After bidding Benjamin and his family farewell for now, and Berko giving Ian a huge hug after waking up just in time to see them leave, Ian led them back to the eastern gate. They would have to pick up their own transport vehicles before taking the outer tunnel connecting to the south eastern gate, emerging back above ground a short distance away. There was already a group gathered in the street leading to the exit, three massive open top trucks and a scattering of motorcycles of various quality and repair. The people gathered there wore a smattering of partial soldier uniforms as well as attire common for wasteland mercenaries. It wasn’t hard to find Zeera, standing among the workers with practiced and overly familiar watch, barking orders as needed. It only took her seconds to notice the trio of newcomers to her party, and she cracked a snide grin as they approached, Ian holding the paper authorization in his hand, ready to give her.
“Heh. Secretary Morna must think we have platinum in our trucks if he’s sending a bunch of cyborg mercenaries to help guard it,” Zeera’s greeting came as a scoffed sneer as she looked over her assigned assistants. She didn’t look impressed, but she also didn’t look hostile. More like she was dealing with a bunch of pets that needed proper handling.
“Got a problem with it?” Whip asked in return, his eyes narrowing in unamused distaste saturated with boredom from having heard the same complaint too many times.
“What makes you think we’re cyborgs?” Ian cut in, giving one last chance for Zeera to retract her position and start again in a more amicable manner.
She didn’t take the offer though, just huffing and giving Whip a sideways glance before looking back to Ian. “Please. All three of you have the halo eyes. And it’s not like bluebell here even tries to hide anything on his back,” she scoffed, nodding her head towards Whip. “I ain’t gonna pick a fight though. More just surprised your kind even exists anymore. Thought you’d all gone berserk and gotten put down by now. But, I can’t deny you’ll be useful. Just don’t do anything crazy and I won’t have to put you down myself,” she offered as a scathing withdrawal, shifting the rather bulky plasma submachine gun to her shoulder and turning back to her team. “Alright kids, let’s head out in five. Those who don’t make it by then don’t get paid. The puppies can drive themselves, and I better not see anyone provoking them. We don’t need to give them a reason to bite.”
Midas had to sneer at her disregard of gun safety, even if the power cell had been removed for now, and had a half consideration that he might just accidentally forget to protect her if she ended up being a target. As Whip wordlessly ushered him to his bike, Midas obediently followed, noting how Whip’s protective shielding arm around him was also acting as a sort of cover.
‘Remove the bullets from your pistols,’ Whip directed Midas silently, flicking his eyes to meet one of the truck drivers that was staring at them and getting him to flinch and return to his task of starting the engine.
‘Why?’ Midas returned, irritable because of their treatment as well as the idea of not being able to use the more effective metal beads. Plasma did nothing against the larger wildlife around here.
‘Don’t give them a reason to blame us if one of them ends up dead,’ Whip returned. He already knew Ian had the same idea, the pack of bullets for his rifle being subtly removed from his pouch and stowed deep in his bike’s compartment. Physical bullets were illegal in all three cities, but they all knew the further away from the cities people got, the more loose laws became. Neither Whip or Ian was going to give these soldiers or mercenaries a reason to use them as scapegoats.
As the others started mounting their bikes, Whip swung onto the back of Midas’ bike, taking the bullet case Midas passed to him and storing it as well. Midas still seemed grumpy, but he took his usual position at the front, looping his fingers into the rings that made up one of the controls.
“Nice Cerah loot. Where’d you steal that from?” a gruff mercenary asked, staying a few feet away from them but still nodding at Midas’ bike.
Giving him a half glance, Midas huffed. “Garbage heap,” he answered shortly.
The mercenary grunted in amused disbelief. “Sure. Let me just look up the serial number registry and see where it’s supposed to be in service,” he pressed, seeing if threatening to report Midas would get him to talk.
“Sure. The bulk of it is from model S7-24-12-11, but the shocks I had to pull from model SC24-72,” Midas shot back, unfazed. “And I had to construct the interface from various parts of an old high wire transport compartment, a neural link motherboard manufacturing device, and a broken vending machine. Do you want the serial numbers for those too?”
The mercenary ended up twitching his head back in surprise at Midas actually talking back to him instead of stammering under the hazing. But he recovered quickly and half forced a short laugh. “Damn kid, that’s a lot. Bit of a handyman there, I see. Might actually be useful to have ya around then,” he chuckled, waving his hand dismissively as he casually left to join his own riding buddy.
Midas could only squint in annoyance after him, giving an unimpressed breath at the return comment and shifting to get comfortable while they waited for the direction to leave. Whip couldn’t help adding his own genuine chuckle though, leaning over to mutter quietly. “Nice one. Just don’t get too feisty, or they’ll stop playing fair,” he cautioned, giving Midas an approving pat on the upper back.
“Then they better be ready for me to meet them on the playing field they set,” Midas scoffed back, reaching his free hand into the other controls as Zeera shouted and gestured for the group to proceed.
“HA. We’ll see if you can keep that claim. Mister ‘I can’t tell the difference between coffee and mud’,” Whip teased back, adjusting his weight to his usual position for a long ride.
Midas’ mildly flustered protest was half lost to the roar of slightly over twenty engines, and Whip ended up just flashing him a toothy smile before quickly raising a brow and nodding his head towards their departing group. The response he earned was just Midas punching too much power into the bike’s gears to cause it to jerk both of them to harass Whip, then smooth out into a steady ride to keep in line with the others. Whip could only laugh again, being more than used to this method of attempted torment from the lad. And just like always, Ian slid in diagonally behind them, rolling his eyes at their antics even as their tires scuffed up clouds of dirt that forced them to keep a bit more distance.
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I enjoy designing the extra characters for this sometimes =u=
