it's been a busy day
He’s now called Enormous Kev,
And he’s been through a horrid transformation!
With a helmet on his head…
A floral one!
To match his shirt!
From beneath the giant foam helmet came a voice made deep and booming by the most expensive reverb filter on the planet Zi, “Hello children, and welcome to Enormous Kev’s Cleaning Station! Today we’re going to learn even more about the proper care and maintenance of zoids! Just look here at thi- at… at this… ARGH! I can’t take it anymore! You there! Woman costumed as a Pteras, Pterosaur type! Your legs are clearly far more developed and agile than those of the man over there as a Stormsworder, Pterosaur type! This cannot be! There are no possible circumstances where a stock Pteras, Pterosaur type can be faster than a Storm Sworder, Pterosaur type! You must both strip and switch costumes immediately! Enormous Kev commands it! And YOU! The lardbelly imagining he is an Iron Kong, Gorrilla type! WHERE! ARE! YOUR! SHOULDERS?”
Li’l Buster sighed and changed the channel. They really were truly humongous pants, but the “Kumquats in Lingerie” show was still better.
Across town at the very back of a park where a free concert was being staged, Balthus Darkstorm was busily unfolding the edifice of duct tape and scavenged plywood that was all that could be found to protect the special equipment that was what kept him on the respiratory side of the line between life and death. Kevin, still in the mascot suit, slowly filled out an unemployment form a few feet away.
“Why are you doing that? We aren’t citizens here, we can’t collect unemployment benefits.”
Kevin sniveled, “It’s better than doing nothing, isn’t it?”
Balthus thought about this for a few moments. “No, not really.”
“You just don’t understand me! Nobody understands me!”
“I certainly don’t understand why you’ve refused to take off the damn costume, that’s for sure.”
Kevin sniffed, “It’s my impenetrable armor. It protects me from the barbs of hatred that would otherwise cut me to the bones. Besides, you’re one to talk, you bought a Giloder whose jets were broken off so it can’t even fly! All it does is waddle around! If you’d bought a proper zoid we’d at least have -some- dignity!”
Balthus sneered as he set out their sign, ‘Darkstorm Parfait Shack’ in curly calligraphy. The organoids had made the sign, too. “Boy,” he said, putting all the inflection of hatred and loathing into the word that others would reserve for phrases like ‘cannibal ebola factory,’ “When you get to be my age, it’s entirely possible that you’ll have at some point picked up a basic fundamental truth. There are things in this world more important than dignity.”
“Oh yeah? Like what?”
“Eating.” Balthus sat down behind the shack, mentally putting things aside to get into a role he had come to know, and hate, intimately over recent months while their organoids started working at their craft. For a time he had to forget having ruled an island, having been the unparalleled terror of the wastelands, to simply become the funny old man who sells ice creams. His memory did not play tricks on him. It had far more vicious things it could do to him than forgetting.
And he makes bitchin’ parfaits. It taunted him time and time again. It had been a joke, oh so many years ago, but today if those parfaits were one iota less bitchin, all he would have left in life would be to burn his last credits on as big a bottle of seltzer he could find, and wait somewhere for it to take him to a state of mind where he could pretend things had not gone so horribly wrong. It was a sobering thought, and it made him take the funny old man role very seriously.
He didn’t like what he privately thought of at the Gimpoder, either. But it fit what they needed to do, had been cheap to buy and cheaper to run. Besides, if it still had its wings and boosters, it’d be too heavy for them to qualify for S.O.L. free transport. Their margin at the moment depended on S.O.L. transport. Eventually they’d save up enough for some useful zoids, and take a crack at being a legitimate Z-fighting team. Of course, the moment that plan looked to be failing, Balthus’s own plan was to sell everything he could lay hands on for a ticket back home to his island, where people listened to logic, to common sense, and most importantly, where people listened to HIM. All the time.
After the concert was over, Balthus made himself an unhealthily large raspberry float before starting to pack everything up into the Giloder’s juryrigged backpack. “We did well tonight. By which I mean that I sold a lot of parfaits, and you didn’t scare away too many potential customers with your endless moaning.”
“I attracted more customers to the booth! I was helping!”
Whatever pithy retort was to be delivered was preempted by a voice calling out to them, “Balthus Darkstorm, I am your father!”
Balthus blinked several times, peering into the gloom toward the figure that approached from the mists. “No. No you aren’t. My father was quite a bit taller, even on his deathbed.”
The figure stopped. “Are you quite sure?”
“Certain. I wasn’t adopted. Kevin was put up for it, though.”
“I was not! I was just given multiple parental experiences!”
