Story 1: Mecha-Owl
Genre: Friendship, Comedy, little bit of angst
Characters: Rorschach, Nite Owl II
Universe and time period: Comic-verse, Pre-Keene, Pre-Roche, sometime in the early 1970's
Warnings: none really. Some brotherly love but nothing more.
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Mecha-Owl
As he emerged from the subway tunnel, stepping with marked apprehension into the Owl's Nest, Rorschach's fears were confirmed. It was every bit as terrifying as he imagined it would be.
When Rorschach and his partner parted ways the previous morning, Daniel had asked if he could arrive an hour or two early for the next patrol, nervously mentioning something about a new gadget he was going to test, and that he wanted another person around.
"Just in case," was the answer he offered when Rorschach's posture gave away a hint of uneasiness.
Rorschach had a feeling he knew what it was Daniel wanted to test. He had caught glimpses of his friend tinkering with it when he arrived for patrol on many recent nights. He was perplexed and unnerved when Daniel would pull a large sheet over his creation the moment he was aware of his presence and try to blow off questions with an air of unconvincing casualness. Daniel was strangely reluctant to explain exactly what the gadget under the sheet was, something entirely uncharacteristic of a man who was usually so boyishly excited about his inventions. In most cases Rorschach was not overly concerned with the things his partner built, but the mysteriousness of this recent contraption sparked his interest.
It was not difficult for Rorschach to sneak into the nest in the bright hours of the morning when he knew Daniel would be fast asleep, recovering from another night of scouring New York City clean of its seemingly endless scum. With the same stealth he saved for the infiltration of underworld hideouts, Rorschach crept into his best and only friend's home and spied on his latest mechanical creation. He was entirely confounded and frightened by what he found beneath the heavy sheet. At first glance it appeared to be a large robot, easily ten feet tall, built of thick steal, and bearing some resemblance to an owl. Upon closer examination Rorschach discovered it to be hallow for the most part, and then as the evidence began to click ominously in to place, he discerned it to be some kind of mechanized suit.
Now, as he stepped into Daniel's workshop, fingers curled into tense fists and shoved into his pockets to hide his anxiety, Rorschach's suspicions were fully confirmed. The thing was standing in the center of the room with its chest opened up, looking in all ways like something out of an eerie science fiction novel, and Daniel was the young and impulsive mad scientist rushing busily about his new creation with irrepressible vigor.
"Rorschach!" Daniel whirled around, bright eyed, dressed in an oil stained white t-shirt and grungy Levis; a wide grin spread across his grease smudged face.
"Daniel…," Rorschach started warily.
"I'm so glad you're early! Check it out man, my latest invention! Mecha-Owl!" Daniel laughed heartily and gestured to the metal monstrosity with a wild flourish.
"Hurm…" was the only response Rorschach could conjure at this.
"Okay, I know you're skeptical! Heh, after all, nothing escapes your skepticism, but this has the potential to change everything!"
The exhilaration in Daniel's voice was only succeeding to further unnerve Rorschach, who stood rigidly planted a solid ten feet away from the fearful contraption.
"With this exoskeleton I'll be strong enough to tear apart a car or punch through walls without even breaking a sweat! Can you imagine? I'll be unstoppable!"
Rorschach still offered no audible reply, only shifted slightly, his nerves crackling like exposed wire beneath his skin.
Daniel was quiet for a brief span of seconds, waiting for his partner to say something, until he eventually gave up and continued without the slightest dent to his ego.
"Alright, I'm going to suit up and give this thing a go! I just want you to be my spotter, okay?"
Rorschach finally spoke, his sandpaper voice cracking in his dry throat.
"Spotter? What…what would you have me do if…" He trailed off.
"Don't worry Rorschach, it'll be fine. If I need your help, I'll tell you what to do." Daniel's smile was infectious, but Rorschach remained wary of the steel beast his only friend was about to crawl inside.
"Get ready for a new era of crime fighting!" Dan shouted boyishly as he climbed into the suit, full of lighthearted exuberance.
The masked vigilante watched in silence as Daniel secured his legs into the metal limbs of the contraption, and carefully situated his body within its core. He looked on anxiously as his partner pressed a button near the collar and a face plate shut down automatically over his head, leaving his eyes only visible through Plexiglas.
"Can you hear me, Rorschach?" Daniel's slightly static ridden voice was emitted from a speaker located somewhere on the steel frame. It sounded fearfully distant to Rorschach, reminding him of the way astronaut's voices sounded when they radioed back to earth.
"Yes. Can hear you Daniel."
