Loonatics: United

World of Chaos

Episode 99: Winding down

In the next morning, Tech, Slam and Duck encountered in their way to the kitchen, as a sweet and familiar smell had woken all up, letting them know that breakfast was ready. "Good morning, Duck." Tech said.

"Morning." Duck replied, sniffing the strong and captivating smell. "It smells delicious here."

"Susan must´ve made pancakes." Tech assumed.

They entered the kitchen, their eyes widened with delight when seeing Rev serving a plate with a tall tower of pancakes on the table, he then ran with his super speed towards the bar and returned to the table in a split of second, placing a jug with orange juice there. Rev looked at them with a caring smile. "Good morning guys! Have ´em while they´re warm!"

"Morning, Rev, and thanks!" Tech and the others took a seat and Slam started to eat the pancakes as if they were tiny cookies.

Susan and her parents entered the kitchen. "Woah!" Susan said while chuckling. "Guys, I wondered what smelled so good!"

"These are Rev´s specialty." Tech served himself a pair of pancakes.

"Aw, thank you so much, Rev." Susan said while sitting down along with her parents.

"This is so kind of you." Sylvia praised.

"Yeah they look so tasty." Declan served himself a pancake and then took a bite of it with his fork. "Oh my goodness! They´re amazing!"

Tech munched with a glare of satisfaction. "You never disappoint, buddy."

Slam burped, having finished already, thing that didn´t bother Tech or anyone at all as they were too busy enjoying the sweet and comforting taste of Rev´s pancakes.

"How´s Ace?" Duck asked.

"Oh..." Tech swallowed the piece of pancake he was having. "He is doing well, he should wake up soon, but we´ll have to wait."

"And Lexi?" Duck inquired.

"I don´t know, maybe in a couple of days, sooner, later. It´s hard to know." Tech responded.

"I thought you were the smartest guy here, you should know for sure." Duck said with a straight tone.

"Hey." Tech looked at him with a frown. "Who´s the one with more than three postdocs here?"

"Uhm." Sylvia pretended to cough, wanting to end with the tense conversation. "So, how are your parents, Tech? I´d love to meet them some day."

"Oh, they´re doing well, thanks. Kynigos is a pretty calm place so they´re certainly enjoying their lives there." Tech responded and sighed. "They used to live in Acmetropolis with us but it was too risky, for obvious reasons."

"How about yours, Rev?" Sylvia asked.

"Well, I insisted them to move to another planet because, well, Tech have just told you. Uhm, but dad is a very serious business man so he didn´t want to leave his company behind." Rev replied.

"I see." Sylvia said. "He must be very brave."

"Kinda." Rev answered coldly before taking a bite of his pancakes.

"And you, big guy?" Declan looked at Slam. "How are your parents? Are they as big as you?"

"Hon." Sylvia looked at her husband with a warning look.

"What? I wanna know." Declan raised his shoulders.

Slam chuckled for a moment then growled at them, answering Declan´s question, telling him that his mother died when he was young, on a car accident, revealing that his father struggled a lot to raise him but that in the end he did a decent job. He then said he lived in the planet Miden, working as the manager of a workshop. He then just said that his dad was way bigger than him.

"Oh, I´m so sorry, Slam." Susan said.

Slam snarled, smirking while thanking her, then stating it was okay.

Meanwhile, in the Chaos Warriors´ HQ, Alfons was in the control center, barely lighted, with some useless technology as monitors and consoles laying over the ground. He was sitting before the monitor of the main computer, looking at a file while having some coffee. "Morning, boss." Lydia said, being ignored by Alfons. "Did you get any sleep?"

"What does it look like?" Alfons said coldly.

Lydia noticed that Alfons was checking the cargo itinerary of Kyros Technologies. "So, what´s the plan?"

"The shipment will arrive next week, it will be heavily guarded." Alfons responded, his eyes were locked in the file. He pointed at a previous date on the document. "Before that, they´ll receive a tank full of hydrinoxide. A fairly safe chemical, if treated correctly. There´s only one thing that can trigger it´s explosive qualities."

"Sound waves." Lydia responded.

Alfons nodded. "Exactly. That will be Landon´s job, the distraction we need to access the shipment with the quantum motor and get away with it."

"What will we do with the Loonatics?" Lydia inquired.

Alfons grunted. "If they want blood, I´ll give them blood. No one will interfere with this operation. The quantum motor is coveted by many organizations, we´ll sell it to the best bidder. I´ve made contact with them already, they´ll start offering when we acquire the asset."

It was around midday, Tech was in the visits room checking Ace. "Baby?" Susan said while knocking the door.

"Come in." Tech replied.

Susan opened the door and entered. "Uhm, I´m gonna take the boys to downtown. They really need to wind down a bit, you should come too."

Tech sighed. "I don´t know, hon, I want to watch over them closely."

Susan approached him, caressing his arm. "They´re stable." She placed a hand on his chest. "The one who needs a helping hand right now is you."

Tech looked at Ace. "I appreciate it, Susan. But, my duty is to take care of them."

Susan stroked his face. "And you´ve made a wonderful job, baby, you saved their lives." She looked deeply into his eyes. "I can tell you´re tired, and stressed." Susan smirked at him compassionately. "Come on, you deserve some rest."

Tech hesitated for a long moment, then let out a sigh and smiled at her, kissing her briefly. "Okay."