The figure, came closer to get under the light, Balthus raising an eyebrow in silence upon recognizing Dr. Pierce, who was thought to have died in the destruction of the Energy Ray Liger, “OH! I skipped a line while reading it, known associate of Balthus Darkstorm! Right, right, can I try again?”
Balthus and Kevin looked at each other, and Balthus shrugged and returned to packing up the shack. It didn’t concern him anymore, after all.
“Big Kevin-“
“It’s Enormous Kev now.”
“What?”
“E-nor-mous Kev. You’re a Zoid Researcher, scientist type, aren’t you? You ought to be able to handle the increase in syllables!”
“Enormous Kev is a stupid name!”
“Oh, like Big Kevin was any better?”
They continued in this vein at steadily increasing volume for quite some time. Sadly, it was just as he finished snugging the last straps into place that he realized they were starting to draw a crowd. He sighed and started to unpack again.
“This is beside the point!” Dr. Pierce shouted, and then added in a more conciliatory tone, “I’ve brought you a Killerdome.”
“You would! I don’t want a Killerdome, trilobite type! I don’t NEED a Killerdome, trilobite type! My Dark Spiner, spinosaurus type is unbeatable?”
Dr. Pierce feigned surprise, “It is? Then where is it? I don’t see it anywhere.”
“It’s… It’s…”
“It got decapitated by a Gojulas Giga’s supercannons, didn’t it?”
“I don’t want to talk about that!”
“You don’t want to talk about that? Fine, let’s tlak about what an incompetent pilot you are instead!”
“Me? You’re the one who got blown up for spending too much time preening in the middle of battle! I got ambushed!”
“Ambushed in a zoid designed expressly for thoroughly scanning the battlefield to utilize electronic warfare which you never even attempted! You need me!”
“Maybe I did! But who was it who put me in a foster home in the first place, dad?”
The people of Blue City had a history of appreciating the fine art of street theater. A supposedly dead geezer mud-wrestling someone in a mascot suit is about as good as it could get. About the only way it could be better would be if one was the only beverage vendor nearby open at this time of night.
Some hours later, both of them were too exhausted to continue fighting.
“I... er… I brought another zoid, as well as the Killerdome.” This brought fort no response, albeit stealthy interest from Balthus, who was once more packing up the parfait stand. Definitively, this time. They were out of ingredients. “I, well, I know how much you like the spinosaurus type zoids, and what with your Dark Spiner being-“
“I don’t want to talk about that!”
“Right, right… being… waiting somewhere, or… something… I got you a customized Spinosapper.”
“Really? Where is it?” Balthus spoke up. He didn’t much care about the Spinosapper, but if the Killerdome was at least mostly working, it could carry the Giloder on its back, which would let them move around substantially faster.
“It’s hidden a little ways outside town with my Killerdome.”
“What a coincidence, we were just thinking of leaving town ourselves.”
Enormous Kev balked, “We were?”
“Yes. After that display people are likely to put two and two together soon and then it’ll be ‘parfait related voilence’ all over the news for weeks.”
Dr. Pierce looked like a cat that just got into the cream, “And of course I’ll go with you boys, I have to get to know my son, after all! Where’s your transport for this Giloder?”
Balthus smiled, “Waiting just outside of town, coincidentally enough.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, I suspect it’s right near a customized Spinosapper of your acquaintance.”
“Oh.” Now perhaps the hypothetical cat had just witnessed another, much larger cat that had already had its fill urinate copiously into the bowl. Cats can be sadistic like that.
Under cover of darkness they departed, heading to an isolated gully some distance from the city limits. Dawn was breaking as they crested the low rise, the Giloder quacking with each step, as they so often do.
Kev whimpered, “And here I thought our luck might be changing.”
Balthus raised one eyebrow, “That’s it? That’s the custom Spinosapper?”
“I don’t know what you two are so disappointed about, those are actual Blade Liger blades on that zoid, they’re exponentially more powerful than its old saws!”
“They’re mounted at the shoulder. All they can do is spin in a vertical circle.”
“Well, I tried putting them in its hands, but the joints couldn’t take the weight! The same thing happened with the elbows! It had to be the shoulders or nothing at all!”
“That didn’t suggest that maybe the idea was inherently flawed?”
“You’re a plebian! You couldn’t possibly understand!”
Balthus eyed him slowly, and then shrugged, guiding the Giloder in its perilous trek of trying to climb onto the back of a Killerdome and then perch there. “At least I know this isn’t a hoax. You two are definitely related.”
The Killerdome, flanked by the Spinosapper Stiltwalker, spinosaurus type, walked silently into the sunrise. Balthus didn’t feel like talking anymore, and was the only one who’d brought sunglasses.
