I was in the middle of making 'breakfast' (gluten free spaghetti mostly from scratch) when BAM, sudden action sequence in my head. You know the kind; the one where your body runs around on its own as you process the 'film' in your mind.
I wish I could plug something in my head and download it, because there are motions and sounds and just...ugh. Anyway, gunna try and write bits down. Most likely this will go nowhere, but at least I'll have notes for later in case I want to scratch out thumbnail comics.
The basic description for this sequence is dull. Let's see...
It's in that AU where AUs cross over, and it's Xeno!Spine, Chicken!Spine and Comm!Rabbit VS QC!Spine at the Binary!Verse Walter Manor.
I could have said something about the actual story, express the emotions I felt as I read, etc. But I'm still waking up, what are words, and I can't stop thinking of how 'Xeno!Spine and Friends' would be the strangest children's show ever.
You mean writing is still a thing that I do? No, yes, it cannot be...
I hope everyone had a decent holiday period, mine was so crammed I've only just managed to get back to my abandoned babies of writing (and I've abandoned being up to date on the SPG tag) and in my usual style 'It'll only be two chapters' has turned into 'Well maybe a few more oops'. This one is only going to be three not six like microfilm chapters but that's because I overran as usual. Too much to say and too little time to say it. I enjoy writing about Comm's life too much.
Anyway, to fill in gaps for anyone who doesn't know what this is and bothered to read that jibber-jabbering above, this is the second part of Radio Rabbit, a biographical account of events in the life of Comm!Rabbit, an alternate-universe Rabbit from the same world as Xeno!Spine and friends. Nicknamed the Binary!verse, this world has a slightly different timeline to our own.
Radio Rabbit takes place in the battleground that became East/West Berlin after the failed conclusions of the Second World War. Upgraded for communications specialities, Comm!Rabbit is stationed in the perilous East Berlin Army Camp, slap-bang in the middle of Sovietland. This is Part 1 of his story, his askblog, and an about page for his universe.
Title: Radio Rabbit
Rating: T (scenes of war, off-screen deaths).
Length: 5800~
Warnings: nonsensical use of made-up cockney rhyming slang because I can. Also feels.
Bzzzzrt! Good morning, campers, and a fine morning it is in this here city of Berlin. The barbed wire shines brightly off the puddles of mud, there's a smell of sulphur on the breeze, and we can expect a good chance of artillery hail later in the day. Unfortunately, lunch is also going to be served.
.--. .- .-. - / ..---
Will opened his eyes and saw only black. A thick, matte expanse of it, pierced with a single green point and a perfect blue ring. They were eyes, staring directly into his. An arrow pointing to the end of his nose, almost touching it. He did what he felt was the most reasonable thing to do at that time. Opened his mouth and screamed.
“Waaaaake-up! Rise and buff shine and shoe, Billy!” Rabbit blared over him.
“I told you not to do that, Rabbit,” he berated groggily. “Not to do it.” This was the third time Rabbit had woken him up this way and he hadn't even been here a fortnight.
“Sorry, Billy, I just get awful bored waitin' for people. You know how boring sleeping is?” the eccentric robot asked. There were night staff on duty at Camp Berlin, but they had declared Radio Rabbit a nuisance, and he'd been disallowed from their company on several counts of blaring rock 'n roll music across the fence at the Soviets.
“Not when you're the one doing it,” Will pointed out. He was slowly becoming used to Rabbit's sense of distorted logic. Unwanted wake-up calls were only the start of it.
In fact, he hadn't seen the robot do a single useful thing since he'd got here. By extension, that meant he hadn't done anything either. For over a week he'd done nothing but mill around and play silly word games with Rabbit. A few days ago the Colonel had asked to see them both and requested a demonstration of their 'rapport', so Rabbit had sent him a coded transcript of the first verse of The Love Story of Alfred J Prufrock from the other side of the office. The Colonel had taken a look at the paper, laughed, and then dismissed them without explanation.
It might have been paranoia, but Will was beginning to feel awkward around the other men. He could understand why they might begrudge him. Even he'd resent the baby-faced Captain who played around with Rabbit all day while everyone else had to work.
