Which Flesh is Your Flesh?

Chapter 14

When Iguazu had told Raven to “do his fucking worst”, it seemed like he had actually listened. He’d brought a new load out with him. It was heavier than his usual style, RaD built reverse jointed legs supporting a Melander core, with C3 arms and a Verril head. It carried a Hu Ben gatling gun in its right hand and an Ashmead pile bunker in its left. Shao-Wei gatling cannons sat on both of its shoulders. Raven had always relied on two things in their fights with each other, speed and sheer aggression. His only real strategy was to hit the other guy until he stopped moving. Lucky for him, he was a fucking savant in the cock pit, so he was able to keep the other guy from hitting him well enough for that strategy to actually work. The sheer fire power he was packing certainly enabled his reckless aggression, even if he sacrificed a bit of speed in exchange. Iguazu’s hud told him that Raven had already given this one a name: IRON LUNG.

This would be tricky. Iguazu could outrun him for sure, but if he let himself get cornered he was absolutely fucked. The long wind up on that pile bunker didn’t matter if his AC was staggered. With the set up he currently had, Iguazu’s goal was just to stay alive as long as possible. He could eventually disable Raven’s AC, but the keyword there was eventually. That consistent damage he had come to appreciate wasn’t high consistent damage. He was going to have to stay on the back foot the whole fight, until either a) he managed to chip Raven’s AP down to zero or b) Raven ran out of ammo.

Even knowing he was signing up for a fucking war of attrition, Iguazu still had to do this. He wanted to be subordinate to Raven, to be a tool for him to use, but he didn’t want Raven to think he was lesser. There was still a primal part of him that wanted to prove they were equals. They were negatives, foils of each other, Iguazu knew it, he just needed this one win to prove it.

Iguazu could see Raven slipping into IRON LUNG’s shell already. It was always fascinating to watch. When Iguazu connected to an AC, the AC became him, his posture, his mannerisms, all of that was preserved and reflected on a much larger scale. That’s why HEAD BRINGER hadn’t worked for him, he had been trying to force himself into a vessel that wasn’t tailored to him. Raven on the other hand melted into the form of his AC like an actor putting on a mask. SKY BURIAL held itself in a hunched posture like a rabid dog, desperate and bestial in the way only a wounded animal could be. CLOSED CASKET stood tall with its chest puffed out, with exaggerated gestures and gravitas that suggested it saw itself wearing a floor length cape. No longer a wounded dog, but a maniacal bastard who knew exactly what sort of character he had been cast as.

As he watched, IRON LUNG began to take a completely different posture. He stood tall, with his shoulders relaxed, his hands steady around the grip of his gun. Iguazu could see his adrenaline levels climbing, but the normal bestial violence or sheer mania seemed to be absent. He was calm and collected. A killer that knew what had to be done and was prepared to do it.

“Are you ready?” IRON LUNG asked. He didn't seem to be eager for the fight so much as simply resolute. Iguazu didn’t give him an answer, he just launched his drones. He heard IRON LUNG make a sound over the comms that could’ve been a quiet laugh or a sigh. “Your funeral.”

The barrels of IRON LUNG’s Hu Ben began to spin and Iguazu quickly dodged out of the line of fire. He had to keep moving. That was his only shot, waiting for IRON LUNG’s guns to overheat so that he could close in and kick his shit in. What worried him though, was that at the moment he only had one firing. Then IRON LUNG began to fire his left shoulder gatling cannon, then after a bit of a delay, his right. Iguazu took a breath to steady himself. He was staggering his shots to prevent them from all going on cool down at once. It would limit the size of Iguazu’s attack window. Well, if he couldn’t wait, he’d have to make his own window.

Iguazu launched his drones. IRON LUNG would have to stop shooting for a few seconds while he dodged out of the way, during that break in fire Iguazu could run up on him and try to stay inside his blind spot. He could probably tank the hit with how heavily he was built, but Iguazu knew he wouldn’t. Tanking hits just wasn’t in his playbook.

