-The Teapot-
“I don’t quite know what happened. I suppose I could find out, but it’s irrelevant in this case.” Dawn pulled in on the hologram, laying bare just how sick the world she was showing off was.
Too much land. Too much land, and too much brown. Seas had shrunk, vanished in some cases, and with them had gone the grasslands and forests. Not all of them, but far far too much. Too great indulgence, or too poor luck? Who knew?
Neeko, looking at the hologram, shrank back, fins flat and eyes wide in horror.
“Wh… where trees go?” she whined, almost wailed.
“There’s been catastrophic environmental change. Water’s become much more valuable than any precious metal. And unfortunately…”
“This sort o’chaos brings out the ticks.” Joy said. “I’ve seen it before. Albeit not this bad.”
“Sadly true. In massive societal collapse, those on the edges can adapt faster at times...but the so-called leaders, the biggest and meanest...they’re not builders, or even capable of sticking old stuff together, most of the time. They do the bare minimum, but overall just make the situation worse and take and take until either they’re dead or everything is, including them. They might be able to slap some things together for a year or two, or maybe even a generation, but in the end, all they do is throw gasoline on the pyre.”
Neeko shook her head sadly. “Neeko knows this. Fake-Shades who get banished from tribe act the same way. They try to form tribe of their own, but they not know how to keep tribe law. Turn greedy like wild ape, make bad trouble for all.”
“So you want ‘em dead?” Joy said.
“Whoa, hold on. We’re not assassins. Even IF the situation there is that bad.” Shun’ei said, having been listening despite his headphones being on over his ears. Hard to tell sometimes when he was actually paying attention.
“I doubt there will be any tears shed, but no. There ARE those who could actually rebuild society to SOME degree, are trying to fix what was broken, even if just to TRY. Hence, Dr. Renck. He’s managed to figure out a way to synthesize water. Rather brilliant, actually. It’s based on a type of radiation manipulation that you combine with atmosphere...not important, I’m not asking you to build it.”
“You want the machine?” Joy said.
“Yes and no. Renck was...unfortunately somewhat strange. He finally figured out the process in a burst of mania, and he wrote it all down...but just one copy. On paper. And that, unfortunately, immediately fell into the hands of this man.”
Worn leather and makeshift armor wasn’t just a stylized choice in certain brands of fiction. It did have pragmatic uses. It seemed like the man who came up had needed it, as the lower half of his face was more scar tissue than flesh, one eye sunken into his head in a way that denoted a badly healed injury, his right arm encased in some sort of crude metal cast slash brace. Joy knew the type. Too mean to die and too mean to let live.
Neeko hissed, catlike.
“Duster. A tyrant king in the Lord Humongous mold.”
“Who?” Bernard said.
“Never mind. He’s got the lone copy of the notes. The good news is, Dr. Renck wrote them on large parchment paper which rolls up nicely in a holding tube, so you won’t have to retrieve a traditional notebook. The bad news is, Duster is very much a nihilist. He’d rather burn the papers than let the world possibly be fixed in any way, because this way is the only way he can be a king.”
“This seems like you’re setting a forest on fire to deal with a lone vicious beast. Surely you can steal these papers away yourself. Why do you need all of us?” Bernard said.
“That’s a very good question.”
Dawn moved some images around.
“He’s got a pack.” Joy ventured.
“Yes. Not the issue. The issue is, he actually has half-decent communications. I jump in and steal the notes, he orders his little group of nutcases that he uses to keep all the producers in line to kill all the producers.” Dawn paused as she produced a stick and poked Meitekun.
“I’m awake. I’m just resting my eyes.” The sleepy fighter said. Neeko stuck her tongue out at him.
“We attack his camp society, he destroys the notes. Or does that and kills the producers. Or breaks stuff that allows them to survive, like the condensation gatherers.”
“Is he really going to go to such extremes so swiftly?” Shun’ei said.
“Cornered animals tend to be at their most fierce. And those types have long frozen themselves in corners.” Bernard said.
“So. We speak his language. The language of parasites.” Dawn said. “What we need to do is get him to get the smell of blood in his nostrils AND his blood up. A supposed raid that retreats unexpectedly. People like that have bad impulse control. He’ll chase us, with his chosen pack mates, leaving the rest behind. I cut communications on the camp front, so they can’t call HIM. And then we send in the brawlers to take care of the defenses, free the camp. Without being explicitedly ordered to, most of them are too stupid, or scared, to do anything without Duster ordering it.”
“....so we’re gonna have them all chase after Neeko?”
“What? Oh, sorry, yes...most of you could be called brawlers. No, see, Duster doesn’t trust any of his minions to leave the notes behind. He’ll grab them and bring them along to give chase. I need to ensure his people can’t contact HIM and that any attempt he makes to contact them doesn’t tip him off that something’s wrong with his communications, so I can’t get them. I’ll be running that interference. And in all honesty Neeko, I really don’t want to see if you can outrun a car.”
Neeko puffed out her chest. “Neeko try! Neeko know many beasts and birds faster than car! They no catch Neeko! Zoom-zoom!”
“Better not risk it, though,” chipped in Meitenkun. “Cars don’t get tired.”
“Got it. Riotous can run rings around any trash that lot managed to get movin’.” Joy said.
