Chapter Text
Andrew sees red when he opens his eyes.
Actual red, the color completely painting the right half of his field of vision in scarlet hues.
...Blood?
Andrew swipes a gloved hand over his eyes but can't feel any of that telltale liquid coming off into his palm. He attempts to rub at his eyes, but when he touches his right eye he feels the cool and smooth texture of metal instead of leathery skin. He taps on it out of curiosity and hears the light plink of glass. A display interface helpfully provides him with the date and current temperature.
Right, he realizes he hasn’t blinked yet.
“The hell...?”
“Oh! Looks like you’re awake,”
The cheerful voice appearing behind him has Andrew jumping to his feet ungracefully. He whips around, revolver drawn at the figure standing before him.
“Haha, easy there, cowboy! Sorry for startling you,”
It’s hard to see the entirety of the man talking to him with everything dyed in red, but it doesn’t take long for Andrew to figure out that the man isn’t exactly human.
He’s seen his fair share of Bionics, their altered bodies fitted to the nines with modifications. There weren’t many flesh and blood cowboys nor outlaws anymore in the New West, save for himself—by choice—and a few of the settlers who couldn’t afford the mods.
He’d quit going to church long enough to not let the sight of such alterations bother him. But he’s never seen someone modify this much of their body.
Metal covers this figure from the neck down—steel, brass, and god-knows-what other materials patchworked together into something resembling a person. If not for the human face and head, Andrew wouldn’t even be able to tell this man apart from a hunk of junk.
“Your body’s adjusted to the implant quite well it seems.” The electric sparks in his pupil whirl around excitedly. “How’s your vision?”
“Moon’s red,” Andrew says, re-sheathing his revolver.
“Pardon?”
“The moon’s red.”
The strange man cocks his head of dirty blonde hair to the side, as if processing Andrew’s words.
“Ah, I must’ve forgotten to calibrate your prosthesis. Just a moment,”
His mechanical fingers whizz across a portable keypad near him, and with a few punches of buttons, the red in Andrew’s vision subsides to normal colors almost instantly.
“Better now?”
“Some,” Andrew catches his reflection on a nearby metal plate and sees the infrared lens lodged inside his eye socket. “What the hell did you do to me?”
“What I did was all I could to save you. Your occipital nerve was damaged severely in the gunfight, among other things. You were nearly done for,”
“And the sonuvabitch that shot me?”
“Dead. You shot a Gold Digger named Marshall, remember that? Well, that Gold Digger owed the Western Baron a significant debt.”
Everyone in the New West knew about the Baron. He was one of the first Bionics to settle in these wastelands after the War, making a fortune off of dynamite, and later the vices of gambling.
The tycoon had influence over a good chunk of the New West. The leftover, he ruled with fear.
“I was a hired gun. Didn’ have no grudge against the man myself. Was up to the Lord if he was gonna live or not.” Andrew grunts, smoothing the fringe of his matted white hair over his implant.
Andrew vaguely remembers the standoff. He’d been a quick draw but the damn yellow belly brought in a posse to get the jump on him. The last thing he can recall before getting chased off of the ledge of the gulch was the searing pain of a bullet. The rest is fuzzy.
“So I was s’ppose to be a dead man. Why’d you save me, then?”
“...You saved me once before. So I returned the favor.”
“I saved you?”
“There was a big heist once, at the town bank back in Lutz. You saved me from the bandits.” The cyborg explains. “My name is—or at least, was—Luca Balsa. I go by Electrolysis now.”
“Ol’ Lutz, huh.” Andrew studies the robotic figure looking up hopefully at him and thinks he can see the man from that day somewhere in there. All he really remembered was that he had long brunette hair in a shade he liked, and a pretty face to go with it.
The face isn’t the same anymore—the pretty features all but a vestige. Still attractive, in an artificial way perhaps, if one didn’t focus too much on the lumpy additions of metallic coils covering his limbs and the bandaged rags he wears. Andrew waves those thoughts away.
“We’re even now, then.”
