Disclaimer: I don't own RvB.
Warning: Tex, Phantoms, the BGC, and a whole lot of explosions.
Episode 50: Blood Roses and Snow Drops
This was it.
The time had come.
Everything rose or fell with the outcome of this one battle.
Okay, maybe not quite everything but the battle with Tex, and later the BGC, would be an important tipping point in their collective stories. Would the Phantoms fall like Freelancers or would they legally become Phantoms, dead in the eyes of the UNSC? Would Epsilon be captured, or would he stay free? Marley didn't know, couldn't know, but her blood was singing in anticipation for the answer. They arrived at the beacon's location and eyed the prone body warily. "Hey Oregon... you got anything on this?" Wash asked. Marley sighed.
"It's Tex," she said. "She's back in Black." The men groaned and Flowdie smacked the back of her helmet. "Sorry, couldn't resist. Okay, approach with caution. No knowing what Tex has set up for us." And that was when a circle of ominous little lights lit up around them.
"Fudgeberries," Flowdie ground out before everything went to crazytown.
/*/
Meanwhile, at the Tool Shed (*author smacks narrator * Wrong franchise! *glares * 'But it's just there! On a metaphorical silver platter! How could I not use it?!' *sighs * Fine. But just this once! Original joke from Yugioh GX Abridged referencing the Slifer Red Dorm. Okay, disclaimed. Continue. 'Stickler.' Hey! If I have to keep disclaiming RvB I'm gonna disclaim signature jokes! Now stop arguing and tell our readers what's happening at the O-) Caboose heard the recovery beacon from Church and ran off to tell the Reds, Kai, and Doc about it. "Sargent! Sargent!" he called. Red turned to the simple soldier while Dex jerked and fell over.
"What do you want, blue?" Red asked, eying the poor man warily. No-one ever knew what kind of madness would come from Caboose getting something right.
"I need your help!" Caboose wailed. Dex moaned and held a hand to his helmet as his forceful awakening gave him one heck of a headache and rendered him only semi-conscious.
"Our help?" Rick asked, quirking an eyebrow at the blue. While it wasn't a terrible idea, it was one that usually wouldn't come from Caboose.
"Yes!" said Blue wailed. "Church is hurt! They must have gotten to him and Tex." The conscious Reds shared a looked while Al sighed and Kai eyed him curiously. Tucker had wondered off to stock up on ammunition as soon as the beacon went active for Epsilon, knowing that Caboose wouldn't let them sit on the sidelines, not matter what Al told him.
"Wait wait wait," a bleary Dex said, waving his hand in a distracted manner as he pulled himself into an upright position with the aid of a conveniently placed barrel. "Who did what with a text?"
"Caboose says something happened to Epps and that the Phantoms must have gotten to him and Tex," Rick said. Dex nodded and pushed himself to his feet.
"Good. Let them fight it out. Freelancer vs ex-Freelancer in a fight for the ages. Leave me out of it. Ugh... how Marley went on a frontal assault mission after letting Al loose in her brain I have no clue," he said, rubbing his head and muttering about Hunter sized hangovers and pan-galactic gargle-blasters. Rick hummed.
"You do appear a bit unsteady. What happened?" he asked, mildly concerned.
"Well, I managed to beat a little Loyalty and Honesty into Gary, so that's a plus," Dex said, then wavered slightly with a faint moan. "On the other hand, he got along real well with my Sarcasm and Bravery Aspects." Rick wondered if he should wince at that or not. "They got into a wrestling match, of all things." Okay, yeah, he should wince.
"Ouch," Rick hissed, giving a full-body wince. And no, asking how he managed that won't get you an answer. Or at least, not one you'd be satisfied with.
"No kidding," Dex grunted. "Anyone know where I can find some Aspirin and a bottle of water? Maybe a hard root beer?"
"No, we have to rescue them!" Caboose maintained, acting like that exchange hadn't happened at all. Rick and Dex gave him flat looks.
"Okay, there's being slow... and then there was being as dense as tungsten," Rick remarked. "Guess which one you are."
"Dude... you're still on that?" Kai asked, giving him a rather surprised look.
"Too bad Tucker missed that," Eagle remarked dryly. Kai nodded.
"He would have loved that one. Seeing him high-five Rick would have been a nice memory," she agreed.
"How many fingers am I holding up?" Doc asked Dex, completely ignoring the others. Eagle noticed and snorted.
