Chapter XVIII

A/N: Ehhh, this chapter is so-so... and it's also a bit shorter, so sorry about that...

Kalebo III, Gadgetron HQ…

"Hey, Mister Lumos, sir?" Rivet greets as she, Klunk, and the little pack of Gadge-bots trotting behind them enter the old reptile's office. "We've got the rest of the Gadge-bots!" She and Klunk both step aside, allowing the Gadge-bots to run up to him, chirruping in bubbling excitement.

Lumos drops the clipboard in his hands and bends down to take the little Gadge-bots into his arms and hug them tightly. He lifts his head up, looking at the duo with a grateful smile. "Thank you." After a moment, he releases the Gadge-bots and reaches around his back to pull out the metal detector. "I believe this belongs to you… along with…" He tosses the metal detector to Rivet, who catches it and nearly drops it in the process. Lumos presses a button on his watch and a holographic display comes up. "Ten thousand bolts."

Once the bolts have been wired to the duo, and goodbyes exchanged, Rivet and Klunk exit the building, heading back towards their ship.

"I was considering perhaps after we assist in fending off the Blarg on Pokitaru," Klunk starts as they walk up the ramp, "we should stay for a night and recharge." Rivet opens her mouth to protest, but Klunk quickly lifts his hand for silence. "I will not hear of otherwise. We may not have another chance to rest for a while."

Rivet heaves a heavy sigh. "Oh, fine. One night."

Pokitaru, Jowai Resort…

Glinting brightly in the sunlight, the clunky red ship swoops in low, zooming towards the flying millipede-esque vessels zipping about the resort, dumping that green toxic waste into the ocean waters. The once crystal clear liquid sapphire is now a sick cloudy green.

"Class 7-G hydro-harvesters," Klunk declares, directing Rivet with a wave of his hand to turn. "Our current vessel does not have nearly enough firepower to take them down. We will need to find something more powerful." He pauses as they pass by a Blarg fighter that had to have seen them, but for some reason does not fire. "I find it odd that the Blarg fighters are ignoring us… hmm." He taps his chin in thought. "Perhaps they do not want to waste their ammunition on us unless we were to attack the harvesters."

"Hey, that looks like the resort owner from the transmission down there!" Rivet tilts the ship down towards the docks below. The resort owner stands in the middle of one of the larger circular platforms, waving their hands frantically.

Slowly and carefully, Rivet sets the ship down on another dock platform one ramp up.

She clambers out of the ship first, Klunk quickly sliding out after her. The duo trudge down the ramp to the next platform below. Rivet takes a quick moment to absorb the lush green hues of the plants, the sparkling sand, and the scary looking mask-like statues lining the dock.

Upon approaching the visibly terrified resort owner, the words that came out of their mouth Rivet was least expecting.

"Dip me in breadcrumbs and feed me to a Snagglebeast!"

Rivet and Klunk quickly share a horrified look before returning their concerned attention to the resort owner.

"You're a Lombax! I've never seen one in real life before…"

Rivet crosses her arms, rolling her eyes. "Yeah, okay. That's great and all, but can we focus? We came cause we found an infobot with your transmission. We're here to help."

"Oh!" The resort owner seems embarrassed. "My apologies, I got excited. The name's Felton Razz, though you probably knew that already." They gesture to the nametag on their shirt, which also lists his pronouns.

"I am Klunk," Klunk speaks up, "and this is my partner, Rivet. Our ship is not equipped with the firepower necessary to destroy those hydro-harvesters. Do you have anything here that could potentially—"

"We have a fighter jet!" Felton interrupts quickly.

"A… fighter jet?" Klunk looks up at Rivet, who shares his bewilderment.

Rivet turns her confused gaze back on Felton. "Why exactly do you have a fighter jet…?"

"I'll explain later, come on!" He waves for them to follow him down the ramp.

Rivet holds out her hand to Klunk. He takes it, and she flings him around onto her back, magnetic mounts clicking together. A quartet of mutated puffoids hurl themselves from the sea water and onto the small stretch of sand ahead. "I'll take care of them!" Rivet sprints on ahead of Felton, equipping her Shatterbomb glove.

A single bomb from her glove leaves the puffoids as nothing more than charred lumps of seafood.

