To yellow 14: The Thames is pretty built up through London, with boats and such on the water all over (and water transmits shockwaves really well – maybe not enough for structural damage but certainly to injure people too close). Potentially he could throw it far enough, but it would have been a very imprecise solution.
To Lyger 0: Almost! Mecha-Man wasn't exactly messing around there.
To Butterfly: After everything that happened recently, it would have been a definite character regression to just dismiss the bombs. But I am planning a dimension-hopping anthology of Bunnyx exploring alternate universes. However, that's a long way away, and I don't know if there's enough to that premise to justify including it as more than a throwaway line.
To armadas: With how serious everything was, it definitely needed a little cute to balance it out. That doesn't work every time, but this time I think it did. Bri and Felix have an… interesting dynamic! Given what's going on with her father, you can see where she might be moved by seeing how close Felix and his mother are.
To StarDaPanda225: Character development! When Bri's happy, he's "Pup"; when she's not, he's a "Mutt."
Iron Maiden sagged into the steps below Nelson's Column with a groan, her hand dropping limply to her side. The power on her suit was below 15%, and between the fighting and running around to defuse the bombs, after so many sustained flights her jetpack was almost running on fumes – at this point she would probably have to walk back to her workshop. She could feel the sweat beading along her forehead and running down her cheeks and neck before soaking into her shirt, leaving her skin clammy. Her hair was plastered to her forehead and cheeks – sweat dripped down the back of her neck where her hair touched it. The gentle breeze her partly-open helmet allowed did little to cool or dry her sweaty face. Clearly her helmet needed a built-in sweatband. They had gotten all the bombs just in time, but still it felt like a hollow victory. How could she have let Mecha-Man escape again? "I–I can't believe he would do that…" she whispered, staring down at her hands.
The Hound leaned heavily against her side, his head on her shoulder, gasping for breath, and dropped the last two bombs in her lap from limp hands. She looked down at them in disgust before placing them with the others she had collected in a bag she'd snagged along the way. "You know, cher," the Hound slurred weakly, "The Heroes of Paris always work as a team."
"So I've heard. That why you have your mother with you?" she teased, rubbing at her face with a gauntleted hand once before glaring at it and giving up.
He gave her a nonplussed look before fishing a handkerchief out of a pouch on his belt and handing it to her. "She's not exactly with me… and that's not what I had in mind."
She nodded her thanks and dabbed at her sweaty forehead, peeling the damp hair away from her skin. "Believe me, I know exactly what you've had in mind this whole time," she observed wryly, arching an eyebrow at him. "You haven't exactly been subtle since I opened my helmet…"
"That's not–I–" He coughed into his hand, failing to hide the slight redness in his cheeks as he did so. "Would you be interested in a partnership?" She scoffed. "Not–not like that. Certainly nothing like that. Just as teammates. Teammates who work together to protect the city when they need to. Nothing more than that."
She hummed coyly. "I'll think about it." Her arm burned where she'd been hit by an energy beam; twisting her arm she could see where the armor plating had melted in patches. Her chest was in a similar state. "Damn." The Hound gave her a curious look. "That partnership thing might not work out after all. Half my suit needs replacing already," she explained. "But it's not cheap and it's not easy."
"I have friends who can help with that, mon Fer," the Hound offered, giving her a look.
She scoffed. "I don't think you understand what we're talking about here. We're not talking parts you can pick up from the hardware store. Mecha-Man's energy cannons put out too much heat energy for most metals to withstand; the only reason he can take an energy blast like that is because his armor incorporates a layer of alien heat shielding, and I don't have access to any of that!"
He smirked. "When I say I have 'friends' who can help you with that, I mean the Heroes of Paris literally have stacks of those heat shielding plates that you were talking about lying around their headquarters."
"Seriously?"
"Seen it with my own eyes," he confirmed with a nod. He frowned. "But if you're accepting my help with this, then that makes us partners, okay?" Iron Maiden shrugged. "And if we're going to be partners, we need to know we can trust each other, right?"
Iron Maiden narrowed her eyes at him, jerking her head down and closing her helmet with a snap. "What are you getting at?"
He grimaced, running a hand through his own sweat-plastered hair and pulling it away from his scalp. "It's just… a lot of things don't really make sense after all of this. How do you know so much about the Mecha-Man armor? How did you know where Mecha-Man was going to be every time, even before the cops showed up? Before it had even been reported a couple of times? And how did you figure out how to defuse his bombs on the first try?"
Her breath hitched. "I just did, okay, Doggo?" she answered, her voice sounding unusually high-pitched in her ears. "Don't read too much into it. Please don't push this…"
He shook his head. "I'm sorry, Maiden, but that's not good enough. If we're going to be working together now, I need to be able to trust you, and that means knowing you're not with Mecha-Man."
She scoffed and threw her arms out, nearly smacking him. "Excuse me? If we're going to be working together? I'm sorry, but if I wasn't here what was your plan for dealing with those bombs? Chuck 'em at the Thames and hope they don't land in a neighborhood or on a boat? Were you just going to let him throw you around the other night?" She poked him in the chest. "You need me! Don't tell me you're going back on your offer already!"