"Yeah, it is kind of nice to see Doc finally accepting the Blood Gulch Way, isn't it?" Kai said. Eagle chuckled softly and tapped his helmet. "Recording for posterity? Huh, I didn't think it was that momentous."
"Oh, not Doc. You," Eagle said. Kai shot him a look. "You read me like a book. It was... impressive," the sniper explained.
"Huh, that's... nice?" she said.
"Two in front of me, four behind your back," Dex told Doc dryly. "Now can we get back to the part where we tell Caboose it's a bad idea to charge in after Agent Texas when she's about to have a grudge match with no less than five Phantoms?"
"But they'll die!" Caboose cried, waving his arms for emphasis. "Sargent, please!" Dex looked over to Red.
"You want to take this one Red?" he asked. "I mean, I know the best way to convince you to do something isn't 'the Blues might die if we don't' but hey! Maybe you'll surprise us."
"Ya sure Gary didn't get along with your Humor Aspect?" Rick asked.
"Oh, sure they did! And boy am I glad, his idea of a good joke was a knock-knock joke! I mean, once or twice, maybe, but every time you try to be funny? Dude, no. Just... no," Dex answered.
"Cowboy up, Caboose. I'm coming with you," Re said. Rick and Dex nearly gave themselves whiplash turning to give the man incredulous looks.
"What?" Dex asked.
"I said, I'm helping him," Red repeated. Rick and Dex shared a look while Eagle summed their thoughts up pretty well.
"I think the world just broke," the sniper remarked in an awed voice, staring at his superior officer.
"Uh... why on earth would you ever help a Blue for no reason?" Dex asked.
"Who are you and what have you done with Red?" Rick added.
"We'll need weapons. How'd your equipment test go, Simmons?" Red said, apparently still possessing the skill of Selective Hearing from his Blood Gulch days.
"Well, I now have Super-Speed so... that's cool," Rick admitted with a shrug.
"Oh, and he found a whole crate of Magnum ammunition then pulled a can of spray paint out of fudging nowhere and marked it. Just saying," Al put in.
"Oh yeah, nearly forgot about that," Rick chuckled, clearly enjoying being able to mess with the A.I.
"Good," Red nodded. "Dex?"
"Eh, I found the pugel sticks and this real delightful experimental stuff that I think is supposed to electrify on contact with the air. Oh, and I bonded with Gary. We're cool now," the other Sargent said with a careless shrug. "Still not going though. I'm done fighting Marley. Besides, even if you hadn't decided to quit, we're the same rank now remember? Heck, in the Project, I outrank you as the Senior Field Agent. You can't make me go."
"I'm not telling," Red said, striding off toward where he was fairly sure there was shotgun ammo. "I'm not even asking." That got Dex to stand a little straighter.
"Okay, this might be weirder than when Marley told me you were glad Dex was getting a promotion," Rick remarked while Dex stammered out a disbelieving,
"You're not?"
"Nope," Red said, disregarding Rick's comment. "I'm going. That's it. You wanna come, come on, but I don't expect you to. Rick will probably tell you that statistically, some of us might die," he went on as he loaded up.
"Eh, maybe just the Blues, though Tucker might be a bit tougher than the others. And Caboose is pretty sturdy. Still, we're all gonna get busted up pretty good, at least," the aforementioned red conceded.
"Like I said, some of us might die," Red said. "But that's not what's important. Let me ask you three a question," he continued, finally stilling in his preparations and turning to face his squad. "You ever wonder why we're here?" The other three reds managed to share a three-way look.
"It does seem to be one of life's great mysteries," Dex allowed, the other two nodding beside him.
"No, I mean you! What are you doing here? You usually act like you wanna quit, but heck, you could have left whenever you wanted. No-one would have stopped you. So why are you here? And you, Rick," Red ranted, pinning the other Sargent in place with his steely helmet before turning to the tech of the team.
"Me?" Rick asked, even going so far as to point at himself after looking around as if there was another Rick around.
"You say you wanna be in charge. They would have given you your own squad a dozen times over. You know it, and I know it, but you're still here!" Red said before turning to Eagle. "Frank, from day one, you've stood firm against wise crack after demeaning comment. You scored a hit on Tex even before you got training from Marley! Yer one of the strongest men I know! Character-wise at least," he said, casting a glance toward Dex. The Raging Hawaiian huffed over his crossed arms but made no comment, waiting to see what else his one-time Commanding Officer would say. Seeing no action coming from his side of the court, Red turned his attention to the Blues. "And you Tucker! As much as it pains me to admit to this, you're actually alright at being a soldier."
