NOVEL NEXT 2.22 The Doomed Daredevil
For once, Salazar didn't doubt or question. He just buckled himself in, and the instant everyone else was secure he slammed on the gas. The jitney half sped, half slid down the mound, kicking up a small avalanche of loose garbage that Salazar compensated for like a boat in water. Once they leveled Salazar snapped the knob to Wheels without slowing down, and the jitney bucked as the treads transformed at speed. He fidgeted at the wheel, straining as if he could add his own willpower to the lumbering jitney's acceleration.
Thankfully the smaller, more nimble trike was too preoccupied with attempting to maintain a wheelie, and the lumbering jitney managed to sneak up behind them. A young man stood against the handlebars — likely around Ricky's age or slightly younger, rail thin, oily black hair, mostly human with bright red skin — and bounced the trike on its shocks, supposedly to test out their responsiveness. Tapper noted that despite the sensible rollcage, the driver didn't wear a helmet and his heavy leather jacket flapped open to expose his bare chest. He was also so oblivious to the world that Salazar pulled up right next to him before the driver noticed and nearly fell off his trike.
Salazar rolled down the window and leaned out to shout something. Those inside couldn't hear the words over the trike's biodiesel engine, and the driver's startle turned into a snarl. He threw a rude hand gesture directly in Salazar's face, revved his engine, and shot forward in a wheelie that only lasted a moment before the driver had to slow back down. Salazar seized the opportunity to pull ahead and block the trike from reaching full speed, eliciting more shouts and hand signals from the young red man. They quickly entered a stalemate of driving alongside the canyon at around 70 kph, the slowest Salazar could go without risking the trike outmaneuvering them.
"Yeah, didn't think that would work," Salazar snarled at himself. "Hey kid! Sorry, Ricky. Can you do that thing when you snagged Phanya with the chain?"
Ricky chewed their lip in thought and glanced at Tapper, who looked downcast. He had not yet gone into a rest mode to refresh his Spray component. "The shooting part is out of, uh, calibration. I can Chain him, but I'd have to touch him."
"He's waving a big knife at us now," Phanya noted from the rear window.
"And I'm not jumping on a big knife without my armor, which would squish him," Ricky clarified.
Tapper stepped up, his sense of Adventure blazing with the obvious solution. His lack of foresight had caught them unprepared, so he would have to simply make up the difference. "Then touch me!"
Everyone, even Salazar, turned back to stare at Tapper in confusion. "With your Chain, Ricky. Chain me and I can temporarily disable his trike, and force him to pull over. I fear that any other solution with multiple programs would be, ah, explosively overpowered for the small vehicle." Ricky shrugged as he started to wind his gizmo, and Tapper turned to the final occupant. "And I will require your guidance, Phanya."
Up on the roof of the jitney, Tapper kneeled towards the rear while Ricky sat braced against the lip of the trap door. A length of glowing chain connected them in a small pile, and Phanya stood next to them with worry clear on her face. "Are you sure about this, Tapper?" she asked again, shouting over the wind. "Can't you calculate the angles with, like, actual math?"
Tapper kept his eyes locked on the trike driver, who was now directing all threats and challenges in his direction. "I can, but the human element is too unpredictable, and there's a high chance he will dodge me. Your class description mentions directing your teammates in complex maneuvers, so —" Tapper shifted to a crouching position, hands planted and legs spread like a frog ready to spring forward at a moment's notice. "— direct me, Phanya."
Phanya groaned, but crouched down next to Tapper and placed a hand on his back. She felt her brain flex as her Commander class started running through battlefield tactics, and her imagination suddenly felt like she was manning a ballista against a charging bull. It felt strange, but it helped her subconscious compensate and picture the "flight path" against her mark. He knows what they're planning and keeps jerking around randomly, but Phanya's sharpened senses notice how the trike leans just before he starts to turn and…
"Now."
Tapper felt it in his chassis. Phanya didn't say the word, she commanded it and Tapper obeyed without hesitation. He sprang forward right as the trike committed to a dodge and landed perfectly on it, wrapping all his limbs around the rollcage for stability.
"Hello sir, please pull over or we will be forced to rescue you!" The driver's panic at a robot suddenly landing on his vehicle was predictable, but Tapper still hoped that the man wouldn't immediately attack him. Which meant that Tapper's torso was completely exposed to a panicked knife thrust.
[Injury: Punctured Lung
Every action now requires a difficult Constitution check, or it automatically fails as you fight for breath]
It took all of Tapper's concentration to not lose his grip, rushing his processor to numb the tactile sensors in his entire torso area. The strain garbled his voicebox slightly and Tapper growled, "Ow. Please pull over now, sir."
The panic passed, and the punk raged. "Piss off, tincan!"
"Very well. SUCK!" Tapper felt the mana pulse from his body and echo into the trike, which instantly started to spark and sputter. "There, now if you could please — whoa wait wait!" Tapper was distracted following the sensation of his mana, and missed the driver shift positions. When he looked up all he saw were the soles of heavy boots flying in his direction, too fast to dodge and too strong to hold on. The driver kicked Tapper off the trike and he bounced twice before his limbs took over, shooting out to meet the tarmac and turn the bounces into a roll.