Tech and Susan exited the apartment along with Duck, Rev and Slam, then they got out of the building, standing on the sidewalk, waiting for the hover-cab that Susan had called. "Are we going to the mall?" Duck asked.

"For sure!" Susan replied. "I´ll take you to a lot of sweet places."

"Nice." Duck said.

The hover-cab arrived and they got in, then it flew rapidly towards the city´s downtown. "I can´t wait to see the cool gadgets I can buy here." Rev said.

"Oh dang it! I left my wallet in my pants." Duck complained with annoyance. "We should´ve changed for this, I mean we´re not like, in 'hero mode' right now, are we?"

"Hey, we always look great in our suits, Duck." Tech said with a chuckle.

"Specially you, baby." Susan wrapped her arms around him and rested her head on his chest.

"Hmm, I guess that´s true. My girl also gets crazy when she sees me in my suit." Duck sighed and leaned against the back of the seat while getting both hands behind his neck. "Yeah, good point."

Rev chuckled. "Also, window shopping is fun as well!"

"Yeah, watching things you can´t buy because you left you wallet at home, sounds fun." Duck said sarcastically. "Uhm, can someone lend me some money if I see something cool? Also, you know, for food...drinks...maybe a cigarette?"

Tech let out a chuckle while shaking his head. "Sure, Duck, why not?"

"Yay." Duck gave him a thumbs up.

After a couple of minutes, the hover-cab arrived at their destination and they got out of the vehicle. "Oh, shoot, look at this!" Rev said with amazement while they stood before the tall and imposing mall, all white from the outside, and dark blue from the inside, with dim, cyan colored lights illuminating the large corridors and stores.

"Now this is neat." Duck smiled by the amazement.

"Indeed." Tech´s eyes were widened.

Susan chuckled. "Well, come on boys, you have seen nothing yet!" She gestured at the mall´s inside and walked in, followed by the rest. They looked around with joy and excitement while walking between the crowd. "Did you guys know that NanoSense have their main store here?" Susan raised an eyebrow while looking at Rev and Tech.

"Oh that´s true, Tech!" Rev placed a hand on his friend´s shoulder with enthusiasm.

"Yeah! I´ve read they got the latest models!" Tech replied.

"We could get the Dragonfly Processor XT!" Rev jumped by the excitement.

"Oh, nerdy stuff, yeah!" Duck mocked them by pretending to be excited, then just shrugged and made a gesture of disdain. "Boring." He looked at Susan. "Are there any good clothing shops here?"

"Sure! I personally like DiCicco´s, they got a lot of great stuff." Susan responded.

"Sounds good, yeah." Duck approached Tech. "Uhm, money?"

Tech sighed while taking a card from one of his suit´s pockets. "Here´s my backup card."

Duck´s eyes widened. "Oh, yes!" Before he could take the card, Tech backed it away from him.

"Do not abuse, okay?" Tech looked at him warningly.

"Ha, whatever." Duck rapidly snatched the card and began to walk away from them. "You coming, Slam?" Slam growled while shrugging, accompanying him.

Tech chuckled while shaking his head. "Do you think he´ll find that shop?" He told Rev.

"Not likely." Rev chuckled as well.

"So, NanoSense, guys?" Susan inquired.

"You bet!" Tech replied with excitement.

Slam and Duck walked between the crowd while looking for DiCicco´s. "Hmm, maybe I should´ve asked Susan first, this place is huge."

Slam growled sarcastically.

"Hey, do you prefer to see boring, nerdy things or buy awesome clothes?" Duck asked.

Slam shrugged, growling briefly, stating it was the same for him.

"Oh, well. You´re trapped with me now." Duck replied. "Hmm, DiCicco´s, DiCicco´s." Several clothing shops were showing up in their way. "We could check some other shops, I mean, we got plenty of time for that." Duck looked at a shop that was called 'Schlatter Men'. "Hmm, that one looks neat." He gestured at it. "Come on, big guy, let´s get some fancy stuff."

On the meantime, in the NanoSense store, Tech and Rev were holding a huge box, reading the specifications of the product, which was the Dragonfly Processor XT they had talked about. "A thousand petabytes of memory, nice."

"Yeah it´s more than enough but I´m not sure about the cooling system. It uses an old model of the RiverLung, uhm...version 10.8." Rev argued.

"I could modify it, make it more efficient." Tech replied.

Rev nodded. "Yeah, that could work."

Susan chuckled while seeing her boyfriend and his friend discussing about the product, she was checking the specs of a pair of batteries. Susan raised an eyebrow while walking towards Tech. "Uhm, love?"

"Yes, hon?" Tech looked at her then switched his gaze to the batteries she was holding.

"Do you think these will suffice to power a portable converter?" Susan asked.

"Let me see..." Tech took the plastic packed batteries and read their specs while nodding. "Yeah, they should work fine."

Susan smiled at him and kissed his cheek. "Thanks, baby."

Author´s note: Hi everyone! Thanks for the support, I´m so glad that this story is gaining popularity, I can´t thank you enough for that! To celebrate Episode 100, a new and exciting side story will start to feature at the end of each new episode, starting from the next one. What will this story be about? I´ll just say that Randy González plays a major role here ;) I´d also like to announce that I´m working on a blog about the fanfic, which will feature lots of cool things like art, additional information, news, etc. May God bless you all!