Chapter Text
"Alright," X began, standing in front of the assembled entirety of the encampment. It was a chilly, damp morning, and the warmth of the fire pit was the only thing keeping him on his feet. "I realize that most of you aren't combat units. That's okay. I'm not actually a combat unit by design, either. You don't need to be one to learn to defend yourself. It helps, but the basics are something that anybody at all can learn and practice."
He looked over the group. Kathy had a notebook out. Flip simply nodded along, sitting next to Siobhan, who was watching a spot about a foot to the left of X's feet. Cirocco and Trigger seemed bored, but X suspected they were designed for combat or at least scouting, so this likely didn't strike them as applicable. Valentina was enthralled, which was a little weird, and the twins, Focus and Drive, paid polite attention without making eye contact. Hammer sat with his arms loosely crossed, and Mack…well, X would need to figure out how to make this lesson work for a completely non-humanoid reploid, but it too listened. Glitch sat cross-legged next to Mack, visibly eager to learn something he expected would be fun. He and X had spent the previous day assembling his sensors, and then, at X's recommendation, they'd recruited Mack and started on a new project for the evening.
"Ideally, we'd have dedicated training weapons and programmable targets," he continued, "but that's obviously not the reality we have here. However, Glitch, Mack, and I worked something out that's almost as good." He unholstered the handheld buster from his belt, other hand on his cane. A long, spliced-in cord trailed from it. "We've repaired a few broken busters into training weapons. They don't fire standard rounds, but…"
X turned, aimed one-handedly at a stack of concrete blocks they'd set up and painted a bullseye onto, and pulled the trigger. There was a brief flash, and a faint bolt splashed against the target, leaving a mild scorch almost dead center. "They're wired to the generator. They aren't powerful enough to use in a real combat situation, but they are enough for practice."
He held the buster up, turning it a bit so that everyone could see what he was indicating. "Rule number one: this is the safety switch. Keep it off at all times unless you are actively in combat. Rule two: never point it at anyone, even with the safety engaged, unless you intend to shoot them. Rule three: keep your finger off the trigger at all times, even with the safety engaged, unless you intend to fire. If there is a single thing you take from this, let it be how not to accidentally shoot your allies."
"Question," said Mack.
"Yes, it still applies even if you don't have fingers," X answered, before Mack could even make its joke. X had expected this, because it had made a similar joke no fewer than four times over the course of their refitting the broken busters into training pieces, and X was beginning to see where Glitch got his tendency to make hand puns. Or maybe Mack got it from Glitch. Either way, this was someone's fault.
"Damn," Mack said. A ripple of laughter spread throughout the group.
"Now, we didn't have time to set up a training buster for everyone this morning, so you'll need to share, but if you could follow me, we've got something to show you…"
X, Mack, and Glitch had worked late into the wee hours of the morning converting as many non-functional busters as they could cobble together, and Hammer had painted targets along one of the walls of the garage in the open space beyond the town center building.
"So this is what you were up to!" Valentina exclaimed. "I thought you were all awfully thick as thieves yesterday."
Glitch took a bow. "You're welcome."
"We've got about half as many as we need, so everyone choose a partner you can trade off with, and I'll show you the basics of target shooting…"
X was in his element. As much as he disliked violence, he did like teaching. He walked up and down the line, cane thumping on the concrete, correcting posture and technique as he spotted mistakes.
Mack couldn't hold a buster, of course, so it took a technical role, ensuring that nobody tangled their power cables too badly and repairing any malfunctioning training weapons. The partner groupings were as X would have guessed: Kathy and Hammer, Focus and Drive, Flip and Siobhan, Cirocco and Trigger, and finally Glitch and Valentina as the remainder, though they got on well enough that it didn't much matter.
"Both eyes open," X advised Kathy. "It's tempting to sight with just one, but you can't benefit from your depth perception with one closed."
Kathy lined up her shot and took it, the bolt hitting several inches off-center. She sighed. "I'm not cut out for this."
"It's a learned skill," X reassured her.
"Not the aiming part," Kathy explained. X wasn't entirely sure what Glitch had told her about him, but whatever it was, between his report and X's offer to teach everyone some self-defense, her attitude towards him had suddenly warmed. "I mean the part where we're practicing so we can shoot other reploids. It just feels…bad."