He dusts off his pants, and makes a move to get up. The place they’re in now looks more reminiscent to a junkyard than a laboratory for some genius cyborg, but from the looks of the terrain Andrew recognizes that they are on the outskirts of the township.
“Desolate Sand is a wanted man—dead or alive. If you go out now, they’ll seek out your life.”
“I’ll take my chances.” Andrew fixes the ten-gallon hat on his head and turns.
“Wait,”
He catches the bag that Electrolysis throws towards him. There’s a familiar heft to this bag, a certain coolness of the contents that can be felt through the fabric.
“Goddamn,” Andrew murmurs when he looks inside.
It’s gold, and a lot of it. Each of the nuggets are the size of his palm. He bites down on one to verify their authenticity, even more surprised to find out they’re in fact the real thing.
“There’s only two forms of order that exist in the lawlessness of the Badlands,” Electrolysis begins. “Blood...and gold. The latter of which I’ve got plenty of.”
“A piece o’ scrap like you, with a fortune like this?” Andrew scoffs incredulously.
“There’s a lot more where this came from.”
“You’re lyin’ through your damn teeth. They don’t call these the wastelands for nothin’. Earth’s drier than Hell out here, and every last drop’s been hoarded already.” Andrew spits.
“I made it. I can make as much as I want,” Still, the Bionic doesn’t falter in his pitch. “The ancient alchemists were onto something when they tried to turn lead to gold, but they never quite got it right. My process is a bit simpler, involving coal. But it’s gold all the same.”
“No one just makes gold.”
“Whether you believe me or not, the proof’s right there in your hands. If you help me out, you’ll be a rich man, Sand. Richer than rich. You can buy out the Baron or get yourself a one-way ticket into Metropolis.”
Just like everyone knows about the Baron, everyone knows what Metropolis is. The sprawling, bordered city that existed on the edge of the desert wastelands was built after the War, filled with greenery and feasts and tech—only for those who could afford it.
Outside the city walls in the New West, the outcasts that couldn’t either adapted or struggled everyday to survive.
“If you’ve got the gold, why ain’t you in the ‘Polis, then?”
There’s a wistful look in the cyborg’s eye.
“...I used to be an inventor there. I’d made a discovery of perpetual motion—machines that can operate infinitely. You know what’s wrong out here in the New West and in Metropolis? The reason the world got like this in the first place? Greed. A select few people start hoarding the energy, the resources, the gold...while everyone else suffers. The machine that I was building would’ve changed everything, except my mentor robbed me of it. I was wrongfully accused and was casted out.”
No one survived out here clinging onto naive notions like that. Electrolysis is the living proof, the result of innocence having been chewed up and spat out like tobacco. Perhaps it’s the pity he feels that grounds his boot into the soil. Andrew turns back and sighs.
“...I’ve got unfinished business here. A score to settle with them folks who robbed me of a good eye. Might as well hear what you have to say while I’m at it,”
Electrolysis perks up almost immediately, so quick Andrew would think that the other’s mechanical neck could snap into two. “I take it that you’ll help me, then?”
“Don’t push yer luck.”
“I’ve spent the last few years…upgrading myself, so to speak. The good thing about this body is that I’ve got everything backed up here,” Electrolysis taps a finger to his temple. “The only thing I need to finish my invention are my original research blueprints, which were stolen from me.”
“I’ve finally tracked down their whereabouts—they were sold to the Western Baron and they’re currently being kept hidden inside the safe of the True Proof, his largest casino.”
“Let me get this straight. You want me to steal from the Baron. I’m a dead man, remember?” Andrew deadpans.
“I’m just an inventor that dabbles as a scientist, while you’re Desolate Sand, the vigilante bounty hunter with the quickest draw in the New West. You’ve been there before, so surely you’ll know how to handle yourself.”
“After this, you’ll be set for life, so think of it as just one small obstacle in getting there.” He adds, to Andrew’s exasperation.
“Town’s two days away. Got anything to get us there?”
