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Boom Town
Topic Started: May 26 2010, 09:50 PM (195 Views)
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.....
Rock lounged in the main office of the headquarters building at Gateway. Even though it was the MERCS headquarters, the office wasn't used much, as Malcom spent most of his time away from the base. He sat up in his seat as the doorknob turned, but was unsurprised when Miyuki entered.

"You have to be the laziest mercenaries in the world...." She said with a slight eye twitch. "You all just sit around here all day, and your boss is too busy convincing everyone to stop fighting. I can't see how you plan to get any work if you keep making friends with all the potential enemies."

"Hey don't complain to me, I had a job a few days ago." Rock replied.

"A job that PAYS Rock... seriously how do you plan to keep this place running doing charity work?" Miyuki clarified, crossing her arms and looking out the window.

"I see your point... But Malcom's got enough credits to keep this place going for a while, and now that the spaceport's almost underway, we'll see some steady income from that. Did you really come find me just to call me lazy?"

Miyuki turned to face Rock, "Actually, I've been meaning to ask you, do you know what's wrong with Amuro?"

Rock scratched his head, "I thought that was more your department."

"Well normally I'd agree, but his AI is so advanced it's just like a real person, so I'm at a loss as to what he's 'thinking.' Regardless, he's been getting more and more uncooperative lately, have you noticed anything?"

Rock thought about it for a moment. "I'm no good with people or feelings, how should I know if a robot's in a bad mood? I'd tell him to go for a walk, but I'd probably never see the F90 again... wait..."

"Miyuki, I think I've got an idea." Rock said, giving her a very un-technical description of how he felt they could fix Amuro's problem.

~

The day came and went, and Rock went to check on Miyuki, whom the guards told him had been working through the night in the factory. As he stepped into the dark building, he could see the F90 kneeling in the far corner, no sign of his mechanic though.

"Miyuki?" He called out, surprised to be answered by Amuro.

"She's asleep now, you should let her rest." The voice came from.... behind him??? Rock spun around, shocked to see the visage of Amuro Ray step out from behind some crates. Looking closely however, he realized it was a very well made hologram, so much so that it appeared solid until scruitinized. Turning back to the F90, Rock spotted a tiny point of light coming from the Gundam's head, presumably projecting Amuro. What he couldn't see was that an ingenious trick of light-refraction allowed Amuro to see through the hologram's eyes.

"So she finished it already? Man she's fast at this stuff..." Rock thought aloud, F90's sensors picking up his voice so that Amuro could hear him.

"She told me it was your idea." He said, "Come on, I'll show you what else she did."

"Wait, how does your voice come out of...."

"Oh that? She reprogrammed the AI to essentially do ventriloquism." Amuro said, his eyes dropping slightly at the reminder that this hologram wasn't a real human body. "I know it's just an illusion, but you have no idea how much better this is than being stuck inside that thing all day, unable to interact with anyone."

As the two reached the F90, Rock found Miyuki sleeping in a chair not far from the machine. He hesitated for a moment to consider finding her a blanket, but Amuro directed him to the cockpit.

"She said this part was as much for your sake as mine." He said, powering up the panoramic monitor and watching Rock's eyes go wide as a second seat appeared in the cockpit. Amuro's hologram stepped inside and merged seamlessly with the display, sitting in the new copilot's chair.

"See? Now you don't have to stare at the top of the cockpit when you talk to me." He said with a slight chuckle. "You always treated me like I was still the real Amuro, like we were a team piloting the F90, now I get to feel like that's really true.

"Wow..." Rock said, amazed at the amount of work Miyuki was able to put into this task, and the level of quality in the result. "I never expected her to go this far with it, amazing.... and you can see from, well, from your eye view?"

"Yeah, just like I'm really sitting here. Unfortunately, there's no way to mimic hearing through a hologram, but my range is limited to a distance that the F90's audio sensors are effective in anyway."

Rock stood amazed at the new setup of his Gundam, he felt reassured knowing that the AI which had been helping him, was finally getting something out of the deal.

"Be warned though," Amuro said, "Doing this has drastically reduced my control over the F90. She told me you were aware of this and were alright with it, but I'm worried about it anyway."

Rock paused, he knew there would be a downside, but wondered how bad 'drastically' was, not wanting to spoil Amuro's happiness, if AI's could have that, he bluffed.

"What? You think I can't handle F90 without the training wheels on?"

"No, it's not that.... Actually you are getting a lot better, I've been stepping down my assistance regularly, I'm just worried the sudden change might make things difficult for you."

"Bring it on!" Rock said enthusiastically, "Between my new co-pilot and me we got it covered!"

Amuro left to continue exploring the factory, and Rock carefully lifted Miyuki from the chair, carrying her sleeping form to her house and laying her on the couch. After draping a blanket over the young mechanic, he stepped outside.

