A/U: So I reached 100 pages of writing for this story! It's 50,000 + words and completely finished! To celebrate I will accept Inspector Gadget one-shot requests until I post the 13th chapter. I will do cartoon, film #1, or additions to any of my fanfics. I do have writing reservations, I won't do funky pairings...And I won't write anything past an extreme makeout...I just don't do that kind of writing. Anyways. It's decided I'm writing a sequel! And I am starting that today. Enjoy and of course let me know what you think! Thanks to Knight Writer 95 and Bookworm Gal for your continued support!
Penny raced through the hall beckoning for her father to follow. The press was right on his heels flashing their cameras and trying to get some statements. He kept quiet and watched Penny as she hurried ahead. Friday had come much faster than anyone had expected. As was promised Rick had chosen a media generated title.
Penny had initially chosen the name and Rick had agreed to it only after she had begged him.
The doors to the press room were opened for the girl by the guards and she thanked them before entering. Rick stood at the opened doors and waited for her to introduce him.
Alex had cleaned up his coat and hat, she wanted him to look his best for the announcement. He checked his tie again, the bright blue satin was smooth under his fingers.
Applause from the crowd reached his ears but he dared not peek around the door. Sergeant Hanson greeted everyone. "Welcome everyone. I gather that you are all excited to hear the name that our own Cyborg Detective has chosen. Before that I want to introduce his daughter Penny Barnes."
The cop in dress uniform stepped back and pushed a step stool to the podium. Penny came to it and nodded at Hanson. The girl climbed up so she could speak into the microphones and see the crowd. She then waved to the crowd excitedly. She was in a green sweater and denim skirt. Her hair was in two curled pig tails.
"Good afternoon everyone," she greeted with a warm smile. "I would like to introduce to you my father, and Reno's new hero, Inspector Gadget!" The girl almost shouted to the crowd.
There was a whoop of victory from a young man in the front row, those sitting on either side rolled their eyes or glared at him. Obviously he was the journalist who had come up with the name.
Rick came onto the stage trying to smile. The cameras flashed like crazy. People cheered and clapped. Penny climbed down but stayed close to him. She had another part to play. Alex and Grant had suggested a small show for the crowd, and Rick agreed if only to appease the media for awhile. He was tired of reporters coming to the door or phone calls asking him for interviews.
He still wasn't fond of the title, but Penny and Jessica had chosen it. Jessica waved from the second row and he nodded his head in her direction. She lifted a camera and snapped a shot with a devious grin. She would use it for a drawing later. The woman had a knack for drawing cartoons and was working on some logos for Inspector Gadget. If the local press and a t-shirt company liked her work she could get paid for her drawings.
Rick tipped his hat to the crowd. Grant had coached him in a few simple and easy signature moves and sayings. "A good hero had a catch phrase and a signature way to greet his fans." Grant had said showing him a few clips from some old cartoons.
Alex and Grant were somewhere in the crowd, probably too far back for him to see without using his zoom features. Rick tried not to look at the crowd too closely, the HUD was hyperactive trying to ID each person in the crowd.
"Howdy," Rick greeted politely. No matter how much Alex tried she couldn't get rid of his southern accent and the slight drawl he spoke with.
The crowd shouted numerous greetings back. Once they were quiet he continued. Luckily for him he had a perfect memory now, not one word of his speech was forgotten, and even if he did the dialogue box in his right eye had the speech scrolling as he spoke.
"I know y'all came up with some good monikers for me. And I appreciate the effort put into each one, but with some help from Penny I decided that I liked Inspector Gadget the best. Congratulations goes to Miles Harrison for your brilliant title" He couldn't believe what he was saying. He would have chosen Detective Gears if Jess and Penny hadn't begged him for Inspector Gadget.
More cheering from the crowd erupted. He raised his hands in a gesture asking the throng to let him continue. Voices died off quickly. "Thank you," he said. "I hope that I will live up to the confidence y'all have in me. I will do my best to do you proud, because, Inspector Gadget is always on duty!" That was the first time he'd managed to say the cheesy catchphrase without laughing.
