Log 5: N. Ecdote

Gin looked at the liquified remains of the cactus on the kitchen table and cracked open his fourth beer of the night. The scent of the putrefied plant carcass mixed with the smell of the booze and of the brownies that were baking in the oven in a distant, almost frightening, way. Neither of the men were sure how someone managed to make brownies and stick them in the oven in the very brief time it had taken for them to go from Gin's lab to the kitchen. But strange things were bothering Nathan less, as more of them happened. He was wondering how long it would take for normal events to become strange to him.

"Shit, you weren't kidding about the plant melting."

Nathan nodded. "I know, right? This stuff broke pretty much every structure down completely. Only the organic stuff: no containers or pots or dirt or anything like that. But yeah, melted. Died as it lived: dangerous to touch."

He stretched out his shoulders and reached out, silently asking Gin if he could have a beer too. Gin nodded, still staring at the plant. He tilted his head, briefly scratching along his rocket. He shifted in his seat and grabbed a small sketchbook that he kept stored underneath the cushion of the chair he always sat in. Wincing, he leaned down, picked up a metal pen that was on the ground, prodding the sludge in the pot. While the pen sank into the pile, when he pulled it out, it was intact, if a bit messy.

"Fascinating… no reaction to the metal…"

Gin tossed the pen aside, and Nathan watched it bounce a few times before nestling itself in a group of soda cans that Cortex kept stored in the back corner. He had mentioned to Nathan, when explaining how the guys kept and cooked their own meals in the communal kitchen, that "Lemon-lime soda is truly my greatest vice in life."

Nathan didn't know if Cortex didn't hear or chose to ignore Brio's muttered "If by 'g-greatest' you mean 'the first one you d-d-developed,' then you're right."

Gin took another pen out from behind his ear and opened his sketchbook.

"I don't know, Dustrielle, how familiar you are with the process of designing weapons…"

Nathan shrugged. "In a strictly theoretical sense, I usually understand the physics behind them. If chemical stuff is also involved, I'll know it even better. Hell, I technically could build an atomic bomb, but I have no reason to do it. At least yet."

Gin looked up, and Nathan noticed the smile on his face slowly creep wider. Nathan wasn't sure, at first, if Gin was just getting loosened up from the booze. But when Gin put down the pen and started to gesture wildly, Nathan realized the excitement and passion he was about to witness. He understood it far too well, since he had accidentally given Cortex a preview of his own brand of excitement during his interview.

"The thing about weapons is that people just think you need to pack the biggest punch possible. That's the only factor most people think about: how big is the explosion? How hard does it hit? And I think that boils down to people only thinking about weapons of mass destruction. Now, I love a massive bomb or mech or laser as much as anyone-"

"Enough to make 12 battle mechs?" Nathan asked, smirking.

"Yes, Dustrielle, enough for that-"

"How about 11 giant lasers?"

"Dustrielle, I've only made 9 of thos-

"10 bombs a… exploding?" Nathan could hardly get the words out through his flushed and wild fit of giggles.

Gin sighed, raising his eyebrow and chuckling. "For fuck's sake, I thought you said Christmas wasn't coming early."

"I didn't actually say anything about that."

"Okay, fair enough. My point is: a weapon can come in any size, any shape and any means of damage, so long as it does what it's intended to do efficiently. I think, really, that there is no greater and more beautiful piece of art than a well-made weapon, especially one specially crafted and bespoke to the strengths of its wielder."

He paused, looking Nathan up and down.

"I will not lie to you…Nathan…"

That was the first time Gin had ever used Dustrielle's first name. It almost sounded like a foreign word.

"...you will fight that bandicoot or his allies one day. Cortex claims that our objectives will be accomplished before Crash has the chance to strike, but I've heard him say that time and time again. Please don't mistake that for a lack of confidence in this plan, it's better than most of the other ones we've tried. But the point is that you're going to need something for a battle. None of us have escaped him unscathed. Now, I have my mechs, Tropy has his tuning fork and teleportation, Brio has a few different transformations… he recently figured out how to turn into a T-Rex."

"...I'm not gonna ask."

"But what about you?"