“R-rabbit?” he announced one afternoon when the pressure of superfluousness felt especially heavy. He was hiding in his quarters designing cyphers out of boredom more than necessity.
“Yeah Billy?” Rabbit had become like a shadow to him, taken like a dog to a new master – or a master with a new dog, watching constantly lest the pup get into trouble. He rarely very far away, and always within hearing distance.
“Why am I here?” Will asked, heaving the question off his shoulders like a heavy coat. Rabbit gave him a bemused look.
“You're askin' me?” he gabbed. “What would I know about it? Ask your parents,” he suggested optimistically. “They're the ones who decided tah-”
“No, I meant here in B-berlin,” he amended. His problems weren't that existential. “I d-don't do anything.”
“Well sure you do,” Rabbit countered with blithe optimism.
“N-nothing useful,” Will begrudged. The pause before Rabbit answered him said more than enough.
“Well, you ain't been here long, Billy,” he explained. “It's still early days.”
“I f-feel like I have no p-p-purpose,” Will confessed. “Everyone else here has a j-job to do, and I j-just sit in here wasting time.”
“Ohhh Billy,” Rabbit sing-songed; elbows propped on his pointy knees, sat cross-legged on the ground. “Most'a the people round here are just making it look like they're doin' work. We're all waiting for the Boss to give orders.”
“And w-what if he doesn't?” he protested. Were they meant to stall until the end of the war?
“Then it's our lucky day, pal,” Rabbit said remorsefully, and Will noted the sadness deep down in his voice. “Just wait, Billy,” he seemed to console. “It'll happen soon.”
He wasn't wrong. A few days later they were playing around with the usual cyphers and silly codes – probably more impractical than they were helpful – when there was a polite rap at Will's tent door.
“Uh, c-c-come in?” he invited. These days everyone around camp knew that even though he was a Captain in name, Will wasn't a real ranking Officer, and wouldn't remind anyone of it. They just walked in if they wanted him or Rabbit. The only man to knock on his door was the one man who really didn't need to. “Oh, C-c-c-colonel,” he stuttered, scrambling to attention, Rabbit mimicking him clownishly. Although Rabbit didn't really abide by most of the camp rules and regulations, The Colonel was the one figure he seemed to treat with respect. Or fear.
“I thought I'd find you here, Rabbit,” the Colonel said with his soft-yet-hard voice, and Rabbit lowered his arm. “It's time.”
“Again?” he sighed reluctantly, but dared not protest more.
“At ease, Captain,” the Colonel ordered, and Will realised he was still saluting, awkwardly dropping his hand into his pocket. “Follow me, both of you,” he instructed, and then turned and walked away. Rabbit fell into step behind him, and Will followed on. Outside there was a kind of subdued chaos – men loading into jeeps and trucks, packing up support and supplies, but all the usual noise and chatter was strangely absent.
“Ready, Billy?” Rabbit said secretively as Will trotted alongside him.
“F-ffor what?” Rabbit didn't seem to hear him, or at least pretended that he didn't.
“Keep your hat on, sport. That's the most important part,” he continued obliviously.
“I don't have a hat,” Will replied. Then, a few minutes later, someone handed him a helmet. He understood what it meant then.
“Rabbit will explain what you need to do,” the Colonel instructed as he led them to a heavily armoured truck; it wasn't until Will had turned his back and started scrambling into the back that he head him add, “Good Luck.”
The interior of the truck was lined with radio equipment, with a stool screwed into the floor at the far end, which Will guessed was him. Rabbit hopped right up and squatted down on the floor, tucking his heels close into his body.
“Scoot on up, Billy,” he said cheerily, but there was a falseness to the tone. Like he'd forced the high-pitched radio tone into his voice; a kind of white noise to cover up everything else. “It might be a bumpy ride.” He wasn't joking – when they hit the first pothole Will bounced straight off his seat, and soon ended up on the floor next to Rabbit, who was rattling around like a bag of marbles in the back of a truck.
“W-where are we going?” he asked timidly. Rabbit only looked at him and shook his head.
“You ain't going anywhere, Billy,” he said. “You just stay in.”
