"So let me get this straight, McCloud", Genie says. "You remotely flew your ship to the battle site from inside the cave, without anyone around you noticing, and fired it at exactly the right time to trap the Sabaku No Ei chasing you in the mountain AND eventually clear them out, all while under heavy fire. Anything I'm missing there?"
"Well, when you make me sound that cool, I feel like I should ask for a raise."
"Denied. But also, I get the feeling you're leaving something out of that story. Anyone else around there who could fly a ship like that undetected?"
"Look, Donnie…("Call me Donnie again and you'll be chicken feed.") Look Don, when I landed on your homeworld, and you kidnapped me and Jack, I can only assume your men searched my ship, did you see anyone else on there?"
"James, that is rude and presumptuous, but no we didn't find anyone. I mean, your story checks out, you've got no reason to lie to me, and your mission was successful. It just feels like something a bit cooler than what James McCloud is capable of."
"Well Don, it sounds to me like you just need higher expectations for me."
"Careful now, that's a dangerous thing for me to have in someone. Where's the newbie at? I don't see him anywhere in your cockpit."
"Oh, um… he's in the back getting work done with the med-bot. He's gonna have a few scars after all this is over."
"Haha, never had a doubt, knew that boy was a killer. I'll see about sending him something nice to mark the occasion. How about Guster? He playing nice?"
"Ummmmmmmm…", James says as he hesitates before turning the dashboard camera to the left and showing the frozen Guster.
"What the hell? Whatcha go and that for?", Genie furiously asks.
"As soon as we started talking about him coming with us, he froze up and then went feral on us. Gave me this little memento", he says as he points to his bandaged bicep. "One of your guys got him with this freeze stick before Antonio finished the job", he says as he grabs a hold of the weapon. "Hey, you got an instruction manual for this thing, or is there anything else to it?"
"Whoa there, I don't know where you got that thing, but I've never seen that before in my life", he says, putting his hands up and putting on his best innocent face. Jody watches the call from just off-frame and rolls her eyes in disappointment that he didn't accidentally incriminate himself. Genie knows how this game is played.
"Oh right, of course. Forget I said anything. I do have a question about Guster, how'd you get a hold of him in the first place? Was he in that frozen state when you first saw him?"
"Nah, he was totally awake when I got him. As I recall, Shadow came to me after your little event in Mute City, and asked me if I had any problems lately that could be solved with an F-Zero pilot. Asked for Goroh, got Guster, what can ya do, besides plot revenge? And then Guster just showed up at my doorstep about a week ago, ready to go, batteries installed and everything. I gave him orders, and he did 'em like a good, little soldier. Never had a problem with him."
"Any word on how to, you know, control him?"
"Nah, I just told him to do things and he did 'em. Maybe I'm the only one Shadow told him to follow. If that's the case, I don't think I can help ya out there. I got my own stuff going on here, and I can't be tagging along with you guys."
"Yea, it's never that simple, is it? I guess we'll just have to figure it out on the way outta here. Anything else you need, Don? I'm nearly back to the Wyvern."
"Just remember the other little part of our deal where you…"
"Where I get you a spot in the next Grand Prix, of course I remember", McCloud finishes his sentence, while Jody nearly blows her cover at the thought of having to race against this creep. "I've got it all figured out, and we'll take care of it as soon as we head back to Earth."
"Very good. Very, very good. You've done well for me, McCloud. Please don't ruin that. Talk to ya soon."
The feed goes out and Jody turns to James, super annoyed. "I still can't believe you're gonna try and get that creep into our racing league. You know this'll end horribly, right?"
"Look, the way I see it, swapping Shadow for Genie is basically a lateral move…"
"YEA, AND WE ALL SAW HOW WELL SHADOW BEING AROUND TURNED OUT!"
"Plus, no Blood Falcon. And besides, Shadow and Genie are two very different kinds of criminals. We know Genie's intentions; he's just in it for the money, this is a business venture for him. Shadow, and apparently Deathborn, we didn't know their end goals, so him being around was way more sketchy."
"We THINK we know Genie's intentions, that guy's got a ton of aces up his sleeve. Sometimes literally, smuggling gambling equipment is on his rap sheet. I just don't want to catch one big bad, just to have to deal with another."
"Don't you, though?", James asks the ace policewoman. "I remember how you reacted when I picked you up back in Mute City when this all began. Everyone else was all 'oh no, Shadow's the worst', but you were like 'woooo, finally, a reason to arrest this jerk'. I think I know you pretty well, and I think you want the glory of taking down Shadow once and for all, and you'll probably feel that way about Genie when he starts racing. Plus, you're gonna get to punt Don into the wall as much as you want once he starts racing."
"That IS how I deal with Zoda, but it's not that simple…", Jody stammers out, trying to figure out how to prove James wrong. "It's not about the glory or the money or anything. It's just the right thing to do. Shadow's a psycho, we've all listened to him kill someone before. He can't be allowed to roam free and just do whatever he wants, especially if his end goal is for Deathborn to take over the galaxies." She pauses and sighs, looking out the window at the stars to make sure she's not just on her high horse, but she knows that she's right about this in her heart. "If my life continues exactly as normal the day after I put Shadow in prison, I'll be the happiest girl in the cosmos."