Nathan sighed. "I haven't exactly fired a gun. Or an arrow. I've punched a fair few people… they wronged me, for the record!"

Gin shook his head. "If it comes down to just fists, the bandicoot wins every time." He paused, looking at Nathan in the face. "Do you mind if I give a few ideas?"

"Nah, go ahead, be my guest."

Gin clapped, his eye shining and his cybernetic one glowing brightly, as though those were magic words that granted him unlimited power. He picked up his pen and started sketching quickly, eye darting around as he started speaking faster than Nathan had ever heard him do so.

"Perfect! Now…the bandicoot wins a fistfight, but that doesn't mean you can't get up close and personal. Maybe sneak a punch in if you stun him. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but you seem somewhat physically sturdy, light on your feet…"

"Right and right."

Between those comments, the sketching, and how Gin was trying to personalize the mystery idea, it reminded him of the one time he bought a custom suit. Though, he supposed, both were art forms, tailored to the intended user.

"... please don't think of this as you being my guinea pig… and tell me if you don't like this… but I've always wanted to make a battle hammer."

"Like what Thor has?"

"Not quite. More like a sledgehammer. But that little chemical of yours… well… it got me thinking… what if you could smash an enemy, leave them stunned on the ground, press a button, and you can dissolve them before they have the chance to move?"

Nathan tilted his head, thinking. He could swing a sledgehammer just fine. More than fine, actually. Would be a great weight to wield, it would give him a reach advantage, and he always liked the feeling of hitting stuff. And of course, the ace up the hammer's sleeve…

"You mean that we'd store some of the acid inside the hammer?"

Gin nodded, beaming. "Yes! I can make a chamber in the center of the handle and head and keep enough in there to completely dissolve an enemy our size or smaller. But if you don't need it, or don't want to use it, it'll just stay in there, safe and sound, while you keep smashing."

Nathan grinned, stroking his chin, thinking about how fun a weapon like that sounded. "Fuckin' hell, man, that's genius. I like it. I want to test it out before making it my 'usual'-"

Gin snorted loudly at that. "Oh please, don't give me that much credit, I've kicked around a similar idea for ages. I've always found hammers effective, creative, and you can never underestimate the drama and intimidation factor-"

"No, but you should've made Cortex one or something…well maybe it'd be too large for him but…but-"

Nathan noticed Gin had stopped laughing. He wasn't frowning, but his face was definitely less jovial. He looked to the ground and back up, putting down the pen.

"I… was going to tell you this sooner or later… but I guess you should get context as soon as you can. Cortex isn't the easiest guy to work for."

Nathan nodded. "Wildly aware."

"Well, yes, but… it used to be worse. Hold on, I want to get comfortable. We might be here for a while."

He reached up to his right forearm and fiddled with the top of his gauntlet. Nathan heard a couple of small pops and cracks before Gin slid the gauntlet off, leaving just the stump at his elbow.

This wasn't the first time Nathan had seen it, of course. During the first "happy hour", Gin had yelled "Here, catch!" and threw his arm at Nathan. While it was a funny thing to look back at, Nathan had been too busy rubbing his shoulder where the gauntlet had hit him to join the other guys in the laughter.

Gin sighed in relief as he placed his arm under his chair. "Phew...as much as I wanted it my arm to be sturdy, that thing gets way too heavy after the day is over. But… yeah… Cortex."

He grew quiet, staring straight into his beer, as though he was gathering his thoughts. "I probably know Cortex better than the others. Brio's the only one who comes close, but frankly, I think that briefly sharing a consciousness with Cortex gives me an edge…"

Nathan opened his mouth, and Gin shook his head.

"I'll tell you about that another time, but in short: even if he's sharing consciousness with 3 other living beings, Cortex will find a way to assert dominance."

He sighed. "I knew Cortex back when we were kids. Same school. Brio went there too. I graduated two years earlier than expected and went to a different high school than they did. Didn't see either of them again for years. Never forgot Cortex though. Two reasons: the first being that he attempted to steal my earliest prosthetic prototype and pass it off for his own."

Nathan raised his eyebrow. "Did he get away with it?"