“O...Okay,” he murmured uncertainly. A few minutes later the truck ground to a halt, accompanied by a rumble of engines as jeeps pulled up on all sides. Unit by unit men dismounted and took cover, and they hadn't been stationary for more than a minute when gunfire started. In the dank light of the truck, Rabbit got up and went to the radio station, turning on a series of switches and running power to the consoles.
“Time to rock and roll, Billy,” he said calmly. It was wrong. He was too calm. “You know how it works, right? In one ear, out the other.” He handed a headset over and pointed out the controls; Will had used sets like this many times before, the only difference being that here he was connected straight to Rabbit, not another radio set.
With a noise that made him jump out of his skin, the back of the truck opened and light flooded in. Major Reynolds stood on the other side, grinning merrily even as gunfire ratcheted in the distance.
“G'dday, boys,” he bellowed. “Ready to get this show on th' road?”
“I h-hope s-s-so,” Will stuttered. “B-b-but what's R-r-rabbit-”
“Don't worry about that, son,” the Major interrupted. “You just git your ass on that seat and tell us what you hear, okay? We'll figure the rest out.”
He watched as Rabbit stretched out to his full height, popping his antenna out and then flexing as if he were a person. Probably eight foot with his arms outstretched.
“Quit messin', boy,” Major Reynolds barked, and Rabbit gave a manic-looking grin. “An ' bring me back a souvenir.”
“Not if I can help it, Smokey,” Rabbit joshed, and then bounced out of the truck and into the ground like he was spring-loading himself. “All right, guys!” he hollered to the company. “Who says I can make it t' the wall in less'an a minute?!” Cheers rang from encouraging to complete dismissal, and then without warning Rabbit shot off, dashing between jeeps bounding two metres at a time.
LETS_GET_STARTED_BILLY came the first string of letters through Will's headset. He punched them into the shorthand machine he could use as naturally as breathing, and a ticker tape spewed from the end of the console. Major Reynolds clambered up and ripped the tape off the station, holding it up to the daylight to read. He snorted, or maybe chuckled, and then screwed it up and threw it aside.
“Is h-he gonna b-be all r-right?” Will asked the Major nervously, and Smokey gave him a stern look.
“He ain't new to this, son,” he croned. “He's done this before. All you do is keep your ears on that console.” Without further prompting, a string of letters Will and Rabbit had coded earlier that day started to stream into his ears in Morse code.
WALL_INTACT_8FT_ARTILLARY_SNIPERS_MINED_STOP_SECTOR3_INTACT_SECTOR2
_INTACT_SECTOR1_DAMAGED_ the information kept on coming, and soon Will stopped thinking about what the words were. Decrypted and translated without even reading, without even thinking. He could have been putting anything into the tape which Major Reynolds read off between thick, calloused fingers and used to direct his orders. Unit by unit the men moved out, until there were only a few left, and the while data streamed into Will's ears.
WOUNDED_SECTOR2_QUADRANT_6_REQUEST_MEDIC_STOP_SNIPER_SECTOR3_
REQUEST_SUPPORT_ the sequence ran, and from the paper that spewed into Smokey's hands he roared orders across the climbing noise of gunfire and shells. Will had no idea what they were even trying to achieve here. War on a wall? What was the point?
But he didn't have time for questions with messages coming in thick and fast. Stopping to think meant missing a crucial second of information, but in the very back of his mind he could see it. Rabbit out there, dashing around like an off-balance shopping cart. Spotting a gunman here, finding a wounded soldier there, being the eyes and ears of the battlefield for people who couldn't look around for fear of catching a bullet through their fragile skulls.
SECTOR4_CLEAR_SECTOR3_OCCUPIED_SECTOR2_CLEAR the new messages ran, and Major Reynolds waved signals to the men. WOUNDED_INCOMINGRabbit warned before stretchers full of men came hurtling back; hauled between the hands of bloodspattered squad medics. Will ripped his eyes from the console for a second and filled them with ripped uniforms and bodies pitted with ripe, fresh red. He turned back to the machine, but in the distance, over the chatter, he heard a far-off boom. It wasn't a missile or shell; something else.
SECTOR5_MINEDcame the feedback seconds later. WOUNDED_SEND_MEDIC. Out the medics ran again, but this time they didn't come back with anyone.
