Disclaimer: I do not own nor do I claim to own any characters or concepts related to ReBoot. This is a nonprofit work of fanfiction.
Quick Draw McBob
Late morning came to the town of Twin Sands and with it the sun, which advanced high along its circuit, washing out the shadows. At the depot near the heart of town, the stationmaster walked the platform, checking the progress of the sun against his pocketwatch and his watch against the train schedule posted on the wall.
Down in the town itself, a fellow strolled casual as could be, his boot spurs ringing out, five-point sheriff's badge winking back at the sun, boots kicking up dust as he made his way from the open street to the saloon that sat a ways back from the street proper. He was a tall fellow, lean, with a swagger in his walk, like a man who knew what he was looking for, and knew how to find it and how to get it.
Ascending the saloon steps he paused to check the cut of his vest, then he grabbed the doors and swung 'em wide. His shadow spilled in before him, a dark thing cast across the floor, the sun bright and hot at his back.
A woman at the bar turned, her skirts rustling around her legs. "Bob!" she cried. Relief colored her voice. "It's about time. Where have you been?"
He hitched his hip up against the frame and slipped his thumb through a belt loop, framing himself to best appeal. With his hat knocked down over his eyes, he couldn't see nothing but a flash of feminine leg, smooth and green, just peeking out from the hem of her gingham dress.
"Need a hand, little lady?" he drawled.
There was a sudden, violent crashing sound, of glass shattering upon, then spilling loose and sharp across the scuffed and dirtied hardwood floor.
"Well," Dot said, fair breathlessly, "if you're offering!"
Bob tipped his hat back and away from his eyes, taking in the tableau quick as a shot: Dot grappling with a stool, yanked free of the saloon bar, and some unwashed goon advancing on her, leering and wriggling his fingers.
Sometimes Bob wondered about the User. The Games it picked--
"I could really use some help, Bob," Dot said, hefting the stool, "if you don't mind!"
She brought the stool down hard on the goon's head, laying him out flat. Little stars shot out of and orbited his head; a small bird whistled.
"You seem to be doing okay," Bob said, looking down at the goon. He nudged at the guy's shoulder: limp and out for the count.
Dot tossed aside the remnants of the stool. "No thanks to you," she said. "What took you so long?"
"Sorry, there was a hold-up at the 4f 6b Corral," he said. He leaned against the bar and busted out his most charming smile, all smooth lines and intriguing shadows. "You're a hard woman to find, Ms Matrix."
Dot rolled her eyes. "Come on, help me get this guy tied up."
*
They gagged Dot's would-be assailant for good measure, then chucked him behind the bar; so far as she was concerned, he could just decompile there. Dot dusted off her hands and tugged on the front of her dress, straightening out the folds and the little wrinkles.
"So, Bob," she started, turning to him.
Bob snapped his gaze back to her face. She paused, eyeing him. Bob smiled extra-wide, his teeth flashing and alarmingly brilliant. A dirty trick and a familiar one at that. Her heart twinged anyway.
Dot composed a quick note to self re: Bob (utilizes personal aesthetics in juvenile attempt to distract), starred it, underlined it twice, then filed it neatly under the heading of Bad Ideas, subheading: Bob, subgroup: Romantic interest in. As if she needed the reminder. Oh, well, better to process it twice now than be sorry later.
Bob cleared his throat. Artfully, he held his hand out to her. "You were saying?"
Gamely, she pressed on.
Dot tipped her head at the bar. "Please tell me this scuzzball's the User. That would make this second so much easier."
"If only," said Bob. He spread his hands and grimaced apologetically. "Game sprite. And not a very clean one at that."
"You don't have to tell me." Dot wafted her hand before her nose. "I'm going to be smelling that for at least the next cycle." She dropped her hand. "So, what are we looking at?"
"The game is Shoot-out at High Noon," said Bob. "All the User has to do is make it to the twelve o'clock train before the sheriff, being, of course, yours truly--" Bob flourished his hands and bowed. "--catches him and throws him back in jail."
Dot frowned. "Twelve o'clock?"
"It's a measurement of time." Bob shrugged. "A User thing. Lucky for us, Glitch can figure it out. Isn't that right, buddy?"
Glitch shivered and chattered, in the affirmative, Dot presumed.
"How much time do we have left?" she said.
Bob bent over Glitch, who clicked twice, then fell silent, its screen flashing. Bob shook his head, slowly at first, then faster and with great feeling.
"This is not good!"
Dot peered at Glitch, but she couldn't make ones or zeroes of anything that scrolled across its screen. "Is it ... bad?" she ventured.
