DISCLAIMER – I do not own any Sonic the Hedgehog characters, settings, etcetera (anything copyrightedly relating to SEGA's works). Fang the Sniper / Nack the Weasel is property of SEGA, although some aspects of this story are my own work. Alterations to the Sonic universe in this story are not to be considered canon. Do not steal (forge in your or another person's name) or sell this story in any manner. I have a good lawyer. You may, however, place this on your website without permission. Please ask permission before using aspects of this story in yours. If sections of it look similar to another, please inform me. I'm no thief myself. Thank you, and enjoy.
Bounty Hunter
By Rusty Dillingham
--Chapter Eight – Fortuitous Encounters--
So Claw wasn't as stupid as Fang had assumed he was. That just figured. He probably should have seen that a long time ago. A fellow with a three hundred thousand dollar bounty on his ass didn't stay out of the iron hands of the law for so long without being at least semi-intelligent. Being on the lamb for as long as the mole probably was had likely sharpened his senses. He might have been a bastard, yet Fang had to commend him for almost one-upping him. But almost didn't count, in the long run.
He swatted sand out of his fur and spat the stuff out of his mouth as he sat on the seat of the Marvelous Queen, nose-deep in a land filled with humidity and death. Sand Hill was far and away the most desolate, uninviting, miserable place in all of South Island, and it was huge. Civilization cared nothing for it. People were more than content with the metropolis of Capital City, or the seaside pleasantness of Emerald Town. Even Starlight City, as close to Scrap Brain as it was, turned living into a joy. Sand Hill was not a joy. It was a lonely, awful place, a total haven for people who didn't want to be found. There was almost no sense of law and order out here. Fang didn't like that, but he reckoned it gave him some breathing room as to what he could do if people picked a fight with him.
And he was beginning to feel like he might have to put that advantage to use. Ever since leaving Claw's beat-to-ass shack hours earlier after putting the mole's two cronies down for the count, he'd had a funny feeling that just hadn't wanted to vamoose. He wasn't sure what to make of it, but it was like some instinct he'd eventually acquired after years and years of bounty hunting had started getting noisy all of a sudden – as though to tell him he needed to watch out for some reason. Fang didn't think he was being tracked. He certainly wasn't going to rule out the possibility, but who would come after him in a lousy place like this? The feeling wouldn't go away, though, and he didn't like that.
Sand Hill made it hard for him to keep track of Claw's trail. There wasn't much wind, but what little of it there was tossed waves of sand about, effectively gutting the path Claw's airbike had made. Fang found it increasingly difficult to maintain some sense of where he was going as time went on, and it was getting dark when he rode into a small little piss of a town that consisted of some shacks, tents, dirt streets, and of course, the obligatory shithole where people went and got themselves hammered to the point where they thought they lived there. Fang steered the Queen into the latter's dusty parking lot and sat a moment, shutting the machine's power down and letting it come to rest on the ground as he glanced around.
There were no aerobikes about him. He saw no signs that any had been present recently either, but the fact that conventional vehicles used the dirt streets made it difficult for him to see anything that would point to bike activity. Fang muttered and flushed a map out of the Queen's storage compartment.
He studied it silently for a moment, struggling to determine if there were any potential hiding spots Claw could have sped off to nearby. There was nothing of interest that he could see, so he put the map away, slid off the bike, and marched over to the bar's doorway.
It was an even worse-looking dump inside than it was outside. There were few patrons, but they all seemed to quit what they were doing and watched him carefully. He watched back for a moment before approaching the bartop, where an irritable-looking individual waited to not greet him.
Fang didn't bother taking a seat on one of the moldy, crusting stools. "I'm looking for a mole."
"Don't give a damn."
"Well, start giving a damn, 'cause I'm this close to killing the sonofabitch and every other sonofabitch who gets in my way."
The bartender paused. "Y'all that Nack the Weasel feller."
Fang suppressed the urge to scream, biting the sides of his mouth.
"I mighta seen someone like that," the old fart continued, "if there's some kinda reward in for me."
"Tell me what you know and I'll consider giving you something. I sincerely hope you're not wasting my time."
"Alrighty, mister. There was a mole here a coupla hours back."
"What'd he look like?" Fang barked, ignoring the intense stares he was catching from everyone else present.