It lasted for over six hours. By the end Will could've fallen asleep at his station and would have carried on typing. But Rabbit never stopped, not for more than a couple seconds.
“All right, kid,” Major Reynolds announced, and for a moment Will didn't know how to process something that wasn't made out in dots and dashes. “Tell'im he can come back.” With stiff joints that weren't used to a wider range of motion, Will turned and flipped a switch, settling his hand on the top of a transmitter.
WITHDRAW he punched in, and for a haunting moment his headset went silent. He heard ghost tones in the silence, ringing from his ears, but then seconds later the feed started up again.
CASULATIES_SECTOR1_SECTOR2_SECTOR3_SECTOR4_JEEPS_REQUESTED_WITHDRAWAL_OPERATIONAL Rabbit pipped into his ear, but it took another full hour before everyone was back in. There were two fatalities – from the mine – and a lot of wounded. Rabbit came back last of all; it was almost dark, and his green eye shone like a beacon. Sharp as a laser sight. He was plastered in mud and moved like a lizard, shooting along the ground in fits of electric-fast movement and complete stillness. Instinct to stay safe, to survive in whatever it was out there.
“Well howdy there, stranger!” he cheered as he caught sight of Will. An unfocused blue eye widened, and the light behind the green sight dimmed a little. Fresh as a daisy, as if he'd been out for a happy countryside walk. “How'd he do, Smokey?” he chattered.
“Didn't figure I'd see a day a kid could keep up wit' you,” Major Reynolds answered with an even hoarser voice than usual. He'd been running it ragged. “If they could make a machine that does what O'Riley here just did, every station in the goddamn West would want a set.”
“T-th-thank y-y-you s-sir,” he jabbered, tripping over his words out of fatigue more than anything else. He was still hearing beeps at the back of his head, and although it was 'over' in name, it sure as hell wasn't over for the wounded guys on the trip back.
More than eve, Will realised this wasn't a drill. This was real. As he'd sat there like a receptionist, guys he saw around camp, ate his lunch with, had been shot. Two faces Will hadn't even bothered to remember were never going to be seen again, two lives extinguished like bullets emptied from casings.
So when he got back, it wasn't the reaction he expected. Apparently only two fatalities was a success for their camp, and the men were putting it down to the fast organisation and response of their scouts. Not to mention the Russians couldn't eavesdrop on the location of their wounded, who therefore weren't picked off like flies as the medics hurried out.
Maybe Will hadn't done anything but perform the duty of an advanced typewriter, but that was apparently just what the camp had needed. Anyone who'd been out on the excursion acted as if they owed him their lives. He got more sir's in the following days than he expected to receive in his life.
It mattered. They actually cared. He'd made a difference.
But that high only lasted as long as it took for the Colonel to come calling again, and this time they lost four. Rabbit couldn't be everywhere at once, and sometimes the bullet got lucky. The Wonderboy effect wore off; maybe they weren't losing fifteen friends every time they went to push the Russians back from the border, but new men kept on arriving, because each time they went out some didn't come back. Will got used to not knowing if he'd ever talk to a guy again, and tried not to be guilty that he was out of the line of fire, safe in the back of a truck decoding noise into words.
Rabbit was the one who took the risks, leaping between gunshots blaring The Rat Pack. No one could complain about Sinatra when he was drowned in shells and gunfire. And like some law of karmic extremes, he seemed determined to balance out every harsh reality with surreal humour, pushing his cheery disposition like a shot of morphine. Anyone Rabbit found down in the dumps was latched onto, and he often had the poor guy crying with laughter before long. As if he couldn't bear anyone to be sad.
One incident, which would later become infamous, began on an ordinary morning when Will woke up nose-to-nose with Rabbit as usual. However, this time he noticed the robot was sporting a large greasepaint moustache, complete with eyebrows.
“G'morning, sport!” he cheered with an exaggeratedaccent. “This morning I shot a Russian in my pyjamas. What he was doing in my pyjamas, I don't know.”
“You... d-don't have pyjamas, Rabbit,” he murmured sluggishly.
“Well then he had somebody's pyjamas!” insisted the robot. “We better get a squad out to catch this nightwear burglar before he stripes again!”
