The following short story is based on characters created and/or copyrighted by SEGA! Enterprises, DiC Productions, Archie Comic Publishers, Fleetway Comic Publishers, and the Taki Corporation. All other characters were created and copyrighted by Roland Lowery.
The author gives full permission to distribute this work freely, as long as no alterations are made and the exchange of monetary units is not involved. Any questions, comments, suggestions, or complaints should be sent to esn1g@earthlink.net. Thank you.
"Hopefulness is the heartbeat of the relationship between a
parent and child. Each time a child overcomes the next challenge
of his life, his triumph encourages new growth in his parents."
-Louise J. Kaplan, psychologist
The Next Life Over - Part Two
by Roland Lowery
- 3226 AD -
The wind whipped through Nack The Weasel's fur as he shot like a dart across the Great Plains that seperated the newly renamed city of Robotropolis from the continent-spanning Great Forest. He only occaisionally spared a glance down at the gauges on his highly - and illegally - modified hovercycle as he sped along. All the conversions to the bike had been made by Nack himself, and he had complete faith that it was operating at full capacity even though he was pushing it faster and farther than it had any right to go.
The plains ahead of him were nice and flat, only broken up now and again by a single tree or small boulder. Since there was little danger ahead of him and little danger in the hovercycle going dead, Nack spent most of his time looking over his shoulder at the huge danger that was straining to catch up with him.
A mad grin began to creep over the bounty hunter's face as the Massive Mobian Relocation Assault Vehicle closed the distance between them. The fusion boosters that propelled the MMRAV along on its grav plating outmatched the anti-gravity particle generators that drove Nack's bike, but only just barely. He knew he would have to deal with the metal behemoth sooner or later . . . and he knew just how to do it. He simply had to pick the right time.
Ever since Doctor Ivo Robotnik had taken over the Acorn Kingdom and for all intents and purposes the entire world of Mobius, he had been sending out troops of SWATbots in hoverpods to flush out whatever Mobians they could find to be taken back to one of the robot-controlled cities for immediate roboticization. Nack had run across several of these squads and promptly trashed them when they tried to take him captive.
Losing so many 'bots - not just to the weasel but to all the newly forming Freedom Fighter enclaves - was becoming a drain on the not-so-good doctor's resources, so he decided to start converting old hovertanks into enormous troopcarriers. From all counts that Nack had heard, several hundred of these monster machines roamed the planet, filled to the brim with SWATbots in mini-hoverpods and stocked with a good sized holding pen for prisoners.
As soon as the MMRAV's onboard computer decided that it had gotten close enough to the escaping weasel, it would open the hangar doors on either side of its bulk and release the pod-riding 'bots to pin him down. Nack couldn't let that happen.
He took one last glance down at his bike's control panel, then put his plan into action. With the quick flip of a switch and hard turn of the handlebars, Nack's hovercycle turned a perfect 180 and rocketed back directly towards the approaching MMRAV. Nack felt a slight tug at his innards, but the highly sophisticated inertial dampner that he had appropriated and installed several years ago kept the g-forces from making him nauseous, unconscious, or dead.
Another switchflip turned the anti-gravity field up to a highly dangerous level as he laid the cycle down flat on its side and he crawled up on top of it. He could see the hatches on the sides of the MMRAV begin to open as he jumped up onto the slanted nose of the giant vehicle. Blood thundered through his ears, drowning out the sound of his magnetic boots soles clanging on the MMRAV's hull. His hovercycle was now directly underneath the behemoth, causing the anti-grav and grav plate fields to meet and violently press away from each other.
The vehicle lurched violently, but Nack managed to stay on. He continued running along its length, making his way to the back as fast as his whipcord muscles could go. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, he reached the back edge of the MMRAV just as the opposing grav fields made it fly up into the air as if flung by the hand of a giant. Nack flew through the air as well, half under his own jumping power and half through the tank's violent upswing, and drew his grappling hook pistol.
He activated the hook after a split-second of careful aiming, causing it to speed down towards his hovercycle, which had just shot out from under the MMRAV. As soon as the hook had passed the topmost handlebar, Nack hit the retract button, making it to jerk back upwards and entangle itself around the bike's handle and start pulling him straight downward.
One of the reasons Nack had decided to use a hovercycle instead of a gravcycle was the 180 degree area that the anti-grav field of a hoverunit covered. An excellent safety feature for when a rider fell off their bike, and a lifesaver when used as a landing cushion like Nack was doing now. It slowed his decent as, once again, the intertial dampner kept him from going under. He quickly grabbed the bike, turned it upright, pulled into a stop, and switched off the nearly overloaded power cells just as the MMRAV hit the ground upside-down with a resounding crunch.
