trans_9 | A Boy And His Robot Dinosaur

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A Boy And His Robot Dinosaur

Vega, like many long-absent crew members, had important things to do when he woke up. Some would have gone to family and friends, inspected their living spaces for tampering, or chased after important ship news.

Vega checked on his Zoid.

He knew it was aware of him from the moment he stepped into the hangar. It was hard to say how he knew, but he felt it. The Berserk Fury had its attention focused on him and it was like a subtle, watching pressure that was difficult to describe. It only gained strength as he approached.

Vega peered up toward the Zoid's head, shadowed in the upper reaches its unlit hangar bay.

"Hi, Fury."

The red "eyes", really windows into the Zoid's cockpit, lit. Vega palmed the nearby control panel to bring up the lights and uncoil the carapaced walkway that would let him get up to the head and examine the consoles there.

The Zoid had missed him. He had been gone, and the Fury had been upset.

"It's okay, I'm back now!"

But he could tell it didn't entirely believe him. What if he left again?

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Sherry, true to her word, had left her quarters as though she had wings on her feet without so much as a word to her mother. She flew through the Hub to the hanger, stopping for breath.

It had been a while. Usually, Sherry had no reason to even be down here. Especially with Vega gone so long. She tried to make heads and tails of the expansive hanger again, chose a path that looked somewhat familiar, and took off down it.

Sherry stopped short of the Fury and Vega, cheeks red with exertion. "I found you!"

...OH right Sherry was coming and he should have remembered to hide somewhere.

Then again, Vega was happy to see her. Much though they argued about everything, Sherry was his friend. So, despite the fact he had kind of just challenged her on the comms, he grinned.

"Hi!"

Sherry stared at him for a minute, and pushed her hair out of her eyes. It wasn't a trick! He was really there!

So, she did what any excited girl who'd missed her best friend and trouble making partner would do: she ran down the carapace walkway and threw her arms around Vega. "Hi!"

~~Somewhere else on the ship, Leon's eye probably twitched.~~

Vega jumped a bit, startled, and patted Sherry awkwardly.

"Well," he admitted, "I guess you're not that slow."

The Fury, in the meantime, emitted a low rumbling noise.

"C'mon Fury it's okay, Sherry's my friend!" Vega frowned at the Zoid. It did not "reply".

He sighed. "He's still mad."

That was because the Fury was always mad, but Vega was bad at noticing.

Sherry pulled back and looked past Vega to the Fury, "Isn't he always mad, though?" And no matter what, Sherry always entertained the fear of the Fury swallowing her whole one of these days while Vega wasn't looking.

Jerk machine.

She fanned her face, "I don't think he's bothered anyone though; he's just stood by and been completely silent." She was pretty sure someone would've made mention of a giant robot causing issues in the hangers on the comm system by now. (At least it was one less headache for her father.)

Vega turned to peer at the Zoid, scratching the back of his neck. "I don't think he's always mad. He just doesn't like it when I go away too long. I think he gets jealous."

Vega walked over toward the edge nearest the Fury's head and began keying in the sequence to open the cockpit. He nodded as Sherry told him the Fury hadn't done anything since he'd left.

"That makes sense," he replied. "Fury doesn't really move around by himself, and he pretty much only talks to me. Right, Fury?"

The Zoid growled again and Vega patted the broad expanse of pale armor. The seals hissed faintly and the top of the Zoid's head lifted open. Vega leaned over the edge of the cockpit, squinting at the readouts on the Fury's many monitors.

"Everything looks okay in here, too."

"Why would he get jealous? It isn't like you're off playing with some other giant ro-- Zoid." See, Vega? She could learn the right term. Sherry hung back as Vega poked at things inside the cockpit. "There are a lot more pilots now, I noticed. But, I don't have any interest in that, why do you like it?"

"I don't know. Fury's kinda funny that way, he's smarter than most Zoids and I guess he worries about me."

He hit a few buttons, leaning awkwardly to check less vital information.

"Cause it's fun," he answered automatically. Then, hastily, he added, "And I guess we need to fight stuff, and this is what I'm good at?"

Sherry gave the Zoid in question a long look, "Whatever you say, Vega."

"I guess you should probably see what the adults have to say about you fighting too... but you know how my dad is about kids on the field." Because that was a sure fire, flat-out "no way." "But that's after you catch up to me."

So, good luck ever doing that.

Vega hopped back down off the side of the Fury's face, his own twisted into a general expression of "yuck".

"Me and Fury were down there on the beach planet, though," he said. "We got outta that okay. I don't get why your dad still thinks I can't."

Vega wasn't really willing to think back on the week following that, waiting on the Fury to be repaired and feeling like a failure. He'd gotten past it, but acknowledging that there had been a problem was difficult. It was much simpler to pretend everything had always been fine.