“Raab-bit,” Will groaned.
“I radioed the operator and asked him to put me through to General Hunger, but apparently he was out for lunch,” Rabbit continued, reaching for a well-chewed cigar, then sandwiching it between his jaws and chomping down.
“R-Rabbit!” Will burst, and managed to sit up enough to push the robot back. There was something quite disturbing about being eye-to-eye with Rabbit at silly-o-clock in the morning. “It's t-too early for this.”
“For what? I'll have you know I'm so early for tomorrow it made me late today,” he gibbered. Will swung his legs over the side of his cot and put his face in his hands, shrugging off the morning haze. Since realising what an on-duty day meant, he'd started to appreciate the quiet ones, but no day was really quite with Rabbit around.
Like most of his phases, he assumed this one would wear off, but for whatever reason it stuck around beyond its welcome. By mid-afternoon Rabbit was still pacing around at a funny angle, and had even acquired a pair of glasses to complete his look.
“The Colonel told me that he wanted me in his outfit, and I said Colonel, sir, I don't think I'll fit in it,” he joshed ecstatically, but the performance fell on a tired, bored audience. It had been funny for a while, but like a child who would't stop demanding the same game over and over, the fun had been ground out of it.
“Afternoon, Major!” Rabbit cheered when Major Reynolds strode over with a face like thunder. “What a day we're having, eh? The majority of us seem to be enjoying it, right?” A soft wash of groans suggested otherwise. “Well, a minor majority are having a majorly good time,” Rabbit continued jovially.
“Allright, kid, you had your laugh, knock it off,” Smokey muttered forebodingly, and Rabbit opened up his mouth and honked Harpo Marx style. “Son,” Smokey emphasised, and Will wondered if he'd always used that term with Rabbit, or he'd only just noticed. “The Colonel-”
“Wait! I can guess – the Colonel says that there's no jokes to be had unless submitted by paper request and co-signed in triplicate to ensure everything's in order before anyone has any laughs, right?” Rabbit rattled off with an unhinged grin.
“No one's havin' any laughs here,” Smokey reprimanded, but Rabbit wasn't having any of it. “He says you're to go see'im.”
“Well I'm afraid my schedule is booked right up until the end of the war,” Rabbit baited. “He'll have to delay or put a hold on the war. Heck, I'm sure we could all do with some time off.” Will appreciated the sentiment, really, but there was something about Rabbit's loudness that wore on people. Perhaps because it seemed so fake, like an exhausted clown bucking for just one more laugh.
Except no one felt like laughing; they'd had a bad week, a lot more dogtags were coming back without the bodies inside them. People Will had shared a few laughs and moments with were gone, and there were too many holes not to notice. Their company was turning into a golf course at this rate.
“Rabbit, hush up an' do as you're told,” Smokey said sternly, but for some reason it was as if Rabbit just couldn't hear – like he was tuned to another frequency.
“Why should I?!” he blared suddenly, indignation bursting from him like a pocket of unexploded mines. As if the curtain had been dropped on the act – along with the backdrop, stage door and lighting.
“Because this is a war, and like it or not, you're in it!” Smokey roared with the rasp that gave him his namesake. “So siddown, shuttup and do as you're told!”
Somewhere, the line between commander and soldier had been crossed. Will felt as if he were watching a domestic fight, some screaming match between friends or relatives. Rabbit said nothing, staring Major Reynolds out as if he could pop laser beams out of that vacant eye of his, and then without another word, he rubbed the greaseproof paint into a dirty streak across his face, turned, and walked away. Whether he was going to the Colonel's office or not Will didn't know, but neither he nor anyone else dared to find out.
Of course, it was commonplace for everyone to blow their top every now and again – with at least one shelling a day anyone's nerves were shot. Will had become used to jumping like a frog any time he heard a siren, dashing for the nearest bunker with lists of what he'd request from Radio Rabbit already compiling in his head. But, like a pot boiling over, people tended to understand everyone had their moments, and things settled down again. So of all people, Smokey was the last guy Will thought Rabbit would bear a grudge against.