"Hmm... I wonder where the Major and Striker are at..." He thought aloud, planning to finally introduce them to Amuro, when a sight caught him off guard. A man, sitting in a wheelchair directly beneath the Arch. As Rock squinted to see who this mystery guest was, his gaze turned into a death glare.

"YOU."
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.....
As Rock approached the crippled man, his mind was filled with images of a man crushed to death by a burning mobile suit.

"Lieutenant." He said, a mix of surprise and something darker in his voice. "With respect sir, how the hell are you still alive!?"

"Ha!" Woods replied, his tired face looking up at the boy he turned into a killer. "I suppose you'd appreciate it if dead men would stay the hell in their graves eh? So would I."

He looked down at his legs, covered by a tattered blanket. "I was lucky, if you can call it luck. The Leo missed me entirely, but the ground it carved up took my legs clean off..." He said, lifting the blanket to reveal a pair of wooden legs that weren't even attached, just positioned in the chair for show. "Unlike you kids, I had a mechanical counterpressure suit, they don't decompress so easily. Tell me, how many of you made it out?"

Rock wasn't sure what to say. "Only me as far as I know. If there are others, they're probably still out there fighting."

"No, I have a feeling you're the only one." Woods replied. "Those kids weren't like you, they wouldn't last a day without us keeping them safe. We told you all it was just a game, and most of you believed it. Winners eat, losers don't show up for the game the next day, or so we told you. But you, you figured it out. You figured out that losers were the dead bodies we made you shoot at the firing range. You figured out not to eat what the rest of the kids ate, where it came from, who it came from. You figured out how to play by your own rules, and live."

Rock clenched his fist at the thought. He wanted to tell his former commander to leave, he wanted to not waste his breath and just shoot the man. But something held him back. Woods looked up again, coughing slightly, he continued.

"You know, I never wanted that for you. I only took you in because the alternative was to leave you to die. I wanted to give you better, to get away from that damned war, to at least try to give you a family."

"You wanted to give me a family? Did you really think I was too young to remember what your Mobile Suit looked like? I remember exactly what you did to my family, and YOU thought you could be a father to me? What kind of sadistic freak are you anyway?"

"Boy..." Woods said, his tone far more serious than before, "I've done inifinitely worse than just kill a few civillians unintentionally. I wanted to give you something better than the short life of a five-year-old left in a pool of his parents blood in the middle of a warzone. Atonement for me is impossible, but if I could do that, at least I'd have one less sin on my list. Or so I thought, then the higher ups started using kids to fill the ranks. No one got a choice in who's kids were used. Even claiming to be your father, I couldn't protect you from that fate. Since I spoke out against it so adamantly, I was stripped of the F70 and placed in charge of the youth infantry division. I was told that if I didn't like sending kids to die, I should train them to survive. As the war dragged on, the 'training' they forced me to implement became more and more disturbing. But by then I'd caused the deaths of so many I could barely bring myself to care anymore. In the end, I was spending all my time either looking for death on the battlefield, or looking for booze in the basecamp. I never found enough of either."

"So what now, you can't possibly expect forgiveness for all that." Rock said.

"What I want from you is a bullet." Woods said, pointing his finger at his forehead, "Right here."

Little did either of them know, Miyuki had woken up and was well within earshot for most of the conversation. She quickly grabbed Rock, pulled him away and quietly spoke to him. Rock shrugged, and walked back to Woods shaking his head.

"The boss lady's spoken, we're too broke to be wasting bullets on every angry old man who can't deal with his past... Besides, apparently there's some local kids that started hanging around this place since I last dropped in, I haven't seen then yet, but we can't be setting that kind of example with them around." Rock said, his mind mixed between annoyance that he couldn't simply shoot the man, and a spiteful hope that refusing to kill him hurt more.

Rock walked away, hoping Woods would simply leave, seek his end elsewhere, but Miyuki had other plans.

"Hey old man, from the sound of it, everyone think's you're dead as it is right? So why not just start over?"

"Start... over?" Woods asked, looking as though the concept was entirely foriegn to him.
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Much to Rock's annoyance, the old man had weaseled his way into staying for dinner. The mess hall had a few dozen tables by now, mostly filled to capacity aside from the one which generally held the lead crew of MERCS. Today however Malcom, Stanley and Hikaru were out, so Miyuki and Rock sat fairly close to one another, Woods sat across from them, and the 'local kids' she'd mentioned gathered around them, eager for the chance to meet one of the original memebers of this rapidly growing mercenary organization. The kids were slightly dissapointed however, as rather than cool war stories, all they got from Rock was a cold stare at the old man. After they lost interest and left, Woods finally spoke again.

