Chapter 3

“Really?”

“Yeah, really.”

Altair paused momentarily at this point in the conversation, just hitting the forest-covered pavement. She didn’t seem to be interested in continuing this thread of the conversation, but just to be careful, he felt he had to quickly change topic; it was already veering into something that was too personal for him.

“Hey, look, thanks for backing me up there earlier” he began earnestly. But the intonation in his voice then became a bit stern, a slight harsher. “Still, you know, I can’t help but feel pissed off about how it all turned out… ”

“Yeah, I’m sorry about that… but it seemed like the only way for me to keep you from being on the receiving end of his fifty.”

“Well you better be sorry!” Altair quickly retorted. “Now I have to pay your dad even more for the fix-up job. I’ve got a debt four missions worth of cash to pay now, both to him and the shuttle company because my ride got wasted.”

Grumman’s daughter only responded with a pseudo-sarcastic and almost inaudible “… heh…” sounding a bit defeated.

Surely enough, Altair couldn’t help but wonder if this meant she were attracted to him… his hard answer to her was meant to annoy her and stir things up a bit to present some kind of distance between the both of them, but she instead yielded to him. Given her tomboyish appearance, he doubted she was some kind of doormat, and so it all seemed to make sense to him.

Of course, he soon dismissed these thoughts and smiled to himself, away from her view, as he continued driving onwards, neither of them saying a thing for a good while.

But there was something that eventually struck his curiosity.

“Hey, I forgot to ask...” Altair began, forcing him a stare from his passenger. “I mean,” he continued “it’d kinda be rude if I continued talking to you and didn’t get your name, you know?”

The red-haired half-Filipino girl smiled. “My name’s Wingale.”

“After the Commercial Shuttle?”

“Yeah… my mom used to be a stewardess, and my dad met her on a Wingale shuttle. They thought it would be cute, they named me after it.”

Nodding his head receptively, Altair found it hard not to let a smile creep up on his face.

“So…” he started thinking. “She’s got a cute name, a cute backstory, cute face, cute… body… ahem, but my point is… my point is that she is being awfully casual with me!! Doesn’t she realize that her dad is right for the most part?! Isn’t she thinking that I might take advantage of her? No wait, maybe she’s confident… maybe she has protection on her: no not THAT protection, maybe some pepper spray, or a tazer… or a blade…!

Well, but there is her dad…”

Suddenly, Wingale let out a curious “hmmm…” as she started to turn to Altair. “Hey… you said the shuttle you rented on your way here blew up earlier, am I right? Why was that?”

Altair sighed, . “Well… some hot-sounding girl wanted me dead…”

&&&&&&

“Hey, thanks for dropping me off here. It’s nice that I got to save money on bus fare.”

Altair and his car were standing right outside the mall that Wingale wanted him to bring her to. She had just gotten out and was saying her goodbyes.

“Heh… no problem,” he answered the redheaded girl “after the shit your dad put me through, I think I needed to get back at the old man some way, even if it’s in a way he wouldn’t even know.”

“Hehehe, yeahh… so thanks and stuff, bye!”

Wingale began to wave at Altair as she started walking towards the entrance of the shopping center. Altair waved back, with a simple but audible “‘kay.” Unfortunately, Wingale’s proceeding and soon last words to him at that moment somewhat upset him.

“It was cool talking to you, see you next time!”

Altair continued to wave, but chuckled nervously, under her ears.

“See you next time?” he mumbled to himself, as he started to drive away from the standing zone and back on to the roads of the city. “Grrr… she’s already starting to see me as a friend…”

Altair gnashed his teeth, scoffed, and then rolled his eyes, lifting his palms and slamming them on the upper-most bar of his steering wheel as he stopped before a red light. “This is not good… I think she likes me. But I just can’t purposely put myself into an awkward situation to screw things up; it feels like I’d be doing something wrong.”

The mercenary stayed quiet as he waited on the red traffic light. He was deliberating how he would approach the situation… and wondering just why he was so afraid of pushing the girl away.

“Man… &# it.” Altair swore, stepping on the gas as the light turned green.

