Work Text:
THMPTHMP!
“That-”
THMP!
“-fucking-”
THMP!
“-freelancer-”
THMPTHMP!
“-bastard!”
THMP!!!
Iguazu breathed harshly as his final punch sent the bag swinging back and forth, stepping away from it to let it settle on its own. Even though his knuckles stung and his lungs burned, the humiliated rage that coursed through him hadn’t dulled in the slightest. It had been days since that fucking mission, and Iguazu still saw red whenever he was reminded of it.
Getting his ass kicked by an independent merc was one thing. There were a few psycho crazies on Rubicon that most AC pilots were expected to lose against, like King or Umber Ox, but that freelancer was a literal nobody. Just some petplay freak piloting an AC that should still be in a goddamn museum, and he’d somehow managed to not only kick Iguazu’s ass, but Volta’s too - at the same time.
It didn’t make sense. The bastard was a Fourth Gen just like him! How did he fold Iguazu like a fucking lawn chair without even chipping the paint on his shitty AC? The more Iguazu tried to figure it out, the more enraged he became at how he couldn’t clearly see how this Raven managed it.
(“Your biggest mistake was letting yourself get caught with your pants down, G5!” Michigan barked, dragging both Iguazu and Volta from the AC bay by the scruff of their necks like they were a pair of rambunctious kittens he was putting into timeout. “That goes for you too, G4! One little kick to the head and you started flailing around on the floor like some goddamn earthworm!”
“He tipped me over,” Volta muttered. “Fucker capsized me.”
“And that freak shot us in the back! How were we supposed to know he’d flip out and attack us?!” Iguazu added hotly, and hissed when Michigan shook him roughly.
“G13 is an independent mercenary, G5! You know what that means? You can trust him about as far as your bank account can stretch - which for you is in the negatives! You actually owe him money for scratching the paint of his AC!”
“Fuck off! Like hell I’m paying him anything!”)
“AAAARGH!” Iguazu howled, and spun around to slam his fist hard against the punching bag. It swung away from the force of his strike - and came back just as quickly and violently, narrowly avoiding in smacking him in the chest as he hurriedly side-stepped it.
“FUCK!” he yelled, and he didn’t know if it was at his now smarting fist, the punching bag, or his situation in general. “I don’t need this!”
Being the only Fourth Generation had been fine! There’d been no one else to compare himself to - and those that were better were later generations, so it made sense! But that fucking Raven ran circles around him! He humiliated him! He fucking did it intentionally to! The way he beat him-!
The door to the Redgun’s gym slid open, and Iguazu tensed, his hands balling into fists as he half-expected Michigan to start jumping down his throat again - but it was Volta, standing at the doorway with his thick arms crossed over his chest and his face set into a wry smirk.
Volta was the biggest of the Redguns - built like an ox with the physical strength to match, but he was also surprisingly even-tempered. Despite shaking hands with Iguazu and pledging to help him beat the shit out of Michigan so they could escape their Redgun contract and find greener pastures elsewhere, Volta had adjusted better to their new lifestyle here, like the big weasel that he was.
Iguazu felt betrayed by it, honestly. Volta was supposed to be on his side, not warming up to Michigan - and definitely not trying to convince Iguazu to set aside his anger and resentment to become “part of the team”. What a joke. What team? A bunch of thick-headed bootstraps all happy to let Michigan play bongos on their empty heads? Iguazu’ll take a hard pass on that.
“What do you want?” Iguazu snarled, squaring up despite the size difference. Where Volta towered over him at 6ft, Iguazu barely scraped 5ft 5’ and was on the skinnier side, no matter how much iron he pumped. He blamed his shitty augmentations. The early generations consumed considerably more calories than the later ones, like he was eating for ten of him rather than one. Just another fucking unfair thing about his goddamn life.