Rivet looks over her shoulder at Felton and holds up her hand. "Stay there, wanna make sure it's actually safe." She then slowly treads forward, eyeing the shoreline and the cloudy water surrounding for any sign of movement.

Just as she nears fifteen feet away from the edge, water suddenly billows up into the air, splashing and crashing against the shore violently, rippling the sand. Rivet stumbles back a bit, eyes widening as they're met with a giant telepathopus, of all things.

"A telepathopus?!" Felton shrieks in the background. "But they're not native to Pokitaru—"

"Well, I guess Drek's goons must've brought them here!" Rivet cuts him off, hurling a bomb at the giant floating lava-based critter. The bomb crashes into the telepathopus' face, shattering into a tangled ball of purple light and instantly vaporizing the enormous-brained alien. "I love this thing," Rivet murmurs, patting her Shatterbomb glove. She turns to see Felton climbing onto a hovercraft. She steps onto the rectangular platform after him as he starts the engine. The machine rumbles to life, and Felton steers it away from the shore.

"You know, I actually had a lovely fishing trip planned before these hydro-harvesters showed up and ruined everything." Felton steers the hovercraft around the shore, the engine purring softly.

A puffoid hurls itself onto the hovercraft. Rivet switches to her FissionMallet and smashes the head right in the sea critter's face, sending it soaring through the air and crashing back into the water with a loud splash. "Oh?" Rivet whirls around, bashing in another puffoid's face and sending it flying back where it came. "Where were you going to go?"

"Well, there's this island not too far from the resort that's nice and secluded," Felton explained. "And there's a lot of different puffoid breeds over there. There's a small volcano too. It's mostly dead, but there are some lava puffoids still lurking around. They're even better than your average puffoid. Less rubbery and more tender."

While Felton continues to yammer on about puffoids and how to tell some of the more similar-looking breeds apart, Rivet continues to smash puffoids to and fro, leaving a trail of knocked-out or otherwise stunned puffoids behind the hovercraft. Just as the last puffoid is hurled back into the water, the hovercraft jerks to a stop. Before Rivet can question, it suddenly jerks again, nearly sending her tumbling. As she steadies herself, she realizes the hovercraft is steadily rising up to a wooden platform above.

"I keep telling my bosses we need to invest in better hovercrafts with a wider lock range, but do they listen to me?" Felton grumbles, shaking his head slowly. "No."

"'Wider lock range?'" Rivet asks, tilting her head.

"He is referring to the range in which this hovercraft, version 2-FC, is still functional," Klunk explains. "If one were to attempt to, say, steal one of these hovercrafts, they would not get far. Once the hovercraft is out of range of the assigned tower, it immediately will shut down and send out a tracking signal for retrieval."

"Huh," Rivet mutters.

"Unfortunately, the tower's signal only covers about half the resort," Felton adds, crossing his arms as his scowl deepens. "Thankfully the other hovercraft isn't that far from here."

The hovercraft comes to a halt, and Rivet and Felton are free to step off onto the platform. The Lombax sprints on ahead and skids to a stop, tele-equipping her Shatterbomb glove. "Of course, they brought over those toxic crab things too."

One bomb leaves the mutant crustacean, along with a few puffoids that happen to be in range, crispy piles of shell and goo.

Rivet sprints on ahead, hurling another bomb and blowing away several more puffoids. Felton hurries after her, sandal-ed feet sloshing through the short stretch of water. As he follows the young feline down the sandy, slightly grassy ridge, Felton exclaims, "Willya look at that? Over to your left there is the Torgoff Waterfall! Every holiday, my brother Grim and I would go hiking up there looking for gold bolts and the like."

Rivet switches to her FissionMallet, smashing a few puffoids' faces and either knocking them unconscious or back into the water. She's only half-listening to Felton's reminiscing, trying to focus on making sure the path ahead is clear. She does vaguely wonder why he's talking so much, and decides maybe it's because he needs some kind of distraction from the threat looming overhead.

"Then one day Grim dared me to ride down in a barrel," Felton continues rambling, "I tell ya, I'd never seen our dad so pissed. Those were the days… I wish Grim was still here, he'd have loved to meet the two of you. He moved to Bogon a long time ago though."