"Short – shorter 'n you, anywho. Looked awful unhappy. We get fellas in here like that all the time, though. Guess this kinda country's the only place they can go."
"Was he riding?"
"I think so. Poor little guy was all dusty like he'd just rode across alla Sand Hill."
"Anybody with him?"
"Not that I could tell. Doubt a guy like that has many friends. Real friends, anyhow."
"Was he packing heat?"
"Was he what?"
"Did he have any weapons on him?" Fang said very slowly and deliberately so the idiot would have a chance at understanding this time around.
"Didn't see any. What'd this fella do, anyway?"
"He pissed me off is what he did." Like Fang was going to let loose the details. The people in this piss-ant town probably would have shot down their ancestors for a chance at that three hundred grand on Claw's ugly head. "Any idea where he is now?"
"Think he musta been headin' north. Might still be here in town, shackin' up for the night. Only hotel here is upstairs, though, and he didn't head that way."
Fabulous. Fang grimaced. He didn't want to have to scour every inch of the town, though. If Claw wasn't here, he'd be that much more behind. The search would move north. He placed a twenty in front of the bartender and turned to exit.
"The hell's this?" the old guy interrupted.
"It's called money, idiot."
"I gave you some good info, boy."
Fang stood there, staring at him blankly, which in his case meant very unhappily.
"An' I expect to be compensated at least for the trouble of, uh…"
Fang still stood silently.
"Er."
The bartender took the twenty and sighed.
Fang turned again and began to make for the ugly old door, but someone was standing at it, leaning against its rickety frame. "Get outta the goddamned way."
The hedgehog didn't so much as move a muscle.
"I said, move." Fang's hand gripped the noisemaker in his gunbelt's holster. He didn't have time for this crap.
"You're not going anywhere," a voice behind him said.
With an expression on his face that would have made granite look soft, the weasel-wolf turned slowly, not letting up the firm grip he had on his semiautomatic as he sent a vile look at whoever had the gall to impede him like this.
"At least not alive," the speaker finished.
It was another hedgehog. And like all hedgehogs Fang ran into these days, he was wearing black. And look – he even had some red on him in places, too. Fang almost laughed – until he saw the gun the geeky-looking fellow was carrying. But he remained indignant. He wouldn't have had it any other way. The kid probably barely knew how to use that thing anyhow, and even if he did, Fang would just kill him. "Everybody in this town as stupid-looking as you?"
"You're Nack the Weasel," the hedgehog said, as though Fang didn't already know that.
"And?"
"And," came the continuation, "we've got business together."
"Why do all you punks these days have to wear black?" Fang asked the kid irritably, subconsciously unsure of whether or not he even wanted to know the answer. "Can you even tell each other apart? And you've all gotta be hedgehogs. I can't count how many hedgehogs I've had to go after in the last six months alone. You people propagate too damn much."
In a deadpan tone, the hedgehog said: "You shot my father in Green Hill."
Well, that just figured. Fang was silent – if only for a moment. He spared a second to roll his eyes. "Did I?"
"Damn yeah, you did." The hedgehog's face muscles were tight as a knot, his jaw clenched in quiet loathing.
Fang huffed through his nostrils. "Yeah, sure I did."
Everyone else in the place looked ready to bolt. It was silent from all corners.
"What?" was the incredulous reply.
"I'll bet I've never even met the guy."
"You did!" The unfamiliar hedgehog waved his hand in frustration."You shot him down in cold-blood, you rat!"
"Well, if I did, I'm sure I must have had a good reason." Fang's handle on his gun's grip disappeared. "I never kill anybody without a good reason."
He paused, then gave the hedgehog an almost nonexistent smile, like one might give a small child. "But those aren't hard to find when chasing people like your daddy."
Fury flashed through the hedgehog's stare.
"Hey," the big old bartender said, "fellas, no fightin' in here. I don't need no dead men runnin' off customers, alright? Y'all take it outside where y'can kill each other without decorating my place with you."
Fang gestured to the punk in front of him. "I'm sure Mr. Generic Emo here would rather die like any man would prefer, surrounded here by drinking friends. Too bad he doesn't look old enough to drink."
"The only drink I want is your blood," the hedgehog hissed through clenched teeth.
"Cute." Fang's expression said otherwise. "Look, junior, I don't have time for this, so your noble quest for revenge can piss off. Now tell your lackey to get away from the damn door before I shoot him. Tell Sonic I said hi, because I'm sure you totally know him. You're probably some new rival of his."