"Yep. World break," Eagle quipped, earning himself a swat on the shoulder from Dex, who seemed to be recording the rant.
"I am?" Tucker asked, understandably confused by this turn of events.
"I know you like to make your rude comments, pretend like it all doesn't matter. But an entire alien race chose you to be their hero! So why are you here? And Caboose," Red said, turning to the soldier who started him on his ranting and finding himself without words. "It's good to see you," he said, having nothing else.
"Thanks. I'm really enjoying this speech so far," Caboose answered and it was at that moment that the others realized... that was exactly what Red was doing. He wasn't ranting, he wasn't loosing his mind. He was giving an inspirational speech. Still, it was going to take a little while for it to really sink in.
"Al, you..."
"Skip me, old man. I'm an A.I. I already know the point you're trying to make here," Al said, a hint of a smile in his voice.
"Well," Red blustered for a moment, clearly not having expected getting derailed like that. "maybe you're all here because this is the only place you fit in. Maybe you're here because you don't have anywhere else to go. Maybe you're all here because, deep down, you want to be here. The reason doesn't matter. What matters is that you're here! For all we know, Tex and Epps are dead. That means we're the only ones who can prevent them from covering it up. SO the way I see it, these Freelancer guys wanna use us, take us away from our families, and send us all over the galaxy just to test if their agents are ready for the big fight? Well, I guess I'm interested in showing 'em exactly what a big fight is all about! Time to clean the slate. So, I'm not ordering you to go. I ain't even askin'. You do what you gotta do, Sargent Grif." Dex sighed and checked the ammo level in his BR.
"Guess I'm gonna have to find a drop ship then. Heaven knows it'd take you till next Christmas if you drove, Red," he said, giving his once-CO a roguish grin. Red chuckled and gave the other Sargent a thankful nod.
"I think I saw a Pelican around here..." Rick said, already stalking off.
"Dude... how are you sharpening those knives by twirling them in the air?! Heck, how are you making it look bad-ass?!" Dex demanded, following his defiant-of-universal-laws teammate who was indeed trailing sparks from his twirling knives.
"I'm awesome, that's how. Do keep up," Rick shot back.
"Careful, McAwesome Knives. I just might drop you out the airlock," Dex growled. Rick stopped the flow of Smug from his knife skills and settled for motioning to the Pelican with a dramatic flourish.
/*/
Back at the Ice Fort, the Phantoms were spread out, moaning in pain. Whether it was from their splitting headaches, the concussive force, or bruised bones and bleeding wounds was up for debate though. Marley coughed, rolling onto her side. "I told you it was Tex," she muttered darkly.
"I thought she was dead," Wash moaned back before rolling over to reach for his gun.
"Don't sound so disappointed, you'll make me cry," Tex remarked dryly as she stepped on his arm, clearly not too torn up. Still, there was another emotion in there as well. What was it? Surprise? Unease? Eh, Wash'd figure it out when his head wasn't spinning. "Where's the Director?"
"How should I know?" York asked, trying to push himself out of the snow and failing as his body reminded him he'd just survived a large scale concussive blast. He fell over as his arms shook and his inner ear told him left was up and up was down.
"Tsk tsk tsk, wrong answer," Tex said, aiming her gun at the tangled mass of Phantoms. Flowdie tackled her, the both of them sliding across the frozen plain while Marley scrambled over to Epsilon, whose robotic body was acting surprisingly human. His weapon having been tossed aside by the explosion, Flowdie chased after Tex and attempted to punch her. Unfortunately, his attack was far too telegraphed and Tex was easily able to spin around him and punch him down into the freezing powder that coated the hard ground. Hitting with a grunt and skidding a pace or five, Flowdie was nonetheless pleased to find he'd come to a stop next to a sniper rifle. Whether it was his, York's, or North's he hadn't the faintest idea, but he wasn't one to look a gift rifle in the muzzle. By the time he was in position to fire, however, York had engaged Tex in a round of fisticuffs. The smaller Agent ducked and weaved around York's jabs with an enviable ease, analyzing his fighting style. Once she did, she stopped dodging and started blocking, waiting for an opportunity. In a moment, she saw her chance and took it, knocking York's arm up high and drove the heel of her palm up under York's jaw, forcing his head back and disorienting him. Again. Placing a hand on either shoulder, Tex pulled the taller Phantom down and slamming his visor into her rising knee. York stumbled back from the force, his head ringing, before Tex's spinning side kick sent him flying. Flowdie took the shot, but somehow Tex avoided it. No-one caught quite how she did it, but somehow Tex made the snow explode beside her and toss up a mini-gun.