&&&&&&

Norte Costa, as its name implied, was a city nestled on the coastal region of Northern California, though a small one. Norte Costa itself was not too densely populated: more than half of city-goers were often commuters who came in from the neighboring suburbs. A fair distance away from San Francisco to the near south by car, it may have been overshadowed by the much more populated and renowned city, but was important to the independent neutral nation of California at the same time, for various reasons, namely because it allowed more Metal Demigods to defend the coast.

Because of Norte Costa’s size, one could easily cover distance throughout the city in a relatively short time either by car or the city’s mass transit systems; not five minutes had passed and Altair was already next to the edge of the port, which was right across from his apartment. The building in question was only about four stories tall and actually looked rather decent and well-maintained, almost like a small hotel. Then again, after all, the city was relatively young, having practically been built in the middle of the First Outer Space War; it was only five or four years old…

Parking his vehicle in the lot, Altair walked in, nodding politely to the security guard --- a large yet intelligent and amiable looking black man with a friendly smile--- as he passed the front desk.

Walking up the stairs, he came out into the hallway of the third floor, where he turned to his right searching for apartment number “3C”. Whipping out his key from his jacket pocket, he spun it around by its ring on his middle finger, dexterously, as he then put it into the hole and unlocked the door, then went in taking the key with him and locked the door behind him. A few steps in, before he ventured further, he took off his shoes and neatly put them aside.

Altair’s apartment, a small studio, was quite bare, given that he had only just arrived. Only a refrigerator, an oven, and a stove were provided for him; there was no bed. He wouldn’t need one, given that he would simply make do with a portable futon. Earlier, Altair had left a duffel bag filled with clothes and other necessities by the edge of the sliding terrace door. And right now, he was reaching in for that very sleeping bag, as well as a few toiletries.

“Saying that it was a long day today…” he muttered “is an understatement.” His voice began to pick up and now he was practically talking to himself out loud, in an imperative, reassuring voice. “And on another note, Norte Costa really does prove that California is in the &#ing Twilight Zone; it’s too peaceful here for such an obviously war-torn world, and I can’t help but wonder how the Union even lets them be their own nation…”

Then he snickered, humorously implausible conspiracy theories flooding his head. “You know, I feel like at any moment, with a snap of President Omura’s fingers… every one of Norte Costa’s citizens will turn into zombies… superhuman zombies… superhuman zombie SOLDIERS that take names, kick “eee-you”, “cosine”, and Mars Nation ass, chew bubblegum, and feast on the brains of their hapless, manipulated mercenary victims for being such sinners against God, humanity, and the commune… heheheh, stupid commies…”

The mercenary sighed, dropping his head a bit in a tinge of disappointment: his words were proof to him that he was badly in need of sleep, as he was already halfway into lala-land. There was certainly something unnatural about his new residence, but it would have to wait until later; it didn’t seem like too big a deal for the moment anyway, and the more important problem concerned whether anymore assailants had trailed him and would make an attempt on his life while he was asleep.

“But &, I have to get some damn rest… I’ve been through worse before.”

He then looked out the translucent glass of the sliding terrace door right next to him, which gave him a view of the harbor right across from his apartment. As far as the classic ideal went, this position, opposite from him either on the water or somewhere concealed on the harbor itself, would have been the perfect place for any would-be assailants to take aim at him furtively with a Sniper Rifle or Rocket-Propelled Grenade.

“Going to sleep on the kitchen floor would get rid of the Sniper problem, but propelled explosives would still be a freaking doozy…” he smirked, dragging out the sleeping bag with one hand as he got up. Holding his bag of toiletries in the other hand, he threw the somewhat crumpled sleeping bag towards the kitchen, making his way to the bathroom…

Quickly as he was freshened up, he was soon drifting to sleep on the kitchen floor. His eyes heavy, his experiences from the last 24 hours or so of his being awake began to repeat arbitrarily in his mind’s eye. But all it took was for him to recall Max Higgins’ comment about him being infallibility to suddenly make him feel unpleasant. He winced at what it forced him to reminisce, gritting his teeth and then sighing. He fought to expel that thought from his mind once again, and, for a moment, he was successful, as he left the conscious world to enter his dreams. But he was oblivious to the fact that his efforts were actually in naught: he was to be assaulted by that very shame the moment he stepped foot into dreamland.

