6 – Scrapping
[Author's Note: Every good training montage requires an epic training song, and the first one that came to my mind was "I'll Make a Man Out of You" from Mulan. So. This happened.]
Let's get down to business, 'cause the dragon calls
If you can't resist he'll have you by the balls
I will beat you down and build you up again
And you can bet before we're through
Engi, I'll make a scrapper of you
.
Trapped in a rainforest that's on fire within
You must learn to face-smash, or you'll never win
Mordremoth don't care 'bout your technology
Wield a hammer, get a clue
Engi, I'll make a scrapper of you
.
I'll never let you catch your breath
Block! I'll run this sword right through you
How underpowered can an engi get
Commander's got a plan for you
I kind of doubt you'll live to see it
Get off the floor, let's try that move again
.
Attention span
You're so distracted, are you still listening?
Has a plan
That he won't follow 'cause "improvising"
Your lifespan
Is just five seconds so melee harder
Watch out, you'll make your sylvari trainer turn!
.
While you don't realize it, it's a point of pride
That I try to help you, though I'm acting snide
So assuage my worries that you're suitable
Show me just what you can do
Why should I make a scrapper of you?
.
~ Tree carving near the Noble Ledges, hacked into bark with a large blade, anonymous
"Rise and shine, engineer. We have a gentleman's agreement. Not that you seem in a state to recall anything."
When Ffeldy came to, he was being dragged along on his back. Canach—who else?—had pulled him out of a tent by the heels. Night-sounds still filled the jungle, though a sliver of orange light brightened the horizon. At least he could mostly see without night-vision.
"Ow—where's my coat?"
"I'd have woken you sooner, if only you'd been easier to find. Funny, I never thought to check the Commander's tent until I'd exhausted all other options. Let's not wake her, shall we?" Canach dropped Ffeldy's ankles and reached for something draped over a nearby branch. "Is this your coat? Because it appears to be soaked, sandy, covered in scorch-marks and—ah!—just shocked me. I can tell you've been…busy."
He tossed the coat at Ffeldy, who sat up to pull it on. The material was damp, not soaked exactly, but felt cold and clammy against his bare skin. The sand was going to rub him raw. What a way to start the day.
"At least let me have my coffee first."
"Ha, good one. You Pact engineers run on turret grease and gouts of flame. Hydrate yourself with water if you must, but coffee must be earned first." Canach reached out a hand and helped pull Ffeldy to his feet.
"I don't remember coffee factoring into our agreement." Every muscle ached, every joint felt like a rusty hinge. This was going to suck.
Canach had of course brought along the massive wrench-club and now thrust it into Ffeldy's hands. "I suppose you could go wake the overworked servants—"
Ffeldy winced. With his peasant background, class distinctions carried a certain awkwardness. "Point taken. Let's do this."
They strode together through the sleeping pre-dawn camp, weaving between tents while trying not to stumble on the guidelines and stakes. A few groggy servants crouched over unlit cooking fires with their tinderboxes. The perimeter guards on watch, Jasmina among them, nodded as Canach and Ffeldy passed by. The wrench dug into Ffeldy's shoulder and he had to keep shifting to one side, then the other.
"You'll get used to it." Canach might have smiled. As usual, Ffeldy couldn't tell. Then something else caught his eye.
"Look, over there. Think what I could build with that…"
A pile of scrap and machine parts lay beside the trail, and Ffeldy instinctively rerouted toward it, his brain clicking through a list of useful applications: turrets, flamethrowers, gyro upgrades…
A bird-sized luna moth fluttered across the path ahead, so close he could have reached out and touched it. Its wings glowed pale-green with phosphorescence. Ffeldy watched how it caught an air current and soared toward into the sky above the wrecked airship hulks. If only he might somehow follow… He thought back to his youth near Claypool, chasing butterflies through meadows and studying their aerodynamic properties while farmers yelled at him for trampling their crops. Priorities.
"No inventions this morning." Canach grabbed Ffeldy by the coat-collar and stopped him from stumbling over the edge of a cliff he hadn't even noticed. "We need to work on both your melee skills and your situational awareness."
"So are we planning to hike all the way back to Lion's Arch, or what?"
"This is far enough. It's a reasonably flat, open area that will make a good sparring ground. They won't hear you shouting from camp. I'll try my best to keep you away from the cliff."
"That's very considerate of you." Ffeldy knew Canach was doing him a favor with this lesson, but couldn't seem to summon words approaching anything like gratitude. He knew he'd get beaten to a pulp in any melee situation. He always did, unless he had some technological "crutch" of his own devising. Today would be no different.