Yet, the next morning, when Major Reynolds greeted Rabbit at breakfast, he looked straight through him. Didn't so much as twitch, and when Will tried to pry he started playing radio tunes. Wouldn't be lured into discussing the matter, simply acted as if the Major just wasn't there. When they got called out for another mission, he even managed to take orders from Smokey as if he were receiving word from above.
Smokey too seemed cold, and stuck to bare orders as he set up the men and let Rabbit bolt out. Will followed his eyeline, knowing he was watching Rabbit, and that he probably had something to say, but the lot of them were all too stubborn to let anything slip. The information started to stream into Will's headset, and he got to work transcribing; at least that was simple and straightforward.
The task was the same as ever – fight the wall, push the Russians back from the border and make sure they didn't get a good enough hold on no man's land to launch a full attack against the base. They were playing a game of offensive defence, and Will was almost used to it. He could tune out, almost; pretending he was in the back of a truck anywhere – even back in Cali, and that nothing else was important. Not where he was, what he was doing, or even the meaning of the letters that came spewing from his own hands like they were possessed.
Perhaps he should've been paying more attention, though, because the warnings that flowed through his ears onto his fingertips never passed through his mind; it was only the screams of Major Reynolds, and the disparate cries of men around them, that alerted Will to anything being amiss the second before the ground underneath them exploded.
His senses were ripped from him as he went flying through the insides of the truck like a hamster ball going down a set of stairs, richoeting off the roof and walls. Funnily enough, he only imagined that this was what being in a washing machine probably felt like – no fear or horror over what was happening to him. Even such basic things as up and down seemed to tumble away, and all the while he still heard tones droning into his ears. BILLY_REPORT_STATUS_REPORT_STATUS_TRUCK_HIT_BILLY_REPORT- eventually, even that faded away.
When Will finally came to some kind of coherence, it was with those color-on-black eyes boring into him, clawed mitts gripping his shoulders and shaking him vigorously.
“-Illy! Billy! Billy! Snap out of it Billy wake up!” he tuned into Rabbit shrieking at him, and managed a single, heavy blink as the outline of the robot swam around.
“Rr-” he was trying to enunciate, but nothing in his body was listening to anything coming from his brain, and Rabbit was still shaking him.
“Billy-Billy-Billy, no,” Rabbit gushed. “You gotta-” Then there was a thunk like a hammer hitting a baseball, and Rabbit suddenly wasn't on top of him any more, but flying straight over him and bowling head over heels.
Bullet, Will managed to think, and with his lumbering, maimed thought, the conclusion came slowly after. Sniper. He saw the bullseye where it should've been, and was driving every though in his head into picking himself up and moving for cover when someone grabbed him by the scruff of his jacket and threw him like a sack of potatoes. That didn't help his disorientation one bit, and everything afterwards seemed to flow in uneven gushes, like time was the shaken up soda in a half-empty bottle. Flashes of noise and shadows moved around him; he was aware of being moved and spoken to, but it wasn't until he woke up in an almost-comfortable bed back in the camp hospital that he could make head from tail.
For a while it was all he could do to sit up in bed, looking around and marvelling at how everything stayed in the same place, until a nurse walked past and noticed him.
“Oh, Captain, you're awake,” the woman cooed proudly, like this alone was an accomplishment.
“I...I-I g-g-guess s-s-s-so,” he said in a fit, flushing in embarrassment. “Wh-what h-h-happened?”
“Your truck was hit with a shell, Captain,” she explained calmly. “You got away with bruises, but it was a nasty tumble you took.”
“Wh-what ab-b-bout-” he started to jitter, while parts came back to him like divine visions. Hallucinations of the past. “R-r-r-r”
“What?” the nurse interjected bemusedly.
“Rabbit,” he gushed. “I r-remember-”
“Oh... I think... well, I'm not sure,” she answered uneasily. “Rabbit doesn't really come to our part of the camp... he's probably at the workshop with all the engineers.” Of course, why would a robot go to a hospital? That was for healing the human body.
“I rem-rem,” he gasped, swinging his feet down to the floor and moving to stand. “I have t-t-to-”
“The doctors said it was best you stayed in bed, Captain,” the nurse instructed, moving to block his path. “You're still in shock, you could-”
“N-n-no, I t-think,” Will gibbered, trying to push past her, and then realising he was too dizzy to make it to the end of the bed, let alone through the door. He let himself be plied back into bed like a baby, and had no sooner laid down and closed his eyes than he was out again.
