Junk Yard Rumble

  “These are the new super weapon you wished to show me?”

  “Yes, Comrade General. We call them the Iron Wolves.”

  “Why wolves. They look like boiled eggs on spider legs?”

  “We thought it sounded good?”

  “Bah, whatever. The Americans will just call them ‘commie-bots’ anyway.”

  General Winter, speaking to the KGB Special Technology Division head.

  Nahoa shivered at Kar1ns giggle as the spider like bot climbed the plane and started dismantling the huge robot arm inside. She was singing to herself, and he was never going to get used to that.

  Who knew Disney music could sound so threatening. He chose not to wonder why she only ever seemed to sing the villain themes.

  “This engine is way to big for me to lift. Can you lug it into the wagon Nahoa?” Badger asked. “Then we can poke around and see if we can find the other engine we need.”

  “Can do.” He found enough rocks to use his powers to shape some stairs up to the wing and lift the engine as Badger cut the last support. He carried it down to the truck. “We are going to need to make a couple of trips unless we make a trail for the hauler.”

  “Yeah, you’re right, want to take the first load back? Leave Weld and Kar1n to do the disassembles they're working on?”

  “Sure.” He moved the truck full of parts over to the boat jeep then with a bit of work put the boat on the truck across from where the cab used to be and pushed it all back to the front loading it on the hauler while the scrapyard owner watched his eyes wide.

  It took about fifteen minutes to push everything back to the truck, and offload it into the box, the jeep-boat getting covered by a tarp, and having parts loaded into it to save space.”

  “Okay, Let's go check on Levi and Kar1n, see if they have another load ready. If not, I’ll go pull those Mercury’s out. I’m not going to be much help other than lifting so if you see anything else you want me to pull just mark it.” He pulled a chalk pen out and handed it to Badger.

  “Sounds like a plan. I thought I saw something under some discarded roofing that I wanted to peek at.” Badger said. The enhanced mechanic whistled as he wandered along, pausing to look at some rather nice hubcaps, collecting a full set of cadillac caps that would look nice on a wall, though not likely to mount a car ever again.

  He reached the sheets of metal roofing, and pushed them off what he’d seen, and whistled. “Oh yeah, I want it.”

  Nahoa was humming to himself as he pushe’d the car deeper into the junkyard when he heard a loud bang from the front of the truck turned wagon, and the whole thing shook. “What the heck?”

  He pulled the truck to a stop and walked around. What did I hit? He saw a new ding in the front bumper. I thought I’d cleared this path?”

  There was a hissing, then suddenly a gray ball was flying at his head from underneath a car.

  “Fuck!” he shouted as the ball bounced off his head. He shook his head clear, catching sight as it unfolded and landed before jumping at him again, balling back up. “Am I being attacked by a freaking Pokémon?” He yelled, swatting the ball out of the air, it bounced against an old fridge with a bang, falling to the ground and unrolling.

  He took a closer look. “An armadillo? What the hell?”

  The armadillo in question shook off it’s stun, and rolled into a ball, before rolling straight across the field right at the big boys feet.

  “Hey! stop that!” He didn’t want to kick the animal, so he quickly called rock and crafted a ramp in front of the animal so that it sailed over his head.

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  The critter flew over his head, and slammed down on the hood of a rusted out delivery truck, leaving a massive dent, filling the air with the sound of metal hitting metal. It uncurled and hissed at him again. “It’s a slicer beast? Who the hell enhanced an armadillo? He backed up trying to get the truck between him and the animal.

  “Have a granola bar, it’s an apology!” he pulled the snack out of his pocket ant threw it at the angry animal. The animal stopped, and sniffed the granola bar. Than let out a weird cry. Three other similar animals came out and started dining on the bar with the first, chomping it up quickly. All of them made metal on metal sounds when they rubbed together.

  Nahoa pushed his truck towards Weld hoping the food would distract them for a bit. “LEVI! I told you there would be spicy critters here!”

  “Bump into something did you? Doesn’t seem to have messed you up too much.” He said, sticking his head out the window of the plane. A pile of parts had formed near the opened door, where Kar1n had been stacking them.