“That is the final problem, actually, Joy…” Dawn said. “This is a damaged, dessicated world...if you show up with a robot horse, they’re going to likely react...badly. As in, not the way I want them to. Panic is bad.”
“They could also be so stunned they’d be an easier target.” Shun’ei said.
“Possible, but not a gamble I want to take. So, I’m afraid you’re going to have to go native. So I might as well ask. Have you ever driven a CAR?”
---
-Oh What A Day What A Lovely Day-
Joy was trying to remember how to move the stick when the not very friendly man jumped into the car.
“Neeko, a guest! What flamdammit idiot set this system…”
The man suddenly jerked as if he’d been slapped in the face. Caught off-balance, he topped backwards and hit the dust, vanishing in a cloud. The other vehicles, whatever cars, bikes, trucks, and whatnot the wasteland people had managed to get working half-decently in this broken world, were following close behind and didn’t take the slightest notice, continuing to blast after the fugitive, the bellow of their engines drowning out the scream of their comrade.
“Is still very many!” Neeko’s voice came from the thin air on top of the car, and she had to scream to make herself heard. “How much longer we do this, Mirree?”
“Um…”
The motorcycle belched smoke as it roared out in front of them. If she’d had the time, Joy would have been impressed. She’d had her share of hardscrabble thrown-together items that always seemed one bump or nudge from falling apart over the years. The vehicle she and Neeko were driving APPEARED to be of the same make, but underneath it was a lot more high grade than hack job, the collapse of a world and loss of nearly all conventional means to maintain such advanced machinery not holding this lot back all that much. Their vehicles looked ugly, ran ugly, and when they failed, they failed hard. But they didn’t have as high a failure rate as one would expect.
Good enough of one that the driver was able to pull out a gun and take aim and fire.
Fortunately, even if you had a strangely well functioning car slash motorbike and well-functioning gun, that didn’t change the fact it was hard to aim while driving and shooting behind yourself. The driver, face barely visible through a taped-up motorcycle helmet which might have been painted with claws, or just had some mess slopped over it, it could honestly be either, apparently decided that such a factor could be made up for via excessive firing.
UNfortunately, by the time he actually shot said excessive amount of bullets, Joy had yanked the wheel to the side, and the motorcycle driver hit open air. Joy heard a loud crash, and briefly glanced behind herself to see another motorcycle driver falling into a fatal tumble off to her left side. It had been driving to sneak up on her, and she’d sideswiped him to oblivion purely by accident.
“For now.” Joy finished.
“How long now?”
“Ask me later.” The car that had dropped off the occupant Neeko had dealt with was closing back in again, until Joy yanked out her own sidearm, aimed behind herself without looking, and emptied a clip in their general direction. No real damage, but it made them back off, for a moment.
“Reload.” Joy said, handing the gun over to Neeko. She really wished she could be using her more exotic forms of firepower, but they were pushing things enough as it was. Joy had traded in her coat and armor for shredded leather, rubber, and some makeshift metal plates, while Neeko had found a lot of bones and shredded cloth to strap onto herself with mismatched leather straps, and they’d presented themselves as a pair of hellraisers who decided to ‘stir up’ Duster’s main camp by, well, driving right through it, including one of the main bunk tents, and spray-painting a tag on what appeared to be a broken down armored vehicle that Duster used as a makeshift vanity piece: the vehicle had long lost its treads and clearly couldn’t run. The idea, Dawn said, was that Joy and Neeko would appear to be a pair who thought that bearding Duster and his pack would earn their respect through sheer moxie and they could join their gang. A ‘terrible mistake’ on their part, as in reality this would just make Duster want to murder them. No sense of humor, it seemed.
In reality, of course, they knew full well that Duster’s group, who didn’t have an official name, would go after them with fatal intent. So now here they were, running for their lives. Too much truth in that one though…
The pickup truck gaining ground to come in from the left had somehow been modified to run on its wheel rims. Somehow, they’d kitbashed it so that tires weren’t required. It was one damn impressive feat of creative engineering, which was now pulling up besides the pair as the three men standing in the back took aim with machine pistols.
“DUCK!”
Bullets ripped the air above the two as they did so. Joy heard another loud THUNK, and popped her head back up to see that there wasn’t just shooters on the back of the truck, but a turret as well, armed not with bullets but with a reinforced harpoon tied to a steel rope. More bullets slash through the air, forcing Joy back down again.
“Gun!”
Neeko passed it over.
Joy promptly opened the car door.
“TAKE THE WHEEL!”
Grabbing onto the door frame, Joy leaned out through the open door, aiming. As said, it was damn hard to shoot from a position like this, one a magnitude WORSE than the earlier biker, but Joy had a few tricks he didn’t.
Like the fact her gun was a literal magic weapon that synced with her eyesight. It didn’t allow ‘see it, hit it’ accuracy, but it helped. And Joy was always more of a ‘OPEN FIRE’ type than a sharp shooter.
Also, vehicles rigged to drive without tires reacted even more poorly to hydraulic damage, it seemed.
Even so, Joy almost emptied the gun into the truck’s right front side/wheel before it broke, using the last shot to sever the rope as the framework snapped and the whole truck overturned in another violent crash. Pulling herself back up, Joy closed the door and wiped one hand across her grime-smeared face.
“It later yet?” Neeko said.
“No.”
“You think we can take them-wait, where they go?”