Bob looked at her, his jaw tensed, his wide mouth pinching. "Very bad."
Dot looked to the rafters. "Why don't I like the sound of that?"
Bob started for the door, his spurs jangling with each quickening step. Dot grabbed at her skirts, hauling them free of her boots as she followed him from the cool darkness of the saloon out into the blazing late morning sunlight.
"The train leaves at twelve and it's already thirty 'til!" said Bob. He stopped in the middle of the dusty street, shading his eyes as he stared down the straight path and into the desert, which gleamed dry and desolate beneath the light of the sun.
Dot held on to her skirts. She turned, looking over the faded storefronts. Dirt and sand crunched under her boots; it clung to her skirts and rolled across her skin, a thin cloud driven forward by the harsh desert wind.
"What does that mean, exactly?"
"It means we're almost out of time," Bob snapped. "The User's probably already on his way to the station."
The back of her neck prickled: sweat. The sun shimmered, merciless. "Then we need to cut him off before he gets there."
"Hey!" said Bob, frowning. "I was going to say that."
Dot raised her eyebrows; she smiled at him over her shoulder. "You need to be a little quicker on the draw there, cowboy. Now, which way to the train station?"
Bob consulted Glitch, then the progress of the sun. "This way," he said, jerking his head sharply to the left. "Come on! We're going to have to zip if we want to beat the User."
"I'll try to keep up," Dot said dryly. She rolled her tongue around in her mouth, scraping the grit off her teeth. She could just taste the sand dripping down the back of her throat.
Dot hated westerns. All that macho posturing, the lax excuse for a legal system, the shoot-outs and the blustering outlaws, and now dirt in her eyes. Alphanumeric.
She kicked her skirts up from her boots and set off after Bob.
*
The train station loomed before them, a plain thing with only a simple roof and a small booth to the side to distinguish it. The stationmaster looked out at them, shielding his eyes with his hand. A pocketwatch glinted at his breast.
Bob looked back over his shoulder to Dot and the barren stretch of street behind her. The smile he flashed her was lopsided and stunning for it. "Looks like we made it," he said. "No User in sight."
"Thank the Net," Dot sighed.
Bob took the steps up to the platform with speed, not grace: his footsteps rang out on the steps, the wooden planks shuddering with each blow. Dot hefted her skirts high and clattered up after him, stirring nothing but dust beneath her boots.
"Train's comin' in soon, folks," the stationmaster called to them.
"Yes, thank you!" Dot called back. She turned with Bob to look out over the street: still barren, still dry, empty but for a tumbleweed rolling with the wind.
"What do we now?" she said.
Bob shrugged. "Wait for the User. Take him out."
Dot twisted her mouth up into a little exasperated moue. "There must be something else we can do."
Bob tipped his head to the side, his mouth working as if in thought. Slowly he said, "We could ... talk about the weather?"
"Ha ha," Dot said and Bob grinned at her. "I hate just waiting around," she told him.
"Why, Dot," he said, eyes wide, "I never knew."
"We should have a plan," she continued, as if he hadn't spoken. "Some kind of outline--"
Bob waved his hand at her. "It'll be fine. I'm telling you, there's nothing else we can do but wait for the User to show up. And that's if he shows up."
Dot started to argue the point, but a voice interrupted her: a zero binome crossing the tracks, with four one binomes and one number four fast behind her.
"Miss Matrix!" she said again. "Oh, we're so glad you're here. We didn't know what we were going to do, or even what we were supposed to do. Hello, Guardian," she added, fluttering her lashes at him.
Bob smiled reflexively, then looked out over the massing group. "What -- have you guys been here this entire time?"
The number four shrugged, his upstrokes rising. "It seemed like the place to be."
"Train's comin' in soon, folks," the stationmaster threw in, content to follow his preprogrammed script to the letter.
"Yeah, we know," Bob threw back.
The stationmaster puttered off, unbothered.
"So!" said the zero binome brightly. "What can we do to help?"
"Nothing too dangerous," said a one. "I have little ones at home."
Dot touched Bob's elbow; she turned to him, drawing near. "Bob, let me," she said. "I have an idea."
He took a shuffling half-step back and moved his arm beneath her hand, then, very casually, he shrugged. "Sure, go for it."
She turned to encompass the binomes and the number four. "The User has to make it to the next train," she said, "and the only one who can stop him is Bob." She looked to Bob, who nodded, his sheriff's badge gleaming.
She faced the others directly. "What we need to do is make sure the User comes straight to Bob. That is, no tricks, no alleyways, no side streets." Dot waved her hand at the main thoroughfare, taking in the dry and dusty breadth and length of it. "We'll make him come front and center."