&&&&&&

(“Is there something you can’t do?”)

Altair suddenly found himself in the middle of one of the vast, Martian deserts, strapped in the cockpit of his customized Tikbalang, his pilot suit and helmet on. Déjà vu: he was quite sure he was reliving one of his old missions.

No, as a matter of fact, this mission was not old… even though he was so hastily dropped into the battlefield, blurring his perceptions and recollections a tad bit, the scene was familiar enough for him to recall it’s origins… this event had only occurred a month ago. And it was the very thing that Altair had wished to not be reminded of, not to be brought back to, when Max applauded him for his multifaceted abilities: what this incident enforced in him, sadly, was that there were some things he just couldn’t do.

And he hated that factt.

Altair’s intellectual musings soon dissipated, as if he had forgotten that he was only observing the moment in hindsight. Momentarily stunned by the sights and sounds of the surrounding battle, where he was to destroy the enemy force and prevent them from retreating were they to turn hostile in negotiations, Altair was suddenly blindsided from the rear by a salvo of missiles from another mercenary’s Tikbalang, knocking it off balance. Though his machine nearly fell face-first into the red sands, it stopped itself quickly by putting its hands on the ground and rebounding with a spin to let it realign itself with the enemy machine, as it also took hold of its dropped Plasma Cannon before turning to face the opposing Metal Demigod.

The raven-haired mercenary let loose with a blast of his weapon as his machine crashed back-first into the sands and kicking up the red sand into the air around. The shot rang true, as it violently tore off the leg of the rival Tikbalang; unable to keep balance, it too crashed into the ground, also resulting in something of a small cloud of red sands. Taking this opportunity, Altair ignited the blades at the end of his cannon and leapt with his machine’s powerful legs into the air, dropping on his downed adversary’s machine with a finishing blow from above meant to disable, not outright destroy.

Of course, while he was busy sparing the life of his enemy, his primary targets quickly sped away in the distance, far past a range that his employers were willing to start giving pursuit; also beyond the maximum lock-on range of Altair’s own missile systems.

His employer chimed in from his own vehicle nearby, as it started to leave the battlefield slowly. Notably unimpressed, he was outright irritated as a matter of fact. “You’re flashy, but I don’t want to see a &ing circus show, Specineff! You let them get away, you dumbass, so you’re not getting paid shit. And don’t you come back to us for another job either! I swear to God… so useless…!”

“You win some you lose some…” the pilot of the still-standing Tikbalang thought, taking off his helmet to get a breather. It wasn’t a total loss to him though: he spared the life of his temporary adversary, who he’d once worked together with on a mission. He contacted him on the vidscreen.

On the other side of communications was a man distinguishably of Middle-Eastern descent, perhaps only a few years Altair’s senior. His helmet was off, but his unkempt hair, solemn expression, and inability to look Altair in the eyes made it evident that he was disappointed. Visibly, he was quite handsome, much moreso than Altair; this gave the latter the impression that he looked now like a billionaire playboy who had suddenly squandered everything, only coming to grips with his own folly at the very end.

“Hey, Hakeem…lighten up, looks like it’s not a total loss on your part.”

“Altair… why did you let me live?” he said with a heavily accented accent. “You’re disgracing me.”

“Whoa, dude, slow down and get over it! It &ing sucks to lose, but you’re alive today, that’s what matters. I mean, come on, kick my ass next time or something if you’re so mad: look, I’ll even share some money to help you repair that Demi, come on, listen to me for chrissakes…”

Immediately, the man turned his head to look Altair in the eyes, grimacing, as he simultaneously worked his controls with his left hand. His words came rapidly, lashing like an angered viper.

“No, you listen to me, Altair. How dare you put salt in my wounds by proving me wrong and then babying me.” He flashed his middle finger, his expression now completely deranged and his voice no longer shouting but screaming. “This is what I think of you!! & you, Altair Specineff!”