Canach adjusted Ffeldy's grip. "Here, lift your hammer into a protective stance. Hold it like this for an easy block." He left his own weapon sheathed and demonstrated the position with a staff he'd cut from a branch.
"It's not a hammer," said Ffeldy, mirroring the stance. "It's clearly a wrench. I suppose the Grove isn't much for technology, but do sylvari even—"
Canach shook his head, and Ffeldy shut his mouth quickly.
"I'm going to teach you basic maneuvers traditionally associated with the war hammer. You are carrying a hammer. I'm going to refer to it from now on as, you guessed it, a hammer. I'm telling you this because I don't want you to accuse me of overcomplicating matters. Is that all right with you, engineer?"
"Overcomplicate away."
Canach demonstrated several basic hammer swings, a leap, and a two-handed whirl that nearly took out Ffeldy's kneecaps. Then he ran the engineer through a series of maddening drills that felt more to Ffeldy like dance choreography than martial arts. Not that he excelled at either of those things.
He stumbled about the training area, the weight of the hammer constantly throwing off his balance, and swung ineffectively at "Mordrem" targets Canach had constructed from dead logs.
"All right. Let's try a moving target now. Come on, I dare you," Canach barked. "Hit me!"
Ffeldy was just thankful the sylvari hadn't urged him to smile! or buck up! or fix that negative attitude, young man! That was the kind of thing he could imagine Atalanta telling him, and which often just made him feel worse, and his feelings out of his control. If only he could figure out how to channel those emotions into some sort of dazzling, flesh-searing laser beam…
"So," said Canach, getting his attention with a shove. "You and the Commander, hmm?"
"What?" Ffeldy's face burned. "Uhh…that came out of nowhere."
"That's what I thought, too."
Ffeldy stumbled gracelessly over a rock. Oh-ho. So Canach wanted to get under his skin that way, did he? Well it was on now! Still, Ffeldy had a sinking feeling that he was never going to outmaneuver Canach in any duel, including a battle of wits.
"Well, not exactly…" Ffeldy tried out the whirling hammer maneuver, which Canach easily side-stepped. His lame attempt at a verbal parry likewise landed with all the elegance of a gluebomb.
"Let me guess. You offered to help set up her tent and one thing led to another."
This time Ffeldy opted for a leaping strike, aiming at Canach's head. "You might think that. Turns out she's quite capable of setting up a tent herself." Once again, he whiffed at air.
"I see. So she helped you along with your own tent."
"What in the name of Grenth's frozen bollocks are we even talking about?"
"I don't understand why you sound so horrified. There's a first time for everything, even camping."
"I know all about 'camping', Canach."
Ffeldy managed to parry Canach's next attack and maintain an unsteady block. Then his grip slipped, and Canach's stave collided with his fingers. Ffeldy hissed in pain but managed to keep hold of his weapon. He knew Canach was trying to spin him up, and it was working. He set up for another whirl, this time calculating where the sylvari would be in three seconds, not where he currently stood.
"You see," he said, winding up for the swing, vaguely aware he should just shut up already, but he was too tired, aching, and miserable for that. "I knew her before. We met when I was a nobody, but she was the Hero of bloody Shaemoor." This time the hammer glanced off Canach's leg, sending the sylvari stumbling. Ffeldy followed through with another blow from the side. "And she believed in me. When few others did."
To be honest, Ffeldy couldn't understand why Atalanta had moved in to kiss him last night. He was the one harboring the inconvenient celebrity crush for years, not her. Ever since the fall of Zhaitan, The Pact Commander's star had been on the rise. She seemed involved in every big news event to hit Tyria. Forgetting Atalanta Fiero had not exactly been an option. But last night she'd given him an opening to make the first move. And yet, he'd still deferred to her. Maybe it was a pity thing on her part. It wouldn't be the first time a girl felt sorry for him. But then it should have ended after a single kiss, and it hadn't. At all.
Ffeldy was so focused on maintaining good form while sorting out his frayed emotions, he lost track of Canach. The sylvari moved in behind him, staff raised, and smacked him across the back. Ffeldy sprawled forward on his hands and knees. He tried to rise on the momentum of an ill-timed hammer swing and ended up flat on his back, Canach's staff wedged under his chin.
"Situational awareness. Your footwork, too, is…hard to watch."
"It's been an invigorating lesson," Ffeldy said through gritted teeth. "I'm feeling a lot more confident about this melee hammer thing, thanks. Stand me up and give me a good shove toward the next Mordrem you see. I promise to go out with my boots on, anyway."