When he woke up again, everything was much more firmly in place, and the ward doctors said he was fine to go. He almost ran across the camp, noting the lack of music or other endearing chatter on the camp radio, and headed straight for engineering.
The first thing he saw when he pushed open the swinging door into the pre-fabricated shelter was a host of familiar shapes lined up on a rack. Too familiar. Parts of Rabbit's casing. He felt a cold slug of dread, and paced forward urgently.
“R-r-r-r-rrabbit?” he called out, and moved past a line of tools to see Rabbit sat on a crate with a few engineers on either side of him. His jaw had been taken off, and was being fiddled with by one of the men, but his eyes were on and turned onto Will as he appeared.
“Billy!” Rabbit cheered, apparently managing to speak without need for his jaw at all. “You shovel and spade it!” He struggled to get up, and one of the mechanics tugged him back down.
“Siddown, R-2,” the man slurred. “You ain't goin' anywhere until we get all this straightened out.”
“What happened? Is he ok-kay?” Will asked, approaching carefully, eyeing the removed pieces of casing here and there on the floor.
“I'm cheese and wine!” Rabbit proclaimed frostily. “Let me to and fro!” Will furrowed his brow, baffled, and caught the eye of the mechanic that'd been seeing to his jaw.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “We can't make a damn word of sense outta him. Been like this since he came back.”
“Wh-what?” Will spluttered. “So h-h-he...”
“Took a bullet in the back,” one of the mechanics finished for him, holding up a backplate with a dent in it like a plughole. “Sniper rounds. Nasty stuff.”
That was the bullet. The bullet that had been aimed for Will. The one that Rabbit had stopped, whether he'd intended to or not.
“You lemme at'em!” Rabbit burst suddenly, struggling to get up again. Now he was closer, Will saw that he was actually leashed to the floor with thick, strong cords. Like a dog pegged to the ground. “I'll give'em a Marlboro Light!”
It was then that Will realised he was hearing something – something that stuck out to his ears.
“Siddown, Rabbit,” the engineer bossed. “We gotta fix you.”
“I don't need to be fruit and nut mixed,” came the report, and there was that tweak again in Will's ear. Rhymes.
“Rabbit... you c-c-can hear me, r-right?” he interjected suddenly, and the eyes were back on him.
“Sure I frying pan,” he answered brightly. “Clear as a' ocean swell.”
“Wait... can you understand him, cap'n?” one of the mechanics asked bemusedly.
“I t-think he's t-t-talking in rhyming s-slang,” he answered.
“I'm just ball of twine,” Rabbit proclaimed. “It's you who can't shear.”
“There,” Will pointed out. “Shear, hear. So ball of twine... fine?”
“How does that make any sense?!” the other guy protested.
“It's a dialect thing,” Will explained hurriedly. “M-more importantly, c-can you f-fix it?”
“We've been trying, but it don't seem like there's any problems we can deal with,” the engineer declared, reaching up and slotting Rabbit's jaw back into his head with a click. “Bullet only hit his casing, and we got spare parts f'that, but he ain't no good to us talking gibberish.”
“I'll gibber your fish!” Rabbit offered boisterously.
“Now, that one doesn't even rhyme,” Will commented caustically, and Rabbit quirked his head; with his jaw back on, he could grin, and Will noticed the smirk. “What is this... a moth to a flame?” he suggested tenatively, and Rabbit's eye widened ecstatically.
“Sure! I'll potter's clay!” he cheered. While Will tried to explain that now wasn't the time to play, and that he had to start talking straight again so the engineers could give him the all-clear and put him back together, for whatever reason, Rabbit didn't seem intent on complying. He just kept on speaking in rhymes and strange half-removed English.
When about ready to give up, Will and the mechanics' plight was interrupted by a ruckuss at the door.
“I'm fine, gerroff me! Git that thing away!” came a familiar, bowling tone, and Will saw Rabbit's eye slip all the way out and in again. Refocusing. Then with a slow, labouring amble, Major Reynolds strolled into view, one hand leaning on the wall of tools for support. He looked like he'd been to hell and back, tossed up and made an omelette of in a pan with all the other broken eggs.
