Rebirth of the Guardians – the long awaited sequel to chapter 16
Chapter 17 – Crazy old doc
Well now everyone evil has died, so let's get about finding some team mates in a couple of 'short' chapters.
And by short I mean get some snacks, or dinner, cause odds are these are gonna last forever.
-Begin-
How Tom had managed to leave the battlefield with reddy, his reddler, Tom's shadow fox, and the mobile suit. A few people suspected Tom's old unit had something to do with it but no-one was certain. But no matter how you sliced it he was gone and now the rebellion only had a clone of him to use as an imitation of him. Everyone, clone included, said that was a good plan.
-
Tom sighed as he took a boat away from the city. On it was his zoid, reddy's, that old blade liger they had found some time back, the still modified shadow fox, and the mobile suit. All of these were on a guysack transport train and were headed to the new continent. Tom was attached to all of them and even though he was going to destroy the mobile suit he wanted to have it go to good use before then. That and he really wanted to be far away from an entire continent that recognized his face and his damn machine. So as he stood on the top deck looking at his nearly empty wallet he sighed. The only good thing about heading back was that the battle federation was primarily housed on the continent they were traveling to. It had been at a small colony of the republic that he had signed up to join the military long ago and left behind his zoid barracks from when he was considered a world class zoid battler. He paused in thought and then swore his face was just as recognized here as anywhere on the damn planet. Maybe he could go the artic continent on the north pole of Zi, as best he could remember it was uninhabited.
"Dad!" Reddy called to Tom. "Some crazy old guy just stole my ice cream!"
Tom looked at reddy confused, not because of the whole dad thing it was both a cover and a legal truth since Tom had managed to adopt him under Zenebas law (and by adopt I mean convince the adoption agency to just give him the kid (no this does not make him bad, he just blew up the city and these guys were being un-agreeable)). He was confused as to when reddy got ice cream. "When did you get ice cream?" He asked as he walked over to a pointing reddy.
Tom's question was never answered as he rounded the corner to face a crazy old man in a lab coat with ice cream and an orange cat. "Hey the kid never had this ice cream!"
Tom glared angrily at reddy, "Is this true?"
Reddy looked back, "No!" He shouted, then ran after the old man, "GIVE ME BACK MY ICE CREAM!"
"No mine you little brat!" The old man in the lab coat shouted and ran off. Tom and reddy quickly took chase.
When people asked why they were running Tom replied, "I fell off the boat and we're trying to find me help." (I've done something very similar once) Needless to say this made the people become busy, either looking for help, or wondering what Tom has just said.
Finally, after nearly two hours of running about the ship Tom grabbed reddy and brought him to a quick and forceful stop. Heaving from exhaustion, a rare event for him, he sighed and said, "You're ice cream is as good as gone."
"I know that, I wanna get the crazy old doc back for stealing my ice cream." Reddy said angrily.
Tom got down to reddy's level put his hand on Reddy's head and turned it around, "There's the cafeteria, it sells ice cream. Get yourself some the same way you did last time, however that was, and meet me at the room." Reddy nodded and walked off. Tom sighed, "Now to follow that dock to the cargo level." Tom quickly and quietly ran to the nearby stairwell and walked down it. Following it all the way to the bottom he saw a security guard there and flashed his vehicle owner ID and got in. Tom chuckled as he dodged between the many vehicles chained in the ships cargo hold. "Really doc, if you were interested you could just ask." He muttered to himself as he arrived at his own little guysack train. "Two guysacks for all this cargo that was a lot of power I needed." Tom said as he walked to the first box behind the forward guysack. "And the money I had to pay for the cargo ticket was a bitch. And then the money to make sure that they didn't look through this container." Tom shook his head as he approached the open hatch. "And then this nutcase gets in no problem. He got in the container and put his hand on the doctor's shoulder. "And then you get in here like that. What am I sacrificing all this money for?" He asked sarcastically at the stunned man in a lab coat with an orange cat.
"You have this model!" The doctor shouted.
Tom reeled back in shock and pulled out a handgun from inside his shirt. "How the hell do you know that!" Tom asked almost scared.
"I helped design it and the mass produced types a few years back." The doctor said with a grin on his face.
"So these designs are a few years old? That explains how they got so many." Tom muttered keeping his gun out but relaxing a bit. "So how did you get out of the Zenebas nation?" Tom asked.
"Well I own this shipping service your riding on now and I have for years. But, you see, I've made several custom designs for several, I guess you could call, questionable buyers that had abilities, and luxury that surpassed the finest military seafaring vessels and cruise ships alike."
"Ooh you stuck more firepower on a private ship than a cruise ship. I think my gun here gives this ship ten times the firepower of a cruise ship." Tom said finally dropping his gun and closing the entrance.
"I mean more firepower than a military ship and more luxury than a cruise liner damn it!"