"Ah. If it helps, it should feel bad to think about. This is meant to be a last resort, in case we need to defend home or each other. I'd be a lot more worried if you thought it sounded like fun." Behind him, Valentina hit the middle ring of her target and giggled excitedly. X briefly glanced over his shoulder at her with a deadpan expression.
"You're right, but…no, I shouldn't complain. You three, and Hammer as well, put a lot of work into this, and I appreciate it." She turned to the target again, careful to keep both eyes open, and fired several shots. They fell closer, at least.
Hammer chuckled. "I stacked some blocks and stenciled some paint. Don't give me too much credit." Kathy handed him the gun, and he took his time sighting it. There was a laser dot on the target from somewhere, X realized, and before he could ask, five shots in rapid succession burned themselves into the dead center of the bullseye.
"Alright, yeah, this ain't half bad when you got a built-in laser," he concluded with a cheerful laugh.
"That's cheating," Flip said, handing his training buster off to Siobhan.
"Nah. That's usin' all the resources available to me," Hammer corrected him. He fired another salvo, lining the shots up carefully before taking them. "Ain't my fault they didn't give you a laser guide."
"I wonder if Glitch could install one for me…" Flip started to say, but Siobhan paused in her aiming and silently gave him A Look. "…I wasn't really going to do it."
"It isn't a competition," Siobhan said, quietly, which was as many words as X had ever heard out of her at once. This must be what I'm like to everyone else here, he thought, feeling self-aware and self-conscious at the same time. Maybe he could stand to be a little more outgoing.
"It's a competition if we end up having to face off against the Drifters. Or the Hunters," Flip added, crossing his arms.
X turned to him. "If it's the Hunters, don't," he advised, seriously. "You'd do better to run. They eventually deprioritize non-aggressive targets, and they're more likely to sentence you to time than decommissioning."
Flip scoffed. "At this point, I'd rather just be decommissioned. Besides, they'd…have one look at me and just scrap me anyway," he said, expression souring, but he offered no explanation, and X decided to not press for one. Whatever Flip was thinking, he'd share if he wanted to share, and until then, it wasn't X's business.
"Fair enough," X conceded. "Not that I'm condoning shooting at the Hunters, but…" Now it was his turn to make a face like he'd detected a mouthful of citric acid. "…or maybe that is what I just said," he mumbled, mostly to himself. The fact that he was arming and training a group of irregulars and Mavericks still sat strangely with him, even though he kept reminding himself that he was, by definition of doing what he was doing, one of them now.
"Anyway," he said, pushing the thought back under the surface to stew a while longer. "Ah, Siobhan, move your grip higher and hold it more tightly. You'll have a more stable shot that way." He had a broken and unplugged buster, which he held to demonstrate. "And when you pull the trigger, use the middle of your first finger pad, right here." X held the dummy weapon out, showing her exactly where his finger fell on it. "That'll keep your trigger pull as horizontal as possible, so you don't tip it back when you actually fire."
Siobhan nodded, silently, and tried to do as he said. She held the buster like she was afraid of it, and X holstered his demonstration piece and reached to adjust her hands. He was suddenly very aware that Flip was hovering just behind his right shoulder defensively, but he focused on the task. "Like this. It won't hurt you. Even if you somehow took a hit from one of the training weapons, it would sting, but you'd be more annoyed than injured."
He stepped back, and Siobhan held the weapon out in front of her. "Like this?" she asked.
X looked over her stance and grip. "Looks good. Try that." She pulled the trigger, timidly, but her shot flew true, striking a little to the upper left but much more accurately.
"Much better," he said, and she smiled the tiniest little smile he'd ever seen at the praise.
Focus and Drive were busily correcting each other's posture in such rapid-fire I.00100-COM: Diagnostic broadcast. that he couldn't begin to keep up, or even find a place to interrupt edgewise, but they seemed to have it well in hand so he left them to it. Trigger and Cirocco had already scored the paint in the center of their target dark with practice shots.
"Shots drift to right side," Trigger said, his voice heavily accented with Russian, and X realized that he'd never really heard the corviform reploid speak, other than a single 'hello' and some crow-like sounds at Cirocco. Indeed, he'd hardly even encountered either of the reploids around home, though he'd gotten the impression that they spent most of their time scavenging resources.
"Sorry. It's the best we could do refurbishing broken equipment in a hurry," X explained. "I want to do some maintenance on the actual weapons soon and make sure we won't have this problem if we need them."