Sensing impending danger when the man began fiddling with his controls, Altair’s eyes widened. In an effort to escape to safety, he leapt away using his machine’s powerful legs in conjunction with his boosters, imploring Hakeem over the vidscreen to stop.

But In spite of this, Altair was rocked with a powerful explosion and, because he had removed his helmet, was out like a light.

When he came to shortly thereafter, he realized he was unharmed, save perhaps for a minor head injury. His machine, having escaped the self-destructive blast, was relatively undamaged. But now he was the one incredibly distressed: outraged, he slammed his fists again and again on the dashboard of his heavily damaged, but still operational machine. For miles on end, his radar revealed that he was the only one there. His former employer seemed to have cleared the danger zone without delay, leaving him to his own devices. Altair was shouting alone, with no one to hear him…

“… a pointless mission, a damaged mech, and I let the guy live for nothing!! &#!!! # HIM!! & THAT UNGRATEFUL SON OF A----”

&&&&&&

Altair’s eyes opened wide in the middle of the night. It was dark outside, and so the mercenary was satisfied with the thought of at least knowing that he was getting well-needed rest. But the dream made him shake his head in disappointment.

Sitting up, crossing his legs, he solemnly thought to himself about his dream. Days after it had happened, he continued to view the incident in hindsight, trying to analyze it best as he could. He thought he was surely about to get over it by now, a month later, but it still hurt him deep inside to know that he could not save the other mercenary.

He was upset that someone had died despite his efforts to keep them alive, but that was the part of Hakeem’s death that he had managed to readily accept after the incident took place: the world was a mess like that. People would die in his quest to better it, in spite of his efforts. He was simply human after all, he could not save all of them.

What truly distressed him was that he was forced to believe the incident was an omen; a sign from whatever greater powers that lay out there in the universe that his endeavor in making the world a better place was for naught. It was here, finally, that his “just being human” in the face of an obstacle was unacceptable to him. Not only was he denied a potential partner in his journey, but that man refused to see things the way he saw them: if other people refused to put in the effort to better their situation like he had, Altair’s grand dream was futile.

Frowning, he turned to his side and fought with himself again as he tried go back to sleep.

“Keep strong…” he muttered. “Don’t give up.”

&&&&&&

When the raven-haired Demi Driver returned to his unconscious world, he found himself surrounded in darkness. Looking around, he realized that he was unable to see even the rest of himself; wherever he was, not even light could reach it.

Soon enough, though, the darkness seemed to stealthily disappear in a flash, replaced by a sea of stars: Altair was suddenly in the middle of Outer Space. Even though the experience respectively left him with a feeling of weightlessness, he felt as if he were still standing, his feet firmly grounded to some invisible floor beneath. Perhaps the feathery sensation came from the fact that he was still standing when there seemed to be nothing to stand on…or perhaps it was the simple fact that, for 360 degrees, he was treated to an exorbitant and breathtaking view of his celestial surroundings. And then again, maybe, it was both.

But this curiosity immediately became unimportant when he came to realize a certain figure was standing before him, at arm’s length and on even ground. Her presence, sudden to him, did not scare him but only brought him comfort; she felt incredibly familiar to him for some reason. He also seemed to understand that he had been waiting for her.

“What took you?” he felt inclined to ask.

He could not make out her face, but he noticed that it was a cute one; he also noticed that she was wearing a single white slip and white sandals; he noticed that she was somewhat shorter than him, the top of her head reaching the bridge of his nose. And he also noticed that she was of a fair yet slightly tanned complexion and had long auburn hair (perhaps dyed) worn untied.

But he KNEW, that he truly, earnestly thought she was beautiful. So beautiful in his eyes, as a matter of fact, that “Love” was the word he wanted to use to describe the feeling she invoked in him. Why was this? He knew looks weren’t all to him! But then, it all made sense when he realized that the beauty he saw in front of him was not beauty in the physical sense, but a metaphor for the beauty of an individual in totality.