The world spun into madness for three very long seconds before Tapper felt the chain attached to his back go taut and reel him in. Phanya grabbed his outstretched hand and pulled Tapper the last bit up until he was laying on the roof of the jitney, waiting for his eyes to readjust. Once they did Tapper took his time standing up, ensuring that he hadn't suffered any additional damage to his limbs. They were disgracefully scuffed, unbecoming for a professional but merely cosmetic damage, so thankfully the only real damage came from the knife. Which, Tapper idly noted, was still lodged into his midsection.
Ricky gaped at the knife handle. "You, uh, okay there, Tapper?"
His torso was still numbed, but something about the imagery still made Tapper grimace slightly as he pulled the knife out. It was oversized and too heavy for any utilitarian purpose, yet still surprisingly balanced and swooped around in a wide arc as Tapper flipped it over in his hand. "Technically injured, but luckily I do not possess lungs. I am fine, thank you." He handed the knife to Ricky, handle first, and turned to join Phanya watching the trike.
The driver was having a hard time. Their ride struggled to stay alive, and despite his fighting it was starting to lose speed. He cursed the party with, "Fuck you! RATFINKS RULE!" and slammed his fist down on a small button. Flames shot from the exhaust ports and the trike shot forward, barely kept on all three wheels by the driver leaning fully onto the handlebars. Salazar tried to steer out of the way but the trike juked in the wrong direction, driving right along the very edge of the canyon. He stabilized, somehow, and pulled safely ahead of the jitney.
Giving everyone a clear view for him to whoop exactly once, before the trike caught the edge of a giant ring and toppled into the canyon. The jitney screeched to a halt, and in the absence of rushing wind the party could clearly hear the trike tumble the rest of the way down. When that too fell silent, the party leaned over the edge to see the red man laying among the scattered parts of his trike at the bottom of the giant half-pipe.
If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
"Damn, he's worse off than if we didn't try to rescue him."
"Ricky!" Phanya admonished.
"What? He is!"
Salazar wasn't interested in the commentary, he just squeezed the steering wheel as if he could tear it off and growled, "Stupid, stupid kid," to himself over and over.
Tapper zoomed in his vision to max range and whooped when he saw the driver shift slightly. "He's alive! The rescue is still on!"
"Wait, really?" Ricky asked, squinting down at the heap. "Huh, I guess that rollcage was a good idea. Maybe I can set up a pulley system to reach him…"
"We only have a few minutes before the next train passes!" Salazar countered, an edge of panic to his voice, and Tapper nodded in understanding. His sense of Adventure swelled beyond the constraints of logic and fear, demanding immediate action while the others bickered. If time was of the essence then he saw only one way to help, and he only wasted one second to verify that the ethereal chain was still anchored to his back.
Then he leapt off the jitney's roof, straight into the canyon.
The others shouted a chorus of confusion and concern that Tapper didn't hear. It was too late to question or turn back, he was committed. Right at the apex of his jump, during the beat where gravity had not yet taken hold, Tapper learned on an emotional level to appreciate just how large the asphalt canyon was below him. Only then did his sense of fear speak up and remind Tapper that his limbs rolled with the asphalt after he bounced painfully against it a few times.
"Uh-oh. ARM feat, protect meee!"
Tapper never figured out how the Automatic Response Module feat worked. His limbs sometimes acted on their own to save Tapper from danger, exactly as the feat described, but he never found any programming within his own system to indicate where the instructions originated from. And it might be from his rapidly increasing panic, but it felt as if his limbs stiffened slightly in response to his shouting. But then he touched the nearly-vertical slope of the canyon and the situation spun out of control once again. His limbs threw his body into a cartwheel spin and Tapper focused all of his willpower on containing his emotional center, which screamed for him to grab onto the wall and slow down by any means necessary. Logically he knew that would doom his descent, even if panic refused to listen to reason, so Tapper closed his eyes and withdrew conscious control from his limbs.
[Status effect: Stunned]
Conflicting reports told Tapper that he was standing still and still spinning at the same time. Slowly he opened his eyes, and after working through the disorientating effects of the debuff Tapper confirmed that both were true --- his body had stopped and righted itself, standing at an awkward angle at the bottom of the canyon while his head spun freely on its neck joint. He grabbed his head with both hands to stop its spinning, and rebooting his spatial orientation matrix canceled out the debuff, but a pervasive dizzy sensation remained across all his senses.
"Adventurer's note: spin head in time with spinning body. Ugh…" Tapper said to himself, and a voice called out his name. It was Phanya, standing at the lip of the canyon and waving for Tapper's attention, and once he looked up Phanya reeled back to throw something. A dark metal clam shell case the size of a human palm arced through the air and landed right at Tapper's feet, and when he opened it he found a small disc the size of a credit chit.