Penny had coined the phrase, and as a gesture of his appreciation for her support he'd given it a chance. He watched as pens scratched on legal pads and notebooks like crazy. The gathering went wild with excitement. More camera flashes distracted his vision briefly. He refocused on the microphones clipped to the podium, he still had one more thing to say.
"Everyone, if I may finish?" He raised his voice as loud as he dared, the Vocal Amplification Unit in his throat was a tad touchy. If he yelled too loudly it was liable to magnify his voice to a painful volume.
When the mob settled down he took a deep breath. If only they knew how hard it was for him to stand there and offer to give them a demonstration of his skills. "If y'all can remain quiet until the end I will display some of the things I can do."
At first a few people started to cheer again and then realized that Rick had asked for silence. They sat back down a little red in the faces.
Rick nodded and lifted up the lectern. He easily moved the heavy wooden stand to the end of the stage.
"Penny," Rick said to his waiting daughter, "shall we?" He asked. The girl bobbed her head and ran to the opposite end. Facing him she pulled some candles out of a box next to her.
Rick didn't take a single step. Instead his right hand extended across the stage. People gasped as they watched in stunned quietude. His hand reached Penny in two seconds and he made a fist as though he were hitch hiking, the top half-inch of his thumb opened on a secret hinge and a lighter flame sparked to life within the digit. More gasps and some excited murmuring reached him, but there was no clapping or cheering. Cameras clicked and flashed from every angle. Penny held the candle wicks to the flame and showed them to the crowd.
A light round of controlled clapping created a soft drum roll. Penny set the lit candles on the stage and backed away. Rick's arm returned to it's normal length and he activated the extinguisher hose as he approached the two candles. From his left arm a small metal tube connected to a black hose emerged. A small controlled jet of white substance squirted onto each candle wick instantly killing the fire.
This device vanished back into his arm and the trench coat closed back up revealing no seams. Penny put the candles in the box and set up a target.
Rick returned to the far end of the stage and Penny backed away from the target quite a ways. As everyone watched Rick locked onto the target and then flicked his wrists as cameras flashed two throwing stars lodged into the center of the thin wooden plank with a bull's-eye painted on it.
Rick waited for the clapping to die away and for Jessica to walk Penny off the stage. The sun shone brightly on the almost empty stage. The wind was almost dead here, a perfect time to show off his newest toy.
He stepped to the center of the stage and his hat opened up. The noise of the helicopter coming together made the watchers quiet. When the mechanism was done he started it up. The propeller began to spin. Camera flashes bounced off of the rotating blades. In a mere half-minute Rick had risen several feet off the stage. He kept himself low and maneuvered the rehearsed orbit around the stage before landing again.
This time his feet gently touched the ground and he walked to a stop. The helicopter disassembled and vanished back into the fedora. Rick took a bow tipping his hat as he did so.
A smile spread on his lips, he'd at least survived the exposition without any issues. The gathering began to celebrate as they realized he was finished. People cheered and clapped. A man approached the stage. Rick noticed a line for autographs was forming, mostly excited children, but a few teens were in the line as well, hopefully just keeping an eye on younger siblings.
"Inspector Gadget," Rick nodded to him. "I'm Miles Harrison. Can I get an official statement on why you chose my name?"
Rick smiled slightly, "Sure." He waited as Miles pulled out a recording device and turned it on. "Out of all the names the papers gave me, I chose this one for its uniqueness. And Penny liked this one the most." Miles smiled.
"Thanks, so when can I call in that shotgun ride?"
"E-mail me a day two weeks out. I'll get it cleared and we'll be good to go." Rick answered.
"Thank you. Can we get a picture of me shaking your hand?" Miles asked motioning his head towards a photographer. The detective nodded.
Miles took Rick's hand in a firm grip. Both men smiled at the camera and held it till the flash went off. "Thanks again, I won a bet with my sister, she's making me my favorite childhood desert tonight." He grinned as he walked away.
