by Lee Bond
It didn’t matter. In a few seconds, the metal King would be released from its temporary bondage, and Nickels, who –huzzah! - was having some sort of trouble with one of the repurposed pneumatic fists, would be down one of two paths. There were no other directions –so to speak- left for Nickels. Not anymore.
The temerity of the man!
***
The pressure plate popped into position with an aggrieved squeal of metal, eliciting a relieved shout from Garth. Now that the armature was properly configured, his corrupted eye began spitting and sputtering with inverted hash. A few seconds later, the colorless noise fully resolved into a full-fledged HUD; DarkEye first announced that it now possessed full connectivity to the pneumatic fist and that it could operate calibration and configuration on the fly. Then, with surprising perspicacity for having only been online for a few seconds, it highlighted Garth’s current goal of not dying right there on the spot and began assessing possible methods of how best to achieve that goal.
Rough-drawn images began flickering quickly off to the furthest side of the one-eyed HUD. So far, the main point of action involved a harrowing combination of insanity mingled with an unreasonable amount of luck; DarkEye’s best option at the moment apparently involved using the pneumatic fist against a large, unbreakable object so he could launch himself up and onto the Big’Un.
From the looks of things, DarkEye needed a better assessment of the landscape. Which meant more running.
Garth grimaced. Running flat out for the last twenty minutes had convinced his lungs they were the seventh level of Hell and they, in turn, were doing their best to make him regret every decision he’d ever made that involved any sort of breathing.
“When I,” Garth huffed and snorted, vaulting over a random boulder just before the King’s oak tree bonker clipped the granite slab, sending it zooming somewhere off into the distance, Arcade City’s first –and largest- stony golf ball, “when I have time … treadmills. Lots and lots of treadmills. They … they have that level of … of … tech. I can … with lots of … gears and … and … pulleys… Yes, DarkEye, I can see the same shit as you…”
The DarkEye HUD had finally settled on an ‘appropriate’ spot for Operation ‘Launch Garth into the Air like a Human Rocket at the Oncoming Kingzilla and Hope Everything Works out Ok’; more rocks, this time more of an outcropping of huge granite boulders that were as close to unbreakable as anything he was gonna come across during this round of Run Very Fast Away From the Murderous Kingbot.
The would-be Kingkiller angled himself for the rocky outcrop, doubt gnawing at his confidence. In the real world, something so blatantly moronic wouldn’t work. Or, well, no, that wasn’t entirely true. It would work, only not entirely, with the chances of turning his arms into pulverized bone and shredded muscle right up there on the same level as Indra Sahari taking her pants off before the second song.
That was in the real world, though. In the fucked up world of Arcade City, Reality was even less concrete than beyond The Dome. The geared arms had been forged according to and with the aid of King’s Will, therefore nanotech won the day and physics could suck a dick.
Either way, Garth totally promised Lady Luck some sweet, sweet lovin’ if everything went down as he wanted, just to be on the safe side.
“Just … just…” Garth pulled his pneumatic fist back, aiming squarely at the angled spot suggested to him by DarkEye, “Just … be cool. Everyone be cool. This will totes work.”
Garth hammered a pneumatic fist into the huge mound of rock jutting through the earth like a broken tooth. The gears and joints responsible for delivering a similar level of machine-driven fury as Thumper’s hammer obliged Garth’s unspoken desire to be the first man to achieve flight inside The Dome by reversing the natural order of things; instead of pulverizing the rock, the contact plate for the punch-plate pressed gently against the smooth surface and did … nothing. DarkEye, monitoring the exoskeleton, began parsing worries of stress overload by turning the whole scene redder and redder the longer the pressure in the arm grew.
Garth held his breath when DarkEye confirmed that the geared exoskeleton of his right arm would withstand the rigorous strain his plan would send shearing through the entire frame.
Which was super-cool, because the Kingzilla was no more than fifteen feet away, filling the air with triumphant bleats of steam-driven robot excitement.
“Fuck this shit.” Garth nodded, braced himself as best he could for something that might tear his whole arm off, then trigged the plate’s release by clenching his left hand tightly. “Alley oop!”