"Alright! So far so good. I'm going to initiate control of the limbs now and attempt to walk. Keep in mind I've never done this before, so don't be surprised if I'm a little clumsy to start off," Daniel chuckled from within his creation.
There was a loud hiss and a sudden electric humming as robotic suit came to life around Daniel. In spite of being a solidly built man of six feet, Rorschach thought his partner looked tiny and frail inside the steel behemoth, encased within its synthetic skeleton. For a tense span of seconds there was no movement, only a low whirring sound, and something Rorschach though might be Daniel's breathing over the radio, and then it moved.
Rorschach stepped back reflexively, his posture switching visibly to defensive mode against his will. The thing lurched forward with far more speed than expected, paused, and then straightened. Daniel cackled victoriously, his voice amplified unnaturally through the speaker.
"It works! I can walk!"
Daniel moved towards Rorschach, each iron footfall deafeningly loud in the underground space. The masked vigilante continued to back away, his wiry body strung taut like that of a cornered ally cat as the massive thing that both was and was not Daniel lurched forward. "Can you believe this Rorschach!? I'm bullet proof in this thing!"
"Daniel…"
"Watch this!" Daniel cried jubilantly and lifted an arm to point a fist at a target mounted on the far wall of the workshop which had always served as a testing range for some of the Owlship's lighter artillery.
"OWL LASER CANNON!" Daniel shouted with boisterous enthusiasm as a panel slid open on the top surface of his forearm with a mechanical hiss, and a gun-like apparatus popped up and locked cleanly into place. There was a moment's pause as the Nite Owl steadied his aim on the target before he fired a blinding white-hot beam similar in technology to the small hand held version he carried, only many times louder, brighter, and more destructive. The cloth and sawdust target was incinerated in seconds.
Rorschach stood agape, grateful for the ink and latex hiding his wide horrified eyes. The Owlship had guns that could do that, but the Owlship was an aircraft. This thing was maneuvered directly by Daniel's movements. Daniel was at its heart, he was its mind, its soul, it was-
It was Daniel.
No. No, no, no. That's not Daniel. Freakish metal monster with Daniel inside. Not Daniel. Rorschach's thoughts swirled feverishly.
"Rorschach! Did you see that!? I did that! Can you believe this?! What chance does crime stand now? They'll just surrender on site when they see me like this!" Daniel's triumphant words blurred together into incoherent babbling as Rorschach gazed up at his partner's face, searching for the familiar honest brown eyes beneath the Plexiglas plate. It was then that against all his better judgment and willpower, a thought, cold as January frost crept into the masked man's brain: Now that he's like this, he won't need me anymore.
And just as quickly as that fleeting feeling of insecurity arose, it was gone, for Daniel had turned, whirling around in a quick and sudden movement, attempting to break into a run, to test the agility of his new steel body, when something went horribly, dreadfully, wrong. As the mechanical torso twisted around the left arm came up quickly as a man's would if he were about to break into a run, but as it did something happened, something Rorschach could not discern from where he stood because he could not quite make out his partner's body within the beast. Something caused the thing to collapse forward instead of running, loosing its balance and stumbling noisily into the subway trench along the back wall.
Propelled by a sudden and almost primal instinct to rescue his partner, Rorschach bolted to the edge of the platform. Adrenaline surged hot under his skin as he heard a gasping cry rise from the sunken track bed.
"Daniel!" Rorschach leaped into the subway trench, landing with a splash into six inches of dark pooling groundwater.
"Arrrggh…R-Rorschach-" Daniel's voice was strained and hoarse, he was undoubtedly injured. From where Rorschach stood, scarcely two yards away, he could not make out any part of Daniel's flesh and bone body within the heap of metal which had fallen face down into the murky water, but he could hear pained muffled breathing mixed with grainy static.
"Daniel-"
"Don't come any closer! Just-" The thing moved too suddenly, as if over compensating for what was intended to be a much slighter movement. A gruesome cry of pain echoed in the tunnel as the steel beast heaved itself to its feet.
At the sound of his partner's wounded howl, Rorschach lost control entirely and rushed the abhorred creation on a single minded mission to somehow extract his partner from it. In a state of total panic, and without a moment's consideration of the sheer ridiculousness of his actions, he brandished the only weapon he carried: his grappling hook gun. Completely forgetting Daniel's earlier statement that he was 'bullet proof' inside the synthetic exoskeleton, Rorschach fired the gun at the chest panel of the metal suit in a frantic attempt to crack it open and free his friend. The grappling hook erupted forth with its characteristic puff of compressed carbon dioxide and found its target in a split second. The four pronged hook collided with the reinforced steal plate, eliciting a deafening ping, and ricocheting hopelessly off the surface as if it were a tiny dart.
