Stories from RhyDin & The Rings

(This is for the awesome The Remote Incursion SL!)



Coydog was aware that something was up long before the lanky form of her son came busting through her bedroom door, frantic with panic and pouring sweat.

"Mom, don't be mad, okay?" The boy rattled out, his hands hands fidgeting with the strings of a worn red hoodie. "So ED-E wasn't waiting for me after school. Annnnd he wasn't at home, either. Or at the treehouse, or the barn, or..." The boy paused his rambling, froze it in its tracks, fixed dark eyes widened with excitement and concern upon his mother's face.

"Mom? Why're you holding your eye like that? Headache?"

His mother seemed in a sorry state, sitting and pouting in the middle of her bed. Her blonde hair was a wild messy snarl, and she was still in her pajamas and that ratty blue housecoat. One of her hands covered her right eye, or rather its newly vacated socket. The most worrying sign to Fennec, however, was the fact that it was 3:00 in the afternoon and his mother wasn't at work.

A few more painfully long moments of silence stretched by, filling Fennec with dread. Coydog snapped out of whatever trance she was in and rustled up a smile for her son. His question was met with tablespoons of caution. Her hand did not stray. "A headache, baby boy. Yeah."

The jitters seemed to leave the boy in waves, though his expression belied that he wasn't completely convinced. Fennec sat on the foot of Coydog's bed and tried his best not to stare at that side of his mother's face, even when she was wearing makeup to cover the damage.

"Okay, Mom. If you say so. But ED-E's gone and I've looked everywhere." A new worry sprung to the forefront of his poor, young mind. "What if he ran away?"

Coydog, in the meantime, was putting two and two together, unaware that her thoughts were being grumbled out loud. "Then he ran off with my right eye, Muggy, and half of my damned dog." She realized her folly too late.

The boy forced himself to look at where his mother's hand rested, shielding him from seeing the empty socket no doubt. "You just said your right eye! Mom!"

"Christ, kid. Alright alright." Her robots were acting fucky and now the kid was giving her a hard time. Her grousing, however, held no bite. "For the sake of not reliving that particular trauma right now, let me just say that those particular circumstances lead to your ma getting a really wicked cyborg eye." Studying her son's face as he processed that, with anxious worry bubbling in her belly, she visibly relaxed when his face lit up.

"Okay, I'm just gonna say that's really cool. Not uh, losing your eye in the first place. But, oh man," the boy was practically humming in his skin; that robot nerd part of his brain lit up like a Christmas tree.

Smiling again, if only for the child's sake, Coydog sat up a little straighter. She did not move her hand, despite the budding ache in her arm. "Yeah, this morning I wake up sans Muggy, one eyeball and one cyberdog. So I figure wherever ED-E is, we'll find Muggy and Roxie. Maybe even figure out what caused 'em to vamoose in the first place."

Fennec, his mood having wildly brightened, jump to his feet as if he were spring loaded. "I won't let you down, Mom. Action and Adventure are my middle names!"

"It's just John, but fine."

The boy paid his mother's interjection no mind. "Annnnd I can get a peep at your weird eyeball!"

Coydog watched her son for along while with a soft smile on her face, her remaining eye wonderstruck; drunk on the fact that she had helped create such a neat and wonderful creature. "Alright, Fennec Action And Adventure Mason, if we're gonna do this then you've gotta do me a solid and get your homework done. Dig?"

"Dig!" The boy stopped his Corny Ninja Kicks of Celebration and without another word hurried from her room, leaving his mother alone with her thoughts and perhaps a precious hour more to brood in peace.

Be it because of his mother's discretion or his father's sheltering, Fennec had never laid eyes on an actual, honest to God Securitron. Sure, he supposed, Muggy may have counted, but he was too small and too puny. The robotic linebacker that his mother hovered over, arms buried in its back to her elbows and her fingers fiddling with its mechanical guts was large and imposing. It intimated the fidgety youngster sitting wide-eyed and entranced on Coydog's bed.