There was a pop, a very loud hiss, and Garth found himself airborne, only this time intentionally. The shoulder and chest components of the rig groaned worrisomely but otherwise held true to the course.
Flipping and spinning like a poorly thrown football, the would-be Kingkiller developed a sudden appreciation for acrobats and the weird shit they did under the Big Top at carnivals. It wasn’t easy, flying through the air like a goddamn Wallenda. The ex-Specter cursed as he fell short of his intended target –the stupid Kingzilla’s stupid smirking mouth- by more than ten feet.
“Goddamnit!” Garth groused, letting instinct take over; falling quickly past a startled King’s jaw, his left hand snaked out and grabbed the ridge of a button on the King’s metallic robe larger than his entire body. Momentum dropped in for a quick round of ‘Smack N’Chalez Senseless Against a Big Shiny Button for Pushing His Luck’, departing just before he knocked himself stupid. Garth dangled there, gasping for air, wondering –not for the last time- if there weren’t easier ways to rebuild a Universe. One that, y’know, involved less … this and more Pina coladas and, like, beaches.
DarkEye confirmed that the punch-plate was operational and began resetting the mechanism for a second go-around.
“Awesome.” Garth took stock of his surroundings as best he could.
Far … far down below him, the bedraggled and sorry-looking gaggle run by Deezy Cue were either playing an unfortunately placed game of Freeze Tag or they were scared shitless and didn’t know what to do with their bodies. Some six miles off in the distance, pure white smoke from an expertly crafted fire trickled into the sky.
Garth stuck his tongue out at Barnabas. It was nice to know that the dickbag’s camp was close enough to walk to should he survive the Kingzilla encounter. Also, and this was way more important, it was all sorts of heartwarming to know also that the fucking blacksmith had to hear the Big’Un bellowing like an enraged Transformer with a speech impediment. If there was any reciprocity in Arcade City, Barnie was shitting himself blind, praying to whatever the fuck Arcadians prayed to that everything came up Nickels, because who the hell knew what’d happen if it won? If he died, Garth found himself seriously, seriously hoping the Kingbot took a wander over to Barnie’s camp and, like, squashed everything flat on general principles.
Kingzilla shouted like a steam whistle and started bashing its robotic mitts against its chest. Naturally, this filled Garth with concerns about organic structural integrity and how this related to his long-term goal of never dying, ever.
“Okay okay okay okay.” Gripping the button ridge with all the might his exoskeletal hand could muster and eyeing the motorhome-sized metal fist coming right at him, Garth braced himself for a considerable amount of discomfort and the pushing of the boundaries of credulity.
In response to the oncoming titanic haymaker, Garth gently held out his own fist, just like he wanted to give his new pal Kingzilla a fistbump on a job well done.
“This is … third on my Stupid List. Yeah, no, this is … stupidly stupid.” Garth shut his eyes. DarkEye assured him via an hilarious icon that everything would almost certainly work properly.
Giant robot fist met tiny little nanotech punch-plate.
***
“This is one man.” Deezy Cue announced, covering his poor head and running out of the way of the sudden shower of parts raining down on them from above. “Hain’t no one out
these ways as can do for a King on his own as hain’t got the grey skin, and e’en then, it’s two or three, like as not!”
Obese Patterson took a metal plate –most likely a Kingly fingernail- to the head and fell like a poleaxed steer, brain fluid, blood and actual bloody brain leaking all over the place.
Riddled Smitty and Large Ronald grabbed a doughy arm each and started hauling the morbidly obese son of a bitch with them as they ran alongside Deezy. Moxy and Cora, bringing up the rear, pointed their shooters –which honestly would do nothing at all except aggravate the angriest Big’Un they’d ever seen in their lives-, watched on in awe as the unnamed Kingkiller fell to the ground amidst a heap of shattered King’s fist.