James nods and tries to get into her headspace, but finds it hard not to think about what'll come with collecting Shadow's bounty. "If you say so. As long as I get the lion's share of the payout, you can get however much or little credit as you want from it", he says as he pulls his ship into the Wyvern's loading bay.
Once they land inside, the rest of the racers are there waiting for them. As James and Jody carry the frozen body of Antonio Guster out, the other racers are excited to see another racer successfully rescued, followed immediately by being a bit confused as to why Guster's frozen like that. Jack follows them out the door, and he walks past everyone straight to his sleeping quarters without a word.
"Is he ok?", Monique asks Jody.
"Probably not, he had to kill someone on the mission and he's taking it hard", Jody says as she struggles to carry the hefty Guster.
"Oh no, someone should make sure he's ok. Gazelle, can you heat up some tea for him? I'm gonna see if I can help him", she says as her motherly instincts kick in. Gazelle nods and heads to the break room to prepare some fresh tea for the traumatized, young man.
"Ohhhhh, I remember when I was young and innocent like that", Zoda says while reminiscing. "Such a terrible time in my life, I've grown so much since then."
"Oh don't worry, Monique", James says, "I was just gonna ask Gazelle to bring Guster to the medbay, but it's cool. I'm sure carrying this 240 pound guy all the way over there'll be fun. Can't wait, thanks Monique."
Before James can be any snarkier, a robotic voice pops up over the intercom. "Don't worry, James. As soon as I'm done with the tea, I'll bring Antonio up from the loading bay. Won't take me very long."
"Oh good", James says dryly. "He's bugged my ship. I love it."
"I haven't actually bugged your ship, I simply have supersonic hearing with voice-identifying channels. I can hear pretty much anything on the ship."
"That's… better? Now we just don't have any privacy."
"Don't worry", Gazelle says, "I won't tell anyone what you say in those late-night calls to your wife."
"AAAAAAAND, the intercom is going off now, bye-bye!", James says as he hits a button on the wall that shuts off the speakers to that particular room, before addressing his fellow racers before they can ask follow-up questions. "Alright, by my estimates, we're about 35,000 lightyears from the GSF HQ, and if we go at top speed, we can get there in three days. That should give us plenty of time to experiment with Guster and figure out what might unhypnotize him or at least figure out what doesn't work. After we get there, it'll be their problem, and we can head off to Porix to try and find Beastman. I'm now opening the floor to anyone (including Gazelle, I guess) to offer ideas about fixing him. Clash, you're the smart one here, what're you thinking about?"
Clash is not thinking of any way to cure what ails Antonio Guster or any other pilot who needs saving. Instead, he's thinking about Jack and what he's going through, and something that, up until this point, he hadn't thought at all about: what this kind of work actually entails. He figured that he'd spend most of his time on this mission away from the frontlines, offering ideas and tools and repairs that would help this operation, without having to get his hands really dirty. That would be something for James or Jody or Zoda to handle. However, Jack probably had the same idea, and now he has blood on his hands. However, Jack has a benefit that Clash doesn't: Jack is 20 years old, and in the physical prime of his life. Dr. Clash is 56 years old, and has never been in any kind of shape, other than round. If Clash was put into a similar situation to what Jack's was in, even if the ethics of killing someone wasn't in the way, would he be physically capable of surviving such a situation? He's starting to have his doubts.
"Doc? You there?", James says while trying to snap Clash back to attention.
"Yep, Doc's fried, I'm now the de facto smart guy in this room", Zoda says. "So like I said before, the easiest way to reverse the hypnotism process is having the one who put him under in the first place snap him out of it. So that would mean saying 'screw the other racers, go straight for Shadow'".
"Yea, except we have no leads about him, and even if we did, Deathborn would still be able to protect him", Jody says. "Plus, even if we did that, we still have Guster right now, so that doesn't help our situation in any way."
"I'm now resigning as the smart guy. Doc, I don't envy you. Having people arguing your points is nightmarish. Why can't I just boss people around anymore?", Zoda says as he storms off to do Zoda things.
"Right, sorry everyone, just… thinking about what young Jack is going through", Clash says as he shakes himself back to reality. "Anyway, Zoda's right in saying that that's the easiest way to counteract hypnotism, with the second-easiest being to recreate the hypnotism process, in order to establish ourselves as the hypnotizers and snap Antonio out of it ourselves."
"That's not bad, but we don't have any of the goopy stuff that got them under in the first place", James says. "It's all underground on Zorok, so we can't get it ourselves, even if we go out of our way to swing by there, and try to get some."
"The GSF is going there to investigate their mining operation", Jody says excitedly. "They probably already got some, and might already be experimenting with it."
"OK, that's great and all", James says back, "but that still doesn't help us with Guster right now. Come on, guys, focus. How do we get this big, frozen popsicle to not want to kill us?"
"Hey, how're we gonna feed this guy?", Clash asks. "He might be going three days without food, so we should probably figure that out before anything else…"
"Oh… this is gonna be trickier than I thought…", James says, deep in thought.
