"Alright, I'm in. Time to get moseying," The caninu muttered above the sound of his robot's pounding legs, metal stomping against rock as he looked around the dim, dismal tunnel. The glowing panels on his radar, along with his robot's eyes, only provided so much light within the cave; Shetland's gray-and-turquoise stone rumbled lightly before quickly being swallowed back up by the darkness. The built-in radio suddenly blared static, causing it's rider to wince in pain and flatten his ears. He clinked his dusted knuckles against the speaker a couple times, and the noise slowly subsided to a hum. "You're coming in loud and clear as usual. What's up?"
"I wa... if... Grappler's comm... was sti... working," A female voice cut through the buzzing, notes of warmth and concern vying for control of her voice. Some seconds later, she spoke again, this time without interruption. "Let me send you the maps of the tunnel that the miners have. It's pretty expansive, but it's been abandoned for a good few months now, so it might be unstable."
"Maybe I should poke out a few holes for sunlight so I could see whether it was unstable or not," The Grappler's pilot quipped back without skipping a beat, smiling brightly at the sigh he got in response. "Kidding, kidding. But I'm gonna need those maps pronto."
His radar flashed briefly, and a series of lines and boxes appeared on the screen. "There. I'm going to stay here at the surface outpost, okay? If I go further into town I might lose the connection."
"Sounds good to me, though your flamethrower probably won't do much good." The jackal nodded shortly and eased his robot's controls further forward; the machine sped up in kind, going from a casual walk to a briskly-paced jog. The air rushed around him, and he pulled his jacket in a bit tighter to keep from getting cold.
The tunnel bobbed upwards and downwards in jagged steps and steep slopes, and the shock from the impact of running and jumping was starting to wear on the caninu's nerves by the time he finally spotted a speckle of light amongst the shadows. As he drew nearer and nearer to what seemed to be the end of the passage, he stopped moving and covered his eyes with his arm, blinded by the sun. The Grappler skidded against the solid rock, and a few pebbles tapped against the ground before going strangely silent. Its pilot, on the other hand, took a deep gulp of the cleaner air.
"Uh?" The jackal murmured, staring outward as he adjusted to the change in light. The Cloud Sea could be seen below, the light turning out to be coming from a large gap torn into the floor and wall – it looked like a recent addition, judging from the dust falling down through it. He gingerly stepped around the hole in the tunnel and ran ahead, sparing it only a few seconds of thought afterward.
"Wait, hold on..." He slowed to a stop and looked over his shoulder. Between dust and musty air, the waning smell of gunpower was unmistakable. Instinctively, he raised his robot's arms, ready to lash out at unseen enemies. "That's way too fresh to be an old forgotten explosive going off by accident. I thought you said this place hasn't been touched in a while."
"It hasn't, and that's what the miners were afraid of... there must be someone operating down there illegally. Be careful, okay?" His mission control replied, and he hummed briefly before walking along to the tunnel's end. The caninu bumped the Grappler's fist into a rickety old minecart – the first true landmark he'd seen so far – and sent it zooming down the track, leaving him to make his way on foot. He rolled his eyes and leisurely chased after it.
The railway was more of a winding trail than the previous tunnel, or at least it had been in its heyday, with multiple switched tracks broken before they went anywhere or led to dead-ends in the cavern. The jackal bit his lip as he spun around and returned to the main track for the fifth time; his ear twitched as another rumble rippled through the cave, clumps of finely-ground sand dislodging from the ceiling and falling on the top of his robot's head. The Grappler's pilot grimaced.
A few paces later came the sound of rolling, and the minecart from before quickly zoomed towards him at high speed. The caninu bounded out of its path, watching the on-rails vehicle as it moved past them, a blur only visible thanks to the light of the mecha's eyes. Taking the chance, the jackal lurched his robot forward into a sprint, pushing through the railway as fast as he could in case another quake sent the minecart coming back for a third round. The rough rock started to give way to unpolished slabs of metal as the passage reached its end, and two lit torches caught the hunter's eye.
"Okay... time to take a look..." He slowly tiptoed (for a given value of tiptoeing) the Grappler over to the flickering flames, standing up and leaning forward somewhat to get a good view of the next room. He sucked in a breath and tapped on his radio a couple times. "Hey, are you picking any of this up on your own radar?"
"I'm... getting a much better reading than I was before. Are you outside or something?" The female voice asked thoughtfully. He could picture her tilted head, puzzling out what was happening from the safety of her own cockpit.
"Not quite..." was the best answer the hunter could give the disembodied voice in the speaker. The jackal snapped his jaw shut as he peered around the large room, a mess of randomly placed piles of scrap atop metal flooring used to camouflage the doors of a dingy elevator; it would have never passed standard safety inspections, but sky pirates didn't much seem to care about that. He spotted a lone guard dozing off at his post across the room, and the hunter took a quiet step away from the lights, dropping his voice to a whisper. "It looks like Shetland's got a pirate hideout right under its nose."
