didn’t let me finish. They raffled them off, I was standing in the crowd with my ticket, they had a big board with ‘Energy Ligers Remaining:’ slowly counting down as they read off numbers. I didn’t get one.”
Luke bit his lip, “But then why bring it up? If it wasn’t any different from the other raffles…”
Rastani stopped in front of the door to the room he was renting from a fairly large public warehouse, “It was different. Just as I was about to leave, they announced they had one last thing to give away. A limited version of the Production Energy Liger, with some of Doc Pierce’s experimental technology put back in, it would supposedly be almost as powerful as the original prototype, and harder to hit, too.”
“Congratulations! But you still haven’t explained why, since you have a zoid, can’t you get any work? especially with a limited Energy Liger! If nothing else, you could sell it.”
Rastani glared at him while punching in the combination for the door, “You don’t know what the limited EL actually is, do you? Nobody who’s crazy enough to want to buy one can believe someone would sell one.”
“Well, no, I don’t…”
He thumbed the ‘enter’ button with the viciousness only a disenfranchised aristocrat can muster, mumbling as the double-doors started to open, “I won an Energy Liger Mirage Infinity.”
Luke stared inward as the lights came on, and much like the small hangar, Luke’s face lit up, “Oh, wow, it’s wonderful!”
Rastani swore under his breath for having forgot who he was talking to, “That’s… well, a matter of opinion.”
“But it is!” He caught Rastani’s eye and paused a moment, “Umm, isn’t it?”
“It’s smaller than a guntiger!”
“You said it yourself, that’ll just make it harder to hit!”
“There’s not even really a cockpit! I have to get in and out laying on a panel that comes out it’s mouth!”
“Then there isn’t room to get thrown around and hurt yourself!”
“It’s mostly pink with the occasional light blue!”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing!”
“If you like it so much, buy it then! Then I’ll get a zoid I can actually use!”
Luke smiled mischeviously, “No.”
“Hah! I knew you were bluffing, it’s a crappy zoid!”
“No. I won’t buy it. But I -will- hire you as its pilot.”
“What?”
“Blake and I have been talking about starting Savage Hammer back up again as a team. Our biggest obstacle is that most of the pilots we know who are teamless it’s because they aren’t trustworthy. We need a third pilot, even in fuzor mode, the Gairyuki can’t shoot everyone at once.”
Rastani boggled, then stared contemplatively up at the zoid he had previously done his best to simply ignore. “I guess… at least with the money from our first win I can get this thing a paintjob.”
“No.”
“What do you mean, ‘No,’?!”
“Savage Hammer zoids stay in the configuration in which they were made. It’s part of the way we do things. After all, zoids have feelings, too. It’s been proven.”
They exchanged a look in which it was acknowledged that they weren’t going to discuss how it was proven. People got in trouble even suggesting there were rumors about rumors relating to that. But people were a lot less inclined to treat a zoid as just a tool these days, nevertheless.
Rastani wavered, and Luke struck, “You won’t lose any prize money paying for a hangar or a mechanic…” This was technically true. Luke had always done Savage Hammer’s repairs pretty much by himself, and he didn’t see a reason to change that.
Rastani gave in. “Right. Fine. Call me when it’s time to bring my zoid over to your hangar.”
“No time like the present.”
Two hours later, halfway across Blue City Blake smiled whimsically as he gazed out the enormous window at the cityscape. He was amazed that Sandra had just given them the entire building Savage Hammer had operated out of as a gift when she’d left her position managing the team. They had to rent out several floors as apartments to make up for the network of connections that had disappeared with Richter Scale’s emergence and subsequent defeat, but Blake couldn’t help but enjoy the view. Especially the view a few minutes ago, when what seemed to be a miniature pink Energy Liger had trundled somehow morosely into their subterranean hangar, with Luke sitting on its back between the two large energy conduits, smiling triumphantly.