Large Ron couldn’t believe how heavy Pat was. It was like trying to drag a skin full of rocks. “Maybe he’s from Ickford, hey? Or … or from further in? I did hear they sometimes…”
“No.” Deezy shook his head and stopped running; as much as he was sick to death of running every few minutes, there was no way in heaven or on earth that he was going to miss the end of this battle. No matter which way it went, dead Kingkiller or destroyed King, this were a story that would garner them all kinds of Dark Iron shots for the telling. “Aye, mayhap from Ickford, but not as you think. If he’s one o’ us, I’m king of Arcadia, ain’t I? No, if anything, he’s one of them artificers. Mad as a hatter, mind, but that’s it, I expect. Moreover, he’s from further in, I’m the King’s old mum!”
Obese Patterson moaned incoherently and muttered something about butterscotch.
Riddled Smitty pointed at the fight. “There he goes again. Straight up like one o’ them froggies you see sometimes at lakes. You know, afore the Water Lady comes and guts you.”
Deezy Cue and crew refocused. Sure enough, the golden-armed Kingkiller had repeated the trick of getting himself airborne again, though this time it seemed he’d planned even more poorly than last time; he’d launched himself right into the King’s oncoming fist.
None of the gaggle were worried. Mad as their armored artificer seemed, he did possess an uncanny knack of not dying when money said he should. They readied themselves for the next bit of insanity.
***
The fist blocked everything out, dominated every ounce of his concentration, and filled him with monumental worry that sometime in the last little while he’d lost his goddamn mind, on account of how normal people didn’t do stuff like this at all.
DarkEye –opportunistic asshat that it was turning out to be- took a moment to kindly inform its host that, contrary to said host’s beliefs, the exoskeleton wasn’t one hundred percent impervious to unrelenting use in this manner.
“Suck a dick, DarkEye.” The soonest possible moment when he wasn’t being hunted or attacked or poked or prodded or anything like that, Garth vowed to hotwire a goddamn OS reconfigurer. Reconfigurator? Whatever. The moment he wasn’t busy not dying, he was fixing DarkEye. And said fixing would involve plenty of Tesla Coils and … and … other cool stuff like that because why not? He was stuck in a goddamn steampunk fairy tale, he might as well get all the way on board, right?
These thoughts and the guitar solo from Devil’s Dime by Black Label Society rocketed through Garth’s mind as the King’s fist ate the distance between them. Gravity decided to reassert itself, turning both him and his gut upside-down.
Garth held his breath again, put his fist out gingerly like he was going to fist-bump Kingzilla a second time and … waited.
The collision wasn’t nearly as titanic as the first one, but it was enough to shoot the King’s fist away in a mangled heap of broken fingers while simultaneously hurling Garth backwards into his gigantic foe’s chest. The ex-Specter slammed forcibly into a plate hard enough to buckle it. Kingzilla roared angrily and did this whole spastic body shaking thing, which, combined with the stars and an embryonic Napa Valley-sized goose egg, cost Garth the chance to grab hold on to anything. Because Lady Luck was a fickle bitch, Garth started sliding downwards.
“Shitshitshit.” The earth loomed quickly, a forceful reminder that –unlike birds and bees and ants and weather and other nonsensical bullshit- the Dark Iron King had no fucking problem with gravity, the lamest of all physical laws.
DarkEye -marching to its own tune of mercilessly inopportune moments for data updates- explained via hilarious pictures that the arm riggings would be very lucky indeed to survive a maximum number of three more fully-charged haymakers before bursting at the seams. The last few pictures also seemed to indicate that –at this inevitable point sometime in the future- he, the Engineer for Reality 2.0, would be rendered totally armless.
Garth managed to get gauntleted fingers between two plates. Dangling there, totally stoked he wasn’t going to have to change his name to Pancake Nickels and just kind of, y’know, minding his own business for a bit, Garth stared at his bedraggled, haggard-ass face in the King’s shiny chest.
“I could use a root beer fl… Ouch! What the … are you fucking serious?”
***
Riddled Smitty guffawed as shrieks of disgruntled rage reached his ears. He fingered the scars beneath his shirt. “Our lad’s probably been thinkin’ this whole time that doin’ for a King is no big thing, hey? Reckon them curses he’s shoutin’ might have something to do with them buzzsaws poppin’ out, hey?”
