Title: The One That Got Away
Episode 1: A Chance Meeting
A/N: This story takes place shortly after episode 2. There is a lot I've forgotten about zoids. If I mess anything up and anyone cares, they can point it out in a review. Sorry for any grammatical errors, no beta reader.
Bit Cloud drove his well-worn but serviceable truck through the desert. The barren sand dunes stretched out before him. Some would find it disturbing, the vast emptiness. He was long used to it. All the same, as the Blitz team's base appeared on the horizon, the junk dealer turned zoid warrior relaxed in his seat. Almost home. Finally. The sun was high overhead. Not yet noon but he'd put in a long day. No sleeping in if you're going to scavenge parts. It had paid off. Someone had taken a beating in a Stealth Viper. He turned off the main road and slowed down as he approached the outer fence.
The hanger doors were open. Bit smiled. Someone else was up. He pulled into the center of the hanger facing away from the Liger's stall. He hopped out of the truck and lifted the back gate. "Hey partner, guess what I found!" He climbed into the bed of the truck. Bit nudged a 40mm heavy machine gun with his boot. "What do you think?"
The zoid gave a low growl, stretching its neck from side to side. Disapproval. A phantom weight settled awkwardly on one of Bit's shoulders.
Fair enough, unless they mounted it directly to his back. The memory of the Heldigunner turret was fresh in both their minds. Bit hoisted a small caliber dual laser machine gun, grunting with the effort. The Viper's tail was 10 yards from the body but both guns had survived. "Agh, okay, how bout this?"
The Liger rumbled. A mental shrug.
Bit sighed and lowered the weapon. He planted one hand against the wall and stared up at the white zoid. He opened his mouth, then closed it. What was the point?
If Liger didn't want them, no point in holding on to it and no point driving all the way to town for just the machine guns. Bit sorted through the crates from the Shield Liger's old stall. No one had complained, about the parts at least. Just looking at the Heldigunner turret made his back hurt. If the shop wanted it they could pick it up. He loaded a set of oversized stabilizers and the optical sight from an electromagnetic rifle that didn't make it.
"Bit! Move your old junking wagon!" Leena didn't quite screech. She glared at him, hands on her hips. "I'm working here!" She stood next to the diagnostic rig. The Dibison towered over her. Cables ran from the rig, up the side of the zoid, and into the open cockpit, where Jamie sat at the controls.
"Sorry. I got a little excited." He was sure the Liger would have liked one of them. Bit secured one crate against the truck's frame. At this rate he was going to have to buy weapons. Did zoids not like hand-me-downs?
"Were you raised in a barn?" She jerked a thumb at the Dibison. "In case you forgot, these parts are off limits."
"Ha. Ha." He'd heard that before and a lot worse. Bit went back for another crate. "I'm a scavenger, not a thief."
"Think you can pretend to be a zoid warrior?" Brad Hunter, the Blitz team's resident mercenary, walked up, a mug in one hand. Steam rose lazily from the top. "We have a battle coming up and we don't want to be embarrassed again."
Bit tied off the last crate in the back of the truck. "I won that last battle!" And the one before. "Where were you?" Cowering in the forest, right up until he was shot.
"Ha!" Leena crossed her arms over her chest. "You got lucky. The Liger did all the work."
Brad stared into his cup. He swirled the contents. "Quite an accomplishment for a zoid with no weapons and a total amateur at the controls."
"When? Who are we fighting?" Jaime called down. He was already climbing out of the cockpit.
"Two days." Brad took a long sip of his drink. "The Razorbacks."
"Two days?!" Jamie was on the verge of a freak out. "I gotta get to work. I've barely heard of the Razorbacks." He took off at a dead run, disappearing into the main living quarters.
"Hey! Jamie!" Leena shouted after him. "I need help!" She turned back to Bit. "Oh new guy… mind helping me refit the D Bison?"
Bit slammed the truck's gate down and locked it. "No time. I need to run these out to a shop." He climbed into the driver's seat and thumbed the ignition.
"Talk about selfish. Brad-"
"No money in it."
The sun beat down on Bit as he dragged the empty pallet jack behind him. At the back of his truck, he unzipped his jacket and threw it in. Lacking sleeves, Bit wiped his forehead with the bottom of his tank. It wasn't that a hot day but too hot for lugging parts back and forth. Bit sighed. Last one. Too bad he'd saved the worst for last. He jacked up the pallet, even with the back of the truck. He braced himself against the heavy machine gun and pushed. Once loaded, he turned the pallet jack around and back toward Porter's Garage.
Porter's Garage wasn't one of those custom order zoid shops but held a good inventory, new and used. And it had a glorious air conditioning system. Bit left the pallet beside the other parts, where two employees were inspecting them. He rolled his shoulders then raised both arms and reached for the sky. His lower back was a coiled spring. No one ever said junk dealing was glamourous.