"Okay, I call bull," Flowdie groused, already scrambling for a better position. Bad memories of the Chain Gun Siblings were threatening to swamp him. 'I wonder if this is what PTSD is like,' he wondered for a moment before those thoughts were driven into a dark corner of his mind by the aforementioned mini-gun revving up. Bullets sprayed York's location, slowly making their way toward the other Phantoms. They must have realized this because not only was York running, but North had decided to charge Tex as well. This was both good and bad because while it did distract Tex from filling York full of bullets, it caused her to whack the other sniper in the head with approximately 85 pounds of metal and gunpowder. This, understandably, sent North flying with a cry of pain.
"Thanks North! Your sacrifice shall not be forgotten!" York hissed through the comms as he took advantage of Tex's distraction to hide behind a large boulder. Wash pulled out the capture unit and decided to try his hand at attacking the fearsome lady who was back at firing at York, who was hiding behind his rapidly deteriorating boulder. The minigun clicked empty and York dropped his hand to his hip and let out a happy noise when he found a pistol there. Pulling it free, he aimed over the crumbled top of his boulder (he was going to miss it) and fired at Tex to keep her attention. The Freelancer in question dropped her spent gun and twisted away from York's bullets to fetch up against a spire of ice. A swift elbow to the backside of the spire and Tex had two fresh weapons.
"Seriously, how did she set that up?" Flowdie questioned, deciding that, if the others were going to keep getting in his way, he was just going to try and find all of Tex's hidden surprises with a combination of his sniper scope and thermal scanners, though what he could do with that information was sorely limited. Meanwhile, Tex was returning York's fire with a SMG and BR combo.
"Ugh, it's like fighting Dex," North muttered as he pulled himself back up.
"Don't you mean fighting Dex is like fighting Tex?" Marley asked.
"Hey, no comments from the non-combatants!" North barked, casting about for his own weapon and finding a discarded BR. "Score!" Right then, Tex ducked out of the way of Wash's capture spike and the two squared off, York frantically casting about his person for more bullets. Wash held the capture unit in a reverse grip and used it to catch and then knock away Tex's BR, throwing her arm out and opening up her side. Tex jumped back to avoid the backswing and brought her left arm up to catch his overhead strike. A quick twist and the capture unit went sailing to the left of their skirmish.
"No!" Wash yelled, eyes involuntarily following the unit's path. York, who had realized he had no spare ammo, decided to join the slug fest and ran out from behind his boulder (he missed it already) while Wash dived after the still sliding capture unit. Sliding on his stomach, Wash managed to grab the sorry thing before it fell off the ice shelf they were fighting on. "Be more careful! This thing can't take any more hits," Wash admonished.
"Wash, I don't think this is a capture mission for them anymore," Marley remarked. "She tried to blow them up, she's shooting at them, and she's shooting at their teammates. This is personal." Wash sighed but couldn't argue with that.
"Then why aren't you fighting her?" he asked. "They're your teammates too."
"Wash. She took out York, Wyoming, and Maine in a three-on-one death match. You watched her do it! And that was before York lost an eye and Maine's mind got turned to mush by the various A.I. he crammed in there under the direction of Sigma. I'm a combat medic. Emphasis on medic. I have to stay alive to treat you idiot yahoos once she's done tenderizing you!" Marley snapped, glaring at the steel-gray figure she could just barely make out through the flying snow.
"WHOA!" York yelled, flying into the mountain side. Oh, and rag-doll agents. Those were there too.
"Ah. I see your point," Wash allowed, watching the man peel himself out of mildly shattered ice and falling to the snow with a muffled 'oof.' Tex, now with a little bit of breathing room, pulled out a detonator remote and activated the explosives she'd rigged on the ice mountain.
"Yikes!" Flowdie exclaimed, diving off the ledge he'd somehow managed to get to and landing beside Marley as a good portion of the cliff side cracked and slid down to crash onto the battlefield. "Come on! How did she set this up?!" the man asked the love of his life.