Nack watched, his maniacal grin still in place, as the other vehicle began to roll end over end and get torn to pieces by the unforgiving earth. The grin froze and then began to slide away as a chill ran up his spine.
I could have died, he thought. Great Walkers, I could have died!
He shook his head and cursed himself for a fool. The Nack of a few years ago wouldn't have given a damn. He would've kept that insane grin on his face the whole time afterwards, loving every second of the action. At the very most, he would have just moved on, satisfied that he'd gotten rid of yet another annoyance.
But now . . . now his life belonged to someone else. Now he couldn't afford to take such idiotic chances, no matter how much he trusted in his own abilities. If he died because of his old recklessness, he wouldn't be the only one to suffer, and he simply couldn't allow that anymore.
He cursed himself again, started his bike on a lowered power output, and sped towards the Great Forest.
He had a daughter to take care of.
"Da!"
Nack quickly crouched down to intercept the small blur of brown fur that launched itself at him with the ravenous speed only an extremely happy eight year old could muster.
"Hey, kiddo!" Nack hugged his daughter tightly to his chest as he carried her over to the other side of their camoflauge covered tent. There, he sat down on a small canvas camping chair and set her on his lap. "Anything excitin' happen while I was gone?" he asked.
"Nope," Liz said. "Did ya bring me anything?"
Nack let his face droop comically, looking horribly miserable as he sucked fretfully on his oversized fang. Liz giggled and playfully punched him on the shoulder, causing him to burst out in a wicked grin. He reached into one of the many inner pockets of his jacket and produced a small holocube.
"Oh, Da!" she cried out in delight. He handed the small cube to her and smiled as her eyes quickly scanned the tiny print on the side, making sure it was the one she'd wanted. "How'd ya get it?" she asked after checking it over.
"Ah, pfsh," he snorted, waving a hand indifferently. "It was easy. Just had ta dust me a Raver or two for it."
Liz's eyes went wide as she bounced excitedly on Nack's knee. "Tell me 'bout it, Da!"
The next half-hour was spent telling the young girl of his heroic battle against two giant MMRAVs with hundreds of SWATbots in hoverpods flying all around, and culminating with a massive one-on-one fist-fight with the evil and powerful Doctor Ivo Robotnik himself with the precious holocube as the sole prize of the entire endevour. Nack, of course, knew that the true story was in itself pretty exciting . . . but if he told the real story, he wouldn't get to make all the voices for the 'bots and Dr. Robotnik, or describe all the explosions, or use any of the other storytelling devices his daughter loved so much.
"'I'll get you next time, Weasel!'" he bellowed deeply, shaking his fist in the air, "'NEXT TIME!!!'" The young rabbit squealed in delight and clapped her hands as Nack smiled and tousled the fur between her long ears. "Okay, kiddo, tell ya what," he said. "You go get cleaned up, and we'll watch the cube before you go to bed, hey?"
"Okay, Da," Liz said as she kissed the bounty hunter on the tip of his nose. She then quickly scrambled down from his lap and ran over to the makeshift camp shower and closed the curtain.
Nack was still smiling as he stood up and walked over to a small folding table in the center of the tent. There, he pulled his ion pistol, gas gun, and grappling hook from their various holsters and set about disassembling them one by one and cleaning them with a small kit. The actions were all routine, something he did every day without fail, so he was able to let his mind wander while his hands went through the motions automatically.
It had been two years since the world of Mobius had changed dramatically. Nack and Liz had spent a good part of the first year wandering back and forth across the continent, checking on just how far the damage of Robotnik's takeover had spread. Unfortunately, they found that it was almost all-encompassing. Except for one or two holdouts, every major city had been taken over by SWATbots and placed under the control of one of Robotnik's higher-AI echelon lieutenants. Even the Mobian-controlled cities were under constant siege. Getting in or out was nearly impossible, and the living conditions inside made it barely worth trying the former path.
Besides the cities, the only other option was living in one of the many villages of Freedom Fighters that dotted the planet. For Nack and his daughter, however, it wasn't much of an option. Living with Freedom Fighters meant fighting Robotnik, something that Nack didn't want any part of. As far as the Weasels were concerned, the war was none of their business, unless someone could cough up enough of a payment for him to sign with them permenantly.