Rather than hover, he looked over the shelves.
Plenty of long range guns. A sonic cannon that must have come off a Warshark. They had a little bit of everything. A Double Barrel Rifle took up one corner of the warehouse. Two meters tall, six meters long, and all of it business.
No way. Liger was never going to be a long range zoid.
He stopped in front of a pair of orange laser blades, clearly from a Blade Liger. Liger would love those. He had to. He could make them work, with the right parts and- He saw the price tag and his heart sank. To hell with them. It was kinda goofy anyway, mounting the blades to the middle of the body.
"That bad?" A familiar feminine voice.
A woman with light olive skin, purple eyes, and dark red hair.
"Naomi?" Bit forced himself not to shift awkwardly. "What are you doing in a mom and pop shop?" He wasn't normally self-conscious. But he'd ditched his jacket a while ago, leaving him in a white tank and jeans. At least he wasn't sweating anymore.
Whereas Naomi Fuegel was beautiful and exotic and overdressed by comparison. Her long red hair was braided and what wasn't framed her face. A red and black dress hugged her figure. Long sleeves hung off her shoulders. She wore a red skirt that stopped at mid-thigh but a red cape started at her waist and ended just above her boots.
She approached the shelf next to him, leaned forward, and ran her fingers along the barrel of a plasma cannon. Her red braid fell well past her shoulders. She must have tied it up during battles. "Can't afford to be a snob. You never know what you'll find." She glanced back at him. "Picking up my Gun Sniper nearby. Someone tore off one of the arms. Did a number on the chassis too."
Less than a week since their battle, it made sense.
"Excuse me, sir." A middle aged woman in a blue smock approached him. She held a data pad for him to see. "This is the value for the rebuilt parts."
Two thirds of what he wanted. Typical. "Hmm." Bit frowned, made no attempt to hide it. "Can I see it item by item?" His back ached at the thought of reloading all the parts but he wasn't going to get lowballed like that.
The woman gave him a tight smile. "I understand." She disappeared into the back room.
Naomi had straightened up, her eyes were on him. She crossed her arms under her breasts. "You're a junk dealer?"
"For a while now." It was honest work, most of the time, even if you couldn't brag about it.
Her lips quirked. "Talk about a good deal."
"The price is always right." Bit smiled. "How's your team holding up?"
"We're not exactly close. Don't get me wrong. They're good girls, just green." Naomi shrugged her shoulders. "It beats mercenary work."
"Really? I'd figure the Red Comet would be in high demand." Bit couldn't keep the surprise out of his voice. Brad loved being a mercenary, seemed to relish being an outsider.
That got a smile out of her. "It's easy to leave, easy to be told to leave. You can only be low man on the totem pole for so long."
Low man on the totem pole.
"Tell me about it." Bit muttered. "Hmm, I should start my own team." That would be the life. No one talking down to him.
Naomi lifted a hand to her chin, one finger brushing her pink lips. "Won't you need some weapons first?"
She was nicer about it than Brad.
"Your Liger Zero is a worthless waste of space."
The mercenary's holier-than-thou attitude always got under his skin. "I'm working on that." The Liger wasn't even his, yet. The Doc owned it. Bit cleared his throat. "Liger is really picky."
Naomi tilted her head. "You're an odd one, Bit Cloud." She gave him a smile and a wave, before she started toward the door. "See ya around."
"Yeah. Bye." He stared at her retreating figure. If only she'd left the waist cape at home…
"Like what you see?" A rough and gruff voice came from Bit's right. An older man with white hair and white stubble grinned at him. He wore a yellow shirt, worn and faded, with the sleeves rolled up over his muscled forearms.
Bit's eyes widened. His voice went up an octave. "What?! I was just-"
"I meant the plasma cannon." He inclined his head at the exit. Naomi was long gone. "Don't blame you for her either."
"Heh. Yeah." His face was red. It had to be. "Who are you?"
"I'm the pop in this mom and pop shop. Everyone calls me Porter." Porter extended a large calloused hand. "I can come up some on the parts you're selling. But I only have so much cash on hand." Porter tapped a data pad against Bit's chest. He gestured to the same weapon Naomi had touched, the triple barreled plasma cannon. "If you're interested in trade, we can do a little more."
Three slender barrels, capable of spitting out super-heated plasma, formed a single triangular head and disappeared into a tapered housing block. The smooth gray finish caught a glare from the overhead lights and winked at him. "I'm interested."
The owner grinned. "Good choice." He patted one of the barrels. "Great rate of fire. No recoil. Best thing to have in an air battle. You got a Pteras or something?"