"No clue, Flowdie. No clue," Marley told him as she, along with Flowdie and Church, watched North, York, and Wash attempt to use the falling rocks to their advantage against Tex. Wash swung at her with the capture unit but was blocked. They traded a few blows before York found a spare BR and North picked up the sniper rifle Flowdie had dropped when he jumped ledge and the two proceeded to fire at Tex. Wash got kicked away, the capture unit falling away, and York closed in, scoring a glancing blow to her head.
"York! Get the capture unit!" Wash called.
"WHY?!" the man yelled back, still shooting at Tex.
"She's just a memory!" Marley informed him through the radio. "She's an offshoot of Epsilon!"
"So... if we turn her in, it'll be like turning in Epsilon?" North asked. "Snap! I'm out of ammo!"
"Maybe? Not sure," Marley remarked, making sure that their conversation couldn't be heard by Epsilon.
"Eh, worth a shot," York said. "North, think you could get the CU?"
"Sure," North answered, running up a falling rock and leaping toward the main scuffle. "Just keep her attention off of me!" York laughed, though he was sounding a bit winded.
"Oh sure, that'll be easy," he quipped. The others, minus Wash, smirked. It was kind of nice to be able to banter like this. Of course, it'd be nicer if they weren't fighting for their lives but hey, beggars couldn't be choosers now could they?
/*/
Meanwhile, Dex was reaching the end of his rope. "Seriously you guys? There is a perfectly serviceable bank of chair in the back. With harnesses!" he snapped at the many bodies crowding the cockpit.
"Ooh! What does this do?" Kai asked, reaching toward a button. Dex slapped her hand with a rather solid blue-gray baton.
"We had those?" Eagle asked, eying the length of metal.
"No. I found some batons when we were exploring the facility and took two," Dex answered, waving his baton menacingly at the crowd. "Now get back into the seating area before I start cracking heads! Except for you Kai. I'm going to try my hand at teaching you how to fly," he said. Not wanting to find out if Dex could really follow through with his threat, the others trooped off to their seats and buckled in. Especially Rick who hadn't forgotten Dex's threat to dump him out of the airlock.
"How are you going to teach me when I'm sitting behind you?" Kai asked, strapping herself into the co-pilot's seat.
"Gary? Would you point out the instruments I name to Kai?" Dex asked.
"As you wish," Gary answered, popping up in front of Kai. "I will be assisting Dex in instructing you today," he told the surprised young woman.
"Cool," Kai said and so the two Grifs shared a touching sibling bonding moment as they flew to the fight of the year... or month, it was hard to tell with these guys. Sometimes, there was something big happening every five minutes and then, two days later, nothing. Those graces periods always fluctuated though. Kai had a working theory that the bigger the event, the longer the grace period. Which meant that after this, they'd have at least a week, maybe closer to a month. Three on the outside.
/*/
Meanwhile, on the ice shelf, the Freelancers/Phantoms were dodging falling spires of ice and York had, somehow, managed to grab the capture unit. As York tried to close in, Wash kept Tex occupied. A knee to the face was caught and shoved back down, a wild hay-maker from the left was blocked, then a flying double kick from York was dodged, sending him crashing back into the snow while Tex rolled backwards to avoid a falling piece of mountain. Annoyed, York kicked the large rock with all his might. "AH-HOW! How did Maine do that?!" he yowled, activating his healing unit to deal with the pain in his leg. Tex leapt on top of the large piece of cliff-side, which had been moved across the snow just enough to be in the perfect position to send her flying when another piece landed on the end.
"That was convenient," North muttered. Wash run up another rock spire that was elevated, firing at Tex.
"So's that!" York countered, trying to find an opening. Tex landed on the tip of a vertical fragment and the tan soldier tried to reach her by running up that one, but the Beta A.I. used the force of the falling spire to launch her higher and away. Wash and York chased her through the debris field, North circling around the back to box her in. Before they cleared the falling stone, Tex punched a large portion of rock at Wash and York. Wash dodged under while York threw himself off a still airborne rock, only to be met halfway by Tex who had run up a rocky incline. She grabbed him by his reared back fist and the underside of his helmet, used their momentum to flip herself over him and bear him to the ground, and delivered a punishing blow to his back as she landed with him bent over her shoulders. Tossing the groaning lockpick into the air, Tex kicked him out of the fight, forcing North to jump over his knocked out friend.