Will didn't know what to expect from Rabbit, but the robot did absolutely nothing, just stared like he couldn't quite work out what was going on.
“He givin' you trouble, boys?” Smokey asked gruffly.
“Uh... a little, sir,” one of the guys answered. Reynolds wasn't even looking at them, just staring straight at Rabbit like he'd never seen a robot before.
“All right, drop it, son,” Smokey said quietly. “Let the fellas fix you up.” As usual, Will had no idea what to expect when Rabbit opened his mouth, but what came out was what he expected leastof all.
“Yes... sir...” came the soft, unassuming reply. Will was blindsided, as were the engineers, who were watching Major Reynolds as if he'd revealed himself as a sorcerer. It wasn't often Rabbit addressed anyone with military respect. But now, he simply glanced down and sat still while the guys replaced all his removed panels.
“Can you confirm that you are fully operational?” one of the guys recited at the end.
“Affirmative,” Rabbit answered with a subdued air. The other engineer was busy loosing off the ties that had him pegged to the floor, and once released he stood up to his full height. He stretched, then bent back down to pick up something too small for Will to make out.
Rabbit stepped between the mechanics and walked straight past Will, up to where Major Reynolds stood, still bracing himself against a rack – like he couldn't quite stand by himself. Without a word, Smokey opened his hand and held his palm out flat, and Rabbit placed a contorted metal shape in it. It was a bullet. The bullet they'd pulled out of him. The one meant for Will.
“There's your souvenir, boss,” Rabbit remarked in a tone far lower than anything Will had heard before. Like an entirely new register reserved just for these moments. Smokey closed his hand around the drop of metal, and clenched it into a fist.
“You always were lousy at giving gifts,” he rumbled, and then jerked his head over his shoulder in a gesture for the door. “Now git going an' see the Colonel.” Rabbit nodded, and then left without saying a word. Will felt new to the Camp all over again, stood in the corner watching things happen without context. But, before the sense of isolation could really sink in, the Major's eyes were on him.
“Come an' give me a hand, Captain,” he instructed suddenly, and Will almost tripped over his own feet getting over there. The Major put a heavy hand on his shoulder and followed it with an arm. Will walked with him like escorting an elderly relative, and as they got out the door, he saw the wheelchair abandoned outside the building.
“A-a-are you all r-right, sir?” he asked timidly, and Smokey lurched over and fell back into the chair with a heave of breath.
“I'll be fine,” he declared. “Took a bit of'a poundin' and I'm not gettin' any younger these days. Here,” he suddenly announced, and reached for Will's hand with his own. Dropped the bullet into his palm. “You take this one.”
“S-s-sir?” He let it sit in his hand, cold and unassuming. As if this little thing couldn't have ripped the life out of him, or put a dent in Rabbit the size of a golf ball.
“Don't worry 'bout it,” Smokey asserted. “Got a lil' joke with Rabbit, he always gives me the bullet when he's hit out there. But you take that one,” he said, and patted a hand over his front pocket. It jingled like it was full of change, but Will knew it wasn't dimes and nickels in there. “I got plenty more.”
Part 3 (TBA)
If you enjoyed this, why not try some other Binary!verse stories?
I I actually had a a question. T the bronze a armor you w wear now i is that the same a armor t that you had b be for um… y you know be for you w were upgraded? s sorry you d don’t have to a answer it!..... Maybe this w wasn’t a a good i idea SORRY
*want to walk away*
It's okay, miss, I can answer you.
Well your craftsman (or craftslady's) eye was right. There are parts of my original frame slapped onta this new one. Your guess as t' why that happened is pretty much right.
See, I wanted to go back after all this war business setted down, but the good ol' govvies said it wasn't a good idea. Not to mention someone had made a rather dashing birdhouse out of my old parts while I wasn't using'em. So there's a few bits an' pieces the engineers salvaged and put back on -- a few Walter Originals -- but a whole lotta new stuff underneath.
Right down though, right in the middle, it's still the same old core that pappy made me with, an' so that's what I think really matters. Can't get to crying over things no one can change, right?