Joy checked her mirrors and then took a look herself. Their pursuers weren’t GONE, but they seemed less in number and further back.
“Ack! Mirree, Neeko feel it coming!”
“What? What? I mean, what’s coming and where?!”
The chase, it should be noted, was not happening in a desert. Rather, it had been happening across a dry plainthat had occasionally been spotted with dead trees, shattered buildings, and even a few roads, albeit ones Joy had crossed over instead of driven on. It had been the recommended direction to go by Dawn: there was a good seventy miles before it gave way to much rockier terrain running into mountains. However, off to their right now was a rather massive forest...or what had been a forest once. Now it was just a mass of dead, desiccated trees, like the fabled elephant graveyards of old.
“There!” Neeko pointed.
Joy couldn’t really SEE what emerged, but she DID hear it. The sound of masses of shattering wood, cut down not for fuel but solely to make a path, as something drove through the glade to intercept.
Joy had never heard of a monster truck. But she would have said it was a fitting name as Duster’s custom vehicle exploded out of the copse like a bat out of hell, chain-reinforced wheels spraying splinters and flecks of dry mold as the truck both charged and loomed, aiming to crush the pair like the bugs they were.
---
When the doors burst open, the punks were already waiting. They gathered in a half-circle, ready for whatever invader was coming. Maybe the boss was gone, but they could rip apart anyone else who decided to step up...
They didn’t quite expect a brown-haired youth to walk in, seemingly unarmed.
Vent looked around, analyzing the rabble in front of him. Not much to consider here. Mostly just the usual cobbled-together weapons and armour. They wouldn't take much to take down, but there were an awful lot of them. The danger was in being swarmed and cut down before he could do anything. So that meant he needed to act now, before they stopped being disarmed by his appearance.
But…
He looked down at what was in his hand.
This was probably a bad idea, in a lot of respects. The Build System at least had some science that it was built upon. A functioning concept. This… this was new in every sense of the word. Untried, untested. And there were so many factors to consider. If even the slightest thing was off…
But a lot of bad memories were starting to surface again. Memories of men - robots - with jackboots and helmets. Of hissing and snarling half-human monsters. And a man in a bat-winged mask.
His grip tightened on the card-like object in his hand.
“Well, then…”
He looked up again and grinned at the punks as they edged closer.
“Shall we begin the experiment?” He asked, rhetorically, as he pressed the button.
JUMP!
Moving quickly, he brought it down to the new device at his waist. Not the Build Driver, but something sleeker, in black, silver and chartreuse yellow-green. As much as he tried to stay composed, he couldn’t help but smile when he saw the flash of light from it and heard the confirmation noise. He didn’t notice the others running in past him, presumably to provide cover.
AUTHORISE…
There was a flash and a VROP. The punks yelled in shock. When Vent looked, a gigantic mechanical grasshopper was squatting beside him, antennae twitching. Good. All systems functioning as expected - including the emergency Sifter tech. But that was only half the test, of course.
He reached up and patted the huge insect. It’s steely shell felt smooth under his fingers.
“Good boy,” he said, vaguely.
Then he held up the card device, flipped it open and gave the all-too-familiar cry.
“HENSHIN!”
And, in one swift motion, he slotted it in.
PROGRISE!
There was a lot here that felt familiar. The bodysuit forming over him, engulfing his form, felt like slipping back into a comfortable pair of trousers. It was oddly reassuring, in a way. But there was a lot here that was new, too. Aside from the sounds and lights, there was the grasshopper giving a single screech, leaping up and splitting apart at the joints. And then each part dissolved into a stream of particles that attached to his own body, forming sleek armour.
GO! LEAP UP AND RISE! RISING HOPPER!
[A Jump To The Sky Turns To A Rider Kick!]
Ventus Cosine paused, taking the new sensations and absorbing the readouts in his vision. Hmmm. Synchronization in most parts seemed to be at max. Except for the arms and upper body. Could provide a weak point for bullets and blades. Oh, well, too late to think about it now.
He turned to-
Shun’ei was standing amongst a veritable pile of bodies, all of them gently smoking. Fire still danced around his hands, and there was a quizzical look on his face.
“You really gotta make those things shorter,” he remarked.
Kamen Rider Zero-One looked at the fallen foes, then at his comrade. Embarrassment seemed to radiate off him.
“Yes, well, um… Something to think about in the next version.”
Things had taken a pretty hard turn there.
---
And speaking of hard turns…
“HOLD ON NEEKO!”
It was a fairly simple, effective plan on Duster’s part. Coordinate with his men, come in from the side, crush the bitches who’d made a mess of his camp. QED.
Except his truck couldn’t get so far ahead that he could come in from an opposing or side angle. Rather, it was more of a 45 degree intercept from the back. And hence when Joy yanked hard on the wheel, the intercept turned into an overshoot, Joy slashing across the front of the monster truck’s path just before said wheels would crush her and Neeko. Joy quickly eased off the gas, sliding back so that she was driving along the truck’s right side. Big, yeah, but the bigger they were...
“That’s our mickey!” Joy said.
Bullets immediately began raining down on the car. Duster wasn’t alone, having several of his men riding on top of the monster truck, the back having been converted into a crude platform with that purpose exactly in mind. They immediately began shooting down at the pair; completely inaccurate fire, of course, but it forced Joy to do some weaving; all she needed was one bad luck bullet in one bad spot.