"Come on, Tex. Do we really have to fight?" North pleaded, still holding the capture unit. Tex didn't dignify the question with a response and charged once more. Yelping quietly, North began to fire at the female robot, driving her back behind cover. Shortly after, a line of explosions went off and the ground fractured, the ridge the Freelancers had been fighting on breaking apart and falling into the frozen sea in a macabre parallel to their team of professionals.
"You gotta be kidding me," Wash moaned. North tossed the capture unit to Wash and dragged York's dead weight onto his shoulders.
"This isn't my idea of fun!" the sniper yelled back to the former rookie as he struggled to run with his friend and jump from falling rock to falling rock in an attempt to reach stable ground. Unable to argue, Wash focused on running. Somehow, they all managed to reach the relatively untouched portion of the battlefield. The less said about how it happened the better in Wash's opinion and as for North... well. He would never live it down. For some reason, Flowdie and Marley found the whole thing highly amusing and York was almost sad he was unconscious for it. Almost.
"Dagnabit, woman! What else did you manage to set up in the two hours it took us to get here?!" Wash demanded once he was on solid ground once more.
"Really, Wash? Really?" Marley asked.
"Did you forget the spray paint and glitter bombs already, Wash?" Flowdie asked. Wash groaned while Marley snickered and North decided to get the show on the road by going after Tex with his combat knife. Tex matched him in kind and there was a brief dance of flashing steel before Tex's knife wound up in North's shoulder. Before Tex could do anything more, York recovered enough to stab the capture unit into Tex's shoulder.
"Fair turn about, eh Tex?" he asked her.
"NO!" screamed Epsilon, running toward them as the two Freelancers let Tex's empty shell fall to the snow, faint traces of oil giving it a golden sheen in some cruel mockery of blood. "Stop! Let her out of that thing!" he cried, coming to a stop next to them.
"We can't, the unit is failing," Wash tried to explain, having noticed that the stress of the battle had been almost too much for the device to handle. Epsilon looked sadly down at the cold body of the one he still thought of as the woman he loved. "Epsilon," Wash said, not noticing his words were falling on deaf ears, "it's over. You're coming with us." That got Epsilon's attention.
"I'm not going anywhere with you! We can fight you!" the A.I. said. Marley snorted.
"We? What makes you think I'm gonna fight them?" she asked.
"We will," Epsilon went on, choosing not to hear the woman's refusal.
"Pretty sure we won't," Flowdie muttered while Wash sighed.
"I'm sorry to hear that," he said, sounding completely unrepentant. "York, give me the memory unit." They stood there for a moment before Wash looked over at his friend. "York?"
"Ya know... I had a thought... why did they need Epsilon? Were the files not enough? Would Tex be enough? What's so special about Epsilon?" York asked, turning to Wash. Before anyone could explain anything, a sniper round came out of nowhere and put North firmly out of commission, Wyoming followed, knocked York out again, stole the memory unit, and turned on an invisibility unit.
"What... the heck? Wyoming?!" Wash shouted.
"That's it, we're done here. Flowdie! Grab North! I've got York and Epsilon," Marley declared as she dragged the distraught A.I. further from the battlefield, York over her shoulders.
"I take it you didn't see this coming," Flowdie remarked dryly as he helped North away as well.
"Oh no. This is completely out of left field. Wyoming was technically supposed to die in Blood Gulch via time-loop aware Tucker and an energy sword." Flowdie and North both shot her look. "Yeah. Safe to say, we are firmly off script here." What she didn't mention was that Wyoming had merely taken the place of a Meta who decided he wanted an A.I. again and so stole Tex to fill that perceived need.
"I'll try to hold him!" Wash declared, going for the sacrifice play. Wyoming showed he wasn't all bad at hand to hand and drove Wash, who had jumped on his shoulders, into the snow. "Guah!"
"Is that all you have, Washington?" the rouge taunted. Growling, Wash pushed himself to his feet and fired at the spot he suspected Wyoming to be. Of course, the footprints in the snow were kind of a giveaway. They traded bullets until Wyoming had Wash trapped under a small overhang.
"I knew you were alive, Wyoming, I just can't believe... can't believe..." Wash tried, but found words failed him as he noticed something behind his old teammate. The faint shimmer of a cloaked form turned to see what had Wash stunned and the form of a smoking Pelican could clearly be seen by the both of them. "I can't believe it," Wash finally managed to say, staring at the approaching ship.
/*/
Red, who for some unknown reason had come to front of the Pelican, pointed to Wash. "There they are! Land right next to them!" he declared.