Gin shook his head, smiling slightly. "If there's one thing Cortex will never attempt to do to me again, it's stealing my work. Let's just say that when he tried to take my prototype, he also became well acquainted with my early attempts at a security system. I still don't think he's fully healed from it."

Nathan chuckled. "Nice. I'd expect no less."

Gin nodded. "Yeah. But then, years later… after the accident… the government didn't want me working there again. I wanted to, so desperately, but they wouldn't let me. Safety concerns, you know? They were all too ready to hand me a steady pension, and I could've lived in clover for the rest of my life. But I couldn't just sit around and twiddle my thumbs. But nowhere in the world wanted to hire me, especially after they heard about what happened. And I didn't know what to do with my life… I didn't know if I wanted to live… and then Cortex reached back out, asked me if I wanted to work with him."

His face grew flushed as he continued talking.

"It was everything I could've dreamed of. Working on weapons and machines all day, no funding or grants to apply for, no bureaucracy to maneuver, just me and my tools and any coworkers I'd have. And I built most of those coworkers, so even better, right?"

"Wow, okay, didn't know that's how you felt about me."

Gin snorted. "Shut up. You know that's not true. But the others… and bear in mind, I adore both Tropy and Brio. They're fun guys… but both of them have worked against Cortex. Not often, once or twice each. They came back because we are stronger together. Neither of them managed to accomplish much by working on their own. See, Cortex has all the resources, and Uka Uka's… generosity. But them not always being around meant that there were periods of time, months, years even, where it was just me and Cortex. And at first, it was pretty enjoyable. We'd work, we'd collaborate, we'd have some fun sometimes. But the entire time, well, I'm still not sure if this wasn't because of the isolation… but I… um… well… ugh."

The groan that Gin made was a deep, disgusted, ugly sound beyond anything Nathan had ever heard before.

"One night, Cortex and I were celebrating a major breakthrough. And we were drunk. Not like tonight, more than this, I barely remember this moment happening. I admitted… to Cortex… to his face… that I was attracted to him. In every sense of the word."

Nathan took a deep inhale, nodding. "Got it. Damn. I'm sorry-"

"Me too."

"How did he react?"

Gin shrugged. "Complicated. In that moment, he simply explained that he didn't feel the same way. Dry, but direct. Party ended at that point, let's put it that way. I'll give Cortex this, for all of his many things I dislike, I don't think he's a homophobe, at least at his core."

Nathan nodded. "Yeah. But… that wasn't all, was it?"

Gin sighed, shaking his head. "Of course not. You think Cortex would just forget that valuable piece of information? My game plan, at that point, was to drop it, just be his coworker and friend and pretend I never said it. And I assumed that was how he was going to operate: same as we were before."

He paused, looking down at the ground briefly. "That new info, combined with the fact that I never have worked against him… Cortex must have realized that I was the 'minion' least likely to fight back."

Nathan's stomach turned, wondering where this was going.

"The first time Cortex pushed me down the stairs, I thought it was an accident. He was angry, but not at me. I had assumed that when he turned to ask a Lab Assistant something, that's how he pushed me down them, like his arms caught me or something. I wasn't hurt, just had the wind knocked out of me. But then there were the times he threw stuff at me. Sometimes it was because of something I said or did. Usually not though. But it was always when he was angry, and the more times that the bandicoot defeated him, the angrier he got. I never said a word or raised my fist against him. And he never tried to pull that stuff against Tropy or Brio. He pushed a Lab Assistant off the mountain once, but that barely counts."

He paused and grimaced. "Day one, the basement maze. Remember it?"

"I still couldn't find my way through it, if that's what you mean."

"Well… neither could Cortex. Particularly with ten drinks in him. We thought it would be funny just to let him wander around a little while. Not too long, and we'd be watching through the cameras to make sure he was safe. So Tropy brought him down, said he wanted to show Cortex something and then teleported off. We let him roam around for like a half an hour, and then Tropy brought him back. Well, he yelled at us for a good long time. And I turned to leave. He shoved me down the stairs again. And tried to come down after me, probably to do something else, but Tropy and Brio held him back."

He sighed. "I sprained my left wrist. It healed up soon enough. And I don't know what Brio and Tropy said or did, but Cortex never tried to pull physical shit with me again. Since then, Cortex has been pretty much the same as you've seen him, no more or less than that."