He tried not to think about the discussion they’d had that morning. Oh, he understood Luke’s concern, and it was true he’d been more than a little obsessive in the past, but he’d let it go and was moving on. Everyone was moving on. Except Luke kept feeling the need to bring up Mach Storm in ways meant to ‘subtly’ check that he wasn’t just hiding it, and really had let go of his need for vengeance against RD. His concern was touching, to be sure, but getting a gift certificate for a colonoscopy as a birthday present would be touching. That didn’t make it pleasant.
He smiled when Luke came in, catching a glimpse of Rastani heading further down the hall. He didn’t say anything. With Luke, he didn’t really need to.
“Hey Blake, I took care of those parts I mentioned. Oh, and I hired Rastani to be Savage Hammer’s third pilot.” And that was it.
Back when Sandra had been running things, something like that probably would have sent him off into one of the rages Luke was so worried would one day prove to be bad for his stomach. Instead, he’d gotten in the habit of actually giving a moment’s thought, or even two, before flying off the handle, and come to realize that Luke knew him well enough to do this sort of thing on the grounds of usually being able to guess when they would already be in agreement, and it was so hard these days for either of them to find a surprise for the other.
And it was true, he respected Rastani’s skill as a pilot, and he’d almost certainly be a good asset for Savage Hammer, their budget certainly didn’t allow for the champagne and caviar binges that had cost Rastani the occasional tournament.
But Blake had a surprise for Luke, as well, though he didn’t much care for it himself. “That sounds good Luke, but tell me, do you know who that is?” He gestured over to a chair set against a far wall, one of the few pieces of furniture Sandra had furnished the place with that wasn’t at all comfortable.
Luke didn’t answer at first, turning slowly.
At first glance, he saw a young boy tied firmly to a sturdy wooden chair.
At second glance he saw the white feathers.
And on a third he saw the metallic red boots and glasses.
“Oh no.”
“He broke in a little while after you left, and tried to steal my pants.”
Luke bit his lip, and asked hopefully, “You caught him rifling through the laundry?”
“No, the ones I was wearing at the time. However,” he paused, swallowing and suppressing a shiver, “I’m going to choose to believe what I said to be the truth.”
Luke sat down with a sigh, “Have you called the PKB?”
“No, after the… other time, he said that the PKB could handle dealing with the pilots of rogue zoids, and until there are some laws about what to do about zoids that don’t need pilots anymore. All he can do is lock them up for a few days and let them go because he won’t be able to press any charges that’ll stick.”
Li’l Buster probably would have spoken up in his defense, or at least, said something, by now, if he weren’t thoroughly occupied in trying to chew his way through the ropes.
Luke noticed he was almost through them, and added several more ropes before he and Blake left the room. “What are we going to do with him, then?”
“I don’t know, Luke, I really don’t. It’s not like we can send him away anywhere… he’ll probably just come back.”
“Well, I suppose technically we could use a fourth pilot on the roll sheets…”
“Luke, you can’t be serious.”
“Of course not, but it wouldn’t be hard to add a cockpit of sorts as a module on one of Gairyuki’s remotes, not one that actually does anything, just lots of levers to pull and buttons to push to make lights blink. We normally shout a lot during battle anyway, so he can believe he’s obeying your orders and helping, nothing in battle actually changes, and everybody’s happy.”
“As long as we can find a strong enough soap so that feeling dirty over being anywhere near him goes away in the shower.”
“Well, there is that, but I’m sure we can help each other with that.”
Blake blinked, had Luke just…? “Why don’t we talk about that a little more, shall we?” He rolled his eyes, and shrugged, “And while I’m sure I’m going to regret it, after that I guess you’ll have to get started on that not-a-cockpit.”
“Are… are you sure, Blake? I know we don’t really have much in way of other options, but…”
“It’ll be fine, at least for a little while. We’ll just have to hope some laws get passed that give us a few more choices.”
Rastani wandered into the office some time later, seeking that deep, ultimate longing of all lonely men, the comfy chair. He did not expect to encounter a small child driven mad by trace chemicals in bad hemp.
Nobody in the entire building expected the emergency intercom to come on blaring, “Help! Somebody help! I’ve only got one pair of pants!”