Large Ronald, the crew’s resident crusher, nodded. He had himself a scar or three, mostly along his back, from not being ready or paying attention to the noises the King made when he was gearin’ to change things up. “Made a good show, though. I call dibs on them fists.”
Deezy Cue passed his field glasses to Large Ronald, saying, “I wouldn’t count our man out yet, Ronnie.”
Large Ronald put the binoculars to his eyes. “Well. He certainly is a nimble one.” He obliged Moxy Molly’s request to see for herself.
***
The trick, Garth was finding, in understanding the things DarkEye was trying to explain was to realize that there was no such thing as a formal AI or even proper programming to the optic. While there was unquestionably some form of idiot-savant nanotech circuitry seeded through the dark black ‘glass’, Garth had to remind himself of one damned important factor: the lens was one small part of a much larger animal, an animal used by Gearmen in the course of their duty, which meant he was missing a really significant amount of processing power housed elsewhere in said giant steamhorse’s awe-inspiringly frightening metal chassis.
So while it was easy to curse DarkEye for sucking the light out of the entire Universe, it was hard to deny that any data at this point was helpful.
Still, though. It could be a little less … horsey.
“Look,” Garth ground his teeth against the ear-splitting sound of one of the King’s blades trying to grind it’s way through his left arm –DarkEye liked that action about as much as getting dental work done without anesthesia-, “all I’m saying is if you’re going to build fucking steampunk robot horses, there’s no need to make them think they’re fucking horses. Jesus.”
The buzzsaw blade trying to slice his left arm off retracted and the seams of the plates forming this particular section of King’s body switched to allow another blade to pop out, this one angling for Garth’s head.
DarkEye showed him a picture that made absolutely no sense.
Garth flipped sideways again, pulling his gauntleted fingers free from the plate behind him, hating this procedure as he did so; this was the third time he’d done it, and he was losing height every time. As he slid down towards the King’s unmentionable and hopefully nonexistent Royal Jewels, the ex-Specter had the uncomfortable feeling that Kingzilla’s skin was getting warmer.
Jamming steam-powered nanotech-enhanced super fingers between two thick iron metal plates, Garth did the only thing he could do under the circumstances. He waited.
No more than five seconds later, those suspicions were confirmed: Kingzilla’s dusky silver metal skin was turning cherry red.
DarkEye showed him a picture of a
giant predator, some kind of thing with teeth and claws and lots of snarling. Then it told Garth that it was likely that the King’s skin was likely to get hot enough to turn him into ash.
“You are even less helpful than The Eye.” Garth groused, turning his head this way and that as he tried to form something that resembled an actual goddamn plan. At least all those goddamn blades had stopped trying to cut him into tiny little Garth-sausages. Heat honestly wasn’t much better, but at least it was, like, an all-over kind of thing instead of whirling deathblades slicing out of no-fucking-where. Garth would totally rather be burned to a cinder than watch his fingers fall from his hands. “How many megapunches do I got left?”
The response was immediate and overwhelmingly horsey. Three delicious sugar cubes popped into frame, with the third cube looking like it’d been nibbled on by a steamhorse’s disembodied brain.
Garth got his feet underneath him, disliking this next part of the plan with just about every fiber of his being; he’d long ago decided Barnabas’ unerring knowledge of Kingspawn points would really only work for so long, turning every spare moment not devoted to being creeped out by gearheads or being angry at his predicament or working on Dark Iron control had been spent considering the aspects of solo Kingkilling.
Naturally, the absolute best way involved him doing none of the killing at all, but rather hiring a mercenary gaggle –like the ones just down below, who were doing everything but eating fucking popcorn while he evaded death- to do for any Kings that popped up. The downside to hiring mercenaries willing to do all that work was continual exposure to … gearheads. With all their gross physical deformations and their rabid, Kingsblood-fueled rage, Specter would probably spring fully formed from his forehead to kill everything in sight.
So while the idea of employing a good, honest gaggle worked fucking awesome on paper, it wasn’t the wisest course of action, leaving solo work. Armed with the basic understanding of how Kingbots were constructed and already aware of the quickest and easiest way to do for the giant robots, the bulk of his planning had involved various ways of getting to the top without following the same path as those mad bombers and lobbers.
