The air in Terminal 5 was thick with a greasy haze, the taste of exhaust coating the tounge. Workers shuffled like ghosts through the designated lanes, their eyes face on the ground.
A man in a patched, drab grey worker's coat moved through the Terminal, indistinguishable from a hundred others. But his posture was too straight, his eyes too sharp for a weary laborer.
Dr Gion moved against the current of workers, one hand firmly on the strap of his backpack, his sense on high alert. His coily medium long hair, tucked behind his ears, did little to stop the sweat beading on his neck.
The other hand slipped into his coat pocket, his fingers finding the familiar crease of the small note.
"Stalls. - S"
Simple. Urgent. Dangerous.
A commotion erupted to his left.
"You! Identification!" a guardsman barked, his hulking aardvark already sniffing aggressively at a trembling man. The man fumbled in his pockets, producing a wrinkled document.
The guard glanced at it, but the aardvark let out a guttural hiss, lunging and sinking its claws into the man's leg. A painful scream was cut short as more guards swarmed, their attention fanning out into the crowd.
"Time to go." Gion melted into the chaos, his heart drumming against his ribs. After a moment he finally found the stalls. A row of grimy, makeshift vendor stalls tucked, separating the crowds walking in their respective ways.
He nonchalantly took a turn into a dim pathway inbetween the vendor stalls, and spotted his contact, a figure pressed against the grimy wall of a stall. Face shadowed by a hood. The man walked toward him.
Their eyes met for a fracture of a second.
No words.
The man pressed a small, heavy case into Gion's hand and walked past without a word, dissolving into the crowd.
Gion didn't look down nor at the man leaving. He walked forward, without breaking stride.
He boarded the next rattling train to Set 6, locking himself in a food service cart. Only then, in relative silence, did he let himself breathe. The case felt like a live coal in his hands.
…
For Kaito, the world was reduced to the roar of the drill and the crush of rock. Every shift in the mine was a tremor that sent him back to that day.
The shadow of the flying behemoth, the crack of whips in the sky. He leaned into his prosthetic, the drill-bit whirring, but his mind a thousand miles away.
"Scraprat."
Sekani'svoice echoed in his head, as clear as the foremans's bell. He was a slave to the rock, to the memory, to his place at the bottom of the world.
THUMP
A deep, groaning shudder ran through the tunnel.
Not a memory, it was real.
A support beamed splintered with a sound, like a gunshot.
"Cave-in!" Someone screamed.
Dust choked the air. Two miners were pinned under a fall of rubble, their cries muffled.
Instinct took over. Kaito scrambled forward, his one good arm straining alongside others, heaving rocks aside.
It was the alleyway all over again, the weight threatening to crush, but this time, they succeeded.
They pulled two men free, bruised and bleeding, but alive.
The formen arrived, Collen, arrived, his face purple with rage.
"You shut down my most profitable dig for them?" He snarled, gesturing with contempt at the injured men.
"Sentimentality don't pull quota, boy. Sentimentality gets you replaced."
Kaito looked from Collen's gluttonous, furious face to the exhausted, grateful eyes of the men he had helped save. Something solid and final clicked into place inside him. He unlatched his drill-arm prosthetic and let it fall with a heavy clang at Collen's feet.
"I quit."
…
"Are you trying to get us both scrapped?" Dakari's voice was low, dangerous rumble in teh scrapyard office. "That sonic boom carried halfway to the Spire! You think they have ears only in the Terminals?"
Uzoma stood his ground, his metal legs a firm anchor.
"I was innovating! It's what I do!" Uzoma roared back. His voice turned more somber as he watched his mentor's angered but worried expression.
"Its'... what you have taught me. It's what keeps me going." Uzoma said, looking through the widow, at the high tower far away from them.
How else can I improve myself? If I don't become better. Stronger!"
Dakari watches Uzoma grow a determined face.
"How else will I ever become a Medjay?"
Dakari walks over to Uzoma, grabbing him by his shoulders.
"How many times have I told you!" Dakari said, his fear gleaming out of his enraged face.
"It's a pointless dream! Only for the higher Sets!"
"Behemoth attacks have risen since last winter! And is almost at the outer rim of the Awdal!" Uzoma yelled out, his face finally turned up to Dakari.