"A cute bunch of little friends you have here... But do you really think your meager defenses are enough to keep children in a place like this?" Woods said, leaning forward and resting his chin on his folded hands.

"It's not so much my choice to let the kids stay, I only found out about them today y'know. Besides, it's not like you'd know what I'm defending them with." Rock said, thinking about his nearly unique machine, the F90.

"That old relic from the Formula project? Tell me, did you get Amuro or Char? Did the mission packs survive the theft attempt?" Woods said with a sly grin, "We've been watching for some time now Rock, you don't have the power to be defending people. Seriously boy, you were trained as an infantryman, what the hell are you doing trying to be a Mobile Suit pilot? As you are now you'd do them more good with an assault rifle than a Gundam."

There was no more need for pretense, Woods smiled knowing his silent audience was busy questioning his sudden change in demeanor and words. This was not the man they'd allowed into their home, and it was not Jack Woods. Before they could ask the obvious question, the man in the wheelchair explained.

"Clearly my choice of appearance wasn't a wise one, plastic surgery and taking advantage of my disability made it easy to fool you, but I expected a warmer welcome. My name is Cairin, and I've went to a very large amount of trouble to see you. As I said, your outdated Formula Gundam isn't good enough for you to be joining up with some 'defenders of justice' or whatever and drawing children into your inevitable conflicts. It's not only the machine either, I'm well aware that YOU are not capable of fighting at the level needed to do this. But we can fix that."

Rock stood up abruptly at that statement. "And just what the hell would you know about what I'm capable of? You can fix that? Don't make me laugh old man, I'm getting better at this every day, and I have allies I can depend on. I don't need you to fix anything."

Cairin shook his head in disdain. "Allies you can depend on? Getting better every day are we? Don't make me laugh. Even I could take this base single handedly. As for your allies, I've seen the variety of machines they utilize, and believe me, I've seen better. To be effective you need better Mobile Suits, and before that can happen, you need the skills to handle the machine you have. Your AI can't keep doing all the hard work."

Rock pulled his handgun from it's holster, Miyuki stood to intercede, but he dismissed her with a gesture and spoke. "I don't know who you are, but you'll have to do a lot better than insults and trash talk to convince me I need your help. Chuck, Tommy," He said, motioning to two of the Security members, "He's done here, lets send him on his way."

~

Some distance from the base, the truck came to a halt, the Security men being kind enough to help the crippled Cairin out of the truck and back into his wheelchair. As they returned to the truck and prepared to drive back, Rock got out and stepped up to the old man.

"I expect to not see you around anymore, understood?"

"Oh that just won't do boy, you still haven't heard my offer." Cairin said, chuckling slightly.

"If it'll get rid of you, then spit it out."

Cairin leaned back in his wheelchair smiling. "As you are, you can't do any good as a pilot, but who says you should remain as you are? I work for an organization, one whose purpose is to improve mankind by exploring the limits of human potential. We've been watching you, scouting you as it were, as a candidate for incredible improvements."

"You sound a lot like the stuff I heard out of ZAFT during the war... Not a good way to get on my good side." Rock said, crossing his arms and waiting for the inevitable continuation of the sales pitch.

"In truth we worked with the Alliance at that time, we provided crucial research which yielded the Extended, as well as played a part in the improvement of soldiers through quantum brainwave research. However after the war, the damage done by ZAFT's colony drop operations eliminated most of our laborotories and research. Because of that, we've gone back to our roots as it were, roots that extend far back into the Universal Century, long before either of our times. What we are offering you, is the chance to become a Newtype."

Rock was done listening, "Give me a break old man, you can't just make someone a Newtype. People are just born that way. Now I've heard your lame offer, so leave me alone."

Cairin sighs, feeling he isn't getting his point across. "I guess I'll have to start using more direct means of persuasion... Go home and prepare boy, I'll see you again soon, and I'll show you the kind of power we have to offer." Cairin said, turning quietly and wheeling himself away.
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Then sun was setting across the wasted Midwest, Cairin in his wheelchair lookingdown at a massive tarp covering a equally massive hole in the ground. Reaching down with great effort, he caught hold of a tie-down and pulled it free, letting the wind do the rest of the job of removing the tarp. As the massive cloth tumbled away, revealing what was once known as F70 Cannon Gundam. Now it's main cannons had been removed, and it's design refocused on high speed close to mid-range combat.

Cairin smiled, and pulled a pair of high-quality prosthetic legs from the bag strapped to his wheelchair. As he climbed down into the cockpit, it occurred to him to make a quick report before heading out. He opened a channel to his superiors.

"This is Cairin, the ruse was a waste of time, but I'm taking one more shot at convincing the boy. If I am unsuccessful, I will simply eliminate him, and turn my attention to the younger options availible there. Cyber-enhancement research division, Cairin Rithe, ending transmission."
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