Getting dominated by Canach had given him a bit of a thrill, actually—going 1v1 against a talented opponent who didn't hold (entirely) back, and lasting more than five seconds, had proved strangely euphoric. Not that he'd ever admit to that in a million years. But imagine how thrilling it might be to actually beat him.
"Umm…unless you'd care to duel again?"
"No, I think you've convinced me." Canach withdrew the staff and tossed it aside. "You are definitely not cut out for this. Technological crutches may be your only hope."
Ffeldy sat up with a groan. "I'm so glad we're on the same page at last." He reached for the hammer and placed it across his knees, contemplating whether adding some sort of electrical field to the stupid thing might give him the slightest edge. He still had an extra salvaged power-source and some wiring in his pocket, left over from the turret he'd built last night. Perhaps that might do the trick. Without his familiar pistol and shield he felt almost naked, but any weapon was better than no weapon. Especially a weapon with electrical upgrades.
"Pact Engineer Von Ffeldy."
Ffeldy looked up, mid-tinker. Canach had never addressed him so…formally. "Sorry?"
"I'm not entirely sure you realize how dire your situation was yesterday."
"Oh." Ffeldy's face burned hotter than an incendiary grenade. "Well, my lips are sealed, and she'll certainly never mention it again, so that just leaves you—"
"I'm not talking about that. Ever again, you'll be glad to hear. Do you remember our little Mordrem skirmish?"
"Vaguely." Ffeldy rubbed his most painfully bruised and aching thigh. "Why?"
"Because I've been observing the Mordrem to figure out Mordremoth's intentions. And those three we fought were coming for you. If we hadn't found you first, if you'd have remained unconscious and tied down by vines, they'd have taken you deeper into the jungle. Made you a slave of the dragon."
A droplet of cold sweat trickled down the inside of Ffeldy's damp collar. He retained few memories from his three days in Mordremoth's vine prison, mainly the musty compost-heap smell, but occasionally he still heard voices that rustled like leaves in the wind.
"But if I'm not sylvari—and I'm really not trying to sound insulting, I swear—Mordremoth can't turn me against my will, can he? And I'm not built of flora, so he has no power to change me physically, either." He stumbled over the words. "Not like Captain Diarmid." His empty stomach churned with acid. He felt ill.
"We're not certain of the breadth of Mordremoth's powers or motivations. He's turning the weaker of my kind into Mordrem guards, then using them to gather bodies of all races, alive or dead, to him. You'd have ended up serving him somehow, with your body, your service, or your mind. Maybe all three."
The thought was too disturbing to linger on, and Ffeldy had no desire to chase that path of logic to its natural conclusion. He ducked his head and knelt over his wrench—no, hammer—fussing with the jerry-rigged power converter until he coaxed a pale glow from the "on" indicator. The metal shaft flickered and buzzed as a golden current shimmered across its surface.
"What will you do if the dragon tries to claim you, engineer? Will you swing a few punches at the foliage with your bare hands before they drag you away? Maybe they'll wait patiently for twenty minutes while you build another of your hovering gyro-bombs, whose unaccountable explosive properties I still fail to understand—"
"I made the one yesterday from salvaged parts, flares, and a single drop of elixir X," said Ffeldy without looking up from his project. He patted his breast pocket. "I still have a thumb-sized vial that survived the crash, but a little bit goes a long way, it seems. It'll have to. I definitely don't want to know the shipping costs from my black-market asuran supplier to the Heart of Maguuma."
"I see." Canach's typically dry voice sounded even more parched than usual. "Well I'm glad you trusted a tree outside your tent to hold your coat last night, along with your priceless valuables. You are definitely more 'champion genius' than 'champion idiot', congratulations."
"Trust knows no logic, or so I've been told…" Ffeldy's voice wavered.
He glanced up at Canach who stood over him, one hand on the pommel of his sword. He drew the blade with a reverberating shhhing!
It crossed Ffeldy's mind to just beg for mercy. He was already on his knees anyway.
"Oh, would you look at that. I just turned into one of Mordremoth's minions. Here I am, come to drag you deeper into the Tangled Depths. What an inconvenience. How can you possibly resist me?"
He was clearly joking. Wasn't he? But Canach wasn't one to joke about such things…
Canach's sword swung flashing in a downward arc. Ffeldy lifted the hammer with both hands and held it over his head in a block. Blade clanged against shaft, and Ffeldy's forearms stung from the impact. If it had landed, that blow would have killed him.
