#waveic

Another long day tinkering and soldering away at the workbench was unfolding for the Babylonian team mechanic, Wave, as she sat locked into her work in her little corner of the zeppelin. Throughout the scrapping and rewiring of all kinds of components, the swallow could feel a strange nagging feeling at the corner of her mind, unable to find a reasoning behind it.

Finally baited by her own thoughts, the techie scooted back from her workspace, dropping her tools as a small treaded droid ran across the surface of the desk, cleaning and tidying behind her.

“What was it? What was amiss? Today seems perfect. There’s no alerts, no disasters, the ship is running like clockwork. In fact, I haven’t even heard a peep from Jet and Cloud all day...”

The swallow paused, scooting her chair around as the droid on her desk began flailing its stubby arms, servos whirring in attempt to catch the bird’s attention.

“Right, of course, that’s because they’re out today. Jet said he’d be out of radio range and Cloud was going out to practice her riding. Hmm, that’s actually kind of funny. Things seem a bit quiet here without them”

With a shrug, she’d turn back to her desk, seeing the little helper probe frantically pointing to a clock sat upon her toolbox.

“What? It’s that late!? Already!?” While there was no telling how long their wild card of a leader would spend out on business, his little sister was usually a lot more punctual. Perhaps she’d just been caught up in the moment and decided to hang around?

Still, there was no harm in checking in. Wave reached for the round cut gem hanging from her shoulders, activating the comms inside with a robotic chirp, and opening a channel with the bluebird.

( @theroguesofbabylon )

“Wave, D...dere’s a bike gear missin’ from da hangar. I...I think Cloud...” The albatross’ shaky words came to an abrupt end as he doubled over, panting and hands resting on his stubby knees. “I...I think she’s r-run off”

The swallow fell silent, her head dipping low. In the back of her mind, she knew something like this would happen...and in one of the rare moments in her life, she didn’t know what to do.

“W...w-wave...Ya can’t keep not tellin’ me what’s going on”

“Storm, that’s not important right now-”

No, he was right. No more secrets among teammates...

“Fine,” the techie sighed, “Follow me”

Wave would lead her teammate through the halls, mulling what she’d say, what she’d do. The events of today raced through her mind, though one thing in particular...

Those bolas...the ones used on Cloud. The construction in them was way too familiar. It couldn’t have been a coincidence.

And the transmissions, Jet surely was trying to hide it, but he contacted a signal almost identical to the swallow’s own...And after that incident weeks ago, she couldn’t ignore the possibility...

As the pair of birds reached Wave’s workshop, she’d take station before a blank monitor, a few keypresses seeing the screen came to life and started cycling through a history list of data and numbers.

THUD!

Another fist sunk into the gut of a white-coated researcher, the beaver doubling over in a pained gasp, only standing through the hulking seabird standing behind him, hooking his arms and holding him in place.

“I don’t have time for this, asshole,” hissed the sharply cut words of a striking green hawk as he knelt, tauntingly raising a finger to the chin of his captive and lifting up their head. “Where...did your men...put it?”

The researcher, barely able to gasp out his words, spat out a mouthful of blood between his strained breaths, then strained out whatever syllables he could muster. “Y...y-your people...n-nearly destroyed themselves...w-with those artifacts... P...p-please...w...w-we can do...s-so much good with them...r-redeem their disasters...l-let us do that for them”

Every nerve in Jet’s body tensed up, fists trembling as he fought to hold back the muscle memory to swing. The room was a dreadful silence, only interrupted by the click’s of a purple-hued swallow’s fingers tapping away at the keys of a laptop. 

“What...did you just tell me?”

The bandit leader’s eyes clamped shut, beak twisting into a hate-strewn scowl. He could feel it building, a pressure surging through his every vein, a burning sensation overcoming his arms as if just keeping them still pained him.

“You BASTARD!,” the hawk shouted, lunging for his captive’s jaw. “My ancestors SACRIFICED themselves to create these treasures!” Again, Jet’s fist sunk into the beaver’s cheek, violently twisting their head aside. “And you fucking RATS! You’d take EVERYTHING from us if you could! Don’t you DARE tell me that we should just stand down and let you rob us of this, too! Especially not for a greater good that would have us just wither away and DIE!”

With every shout, every ear-piercing screech of anguish and rage, the lead Rogue sank his knuckles into his captive’s skull, battering away with a strength normally far beyond the bandit’s limit. With each hit, the beaver’s face was more and more unrecognizable...a split lip, a face purpled and swollen, and blood dripping from cuts torn into the misshapen and miscolored lumps on their face.