“For that, we’ll need ourselves a trusty steed,” Electrolysis whistles, leading a white mare by the reins from a rusty stall. “Meet Choir,”
The mare nuzzles at Andrew some, turning its head to expose the black steel exoskeleton making up the other half of its body.
“Easy, girl. See? I think she likes you.”
“I thought you said she was a steed.”
“Steed. Stallion. Doesn’t really matter after the mods,” Electrolysis shrugs. “Got good horsepower nonetheless.”
“Guess it doesn’t.” Andrew says hopping onto the horse with Electrolysis following close behind.
The Bionic horse gallops its way steadily through the empty canyon.
The desert night is cool. Andrew can feel Electrolysis’s arms looped around his waist, cold as ice from the dropping temperatures.
Electrolysis chatters away about some sort of foreign concept, unawares of his potency as a walking thermal conductor. He shifts uncomfortably in his seat for while, before the cyborg finally takes notice and detaches himself from him apologetically.
“Sorry! Sometimes I forget in this body,”
“It’s fine.”
A stream of whistles and loud whoops cut through the calm of the darkness. About a hundred meters away, a formation of red lights can be seen descending from the sides of the canyon. The interface in Andrew’s right eye identifies about five or six hostiles.
“Bandits,” Andrew grits. Bad news.
“They aren’t supposed to be here. This isn’t their turf,” Electrolysis says.
“Well, they've decided it’s their turf now. Hang on,” Andrew applies pressure to Choir’s flank with his foot, speeding them up. He draws his revolver from his holster just as the first of the shots ring into the air.
Andrew whips around and fires back a few shots. He can hear some shouts and the thud of a body falling to the ground.
“This eye ain’t bad after all,” Andrew chuckles under his breath.
A wild buzzing sounds around him, sending static into his vision. The wind picks up around them, sending the sand swirling into the air.
“Watch out, it’s a solar storm!”
At Electrolysis’ warning, Andrew peers behind them to see the approaching storm gaining speed. He also sees more of the bandits closing in.
“Damn, we don’t got time for this,”
Getting swept up in a magnetic storm like this would be a death sentence. He pulls his bandana up over his nose.
“I can detect shelter about another hundred meters ahead. By the cliffs,” Electrolysis reports.
Andrew decides to switch up his strategy, aiming his shots at the hooves of the bandit’s horses. One of the horses gets spooked and throws off its rider into the mercy of the storm.
The other bandit deploys a wired lasso. The lasso catches onto a part of Electrolysis’ coils, yanking him off of Choir and into the sand. Andrew shoots the bandit off the horse. Electrolysis continues to be dragged behind the horse, the lasso the only thing preventing him from flying up with the high winds.
“Sand, catch!”
Andrew catches what gets thrown at him, and does a double take when he sees Electrolysis has thrown him his own head.
“How in the hell—”
Despite being detached from the main body, Electrolysis’s head is moving and talking with ease. “My body’s only going to be dead weight in this storm! The electromagnetic interference’s jammed my motor functions, but don’t worry about me! Just keep going,”
Electrolysis makes the concept sound so infuriatingly simple, but the last thing Andrew needed was to travel around with some talking head. He secures Electrolysis’s head to the saddle and takes the reins in one hand, easing Choir closer to the other horse.
“Just leave it, Sand!”
“C’mon...” Ignoring the protests from the robotic head, Andrew jumps onto the other horse with a grunt. He sees where the lasso has been tied onto the saddle. With a great effort, Andrew pulls Electrolysis’s body up and off of the ground.
He throws the lug of the body onto the back of Choir and leaps back on right before the horse underneath him veers sharply and topples to the ground.
The hairs on Andrew’s neck prickle with electricity from the proximity of the solar storm.
“There! The cave over there!” Electrolysis cries out.
Andrew sees it then, the desert cave a beacon of hope. Their last chance. Closing in, Andrew tugs on Choir’s reins hard, tucking Electrolysis’s head and body under each of his arms.
“Sorry, girl.” He murmurs to Choir before leaning to the side and tumbling off of the horse.