"Are you sure?" His friend replied quietly, and he grunted. "We're the first ones to check on the strange tremors in the cave, remember. I was thinking it'd only be a couple stragglers, but if it's a hideout and everything..."
"There's only one of them here right now," The jackal hastily added, watching as said guard let out a hefty yawn, stretching his arms out of the cockpit. He squinted, getting a better look at the enemy robot. "But... wait a minute, that looks like..."
Both the hunter and the pirate guard snapped to attention as the cave shook violently, and the former gasped as a couple sharp chunks of ore were forced loose from the ceiling, on a collision course with his ride. Growling under his breath, he covered his muzzle with his jacket and pounced into the room, keeping a white-knuckle grip on the Grappler's controls as the landslide landed.
The standing torches toppled over into the middle of the entrance, and the bobcat coughed as the clouds of dust settled. His sharp eyes widened in shock as he spotted the uninvited guest in front of him. "Weh? Whozzat?"
"Nobody, I'm just your imagination," The caninu shot back with a cheeky grin, narrowing his eyes as he gave the confused pirate's robot a proper once-over. It had segmented arms and stubby legs, but the body itself looked cobbled together from the more typical pirate-used chassis. He shook his head – the hero of the battle of Pharoah wouldn't have gotten his robot stolen so easily anyway. "What's with the cheap knockoff? I thought pirates were more interested in blasting than lifting."
"Hey! This is the best robot that guards get to use right now!" The bobcat yelled back, his temper quickly rising, and he threateningly waved his robot's arms around a few times. "A hunter like you's no match for a counter-hunter like me!"
Counter-hunter? The jackal had no time to question it, as the bobcat stomped towards him, thoroughly ticked off. Shifting his weight around, he leaped over the pirate's head and spun on his heels as he hit the ground, landing a punch on the enemy robot's side. The knockoff puffed steam as it swiveled around and retorted with a strong slap, the shock of damage enough to send a ripple through the jackal's bones. He grit his teeth and adjusted the fit of his knuckle dusters before stepping out of the way of another unwieldy strike from the pirate's robot hands.
The bobcat bared his teeth in a menacing sneer as he slammed on the controls, and the jackal abruptly found himself skidding backwards, the counter-hunter having dashed into him. The hunter slammed both his Grappler's fists into the ground to stop himself, and jabbed forward at the approaching enemy robot. It wasn't a strong blow, but grazed the head of the chassis enough to knock the knockoff off its balance.
"Argh!" The felineko grunted, wobbling backwards a bit and stomping on one of the fallen torches, putting most of it out with a single step. "You're gonna pay for that one!"
"Why are you even fighting like this if you've got a robot like the one the big hero had?" The jackal asked casually, and he tensed up as said robot kicked the torch's remains at him. He ducked underneath the burned tinder, only to find himself in the grasp of the pirate's hands. Withing a few seconds, he was lifted off the ground. "Th-this is what I was expecting you to do in the first place!"
"What's going on!?" The radio squawked. The hunter forced himself to ignore his friend's cries for the moment, taking a deep breath as the pirate simply held him aloft. The bobcat stared at his prey – almost like he was in awe of having hoisted the Grappler into the air – and started to cackle.
"Ehehehehe! I guess this is what the boss meant by 'unorthodox methods' before he and the rest left the island!" The counter-hunter taunted, lightly shaking the hunter around. "Up and down and up and down, hah! Both you and the bomb someone tossed in the junk pile were easy to deal with!"
"Unorthodox methods... yeah, no kidding," The caninu said smoothly, holding onto the cockpit with one paw and undoing his safety belt with the other. Even if the pirate's boss had already left Shetland, the guard was still talkative enough. "Is that why you've got a knockoff of the hero of Pharaoh's robot? Because he was so good at fighting everything with it?"
"Yeah, and I beat you, didn't I?" The bobcat had at point, even if it was soon to be moot. To the hunter's surprise, the pirate leaned against the controls of the knockoff, accidentally sending the Grappler slamming into the ground. Its pilot was stunned for a moment, which his opponent took to unwisely gloat again.
The jackal, shaking his head to come back to his senses, shortly considered forcing the robot's grasp off and simply smashing the thing to bits, but decided against it, bending his knees and pressing his feet against the chair. "Maybe you could have, if it weren't for one thing."
"Whazzat, huh?"
The jackal grinned and jumped out of the pilot's seat towards the startled felineko, rearing back with knuckle dusters in paw. "I also use unorthodox methods."
The counter-hunter screeched.