A Different Place

Chapter 50 - Turn This Ship Around

The Drache banked sharply to the left as MegaMan turned, avoiding a shell fired from Glyde's ship. Sure, the big beam cannon couldn't get him from up here, but Draches were small, and couldn't take a lot of punishment. Plus, MegaMan was carrying perhaps the most important cargo of all.

"Be careful, up there!" Tron shouted over the voicelink. Her combat module was hanging from the Drache's clamps, ready to spring into battle if necessary.

"I'm trying to not get hit," MegaMan shot back, flinging the little skyship into a wide turn. "Try to shoot a little more at Glyde, if you can. Number Thirty-Nine's having trouble with it.'

"It's just hard to hit those little Birdbots from so far away," said Thirty-Nine defensively. "And I don't think my bullets are doing anything at all to that big robot."

MegaMan looked at the aforementioned giant robot, which was coincidentally the same one with which Glyde had tried to attack the city earlier. Its four arms were flinging explosives as rapidly as possible at many of the Draches currently participating in the assault. As his own Drache zoomed by, he saw that Thirty-Nine was correct; the bullets were having little or no effect on the large combat vehicle. "Tron!" he called. "Do you want to detach and attack him directly?

"You bet!" Tron answered with violent fervor. "I'll drop down on the next pass! Try to get as close as you can!"

"Roger," MegaMan said, not realizing until it was too late that it made him sound a bit like a Servbot. He flew lower, approaching the stern of Glyde's emerald green skyship. Confident that no one would notice his Drache from this vantage point, he pulled in closer, getting almost near enough to bump the ship's hull with the Drache's nose. Then, he climbed slowly upward, the ship's deck gradually came into view. MegaMan leaned slightly forward on the controls, inching the ship forward, until he judged it an acceptable drop zone for Tron's vehicle. "You're clear," he advised her.

"Great. Here I go!" The Drache rose slightly as the weight released from its undercarriage.

Yes, now Tron was going into battle. Battle against that huge, powerful robot which had caught them off their guard in Kattleox City and was now lurking over her, and was that an evil grin on its face? MegaMan shook his head. Now the "face" just looked metallic and locked in place, like it should have. MegaMan's stomach tightened. All of a sudden he had an uncomfortably tight feeling in his stomach. He didn't want Tron going out there alone.

Shifting the flight controls to Number Thirty-Nine's console, he said, "Take over. I'm going to go help." Luckily, he'd brought his Arm Cannon along in case of emergency. He locked it in place over his left hand, then opened the Drache's rear door. The distance down was perhaps a bit greater than he'd originally thought. Nearly thirty feet of air hung between him and the deck of Glyde's vessel. MegaMan gulped. He'd never been afraid of heights, but this seemed an insane height for anyone to jump. From behind him, he could hear the sounds of Tron engaging Glyde's massive robot. She would be in for a serious fight, one she likely would not be able to win.

MegaMan closed his eyes and stepped out the door.

Seconds later, he landed perfectly on the deck. In truth, he felt no discomfort whatsoever, a fact which, considering some of his previous experiences, no longer surprised him. He doubled around and saw the Feldynaught spinning its squid-like arms in a clockwise direction, firing random shots in the direction of Glyde's massive machine.

"Hey!" called a voice from beside him. "Are you okay? That was one heck of a fall."

"Dantz," MegaMan said in recognition. "What are you doing here?"

The tall Digger tipped his hat slightly. "Well, when I saw this ship attacking the city, I knew I couldn't just let it happen. I had to do something, even though it was just me against all of this." He looked at the giant mechs battling in front of them. "To tell you the truth, I was pretty glad when you all showed up. I don't know if I could have handled it by myself."

MegaMan pondered that for a minute. Could he, by himself, put himself up against unbelievably bad, and perhaps even impossible odds to protect people who he'd never even met? No, he decided, he could never be that selfless, no matter how noble it was. He shook the feeling off. "All right, let's help Tron. She's a little outmatched." His eyes lightened ever so slightly. "Don't tell her I said that. She'd rip my ears off."

"No problem," Dantz said, charging up his Arm Cannon. "Once that clown gets a taste of the ol' Dantz Blaster, he'll be sorry he ever messed with us!"

The Feldynaught shot a volley of Bonne Bombs at its larger opponent. "The Dantz Blaster?" asked MegaMan. "Isn't that just a regular Arm Cannon?"

Dantz shuffled his feet. "Well, yeah, but we gave it a special name."

Laughing, MegaMan said, "No offense, but that makes you sound really full of yourself. That's like if I called mine...um...if I called mine..."

"The 'Mega Buster,'" Dantz supplied for him.

"Yeah," said MegaMan, grinning. "The Mega Buster."