And he’s been through a horrid transformation!
With a helmet on his head…
A floral one!
To match his shirt!
From beneath the giant foam helmet came a voice made deep and booming by the most expensive reverb filter on the planet Zi, “Hello children, and welcome to Enormous Kev’s Cleaning Station! Today we’re going to learn even more about the proper care and maintenance of zoids! Just look here at thi- at… at this… ARGH! I can’t take it anymore! You there! Woman costumed as a Pteras, Pterosaur type! Your legs are clearly far more developed and agile than those of the man over there as a Stormsworder, Pterosaur type! This cannot be! There are no possible circumstances where a stock Pteras, Pterosaur type can be faster than a Storm Sworder, Pterosaur type! You must both strip and switch costumes immediately! Enormous Kev commands it! And YOU! The lardbelly imagining he is an Iron Kong, Gorrilla type! WHERE! ARE! YOUR! SHOULDERS?”
Li’l Buster sighed and changed the channel. They really were truly humongous pants, but the “Kumquats in Lingerie” show was still better.
Across town at the very back of a park where a free concert was being staged, Balthus Darkstorm was busily unfolding the edifice of duct tape and scavenged plywood that was all that could be found to protect the special equipment that was what kept him on the respiratory side of the line between life and death. Kevin, still in the mascot suit, slowly filled out an unemployment form a few feet away.
“Why are you doing that? We aren’t citizens here, we can’t collect unemployment benefits.”
Kevin sniveled, “It’s better than doing nothing, isn’t it?”
Balthus thought about this for a few moments. “No, not really.”
“You just don’t understand me! Nobody understands me!”
“I certainly don’t understand why you’ve refused to take off the damn costume, that’s for sure.”
Kevin sniffed, “It’s my impenetrable armor. It protects me from the barbs of hatred that would otherwise cut me to the bones. Besides, you’re one to talk, you bought a Giloder whose jets were broken off so it can’t even fly! All it does is waddle around! If you’d bought a proper zoid we’d at least have -some- dignity!”
Balthus sneered as he set out their sign, ‘Darkstorm Parfait Shack’ in curly calligraphy. The organoids had made the sign, too. “Boy,” he said, putting all the inflection of hatred and loathing into the word that others would reserve for phrases like ‘cannibal ebola factory,’ “When you get to be my age, it’s entirely possible that you’ll have at some point picked up a basic fundamental truth. There are things in this world more important than dignity.”
“Oh yeah? Like what?”
“Eating.” Balthus sat down behind the shack, mentally putting things aside to get into a role he had come to know, and hate, intimately over recent months while their organoids started working at their craft. For a time he had to forget having ruled an island, having been the unparalleled terror of the wastelands, to simply become the funny old man who sells ice creams. His memory did not play tricks on him. It had far more vicious things it could do to him than forgetting.
And he makes bitchin’ parfaits. It taunted him time and time again. It had been a joke, oh so many years ago, but today if those parfaits were one iota less bitchin, all he would have left in life would be to burn his last credits on as big a bottle of seltzer he could find, and wait somewhere for it to take him to a state of mind where he could pretend things had not gone so horribly wrong. It was a sobering thought, and it made him take the funny old man role very seriously.
He didn’t like what he privately thought of at the Gimpoder, either. But it fit what they needed to do, had been cheap to buy and cheaper to run. Besides, if it still had its wings and boosters, it’d be too heavy for them to qualify for S.O.L. free transport. Their margin at the moment depended on S.O.L. transport. Eventually they’d save up enough for some useful zoids, and take a crack at being a legitimate Z-fighting team. Of course, the moment that plan looked to be failing, Balthus’s own plan was to sell everything he could lay hands on for a ticket back home to his island, where people listened to logic, to common sense, and most importantly, where people listened to HIM. All the time.
After the concert was over, Balthus made himself an unhealthily large raspberry float before starting to pack everything up into the Giloder’s juryrigged backpack. “We did well tonight. By which I mean that I sold a lot of parfaits, and you didn’t scare away too many potential customers with your endless moaning.”
“I attracted more customers to the booth! I was helping!”
Whatever pithy retort was to be delivered was preempted by a voice calling out to them, “Balthus Darkstorm, I am your father!”
Balthus blinked several times, peering into the gloom toward the figure that approached from the mists. “No. No you aren’t. My father was quite a bit taller, even on his deathbed.”
The figure stopped. “Are you quite sure?”
“Certain. I wasn’t adopted. Kevin was put up for it, though.”
“I was not! I was just given multiple parental experiences!”