"I said, you're not leaving here alive. Everybody on this whole island's going to know that Ruin the Hedgh—"
Fang's pupils drifted away from the speaker as he sighed quietly.
The hedgehog stood there. "What?"
"Your name's Ruin?"
Silence.
"So what?"
"Your name is Ruin."
"So what!?"
"Is that your real name?" Fang asked in the most modestly insulting manner he could muster.
"D'—" the hedgehog spat. "I—maybe!!"
"What's doorway's name? Extinction? Decay?"
"It's Doug," the guy behind him at the door said.
"Damn it, don't tell him that! Damn it!"
"What about your dad?" Fang asked. "What was he? I know! Insolvency!"
"SHUT UP!"
"Heh heh," the guy at the door giggled.
"ARGH, YOU SHUT UP TOO!"
"Did your parents give you this name? Could they not afford a ten dollar name like the rest of us have? What was your mom's name? Could she even afford one for herself?"
"I said, SHUT THE HELL UP!! I'm going to KILL YOU!!"
"When you were born and they were trying to figure out what to call you, did they just grab a dictionary, flip it open, point to something and go with that? I'll bet your real name is Simon or something. Who the hell calls themselves Ruin? Why don't you call yourself Retarded Gothy Heroin-shooting Teenage Douchebag Who Doesn't Have His Priorities Straightened Out Yet? Because that's much more appropriate. Have you ever even had a job?"
The hedgehog could only stand there with an expression one might have seconds before their brains exploded out the top of their head. "You--... You--..."
"I swear," Fang groused, "all you kids these days, with your black clothes, and your goofy names, and your red makeup, and your hedgehoginess, and your Pinkin Lark CDs stuck bone-deep in your wrists, it's no wonder your dad ran off to get himself killed. I'll bet he gave you that gun in the hope that you'd somehow manage to shoot yourself with it—"
The hedgehog grabbed iron.
Fang was already juking out of the way by the time the first shot sounded off noisily, and he felt something hot shave some fur from his shoulder. BANG went the hot round through the door, missing the head of the fellow who was standing at it by approximately four atoms.
"Ho-lee sh--!!" Off to the side dove the poor guy, and that was all the room Fang needed to split. He'd been tempted to just blast the hedgehog, but he was already being shot at, and this was a quicker exit. He was out the doorway in a flash as gunfire followed in his wake.
Over to the Queen he bolted, footsteps crunching in the dirt-gravel of the parking lot until the weasel-wolf leapt right over the airbike's back and into its leather seat. It took him a nanosecond to start the machine up, and he again felt something hot blow past him, this bullet feeling like it was even closer than the last. The little punk wasn't too bad with his pea shooter; Fang had to give him that.
He turned in the seat hurriedly, drawing his own killer from its nest, and he snapped off a quick, loud shot back at the bar. He was in too much of a hurry to do so, though, and he could see the hedgehog – whatever the hell his name was supposed to be – jolt backwards behind the building's frame as the round impacted against its surface, smoke and wood chips spraying from the hit. That was all the time he needed to give the airbike some gas, and he tore forward, sending a wash of dirt and gravel up behind him as he blasted out of the lot and away down a street.
It didn't take him long to get enough distance between he and the town to be safe, at which point he slowed to a stop and looked back at it. If Claw still was there, then Fang was out of luck, because he sure as hell wasn't about to set foot back in there again. He'd have to check his map to figure out where the mole might have run off to up north.
He inspected himself, and felt his eyebrows raise very slightly when he saw a trickle of blood oozing down his arm where the second round had nicked him.
"Tch." Nothing ever came easy.
"Hey!" BANG BANG BANG went Jagged the Hyena's hand against the door of the lone wooden home as a dusty wind breezed around him. He hated Sand Hill. If there was ever a place that really was out in the middle of nowhere, the whole stupid zone was it. Sand kept getting stuck in his fur, he hadn't had a drink in hours, and he still had the remnants of a hangover. That, and this stupid guy wouldn't answer his fuggin' door. "HEY!!"
Just when he thought he'd never get a response, it swung open, and Thor the Gorilla glared at him.
"What do you want?" the massive gorilla queried in a tone that indicated he was feeling anything less than polite at the moment.