“I’m actually not too bad at this!”
---
“We don’t have time to let her get good at this.” Dawn said, lowering the engine into the vehicle.
“And you really don’t want to tell her about the computer aid?” Vent said.
“She might rely on it. Better to let her think she’s doing it all naturally. Humans have a bad habit of second guessing themselves.”
Something about that line made Vent look uncomfortable. But he said nothing.
“You know what I mean.”
---
So yes, Joy was NOT suddenly a master combat driver. But she was good enough; the computer just compensated for time. After all, if you were going to build a fake battered fallen-civilization patchwork car, you might as well hide some stuff under the hacked together broken bits.
And it was probably a good thing she did have something of an idea how to handle an unwilling ride. She HAD had to ride horses before she got her special one, and not all of them were agreeable. While a car didn’t have a mind of its own, it also didn’t respond on its own in any way; Joy had to command it to do everything. So when the carry-on Duster man followed the bullets by throwing down a molotov cocktail, Joy had to again swerve away…
Which nearly made her drive into a giant rock. And when she snapped the wheel back, Duster followed suit, attempting a ‘side slam’ against the car that would really be a ‘side crush’ if it had worked.
The angle, fortunately, didn’t favor it. The chained super-sized wheel still ripped into the side of the car, Joy reeling back with a yell as the spinning mass and momentum sent chunks of metal flying, and then with a pained crunch, tore the door on Joy’s side right off before Duster had to pull back to keep his top-heavy vehicle from potentially overturning or overstressing the chassis.
“Motherfucker.” Joy said with solemn aggrievance.
“Me get rid of top pests!”
“Wait, Neeko, let me get closer-!”
Neeko was a lot clingier than the average being. She also had excellent reflexes. Which meant when she did a leaping bound, the men on top shot at her, and she compensated in mid air, she didn’t land on the ground or fall under the wheels. Instead, she landed on the side of the back right side wheel of the truck.
It promptly took her for a spin, Neeko letting out a yowling yelp as she became a blur of movement, before Joy pulled back and let Neeko part jump back, part fall down, and part get pulled back into the car.
“You all right?”
“Feel like clothes in washing machine.” Neeko’s eyes revolved madly in their sockets. “But could be worse.”
More bullets...from behind them. Duster’s people, at least some of them, had caught up, and were starting to box them in from behind.
“Yeah, about that.”
Then the molotov came crashing down, and the front of Joy and Neeko’s car erupted in flames.
---
The camp, on the other hand…
“WAHHHHHH!” Yelled the random punk as he was hurled through the air, before he was knocked arse over teakettle backwards by...a pillow.
Vent was testing out his new tech. Shun’ei was practicing fighting smaller, weaker groups. Bernard and Meitenkun...were playing baseball. Bernard in his Apparatus being the pitcher, and whoever he grabbed up being the ball.
“fore.”
“Wrong sport!” Vent said, as Springtrap stood by, eating popcorn.
“i wasn’t saying the term, i was counting the number.”
“Oh.”
“WARRGGHHH-!” WHACK.
“double fault.”
“Why do I even bother?” Vent said.
“hey, this is busywork. gotta find some way to have fun. I’m sure the two girls are amusing themselves.”
---
A blobule of whatever thick mess the apocalypse punks used for their accelerant immediately flopped/broke off the flaming front of the car. Joy was thankful she had discarded her hat; the fireball would have taken it otherwise as she ducked.
“I sure hope Dawn wasn’t expecting this back without a scratch!” The fire bomb had thankfully landed on the actual front of the car instead of in the exposed cab, but that still meant the front was now awash in flame, and worse, belching foul black smoke that completely snarled forward visibility.
Joy really didn’t have time to even shout a few words in regards to her solution. She looked behind her; men on motorcycles, two of them, followed by one car…
Then she hoped she remembered the buttons right and hit a switch.
The top of the car flipped up, and Joy aimed her gun and blew the connections off, ducking. And Neeko, bless her heart, or maybe her reflexes, also ducked.
The fiery square of metal smashed through Joy’s windshield (which was already half broken via Joy just having shot through it, so no big loss there), flew over their heads, bounced off the back of their car, and took out the bikers, their faint scream of surprise vanishing as their bikes crashed and the car behind them ran them over, the sudden ‘bump in the road’ too much for said car to handle as it snap-turned and then OVER-turned, the whole mass going up in an explosion as Joy stuck her head back up.
“I think we’re just about out of leather oil, Neeko.”
“Neeko might be running low on magic,” the Oovi-Kat hissed. “We need think of something soon.” She chucked a quick Tanglebarb behind her, but it was weak and faint, and probably had no hope of snarling up anything bigger than a unicycle.
She was right. But it DID cause the wheel to lock up for a split second, which sent the monster truck into a weave…
“TAKE THE WHEEL!”
Joy sprang up to her feet and immediately got onto the battered front of their car. It was probably a good thing she didn’t step on or stick a spur into any vital part of the now-exposed engine and other mechanisms, as she pulled out a grappling hook attachment.
The men on top shot at her, the car having fallen behind the truck a bit from Joy taking her foot off the accelerator, and the molotov man lobbed another of his bombs, this one missed completely. Joy shot back, getting the top men to duck for cover, and then she snapped in the grappling hook, fired, and as soon as it punched into the lower part of the truck, wheeled the line in, pulling herself onto the truck’s back.
