Author's notes: Oh wow! So many lovely reviews. Thanks everyone for your support, hope you all enjoy this chapter.
Phase Five: Transition
Chapter Nine
Irony was never favorable and it always seemed to appear at the most inopportune times. All that time wishing she could go out and see the world…and now she got her wish. Although not under the circumstances which she felt would be more preferable. Had she any sense or wit left, she might have found the situation oddly funny, but her mind was frozen. All thoughts had ceased and all she seemed to be able to do now was cling to the golden bars of her cage, eyes darting here and there. She wasn't sure what she was looking for, or if she was looking for anything at all; maybe she just wanted to see as much of the world as she could before…
A feeling of absolute terror gripped her entire body. She'd never felt anything like it; it was as though every artery, vein, muscle, cell, and atom in her body was pumped with energy, ready to spring into action, and yet she couldn't move. It was terrifying and exhilarating and frustrating all at once. She barely even noticed the bone freezing chill of the outside world as her capture and, likely executioner, left Xeon's tower. The street level of Kaon looked nothing like the glittering sky line. The streets themselves were in ruins, the ground crumbled and broken. Pieces of metal and debris from who knew what littered the ground, making clinking noises as the Mech walked.
Swindle strolled swiftly across the street to the cover of the buildings across the way, disappearing between their bulks into a skulky ally way. The cage swung unabated and the Mech made no motion to steady it or make the ride any less jarring for the little human inside. The water container splashed and sloshed before tipping over and soaking the floor and bottom of the bed. Her bare feet stung as the icy water touched her skin. The food container also tipped over, spilling its contents across the floor. Several pieces of fruit fell through the cage bars and fell to the ground while at the same time, water slipped out in thin dripping streams until the floor was no longer flooded, merely wet.
Her captor never spoke to her, even though she had half expected him to taunt her. She banged her head against the bars when the Mech took an abrupt turn and began marching down a new ally, just as dingy and dirty as the last. Deep bone panic took its toll and Brea felt her chest begin to heave as she struggled to breath. Hot tears burned her chilled cheeks and she gritted her teeth as she tried to choke back the sobs.
A beeping noise from above her made her jerk her head up to see Swindle raise his free hand to his mouth, speaking into his wrist.
"Swindle here. What is it?"
A voice, unfamiliar, filtered out of the speakers in the Mech's wrist.
"Where are you?"
"Just taking care of something. Why, what's wrong?"
"The inspector's back. He wants our copy of the invoices to verify the ones Ratbat gave 'em. Where are they?"
"They're in my office. Top drawer."
"He wants to talk with you as well. Ask you some questions."
"I'll be there as soon as I'm done here. It won't take long."
"Alright. Just be quick about it. Onslaught out."
The cage swung alarmingly before abruptly rocking as it was dropped onto the ground. Brea stumbled backwards onto her behind, hands reaching out to grab anything to steady herself; body aching resentfully in some placed while others screamed obscenities as she landed. She lifted her head to look up to find Swindle standing over her. His red optics studied her for a long, heart hammering, moment while his head tilted in contemplation. Suddenly lowering himself to one knee, he reached out and grabbed the top of the cage, fingers clawed as they gripped the thin metal bars. With the sheering and creaking sound of ripping metal, he tore the top of the cage right off and tossed it away. Brea pulled her arms and legs in close at the abrupt and violent action, screaming in absolute terror. All her senses, sight, hearing, taste, and touch were enhanced to abnormal levels as fear and adrenaline pumped through her. Her heart pounded like bass speakers in her ears and she felt it very well may burst before the Mech had any chance of killing her.
Cold metal fingers of a dark hand reached inside and wrapped around her shivering form, bruised arms stinging at the pressure, and lifted her up. Still and docile, her mind raced through lines of thought that seemed to last a fraction of a second while at the same time feeling as though they were hours long. She shut her eyes tightly and braced herself against the forth coming pain that would bring her death. She struggled to ease her thoughts, to calm herself in her last moments and taking deep breathes as--
--a sudden SHEEW split the air with a sharp crack and Brea screamed, fearing it was the sound of her death, but her cries were drowned out by the thunderous bellows of a Mech in agony. The hand around her shuttered and dipped, causing her to cry out again as a swing of vertigo sent her already panicked mind spinning. She jerked, the action prompting hellish pain from her ribs, to a stop and opened her eyes involuntarily to see Swindle, kneeling on the ground with his free hand groping his shoulder. A fresh flow of pink and blue…blood drizzled from a hole the size of her head in the greasy yellow armor; the area around which was charred and dented inwards. She gawked at it.