So, the two of them had finally ended up living in the Great Forest for the most part, trying to stay carefully neutral in the whole affair. After they had settled in, only once did Nack try to contact anyone outside. But it was to no avail . . . the Bounty Hunter Guild had, mysteriously, disappeared. It almost seemed as if every single member had just floated away in the breeze, never to be heard from again.
Probably, Nack had thought at the time, they were just doing the same as him . . . holing up somewhere until the whole thing blew over. If it ever did blow over . . .
Life in the forest wasn't so bad, overall. Liz had taken to it almost immediately and even seemed to know a great deal about it. She often pointed out certain types of trees, flowers, and animals while telling Nack everything she knew about them. Nack already knew most of it but as the doting parent, of course, he would listen to her talk for hours as she covered every tiny detail about the sparrow's mating cycle, or the black elm to pine tree ratio, or anything else that struck her fancy.
To Nack, it seemed almost as if her knowledge came not only from book learning, but from actual hands-on experience as well. Someone had brought her out to the forest and taught her all these things. Whenever Nack asked her about it, she'd withdraw from him slightly, so he eventually stopped asking.
Past that small dark spot, the two of them lived happily. Nack would make runs into Robotropolis infrequently to gather supplies, secure in the knowledge that Liz would be plenty safe on her own for a while. She obviously knew the Great Forest well enough, and he had taught her a good bit of basic self-defense and survival just in case.
What he hadn't actively taught her, however, was martial arts . . . or how to ride a hovercycle . . . or meditate . . . or any of the other skills he had learned with the dackers or the guild. He had wanted to spare her the life he had been leading before he met her, the life that had been threatening to swallow him whole . . . but she had learned anyway.
It had been almost seven months ago that he had been practicing his katas outside the tent and had happened to look over and see Liz mimicing his movements a few yards away. He'd been angry at first, since he had specifically told her not to follow him when he was training. The anger quickly faded, however, as he decided to just let her be. She was just doing a little monkey-see-monkey-do routine, and he figured she would probably grow tired of it after a week or so.
Three months later it became obvious that she would not be growing tired anytime soon. She had not only vastly improved in her technique over that time, she had grown bold enough to stand right beside Nack as she followed his every move almost perfectly. During those three months, he had come out of his meditative trances to find her just coming out of her own, seen her studying the control panel of his hoverbike, and caught her reading through the owner's manuals for his pistols on the sly.
Finally, he realized that even trying to expressly forbid Liz from following in his footsteps would be futile, and he knew that if she continued on without some sort of guidance, she could end up hurting herself. So, he caved in and started to teach her everything he knew.
She was a voracious learner. Nack had to go to Robotropolis almost every day now and scrounge up holocubes about any number of subjects related to his job, from martial arts training holos to documentaries on famous bounty hunters to electronic schematics for security systems. The latest addition to Liz's ever-growing collection was an introduction to wilderness tracking.
Nack knew that eventually, however, simple holos and training exercises weren't going to be enough to satisfy Liz. She wasn't going to settle for just shooting tin cans off of rotting tree stumps, or punching and kicking sandbags, or following deer tracks through the forest. It might be several several years in the future, but she would eventually want to sink her teeth into the real thing.
Liz was going to be ready for it when the time came, Nack had no doubts about that . . . whether or not he was going to be ready was another story entirely.
"Da?"
Nack blinked rapidly a few times before realizing that he had long since finished cleaning his pistols. Liz was at his side now, shaking the sleeve of his longcoat gently. He looked down at her, shaking away the last bit of dazed confusion that coming out of his thoughts had put him in.
"What's up, kiddo?" he asked.
She smiled up at him, her slightly damp fur clinging to her dimpled cheeks. "Time to watch the movie, da."
"Right-right!" he said jauntily as he stood up and walked over to the holoviewer to load the cube. "Up for peepin' sub-zero phants, neh? Viddies 'n' hollies 'n' runamucks! Skolly on, L!"
"Skollyin', Da, throttlin'!" she called back at him. She clambered up onto his lap as he sat down and pressed the power on the HV's remote. As the holo cued up, she snuggled up to his chest and put her hand over his heart. "I love you, Da," she said softly.
"I love you, too, kiddo," he whispered back. "I love you, too."
- 3231 AD -
Nack The Weasel punched furiously at the control panel of his hovercycle, causing it to squeal a little harder in protest, then settle back into a more comfortable whine and pitch. He cursed softly and promised himself that he would service the engine just as soon as his current job was over. Speaking of which . . .
"How we doin', kiddo?" the bounty hunter yelled over his shoulder.