It became immediately apparent that Neeko was a lot better at playing stick to the surface than Joy was, as she nearly immediately fell off, one hand losing her grip as she barely held onto the back of the truck.
“MIRREE!” Neeko looked up, then back down, torn between focusing on the road and on her friend. But one hand quickly dug into a pocket and pulled out a handful of something.
“Careful, Mirree!” she shouted over the roar of the engine. “Neeko try these Bangnuts!”
She didn't have time to wait for a response - or, at least, she felt she didn’t. Leaning out and over, she threw them at the general area of Joy’s feet. There was a moment’s silence, and then - BANG - and a flash of green light and force pushed Joy up towards her original goal. It also made the back of the truck jolt a bit, but that was the least of their worries at the moment.
It was far from the most elegant of landings, but it had two benefits. One was, as Joy got pushed/tossed/flipped up onto the top of the truck (modded to have more space to carry Duster’s men up there, a small bonus), she wasn’t falling to her...well, maybe not doom, but it would have been painful. And the second, better benefit was that the awkward flip-tumble up bumped one of the men as he was going over to see what the racket was and caused him to fall off, Neeko dodging to the side as he crashed down with a cut off scream. The impact drove the breath out of Joy and sent pain shooting through her lower back…
It wasn’t enough to keep her from snapping her backup guns into her hands from the mechanisms hidden up her shirt’s wrists as she shot down the rest of the men in three quick bursts.
No more ammo for those, though. She discarded them as she got up.
She wasn’t the only one, as the man finished swinging up from his climb from the truck’s cab.
Joy narrowed her eyes. This was a badly damaged world. It shouldn’t have been producing, or even allowing to endure, specimens like this. Contrary to popular fiction, radiation just killed and produced fatal mutations. It didn’t make super babies, and it sure as heck didn’t empower men and women so that they stood 6’7. He wore what might have once been a boiler suit, covered up with torn knee pads, several belts, and some fuzzy material Joy couldn’t identify (it was badly damaged scuba-chainmail, the kind that divers used for protection from sharks). Dark goggles covered his face, and his hands, the size of Joy’s head, had drawn a pair of machetes. His head was a mass of scars; he’d once barely avoided a scalping, and he’d long lost every tooth in his mouth. How he’d managed to put together the metal fang-dentures that replaced them as he growled, Joy had no idea. Necessity was the mother of invention.
Joy didn’t make any sound in response. She just drew her sabre. Yeah, it stood out...but she doubted Metalmouth noticed.
---
The sounds of yelling, metal clashing, and feet stamping on the back of his truck briefly reached Duster over the noise of his vehicle’s engine and the sound of his forward progress. This had been a black sand beach once...now it was just barren grey fields of dust.
He liked it, personally. It killed everything that crossed it without respect. Just like him. That was all that was left in the world. Killing and respect.
He checked his mirror setup. The car was gone. Well, it wasn’t ahead of him, he didn’t have any blind spots...which meant it had either fallen far behind, or crashed. His men would deal with the car. Just like Terminal would deal with the intruder. God damn annoying bitches, but hey, they’d cleared away some useless mouths. Anyone who couldn’t handle a pair of girls with a semi-functioning car and one gun had no place in the world, HIS world-
There was a heavy thud on the roof of the cab, and Duster removed his right arm, the scarred metal brace letting out a pained squeak from hinges no oil could completely grease as it came away from the wheel, the knife popping from the wrist. Just in case...
The large form slid back into the other seat. Terminal looked even worse than he usually did, blood running down his face, neck, and torso, one side of his armored jacket shredded and gone, as well as his goggles. It had clearly been a fight, but his cold eyes and brief grunt made the winner clear.
“Nice work. You leave anything good for later?”
Terminal just snorted, holding up a bloody mess. A freshly cut off face.
“Good.”
Which was when Joy came down on the other side of the truck cab, holding onto the driver’s side as she rammed her gun into the back of Duster’s head.
“Stop the truck.”
Duster froze. He was, for the first time in a long time, completely baffled. Terminal had come back in, he’d skinned the woman, even IF she’d somehow survived her face getting flayed off there was NO way Terminal would have left her alive, he would never betray him, how could someone be sticking a gun against his he-
Then Terminal shimmered and turned into Neeko, the ‘skinned face’ just an empty bag. And Duster’s bafflement veered into full-on distress, as what he thought was possible in his world was upended several different ways, all at once, and all of them hard hitting. Only the sensation of the hot barrel starting to blister his skin kept him from just shutting down entirely.
“STOP THE TRUCK!”
What the hell the hell...he heard the click, and somehow he turned somewhat back to the wheel, the gun barrel sliding along his head to rest against his left temple. Terminal was gone, he knew that, and there was a monster in his truck and what was going ON was he already dead and in hell…?
“The notes. Hand them over.” Joy said. She had an odd accent, and was this other woman...monster...THING rippling with different colors as she intensely looked at Duster’s twitching eyes.
“What notes?”
“THE WATER MACHINE NOTES.” Joy pressed the barrel harder, grinding the circular shape into skin that felt little different from leather. She was quite willing to pull the trigger and kill the man right then and there, there wouldn’t be any hesitation in the act. She didn’t do it because, well, she sure as heck didn’t want the results to spray on Neeko. That was a trauma she would bend over backwards to spare the Oovi-Kat.