"Right. Land," Dex drawled through grit teeth. He wasn't too sure about landing in a craft as damaged as theirs.
"You do know how to land this vehicle don't you?!" Red demanded.
"Oh, sure!" Dex replied, mind racing to figure out how to do so safely with a ship that was literally falling apart at the seams. "It would just be a lot easier if someone hadn't gotten us shot at and I still had a whole ship!" Kai wisely stayed silent and strapped into her seat.
"Oh, skits! This is gonna suck!" Tucker yelled.
"I still haven't gotten my peanuts," Caboose remarked dully from the back. Dex growled and blocked them all out as the frozen landscape swiftly rose to met him and he tried his hardest to level out. His task was made much harder as his left aft engine fell off. He managed to get the nose up and their speed reduced just enough to turn a crash landing into a skid landing, but it was still rough and the left fore engine joined its aft brother in death. None of the occupants of the Pelican noticed Marley and Flowdie dodging out of their way with the incapacitated members of their party. As the ship came to a stop Dex finally unclenched his jaw.
"So glad we had seat belts," he remarked before turning around to examine the rest of the crew. "Is everybody ok back there?" he asked.
"Super duper, Dex!" Eagle called sarcastically.
"Let's do that again!" laughed Kai.
"Ah! The references! They won't stop!" yelled Chi.
"We're a bit shook up but we should be fine," Doc told Dex, steadfastly ignoring Chi.
"Cut it a little close there, didn't you Dexter?" Marley remarked as she stepped around the still smoking Pelican.
"I would say that was the cavalry, but I've never seen a line of horse crash into the battlefield from outer-space before," Wash remarked halfway between deadpan and snarky as he stepped out from behind a tree, Epsilon not far behind.
"Hey," Epsilon began slowly, "is it possible for a memory fragment out of an Artificial Intelligence program enclosed inside a robotic body to piss its pants? Because I'm pretty sure I just did that."
"Come on," Wash ordered. "Let's see how many of your friends survived that."
"You know they're not really my friends," Epsilon said.
"That's okay. I'm sure none of them really survived," Wash told him without giving him a chance to add, 'they're the ones who encouraged Tex to take me out here.' If he'd waited the extra moment, Wash might actually have felt sorry for his former A.I. Still, Epsilon ran ahead to 'greet' the BGC. Over by the totally destroyed ship, Red was trying to pin the damage on Dex.
"Grif! Look what you did to our ship!" Red bellowed.
"Okay, two things there Red. A, I wasn't the one to take us into that group of salvagers and B, it's a Freelancer ship so why do you care?" Dex countered.
"Eh, good point, fudge it," Red said, kicking the wreck over the side of the cliff and causing it to crash on the ice below, breaking the large sheet apart.
"Has anyone seen Tex?" Epsilon asked, prompting Al to groan.
"I'm sorry, Epsilon. York captured her in the memory unit," Wash said, choosing to ignore the other cobalt wearing sniper-toting soldier on the ice plain.
"There it is!" Epsilon cried desperately, running over to where the damaged unit lay in the snow, faintly pulsing red. "Over here! Help!" Wash ran over to the distraught A.I. while the rest stood back.
"We flew all this way... for a soap opera?!" Eagle hissed, feeling gypped.
"Shush! I want to see how Wash will handle the jilted Church!" Red reprimanded, watching the unfolding drama intently.
"Always knew he was weird," Dex muttered.
"Epsilon, there's nothing we can do. She's stuck in there," Wash said evenly. Epsilon couldn't live with that, couldn't wrap his mind around the fact that Tex might well be gone forever.
"So, let her out," he said, as though it were the easiest thing in the world.
"Fudge this, I'm breaking this angst-fest up," Tucker declared as he ran toward the two, Caboose swiftly overtaking him.
"We rigged it so it's one way," Wash explained as the other two blues came to a stop behind him.
"Come on boys! I want a front row seat!" Red declared and ran toward Epsilon's side with Rick and Dex following.
"We didn't want you to escape again," Wash finished as the Reds arrived. Kai and Doc held back to chat with Flowdie and assist with North and York, respectively.
"Well, un-rig it!" Epsilon demanded. Rick bit back a scathing comment on impossibility and short circuits.
"I'd need to get it to a lab, somewhere with tools," Wash explained.
"Simmons!?" Epsilon tried, half turning to the red.