Jagged stared up at the guy. Thor was about three times his size all-around, and the guy looked ready to crush the nearest person's ribcage like it were a pack of cigarettes. "I, uh—"
"You're bangin' on my door and you ain't even figured out what you want to say yet," Thor rumbled.
"Well, uh—"
"You gotta be screwin' with me. Man, people like you are what's wrong with society. You bother people and you don't know what the hell you even doin'. They don't even pay no attention to that do-not-call list shit."
"I, uh—"
"I keep gettin' calls from people trying to sell me water insurance. What the hell is water insurance? I don't even know. Does it look like I could go swimmin' around here?"
"Um—"
"You ain't tryin' to sell me insurance, are you? 'Cause I damned-for-sure don't need no water insurance. I don't even know what the hell you doin' here yet 'cause a damn cat got your tongue."
"Er—"
"So why don't we try this again? Knock again when you figure out what the hell you want to say to me. Asshole."
SLAM.
Jagged stood there.
Five minutes later, once he'd come up with a way to keep the gorilla from ripping his arms off the next time he knocked, the hyena gave things another go. He wasn't exactly looking to charm Thor into a romantic dance under the evening sky, so as long as he kept the big man from slapping him around, he'd be out of here in no time. At least, that was the plan, and few of Jagged's plans ever really worked out for him because it seemed like push always came to shove, and he didn't think many of them through anyway.
"What!?" Thor thundered when he swung his door back open, glaring down at Jagged's battle-scarred visage.
"Listen," Jag started, holding his hands up. "You don't like me, and I don't like you—"
"I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHO THE HELL YOU ARE!" Every grain of sand within the surrounding half-mile shifted positions.
"Damn it, I'm with the friggin' government, alright!? I'm looking for somebody!"
"Is that so?" Thor's eyes narrowed. "And you think I've got somethin' to do with this somebody?"
"Yes—no—YES. I mean— uh—" Jagged wondered how quickly he could put himself a hundred miles from this guy in the event of an emergency happening within the next two instants.
"Now just who are you lookin' for?" Thor's tree-sized arms crossed over his Hoover dam-sized chest.
"Fang the Sniper. I got a tip he was heading out this way. This dump of yours is the only speck of civilization I've seen since I got here, so I figured his fleabitten hide would show up here sooner or later." Jagged frustratedly ignored brushes of sand sweeping past him and getting into his black ears. He wanted to get this over with as fast as he could manage. Standing here wasting time with this goofball was probably putting major distance between he and the target, but he didn't have many choices as far as that went. He didn't have any leads of his own. As long as Thor cooperated, though, that probably wouldn't be a problem.
Except, naturally, Thor didn't cooperate. "Never heard of him."
Jag's expression fell slightly, and some part of his inner soul burned in rage. "What the hell did you just say to me?"
"Never heard of him," Thor repeated in the exact same tone as before.
"You've never heard of Fang the Sniper? Are you from the moon? I didn't know they had hillbillies there. I'll bet you don't know who Sonic the Hedgehog is either."
"Don't know Fang the Sniper. Not much city life out here in case you haven't noticed, genius."
"Bullshit." Jagged felt a great deal of his intimidation evaporate, and he was suddenly not feeling as generous as he'd been seconds earlier. "You could live under a rock and you'd know who he is. Even out here in the boonies, people know him. Probably because all you wankers come out here to get away from the law, and he comes after you."
"I'm gonna pretend I didn't hear that."
"Just like how you're pretending you're a blind-ass ghetto prick." Treading hot waters always filled Jagged with a fine, firm sense of accomplishment. When he didn't get his butt handed to him, anyway. "Tell me what you know, now."
"I said, I don't know him." Thor cheeks flushed. "Now get the hell outta here."
"I'm not leaving this friggin' spot until you tell me something!" Jagged frothed, bloodshot veins stretching into the whites of his eyes.
Thor sneered. "Then maybe I oughta just call the authoriti—"
"I am the authorities! Goddamn it!! Are you DEAF!?"
Thor stood there, thinking.
"Alright," the big boy eventually said. "He went east."
A long, miserable exhale eased from Jagged's nostrils. "East, huh."
Thor smiled. "Maybe."
And he chuckled audibly, leering down at the hyena.
Jagged was silent, and then he smiled too.