“...I don’t have them.”
“Neeko, on the count of three, start eating his face until he talks, or can’t talk any more.” She was FAIRLY sure Neeko would know she was putting on a nasty act…
“Neeko prefers gizzards.” Neeko flashed her teeth meaningfully.
“ALLRIGHTALLRIGHT! Under...the seat. Your seat, freak.” Duster growled. The world was still insane, but he was familiar enough with being threatened to respond to it via his own instincts.
“And stop the truck.”
It was around here that Joy’s lack of expertise in cars finally came calling. Neeko started to bend over, looking under the seat...and Duster did exactly what Joy asked.
Except he did it by slamming on the brakes. Something Joy had forgotten he could do, because it was done by his feet.
Horses, after all, were stopped by the hands. Like Dawn had said, she hadn’t had time to become a master car driver.
Good thing she knew how to handle an animal that bucked. That still only saved her by a few inches, Joy’s hands just managed to seize onto the edge of the door, her gun slipping from her fingers, even as Neeko was flipped upside down from the sudden brake. The knife snapped out of Duster’s arm as he tried to stab Neeko, but even in this tight space Neeko was not in the mood to lose another tail, as she thrashed around, kicking one foot at Duster, and he reared back, turning to stab repeatedly as Joy as she pulled herself up, the woman grabbing at the knife-arm, and then the monster truck roared back into life, grey sand spraying up as Duster switched from the brake to the gas, Joy snarling as she cut her hands on the barbed wire on the brace and the knife, trying to still hold on.
Neeko was getting upright, but in this super cramped space she couldn’t really pull any of her better tricks, she might hit Joy, or make the vehicle explode, and the notes…
She knew what Joy would have wanted. Still, she whipped out her tail, grabbing Duster by his neck and trying to get a strangle on as she dove down, simultaneously trying to get under her seat, where was it…
The knife impaled into her tail, and she yowled, but she had it, it was a circular container and even as she was grabbing it firm she was kicking with both legs, and she had forgotten the exact space she was dealing with it was too small and she found herself not only kicking Duster but kicking herself right out of the monster truck, the door breaking open from the impact as Neeko fell out, managing a mostly-uprighting before she hit the sand and tumbled, the foul mess stinging her eyes and filling her mouth with dust.
Joy, barely hanging on, tried to grab for Duster’s wheel...and her blood slicked hand slipped. It was just enough for Duster to turn around and punch her, his metal fist not getting a stab in with its attached blade, but the impact was enough to knock Joy free entirely.
Neeko cleared her eyes just as Joy fell...and then in an insane blur, she drew her sword and impaled it into the side of the truck. For a few more seconds she dangled from her new perch, before the weakened metal gave way, the sword pulling free as Joy’s form swinging and falling down beneath the massive wheels.
“MIR- ack!” Neeko’s cry of concern was ruined by all the sand in her mouth. Cough and spitting, she lolloped over on all fours, her muscles still singing from all the tumbling she’d been doing. More spand spilled from her hair, but she still clutched the canister in one paw, which she transferred to the grip of her tail when she found that was slowing her up. It had been a very good time to avoid losing another trail, stab aside. It just hurt. But not as much as the innate fear and panic did.
Joy...actually got up before Neeko reached her.
A little. It was more of a flopping fumble, a cross between being drunk and a fish tossed on land. Grey sand. Loose. A normal person would still likely have been crushed, she HAD been run over by a gigantic wheel, but Joy had armor, and was tougher than the norm. Between that, and the sand having just enough give that it had imprinted her into the ground as much as crushed her into it, she wasn’t dead, or a broken mess.
“I don’t like sand.” Joy mumbled. If she only knew how her adopted father would have reacted to that.
“Mirree, yes! Got notes! LET’S GO!”
“Where car.” Joy was spitting clumps of dust out herself. She seemed to enjoy it about as much as Neeko had, as in, not at all.
“Um...jump free when you beat big stabby man, left it.”
“Oh.”
The very loud sound of an engine being strained interrupted Neeko’s response.
Duster had managed a rather impressive feat; a strong 180 degree turn on a vehicle that really wasn’t meant to do that sort of thing. Now he was facing them in the distance, the wheels snarling as the truck tried to get purchase on the loose sand.
It wouldn’t take long. Ten seconds, max. Joy shook her head, blinking mess from her eyes as the solution lined up, as smoothly as a drawn gun.
“...hey Neeko, you trust me?”
“When Neeko ever not trust you?” was the reply.
“Then run. That way. And keep your hands free.” Joy pointed to her left. “Leave me here. I got this.”
Neeko stared at Joy hard, a worried expression crossing her face. For a moment, it didn’t seem like what she’d said earlier was true. There was the weird feeling of her sho’ma probing at the other woman’s, trying to sense her intentions.
Whatever she found, it seemed to satisfy her, as she nodded.
“Give him one for Neeko,” she said, then turned and sprinted away as fast as the sand would let her.
“Oh, no need.”
There had been so much rigamarole here. So many damn horses to shoe, so that something wouldn’t go wrong. Sometimes Joy thought Dawn just liked making people do things the harder way, what with all the things they’d had to do, or rather not do. But…
Neeko had the notes.