"Epps, he's the expert on this kind of tech. I'm not sure I'd be helping," Rick told him, though part of him was itching to fiddle with the annoying device.
"And it's in no condition to move," Wash went on.
"He's right about that," Rick muttered, moving forward before he could stop himself. "This thing has taken a lot of damage, likely from the fight it took for York to capture Tex in the first place."
"If it locks down before I can get it open, she'll be trapped in there," Wash continued, though he did offer Rick a nod of agreement.
"Still, I guess we could try something," Rick said, shooting a look toward Alpha. If he had to guess, Rick would say the A.I. was gritting his digital teeth.
"If I let her out, you have to come with me," Wash bargained, prompting Rick to pull a knife. Wash would deny that he flinched at the sight of a knife in the maroon soldier's hands.
"Yes, fine, just get her out!" Epsilon relented, completely defeated by his greatest weakness... the memory of his wife.
"Caboose, Tucker, get in the base and see if you can find some tools," Wash ordered. The reds groaned as the two blues ran off to follow Wash's orders.
"Seriously?" Rick moaned.
"Called it," Red muttered.
"Oh, when did you call this?!" Dex demanded.
"You three, find me anything that has power. Anything and everything," Wash ordered the reds. "We're gonna need a lot to keep it online."
"Why are we following his orders?" Dex asked as they ran. "And why did you have to say something!?" he added with a glare toward Rick.
"Because it's the right thing to do?" the tech tried.
"That's not what Al said," Dex groused.
"I can get her out," Epsilon declared to the memory unit as the reds ran away. Wash turned to him in shock.
"What? No."
"It's my only option," Epsilon maintained, turning to Wash.
"I need you Epsilon. You're my only ticket out of this mess," the Freelancer told him seriously. "If you get stuck in there they'll never believe me. I'm not going back to prison."
"I can do it," Epsilon declared firmly.
"No! I won't let you!" Wash countered, just as firm. No way was he letting his freedom slip away again!
"You can't stop me," Epsilon told him, sounding like he'd made some grand discovery. "I have to help her. She's here because of us."
"Because of me?" Wash asked.
"Not you. US. Me, and Alpha. And the Director," Epsilon said, Marley not missing the tone of disgust toward the Director.
"You started to remember," Wash said, pleasantly surprised.
"I found journals from the Director," Epsilon corrected then turned to the memory unit. "She's someone from his life. Someone he lost. Someone he loved." Understanding flooded through Wash's mind.
"Allison," he breathed with a slight nod. "Her name was Allison."
"Allison," Epsilon repeated with a hint of fond nostalgia. Wash and Kai almost felt like they were intruding on some deeply personal moment. "When they made Alpha, she came back," Epsilon began again, turning to Wash. "She was a... byproduct... of the process," he explained, though it sounded like he didn't appreciate Allison being labeled a 'byproduct.'
"She's just a shadow," Wash told the A.I. gently.
"Don't call her that!" Epsilon snapped. "She died in her real life and that's all the Director ever remembered of her. So now, no matter how tough she is, no matter how hard she fights, she's always going to fail. Because that' what she's based on. No matter what she's doing, or what she's trying to accomplish, just when her goal is within her reach it gets yanked away. Every. Single. Time. Can you imagine what that's like?" he finished. Kai had to admit, the story got her all choked up, and Wash really wasn't much better off.
"Better love story that Twilight," Marley muttered to Flowdie. The man shot her a look.
"Don't ruin the mood, Marley," he admonished. "Hearing him admit it is touching." A moan sounded and the unit stood up, drawing the attention of A.I. and solider alike. "Uh oh."
"DARN IT, REGGIE! YOUR TIMING IS THE WORST I SWEAR!" Marley bellowed, pulling out her personal weapon and firing just below the memory unit, hoping to catch Wyoming in the relatively unprotected region of his waist.
"I think I'm starting to get the idea," Wash remarked dryly as Wyoming dodged the syringe while fading back into view.
/?/
A/N: Hey guys! Yeah, I'm not dead. This fic isn't dead. I just... had a hard time with the fight scene? Anyway, it's done and dusted and Wyoming is back for round two! With a semi-faulty invisibility unit! Yea? Anyway, I have no clue when the next episode will be done and I'm starting college this August so... yeah. I'm about to enter Super Crazy-ville and once I do any 'spare' time I have is likely going to be devoted to making sure I don't go under or working on scholarships for next term. Ugh.