Chaos Precip

V. Creed,

( Are you still being an idiot up at the Canadian border? )

Batou let the Tachikohma skid to a halt so he could look over the town they were approaching. The little town of Riverbend was...a lot more fortified than he remembered it being. "Stay put," he told Remy quietly, leaving her on the seat of truck as he slid to the ground.

Perhaps bandits had been through? There'd been bandits before and they hadn't let to a nice, solid wall and gate guards.

Had someone taken over and declared it a duchy or something?

Well, one way to find out. He lifted his arm and waved. "Hey! What gives? I can't get my Tachikohma through that little gate!"

The men were cheerful enough when they called back to Batou, obviously they recognized him, but they wanted to check his truck anyway. The nice men ambled up to the truck and peered up at Remy, their faces sliding from cheerful to worried in a heartbeat. "Ma'am?" One of them asked. "You alright in there?"

Batou shook his head, clearing the last fuzziness of the teleport from his head. He wasn't a Space, he didn't like the whole 'moving against physics' kinda thing unless it was under his own power. "Alright kid, we're here. You sure you're okay with this? No last minute nerves or anything? I gotta warn you, I haven't done the dad thing before so I could really screw it up somehow..."

He wasn't joking. If Remy was at all uncomfortable they'd hop a Space back and thank Arebah for her time!

Ms. Na,

I asked around the Org and you came highly recommended as someone who can draft incredibly binding contracts. I happen to need one of those. I'm adopting a girl and I'm not exactly sure how to reassure her that i'm not going away and that she's not going to get set aside. I figure that one of your contracts for the adoption may be a good start. If you have the time could we meet up?

Thanks for the time,
Batou

Shibuya isn't a big town, and it's not a powerful town. It's not a centre of commerce, because it only has one really saleable item: cloth. The people there make enough to eat, and buy what they can't make. Enough stay that it's a thriving town, enough leave that word of their cloth has spread around.

And right now it's completely under siege. There are about two hundred people boarded up in the mayor's house-slash-offices, with all the food they could grab and all the weapons they could find. The post-office is in the same building, so that's where they've got cleared out for people who are coming in to help.

There is nothing so sad as a highly fashionable person in disarray, and Kitanji Megumi is one of those poor souls. Four days ago he was perfectly coiffed from the smooth long hair to the points of his shirts down to spit-shined shoes. Now? The coat has been passed off to a little girl who ran to safety wearing nothing but a nightshirt, his shirt to someone else, his trousers are stained with blood and spilled food, and his hair is in the sloppiest ponytail it's ever been in, and crackling with electricity. His voice, however, is still even and calming as he talks to his people.

Outside the infected people stagger around feeding and attempting to get in, stymied by the lightning rods surrounding the mayoral house, and static hops between them, arcing white and violent whenever something gets too close. That's what has kept Kitangji's people safe, and that's what has him worn to a gaunt shadow. He's a Master, not an Adept, and four days of continual working has drained him.

"Thank you for coming." he said to each person, "I am not a fighter, I have to trust you each to know how you can best help."

The place wasn't even a town really, just a bump in the road homestead, but it was a good relay point for the mail and Batou'd overnighted there more than a few times over the years. The family was a large one, and it was the oldest boy that 'caught' incoming mail and sent it on to places further west. It was this boy that tried to catch Batou's attention as he pulled the wagon up.

Of course, being quiet and shy didn't help. It wasn't until dinner that the boy managed to catch Batou's ear, and then there were a few whispered words and a envelope passed.

Batou wasn't happy with whatever was in the message. Not at all. He frowned and excused himself from the table to write a response. The boy here wasn't strong enough to teleport people so he had to get a message off to a Space that was...

...and he had no idea what to do with Remy. He wasn't keen on taking her into a fight. She'd do better left with the truck and tachikohma, but he had the niggling feeling she'd insist and there wasn't time to argue. Not if the situation was as bad as the letter hinted. He'd been in Shibuya, people there couldn't handle an attack, especially not a large scale one. "Hell," he muttered while digging in the truck for paper to write on.

Just...hell. He hated quarantine situations. He was better with one nice, big enemy to shoot at.