And Joy had stabbed a big hole into the truck’s gas tanks, the fuel pouring out as Duster put his truck in gear, roaring forward to crush her properly. Why wouldn’t he? Just a girl. Guns gone, sword gone, no way she could outrun a truck, open field, nowhere to hide…
Electrical arcs crackled between Joy’s fingers.
He wanted to play showdown? Fine. She’d always welcomed a challenge.
“HEY NEEKO! CATCH!”
Joy didn’t shoot the lightning bolt at her attacker.
She fired it at Neeko. All Duster really saw was a flash of bright light, and Neeko turned around, the electricity not so much striking her as impacting her hands, gathering there, and then using Neeko as a semi-conducting rod, Neeko providing the small amount of aim needed on her own. The lightning bolt slashed back out, sand sizzling into glass before it slammed home into the fuel-spouting hole.
Killing and respect, all that was left. There was more than one way that the lack of the latter would cause the former, a lesson Duster learned in the few seconds of life he had left before his truck went up like a bomb. Traditional gasoline was rarer than water these days, you made your engines run on whatever you could hook up.
Even if traces of that were some faint traces of old rocket fuel.
Joy had expected the truck to go boom.
She hadn’t expected it to explode but STAY TOGETHER, Duster vanishing within his cab with a howl as the inferno consumed him, but the darn thing was still going forward at high speed, right at her. And she really wasn’t in any shape to run. She’d just been run OVER, after all.
“Fuck.”
Neeko slammed into Joy, having charged back across the sand before delivering the strongest leaping tackle she could, the two women lost in another (painful) tumble as the truck roared on past where Joy had been, and then FINALLY broke apart, the wheel framework tearing apart as the weighted cab broke off, the whole machine going to pieces and exploding a few more times, scattering a thousand flaming shards of scorched steel over a several hundred foot area. The sound of debris puffing down into the sand continued for another ten seconds.
Joy would have said thanks. But she was too busy spitting out sand and dirt, again. This time, rather violently. Seemed like she’d gotten a mouthful, the woman letting out a steady stream of what might have been curses and might have just been onomatopoeia for ‘I don’t like sand. Especially in my mouth.’
Neeko, too, spent a good time hacking up the mouthful of sand she’d received during their tangled tumbling. She’d inhaled about the same quantity as Joy had, so it took her some time to formulate any kind of words. A lot of it had ended up in her hair also, the purple and pink marred by a solid canvas of grey dust. By some miracle, her tail remained coiled around the notes, which hadn’t somehow gotten lost in the dust ball the two women had formed.
After a while, the Oovi-Kat managed to clear out her mouth, although a good deal of it still clung to her tongue. She inhaled some dust-free air, then looked up at Joy.
“We scrap him good,” she quipped. It was the cleverest one she could think of at the moment.
“You’re telling Dawn we lost the car.”
“Why Neeko?” Neeko looked mildly indignant.
“Because if I do and she gets cross with me, I honestly might shoot her.”
----
-After-
“Just call me Alice!” The old, worn man’s bug eyes were made even buggier by the coke bottle glasses he wore, one a spiderweb of cracks, said eyes flicking back and forth over the papers.
“Should we be talking to him?” Bernard said.
“Because he seems insane or because I talked about us not interacting with the people here?” Dawn said.
“Anchovies on your pizza, sir?” Dr. Renck said.
“....Both, I suppose.”
“The answer’s the same. I doubt he’ll remember it properly or anyone will really listen. I was more concerned with tone. Anyway...yes. Those were his notes, more or less intact.”
“Oh good. I was worried we’d come here just so Meitenkun would discover he could even sleep in a wasteland.” Shun’ei said, his partner doing just that in a corner.
“You made copies already? Of the notes?” Joy said.
“Yes. They say you can’t kill an idea, but you can damn sure bury it alive if you’re not careful. This world’s better off now. Hopefully, a trend.”
“...I hate to be the fly in the soup…” Joy said.
“What was the point of this, besides a good deed? Dr. Renck, how did you get this idea?” Dawn said.
“Plastics!”
“All by yourself?”
“No, no! Colored man, colored man! Very friendly, scared or not! Young ones these days! Do you know they have tails? Or maybe that’s all the radiation!”
“...he met an Oovi-Kat?” Joy said, looking up in shock, before checking to see if Neeko had somehow appeared. She hadn’t, for good reason...
“How?” Bernard followed.
“Gone, gone! Vanished at times! He didn’t come back! But we talked, we talked! Gave me holes for thread! A great egg in his pants, that one!”
“....Dawn, I’ve long puzzled that you like to keep your cards close to your vest, but this is somethin’ I think bore mention’n up front.” Joy said.
“I didn’t want to give anyone false hope. Or confuse them.”
“When he says gone, does he mean-?”
“Dead? Well, I didn’t find any corpse. And I don’t know, I feel like...Neeko would just know where to go if one was around. No. I had a theory and this is very good confirmation.”
“Please keep it simple.” Shun’ei said, replacing the ice bag on his knuckles.
“Simple? Not an easy task. But...all right. Ghidorah ate societies. Not just flesh and blood, he ate life and soul and whatnot. Partly because he had to, mostly because he was a sadistic monster. But it meant that he was slow to digest his meals. When we killed him, the most recent of said meals were released. And since that wasn’t planned, they just sort of went everywhere. Time and space and dimensions, it’s very complex and involves a lot of math.”