Midway through Felton's monologuing, as Rivet approaches the edge of the shore, water splashes up violently. From the crashing waves emerges another telepathopus. Just as it opens its beak, Rivet hurls a bomb into the newly present opening. The telepathopus swallows the bomb before it realizes what just went down into its gullet, and a split second later it explodes, bits of its flesh flying through the air and disintegrating into nothingness.

Rivet steps onto the hovercraft, Felton following shortly after. The machine powers up with a soft hum, and Felton carefully steers it away from the shore. "Haven't heard from him much since then."

Rivet heaves a sigh as more puffoids leap onto the hovercraft. She switches back to her Mallet and swings at the nearest one, striking it right in the face.

"Sacre bleu! Romulus, watch your aim! You almost shot my arm off!"

"It wouldn't be a problem if these things would just keep still!"

"Well they aren't, so s'il te plaît, be careful where you point that thing!"

"At least this time yer're sober."

"What was that?!"

"Less yappin', more shootin'—"

"I am the Captain here—"

"Hey, mind if we join the party?"

The previously bickering pirates— decked out in glittering attire lined with bright gold patterns and reflective blue-ish green highlights, standing in an oddly yet clearly deliberately placed puddle of ankle deep water— glance over at the newcomer. Rivet smashes her FissionMallet into the face of the nearest puffoid, sending it flying and crashing into the wall of a nearby hut.

"Not at all!" The French pirate, whom Rivet immediately recognizes as Captain Pierre Le Fer, stabs a puffoid just as it leaps at him and kicks the skewered corpse off his blade with his foot. "Meurs, fruits de mer, meurs!"

"Just keep yer hammer-thing away from my kills," Slag snarls, his claw spinning faster and faster until its consumed in a flash of bright blue light. When the light fades, in the claw's place is a giant wooden mug. Slag tips it back, slurping loudly. Rivet, as she smashes her Mallet into another puffoid, opens her mouth to question when Slag lowers the giant mug and a spray of fire bursts from his mouth, roasting any and all puffoids that the flames touch.

"Telepathopi!" Pierre yanks out an energy pistol, pointing at the nearest of the said enormous-brained creatures. He pulls the trigger, unleashing a rain of super-charged bullets into the critter's flesh.

Rivet turns her attention to the other telepathopus while Pierre and his partner are otherwise occupied. She switches over to her Shatterbomb and hurls one of the deadly spheres at the alien, the orb instantly vaporizing it upon impact.

She quickly whirls around to see Pierre fire one last round into the other telepathopus' head before it starts to fall back into the water, succumbing to its wounds.

The three fighters stand there a moment, taking in the loud silence now that the explosions and slashings have ended.

Rivet is hunched over, hands resting on her knees, her chest aching with each breath she takes. She suddenly feels so winded. And the worst part is, they're not even done yet. She lifts her head as Pierre holsters his weapons and grumbles loudly to Slag, "I can't believe this! Connerie! Putain de Blarg!"

Felton Razz steps out from around the corner, where he'd been huddling for cover. "Good to see you two are alright…"

"More or less," Slag answers, his mug spinning faster and faster before a familiar flash of light consumes it. In its place is his claw. "But those hydro-harvesters are still here—" He points his claw to the nearest one, the harvester swooping in low and dumping more toxic green waste into the ocean, "— and last I checked, those weren't among the tourist attractions!"

Rivet slowly straightens her stance, her aching body more relaxed now. "That's why Klunk and I are here," she tells him as her aforementioned partner slides off her back. "We're gonna take out those hydro-harvesters before they can do any more damage."

"I can't unlock the fighter jet hangar," Felton pipes up. As everyone turns to glare at him, he lifts his hands up, waving for them to calm down. "But, Bob can help you get in. He knows about these locks. After the last owner let someone take this thing for a joy ride, my bosses only trust one person with it. That person is not me."

Rivet raises an eyebrow. "I still don't get why you have this fighter to begin with, but if it can destroy those hydro-harvesters, I'm not gonna complain."

Felton gestures to the building off to the left. "Bob's in there. The blast door is shut… probably had the shite scared out of him, the poor guy…"