They'd been in Wheelsy a lot longer than Batou liked, but they'd needed to give the nice shop lady time to make up Remy's new wardrobe. The last of the clothing had been finished this morning and tucked into a long trunk that now lived under Remy's cot in the truck. In general he thought he'd done a pretty good job adjusting his truck and tachikohma for another person. It was cozy now!

Totally cozy.

If anyone called it cramped he was going to fry them.

"Alright, supplies, clothes, tire's fixed....am I forgetting anything? Damn it, probably..."

[I reach and she's not there.]

Sometimes there was screaming, but most people his age screamed these days. There weren't exactly psychologists handy to fix every little brain quirk anymore and he didn't mind the nightmares, not really. They meant he still remembered.

Sometimes there was thrashing and lightning crawling through the back of the truck he called home; he'd had to apologize to his baby more than once because he didn't sleep well at night.

And then, sometimes, he woke up screaming her name.

Motoko.

Screaming her name and reaching for a woman that wasn't there but he damn well knew was alive.

And some nights there was all three.

This was one of those nights.

It'd been a pretty productive day all told. He gotten a few sketches done and sent out with a rider, had someone with tires look at his truck (it would take a day or three to get that totally fixed), gotten his 9mm to a gunsmith and now...

...now he was holding a nice little gun rebuilt into a bigger frame for the girl. Hopefully she'd like it.

Now he was sitting in the dirt just under his tachikohma trying to figure out how to rearrange things to fit another bed in and some space for Remy. Maybe more netting on his walking tank? At least for the goods that wouldn't be damaged by weather?

Or some kinda bunk cots?

Christ it'd been a while since he had to consider sharing living space.

It's hot, it's muggy, and Bill Pardy is pissed as hell as he and Bors stand along the roadside on horseback.

The two dismount, and Bill hands his reins off to Bors, who leads the lightening manes to a tree to tie them up.

Looking up and down the deserted stretch of road, Bill sighs.

"Why the hell am I out here?"

"'Cause you popped off to the mayor while he was already reamin' you," Bors answers matter-of-factly.

"That asshole's tryin' t'tell me how t'do my job? Screw him."

Brushing his hands off, Bors walks back over to Bill.

"M'not sayin' you was wrong, I'm just sayin' that's why we're out 'ere."

Throwing Bors a dirty look, Bill crosses the road.

"Lemme know if we get any traffic," Bill says, finding a spot to sit in the shade, with his back up against a tree.

Bors sits down on a tree stump, watching Bill, and continues to muse.

"'Course, 'e is tellin' you what t'do, sendin' you out here t'pull a checkpoint shift an' all... "

Bill scowls and tugs down the bill of his cap to cover his eyes.

"Shut the hell up, Bors."

Barking a laugh, Bors leans down to pluck a stalk of grass up, sets it in his mouth, and settles in to watch.

"Awwwww DAMN IT!" Sometimes life just wasn't fair. Not at all. Not only had he just left one of the loonier towns on the coast (only low level folk and Waters allowed) but now he'd blown a tire. A god damn mother fucking tire.

Needless to say he was venting just a bit colorfully. In a handful of languages. What use was a foreign language if you couldn't swear in it?

There'd been good old fashioned barbed wire tangled in a clump of weeds he'd gone through, and really he should be glad that it didn't snag all four tires of the giant truck he used as a wagon, but, well, he wasn't feeling that grateful. Changing tires was an arduous business, it involved unpacking all the supplies from the back so that the jack he had could actually lift the truck, then he had to see if he could repair the damage because, well, if not the spare just wasn't going to last long.

And, well, an Earth had been the last one to screw those damn lug nuts on. "The HELL WAS HE THINKING?" Sure, Batou was strong, but not exactly that strong. It took him hours of cursing and tugging before he got the damn things to budge, and by that time the summer sun was well up in the sky and the humidity had hit 'soup' levels. His hound had been flopped in the shade of the Tachikohma from the start but after a good solid kick to the tire Batou thought it best to join the dog. He needed to cool down, in more ways than one, and there were worse ways to do so than having his hound shuffle upright long enough to flop across his chest.

"HELL. Damn it. So...you hungry Bastion?" Of course the hound was hungry. Dogs were like that.