"I thought we were done practicing—"
"We are. This isn't practice, this is real. If you submit to me, then you submit to Mordremoth." Canach brought the blade down again, his full weight behind the swing.
Ffeldy blocked again, sliding backwards on his knees from the force of the collision. Agony ricocheted along his bones, and he thought his arms might shatter.
"You've already admitted that you stand no chance, so just surrender now." Canach's blade traced a figure-eight in the air, then sliced crossways at the level of Ffeldy's neck.
Ffeldy threw himself face-first onto the ground while the blade whirred past overhead. He rolled sideways, using the hammer's inertia to propel himself to feet. Canach maintained pressure and came at him again, this time with a simple, effective sword thrust. Ffeldy saw it coming in his peripheral vision. As he spun around, he flipped a switch on his hammer's newly installed power supply. His insulated leather gloves protected his palms from the angry buzz of electricity in the shaft. For a split-second he relived one of Atalanta's staticky kisses in his mind, then shoved the distraction away. With a pained grimace, he swung the hammer over his head, intending to knock aside Canach's incoming sword point.
"Here, Mordremoth. Have a taste of lightning." Dwayna, let this untested weapon upgrade work.
The hammerhead fell towards the earth with a swoosh, missing the sword by inches. Time seemed to stretch mid-swing, forcing Ffeldy to watch how Canach flicked his wrist in maddening slow motion, sending the tip of his blade toward Ffeldy's own nose. Now he contemplated, moments from certain death-by-skewering, the way the foreshortened blade tip became almost invisible from this unfortunate perspective. He could never fully control his odd thoughts and their terrible timing.
Another thought snuck in. That Canach must have turned. Why else would the sylvari be legitimately trying to kill him?
The hammer struck the ground with a shower of sparks like a lightning bolt, and a web of electricity crackled outward from the impact point in a wide ring. Canach's sword froze inches from Ffeldy's face. Golden strands of electricity writhed along the blade like angry snakes.
Ffeldy blinked. A thread of electricity leapt from the blade to his panscopic monocle. His heads-up-display flickered momentarily, then shorted out. Meanwhile Canach stood, immobilized by the electric field. The brow-like ridges above his eyes were raised in a most human-like expression of shock that even Ffeldy could decipher it. It was…not a very Mordrem look, either.
"Sorry…" Ffeldy reached an apologetic hand toward the stunned sylvari, who winced as electricity continued to pulse up from the ground through his legs. Ffeldy's own gloves and boots had protective insulating properties—a necessity for airship engineering work.
"Don't apologize," said Canach as the stun wore off, his annoyed tone softened by something like pride. But couldn't have been that. "You just stopped me cold. Now follow through and bash my face in with everything you've got."
Did Canach actually care so much to push him this far? Ffeldy was just some nobody engineer. It seemed unlikely.
"But—"
"Don't even think about holding back. Don't think, period."
"Too late," said Ffeldy with a grin, hefting the hammer over his shoulder. "Because I have an idea for a rocket-propulsion hammer charge, but I'm afraid that's still in development at the moment."
"Then do your second-rate best, engineer." He sounded amused, nonetheless.
"Pure kinetic energy it is!" Ffeldy's muscle memory, out of practice as it was, kicked into gear. He managed to more-or-less duplicate the whirling motion Canach had taught him earlier, though with sloppier footwork. Once again, lighting began to spark from the hammer as he spun. "Scratch that. I forgot to turn this thing off."
"Ow. Ow!" Airborne lightning bolts struck Canach in the shoulder. "By the Pale Tree's cotton knickers, it's too early in the morning for this."
"It's on the lowest setting. But just imagine if I dialed up the voltage—"
"You know what? We're done. Congratulations, engineer, Mordremoth didn't enslave you before breakfast after all. I still doubt you'll one-shot any dragon minions with that hammer of yours, but you just might annoy them to death. Let's go see about that coffee of yours. Then I believe the Commander has a rescue mission lined up for you."
"Lord Faren. I'm sure he's practically rescued himself already." Ffeldy hit the power switch and grounded the hammer, removing the extra charge with a worrying fountain of sparks. This thing was a deathtrap. Hopefully just for Mordrem. He'd have to make some adjustments to reduce collateral damage, however.
He took off his glove and held out his bare hand. "Hey Canach. Thanks."
The sylvari eyed him dubiously, then shook it. A spark crackled as their fingers met. They both jumped.
"Good one," said Canach. "Let's just call that a fair trade, shall we?"