The Mech seethed through his teeth, gritting against the pain. The injured shoulder shuttered and the vibrations traveled down the length of his arm to the hand that struggled to keep a hold of the captured human girl. Fingers loosened as strength gave way and Brea slipped through the digits. She landed awkwardly, more pain sprouting from her battered body, but was immediately up and running. Her body was aflame with such pain Brea wondered what was keeping her from fumbling to the ground in agony.
As she darted around the debris laden floor, she heard Swindle curse and rise from his crouch to stagger after her.
She dared not look back. She kept running, forward, faster, harder, longer…
Another loud SHEEW cracked the air and Swindle cried out again.
Ok…one more peek.
Brea turned her head to see Swindle fall to the ground in a heap, his back smoking slightly, presumably from another wound. A flash of light caught Brea's eyes and her sight traveled up to the top of a small building over looking the entrance to the alley. She caught sight of a flash of grey before it disappeared beyond her sight.
She slowed and stopped, looking back at the downed Mech, heart pounding and breath deep and painful from the chilled air. Her body shivered in the cold as she gapped at the downed Mech with disbelieving eyes.
What had just happened?
Stunned, Brea stood there and stared, half expecting the Mech to rise, curse, and chase after her. The only movement came from her gasping mouth as her lungs worked double time to catch up.
The faint sound of metal falling on metal jerked her out of her memorization and she quickly glanced around the immediate area, looking for the source of the noise. More crashes followed, louder this time, and she began to hear the faint sound of…voices?
"This way guys," a faint voice said. "The 'Con went down this way."
"Nice shot kid. I don't think I've seen you hit that good since Detra-9!"
"Yeah, well…I've been practicing a lot."
Brea took a fearful step back at the approaching voices, and then another…and then bolted. Her legs, bruised and sore, ached with every step, but her adrenaline-juiced mind ignored the pain and she kept running, as fast as she could. Her body was aflame with a myriad of pain despite the freezing alien air that slapped against her exposed skin and her bare feet endured the sharp jets of pain as rocks and other sharp pointy things jabbed into her soles.
But she ignored it all and focused on running as far and as fast as she could away from there.
The old saying went 'Out of the frying pan and into the fire', but at the moment, Brea felt that the saying should be revised to 'Out of the frying pan and into the freezer.'
It was colder then anything Brea could remember enduring and her current attire made it all the more harder to bear. Had she worn her old clothes, she would have been able to keep a little warmer, but with nothing but the flimsy white dress (now stained and torn) and the metal collar (which began to absorb the cold, making it like ice against her neck), tolerating the frostiness was near impossible. She rubbed her toes vigorously, trying to keep from getting frost bitten. Her entire body shivered uncontrollably and her joints were stiff. The skin on her exposed flesh stung and she dreamed of a warm place to lay down and sleep the rest of her life away.
She'd escaped her first death only to find a second; this one slower and more painful. But she took solace in the fact that she was going to die on her own terms and not Xeon's orders.
She began to wish that she had not told Xeon about meeting Mirage. He had told her not to say anything. And now she was paying the price.
She raised her head and looked around her shelter…her tomb. She'd crawled into the crevasse between two containers, which she assumed were garbage cans of some sort. There she huddled and shivered, watching the warmth of her body as it escaped from inside her by the way of misty puffs of steam. Her throat stung with every intake of alien air.
She looked out of the small slit of the ally beyond the confines of her shelter. The encroaching bleakness began to suffocate her. She couldn't take it anymore. She had to stop thinking about it. She began to hum to herself. The melody of her humming became familiar and before she realized it, her frozen lips began to move and form words to a song. Her voice cracked and popped, the chilled air seeming to have caused ice sickles to cling to her vocal cords…
"Someday
When we are wiser
When the world's older
When we have learned
I pray
Someday we may yet live
To live and let live
Someday
Life will be fairer
Need will be rarer
Greed will not pay
God speed
This bright millennium
On its way
Let it come
Someday
Someday
Our fight will be won then
We'll stand in the sun then
That bright afternoon
Tell them
On days when the sun is gone
We'll hang on
Wish upon the moon
Change will come
One day
Someday
Soon."
