lr.6
MEGAZONE 23
"Did you ever have one of those days when it all was
going wrong?"
--Tesla
"ReRob, you have the conn. I have to do a little Search
and Rescue mission."
"I heard. Where's Gryphon?"
"He put on his armor and went out the back."
"Oh, that explains the alarm. Good luck."
"Thanks, I'll need it. See you when I find her." With
that Zoner climbed the ladder to the Daytona from Hell.
"If you find her," ReRob mumbled.
Just after he left, Kei entered the bridge, wearing her
black CVR-3 and carrying a large box with wheels on it. She
stepped into the portside airlock and, without saying a word,
decompressed it into space. Unfolding her VR-052 Battler
Cyclone, she transformed it to battloid mode and streaked
away on full jet.
Zoner looked down at his sensor panels. Radar was
indicating himself, the Wedge, and three other blips. One
was moving away from the Wedge at Mach 1 (where Mach in space
was determined to be 750 mph), one was directly on its trail
at Mach 4.7, and the other was coming up behind him at 400
miles per hour. The Mach 4.7 blip was undoubtedly Gryphon;
his armor was the fastest thing in the Wedge's arsenal. Even
the Daytona from Hell could only sustain Mach 3.5, for now.
The 400-mph blip had to be a Cyclone, which would make it
Kei; nothing else was that slow in space. That left the
obvious one, the one with the biggest head start and the odd
speed, to be the Garland. Zoner opened up a radio frequency
to the Cyclone.
"Kei, that you?" he asked.
"Of course it is. She's my partner, I'm not gonna sit
back and let other people search for her."
"It isn't much of a search; I have her on radar."
"Yeah...my Cyclone only has one-mile radar capability,
or I'd be seeing her. The Wedge just went off my scale."
"That thing's too slow," Zoner said as he braked.
"Catch up and grab on."
"Right. Thanks." Zoner slowed further, allowing her to
catch up and grab onto the Daytona's undercarriage. Then, as
soon as she was sure the Cyclone's powerful exoskeleton had a
good grip, he opened her up.
Gryphon was half-exulting in the incredible feeling of
streaking through open space at nearly five times the speed
of soundlessness--and half-worried to death. He could see
the glow of Yuri's thrusters now, having closed the gap
between them quite rapidly. The GRF-3N was a damn mobile
piece of equipment. On the other hand, coming up behind her
so fast, it was quite certain that she would notice him
before long.
Indeed, she did notice him; the Garland suddenly spun,
as he got within visual-detail range, and raised its 25mm
machine rifle.
"Stay away, Ben," Yuri's voice said in his ears. "I can
take a hint. I appreciate the sentiment, but don't try to
bring me back."
"Yuri...first of all, I doubt you can hurt my armor with
that gun. Second, I'm not going to leave you out here.
You're at least two weeks from anywhere you can get out of
that thing, and you only have a couple of hours of air.
Third, Zoner is extremely sorry for what he did. I made
certain he feels like shit about it."
"Sure he's sorry. There's nothing for him to be sorry
for. He just doesn't love me, that's all--it's not his
fault. I won't stand in his way." Her voice caught. "I
don't believe in tying people down."
"It isn't like that. It's just that he never thinks."
Gryphon had nearly pulled even with the Garland by now. "You
know how he just pulls incredible `duh's sometimes...he just
never thought that you would doubt him."
"Fuck that!" Yuri shouted bitterly. "I'm not stupid,
you know--I can take a hint. When someone says `go away'
that loudly and clearly, I can hear them. I'm not Nedlike."
"Now you're being just as silly as he was. He didn't
even realize he was hurting you until Kei and I told him.
Even then it surprised the hell out of him. He loves you."
Before she could interrupt him with anything more, he cut in,
"And so do I."
"What?!" Yuri replied. "But what about--I can't believe
you'd do something like that to Kei--"
"No, no, no, no, no, geez, why does everyone
automatically assume when a man says something like that to a
woman he means--Christ, Yuri, you love Kei and Kei loves you,
and you go around shooting people if anyone implies something
like that between the two of you! Great. Now I'm getting
angry. I don't want to be angry, goddammit! I don't know
any way to explain it except one that sounds really lame...
Yuri, I never had a sister. I'm an only child."
"I know what you mean...I'm sorry I shouted at you. I'm
just a little on edge, or I would've known what you meant
right from the start..."
"We all love you, Yuri."
Gryphon noted the Daytona from Hell closing in from back
from the direction of the Wedge, with a Cyclone riding the
undercarriage. The channel squawked a bit as Zoner cut in
the Daytona's comm gear.
"Yuri! Stop this, I'm sorry, I really am. Please come
back. I...I love you."
"You're lying! You're just saying that so you don't
look bad, you don't really care. I've seen you with Jenna.
You're always talking to her, telling her your problems and
secrets. If you really loved me you'd talk to me."
"Fine. I understand, I caused you to lose your trust in
me. I apologize for that. I realize you won't be able to
simply jump back into our relationship. But I do still love
you, and you must still care for me or you wouldn't be
running away like this."
"I don't care anymore. I wish you would just get out of
my life!"
"Yuri, you don't mean that. You ran because you were
hurt. You wouldn't be hurt by what I did unless you cared.
Even if you don't want to talk to me, don't do this to
everyone else. What about Kei? You know you can't just run
away from her. And what about the rest of the Wedge?
Everyone likes you, hell, we all love you. You're one of us.
Are you just going to run away from everyone?"
