30 Celebration (Rescue end)

a/n: The rescue is over and it is time to party. Repenta parking lot, Friday, byob.

All the good things belong to Monolith Soft.

It was over a week before they could hold their celebration. The anniversary had come and gone and it was almost two days later before they could gather in the parking lot to tip back a few cool ones, as Frye put it.

Doug had been in the Mimesome Maintenance Center almost the full time. There wasn't much damage to his body; he'd only had to float in an intensive care tube for a day. The wear and tear on his brain had taken longer to set right. Something about his internal clock had been altered; it fluctuated between racing without concern for the outside passage of time, or crawling excruciatingly slowly. The latter happened consistently whenever Doug was feeling any kind of discomfort. It was a nasty glitch that the Ganglion had introduced: they could inflict twice the pain in half the time. He'd been debriefed, gently, while the center technicians had worked on repairs. The disturbance to his perceptions put some of his observations into doubt, but the people that knew him (and they were important people) were relieved to see his underlying steadiness was unchanged. Doug gave his reports, answered their questions, tried to crack a few weak jokes, and left the Center on Friday afternoon, glad to be home.

H.B. had been closeted with an overlapping group of questioners for nearly as long. He'd bounced in and out of BLADE tower, Meredith & Co. headquarters, the Outfitters' Hangar, and the Mim Maintenance Center. For one shining hour, he had been invited to an exclusive meeting with Chausson, Nagi, and Vandham. They'd wanted to know every step he'd taken to scan the enemy fortress, every measurement and observation. He knew they wanted the smallest scrap of hope that they could find one of Elma's compatriots. He wished he could have said, yes, yes I have found your lost sheep. He could not. Nothing had hinted at a living individual or even a dead one. No equivalent of DNA, no fingerprints, no solitary crystal hair caught on the edge of a door frame. However, he was quite proud of what they had been able to retrieve, small as it was. They hadn't been able to take much physical evidence, not in the hurry that they were in, but it must be important. He was certain that his extensive scans of the mechanism would alter the city's future. Perhaps enough so that there would be a full display case on the incident in the future Hector Birtwhistle Memorial Center.

Yelv had dropped all the cool stuff he'd collected during the mission at the Mim Center. Most of it was in the form of Doug, but there a couple neat energy points and also a control panel that he'd peeled off a console and rolled into a tidy tube. Then he had bounced off to his next assignment. Work had stacked up in the 24 hours they'd been gone, and wrecked skells weren't gonna reclaim themselves. Let somebody else figure out what it was that they'd dragged home.

Frye had spent quite a bit of the week planning the reunion. He'd even asked sweetly if they could maybe lift the ban at the Repenta, just for the evening. No luck. It was cool; he liked the parking lot plenty, and Doug would probably be happier drinking outside than in a dark indoor bar. He'd started planning the night while they were still running for their lives, zooming down corridors and parkouring up air shafts. Doug had been slow, and Yelv had his hands full helping him along, and H.B. had been worried about everything that they'd seen, so Frye had started talking up the future evening. Every time they cleared a floor, or pacified a wave of guards, he'd drop another suggestion. When they skidded to a halt at the edge of the castle's roof, he'd asked whether they should just get a keg instead of individual drinks. Then he'd stepped into thin air. For once, Doug was just as fast as the rest of the crew, although he'd crumpled into a heap upon landing. It was no problem though. A medi skell was moving toward them, the one Frye had spotted a million hours ago. It had scooped all four of them up before the first Ganglion mechs had caught up with them. That was a big advantage to on-foot maneuvers: falling was faster than flight, at least until you hit the ground. They had a head start and they hadn't lost it, all the way back to New Los Angeles.

Now they were together, flasks in hand, ready to celebrate what they'd accomplished. Also, ready to smooth the memories of what they'd seen and done, until only triumph was left. H.B. was already full of himself and the future.

"They hung on my words, naturally," he said, describing his important meeting. "Clearly they were glad to finally spend quality time with a quality BLADE. No offense to present company."

Frye thought about mentioning the hours he himself had spent with Pappy Vandham and Elma, going over every impression he'd had about the inhabitants in that dank prison. He decided to have another pull on his flask instead.

Yelv was jangling, unable to stand still. "I'm still bummed we didn't blow more crap up. Let's go back some time and see how much of that dump we can shave off. I wanna see some parts of it slide into the lava."

Doug was nursing his drink, nodding at their words (or at Frye's silence) but adding nothing much. Finally he said, "We haven't done a toast."

"To us, pard!" Yelv said.

"To our find. We could develop new ..." H.B. began.

"To Al," said Frye quickly.

Doug took a deep breath. "To Al. May we meet again."

They drank to that and were quiet for a moment. The sounds of their city surrounded them. Then Frye asked the question that had been nagging him for a week. "What do you think: is Al a vodka or a bourbon kind of guy?"

a/n: Yay! Apriltober was fun! I know what the tech they found is, but it really isn't important, is it?

Thank you for the prompts and reviews and I hope you had fun too. Excuse me, though, I have a backlog of games to play now.