"Not to worry. Is impressive you do this so fast," Trigger said, fluffing and settling the overlapped steel feathers that covered the back of his head and neck. "For broken gun, is very good."
Cirocco chuffed in amusement and darkened the middle of the target further with a burst of fire. "If anything actually happens, you can keep your busters. I've got my own methods." She lowered the weapon and turned to X, flexing a hand. Thick claws unfolded from her fingertips, and her hand was suddenly much less a hand and more a heavy paw. "But it's good practice."
"If anything happens, you take buster and stay out of live fire," Trigger scolded her, which only prompted another canine snort of laughter.
"There'll be a lot less shooting going on if they don't have arms to hold their busters," she retorted.
X looked between the two. This seemed to be a verbal spar they had performed countless times before, but he still cut in. "Be that as it may, we don't want to scrap anybody if we don't explicitly need to. There'll be much less reason to escalate in force if we can repel intruders with minimal violence."
"Gavno," Cirocco muttered.
Glitch piped up from the next lane. "Zatknis'."
"Idi na hui," Cirocco shot back, with feeling.
"Ya by vas paslal, da vizhu vy ottuda," Glitch chortled.
"Oh my God, both of you," Valentina interjected. Trigger emitted a croaking rattle that it took X a moment to understand was in fact laughter.
"You have no idea what we were saying," Glitch countered.
"I know it was rude!"
"Val. That's xenophobic. You can't just assume anything you hear in a different language is rude."
"No, but I can assume anything you and Cirocco are saying to each other in Russian is rude!"
Glitch sighed dramatically. "She's got me there." Then, gripped with sudden inspiration, Glitch spun to X, a troublemaking grin on his face. "Oi, V. Nihongo wo shabereru kai."
"Iya, ore wa sono geemu wo asobitakunain da," X said, firmly denying Glitch any further chance to be a polyglot troll.
Glitch intensified his wounded act. "Oh, you're no fun, either." Valentina thumped the buster into his chest plates, sideways and with the safety engaged, X was relieved to note.
"Your turn," she declared, mostly to shut him up.
"If you shoot buster half as good as you shoot mouth, we are safe from anything," Trigger croaked in amusement.
Glitch huffed and took the weapon. He adjusted his grip, switched the safety off, planted his feet, and swept it up in one smooth arc, firing off a burst of plasma bolts the very instant he aligned the buster's barrel with his target.
The other four simply watched the resulting wisp of smoke drift off. "Well, I do have to give you full points for precision," X admitted, after a few moments, "but your accuracy…"
"Yeah," Valentina said. "Your…accuracy."
"You would not hit long side of warehouse if you stand next to it," Trigger agreed.
"My aim isn't that bad," Glitch objected.
X settled both hands on the handle of his cane, smiling mildly. "So, you were aiming for the back wall? That's…a creative take on the exercise, I'll give you that."
"Trigger was half right. You do shoot from the hip regardless of the context," Cirocco snickered, tail swishing behind her. "But maybe try aiming next time?"
Glitch harrumphed aloud, and X patted him on the shoulder. "Speed in combat isn't a matter of processor speed. It's about knowing what to expect, and moving fluidly, so you arrive where you need to be at the exact moment you need to be there. No sooner, no later. Practice carefully, and you'll perform quickly. Practice quickly, and you'll perform sloppily. It's not about impressing anybody. Besides, I already know you're an alright shot if you aren't rushing."
Glitch exchanged a look with him. If this were coming from anybody else in the entire world, it seemed to say, I'd tell them where to shove it. After a moment, he gave up with another melodramatic sigh and lifted the buster again, adjusting his grip. "Fine, fine, Mister Former Hunter. I'll try it your way."
"Glad to hear it. I'll be back around in fifteen. I need to sit down." X retreated to sit on a crate at the fire pit. The flames flickered lower, so he tossed a few pieces of scrap in and waited for them to catch. He hadn't really had time to recharge or even rest the previous night, and the all-nighter fatigue was already catching up to him. Once upon a time I could go days between needing a break to defragment, he thought ruefully, fighting off sleepiness unsuccessfully. I really never appreciated it enough when I had it.
Mack trundled over. "Seems like it's going well so far," it said. "How are you holding up?"
"Huh?" X jarred awake and sat up straighter, then realized it was only the C-15 and relaxed. "Oh. I'm alright. The weather gets into my joints and I could use a recharge and defrag soon, but I've had worse."