One side of the disc sported a dark, glassy red sensor while the other showed exposed contacts under a sticky film, and a label stuck inside the case's lid detailed the instructions for use: Affix sticky end to skin to hear, and touch sensor to speak. Tapper's finger brushed against the contacts and he suddenly heard a small voice speak without sound.
"Tapper, can you hear me? Do these damn things even work on robots?" The voice was faint and muddled by static, but the exasperated tone was unmistakable.
"Hello, Mister Salazar! Yes, these communicators work on robots," Tapper cheerfully answered.
Salazar was not cheered up by the news. "Tapper! What the hell you were thinking with that jump? How did you even survive the fall!?"
"I was thinking that time is of the essence, Mister Salazar. And I merely caught myself against the slope! Repeatedly and rapidly."
The merc sighed heavily into the radio, and Tapper took the moment to better secure the communication device. So long as the contacts were touching his metal chassis then it could relay sound as a direct electronic signal, and the small disc fit perfectly in the center of Tapper's stylized bowtie. "So how bad is the kid?"
The red man was slowly getting his own bearings, and recoiled when he saw the robot take an unsteady step towards him. He attempted to scramble away but immediately gave up on that plan, instead grabbing his knee and wincing in pain. "Hello sir, as promised we are here to rescue you! Are you gravely injured?"
"Piss off!"
"The young man is down and bad but not critically so, Mister Salazar."
The radio went silent long enough for Tapper to almost repeat himself before the other answered, "...Just secure him and we'll reel you up. Hurry!"
Tapper took another look around the trench, noting the scattered parts of the trike. It was too destroyed to repair, even if Ricky was down here with his tools and plenty of time. The only component to remain in mostly one piece was the rollcage, and the large front wheel it was anchored to, but it offered little protection now. In fact, if Tapper leans over enough to examine it upside-down, the rollcage looks like the struts to a sled. But the lean placed Tapper in the exact correct position to look all the way down the canyon's length, where he saw something at the point where it vanishes into the horizon.
A glimmer.
"Uh-oh. Mister Salazar, I see a blue light at the end of the tunnel." The radio sputtered with overlapping shouts, but the message was clear. "One moment, please!" Tapper moved to pick up the trike driver, but the young man kept struggling to get away. Frustration and panic bubbled, overriding his customer service protocols for a brief moment. "Stubborn daredevil, let me rescue you already! SUCK!" He cast the spell once he had a solid hold, and the driver instantly slumped in Tapper's grasp.
"Whadid you do? Feelin' woozy…" the young man slurred.
Tapper only responded with a curt, "Shush you," while he got to work. Both of his back spindles wrapped around the driver's torso to hold him snug against Tapper's chest, while he straddled the inverted rollcage and gripped its safety handles. Tapper was determined to rescue this man, but that didn't mean he wanted his own chassis to get dragged up the asphalt in the process. "Okay Mister Salazar, we are ready!"
On the edge of his perception Tapper noticed static electricity starting to build up in the nearest ring, and when he looked over his shoulder a fresh spike of panic lanced through Tapper. The blue light was much, much larger now. "We're ready now, Salazar! Let's go go — guh!" The chain attached to Tapper's back suddenly went taut and nearly yanked him off the rollcage, but he redoubled his grip and they slid forward instead.
Physics played tug-o-war on Tapper's body, and all he could do was try to keep his balance. The chain pulled at his back, the tarmac pulled at the rollcage, gravity pulled at the driver, and the approaching train pulled at Tapper's attention. He couldn't look away from the blue fireball, some part of Tapper's emotions wondered what oblivion would feel like, and as they slid up the vertical slope his computer brain started calculating the impact forces.
Tapper never noticed the answer, if he even finished calculating it. They crested the lip of the canyon with enough speed to flick them into the air a second before the train rocketed past, and the shockwave added to their upward trajectory. For the second time in as many minutes Tapper felt the weightlessness of flight, only now the entire wasteland stretched out below him. The jitney was driving at full speed away from the canyon with Phanya riding on top, and when she saw Tapper's launch she waved at him before ducking back inside. They slowed to a stop and the chain connecting them turned Tapper's flight into a downward arc, cratering them into a large garbage mound.
Everything stopped. All movement, all sound, all sight, all thought. Technically Tapper's sound processor crashed after the sonic boom hit, and he had the Deafened debuff to prove it, but everything else came from getting buried halfway in the loose trash. The wave of panic-induced adrenaline broke, and in the emotional vacuum it left behind the detritus almost felt comfortable. Tapper could just rest here for a moment.
"...That was fucking awesome." The quiet voice came from just below Tapper's chin, and his customer service protocols reestablished their place over Tapper's frayed emotions.
"My pleasure to be of service, sir." Tapper tried to keep his tone professional, but exhaustion underlined every word.
[Quest: Defensive Driving complete! Perk reward: Feat Growth
Your ARMs have been working out, by necessity. Augmented limbs now add half of your Willpower score (rounded down) when acting autonomously.]
"Huzzaaah."