Everything always would be okay in the end, after all. He just had to get there.

"I don't know, either. There are lots of super-powered kids now. It's kind of annoying, actually." Mostly because Sherry was still confined to places while it seemed like everyone else got a free pass.

She understood why, of course, but it rankled her sense of independence. "But not all of us have powers, or giant robots." Some of them had horrible diseases in their blood streams, instead.

Hooray, science!

Vega frowned. "Yeah. We're here for a reason, right? And if I can do things to help I should be allowed to do them!"

He seemed proud of this conclusion before getting immediately sidetracked. "Oh, and I bet I could teach people to pilot Zoids if they wanted. Then they could do that, too! There's gotta be a bunch of 'em here, I bet!"

Sherry pulled him back to reality, "You'll have to talk to the people doing all..." She motioned to the mecha that lined the hall, "This. It's one thing to say that, it's another to get them to listen to you long enough." Sherry paused and looked at Vega.

"And can you even teach effectively? You have to think about that, too."

"How hard can it be?"

Vega had no idea how hard it could be. That was how Vega saw things, everything was sooooo easy until proven otherwise.

Like, say, math homework.

Allenby had been planning to do some general fixing-up of the mobile suits today, mainly seeing if she could get the Zakus to be anything other but big, ugly tanks. After seeing and hearing about the new Ohm soldiers, she wanted to make everything faster.

But the kid standing up in the shadow part of the Hangar caught her eye. Jumping up the catwalks, it wasn't long before something in there turned on and started to glow like eyes. Getting closer, Allenby saw that, well...

It wasn't a mobile suit, that was for sure.

"What is that thing?"

Vega turned at the voice. Somebody else who didn't recognize the Zoid, he supposed.

"My Zoid," he answered. "I've been gone a while so I had to come check on him!"

The lights revealed a large, saurian machine over twelve meters high and close to twice that in length. The heavy armor the clung to its frame was not quite white, but a pale lavender that was somehow at odds with how ominous the thing's presence was.

The kid, however, seemed entirely used to and unbothered by this.

"A Zoid, huh?" Allenby approached the machine, trying to fight down a strange, back-brain sensation that she should definitely not be so close to something with that many teeth. It wasn't a real dinosaur, after all. Anyway, the kid had a pretty happy grin on his face.

Its strange color, of course, didn't faze her at all. A pink dinosaur was no odder than a schoolgirl-themed Gundam. "So he's some kind of mech, huh? Hah, stick a Gundam crest on his forehead and he could be from my Earth." She looked down at the kid. "But you look kinda young to be a pilot, no offense. What's your name?"

Vega's grin didn't falter.

"I'm Vega! So I take it you're a Gundam pilot, huh?" He was somewhat familiar with them, though the fact that they tended to be shaped like people was just weird.

"You betcha! Allenby Beardsley, pilot of the Nobel Gundam. Right over there!" Allenby pointed to the station where Nobel Gundam stood, quietly hoping that he didn't have any smart remarks to make about the design. "You friends with any of the other pilots?"

"I know a couple!" Vega replied, nodding as he peered toward the Nobel Gundam with plain interest. "Kira and Lowe and... I've seen some other guys around but I don't know if they're still awake or anything." He shrugged, unconcerned.

"I think there's only one other person with a Zoid, though."

Allenby nodded. "Yeah, they're still around--well, I think Lowe just got released from GLaDOS, actually." She scowled as she always did when the subject of that particular AI system came up. "But Kira's head of Blade Squadron right now and then there's these other guys from this group called Celestial Being--"

She stopped herself. "Hah, but I'll talk your ears off about Gundams. What's this Zoid thing of yours capable of? I gotta say he looks really fierce."

Vega grinned broadly. This was probably his favorite topic and he had no problem starting in on it with a will.

"Fury's the best Zoid there is! Some people say it's the Liger Zero, but they don't know." The kid just seemed to light up with his enthusiasm. "He's an Ultimate X, he's smart. Like... when we fight stuff? He learns about it and can remember what to do later."

Vega then indicated the massive booster units on the Zoid's shoulders. "Those are the main boosters. Fury can run but it's better if we boost around, a lot quicker. Along his tail there? Those are the vents for the Charged Particle Cannon up in the mouth." Vega pointed out the panels that would fold out when the Zoid needed to vent the massive heat that the cannon generated.

"It's the best cannon there is! Sarah wouldn't let me use it for like weeks cause she wasn't sure if I could handle it," he went on, though this last bit clearly irked him a little. But that was in the past.

"Me and him are best at melee fighting though, I think. He's hard to throw around and I know a lot of good tricks!"

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A Boy And His Robot Dinosaur

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