"Keep talking." Tom said motioning with his gun in one hand now.
"Well one of my customers was a man named lazar Kaganovitch. His ship was special, it could transform. Well at least partly. He wanted a ship where a majority of the weapons systems could be hidden in the ship in some manner. I gave him a ship that stored a mad thunders worth of weapons, including ultra advanced weapons with new abilities and scaled down versions of more conventional ones. To say the least the man was impressed. And when he saw the new weapons he truly desired my services. So I split my time, between the Zenebas capitol and the sea shore until we made the first 100 mas produced units. Then I was given an option, help develop more units and receive my typical payment plus the price for the boat per successful operating unit type or leave. As you could imagine I took the first." Then the doctor paused.
"Go on." Tom said motioning with the gun, "I'm not gonna shoot you or let you leave until you're done talking. No matter what the consequences."
"Well when I decided to stay someone took over for me, and I also retired me getting on in years and all. Then the man introduced me to his many mad ideas and I regretted staying. Sure reveling in all that extremely advanced earth technology was helping my own designs but that mans madness was, well, maddening!" The doc took a moment to breathe and compose himself. "Well a couple months ago I hear about his, just now finishing, grand assault plan. Didn't do much for me at the time, but then shortly before the assault began I heard about him leaving along with mass amounts of Zoids and other war machines."
"Other war machines?"
"Primitive earth tanks, fighters, not much other than the mobile suits were terribly complex. Well there was the katana fleet but…" Doc rubbed his chin for a moment, "I'll tell you about it when we're closer to landfall and I know where my future ties will lie."
Tom glared intensely at Doc for some time holding his gun much tighter, but eventually he let up his judgmental glare and nodded his approval. "Any way I heard about his leaving, and the quadrupled security on us important people. So I'm stuck, until about a month ago when you and your liberation army arrives at the capitol city where I am. The short version is your assault allows for a lot of old Zenebas rules to be broken by force and me, and lots of other people wanting to leave, left. Is the short version good enough for you?"
Tom sat for a moment and then got up, "It'll pass."
"Good, I was hoping it would. I don't mind telling the longer version, but the plain facts are, it's long." Doc walked out, and when Tom motioned to say something he said, "I know, no-one will know about this. And as a good favor I'll get the customs people to not check you stuff on the way out for free."
"Will you now?"
"Hey I used to own this company, they'll do a small favor for me like passing a single enclosed container in a heartbeat." He said with a laugh.
Tom watched as Doc left (yes I'm referring to him as Doc even now, HE HAS NO OTHER NAME!) and muttered to himself, "That guy is pretty damn smart. This mobile suit out performs the model it was meant to replicate by epochs of technology. I could imagine it being pretty good but with what is on Zi this thing is amazing. I need him." Then Tom looked at a beeping red dot on the Doc's coat. "And I need to keep track of him too."
Reddy had arrived in the room about twenty minutes before Tom, ice cream in hand. He had then lay on the bed and eaten it all before he got back. So then he sat on the edge of the bed and put his head in his hands and sighed. "I'm so bored." He walked over to a screen by the door and pushed a button. After a few moments a very cartoony animation of the ship appeared in the water between the continents and below it was the time left to travel. "Four days!" Reddy shouted. "Damn it. It was more interesting in the military at least." He walked over to his bed and lay down.
Then Tom came in, "I have some almost good news, I think."
"You unsure of anything." Reddy said still on his bed, "Well then it must be serious."
"That guy who stole your ice cream, well he's a mad scientist of a sort. I managed to talk to him and draw his favorable attention." Tom paused, "I think two things, one that his attention was favorable. Two that his attention is good."
"Heh, all you're smarts and you still can't figure out people." Reddy said with a laugh.
"I was floating around in space for an eon or two you know." Tom jested back, "But seriously he designed this ship on his own using just his brain for technology. I think he may be able to help me with some things."
"What sort of things?"
"The sort that I'll talk to you when we are far from everything."
"Fair enough." Reddy said as he resigned himself to wondering about what Tom was thinking of for the remainder of the journey.
-
In his large room Doc put down his cat, Garfield, and sat down in a chair. "The katana fleet. I wonder if it was used during the assault." He muttered to himself as he petted his cat on the bed. "I doubt it, it being on another continent and all. And I hope it hasn't, I would like to have one of those ships." The doc smiled, "And I would like him to have one of those ships too."
-
Finally some four days later as Tom hopped into his front guysack and Reddy the rear one (there's two guysacks cause they're transporting the weight of something like 5 and ½ or more Zoids (that figure is just assuming the Gundam only weighs 1 ½ times a zoid, and the shadow fox doesn't now). As Tom prepared to leave and pulled out his wallet in case the old man decided to back out on their very flimsy deal he was surprised when he saw said old man appear on the intercom between him and reddy. Then he saw the mans cat. "Hello there doc." Tom said with slight disappointment in his voice.