Before Thor even knew what was happening, he was already in the middle of being blasted with a healthy surge from Jagged's nine-hundred-thousand-volt stun baton as the hyena jammed its lethal end as hard as he could into the gorilla's abdomen, the sinister weapon crackling and spitting with all the subtlety of a nuclear war. Thor was down before a full second had passed, and Jag was right in his face the whole time.
"WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE!?" the hyena roared while Thor writhed on his dirty wooden floor in agony. "DON'T YOU GET IT!? DID I NOT TELL YOU WHO I AM!? YOU BIG FAT BODY COMMIE GRAB-ASSER! I SHOULD BITE YOUR WHOLE DAMN HEAD OFF!!"
WHACK went the baton against the gorilla's massive head. "NOW TELL ME WHERE THAT MANGY RABID FUCKER WENT, OR I'LL FILL YOU UP WITH SO MUCH LIGHTNING, THEY'LL ISSUE A SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING EVERY TIME YOU TAKE A CRAP!!"
"Up—" Thor gasped, "He went up north-west! He came—came by—"
"ARE YOU SHITTING ME!?" Jag's eyeballs bulged to the point where they almost fell out of his head.
"No! No! I'm not!"
"SO HELP ME GOD IF YOU'RE LYING TO ME, I'LL COME BACK HERE AND BURN YOUR WHOLE DAMNED HOUSE DOWN AND USE THE ASHES TO CLEAN MY TOILET!!"
"No-- NO!! NO!! HE WENT THERE! THERE'S A SHACK OUT THERE!! LOOK THERE!!"
"YEAH, THAT'S RIGHT HE WENT THERE! KNOW YOUR PLACE, YOU PIT-SCRATCHING, KNUCKLE-DRAGGING WASTE OF SPACE!! YOU WILL NOT LAUGH!! YOU WILL NOT CRY!! YOU WILL LEARN BY THE NUMBERS!! I WILL TE—"
Jagged looked up from his mayor-of-Psychoville tirade and saw Thor's wife and seven small children standing some distance from the scene, staring at him with mouths agape. The first thing Jag noticed about them was that they were all Thor's size.
The hyena stood there motionlessly.
"Hiya."
A symphony of knuckle-cracking filled the room.
"Ohshit--"
After he'd managed to scramble away from eight enraged gorillas looking to rip his arms off and shove both of them up his ass until he could taste them, Jagged had made his way across Sand Hill as far as he was able to, but that didn't amount to a very far distance. He'd quickly started realizing that his motorcycle did not appreciate having to roll across the sand at such lengths, and under a hot burning sun, no less. Eventually the thing had sputtered pathetically before dying on him, and the furious hyena had given it a swift kick out of frustration.
Now he was trekking across the desert on foot, with a near-broken leg. In his sweaty, stinky state, muttering and cussing himself out didn't help his situation any, but it sure as hell made him feel better. "Fuck this whole place. I hate this. What sort of stupid dumb monkey-ass commie jackass would come all the way out here to find some butt-blaster who probably isn't worth the space he takes up? Oh, yeah, that's right. I would. Way to go, dumbshit. This is exactly where I wanted to die, out here in the middle of the seventh circle of hell. I must be losing my whole damn mind if I'm stupid enough to..." Etcetera, etcetera.
But he wasn't stupid enough to get himself lost. Jagged stopped at the top of a sandy rise when he saw a small wooden building sitting comfortably between a few natural rocky pillars. The hyena was stricken stupid upon seeing it, having been expecting a million more miles of desert to greet him once he'd reached the top of the rise, but it didn't take him long to race down its side toward the shack, cackling like an idiot to himself the entire time. He didn't even notice the big, black aerobike sitting a short distance from its entrance. "Ha! Ha! Ha ha ha ha haaa! Who's your daddy!? Oh baby! Water water water beer water water. Come to papa!"
Oh, right. Someone in that building would probably try to kill him once he set foot in there. Whoopsy. Well, fuck them. He'd just kill them first. He threw open the decrepit old door to the shack and hurried in. "Water water beer beer beer wat-- HOLY MOTHER OF GOD."
Dry Horn the Bison lay on the floor next to the shack's termite-infested wall, looking like everything Jagged had never wanted to see ever. He'd stopped bleeding from his wounds, but that only meant he'd run out of stuff with which to bleed. It was an atrocious sight. Jagged had seen some crazy stuff before, but this wasn't exactly a scene he'd expected to come across when he'd barged in through the door.