People hurried past Walter as much of the assembled crowd dispersed. He'd waited till the very end and as he had hoped Doctors Lawrence and Jackson were still here. There was a group of five people standing in a quiet corner talking. He immediately recognized the young girl to be Project Penultimate. He saw the two scientists and of course they're successful cyborg creation. But the other woman he wasn't sure about. She looked a lot like Lawrence, but she could have been any woman for all he knew.
As he got closer his muscles tensed. The pit of his stomach knotted up and his palms just began to sweat. It was a cool spring day and the sun didn't warm him up that much. He'd watched the entire thing. And now he had a job to do. Telling Lawrence that her private work was requested may not be the brightest way to introduce himself, but he couldn't do anything else. Orders were orders. He finally broke the invisible comfort bubble of the group and all eyes turned to him.
He paused. They had all dropped the conversation and were staring at him. Seconds ticked away as he tried to smile, but he couldn't. They all looked so happy and relaxed. What kind of FBI agent destroyed the peace? Penny was staring up at him curiously. Her green eyes were so innocent and she looked so normal it was hard to believe she had developed inside an artificial womb.
Without even knowing it he stuck out his hand to her. "Hi." Was all he could squeak out of his locked throat.
"Hello." She shook his hand cautiously. The cyborg watched him closely.
"FBI?" Rick asked quietly. His eyes seemed to focus on the stranger even more and the irises rotated. Walter nodded and the detective pulled the girl behind him. The unidentified woman took a step with the girl and the scientists grew stiff.
"I'm Agent Riggs." Walter finally answered. He'd pretty much blown that introduction.
"You here to steal more of my work?" Alex asked folding her arms over her chest.
"We've noticed that some of your personal work was missing from our legally obtained documents." Walter replied. He at least remembered how to speak to them. There was a code on what an FBI agent could say. And keeping his words to the point and devoid of common jargon and slang made it easier to confuse people.
"You had legal rights to anything McDowell created. My work was separate for the most part." Alex replied. She wasn't about to let him get away with such blatant lies.
"The Court ruled in favor of the FBI's search and seizure of FutureTech's entire research database." Walter replied. He was suddenly cool and collected. Under no circumstances was anyone allowed to badmouth the FBI. And he had disagreed with their seizure and the resultant shutting down of FutureTech.
"My work wasn't kept in their database. It was kept in a private laptop, which, I still haven't gotten back. That had only about a thousand digital photos saved on it." Walter had inadvertently opened up a wound that had yet to heal. In fact from the way things were going she must have been harboring a hatred for the government agents.
"I do apologize for the inconvenience, but you do understand that we couldn't allow what Calvin McDowell had done to humanity to spread." Walter spoke as though he were discussing a contagious disease.
"Eight years ago I was the sole inheritor of FutureTech, a government funded and supported research facility. We were working for you. When you forced me to shut FutureTech down I had to send fifty of the country's best minds out to fend for themselves. Not only that but you deprived the world of a prosthetic alternative that would guarantee a return to normal living. And you ruined any chance of revolutionizing how we look at organ transplants. Do you know that Genesis Research has gotten their hands on a few of McDowell's original people? Do you know that they acquired stolen blueprints for cybernetic organs? Do you also know that they receive funding from Canada, France, Germany, and Brittan?" Alex exploded in his face.
Walter blinked and stepped back from the woman. This information was not in his dossier. He wondered if anyone back at HQ knew.
Alex stormed away as she tried to keep her emotions under some form of control. Grant followed after giving Walter a rather displeased glare.
"You shouldn't have said that." Rick finally spoke up. "She's been working night and day to better humanity, and all you have for her stolen personal files is some rehearsed apology."
Walter's cheeks warmed. He didn't expect anyone to call him out. And he'd be damned if some science experiment was going to be the one. "I have my orders Guardian." He said evenly.
Rick's eyes flashed. "I think we're done here." He turned away. Jessica and Penny headed in the direction Alex had gone. Rick followed them without so much as a glance back.