“Alty…” she muttered, her voice echoing however as to make it audible to him. She seemed to be putting her hands behind her shyly, looking up to him as she blushed and smiled a heartfelt smile. “Kiss me.”

He was so awestruck by the moment in passing that, in sort of a way of both respecting and praising who he saw in front of him, he handled himself with grace and confidence in spite of his fear as he walked closer to her, putting his arms around her as he looked down at her and stared at her eye to eye. Taking her gently, he complied and put his mouth to hers…

(“Is there something you can’t do?”)

Altair was once again thrust into the middle of a battlefield, having been ripped out of his pleasant interlude with the mysterious girl. His body felt younger, smaller, more frailr; he was a teenager here, and his new surroundings puzzled him. He was still in Outer Space, but he was sure this time that he was in a realistic setting, most likely somewhere on the Solar System’s Asteroid Belt given that he was amid an “Asteroid Canyon” of sorts.

Catching sight of six other machines in the battle zone that he somehow knew were identical to his, understanding that these were his comrades, and acknowledging that they were up against heavy odds, Altair too began firing at his designated opponents. But a surprise awaited him: it dawned on him in a flash that the Metal Demigods in this skirmish were not the ones he was used to encountering in his line of work, but ones that were out of date, obsolete now. His machine, therefore, was too: gripped by a claustrophobic fear, he now knew that he was strapped into the cockpit of the first Metal Demigod of the Advanced Calendar: the Wyvern.

“A Wyvern…” he thought, as he laboriously dodged an almost unexpected incoming burst of Beam fire. With as much difficulty as he had avoiding the shot, he turned to face the enemy, who he noticed at the edge of his optical sensors, no doubt scheming for his flank. “I’m in the ‘flying coffin?! So I’m---!!”

“…collateral!” a voice chirped in angrily on his communications. A momentary static that soon cleared obscured some of the words, and it seemed blackly humorous that it was timed to follow right after Altair’s incomplete musings to himself. The voice was suddenly familiar to the mercenary, who, hearing it, realized that at this moment in his life, was not a mercenary but---

“Men, our day’s finally come… we’ve been used… But I’m not standing for this. As members of the Earth Union Special Operations Taskforce we should NOT STAND FOR THIS!! If any of us lives through this, you make me a promise: do what you can to get back at those bastards for leaving us for dead. Let them know that we’re warriors!”

Unlike his other two dreams, Altair had difficulty in keeping track of what transpired shortly hereafter; everything seemed like a tumultuous blur to him, perhaps because he suddenly felt his own analytical consciousness replaced by the psyche and personality of the character whose shoes he was put into. And in the aftermath, he suddenly found himself alive and well, albeit with a bloodied head and damaged helmet. Though this time it was out of sheer fortune (or perhaps misfortune), it seemed he had once again weathered a storm, only to come out of it not only alive but on his own.

Part of that luck was what had also kept his machine’s life-support system running in contrast to the fact that his other systems had shut down. It was clear to him now: in the ferocious struggle against the technologically superior enemy machines, Altair’s Wyvern was throttled by an explosion into the crevice of a sizable asteroid, reducing him to an inconspicuous non-participant for the rest of the battle. Because of the damages his machine had sustained, both from the explosion and its smacking into the wayward rock, a majority of its systems went offline, which left Altair hapless yet undetectable by those who ambushed his quarry and sought to wipe them out.

Later regaining his composure and wincing at the pain from his wound, he sought to leave the crevice hastily, led by a desire to understand the fate of his comrades. His Wyvern’s optics lit up, a sign of his bringing the machine back to life, as it laboriously began crawling out of the asteroid’s crevice.

Something suddenly frightened him, however: it occurred to him at that moment that there was something --- no, someone --- who was higher on the list of concerns than his other teammates. Fearing for her well-being, Altair started to move with increasing hurriedness towards the former battle zone, giving little regard to the fact that if he did not maneuver wisely, he would have smashed into another of the giant rocks (but with a much less accommodating outcome). In an instant, he had practically forgotten about how much his wound irked him. He also seemed to be ignoring the condition his main boosters were in. They were damaged to the point they might have exploded fatally at any moment if he continued to utilize them without proper restraint.