The last note hung in the air and Brea sat there silently before curling her knees up to her chest, wincing against the throbbing pain, and rested her head on her arms.
Silence filled the air and, for what seemed like an eternity, was all she could hear.
Abruptly, the garbage can to her right shifted and Brea's heart raced up her throat as she jumped, looking up into the face of an unfamiliar grey Mech. Blue eyes peered down at her from a grey helm adorned with a bright red…horn…thing.
Brea scrambled backwards uselessly, palms and feet and backside scrapping against the ground, and the Mech quickly put his hand up in a sigh of…surrender?
"Please don't be scared, I'm not gonna hurt you I swear. I'm just trying to help." Blue eyes turned soft and he pulled his arms in, trying to make himself as small as possible. "Really, I'm a good guy!"
Brea stared up at the Mech, something inside her stomach wrenching. Logic screamed for her to run, but her body quickly informed logic that in no way did she have the ability to do so for she was too tired, too weak, and far too cold.
"They told me you'd die if your core temperature drops to low, and if you stay out here too long you could die," The grey Mech pleaded, sounding oddly concerned. In a soft, reassuring voice, he said, "I'm just trying to help…"
A dark colored hand reached out slowly to her in an attentive gesture and she stared at it. She looked up into the Mechs eyes.
Blue…, she thought absurdly and something in her mind went click.
"Do you know Mirage?" She asked.
The Mech paused for a moment before his face lit up.
"Yes!" He answered in English. "He's the one who told us about you! Sorry, I forgot about the language thing. Sometimes I just talk without thinking…We were supposed to make sure nothing suspicious was going on before the investigators got there. Lucky thing too, huh?"
Brea didn't find any humor in the sheer dumb luck of the situation and likewise was feeling very uncharitable.
"Did you shoot him? The other one, I mean?" She asked.
The Mech nodded, suddenly looking very solemn, "I'm gonna get in trouble for it for sure, yeah. But he's not dead, no, just knocked out. The shoulder hit was suppose get him to let go of you, and well, it did. The second one just severed a neural receptor. He was going after you and I didn't want him to hurt you so I had to stop him somehow. He's just paralyzed temporarily. He probably won't remember a thing either. Which is good."
Brea nodded absently, rubbing her arms and trying to rejuvenate some warmth. The Mech looked at her shivering form and seemed to suddenly suffer from an epiphany, "Oh! I can help with that!"
Brea watched with child-like awe as the Mech pulled something from his sub-space pocket, the little part of her mind that had always enjoyed watching the act peaking out from beyond the layers of misery. It looked like a foil blanket of some kind, one side colored silver while the other copper. It was wrinkled faintly like tin foil but looked to be as supple as cloth. He pinched each corner between two fingers and draped it over Brea.
She recoiled away from it at first as though it were some death shroud but as soon as it touched her skin she felt an overflowing of heat resonate from it. She instantly grabbed it and pulled it around her, hungry for the warmth. Brea flinched and cried out when the grey Mech's hands appeared on either side of her and daftly picked her up, cradling her shivering form so the foil blanket covered as much of her as possible.
"Hey, it's OK," He told her when she started to fidget, "No one's gonna get another chance to hurt you. I promise."
The Mech held the little human close to his chest as he turned and started walking down the ally. Brea snuggled deeper into the foil blanket as heavenly warmth soothed the chilled skin and relaxed injured flesh and muscle. She was torn between the immeasurable relief of not freezing to death and the undeniable feeling of exposure and vulnerability.
"What's you're name?" The Mech asked curiously.
She raised her head and looked up into his blue eyes.
"Brea," She answered softly, feeling the encroaching fatigue start to take over. She felt her terror drip away as though she simply did not have the strength to fear anything.
The Mech smiled brightly, looking all the world like a child who had just found an abandon kitten. "Hello Brea. I'm Bluestreak."
Just before she slipped into an exhaust fueled slumber, Brea smiled and laughed to herself.
Why is he named Bluestreak when there is not a spec of blue anywhere on him?
Author's Notes (2): Hey, the song Brea was singing is called "Someday" from the movie "Hunchaback of Notre Dame". It was the song that was supposed to replace "God Help the Outcasts" but they decided to stick with it. If you wanna hear it, go to youtube and look for the one that's sung by the late Laurie Beechman. That's the good one.