Good Boy, Mike

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Mike's training was progressing well. The mushroom swamp was the isolated and quiet, and no doubt Mike's memories of the unstable footing kept him from making a run for it. He wouldn't, though, not with the training she put him under. Her footman needed to step in for the next important step of the lesson: teaching Mike to listen only to her. She just wished he'd treat the situation with the gravitas it demanded.

"Ah, no, please," the footman pleaded, bored. He couldn't even make himself emote. "Don't touch me. I order it."

Kaia couldn't help a laugh. "Mike, touch him"

The footman, plainly, responded, "Do not touch me."

Mike, however, was exhausted. Kaia hadn't let him up from his knees for ages, and his back and hips were stiff and pounding. That pull in his stomach had to be hunger. The shift between euphoria and the horrible jolts of pain wiped the rest of his energy. The sensation in his head had morphed from a constant fuzzy warmth to a steady thump in his head, mapped to the beat of his heart. He could get that feeling back through, if he just... His hand went out and set itself on the footman's leg.

"Oh no," said the footman with all the enthusiasm of a dental patient. "I am defeated."

Mike laughed sincerely along with Kaia. It tickled his funny bone. It reminded him of Dutch, and it made him happy until Dutch's face came to the front of his mind. His face, bound in vines, and look at him like Mike let him down, like he betrayed him. All of his friends being carted away, hurt because of him, and their eyes following him as they were lead off to be locked up. Laughter crackled up his throat like he was about to throw it up all over the ground.

"All right," said the footman. "Now get your hands off me."

Mike's shoulder flexed before the rest of him reflexively locked. He couldn't. The last time he followed one of the footman's orders, he hurt. It was a different hurt every time, never anything he could expect and fight against. His back, his legs, the skin of his inner elbow, his earlobes- wherever he wasn't looking, it hurt, and it hurt terribly. He didn't move. He was scared to move.

"Finally." Kaia smoothed his hair back over his heads where it had been tousled. The pain subsided as his body flooded with joy. "I was starting to think you wouldn't get it. Good job."

"We good to move out now?" asked the footman.

"No. We keep at it, until it's second nature to him." Kaia thumped Mike's shoulder, and his mind blanked. He couldn't figure out if he was being punished or not. "Mike, take your hand off him now."

Back in the village, Terras scrambled, unknowingly watched by a pack of Burners. Gunner had released them all, saving Texas for a conspicuous last. Julie, Dutch, and Chuck all hung back and stayed quiet out of respect. If Gunner had been in his right mind, he never would have agreed to their demands. Using the same control on him that Kaia was using on Mike just didn't feel right. Once Texas was out, flexing his way out of the rest of the restraints after Gunner cut the main stalk, all bets were off. They pounced on him all at once, gagged him with a spare length of vine, and sealed him up in a cell. Dutch and Chuck pulled double duty tying the door shut with their old bindings while Texas and Julie stood watch at the door.

"We're sorry about the trouble, Gunner!" Chuck apologized. "Just don't tell anyone where we went if they ask you to, okay? Okay great thanks!"

"Come on, guys! You're holding up the sneaky-mobile!" Texas waved them over to the door so they could check the open area along with him. Terras were everywhere, not only moving across the flat patch of earth in front of the jail, but up and down mushroom stalks and tree trunks. There was no pattern to their movements, at least none that Burners could make out at first glance. Texas made a little noise of thought and stroked his chin. "Man, they're all over the place. Texas can get through, but he worries about being slowed by dead weight."

Julie sighed through her nose. "Look, I can extend my holo-projector to cover one more person, but only if they stay right on my back."

"What if I carried you on my shoulders?" asked Dutch. "Would that make our silhouette any smaller?"

"It's not that simple," said Texas. "The Terras don't have blind spots for us to sneak through like the KaneBots in Deluxe. Terras move up and down, not just along the ground. The only really safe way to get anywhere is to go around the outside of the village, along the sheer wall of the central tree. I could do it, and maybe Chuck could do it if we had a million years, but you and Dutch don't have the upper body strength to climb like that."

Dutch and Julie stood, stunned silent.

"Oh... I forgot," Chuck said as an afterthought. "You were an honorary Terra for a couple weeks there."

"WAIT hold everything Texas has just had an awesome idea. C'mere!" Texas yanked Chuck down and over his shoulders like a stole. Chuck grappled tight out of reflex. "See? The Chuck-pack! It's perfect!"

"Look, whatever gets us out of here faster!" Dutch worried aloud, "And I don't even know where we're going from here!"

"Oh that's easy." Texas cracked the door open again and pulled Dutch down to see. Julie scooted in on the other side. "We go around the cliff side of the village until we can go up the side of the big central tree, we climb it, and we scope out where to hit the Terras to stop their evil plan. My first instinct? Neutralize the deer, find the cars, then take out the bridge once we've crossed it."

"Hey, wait, woah! Forgetting something here?" Chuck kneed the door shut and twisted himself around on Texas's shoulder. "What about Mike?"

"Well, Mike's with Kaia, obviously," Texas shrugged, and the shrug bounced Chuck just enough to drop him to the floor. "We get Kaia out here, we get Tiny back and toss him in Mutt, and we'll have Chuck drive him home."

