SPURS
by Karen Hart
Disclaimer: No profit is made or intended on this story. The characters and related trademarks of Wild Arms 5 belong to Xseed Games. I write these fanfictions for love of the game, nothing more.
This was, well, it was…
Dean didn't know what to think, really. Words like incredible, and stupendous (which sounded far too close to stupid for his liking) and awesome flashed across his brain, but none really seemed to hit the mark.
There was a golem. A real golem. In front of him. A real, big, shiny (well, okay, maybe not that shiny) golem. And they were going to let him use it.
"All right! My own golem—and it's the same one that was protecting Avril! This is awesome!" Only rock solid self-control kept him from dashing into the hanger.
Of course, that self-control broke about fifteen seconds later.
He barely heard Rebecca yelling at him to come back, or the crewman trying to warn him that it was dangerous in there—there was a golem! He couldn't very well not dash in there, could he?
"DEAN!"
Well, okay, it'd be real hard to ignore that. He turned toward his lifelong friend. "What is it, Rebecca?" And why was her face the same color as her braids?
Rebecca stalked forward, glaring. "You idiot, Dean. Do you have any idea how to even use one of these things?"
"Of course I do! It's easy. You just climb up to its shoulder…like this and—" he to pause for breath, "—GOOOO, ASGARD!"
Asgard (it even had a cool name!) didn't go.
"ONWARD!"
Asgard didn't go onward, either.
Or forward, for that matter. Nor did he charge.
Dean scratched his head. "I don't get it. It always works in Nightburn's commercials."
"Well, of course that doesn't actually work! It's NOT REAL!" Rebecca fumed. That boy could be abysmally stupid sometimes.
No one else said anything. They knew they were about to bear witness to Something to Tell the Grandkids.
"Oh." Dean thought about this a moment, then turned to the much-neglected crewman, whom Dean only then realized was wearing a nametag marked THADDEUS, and very calmly and politely asked, "How the hell do you get this thing to move?!"
Thaddeus paused a moment. Maybe handing Asgard over to this kid wasn't the smartest idea in the world. Even though it was the Captain's orders. But since it was the Captain's orders—.
"All right. You see that panel on Asgard's right shoulder? Yeah. Go ahead and open it. You can either press the blue button and tell Asgard where you want to go, and he'll move on his own, or you can use those levers to control him manually. And if you want to stop, pull down on both levers at the same time."
Dean grinned. That sounded pretty simple. "All right, I got it." And, giving Asgard's heavily armored shoulderblade a good kick with his right spur, he pulled a lever and shouted, "HIGH-HO, ASGARD! AWAY!"
His spur got stuck.
Oh, it wasn't that they were sharp enough to pierce golem armor, but they were thin enough to get caught between a golem's plating. And this, one of his spurs had just done.
It shall be noted here that Dean screams like a girl.
"O, SH—." It would have been nice to think that Dean paused in midswear because it's not polite to swear in front of women and children, but we all know he's done it before. So, it was probably having the wind knocked out of him when Asgard ran into a wall that made him stop. That collision also resulted in Dean losing his balance and falling, so now he was swinging from one boot.
Carol's backpack included a camera. There would be copies.
Asgard ran in place for a moment, then turned right and ran smash! into a set of doors, denting them. Another turn, followed by more running, and smashing. Turn, run, smash.
"Isn't," Dean shouted, still dangling, "there some way—" WHAM! "—to stop it?!"
"I told you, pull the levers down!"
"Some OTHER WAY!"
Asgard was making a real mess of the hanger. And well, Dean too, but it probably wasn't going to take weeks to fix him.
Chuck alone looked slightly uneasy. "Maybe we should help him out?"
Rebecca shook her head. "I'm sure he'll be fine."
There was more running, smashing, and turning. Dean could handle the running, and the turning was no problem, but the smashing was really getting to him. "ASGARD! Please stop! PLEASE!"
There was no break in the pattern.
"Look, I'm sorry about the spur. Really! And…OW! the high-ho. I won't say or do those again! I promise! So please: STOP!"
It might have been his imagination, but Asgard did seem to be crashing into walls a bit more gently than before. And that, happily, resulted in less bruises.
Dean hung, and thought.
Okay.
He reached with his free leg and the lodged the other spur as deep as he could. Thus anchored, he tried pulling himself into something of a sitting position, only to fall back when Asgard ran into another wall. Sit. Fall. Sit. Fall.
Finally he managed to stay upright (sort of), by hanging on to his own pant legs. He reached up. It wasn't that far to the control panel. It was, however, far enough to be inconvenient, and Asgard had chosen that moment to run into a door.
Dean gave it another shot. Pull…flail, and…
YES!
He managed to hook his middle finger on one of the levers. A little further, and he had his index finger touching the other lever.
All right, now just…pull down, and…
Asgard came to an abrupt (and welcome) stop.
"Oh thank you," Dean muttered, and hauled himself up to the golem's shoulder, dislodging his spurs in the process. He looked around and blinked at the destruction. Most everything that could be had been dented, and while nothing was actually broken, it was clearly going to take a long time to repair the damage.
Then he looked down at Asgard, who seemed to lack a single scratch.
"Isn't he the greatest?!"