Part of the wall on another side of the room had been blown out, and sand had crept in from various breezes rolling across the dunes. He spied two spent bullet shell casings on the floor. What in the holy hell had happened here? Jagged suddenly understood the danger he'd run into and he hurriedly pulled his semiautomatic from the holster on his belt, keeping it raised toward the only other door in the building. It led to the kitchen, but he found nothing out of the ordinary there.
Once he was certain the place was empty, save for himself and the gargantuan guy on the ground, he was able to breathe a little easier. Normally Jagged welcomed conflict, but the thought of doing so right now didn't sit well with him. He was suddenly nerve-wracked, and that would have made for a harsh battle. At least now he could do some snooping around without having to worry too much about getting his head blown off.
Jagged's stomach flip-flopped at the thought of doing so, but he had to. As much as he hated it, he approached the body, glancing at the windows out of paranoia that someone would pop up by one of them and try to blast him.
Dry Horn might have been ugly before, but this was a whole new level of ugly. Jagged knew who the guy was – Both of Claw the Mole's cronies had miserable reputations of their own, reputations they hadn't gotten by dicking around like con artists or gumball machine thieves. They were both killers, and almost as mean as he was. Sombrero the Gila Monster, Claw's other lackey, was nowhere in sight, and for that Jag admitted he was a little thankful. But because he didn't know where the guy was, he'd have to watch out for himself, too. But if big boy here was down, there was a chance that so too was the lizard. Jagged sneered at that thought. He was at least smart enough to keep from making presumptions that could get him shot dead.
He did a quick investigation and quickly caught notice of a clean, round hole in the bison's forehead. What the hell was that doing there? Why had a shot to the head been necessary with all these other gruesome wounds? Jagged didn't get it. He looked away from the body and around the rest of the old craphole, struggling to figure it out, but no revelation appeared. Well, whatever. It probably wasn't important anyway.
Then he remembered – this was where Fang the Sniper had been headed. That was the whole damn reason Jagged had come out this way. Once he remembered that, everything became a little more clear. That realization made him stand there and contemplate everything in silence, something he wasn't used to and thoroughly disliked. It didn't take him long to get himself back in gear.
He reached across his back toward his belt where he kept his map, except he forgot he hadn't brought one. "What the f—where in the fuck is my—what the fuck! Are you friggin'— You've got to be kidding me. You have got to be messing with my head. Oh son of a bitch. Son of a BITCH! F-f-f-f-f-f-f--"
He struggled in rage to keep from placing the gun against his own damn head while he stood there hissing and spitting, his eyes bugging out of his skull. Five seconds later he was hurrying into the kitchen and rifling through various drawers. There had to be a map in this place. These assclowns couldn't possibly have found their way around this armpit of a zone without one while they'd been here. Just before he started shooting up the place out of frustration, a miracle happened. "There you are! It's about time."
Unfolding it, his eyes darted across its surface as he began to head outside, not bothering to look up from it – bump. "Goddamn wall, fuck yourself!"
Once he was finally back outside in stupid Sand Hill's sandy winds, the hyena started to trudge forward, still examining his new accessory – bonk. "OW, GODDAMNIT!!"
He looked down at what his already-aching leg had clonked into. Dry Horn's big, mean-looking airbike sat inanimate before him, causing Jagged to actually shrink back in surprise. He hadn't even noticed it when he'd been inside the shack. It was a massive machine, bigger than the bison himself. Not only that, but there was a key inside its ignition slot. How about that? Jagged was stunned at his luck. Dry Horn must have kept it in there in the event of an emergency, such as getting shot at. Who could blame him? "Damn."
He spared a glance back at the shack. Dry Horn certainly didn't need the thing anymore, and Jagged did. Screw it. He'd take good care of it. Climbing into the seat awkwardly and tenderly, he tried to get comfortable while rubbing the machine's handlebars. Daddy's gonna take good care of you, sweetheart. What do you say you and I get better-acquainted?
Click went his finger against the igniter, and the machine roared to life. Holy damn! That was hot. Let's see if you can't do that again. Hey, you don't have any papers I have to fill out or anything, do you? Because I really can't read worth a shit—
The machine suddenly shot forward when Jagged nicked the accelerator, sending both rider and steed crashing into the side of the shack.
"Ow."