A quick rolling motion helps to break his fall, and he makes it inside the cave entrance with Electrolysis’s parts just as the storm blows violently past. He coughs, crawling further into the cave to avoid the howling wind outside. The blue glow pulsing faintly on Electrolysis’s chest is the only source of light in the otherwise pitch-black depths.
Speaking of which, he hasn’t heard a peep from the Bionic.
“Hey, you there?” Andrew shakes the unresponsive head in his grasp. “Hey, Electrolysis!”
He curses when his prompts are met with silence. Just when he’s about to get up though, he hears a beeping noise followed by the sounds of machinery whirring to life. Electrolysis’s visible eye flutters open, to Andrew’s unexpected relief.
“Relax! It’s just power-saver mode,” Electrolysis assures brightly. “Hey, could you do me a solid favor and pass me my body?”
Andrew deposits Electrolysis to where he specifies. In the rather horrifying sequence that follows, Electrolysis’s headless body latches onto its head, twisting it back seamlessly with a click.
“I’m grateful that you retrieved my body for me, Sand, but it was an unnecessary risk. You could’ve just taken my head—I’ve got a spare body down back at the depot.”
Andrew watches the other remove sand out of his ears. “Just your head wouldn’t do me any good. Wouldn’t be able to follow through with your end of the deal,”
“Hmm...I suppose you’ve got a point there.” Electrolysis hums at Andrew’s response. “What a storm, huh? Looks like we’ll be stuck here for the night.”
Andrew rummages through the paltry remnants of his saddlebag, relieved at the presence of the gold still there. All that’s left is a can of cold beans and he’s hungry as a horse. He certainly hadn’t expected to run into a storm along the way. “Just my luck.”
“Hold on, give it here for a moment,” Electrolysis motions towards the can of beans. Andrew passes it to him warily.
Blue electricity gathers at Electrolysis’s palms when he rubs them together. He cups the can in his hands until he appears satisfied.
“Convenient, isn’t it? Here you go,”
A bit of warmth lingers from his metallic hands as he passes Andrew the can, and for a moment, it’d be easy enough to mistake them for human instead of machine.
Andrew shakes away the thought, spooning the lukewarm beans into his mouth with a switchblade he finds in his pocket. Not particularly appetizing, but it’ll do. He watches Electrolysis procure a thick flask from his belt, filled with a fluorescent blue substance. He drinks from it casually the whole time Andrew’s eating.
“You aren’t gonna eat?” He asks.
“With this body, I don’t need to eat for sustenance. Doesn’t stop me from enjoying the little things though.” Electrolysis says. He holds up the flask Andrew’s been eyeing. “Wanna try it? It’s my special mix.”
Electrolysis passes the flask over to Andrew. He takes a moderate swig and regrets it almost immediately. The sting of the alcohol makes him grimace, to the Bionic’s delight.
“Shit’s about as good as poison.”
“Methanol tends to do that. Altered bodies are able to ingest it, strangely enough, without it being detrimental. You’re newly minted. Give it some time and it’ll taste akin to ambrosia,”
“...I’ll pass.”
“You’re Andrew of the Ancient Ballads, aren’t you?”
It’d been a long time since he’d heard that name. He’d long discarded it, that label of his weakness.
“I figured anyone knowin’ that name woulda been dead by now,” Andrew mutters.
“Dead, alive...I guess I’m not either, aren’t I? To tell you the truth, I’ve been to the New West three times now. When I was a child, my family visited the frontier once to see the Settlements. We came across a tribe during our stay, and in that tribe there was a boy around the same age as me, with a beautiful voice,”
“Can’t sing anymore, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
“Well, neither can I. But I remember it was fun when I did get to sing with him,”
Andrew looks down to avoid Electrolysis’ gaze, suppressing the little bitterness in his chest. “So what, you feelin’ sentimental now or somethin’?”
“...I promised that boy, that I’d sing with him the next time I came back. My father was supposed to debut his business venture then, one that would’ve helped the tribes living there. I’d be able to visit often. But I wasn’t able to keep that promise.”
The wistful look returns in Luca’s eyes, and what Andrew also notices as a flash of anger.