And the very last of these strikes? It was enough to rip the captive even from Storm’s grasp, launching the researcher sliding across the outpost, terrified and shivering co-workers sheepishly daring to rush to his aid. The albatross watched the scene unfold in silence, his widened eyes shifting between the small group circled around the brutalized archaeologist, and the splatters of crimson that stained his leader’s white gloves.

Even Wave seemed to be unnerved, the tapping of the keyboard finally coming to a halt as the mechanic simply sat there, eyes closed. Moments passed, and the typing soon resumed, eventually leading to a window flashing onto the swallow’s screen.

“I found it. South storage, rack thirteen, in an unmarked crate”

Jet’s beak twisted into a crooked little grin, the dim light shining darkly on his face. “See? All that bravado and for what? You at least should have played nice and told us what we wanted. We would have already been gone and you’d be...well...able to hear me over the ringing in your ears”

“Well uh, dat’s a pretty tough question. Nobody really keeps track of dat kinda thing I mean none of us ever fall off-”

“It’s Storm”

“Yeah, definitely Storm”

So, fun little tidbit. Storm’s been depicted of having a hard time coming to a quick stop from his board in several scenes, and this is a reference to real-life albatrosses which due to their EXTRA LONG wingspan, tend to be clumsy when landing and coming to a stop.

( birdboyofbabylon )

( @cloud-the-bluebird )

( @theroguesofbabylon )

“Bosssss!? Clouuuuud!?” The deep shouts of the Babylonian team muscle could be heard faintly at first, almost completely muffled over the roaring winds that swept over the area. However, it would repeat again and again and again, just a little bit louder each time until it finally caught the avian leader’s ear.

“Yo, Storm! Over here!”

The albatross quickly turned for the source, ducking down and boosting off at full speed, his teammate trailing close behind, neither one of them taking long until they reached the shelter of the old ruin Jet had been using.

“B-BOSS!” Storm was the first to stumble in, running straight towards his leader and putting him into a huge bear hug. “B-boss! Didja hafta get us all worried like that!? You an’ Cloud both scared us half-ta-death!”

“Uh...she is alright, ain’t she?”

“Bored. There’s nobody out there who can race to save their lives! Nothing but rookies!”

“I want a REAL race! I want an actual challenge! I’m tired of blowing rookies away at the first few corners and spending the rest of the race forgetting that it was even a contest to begin with!”

“Same as da Boss, ‘cept with fightin’. I ain’t found nobody dat can handle gettin’ clobbered by deze fists”

“As you can expect from what you’ve just heard, my hands are tied fixing everything this testosterone devouring pair can break every time they find another yardstick for their dick-measuring contests”

Meanwhile I’m busy trying to think of what would make a good faceclaim :x

Actually I’m just looking at my drafts backlog and trying to slap myself into gear about getting to writing. It’s one of those “I want to write I want to continue the thing but I can’t drive myself to actually do it for some reason” things.

I’ve got 40 drafts I’m just sitting on and I feel really really guilty over it.

“GAH! Why is it so COLD!? Wave, I thought you said you were gonna fix the heater!”

“I said I’d fix it when you get me those radio parts I asked for”

“Are you kidding me!? I told you that thing wasn’t worth my time! Go do it yourself”

“And I suppose you can fix the furnace yourself, hmmm? Looks like we’ll all have to suffer together, Jet”

It wasn’t long until he’d be interrupted, a light rapping on his door before a purple-hued swallow let herself in.

“Jet, are you alright? You’ve been staring at a blank screen for half an hour now”

“Gah...h-huh!? How did you...?”

“I...did a bit of spying. Sorry, Jet, but I had to make sure our leader wasn’t driving himself crazy after everything that’s happened today”

“Oh...great...so you do think I could become...that”

“That’s not what I said at all! Would you just...”

“...Look, we’re all shaken up. How couldn’t we be. We all saw versions of ourselves that we...never wanted to be. That alternate world’s counterpart of you may have lost his mind, but his team laid down and let it happen. They didn’t step in and take charge when they needed to”

“I know how you feel right now, I’m feeling it too. It’s hard to come to terms with what you could have been...but it’s not what you are, Jet. Don’t forget that. You may be a rash, impulsive child, but you’ve been had more asked of you than anyone could have ever hoped. I’m ashamed to admit it, but any of us would have cracked under the pressure a long time ago. You didn’t”

“So even though you’ve made mistakes, even though you’ve done some things I’m ashamed of and embarrassed me more times than I can count, I’m still proud to have you as a leader...we all are”

“...”

“...Jeez...you...you gotta say something like that? You know I’m not good with any of that sappy stuff”