“Always with the math.” Shun’ei said.
“Since I wasn’t expecting it when we took him down, my ability to track it is limited. All I can manage is a sort of rough direction set and possible landing spots. Basically, he spat Oovi-Kat all over the realms, and they sort of pop up where they land. Alive, it seems.”
“And then they vanish?”
“Well, this was the hole. My readings as said are incomplete to an extreme I find uncomfortable. It should just be a matter of follow line, look for dot, go to dot. But that’s not working. I’m just getting ‘smudges’ instead of clear landing points. So all in all...my working theory is that there’s some strange sort of magnetism happening here. That the Oovi-Kat will come down somewhere, and then get pulled...somewhere else. In theory, based on more math you would never understand, towards each other. So the good news is, they could all be gathering together again. The bad news is, because of all the mentioned factors, I have no idea WHERE. So, we go to where I think these Oovi-Kat made their landings. And if we get enough of them, I can cross reference them to find a singular point where they would all meet if they then headed towards each other.”
“....well, it’s better than nothing. Anything else that could mess this up?”
“Beyond the troubles of those worlds? Two things. One, I don’t know if this drawing process is voluntary or not. Can they not go if they don’t want to? Or is it beyond their power? And the other is, I don’t know if you have to be alive for it to happen. So I have no idea if we’ll find remains, and by extension...how many survivors we might find at the end.
“...Still, a chance for some survivors is better than complete extinction.”
---
-Later-
Once again, Joy’s dad would probably have invoked some pop culture. The Prime Directive, maybe, or something about some people called Watchers and ‘Pro-Sicilians’, whatever the heck that meant.
In any case, Dawn’s team had certainly kicked over this apple cart. They’d freed this large camp from Duster’s tyranny, of course, but the world was still a giant mess, and as bad as the system had been, now it was shattered all over again, and the survivors had to try and fix it into something better.
It wasn’t a total loss. They WERE survivors, after all, and a lot of resources had just been freed up. There were those who could defend themselves and others, Dawn could probably slip them a useful aid or two…
But the big issue were the remnants of those Dawn had condemned.
Between both battles, most of Duster’s loyalists were either dead or long gone. But there was still a group of about nine, left over from the camp battle and two cars returning from Duster’s demise only to be captured. What were once men and women, now hardened THINGS who barely had enough survival instinct to keep ahead of their glowering fury. The parasites, who would take until there was nothing left. Too mean to die and too mean to let live.
“So then. Maybe I should give you the same chance you’d give me if you were wearing my boots.” Joy said. “So here’s your two options. Get in your cars and go away. Far, far away, and never, ever come back. Or…”
Joy held up what had once been a can of beans, now just a dented mess of metal.
“You still have your weapons. The forces covering you stopped aiming ten seconds ago. If you shoot me down, you can leave without issue. But we’re going to do this in the way of noons. Nobody draws until this can hits the ground.”
The remnants looked at each other. Twitches, hand sliding down towards weapons, but amazingly, they did listen, maybe Duster had drilled some sort of discipline into them, or maybe Joy was thinking too coldly of them.
She tossed the can up.
Eyes flicked.
And Joy pulled out a pair of guns and blew every single remaining Duster loyalist away before they could even get a weapon free.
You’re damned by the company you keep, sometimes. With a dull clatter, the can thudded to the ground, Joy lowering her smoking firearms.
“Draw.”
-------
-Actually Later-
Neeko woke up with a gasp.
For a moment, she didn’t know where she was. The white walls, the stucko ceiling and the cotton bed gave her no clues as to where she was. Her mind whirled, trying to recall something, anything, to give her an anchor in her current situation.
Then she remembered coming back, after they’d got the notes. Then the sudden shortness of breath and burning itch in her throat, halfway into handing them over to Dawn.
The dust in that world had… not been of the healthy kind. With all the impromptu tumbleweed impressions she'd been doing, Neeko had inhaled more than her fair share of the stuff. Enough that a nasty pathogen had started attacking her respiratory system. And this on top of the usual problems that come with a lustful of foreign dust from another dimension. Dawn had given her something foul-tasting and with far too long a name to remember, and told her to rest up while her body did the rest.
But it had left Neeko rather light-headed and dazed. She’d slipped in and out of consciousness several times, followed by bizarre and surreal dreams she couldn’t remember. Once, she’d been certain she was awake and waiting for orange juice, and then the pink elephants on the wallpaper had started dancing. She’d woken up screaming an epithet in her language that she was sure even Joy got the gist of.
They didn’t even have pink elephant wallpaper.
And now, there was that last one. Did she see that? Did Joy really just… so casually and callously kill those people? Was that a dream or a memory? It all seemed to blur together, the sho’ma she’d sensed and grabbed and thrown away a chaotic mess of colour. Suddenly, trying to fix that hole in her friend’s soul didn’t seem such a good idea…
But then she remembered what had been told to her as she’d been convalescing. About sightings of Oovi-Kats. And the chance that maybe, just maybe, they could find them.
Neeko relaxed. But she kept an eye on the walls, just in case the pink elephants came back suddenly.
Then she dropped her head on the pillow, and went back to sleep.