"If we do end up having to fight," Mack said, tucking its feet underneath itself next to X's crate, "what do you think our odds are?"
"Well, that depends on a lot of things," X replied, thoughtfully. "How many opponents we have, how well armed they are, how much practice time we have, what kind of warning did we get…there are a lot of variables. I don't think I could give an answer right now. The more important thing is to get in as much training as we can and shore up our defenses. Speaking of which, how is that going so far?"
"Hammer and I were working on it yesterday, before we started the training weapon project. We've got plans drawn up for a new wall on the far corner, that way," it gestured vaguely with its eyes, "and we've pulled a bunch of rebar out of the surrounding buildings to work with. Concrete's difficult, but Cirocco and Trigger are hauling everything they can carry from the nearest home supply store. So far, nobody's bothered them. We can stretch it out pretty far with blocks and rubble as infill, so that should help. I was thinking after this I'd go draft out the plan on the floor and we could start staging materials."
X nodded approvingly. "That sounds like a plan. Any ideas on the upper floor ramp?" he asked.
"I think we can turn a few cars on their side and weld them into place. It's not perfect, but they'd be endangering themselves to spend much time out in the open trying to get around that. Hopefully they don't get any bright ideas about making a mess on the roof to give away our location, but I don't know what we'd do about that even if they did."
The notion raised X's anxiety by a notch, but he pushed that back under the surface for later, too. "We'll deal with it if it happens," he replied. "Blocking the roof should be enough to start. If the Drifters do attack, we'll need someone behind the front lines who's capable of supplying ammunition to the defenders. That's where you'll come in."
Mack stood a little taller. "That's what I'm good at. Unless they get close enough for the laser cutter, but we've got larger problems if that happens. Speaking of ammunition, I don't suppose you have any ideas for recharging old buster packs?"
"It's not really my area of expertise. You'd want to talk to Glitch about that and see if he's got any ideas. I don't want to have to bank on assuming they've got the same ammo shortage that we do, but it may come to that." X gazed into the fire pit, the heat finally reaching his aching joints. The rest of his systems complained a bit at the temperature cycling, but it was still better than the cold.
"Mack, you've been declared Maverick," X started, apropos of nothing obvious to anybody but him. "What's that like for you?"
"Hmm. I'm not sure it's like anything for me." The little C-15 shuffled its feet in a way that X was beginning to recognize as the equivalent of rubbing one's chin in thought. "I never had the orientation that other reploids had, because I'm not supposed to be here. Even without that, there's no place in society for a model like me. I could do a mechaniloid's job, but if I wanted anything else out of life I'd need to be transferred into an entirely new body, except I couldn't afford one and I don't want one anyway. And that's all besides the fact that I go where Glitch goes, and he goes where I go."
Glitch's exact words too, X recalled. "I guess that makes sense. I hadn't thought about it quite like that."
Mack looked up at him, tilting its round little body with the effort. "To sum it up in one sentence, I'm irregular because this world doesn't fit me, so I can't be anything else, and I'm a Maverick because I'll defend him with my life, whatever happens. I never had much of a choice to begin with, but where I do have one, I've chosen Glitch over the rest of the world." It paused for a moment, then in its usual deadpan monotone voice, "That's two, but close enough. Trying to sort yourself out?"
At least Mack's answer hadn't sent X into an existential crisis. Or perhaps he'd just gotten better at handling the idea. X wondered what that meant for him, but he wondered it with slightly less dread than usual. "Basically. I don't know where I fit into anything anymore. Any course of action I can imagine from here still isn't the obviously right thing to do, but I'm not sure an obvious right thing to do even exists."
"Ha ha ha," said Mack, and if X hadn't already known quite well that it only had the one tone of voice, he might have assumed it was being rude. "Welcome to the club. It's got a way of sneaking up on you like that."
X groaned. "I was warned." Multiple times, even, and I thought it surely couldn't have applied to me until I was already in well over my head. "But I'm here now. I've picked a direction…all I can do is keep going, I think."
"That's the spirit," Mack agreed. "Stay your course. I'm going to head back over and see if Glitch has shot himself yet just to see how much it hurts."
X frowned at Mack with alarm. "He wouldn't. That would be—"
"He would, and we both know it. Take your time, though. I haven't heard him swearing yet, so it's probably fine." Mack stood, or more accurately, lifted itself up from where its underside rested on the ground, and waddled back to the new firing range, leaving X to wonder just what kind of very low impulse control reploid he'd ended up attached to.