He stopped talking and chugged his beer until there was nothing but an empty glass. All the pieces finally came together in Nathan's mind, why Gin behaved differently around Cortex, why he had been so concerned when Nathan was ranting about Cortex… and one other thing...

Nathan pulled his lips tight and let out a deep exhale.

"That's fucked up what he did… I'm glad he hasn't pulled that shit since… And if he tries, I'll push him down the stairs. Or at least I'll try to."

"As will I for you. Wasn't sure if he'd tried something against you, since he might interpret you as 'bottom of the totem pole.'"

Nathan shook his head. "Nope. And he'd find out real quick I'm anything but the bottom."

He flushed slightly, kicking himself for that last sentence, and cleared his throat. "I really don't want to make light of this, in the slightest… but is it bad that I guessed about you having been into him at one point?"

Gin raised his eyebrow. "How did you guess? Did I seem like I was? Because I haven't been for years."

Nathan shook his head, chuckling. "No, not at all. It's just...Cortex had… said something funny to me yesterday. I don't know if he looked at my internet history, or something like that, but he made some remark about how 'if you get some sort of inkling of attraction to me, I'm not interested, so don't waste your time'. "

Gin winced. "I know, for a fact, that he occasionally looks at our internet history. For curiosity more than anything else."

"No, I'm not worried about that. But I said back to him, 'wasn't even remotely interested, but okay.'

And he was like, 'good… wait, what do you mean you're not even remotely attracted to me?!'

The look on his face, he was so offended, it was priceless. I wish I'd taken a picture."

Gin's mouth dropped, first seemingly in shock and then as his eye went wider, he started to cackle:

"Wait, does he think everyone who is into men is into him?"

Nathan laughed, waving his arm wildly. "Probably, he's a vain bastard. He probably would be into himself if he was into men!"

Gin wheezed, catching his breath. "You're so right, you know. Oh, that's good."

Nathan nodded. "Yep! So I was wondering why that idea occurred to him, and I guessed that a coworker might've said something to him at one point. But yes, now we have a wonderful piece of information of our own: that Cortex is an even bigger dunce than anyone could've imagined."

Gin smiled. "Yeah… yeah we do… do you think that if we told him that Uka Uka-?"

A bright blue flash interrupted Gin's question, and as the light started to dim, Tropy stood in front of them. His hat was off, revealing his smooth blue bald head, and though his gauntlet on his left arm was still on, he was also wearing yellow pajamas and a pair of purple oven mitts. His eyebrows were raised and the corner of his lip was twitching.

"... Er… hello gentlemen, was I interrupting anything?"

Nathan looked at the brownies in the oven and then back to Tropy, putting two and two together. He smirked.

"Not really… hey, remember when you told me about not taking frivolous trips?"

Tropy's face grew flushed as he rolled his eyes.

"Yes, yes, I know. Look… as a time traveler, I have seen waters long since dried and animal species long extinct. I have watched empires rise and fall. I have witnessed the Big Bang and the heat death of the universe. And passing normally through time… well, quite frankly, it's… ugh… boring ."

"In other words, you were hungry, made brownies and didn't want to wait?"

Tropy sighed as he pulled two trays out of the oven. "Fine, yes, guilty as charged. In my defense, I was also going to bring some to Brio. He's needed to replenish his supply."

Nathan laughed and raised his hand. "Excuse me, I would like one brownie for my silence. One for Gin too."

Tropy raised his eyebrow, frowning deeply. Then he closed his eyes, exhaled in a sigh, and Nathan could've sworn that Tropy nearly smiled.

"Very well, I'm already sharing these, so why not? One each. And not a word to Cortex. He doesn't deserve any. Family recipe, you know, it goes back generations."

Nathan leaned forward slightly, raising an eyebrow. "What would you say if I tried to extort you for an extra one?"

"Don't press your luck. Besides, if you're taking from that tray, you'll only want one. And for your own sake, only eat half to start with."

"... oh… huh… and those brownies are for Brio?… Can you hook me up with some? Where do you get-?"

"A dealer does not tell his secrets."

"Okay, screw you too."