“My father was just enough of a fool to lose the family fortune to someone like Alva...and next time I came back, the tribe was already gone.”
“None of it was your fault. The boy wouldn’t have held it against you.”
“...’Electrolysis’ is a mouthful sometimes. You can call me Luca if you want. Like the old times,”
“Like the old times.”
Andrew looks at the Luca before him, a smile threatening to its way onto his lips. “Guess we could use another of your drinks.”
“See? I told you you’d like it eventually!” Luca laughs.
Sunlight peeks in through the cave.
Andrew stirs, removing the hat covering his face. Squinting through the rays, he sees Luca already standing at the entrance. He follows him to the mouth of the cave.
“Mornin’.”
Luca turns to him. “Good morning, Andrew! Have a good rest?”
“You didn’t sleep?”
“Mm...I don’t need sleep, and can’t, usually. Figured I would chart the storm instead,”
“What’d you reckon we do now？Still about ten miles to town and we’re outta a horse.”
At this, Luca whistles sharply with his fingers. The sound of a horse neighing follows suit. Andrew cranes his neck to see Choir galloping towards them.
“Good girl,” Andrew rustles the part of Choir with an actual coat. “Thought she was a goner,”
”She’s got a built-in Faraday cage. EMP-proof.” Luca grins proudly. “Well, shall we be off, then?”
They enter the town of Oletus fortunately without a hitch.
Andrew thinks he’s seen his face plastered on every other town bulletin they’ve come across. He sinks his face further into the secondhand ponchos acquired from a traveling emporium disembarking the station.
“I think it’s better if you kept that bandana off. The drawings don’t capture your nose very well, in my opinion.” Luca supplies, rather optimistically.
“...Thanks.”
“Look, Andrew. We’re here,” Luca points to the building up ahead. They dismount the horse in an unassuming alleyway.
“The safe is on the second floor of the casino. It’s rather impossible for me to blend in, so I’ll have to make my way in through the windows.” Luca details the plan to Andrew. “The Baron undoubtedly will be monitoring the gambling on the first floor. I just need you to monitor where the Baron is for me. Try to blend in.”
“And if that plan backfires?” Andrew asks. He rips another “wanted” poster off of the wall and crumples it up.
“Keep them busy.”
Andrew walks in through the saloon doors to raucous laughter and the shuffling of casino chips. He scans the room, past the tables of gamblers, and spots the Western Baron conversing with some affluent officials.
“Looking for some company, mister?” A slim woman clad in a bright yellow dress moseys up to him, looping her hands around his arm.
“No thanks, ma’am.”
Before Andrew can dislodge the woman from him, a red-haired man, followed by several men, approach them.
“Natalie! What do you think you’re doing?”
“S-Sergei, I—”
The last thing he needed was to get involved in a lovers’ spat. Andrew starts moving off to the side once the woman starts sputtering excuses, but the smiling man named “Sergei” blocks his path.
“Hey, partner! What do you think you were doing with my woman?”
“Think you’ve misunderstood. Just lookin’ to talk with the Baron. Don’t want no trouble, now.”
“You don’t look all that convincing.” Sergei studies Andrew closely. “Wait...I know you. You’re the one that offed Marshall! Lookit here boys, we got ourselves the wanted man!”
The man and his entourage start reaching for their holsters. Andrew beats them to the punch, whipping out his revolver and shooting them down a bullet each. The woman screams and all eyes turn on him.
So much for blending in.
“Luca, you better hurry,” Andrew mutters under his breath.
A single shot rings out and the casino goes silent. A single set of footsteps break that silence, the crowd moving aside for their owner as they make their way to Andrew.
None other than the Western Baron himself, in his fur-covered, rotund entirety, appears before Andrew.
“If it isn’t the one and only Desolate Sand! You’ve got the guts, showin’ up at my doorstep.” The tycoon sneers. “Never seen a man this desperate to die,”
“You’ve got half of it wrong. I don’t plan on dyin’ anytime soon.”