Bunnie Elizabeth Weasel gave him a quick backwards nudge with her shoulder and let out a wild war whoop as she pumped another round into her high-powered rifle and let fly speeding lead into the nearest SWATbot hoverpod. Nack grinned and shook his head, turning his attention back to keeping the bike on track. He never quite understood his daughter's slight facination with solid projectile weapons, but he had to admit that the thirteen-year-old was quite proficient with them, both in aiming them as well as tricking them out so that they had enough punch to puncture steel.
The hoverpod that she had just shot wobbled a bit, then finally hit the ground with a satisfying crunch and scatter of parts. With two more precise shots, Liz managed to down its companions in short order. Flush with the pride of a job well done, she turned back around in her seat, slid the snub-nosed rifle back into its thigh-holster, and wrapped her whipcord-muscled arms around her father's waist.
"All wrapped up, Da!" she yelled above the screaming wind.
"Good gehl!" he replied. "We just gotta delivery to make, and we can get the hell outta here!"
"You're late."
"You wish, Clockwatcher."
Nack flashed an oily smile at his current employer, designed expressly to tick her off, then waved a hand in the air dismissively.
"Ah," he said, "we ran into some SWATs on the way over. You know how it is."
The straightlaced vixen sitting across the table from him and Liz ground her teeth together. He knew that she knew quite well that he could've been there early, SWATbots or no SWATbots, but that he was intentionally trying to grind away against her obsession with timeliness. From the way Liz was obviously failing to cover a smile, he also knew that she had been watching the whole silent fight from the beginning and enjoying every second of it.
Something about the lady he called Clockwatcher just wasn't quite right, Nack thought. Her mind was so twisted around the absolute certainty that everything could and should be placed on an exact timetable; a rigid inflexibility that he simply couldn't stand to deal with.
But, business is business, so he'd gotten her the item she had requested. It hadn't been easy, but the payment would be well worth it in the end. He waited just a few more seconds, hoping that Clockwatcher would finally crack and try to chew him out for his tardiness, then pulled a small package from one of the many inner pockets of his jacket.
"But, hey," he said with a shrug, "better late than never. I got what you want, of course. But . . . "
Clockwatcher's beady eyes clung to the package in Nack's hand, locked onto it as he idly swung it back in forth. Sweat started to pop out from under the fur on her forehead. She reached up and irritably swiped it away with a long, slender hand.
"Yes, yes," she snapped, "but what?"
"But," Nack continued, "are you sure you really want it?"
Her gaze jumped up to his abruptly. She suddenly looked more like a striking snake than a fox.
"You're joking," she said sharply. "There is no possible way that you are serious with that question. I hired you to find it. I'm paying for its delivery - quite handsomely, I might add - and I am currently waiting for you to give it to me, you . . . Nack."
Nack's eyebrows raised almost of their own accord. The way she said his name, he almost preferred she had gone ahead with a mere curse word. It wouldn't have sounded near as abusive.
"We are wasting valuable time, bounty hunter," Clockwatcher said, her fine features finally starting to crack.
"Alrighty then," Nack said with a shrug. He placed the package on the table and slid it across to her, then pulled over the small data crystal that she pushed over to him. "Pleasure doing business with ya. C'mon, kiddo, let's get gone."
As they left, Nack threw one last glance over his shoulder at Clockwatcher. She was completely ignoring the two other Mobians, instead staring intently into the silvery face of her prize. He shook his head sadly and left her to it.
"What was that all about?" Liz asked once they were outside.
Nack frowned and shook his head again. "A lesson for ya, kiddo," he said. "Sometimes what people want isn't really what they need."
Liz looked puzzled. "What do ya mean?" she asked.
"Take ol' Clockwatcher there," he said. "That thing we picked up for her is a little magical doodad that shows the viewer events seven hours in the future. Sound useful?"
"Well, yah," she replied.
Nack shrugged. "Yah, I'd think so, too. In fact, for someone who'd just be lookin' in on it once or twice for kicks or just when they figured they really needed it, it probably would be pretty handy to have around. But this lady," he said with a jerk of his thumb, "she's got nothing on her mind but how seeing seven hours into her future will let her effectively control every single aspect of her life."
"Won't it?"
"Nope," Nack said, shaking his head. "I'd bet credits to microchips that if we came back here in a year, we'd find her corpse sittin' there, staring into the damn thing 'cause she couldn't spare the time to set it down and get around to actually doing the things she'd spent her entire time watching her future self doing."
Liz looked back at the building they had just left, a concerned look on her face. "That's so sad," she said.