"Stop it! Just stop it! Don't you dare try and guilt
trip me into staying! I...I've made up my mind! I'm
leaving!"
"Yuri! How can you do this? How can you leave me after
all we've been through?" Kei cried out.
"Kei, we've hardly been through anything together. We
didn't even exist a couple of months ago! It's all fake, my
whole life is false. I don't belong here. I wasn't meant to
exist, to love."
"I guess that's how you feel about me too then, right
Yuri? I don't deserve to exist either?" Kei asked, audibly
disturbed and translating it to her own form of anger.
"Kei, Yuri, you both exist now. In your mind what you
remember is as real as everything I've ever done. You exist
and you're loved. What is real? How do we know that we
weren't all created a few moments ago, memories included?
For all we know we're all characters in some stupid story.
Why are we here? Because we're here. I could go on forever,
but we're not here to do theoretical discussion. I'm here to
get the woman I love back."
"Well, I'm not going back. I can't go back there now.
I can't face you and Jenna. Everyone is going to think I'm a
fool."
"Will you drop that already! Jenna and I are just
friends. Besides, if she thought she was to blame for our
breaking up she'd get really down."
"That's too fucking bad! You should have thought of
that before you shunned me for her!"
"Stop blaming this on her! Jenna and Matt are a couple.
They're fucking engaged! This is all just because of your
being so goddamn insecure!"
"I'm insecure! I'm insecure! How dare you call me
insecure! You're an insensitive bastard!"
"Insensitive?! I may be oblivious at times, but maybe
it's my fault for loving such an insecure bitch!"
Gryphon couldn't take any more. With a sudden shout of
pure, inarticulate rage, he fired his PPC at nothing at all.
The resultant flash and the sound of its firing, echoing
through the commsystems from inside his armor, silenced
everyone. He corrected drift with his reaction jets and
pivoted to face them; inside his faceplate his face was
slowly turning red. He was crying freely and his voice rang
with anguish.
"STOP IT!" he screamed. "STOP IT RIGHT NOW! You two
love each other! I won't just float here and watch you
verbally beat each other's brains in!" He pointed at the
Daytona. "You! You're too sensitive for your own good, or
at least that's what you think, so you wall yourself off from
everything and become one of the most insensitive people in
the universe!"
He swung around and gestured at the Garland. "You!
You're also extremely sensitive. You take his wall routine
as some kind of message. Compounding that--is you again!"
He swung back toward Zoner. "You also couldn't see the
broad side of a clue B-52 if it was sideslipping toward you!
You don't even realize you're driving the woman who loves you
away--and you don't even for a moment think she might take
your forced isolation the wrong way. I'm not even going to
get into the ultimate DUH you pulled, I'd get too pissed off
at too many people who have nothing to do with this at all."
Once again he pivoted toward Yuri. "And you--you're
becoming just like him! Your sensitivity is one of your
greatest gifts. Don't follow his example and let it block
you up into your own little cinderblock world. And don't
follow mine either and let what you're seeing around you
drive you to the point of utter madness either--figure it out
yourself. Both of us are sensitive people who fucked it
up...don't do the same thing!"
He jetted back so he could face both of them. "What I
see here is the most colossal fucking misunderstanding in the
universe. You two love each other. You fucked up, you took
it the wrong way, you started to drift and then you split.
That was stupid! Don't let it end this way. This is one of
the best things to happen to either of you--the only really
good thing to happen to either of you for a long time! Don't
kill it, or so help me I'll kill both of you."
"Ben?!" Zoner choked, not sure of what he had heard.
Ben hung in space for quite some time, motionless; then
his shoulders slumped and he exhaled hard.
"I'm sorry...I just lost it. I saw something beautiful
crumbling away into dust, and I couldn't handle the sight...
I'm sorry. I'll go away now... Suddenly I'm very, very
tired." He shut off his transmitter and floated there,
quivering with tension.
Kei flew to him, braking at his side and putting an arm
over his shoulders. Tapping her helmet to his so only he
could hear, she murmured, "Good job. If that doesn't do it,
there's no hope for either of them."
Zoner was silent for quite a while, struggling with his
thoughts. Yuri floated silently as well, contemplating.
Tension rippled.
"Yuri""Zoner," Zoner and Yuri said simultaneously.
"Sorry..."
"Yuri..."
"Go ahead," Yuri said a bit sheepishly.
"Yuri, I'm sorry. I'm not really angry with you, I guess
I'm angry with myself for driving you away. I don't blame you
for running away. I should have talked with you more."
"Talking with her at all would have been a good start!"
Ben angrily interjected.
"Thanks Ben, kindly butt out for now?" Zoner snapped
back. "As I was saying, Yuri, I never realized how much your
short existence bothered you. We really do need to talk.
Please understand, I've been fucked over too many times to
open up easily. But if it makes you uncomfortable, I'll tell
you more about myself. I guess it isn't fair. I know most
of your history, yet I'm mostly a mystery. But we shouldn't
sit out her in space and talk, we ought to return to the
ship."
"I'm sorry too. I guess I let all of my worries add up
and overcome me. I reacted a little extremely. I'll come
back with you."
"Thank you, Yuri. Thank you."
"You guys take off, Ben and I will return in a little
while."
"Ok, and thanks, both of you. Yuri, grab on to the
undercarriage. It'll be quicker."
"Ok."
Yuri grabbed onto the Daytona from Hell and they both
departed for the Wedge at high velocity.