  “Dude, there are enhanced armadillos here, one attacked me after it ran in front of the truck. I threw food at it and a half dozen or more showed up.”

  “Right. Don’t mess with the armadillos. Got you.” Then he laughed. “Armordillos.”

  “No shit. The thing dented metal when I slapped it away. He looked behind him to make sure the armordillos hadn’t followed him before starting to load the truck up with all the parts Levi had stripped down. “How are we doing on the parts list?”

  I think we’re going to get all the cockpit parts, but we're only looking at about half the engine and wing components. Still, doing pretty good, and he did say there was another place to check out. Considering the boat jeep, we’re having good luck ourselves. That and your car.”

  “Yes, and I have many parts to restore for the shop's webstore.” Kar1n said.

  Badger ran at them with a weird leg like appendage over one shoulder. “Kill bots!” He pointed back at a half-dozen man tall spider-like bots chasing him. Each with sharp swords on their arms, “Die capitalist scum!” The lead bot shouted.

  “Seriously. Commie-bots?” Levi groaned, climbing out the window, and dropping to the ground, while Thud picked up an engine block, more accurately ripping it out of an old rust bucket and hurling it into one of the robots closest to Badger, crumpling it and causing a small explosion.

  “You dare attack my human!” Kar1n raged. “Please! Authorize me for violence!”

  “Override safety code! ID Harrison, password Ragnarock6969.” Badger said trying to find a place to take cover.

  Karen’s violet eyes went red and a laser cannon dropped out of her belly. A moment of charging whine filled the air before she fired a thin ruby beam, slicing through a bots legs before charging into the fray with her claws and cutters.

  “She has a laser cannon? Why did I not know that?” Weld asked, absently, as he stripped off his shirt, his torso turning white hot quickly so he could block and punch off a swiping claw.

  Thud shrugged, having found a drive shaft, using it to batter two other bots, keeping them at bay but not quite managing to land decisive blows. “I assumed she did.”

  “She doesn’t need it most of the time.” Badger said. “I’ve got a lot of restrictions programmed in her, you only need one robot to decide to try and kill you in your sleep to learn that lesson!” Badger yelled as he grabbed for his bag.

  Kar1n began grappling with another bot, trying to pull it down to the cannon's fire arc while stabbing at the bot with back legs now tipped with wicked sharp spikes.

  “Makes sense.” The Hawaiian man said, getting tired of fencing with the bots, letting one snatch the rod and pull, letting go and launching himself at its partner, kicking the unsuspecting bot savagely, as he brought a mass of rock up directly behind it. The bot impacting and smashing savagely against it.

  Badger pulled out a small, weird looking gun and fired it at the last bot nothing seemed to happen, but the bot stiffened and fell over.

  “I will use your chassis as a pram for my babies!” Kar1n shouted as she fired her laser into the twitching bots.

  “Right… So, we done?” Nahoa groaned, limping a little. Kicking that thing had hurt.

  “We can finish collecting stuff up here. I found a truck I want to grab, but yeah, we're good.” Badger said.

  “Are we going to ignore Kar1n talking about having children?” Levi asked.

  Badger and Nahoa spoke in unison. “Yes.”

  Badger continued. “I am grabbing the intact Commie bot too, if nothing the Boss will think it’s funny, actually grab another for Gray to dissect.” They loaded stuff up and began heading for the front.

  “See that dent?” Nahoa pointed at the front of the truck-wagon, and the deep dimple in the metal. “that was done by the armadillo.”

  “I saw one of the robots stumble over a bunch of them eating something.” Badger said.

  “I threw a granola bar at them to get away. I didn’t want to kill them.”

  “Badger, it is not imminent, but I will need a new primary battery. It is very drained from the laser.” Kar1n said, curling up on the truck.

  “I brought a spare, I figured this might be a heavy energy use trip. Just not that heavy.” Her creator said.

  Nahoa stopped pushing, sighing. “Here’s the truck.”

  “Kinda neat. We’ll drop this off, go back for the vehicles, and get fully loaded. Then we'll call the Tailor and let him know we found most of what he needed.” Badger said