"Yah," he said, "yah, it is. But it's not our concern . . . she's gotta live her own life however she's gonna live it, and it's not our place to tell her not ta. The only thing I want you to concern yourself with is the lesson so you don't fall into the same trap. Remember the difference between what you need . . . and what you want."
"I will, Da," she said, her young face bunched in serious thought as they took their seats on Nack's hoverbike. "I will."
Less than an hour later, Nack and Liz were standing outside an old run-down bunker set amidst the ruins of a small border town on the southernmost edge of the Northern Territories. Since the few border towns dotting the planet of Mobius were often far too small for the evil Dr. Robotnik to worry with, they had all pretty much been smashed to the ground and left as little more than ghost towns. As far as Nack knew, there weren't any Freedom Fighter groups stupid enough to use an old border town as their base, but a number of them found it handy to use the occaisional building left standing in them as storage for odds and ends they couldn't keep in their regular hideouts.
"So what'd we get, Da?" Liz asked as he punched in the passcode to the bunker's garage doors. "Food? Firearms? Sundry goods and services? What?!"
He gave her a slightly sardonic look as he tried to pull the door up on its rusty tracks. "Do you want . . . to spoil . . . the surprise?" he asked between attempts. She fell into silent anticipation as he finally managed to wedge the door high enough for the two of them to crawl under.
Except for the dim twilight that crept in under the door, the single large room of the bunker was pitch black dark. Nack and Liz quickly activated their glo-lights and shone them around.
"There we go," Nack said after just a short bit of searching. "Ain't she a beaut, kiddo?"
He looked over at Liz to see that she was absolutely speechless. She gaped at the giant machine sitting in front of them, unable to do anything for the moment but admire the curve of its hull and the obvious power that lurked within its engine, waiting to be let out. With a girlish squeal of excitement, she rushed over to the side of the machine and started inspecting it more closely.
"Oh, Da!" she exclaimed. "It's amazing!"
"Ain't it, tho'? And the best part?" he said. "She's yours."
Liz looked back at him, wide-eyed. "You're kidding," she said.
"Apparently I've been doin' that a lot," he replied bemusedly. "But nah, nah . . . it's yours alright, assumin' you want 'er. I figure since this was your very first bounty hunt, you should take the whole payment. Special occaision and all'a that. Of course, if you don't want it, I can go back and tell the clock lady tha-"
"Don't you dare!" she cried out as she bounded over and enveloped him in a rib-breaking hug. Tears of joy had begun to stream down her face, making her eyes shine in the dim light. "It's a Walkerdamned Gravtech Berin model ATV, and I'll be damned before we give it back!"
"My my, such language for such a little lady!" Nack said, feeling his own eyes start to mist up. "Who the hell taught you such? Sure didn't come from my side of the family."
The two of them laughed as they hugged each other tightly for a long time, Liz feeling fortunate beyond words to have such a loving father and Nack near to bursting with pride in how well his daughter was growing up.
"Well," he said after they had stepped back from each other, "how's about we check out this hunka-junk's insides, neh? I dunno 'bout you, kiddo, but I could definitely catch a few winks, and I hear these Berins've got some pretty good accomodations . . . "
He wrapped an arm around Liz's shoulders and the two of them stepped into their new home-away-from-home for the first time.
Nack had been right. The bunk beds in the Berin all-terrain vehicle were far and away better than the cots and sleeping bags that they had been using, even after all the years the machine had been sitting in storage. Both father and daughter knew that, in the end, comfort was a very low priority in the big scheme of things, but when the occaisional bit of papmering came along of its own accord, they weren't about to complain.
Both bounty hunters had fallen asleep almost the second their heads hit their pillows, a combination of their improved sleeping arrangements and training themselves to sleep henever the chance to sleep presented itself. They both knew that 'bot patrols could come through at any time, but they both had to get at least a little rest before they tackled the difficult job of restoring the ATV to working condition.
Nack was already dreaming his way through random bits of the restoration, in fact, when he woke to a slight touch on his forehead. Normally if something had woken him up, whatever it was would have quickly found itself on the wrong end of one of his pistols, but the forehead touch was a signal that it was just Liz.
He automatically scooted over on the bunk and turned on his side to face her, making room for her to lay down and curl up next to him. She slid in under the sheets, then urned onto her side and pushed her back up against him. He laid his chin on top of her head, right between her long ears, and wrapped his left arm around her side. He gently stroked his hand up and down her belly and hummed softly.