"I've decided I'm coming with you at least until you reach the location of the Katana fleet. Also I'll make sure the guards don't search that one container you don't want them to. I do expect you to listen to me or else I will be gone at the first chance I get."
"And let me guess you'll take the Gundam with you?" Tom said with melancholy.
"Yep."
"Oh great, another potential threat. Fine we'll do what you want but I want to get back to my zoid base to deposit all of this stuff. Then you can do whatever."
Doc seemed to think it over to himself then nodded and said, "I'll come with you so they know not to search you."
Tom nodded and kept his cockpit door open as he pushed a button to engage the dual guysack synch drive program. As he very slowly inched up at a rate of almost not moving (THIS GUYSACK IS SLOW, if you didn't get the hint, lol) the Doc managed to arrive in time and hop in the cockpit. When a customs officer asked why the doc had been running Doc replied, "I had put my cat with his son," doc said motioning to Tom who waved at the guard, "And had to get to the front."
"But you were barely moving." The officer said to the doc.
"Look I'm old damn it and this thing is long. Just go look in the back and you'll see my cat!"
When the customs officer came back from his check he said, "Found your cat. We did what the on ship people asked for you."
"Thank you very much." Tom said, "Can we go?"
"You're free to move along." The officer said waving him along. Tom then inched along at a slow rate, a real slow one.
-
Finally two days later Tom arrived in the town closest to where his base was. Stopping on the edge of town he said to Doc and reddy at once, "Just wait here a bit I've gotta check something out with someone and then we'll go."
He walked out of his guysack and into town, until he found yet another non-descript house on the block with a zoid hangar and a garage on the side. "This should be it." He walked up and knocked on the door. A moment passed and a man that looked to be in his 40's opened up.
"Oh, um, hi Tom, it's been a while." He said anxiously.
"Yes it has." Tom said slightly suspicious.
"Well come in, I suppose we should catch up." He said motioning inside.
"No I've got people waiting in a vehicle inside of town so you can tell me here."
"Um, well, you see…"
"What happened John?" Tom asked him.
"Well about leaving me to watch the base, I went on a vacation for five days and then 30 bandits got in. I had hired someone to watch it for me for those days, but I guess they did a bad job." John was rubbing the back of his head in shame.
Tom sighed, "Well I guess what happens happens. Is there anything else I should know?"
"Well if you're going to deal with it they've only had the base for three weeks so that means you're secret doors are probably fine."
"That's good news."
"The bad news is that they took a couple of high ranking warrior's hostage and are using them like a shield."
"Oh, crap. I guess I should move faster then."
"Do you want me to come along?"
"No you've done a good job for the past year. I can handle this."
"Are you sure, I mean I called the police and neither them or the IZF could get them out."
"It's my base I can do it." Tom then turned around and ran off. "Thanks for doing what you did do though!"
"Um, sure."
-
Over the visual intercom doc and reddy were playing virtual go fish, "Got any, umm sevens?" Reddy asked as he looked at his screen.
"Go fish!" Doc shouted happily.
"Ok so I draw my first card, you've got thirty on the other hand."
"SO WHAT!" Doc shouted angrily when he saw Tom running, "Tom's back, and running. Is running ever good for him?"
"Probably not." Reddy muttered.
"Mmm…"
Tom hopped in the guysack cockpit. "Ok, plans have changed. Base is currently in the hand of bandits and we've got to get it back."
-End-
For those of you who aren't sure what happened when, here's a rough timeline up to this current point in the story
Approx 500 years ago – Zenebas prepares it most fledgling army for war
Approx 1-3 years ago – then Zenebas chancellor Lazar Kaganovitch plans out his final war plan codename 'VW' (for victory in western continent, personally based off of VE day (victory in Europe WWII))
Approx 1 year ago (a little less than) - Tom 'Reynolds' joins the recently formed guardian force and after very short training goes into his first mission
Approx 10 to 2 months ago – Tom works with his small base crew and takes part in various missions
Approx 2 months ago – VW begins, Tom's base overrun, all people inside presumed dead
Approx 1.5 months ago – Tom reveals true earthling identity and rallies an army to strike at Zenebas capitol prioritizing on a strike force that had gotten close shortly before operation VW
Approx 1 month ago (a little more than) – Tom reddy and his Zoids and singular mobile suit disappear
7 days ago – Tom buys tickets for ferry once again under 'Tom Reynolds'
6 days ago – Boards ferry (more like ocean liner really) for a return to his 'home continent' with reddy, meets Doc and gains an ally in him
2 days ago – arrives on shore, travels inland and north to old zoid base
Present – arrives in town nearest to base and discovers it is taken by bandits
And that's a rough (that's the keyword) timeline of most of the more important events in this fanfiction