When he finally reached the area shortly thereafter where he and his comrades were ambushed, Altair was treated to quite a sight; even though human corpses were replaced by the shredded, warped, disfigured remains of metal giants, the scene before him still served to perfectly convey the terrifying visage of battle. However, while this would have absolutely stunned the soldier under normal circumstances, he was unfazed. He continued to survey the once-tumultuous battlefield, as the only thing that mattered to him was---

“No!! NO!!!” he screamed pleadingly, having spotted a particularly damaged Wyvern chassis floating waywardly amongst the debris. “PLEASE, DON’T BE DEAD, DON’T BE DEAD!!”

Bringing his own Wyvern hurriedly by the other one, he looked to his damaged biosensor, hoping that at a range this close he would have been able to detect whether his companion were still alive.

“No reading? YOU BUSTED PIECE OF JUNK! STOP LYING TO ME! SHE CAN’T BE DEAD…”

Altair slammed his fist into the side of his cockpit, as tears started coming from his eyes. Instead of coming down his cheeks, they floated as tiny goblets of water in midair.

Desperate, his Demigod’s hands began inching towards the cockpit of the other Wyvern’s torso, perhaps to pry it open. Because he did not do so outright, it was obvious Altair was hesitant; did he fear a monster would emerge from the cockpit in place of his beloved comrade and devour him? Not necessarily, but there was a fear on that level holding him back from tearing the hatch open so brutishly. However, he was unsure of the reasons why.

Whatever was the case, Altair came to the conclusion that he had to let go of that fear… as the fear of being without her was even more disturbing.

“NO! DON’T LEAVE ME ALONE…”

Altair cried shrilly into the Asteroid canyons, grasping the torso before him.

“DON’T LEAVE ME ALONE!!”

&&&&&&

With a terrified scream, Altair sat up very suddenly from his sleeping bag, sweating profusely and hyperventilating. For a moment, having been torn from the realm of nightmares back into the real world, it seemed that his fear in having lost someone so important to him continued to take its toll on his mood as he was still crying, muttering to himself incoherently even.

But it soon registered in his mind that it was incredibly uncharacteristic of him to be doing so. He smiled sarcastically, and even began laughing at himself, but he was still markedly irritated.

“WHAT THE & WAS THAT ALL ABOUT!” he shouted, wiping his tears away with his forearm, then slamming his fists on the kitchen floor beneath him before he got up, scoffing. “I don’t--- that’s not me! MAN, I don’t cry at that shit! If it were me, I would’ve moved on --- and --- what about--”

Altair stopped, however, shocked, as he was hit with a revelation. His face turned serious, and he decided for once to dwell momentarily on his unconscious experiences, for this one ended in quite a tragedy. By the way events had turned out, it was heavily implied that the girl he had kissed so passionately in his earlier dream was the one who supposedly died in the next one.

He sighed, wiping the sweat from his forehead before reaching into the pocket of his shorts for his cellphone. The screen told him it was 7:03 A.M; he seemed to have awoken just early enough, and he smiled again, albeit weakly. Obviously, the dreams he just had were psychologically tied to his concerns of shattered hopes. He shook his head, raised his eyebrows, and sighed.

“Life goes on, man… so what if she died… ? She was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. But I’ve got things to do, dreams are just distractions, I mean… I should be glad that I got some sleep and woke up early, that’s all…”

With that, Altair walked back into the bathroom to brush his teeth and take a good shower: being a mercenary, usually on the move, good ones were generally few and far between.

But when he set foot in the bathroom, he couldn’t help but notice something in the mirror. And when he did, he dropped his jaw, absolutely taken aback…

In the dream just prior, he had been scarred on the forehead, just above the bridge of his nose, when the glass of his helmet broke and fell in on him.

He looked in the mirror, trembling; surely enough, the scar was there, exactly where he had been cut. He reached out towards the mirror, feeling where he saw it, and then brought that very hand back to his own head to feel the scar; it was not some kind of hallucination, and he was not “wondering” if that was the wound from his dream. That wound was in fact real, because he KNEW it was real.