"Mom."

"Yes Fennec?" Came his mother's distracted reply. She held her hand out to him without looking, blinded as she was by the task at hand. "Wrench, please."

The boy looked into the old toolbox sitting in his lap, plucked a wrench from the surprisingly tidy selection of tools, and dropped it in her outstretched hand. "I think it's pretty cool."

Coydog peered down into the robot's open chassis and scratched her head with the wrench. "What's pretty cool, sonny boy?"

Fennec restlessly kicked his feet, drumming his heels dully against the side of the bed. "That you're The Courier."

His mother froze and quickly returned her attention back to tinkering with the robot's innards. Luckily her kid didn't see the frown on her face. "Come over here and gimme a hand, will ya?" A temporary change of subject; sooner of later the kid would mention The Courier again and she would, one day, have to address it.

He set the toolbox to the side with a quickness and quickly bridged the gap between the bed, his mother and her newest project. Up close it was even more menacing, despite being shut down. He trailed his finger up its dull metal side, just skirting the edges of the old screen in the middle of its "chest". Fennec looked up to his mother questioningly.

Coydog handed the wrench back to the boy, her smile confined to one corner of her lips and her free hand clasped against her hip. "I think I've done all that I can do. A little slapdash repair work, really. Do you know why I'm doing this?"

The dark eyed boy's brows furrowed in thought. He then looked into the robot. "If a..a bunch of tech is going wonky, it's usually one thing causing it. An infection." He paused, only continuing when he looked up to see his mother smile. "The securitron might get sick with whatever the other bots got, and maybe we could track it to 'em?"

The blonde clapped her hands, chuffed and as proud as any mama bear had a right to be. She tapped a finger against the slumped robot. "That's why you get to tighten that last bolt in there, Fenn."

The boy pumped a fist in the air and wasted no time getting to work, humming as he did.

______________________________________________________________________________________________


"Mom! MoooOOOoOom! Make it stop!"

The securitron had powered on without a hitch and had stood up so quickly that Fennec, in his panic, had grabbed the robot's shoulders. It had wasted no time catching the virus that was going around; some tech parasite that took control and commanded it onward to some destination and purpose unknown. So it was that Coydog's spawn clung to the massive robot's back for dear life as it whirred and rolled from the room; a bumpy ride for certain once that mono-wheel hit the stairs.

It did not seem phased by the fact that it was giving an unwitting, lanky teenager a particularly rough piggy back ride.

Its screen held an eerie, greenish gray glow. The face of an old cartoon army man sneered through the screen. "MOVE ALONG!" It commanded the coat rack in a tinny but authoritative voice as it bounced off of the last step and tore through the common room. It was late at night and thankfully empty. Coydog, trying desperately and failing spectacularly at not panicking, came bounding after the automaton.

"Mommy's coming, sweetie! Don't you worry!"


Reassurances shouted just as the securitron busted through the inn's front door. Coydog would pay for it later. "Fennec! Hold on!" She darted through the hole made by the robot, barefooted and without a coat. She ignored the small rocks digging into her feet and the chill that threatened to pierce her bones should she do something so foolish as stop. Soon she was on the securitron's heels. She lunged forward, reaching out to grab the child only to come up with fistfuls of air.

Her heart was pounding, and the fact that Fennec hadn't made another noise set like concrete in her belly. "...Fenn?"

Then the boy turned his head and Coydog laughed when she saw the big grin plastered on his face. "This. Is. AWESOME!"

And for that moment a fleet-footed Coydog took in the wind blowing through her hair, and embraced the thrill that came with running in the cold night air. For a moment she could close her eye and imagine she was back home beneath an endless night sky and a patchwork of stars. The scent of the desert - her desert, not Cadentia - fell free of a passing memory and when she opened her remaining eye to see the glee overload on Fennec's face, it was all that she could do not to cry.

"Yeah," she thought, lest she waste precious air on talking, "awesome."