He shrugged. "If we can't trust each other, then maybe it's not going to work out."
"I'm on your side, Hound," she insisted, opening her helmet once more and glaring at him.
"Then how do you know so much about Mecha-Man?" he retorted, giving her a calculating look.
"The reason I know so much about Mecha-Man," she told him, "is–" Her words caught in her throat. This was it, wasn't it? There was no way around it – either she trusted him or she didn't; either he would accept her and she'd have someone on her side or she was on her own again. She sighed in defeat, her shoulders sagging though the armor didn't move. "I know about him because I know him. I could disarm the bombs because the man who wired the bombs taught me to wire a circuit. The same man who made the Mecha-Man suit is the same man who made me."
The Hound's head cocked to one side, one ear standing up. "Wait… are you saying you're…" He stared at her head in bewilderment and allowed his eyes to wander down her suit.
She arched an eyebrow at him. "What did I say last time?"
The Hound's eyes shot back up to her face and he paled. "No–I mean… does it come off? I mean, when you say he 'made' you…"
She gave him a deadpan look. "Not like that, genius. I thought you were supposed to be smart," she replied, rubbing her temples with one gauntleted hand. "Look," she continued, "when a man loves a woman very much–"
His jaw dropped. "Wait, Mecha-Man's your father!?" he interrupted, eyes widening and jaw hanging open, staring into her face in shock.
She groaned and averted her eyes to study the monogrammed handkerchief in her gauntleted hand. She should have known: of course he would judge her for her father's actions; she would, too, after today. "You see? This is why I didn't want to tell you!"
"No, it's not that," he assured her quickly, putting up his hands in a placating gesture and placing one on her shoulder, drawing her attention back to him. She was surprised to see concern in his face. "It's just… oh, bloody hell, you and my cousin could start a support group…"
She furrowed her brows for a moment but shrugged, filing that information away for later. "I didn't know at first," she insisted, eyes wide, pleading for him to believe her. "I knew he'd taken a new job, one that paid better than his old one, but I thought it was just more of the same. But then I heard him talking to someone on the phone in the middle of the night and followed him to a meeting." She sighed in defeat. "He was picking up a shipment of alien tech. The next day I followed him to his workshop. He was building a suit, and from the look of the people he was with, their hardware, all of it, I just knew he had to be working for criminals. And when Mecha-Man showed up just a couple weeks later? It didn't take a genius to figure out where he came from: my father built that suit, even if he wasn't the one inside. That's when I decided I wanted nothing more to do with him. That's when I decided to come to London for college." Her lower lip quivered and she hated it. The words just kept spilling out. "But he's still my father. I hate what he's doing and who he's doing it for, but I can't bring myself to really hate him for it. Everything I am, everything I have, it all came from him. He taught me almost everything I know… and I know he still loves me."
"So that's where your tech came from? Why so much of it is so like Mecha-Man's suit?" There wasn't any judgment in his voice.
She nodded, still staring down at her gauntlets. Her hands trembled with the strain. And yet, there was a level of relief in finally telling someone. "I grabbed what I could from his lab before I left Paris, came here, and started working on my own suit. Aside from a couple days ago, I haven't talked to him since. My father's designs have hurt so many people – first back home and now here – and I thought maybe I could derive some good from them. I need to stop him – now more than ever. After all, the reason he came to London was because he was following me. Because he wanted to reconcile with me." She clenched her hands. "And I want that – I want it so badly… but I just can't do it, not when he's responsible for so much. Does it make me a bad person that I still love him when he tried to blow up London twenty minutes ago?"
The Hound took her hand and squeezed, placing his other hand on her shoulder. "I get it," he assured her, a soothing tone in his voice. "Believe me, I understand what you're going through. Maybe not my father – he was a good man – but when I found out my uncle… well… I understand feeling ashamed of what your family has done. And I can understand wanting to love someone who has done terrible things just because he's your father – my cousin still loved his father despite everything, and his father was far worse than yours; yours sounds like he genuinely cares about people – or at least about you. That your father works for bad people doesn't make you a bad person. He is not you." He fell silent for a moment. "I don't exactly know you that well, but I can already tell that you are better than him. You are a hero. And with your information, the Heroes of Paris could stop your father and his employer in their tracks."
"Maybe…" She looked into his face and was surprised to see concern instead of the arrogance she'd been expecting. She shook her head. "But not right now. I'm not ready for anyone else to know yet."
He nodded. "I understand. But when you're ready, we'll do it together… partner." He held out his hand.
She smiled sadly, fighting back the tears that sprang unbidden to her eyes, and took his hand, nodding. "Thanks… partner."
AN: That's the last word for "The Hound and the Maiden," but not for the Hound and Maiden themselves! I already have a sequel in the works, as well as a couple "Life and Times" one-shots featuring them which will come out in the meantime. Tomorrow will be a different "Life and Times" one-shot, followed by a few more chapters of "The Woman out of the Fridge." The next multi-chapter story will be "A Bees' Life."