There’s the sound of glass breaking upstairs, followed by the thud outside of something heavy, like a safe. Andrew admits that he’d expected Luca to take a higher-tech approach to opening the safe than blowing it out the window, but whatever works.
The Western Baron grins menacingly. “Both of you thieves are goin’ to pay greatly for steppin’ foot on my lands. Tie ‘im up, boys—”
Andrew takes this chance to cast the bag of gold into the middle of the gambling floor. Chaos erupts the moment the gold nuggets spill out, the majority of the casino’s occupants clamoring for their piece of the riches. The guns previously trained on him are turned instead towards the crowd uncertainly, some of the gunmen themselves butting their way in to grab the gold.
“You fools!” The Baron shouts in rage, drawing his own pistol and firing into the air in an attempt to control the mayhem. He commands his remaining henchmen, “After them!”
That was his cue to high-tail it out of there. Andrew makes a run for the doors.
Just on time, he sees Luca already on Choir and galloping towards him with an outstretched hand. “Grab on, cowboy! We’re out of here,”
“Music to my ears,” Andrew takes it and mounts onto the horse behind Luca.
Several gunshots crack through the air and bullets whizz past them as they ride away from the scene. Andrew turns, seeing that they belong to a dual-wielding and very pissed off Western Baron. Andrew focuses his scope on their aggressor and, locking onto his target, fires one last round. His bullet shatters the Baron’s monocle and the tycoon doubles over onto the ground clutching at his eye.
“Eye for an eye, as they say.” Andrew blows away the revolver smoke at the tip of the barrel.
He sees the henchman aiming the gun higher, not at himself but at Luca’s head.
“Watch out!” Andrew grabs Luca in an attempt to shield him from the incoming shot, ducking them both down. White-hot pain pierces through the right side of his face and his hearing goes out suddenly when he feels his eardrum explode.
“Andrew! Andrew—” Luca’s horrified face is what he sees as he begins to fall backwards, vision growing dark.
System Error...
Rebooting System...
Loading Interface...
A bright, white light appears overhead beyond his eyelids, followed by some indistinct warbling of electronics. Everything feels heavy, like he’s underwater. He fights the feeling, clawing his way up and through until—
Andrew breathes, a sharp intake of breath filling his lungs. He opens his eyes to see roughly half of his vision, and Luca’s face hovering over him.
“Still with me, cowboy?”
“Ain’t dead yet,” Andrew groans.
“Good. Hold still, would you?” Luca shifts his weight above Andrew, finnicking with some tools.
After a few more careful turns of a screwdriver, the vision in Andrew’s right eye, as well as the sound on his right-hand side, returns.
“There. You’re back online,”
“The blueprints...we get ‘em?”
“Right here and uploading,” Luca holds out the small computer chip in front of him.
Andrew leans back on his elbows with a sigh. “Good.”
“Hey, thanks for helping me out back there. It really means a lot...so thanks,”
Luca might as well be beaming a thousand kilowatt headlight at him. With a smile like that, even Andrew can feel the corners of his lip turn upwards slightly.
“Hmph,”
“You sure got busted up, though, taking that hit for me.” Luca murmurs, tracing his metal fingers over Andrew’s split lip gently. “Let me bring you some isopropyl for that.”
“Don’t need it.” Andrew clasps Luca’s hand in place.
The realization that the Bionic’s body is still straddling him is compounded by a sudden urge to kiss him.
“Andrew...?”
His head must’ve hit something on the way down back in Oletus.
Andrew places his mouth on Luca’s, a lot more carefully than Desolate Sand would ever get caught dead doing. It’s not the steel trap he’d imagined it to be.
The silicone rubber of Luca’s synthetic lips is a far cry from the softness and warmth of a saloon girl, but the unsatisfying texture surprisingly keeps him coming back for more.
He reaches his hands up Luca’s tattered excuse for a shirt, fingers seeking purchase on the contoured metal surface of the other’s back. Seeking for something familiar, maybe, like the warmth of skin. Andrew fails to find something meeting that description, even as his touch trails downwards underneath Luca’s belt. He notices then, that Luca—while reciprocating—hasn’t been responsive to any of Andrew’s ministrations.