Chuck squealed in dread.

"I hate to say it, but I'm kind of more worried about Kaia than Mike." Julie finished up her calibrations and clipped the holo-emitter back into its usual spot. Kaia's words about the plan to dose her father with whatever was affecting Mike still hung in her mind. "If she can make more of that drug, she can just make a stockpile and try again later, even if we do rescue Mike. I don't think we can run for the garage right away. Texas has a good base plan, though."

Texas picked Chuck right back up and held him by the wrists and the knees, pulling him around his neck so he couldn't fall off again. "We aren't gonna get anything done standing around here! We gotta move out to the big tree-shroom and do intel!"

"Wait!" Julie gasped. "Put Chuck down and carry me! I can keep us cloaked, and we can relay shots of the village to Chuck and Dutch here."

"I second that plan!" Chuck wriggled to release himself from Texas. "Second it to hell and back, anything that does not put me over a sheer cliff face!"

"Eh, it'll do." Texas dropped Chuck hard. "Come on, Sadie!"

"Julie."

"Hwa-chaaa! Texas!"

Julie got swung up onto Texas's shoulders like she weighed nothing, and only just had time to activate her cloak before he was out the door and into the village. Texas bobbed and ducked into hiding places like she wasn't even there, sometimes pulling her feet out of the way of an oncoming Terra that she didn't even spot. She had to hang on herself once Texas grappled onto the far wall and started climbing, and even that was a terrifying ride. Nothing but the sickly yellow glow of toxic waste below and a cold, unfeeling wall under Texas's hands... it was enough to make her a little dizzy, looking down. After a long minute of debating with herself, she closed her eyes and hid her face in Texas's neck, and hoped for her own sake that she didn't whimper.

They stopped about two stories up. Hidden in the foliage, Texas let Julie down gently and looked out, assessing the grounds. He waited until Julie was visible before speaking. "Right, look," he began, "See that building over there? Used to be a superstore. Got a lot of boxes in front of the big loading ramps?"

Julie followed Texas's pointing finger. She could see it, and the boxes looked kind of haphazardly stacked. Why would Texas be pointing it out- she gasped, realizing the answer. "They made room for the cars!"

"Exactamundo," said Texas with a little grin. She snapped a few pics and shot them over to Chuck with the relevant information in text. "And it's not too far from the deer pens, either. Go any further into the village, and the trees get too curvy to drive on, much less if the car's getting towed. They've gotta be in there."

"You're sure?" Julie asked.

"Not a lot of places to store cars when you don't use 'em," said Texas. "Just a lot of spook-proof deer."

That gave Julie pause midway through her recon photos of the deer pens. "Spook-proof?"

"Yeah, spook-proof!" Texas held his fingers out in a frame. When Julie looked through them, she saw a little grouping of deer with antlers on the far side of the pen. "The deer are special-trained to be spook-proof. They're not scared of gunfire, explosions, most loud noises, and especially people who aren't Terras."

Julie sent that info to Chuck and worried at her lip. "If they're spook-proof, how do we neutralize them?"

"See, what I do is wheel in there with the gun-chucks and use my awesome kung-fu powers in a massive brawl-"

"And you're back to Texas." Julie took over that line of thought and commed Chuck and Dutch. Their avatars popped up on her comm screen. "All right, you guys have all the info I do. How do we get the deer out of the picture without hurting them?"

Chuck said, "I'd say we could use the super-spores on them, but if I can eat through them, the deer probably can too."

Dutch said, "All we'd have to do is use a lot! Nothing eats that fast."

Julie nodded. "Texas, where do they keep the super-spores?"

Texas scanned and pointed to a long hut. They passed it on the trek to the tree, and she hadn't thought much of the nondescript building. "Over there. Or in Kaia's house; she always got hers out of there."

"Plan's rearranged," Julie stated. "Texas and I are going to get as many super-spore grenades as we can carry from the armory, then we're getting the cars. From the cars, we use their cache of super spores to tangle up the deer. No weapons, no rides, and from there we get rid of the drugs."

"Okay, that's definitely in Kaia's house," said Texas. "So what do we do to get rid of the drugs?"

"Kaia's house is made of plants, isn't it?" said Chuck. "What if we set it on fire?"

The Burners gasped in shock.

"Look, this is seriously dangerous stuff!" Chuck argued. "We want NO chance of it ever coming back, and if fire gets the job done-"

"Hey, and if they're busy putting out the fire," Dutch realized, "Nobody's coming after us!"

Julie's smile was growing as the picture formed in her head. "And then Kaia comes running in to check on the noise..."

Chuck gasped and finished, "And brings Mike!"

"This plan just went from crazy to plausible," said Julie.

Texas preened. "You mean crazy to crazy-AWESOME!"

"Yes! Yes, I do!" Julie was only halfway teasing. This plan was haphazard and growing more destructive by the minute, but the stakes felt too high to risk playing lowball. She popped her holo-emitter onto her belt. "Texas, put me on your shoulders and get me to the cars. Dutch, Chuck, lay low 'til we tow Whiptail to you. Let's party."