The whole ritual was done silently and instinctively. It was something they had gone through off and on for several years, though it had slackened off as time went by . . . still, Nack had had the feeling that it would happen again tonight, so he wasn't in the least bit surprised by it.
After a short while Liz asked the question she always asked on those dark, empty nights.
"Da . . . tell me about Mom."
Nack stopped humming and sighed. He continued rubbing the young girl's stomach as he talked, keeping his voice soft and reassuring as he possibly could.
"She was a wonderful lady, kiddo," he said. "The first time I met her was at a guild meetin'. One look at her and my heart melted. One look from her and the rest of me followed suit. She came over, smooth as silk, and asked me if I was all right, so I told her the only way I was gonna be all right was if she'd fall madly, desperately in love with me so I wouldn't die of a fatally broken heart. Damned if that isn't just what she did, all t'save some scraggly-lookin' weasel from dyin' of lovesickness.
"But she was like that . . . always thinkin' of others before thinkin' of herself. She was noble in ways that you only hear about in fey tales; ways that folks like me can only dream of matching. Sometimes I felt guilty about keeping such a precious lady tied to me because of my own frailty in the precense of her beauty, but I could no more live without her than I could live without air. We were together for only a few months before we finally tied the knot in the biggest, most expensive wedding ceremony you ever did see.
"We were inseperable, kiddo, and that's a fact. We did everything together. We ate together. We hunted together. Hell, sometimes we'd just sit around and enjoy breathing together. Just being in the same room with the lady was like being in the same room with the Ancient Walkers themselves, basking in power and understanding and compassion that went beyond Mobian comprehension.
"It was a joy just to look at her. Emerald green eyes . . . winnin' smile . . . hair the color of autumn leaves. When she laughed, the entire world stopped to hear it, and her smile outshone the sun and all the stars put together. We loved each other implicitly and lived each day as if it was the greatest day in our lives.
"And then we had you, luv, and it was the happiest day in our lives. She named ya, y'know. Right there on the spot. She loved you so very, very much . . . "
It was a lie.
Both of them knew quite well that Nack had found Liz in Mobotropolis during Robotnik's coup and that the mother that he told her about was nothing but a creation of his. A lie. But on some nights, when the laughter and smiles and love that they had for each other just wasn't quite enough to fill that empty space that resided in both their hearts, they needed the lie.
That night they cried each other to sleep.
- 3233 AD -
Nack The Weasel squinted as he emerged from the dark insides of the Opal Oracle's temple and into the harsh sunlight pouring into the jungle clearing surrounding it. He snugged his hat a bit further down on his head to try and block some of the brighter rays as he made his way down the temple's front staircase, taking three steps at a time. He didn't look back as the figure that had been waiting for him just outside the entryway easily fell into step behind him.
He smiled to himself as he thought over the fact that his follower could easily outdistance him if she really wanted to, using the massively powerful muscles in her legs to bound down the steps eight or nine at a time as easily as he could walk across level ground. He knew that she could, if she wanted and if he was anyone but who he was, make those giant leaps and yet still be so silent at it that she could sneak up on someone and snap their neck before they even noticed someone else was there.
He knew that she could take a man down in less than five seconds using any of a hundred different tactics, ranging from non-leathal to extremely painful to bloodily merciless. He reveled in the fact that she could track anything or anyone anywhere at any time, do complex logic puzzles in her head with ridiculous ease, foil booby traps of all size and make with minimal tools, and any of a hundred other skills she had learned over the years.
Often he felt nearly overwhelmed when he thought about all this. And why not? What man could truly say that the pride he felt in his own daughter's accomplishments didn't threaten to overtake him from time to time? How could he not be proud of Liz Weasel?
And now that he had seen what the Oracle had shown him, he felt even more pleased with himself and with her. That other life he had seen had been so . . . so horrible! Without Liz by his side, it had been so empty, so devoid of joy and happiness. He couldn't possibly understand how that other Nack could stand to be so alone.
"What's the game plan now, Da?" Liz asked when they finally reached the bottom of the stairs. Just a short ways away sat the Rough Rider, their massive ATV. Nack started towards it as he answered.
"First we pick up the supplies that Jumpy's people have left at the dump site for us," he said, holding up the data crystal the Freedom Fighter had given him a short time before, "then we've gotta head over to Knothole Village. Apparently, our services are badly needed in the captiol city area."
"Razor," Liz said with a grin.
That afternoon, father and daughter sped out across the Great Plains to their destiny.
CONTINUED.
Roland Lowery
esn1g@earthlink.net
December 12, 2003
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