“Enjoying yourself?” Luca asks with an amused expression when Andrew pulls his lips away.
“What’s lefta you? Not ‘Electrolysis’, but the real you?”
Luca merely laughs at his question. “Aside from my dashing personality—nothing much, I’m afraid.”
“...So you can’t feel anything.”
“I never thought I would be needing it, with my current form. Does that disappoint you?”
Looking down in between Andrew’s chaps, Luca seems to catch on to the bounty hunter’s predicament.
“My, you’re certainly a strange one, Andrew. Who am I to stop you if you’re so eager to explore?”
Leaning back on Andrew’s thighs, Luca strips off his ragged clothing to reveal the pure machinery underneath. His metallic torso shimmies enticingly, more than Andrew would like to admit.
Man-made. That’s exactly what Luca’s body is—all rigid angles and impermeable steel. No room for the intrusion of anything as primitive as an organic human.
Still, it’s Luca, and hell if Andrew doesn’t at least try.
At Andrew’s obvious frustration, Luca seemingly decides to take mercy on him.
“There’s one place, under the hood, so to speak.”
Luca gazes down at the convergence of electricity housed inside of his chest. He unlatches the plexiglass panel covering his heart, exposing it to the open air.
“Looks dangerous.” Andrew says.
“The brave may enter,”
Andrew dips a thumb into the glowing blue mass experimentally. A tingling sensation works its way up his fingers. The insulation from his leather gloves must’ve protected him from the brunt of the shock.
Luca jolts up with a small gasp, as if pulled by some invisible strings. Andrew’s not sure how to decipher it, but this is strongest reaction he’s received thus far. There’s no way he’s going to let go of it so easily.
He presses his thumb further into the sparking cavity of Luca’s chest to elicit more of those reactions.
“Ah...”
There’s a different undertone now, of pleasure, that Andrew can see with the bucking of Luca’s hips and joints. He pins down the writhing limbs with his body, feeling them undulating underneath him as he grinds his own hips against their surface.
Andrew crushes his lips hard against Luca’s, tasting silicone and ceramic and the tang of metal. Luca’s breathing quickens, chest heaving with each variation of Andrew’s presses.
He digs his thumb as far in as he can into that ball of electricity. His finger feels numb, as does the rest of his hand, but he keeps going until he feels the limbs around him jitter and overheat to their core. He decides to withdraw before Luca starts malfunctioning.
The lens of Luca’s pupils lose their faraway look and gradually refocus on Andrew as the Bionic comes down from whatever state he’d been in.
“...Why’d you stop?” Luca asks.
“Looked like you were gonna short-circuit. We’re you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not. I haven’t done this before with anyone.” Luca murmurs quietly. “It felt good. Did you…?”
“No. It’s fine.”
“I’ll see if I can go about installing some additional sensors or something. Rip a blueprint from the pleasure bots in Metropolis if I have to.”
“Yeah?” Andrew rolls on his side, willing away his little problem. He’d need a cold shower, probably.
“Or, if you wanted to, Andrew, I’m sure I could graft some new enhancements onto you,”
“Like hell you will.”
Luca climbs back on top of him with a giggle, still thrumming with electricity in a way that makes Andrew shiver at the contact.
“We can’t just leave you like this, can we?” The Bionic purrs, gathering blue sparks at his palm. “I haven’t even shown you all of my tricks,”
Damn.
The last thing Andrew expects to be doing when he wakes up is staring down the barrel of a gun.
“Rise and shine, sweetie.”
Andrew attempts to reach for his gun, only to be stopped in his tracks by a pointed heel digging into his chest. The busty, white-haired woman above him leans forward with a wide grin.
“Black Rose,”
He should’ve known the Baron would send his best bounty hunter after them. To Madam Black Rose, everyone has a price tag above their heads, and she was more than happy to collect.
“Well howdy to you too, Sand. It’s been a while.” Black Rose replies. Andrew looks around for any potential openings, noticing a headless metal body next to him in place of where Luca should be.