Failure to crack the armor pushed Rorschach further into a panic. His partner, his one solitary friend, the only person alive that felt in some strange an unexplainable way like family, was hurt and trapped inside that horrifically unnatural iron creature, and Rorschach had no idea how to free him. He ran helplessly around the feet of the monster, halting every couple steps to scan its construction, to try to find a way in.
"D-Daniel! Can you hear me? Daniel," Rorschach pleaded, fear and anxiety far more prevalent in his voice than he would consider acceptable.
"Daniel! What should I do?! Tell me what to do!"
Rorschach continued circling the robotic feet, inkblot face focused desperately on the Plexiglas plate where he could not quite make out Daniel's face in the dim light. Each agonizing second with no reply from the mechanical behemoth drove him deeper into incoherent madness as he began to fear his partner had fallen unconscious, or worse.
"Please, tell me what to do! Don't know how to get you out! Don't know how to make it open; don't know about robots; don't know how you built this! Daniel! What should I do?! Da--"
A low chuckle emitted from the robot interrupted Rorschach's wild pleas, and he froze mid stride, every muscle abruptly seizing.
"Ror! Hey, Rorschach, its alright, man." Daniel's voice paused, unable to stifle another sniffling laugh. "Its okay, it's okay. Calm down. Just hold on a minute. "
Rorschach was still shaking, his heart still hammering against his ribs, and his breath still coming in quick puffs as the adrenaline gradually dissipated in his blood. He remained frozen in a stiff defensive posture as the monster slowly and very carefully knelt down on one knee before him. There was the sound of an electronic locking mechanism sliding open and a soft hiss as the chest plates slid aside and Daniel stumbled out onto the mucky track bed. He was breathing heavy, wincing, and clutching at his left arm, but there was an irrepressible grin spread innocently across his boyish features.
"Oh man, Rorschach. You should have seen yourself," Daniel snorted as he staggered through the shallow groundwater to where Rorschach stood. "I've never seen you so freaked out!"
With Daniel's face clear in his sight, very much alive and safe, Rorschach's panic was replaced with a surge of bitter embarrassment and he could feel himself flush beneath his latex face. It was not the first time that night he was grateful his features were hidden. The humiliation mixed with fury as Daniel laid a warm brotherly hand on his still trembling shoulder and chuckled again.
"I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to scare you like that." Dan paused, bit his lip, then burst into another fit of laughter. "God damn, I'm sorry man- Its just- the, the way you were all run'n around, you looked so little, and all panicked and--"
"Enough Daniel…"
Dan coughed. "Okay, okay." he lifted his good hand to his mouth to hold back another bout of hysteria.
"Not funny Daniel! You are hurt! Could have been killed! Should not have built that-that- THAT THING!"
Rorschach was furious now in the wake of his relief and subsequent humiliation. It was the truth Daniel was in danger, he had every right to act the way he did. Things could have been worse, much worse. "Thought it was ripping you apart, Thought for a moment that it might have killed you! Not funny Daniel! Not funny at all," Rorschach continued vehemently.
Daniel's expression softened and he replaced his hand on Rorschach's shoulder, squeezing it gently.
"I'm sorry, Rorschach. You're right, I was a little too careless there, wasn't I?" Daniel looked over his shoulder at his creation. "The controls are touchy, it's a lot stronger then me. When I fired the cannon, it rattled me a little. My arm wasn't quite in the right place inside it anymore. When I turned to run it snapped it like a toothpick." He glanced down at his limp left arm. "The second I moved I realized it was a mistake, but it was too late. Pop!" Daniel grimaced at his own morbid description.
"Hurm…arm is broken?"
"Yeah." Daniel winced again and glanced over at his invention. "Ugh…Never again. Hey, can you help me back up onto the platform? I need to call a cab and get myself to the hospital. This needs to be set."
Rorschach nodded, and with an uncommon gentleness, he helped his friend back up onto the platform. He was still shaken, still embarrassed, and still very angry, but in spite of all these bitter emotions, he was mostly relieved. Relieved, and although he would never admit it to anyone, himself included, he was grateful. Grateful that in the end his partner still needed him after all.
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Author's Notes - Some fluff for starters. I would truly love to see Dan posing like something out of Power Rangers or Gundam in his 'Mecha-owl' suit. It's too bad he trashed the idea. The title was of course inspired by classic Japanese Mech genre stuff.