The figure, came closer to get under the light, Balthus raising an eyebrow in silence upon recognizing Dr. Pierce, who was thought to have died in the destruction of the Energy Ray Liger, “OH! I skipped a line while reading it, known associate of Balthus Darkstorm! Right, right, can I try again?”
Balthus and Kevin looked at each other, and Balthus shrugged and returned to packing up the shack. It didn’t concern him anymore, after all.
“Big Kevin-“
“It’s Enormous Kev now.”
“What?”
“E-nor-mous Kev. You’re a Zoid Researcher, scientist type, aren’t you? You ought to be able to handle the increase in syllables!”
“Enormous Kev is a stupid name!”
“Oh, like Big Kevin was any better?”
They continued in this vein at steadily increasing volume for quite some time. Sadly, it was just as he finished snugging the last straps into place that he realized they were starting to draw a crowd. He sighed and started to unpack again.
“This is beside the point!” Dr. Pierce shouted, and then added in a more conciliatory tone, “I’ve brought you a Killerdome.”
“You would! I don’t want a Killerdome, trilobite type! I don’t NEED a Killerdome, trilobite type! My Dark Spiner, spinosaurus type is unbeatable?”
Dr. Pierce feigned surprise, “It is? Then where is it? I don’t see it anywhere.”
“It’s… It’s…”
“It got decapitated by a Gojulas Giga’s supercannons, didn’t it?”
“I don’t want to talk about that!”
“You don’t want to talk about that? Fine, let’s tlak about what an incompetent pilot you are instead!”
“Me? You’re the one who got blown up for spending too much time preening in the middle of battle! I got ambushed!”
“Ambushed in a zoid designed expressly for thoroughly scanning the battlefield to utilize electronic warfare which you never even attempted! You need me!”
“Maybe I did! But who was it who put me in a foster home in the first place, dad?”
The people of Blue City had a history of appreciating the fine art of street theater. A supposedly dead geezer mud-wrestling someone in a mascot suit is about as good as it could get. About the only way it could be better would be if one was the only beverage vendor nearby open at this time of night.
Some hours later, both of them were too exhausted to continue fighting.
“I... er… I brought another zoid, as well as the Killerdome.” This brought fort no response, albeit stealthy interest from Balthus, who was once more packing up the parfait stand. Definitively, this time. They were out of ingredients. “I, well, I know how much you like the spinosaurus type zoids, and what with your Dark Spiner being-“
“I don’t want to talk about that!”
“Right, right… being… waiting somewhere, or… something… I got you a customized Spinosapper.”
“Really? Where is it?” Balthus spoke up. He didn’t much care about the Spinosapper, but if the Killerdome was at least mostly working, it could carry the Giloder on its back, which would let them move around substantially faster.
“It’s hidden a little ways outside town with my Killerdome.”
“What a coincidence, we were just thinking of leaving town ourselves.”
Enormous Kev balked, “We were?”
“Yes. After that display people are likely to put two and two together soon and then it’ll be ‘parfait related voilence’ all over the news for weeks.”
Dr. Pierce looked like a cat that just got into the cream, “And of course I’ll go with you boys, I have to get to know my son, after all! Where’s your transport for this Giloder?”
Balthus smiled, “Waiting just outside of town, coincidentally enough.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, I suspect it’s right near a customized Spinosapper of your acquaintance.”
“Oh.” Now perhaps the hypothetical cat had just witnessed another, much larger cat that had already had its fill urinate copiously into the bowl. Cats can be sadistic like that.
Under cover of darkness they departed, heading to an isolated gully some distance from the city limits. Dawn was breaking as they crested the low rise, the Giloder quacking with each step, as they so often do.
Kev whimpered, “And here I thought our luck might be changing.”
Balthus raised one eyebrow, “That’s it? That’s the custom Spinosapper?”
“I don’t know what you two are so disappointed about, those are actual Blade Liger blades on that zoid, they’re exponentially more powerful than its old saws!”
“They’re mounted at the shoulder. All they can do is spin in a vertical circle.”
“Well, I tried putting them in its hands, but the joints couldn’t take the weight! The same thing happened with the elbows! It had to be the shoulders or nothing at all!”
“That didn’t suggest that maybe the idea was inherently flawed?”
“You’re a plebian! You couldn’t possibly understand!”
Balthus eyed him slowly, and then shrugged, guiding the Giloder in its perilous trek of trying to climb onto the back of a Killerdome and then perch there. “At least I know this isn’t a hoax. You two are definitely related.”
The Killerdome, flanked by the Spinosapper Stiltwalker, spinosaurus type, walked silently into the sunrise. Balthus didn’t feel like talking anymore, and was the only one who’d brought sunglasses.