“Where’s Luca?” He demands.
“You two sound like you’ve gotten to know each other really well. I’m surprised, really. Always pegged you for the lone wolf type.” The bounty hunter steps back to reveal Luca’s deactivated head.
“Don’t you hurt him,”
“Don’t worry, hon’. I won’t harm a hair on his pretty little head. Where do you think I got this from?” Black Rose points to her right eye, embedded with a pulsing red LED. “Sharpshooting runs in the Bourbon blood but it doesn’t hurt to have some extra enhancements. This fella here does ‘em the best.”
“Then let him go. He’s got nothin’ to do with this.”
“Right you are. There’s a million dollar bounty on your head, Mr. Sand. Nothing personal, just part of the job.” She proclaims cheerfully. “So let’s make this easy, shall we?”
The clock is ticking for him. He has to find a way out of this situation, fast. Black Rose was always in it for the money—loyalty to the Baron meant nothing for her.
“What’s a million for my head when you could have much more in gold?”
“I’m listening,” Black Rose says, her finger clicking the safety.
His appeal seemed to be working. “Electrolysis made the deal with me. You’ll have to wake him up fer the details.”
Black Rose keeps her aim trained on Andrew, but removes the signal jammer attached on the back of Luca’s neck. She reattaches Luca’s head to his body.
“Luca,” Andrew calls out when the cyborg’s eyes flicker back to life.
“Andrew! And Miss Demi—always a pleasure seeing you here.” He looks around, seeming confused at the tension.
“Electrolysis! Apologies darlin’ for the wake-up. I got some business with Mr. Sand here, who tells me you’ve got gold worth talkin’ about.”
Luca glances at Andrew for a moment, before seeming to understand the situation at hand.
“That’s right. If I may present a proposal to someone as reasonable as yourself, I’m sure we can come up with an agreement of sorts,”
“See? Now that was easy. Let’s walk,” Black Rose prods Andrew to his feet.
“This way to my laboratory, please.” Luca motions for them both to follow into a workshop-sized room.
“This was all coal in a past life. Now, it’s gold.” Luca wheels a cart of what appears to be hunks of gold to Black Rose. “It requires some energy to create this much, but imagine what you could do if you scale up production with my machine!”
“My God, I’ve never seen this much…You’d never have to work another day in your life with this,”
To the discerning eye, it’s obvious that many of the gold pieces are spotted with blemishes. But Black Rose is too busy being dazzled by the gold to pay attention to Luca’s theatrics. She’s lowered her gun and sifting through the metal.
Andrew starts reaching for his gun while the other bounty hunter is preoccupied, but Luca shakes his head when their gazes meet. His lips make a whistling motion instead, and Andrew looks to the side of the junkyard where Choir’s stall is.
Whistling with all his might, the horse comes running straight for them. At this moment Luca pushes Black Rose into the cart to her surprise, taking Andrew’s hand to get up on the steed.
There’s gunshots sounding after them, but otherwise Black Rose doesn’t give chase. They don’t stop riding though, until the sun is bearing on their backs.
“If Miss Demi’s fuming now, she’ll be absolutely livid the moment she finds out what I showed her was just gold-plating,” Luca laughs breathlessly behind him. After patting about his pockets, his eyes appear to widen in a panic. “Wait—Andrew, the gold! We have to turn back—I forgot to bring the actual gold!”
Gold. There was a time when that precious metal would’ve been all that mattered to him. But now...he realizes it never was really about the prospect of riches. Rather, it was about finding something precious to him. And now he’s found something even more precious than gold.
“Don’t matter to me. It’s all fool’s gold, anyway.”
“But Metropolis—”
“—You got your blueprints. You’ll figure somethin’ out when we get there. We’ll figure it out,”
Luca tightens his arms around Andrew, leaning his head against his back with a chuckle.
“The gold didn’t matter, huh? You’re a lot more romantic than you look, cowboy.”
“...Shut up,” Andrew says, without a bite in his tone.
This time, Andrew doesn’t make a move to loosen the warm arms wrapped around his waist.