“Came to see if you were still sulking,” Volta drawled, stepping into the gym proper. It was small but decent, with a pair of treadmills, a punching bag, and a couple of workout machines and weights for the various Redgun AC pilots to keep themselves in peak physical condition, like Michigan thought they were still in the pirate era and were gonna board the enemy’s AC to fistfight them in the cockpit or whatever.
“I’m not sulking. I’m ‘working out my aggression in a healthy manner’ or whatever Red fucking talks about.” Iguazu snapped, turning back to the punching bag and assaulting it with a bit more restraint, now that he had an audience. “Better than me throwing these fucking fists at Michigan’s loud mouth.”
“Iguazu…” For a moment, it seemed like Volta was going to try with his stupid “oh~ Iguazu~ Michigan isn’t that bad if you just give him a chance~” bullshit, but he must’ve read the mood, and said instead: “It was just some merc getting lucky. There’s no point getting wound up about it. We’ll pay him back next time we see him.”
“Unless Michigan fucking hires him again!” Iguazu snarled, ignoring the ache in his fists as he whaled on the punching bag. “I overheard him- thinking of sniping him for that assault on The Wall, since Walter’s trying to offer him to Arquebus instead! Never mind what he did to me and you!”
“Huh. He must’ve really impressed Michigan-”
Iguazu made a noise like an overboiling tea kettle, slamming his fist so hard into the punching bag he felt his fingers click painfully. “HE’S NOT IMPRESSIVE!”
“Da~amn,” Volta laughed at him. “You should scream that a little louder, Iguazu. I don’t think Raven heard you from across the planet.”
“Argh!” Iguazu threw his hands up and turned to point aggressively at a smirking Volta. “Shut up! Just shut right up! I’m done with everyone laughing at me! That merc just got lucky! He cheated! What kind of guy just does that?!”
Volta, the ass, just looked even more amused at Iguazu’s boiling fury. Guy could never resist poking the hornet’s nest, no matter how many times he got stung. “Wait, you’re not angry at losing. You’re angry at how you lost.”
Iguazu said nothing. He wasn’t sure if the heat he felt in his cheeks was from sheer rage or utter embarrassment.
Raven hadn’t had the decency to beat him straight like a proper AC pilot. No, the worst thing was was that when Raven had decided to backstab them, he had beelined for Iguazu - singling him out as the weak link - and promptly rammed him right into a corner where he’d proceeded to fucking kick his AC to death.
Not a single shot fired. Just HEADBRINGER getting brutally stomped on and kicked by a psychotic museum piece of an AC before Volta came to the late rescue. By then, though, the damage had been done. Though Raven ran a light AC, the sheer weight and force of the kicks on the more vulnerable parts of Iguazu’s AC had been enough to render it combat ineffective. The only silver lining was that the Core had been left utterly untouched. Iguazu hadn’t even needed to eject.
Not that he could’ve, with his back stuck to the wall as it was. Iguazu didn’t want to think if that had been intentional or if Raven was sadistic enough that he'd found ghoulish amusement in crippling HEADBRINGER first before finishing the job. If Volta hadn’t interrupted, Iguazu genuinely didn’t know if Raven would’ve killed him or not by crushing his Core beneath his AC's feet.
He hated that thought most of all - his life hanging at another's mercy.
“I guess it was pretty embarrassing,” Volta hummed. “He didn’t have to fire a single shot. He just kicked the literal shit out of your AC. Gotta give him points for sadistic creativity-”
“Fuck off,” Iguazu muttered, the fiery air leaving his furious sails. He flexed his aching fingers before linking them together, pushing them away from his body to stretch out the sore tendons. “Least I wasn’t beaten by getting capsized.”
“Wasn’t expecting that, honestly,” Volta said, annoyingly unaffected by the jibe. “Tank ACs are normally too heavy to do that, but… well, that’s what I get for firing heavy rounds at a frozen lake.”