He should probably go back and check everyone's progress again, he thought, but the fire was nice and warm, and the autumn weather was everything his old joints hated. Spending a little more time here wouldn't hurt anything, surely. Five more minutes. Twenty was about the same as fifteen, give or take.
At some point soon, X knew, he would need to find a moment to talk to Glitch alone about their next steps. The sensors still needed to be distributed, but once that was finished, then they could broach the matter of Charles Alderman's fate with Kathy. He didn't look forward to that at all, but he hoped that having Glitch on his side and doing it in private would help manage Kathy's reaction. Come to think of it, they could almost definitely loop Mack in on it. The two were a unit, after all; if he could trust one, he should be able to trust the other. He'd mention it to Glitch next chance he got.
With a tired groan, X planted both hands on his cane and dragged himself to his feet. Keeping the others waiting too long wouldn't do. He took a moment to regain his balance and headed back to the impromptu firing range.
"Alright," he began, raising his voice as much as he could will himself to. Nobody seemed to hear him over the popping of the practice weapons, and while he'd shouted over similar dins countless times in his past, he just couldn't seem to muster the volume now. "Um. Excuse me. Hello. Could I have your attention?"
Hammer went to hand the weapon off to Kathy, and spotted X standing there, looking expectant but ignored. "Here, lemme help you out." He put two fingers in his mouth and blew, emitting a whistle so loud that X, Focus, and Drive all winced. "Hey, listen up! V's talkin'," he announced, once the rest of the reploids had stopped firing and turned to see what he wanted.
X cleared his throat. "Alright. Everyone's had a few practice shots, and your form is looking good. Whenever you've got a spare moment, come put in some time here. We'll try to get more training weapons put together, and if you ever want some critique, you can ask me any time. I'll be glad to give you whatever pointers I've got. Now, on to the next thing…normally that would be weapon maintenance, but the training weapons aren't really going to be a good example for that, so I think we should move to basic maneuvers and tactics…"
By the time they'd gotten through what X considered to be a decent starting lesson, it was late afternoon and he was sitting on the ground, exhausted. Glitch sprawled out on the concrete with several new chips in his paint, loudly contemplating painting himself red again because he'd be faster, while Mack pointed out that then he'd look like a Drifter, and that would be confusing mid-combat. Cirocco sat back on her haunches on all fours, grinning wolfishly and clearly having the time of her life, while Flip and Drive reassured Siobhan and Focus that they were doing great actually. Kathy had given up on clothing and shed hers because it kept snagging on things, while Valentina had added several layers because the concrete was too rough for her, and with Kathy's help she'd tied her long peach-pink hair into a bun after being blinded by it one too many times while trying to army crawl. Hammer and Trigger played paper-rock-scissors for a contested spot in the recharge pods.
"I think," X said, "that maybe I should reconsider how I teach basic training."
"Yeah," Valentina agreed. "You should like, definitely do that."
"I think it went great," said Glitch, still facedown. "I think I could do this all day."
"That's why you're also on the ground?" Kathy asked, fans audibly running overtime. The relatively enclosed area had warmed up considerably with all of them exerting themselves and generating heat. "Because you could do this all day?"
"Yup."
"Sorry. I'm used to, you know. Hunters," said X, making no effort to get up either. "Hunters who signed up for this, on purpose. And also not being such a piece of junk myself. I haven't tried actually doing this since…things happened."
"It's a good day to have the fourth pod finished. And I have first dibs on it, because it's still in my lab."
"Not if I get to it first," Valentina challenged, though she didn't move.
"Race you." Glitch did not at all get up.
"You're on." Valentina stayed right where she was.
For several moments, nothing interrupted the white noise of twelve sets of cooling systems running at full power, except for a quiet exclamation of "Blyat'," as Trigger finally lost the heated match with a poorly-chosen throw of scissors.
"Who's winning?" X asked, thinking about taking his jacket off, but not really feeling inclined to get up just yet. It was not that common for him to run too hot to be comfortable, but he'd managed it for once.
"Me," Glitch and Valentina said, simultaneously.
"Ah," said X. He gave up and limply wiggled out of his jacket.
"So," Cirocco said, grin widening and tail thumping against the concrete floor. "Same time tomorrow morning?"
Nine groans, one '>I.00023-VOC: Decrease vocal volume.', and a weakly thrown piece of concrete were all the answer she received.