"I heard they have been lowering the qualifications to be able to join the Juveline tournaments, in search of fresh pilots and engineers! "
"It's impossible! The only way for you to even qualify is for you to be..." Dakari stopped, looking down at Uzoma and his mechanical legs.
"These kinds of antics will create more problems for yourself, we have done great here in our yard. " Dakari said in a calm tone.
"Please Uzoma, don't let that dream kill you."
Uzoma's eyes latched onto Dakari's. "You know that I care about you, but those people.. "
The door creaked open, cutting off his retort. A silhouette against the falling sun, his grey coat now dusty. "Some dreams." Dr Gion said, his voice calm but firm.
"Are worth risking, my old friend."
Dakari sighed, the fight draining out of him, replaced by a profound weariness.
"Gion. You damn fool. I should've known." He gestured to Uzoma.
"This is the boy I told you about. The one with the hands that can make scrap sing."
Gion's eyes, sharp and analytical, scanned Uzoma. No pity, but with a spark of intense interest.
Before they could speak further, Kaito arrived, the dust of the mine still on his clothes, a new grim resolve in his eyes.
Uzoma still lingered to the words of Dakari, walked out, past Gion. Watching him with a fierce face, although changed when he was next to Kaito into a more bittersweet face.
While the two boys strolled together further into the yard, Gion closed the door, taking his coats off.
"Can't forget the smell, still smoking that bronco?" Gion said with a sassy expression.
"Oh sorry, wouldn't have smoked it if I knew a high Set man as yourself would humbly bestow upon us, you shithead!" Dakari barked back, both men laughing.
"I guess some things are harder to forget than others," Gion said.
They both take a seat next to Dakari's desk.
"I know you aint here because you miss the soot air," Dakari said.
"What're you holding in your head?"
Gion looked at his old friend as he laid his backpack on the desk and took out the small case. A low, rhythmic trhum seemed to emanate from the case.
Dakari leaned forward, in awe at the case. Gion opened the case, revealing the item within it.
A deep, living green light throbbed within, pulsing with a silent, potent energy.
…
The sound of the gate opened as both of the boys entered the Unit. Kaito jumped on the wall, up to the platform next to the mech and sat down.
Uzoma leans on the module, glancing at Kaito's naked shoulder.
"Did you end early?" Uzoma said, breaking the silence.
Kaito looks away, "I just wanted to visit, see what you guys were up to."
Uzoma laughs. "Aw, did you miss me?"
Kaito chuckled, "No you weirdo! But that food was good tho! You will make your future husband a very happy man."
They both laugh. Their laughter drains the world outside of the Unit.
"So what's up man?" Uzoma asked. "It better not be those shitheads that took your arm again!"
"No no! It wasnt them." Kaito responded. His eyes glommed down.
"I quit."
Uzoma looks up at Kaito.
"Well fuck them! Especially Collen! They needed you more than you needed them!"
Uzoma turns around and pulls the lever down. The platform and Kaito lowers down.
"I can convince ole man to let you work here." Uzoma said
"And what can I do?" Kaito asked, confused, "I have barely half the technical brain you got. Nor the big head you have to keep it in."
Uzoma then walks behind the platform, to a compartment. He grabs a gauntlet
"True, but I do need a faster test subject than the weasels crawling around."
Uzoma then turns around and points at Kaito and tries to shoot projectlies at Kaito.
Kaito immedialty jumped and twisted, evading the incoming pellets with an acrobatic grace that made Uzoma grin, landing next to Uzoma.
"See?" Uzoma said, lowering the gauntlet.
"Faster than a weasel."
"Something is wrong with you!" Kaito laughed out loud.
"You could get a better lab than this scrap."
"Then how about this place," Uzoma said, reaching into his pocket, revealing a creased poster with a symbol.
"No way!" Kaito said, his eyes after a long time, showing a glow.
"Yes way! A Mech fight!" Uzoma said with a grin.
"Where did you get this? Don't you need a contact for that?" Kaito said, grabbing the poster with his good arm.
"And Jenko is the contact," Uzoma responded.
"Woah never thought he would ever do us a solid!" Kaito said.
Kaito looked at the symbol on the poster, a scorpion and a circle on the end of the stinger.