"Even odds," said the number four with satisfaction. "I like 'em."
"Anything we can do to help, Miss Matrix," said the zero.
"All right," said Dot, turning her back to Bob as she laid out her plan. The binomes and the four drew close to her, leaning in as she spoke. "We'll spread out and take the surrounding streets..."
*
"A posse," Bob said admiringly as they set out, the zero, the four, and a one heading left, the others to the right. "Nice. Very appropriate."
"It's not really a posse," she demurred. "A posse is a collective imbued with legal authority."
Bob shook his head. "And you said westerns were 'devoid of any educational merit.'"
Dot pressed her hand to her chest. "Did I say that?"
"Unless my memory core has fragmented, I'm pretty sure you did. Anyway," Bob said, settling back against one of the support posts, "I'm the sheriff around these parts, so if I say it's a posse, then it's a posse. Consider yourself imbued with all the legal authority you want."
Dot threw him an arch look. "Why, sheriff," she said, touching her throat, "that's just about the nicest thing you've ever said to me."
Bob looked pleased.
At the steps, Dot paused.
"Will you be okay?"
Bob patted the holster slung low on his hip. The revolver's handle glinted, silver. "I'll be fine. You take care of the side streets and I'll take care of the User."
Dot nodded and turned to leave. At the foot of the steps, as she set her boot down in the dirt, she turned back to him. Her lips parted. She hesitated.
"Take care of yourself," she said.
He smiled. "You, too. Stay frosty out there," he added, pitching his voice loud for the benefit of the others. "That sun's a real scorcher."
Dryly, Dot said, "You're not the one in a petticoat. Or a corset." She plucked at the bodice.
"Point," Bob said. He rolled his shoulders back and tipped his head, appraising. "It looks good on you, though."
Dot laughed and set off for the right, angling for a thin alleyway between two slanted houses near the tracks.
Bob watched her go for a moment, then he straightened, pushing off the support post. He looked to the horizon, where a plume of steam and smoke rose higher and higher, drawing inexorably closer.
"Here comes the old girl now," the stationmaster said lovingly. He clicked his watch closed and pocketed it, and whistling to himself, he proceeded down the platform to his booth.
Bob checked his holster and crossed to the steps, where he waited with his feet planted, his arms crossed, watching the dust swirling across the empty street.
The train pulled in, hissing and grinding as it slowed and now stopped with a noisy burst of steam, which rolled across the platform like a sudden fog.
A whistle blew, shrill.
"Now boarding to Green River," called the stationmaster. "Now boarding!"
A light winked near one of the storefronts lining the street, and a man stepped out into the sunlight, a tall man, darkly dressed in spite of the heat, with a thin mustache and a hunted look to the twist of his mouth. The User advanced on the station, his head low, hat hiding his eyes.
Bob set his hand at his hip, palming the revolver. "Showtime," he said.
He drew his gun.
*
The sounds of the train idling suffused the air: loud clanks, a low rumble, and steam jetting periodically. Dot tipped her head back to watch the sun's stately progress. It inched along, slow and hot, and even in the shadows, she sweltered.
She waited it out, each crawling second, looking to the sun, then to the far end of the alley, where nothing stirred or crouched in the shadows. She had to stay: that was the plan. Keep everything blocked off so the User didn't have any choice but to go through Bob. Dot caught herself clenching her hands. One by one, she relaxed her fingers.
Basic. Bob was a Guardian, academy-trained, a professional through and through, for all his goofing. He knew what he was doing. He'd been in all sorts of messes before and he always managed to scrape through just fine. Besides, she reasoned, she couldn't do much else to help him. The Game itself was pretty clear about that.
Her palms ached where her nails had bit into them. Her shoulders tensed, the muscles knotting up. Dot exhaled and for the span of a nano, she closed her eyes.
A gunshot split the air, as sudden and sharp as thunder cracking on a clear day.
Dot bolted for the mouth of the alleyway even as it dissolved around her, vanishing into the wave of electric purple that swallowed the town. By the time she reached the open expanse before the platform, the Game was gone, the cube ascending into the crackling Mainframe sky.
Bob made a gun out of his hand and blew imaginary smoke from his forefinger, and with a flourish, he mimed holstering the gun. He angled a grin Dot's way, a sly grin, crooked and no less stunning for it.
"Just call me Quick Draw," he said.
On principle Dot said, "I don't think so," but she smiled as she said it.
This story was originally posted at livejournal on 10/25/2009.