After a quick glance, both Diggers dashed into battle. MegaMan tried to focus his fire at what seemed like they might have been the large vehicle's weak spots. It was hard to keep his shots clear; Tron kept getting in his way. The deck just wasn't wide enough to leave room for him, Dantz, and the Feldynaught, too. MegaMan leapt up as high as he could, getting off three blasts at Glyde's maniacal vehicle.

"Hey!" Tron called over the voicelink. "Stop that! I don't need your help!"

"I'm not going to let you fight alone," MegaMan said. "That robot's almost twice the size of yours!"

"I don't care! I'm not going to let him win!" Tron fired another barrage at her foe. "Get out of here! I don't want either of you helping me!"

"Okay," MegaMan said hesitantly. He stood down from the fight, then ran over to Dantz, signaling the other Digger to stop his assault as well.

"What's happening?" asked Dantz.

"Tron doesn't want us to fight with her," said MegaMan. "It's probably some stupid ego trip, but I'm not going to get anything done with her hollering in my ear constantly, either, so we'd better do what she says."

"Is there any other way we could help?"

"I don't know," MegaMan said, firing at a Birdbot that was trying to rush him.

Dantz ruffled his brow in concentration. "Okay, I've got it. Let's get the ship out of here."

"What?"

"If we can change the ship's course, we can keep it from destroying any more of the city than it already has. Maybe we can even destroy their giant weapon, or something, I don't know." Dantz adjusted his helmet. "It's worth a shot."

MegaMan shrugged. "Okay. Let's do it."

Roll held the screaming child tightly against her shoulder. "Don't worry," she said soothingly. "We'll find your mother soon." It was hard to be comforting when she was so worried, both about Dantz and the little girl trying to squirm out of her grasp. Roll had found the child sobbing in front of the ruins of a nearby hamburger restaurant. The Spotter fervently hoped that the little girl's parents had not been inside,.

"Excuse me," she asked a nearby townswoman. "Do you know this child? Or her parents?"

The woman looked dazed, staring at the smoking remains of an apartment building. "No," she said blankly.

"That's alright," Roll said, walking away from her. Where were the police, anyway?

The sound of a siren grew closer as Roll walked down the street. The library was still undamaged; maybe she should head there? A police car drove by her as she turned right down an alleyway. At least they were finally reacting to the disaster. She darted through the alleyway, which was not nearly as concealing as it had been several hours earlier.

As she emerged, she saw that, indeed, the library was still structurally intact. Roll dashed across the open street, which, she had to admit, was not as dangerous as it had been just minutes ago, when the city had been under vicious attack. While Roll was climbing the steps to the library, she heard a voice cry out behind her.

"My baby! That's my baby!"

With relief, Roll handed the child over to the matronly woman. She continued her trek into the library building, not sure of what she was going to do next. It was at times like this she really wished she was able to fight by Dantz's side!

"Errerrh!" came a familiar squawk as the girl tripped over an obstruction.

"What?" She looked down at her feet. "Quackard, is that you?!"

"Yeah," said the Birdbot weakly. "I think you should watch where you're---"

Quackard was cut off as Roll gripped him in the tightest, most painful grip he had ever been caught up in. "Oh, Quackard, thank goodness! I thought I was never going to see you again!" She tightened her arms around the diminutive Birdbot.

"Errawk! Gently, baby, gently. I don't want to have to buff out any dents in my awesome bod."

Roll loosened her arms just a bit. "And Grandpa? And Data? Are they okay, too?"

Quackard gave her arm a quick nibble of affection. "Yeah, they're all okay, keh-keh! It was touch and go for a while, but we finally landed without any one of us killing the others, so we're all ship-shape. Grampy's inside. He was worried sick about you, you know."

"Let's go see him!" Roll dragged her re-programmed Birdbot inside the Kattleox Island Library.

Yuna awoke as the Carrier's klaxon started reporting. She rolled groggily out of the stasis tube. Admittedly, she was far more alert than she would normally be upon awakening, but still, she felt a lingering tiredness that was difficult to shake away. "What is it?" she asked Gatz.

Gatz, still sitting at the pilot's control panel, checked the readouts. "Mistress Yuna, it appears that the near-Purifier readings we received earlier are being repeated, though softly, from almost exactly the same location."

"Excellent." This truly was good news. Yuna had been half-afraid that the readings would be intangible ghosts again, leaving her with no escape from her current carbon shell. "How far are we from their location?"

"Less than ninety minutes, Mother."

"That's wonderful. Let me know when we have arrived." Yuna slid back into her stasis tube and closed her eyes. She'd need all the energy she could muster once they arrived at...what was it called again? She tried to recall the name of the island. Oh, yes. Kattleox.