Thinking back, that had probably been intentional. From Iguazu’s limited vantage point and half-ruined ocular feeds, he had noticed that Raven had spent most of his fight with Volta baiting him out onto the frozen lake and circle strafing him, just a little too fast for Volta’s FCS to get a secure lock on him. It ended up with most of Volta’s rounds and missiles striking the ice, cracking and weakening it, so that when his heavy tank AC drove over them, well…
Fortunately, the AC’s Core came with a long reserve of oxygen and good temperature control, let’s put it that way.
“Why aren’t you pissed?” Iguazu demanded. “You should be just as pissed as me! This nobody freelancer completely whipped us in the most embarrassing way possible in front of everyone. We’re laughing stocks!”
Volta shrugged. “We got cocky… I mean, that’s the long and short of it. Getting wound up about it isn’t gonna do anything, Iguazu.”
“You’ve gotten soft, Volta,” Iguazu sneered. “Can’t believe you let Michigan fucking domesticate you. If this was a few months ago, you’d be just as angry as me - be looking for ways to pay that fucker back properly. But instead you’re just letting it go? Saying it was because you sucked? That asshole cheated. He just got lucky! He isn’t better than us!”
Volta began to look constipated, his mouth twisting into a grimace. “Iguazu, listen…”
Iguazu didn’t listen. Irritably, he picked up his water bottle where he’d left it on a nearby lifting bench and stormed past Volta. The other AC pilot didn’t stop him, but Iguazu felt the weight of his stare on the back of his neck long after he’d left the gym.
As if being press ganged into the Redguns wasn’t bad enough, now he had to deal with Volta getting brainwashed by Michigan and transforming into someone Iguazu barely recognised. They hadn’t been friends, as such, but they’d been kindred, desperate souls, shaking hands in a pact to topple Michigan together, no matter what. Iguazu didn’t even know why he was hurt or surprised. People breaking promises was just the standard with him.
“Damn it,” Iguazu hissed under his breath, stifling the urge to punch the wall by smacking the end of his water bottle against his palm instead. He needed his AC to be fixed - and soon. Every fibre of his body felt like it was going to vibrate apart from this violent restlessness coursing through him, making his head hurt from the sheer tension of it. It had been a headache that hadn't fully gone away since the dam mission - complete with a persistent, low ringing in his ears. Shit was annoying.
i need to destroy something, Iguazu bared his teeth unthinkingly, looking like a rabid dog as he stormed towards his personal quarters - just a tiny, shitty little cabin big enough to store a single-man bed, a locker and a sink. Luxury, compared to what the MT pilots had to deal with: 20-man rooms.
i need to get out of here, Iguazu thought with an edge he couldn’t put into words, i’m not dying for this piece of shit company, getting compared to some mute freak. i deserve better than that.
Iguazu wasn’t inferior - when that quack had done his augments, he had praised him for how well his body had accepted them. The survival rate for Fourth Generations weren’t very high, especially when using low-quality and impure Coral, but Iguazu had assimilated the augments flawlessly. No mental issues, no accidental lobotomization… he was in full control of his faculties and didn’t suffer from spontaneous blindness or hallucinations or whatever.
He was meant to be the most stable and best Fourth Generation on Rubicon. So how did- he wasn’t going to accept this fucking upstart!
When Iguazu reached his quarters, he practically stabbed the keypad with his fingers, inputting his personal code. The door slid open and he stepped inside, already close to tripping over his damn bed with how cramped it was in there.
The door slid shut behind him, and he flicked on the lights.
He took that moment to just breathe, to just try and calm the frantic beat in his chest and the heat in his blood. Once the red faded from his vision, Iguazu forced himself to look at the situation objectively. In a way, Volta was right. It was pointless thrashing some helpless punching bag over something that was in the past. What Iguazu needed was to get his AC fixed pronto, and throw himself at that no-name mercenary the next chance he got, to reassert the pecking order.
Raven just got lucky.
Iguazu will put him back in his place soon enough.