"Not exactly." The recoil, the speed, if it worked for a flyer… "What about on a Liger?"
"A Liger?" Porter raised an eyebrow. "Kid you might be an idiot," he scratched the stubble on his cheek, "then again, you could be brilliant."
Doctor Steven Toros boosted the gain on the inputs. Either the diagnostic equipment was failing or the Dibison's sensors were totally out of whack. "Anything now?" He shouted up to the zoid's cockpit.
"Nothing!" Leena sat back in a huff. She never could deal with frustration.
"Let's re-initialize the system, again." Toros scratched his head. He ignored Leena's choice of words as she jabbed at the Dibison's controls. The screens on his panel went blank. "Where is everyone?"
"Jamie's freaking out. Bit's selling scrap. Who knows where Brad is?"
Toros sighed. What he wouldn't give to have someone else do this. In the distance, there might have been the low rumbling of an engine. Sure enough, Bit's camouflaging truck appeared.
Bit pulled into the hanger, stopping in front of the Liger Zero. He leaned halfway out the window, waving an arm excitedly. "Hey Doc, sell me the Liger!"
"Sell you the Liger?" Toros crossed his arms. "I don't know Bit. It cost me a lot of credits." Then it sat there collecting dust. "Why the sudden interest?" And why now, when he could finally make some money off the zoid?
"I need a zoid." Bit jogged over. "It's not like anyone else can pilot it!"
"Go for it Dad." Leena groaned, rubbing her palms against her eyes. "We couldn't unload the thing for years."
Another rumbling sound, this time a from the Liger Zero. Bit turned back to face the zoid.
"Thank you, Leena." Toros muttered, then louder. "Be a dear and finish up with the Dibison." He fixed a smile on his face. "Okay Bit. I guess we can work something out. Follow me."
He led Bit out of the hanger, back into the living quarters. They passed Brad and Jamie in what served as the meeting room, eating instant noodles and reading a copy of Champ Industry magazine.
Toros took a seat on one of the couches. "If owning the Liger means that much to you, I suppose I can part with it."
"There's one born every minute." Brad paused his slurping just long enough to chime in.
Toros' jaw clenched. The Liger Zero's… quirks weren't a secret but did any of them understand how to negotiate? He fixed Brad with a cold stare. "Brad, would you mind helping Leena? Can't have a malfunctioning zoid dragging the team down."
The mercenary gave a sigh but rose from his seat, noodles in hand. "Suppose you're right. We've got enough problems."
One down. Jamie wouldn't stab him in the back… The kid couldn't be trusted. "Jamie, how's that strategy coming? I'd like a briefing as soon as I'm done talking to Bit."
"I'm on it Doc!" Jamie dropped his magazine, jumped from his seat, and ducked into the hallway.
Toros gestured to the empty couch across from him. He waited until Bit settled into his seat. "You may not know this, Bit. White Ligers are quite rare."
The hanger was empty when Bit returned, of people at least. The Dibison stood alone in the center of the hanger. The diagnostic rig was on its back, cabling ran haphazardly along the floor. Bit stepped over a crushed cup of noodles and found the only company he wanted. The Liger didn't move, didn't make a sound, but he swore there was a warmth in the back of his mind.
"Hey partner, I've got an idea." He opened the rear gate of his truck. The plasma cannon stared back at him. "I need you to give it a shot."
A shock cannon was more conventional for a high speed ground zoid. A shock cannon would hit harder. Hell, a set of laser cannons would too. Plenty of warriors swore by either of them. Shock cannons were slower, too much recoil. Laser cannons- Well, the Liger didn't need a set of laser cannons on its back, raising its center of gravity. No, this would work. It had to work. Porter's shop had shortened the barrels for him. It'd cost him some range and most of the money from his parts. He just needed to mount the housing directly to the chest cavity and rework the Liger's armor.
Good thing he wasn't afraid of work.
"We can't afford to lose." He craned his neck to stare into the zoid's face. "Doc says I can pay him off with our share of the prize money." Minus repairs and tune-ups and food. The Doc was all heart. He'd driven a hard bargain for an unarmed zoid that wouldn't let anyone else pilot it. Five, six wins, should do it, fewer if they got into Class A. Better battles, better paychecks. As long as they didn't get destroyed along the way.
A deep rumble shook the air, the warmth pulsed in the back of his mind. He grinned at the feline zoid. "You don't like being the bottom of the totem pole either." The Liger shifted on its feet. His fingers twitched. "They'll see how much we're capable of and if they don't, we'll leave. Fight solo. Become a mercenary." How hard could it be? Brad wasn't losing any sleep at night. "Start our own team."
A/N: I appreciate reviews, especially when they help me improve. Slight changes have been made as reviewers pointed out some mistakes.