IRON LUNG predictably dodged out of the line of fire and Iguazu rushed behind him. Iguazu pulled his arm back, charging up his light blade, but the moment he was about to strike, IRON LUNG’s core spun 180 degrees at the waist.

He had forgotten about the pile bunker.

Iguazu didn’t have time to think, let alone dodge, before he went flying. The shaft had bored a fist sized hole in his chest, he could see his wires sparking red through his torn plating. Iguazu pumped his adrenaline to prevent himself from going into shock from the pain and popped a repair kit. Then he dodged to the side, just as IRON LUNG started firing again. Iguazu launched his laser orbit to provide cover. IRON LUNG was still managing to dodge the bulk of the onslaught, but with lasers coming from 8 different directions, he was taking hits. Iguazu could see IRON LUNG beginning to stumble. He felt that itch in the back of his mind that told him to go all in. Fuck it, why the hell not, Iguazu started charging a shot with his handgun and darted towards IRON LUNG again. As he turned to lock Iguazu in his sights, a laser blast caught him in the shoulder and he went down. Iguazu unloaded the fully charged blast right into his face.

Iguazu was hit with a wave of feedback from his targeting systems. He felt himself start to drool. The sheer amount of dopamine flooding his brain made him cum, spasms wracking the small body in his cockpit. He needed more. More of his generator thrumming, the vibrations he felt in his chest when his boosters engaged, the little hit of dopamine when his targeting system locked on. None of it had ever been this intense when he was just fighting MTs. Though maybe that was just because he hadn’t been fighting Raven.

He noticed a flash of blue dance over IRON LUNG’s red chassis. Iguazu dashed backwards, narrowly avoiding his assault armor as it activated. The melted laser holes in IRON LUNG’s face slowly began to close as he was forced to use a repair kit of his own. The rush Iguazu felt at forcing him to use one was tempered by his disappointment that his cameras hadn’t been knocked out for longer. At least he knew his strategy would work. He would just keep whittling IRON LUNG down, lovingly taking him apart piece by piece.

He boosted out of the way as IRON LUNG began to fire again. Iguazu did not go as far as he thought he should’ve, his energy alarms dinged, indicating his generator needed to recharge. Shit. He was caught in the firing line of all three of IRON LUNG’s gatling guns. The second the blast staggered him, IRON LUNG launched into an assault boost, kicking him with his full weight. Iguazu was knocked clean off his feet, but the second he hit the ground, his generators came back online. He swiped at IRON LUNG with his light wave blade before dashing away again. Bullets whizzing past his antennae, he activated another repair kit. IRON LUNG was forced to do the same thing a few agonizingly long seconds later. As things stood Iguazu could see how this bout was going. He’d already lost, the pace of the fight was too far in IRON LUNG’s favor, but he couldn’t stop. He had to prove to Raven that they were equals, that he wasn’t a useless thorn in Raven’s side no matter what side of the battlefield he was on.

The belt fed magazines on IRON LUNG’s gatling guns fell to the ground empty. Manic joy crashed into Iguazu like a car wrapping itself around a tree. He kicked IRON LUNG in the chest, aiming his hand gun directly at its head. Finally he had him.

Iguazu pulled the trigger. His handgun clicked, but no laser shot from it. He pulled it a few more times, click, click, click, but still nothing. He tossed it aside and drew back his sword. IRON LUNG placed the tip of his pile bunker against Iguazu’s chassis. They both froze for a moment, breathing heavily over the comms, neither sure who was going to make the first move.

Iguazu broke the spell first, shoving his hands beneath IRON LUNG’s plating. Raven let his pile bunker fall, running his hands beneath the plates of Iguazu’s arms. The body inside the cockpit was a quivering mess. He was leaking so much lubricant it was starting to pool on the ground. Raven moaned quietly over the comms, his voice still brittle from disuse, static twining through the signal as his synthesizers tried to make sense of his mental input.

“See, we’re even.” Iguazu punctuated his point by sticking his fingers into Raven’s head mounted sensor arrays. He kicked out IRON LUNG’s legs in pleasure.

“I don’t know if you can call two losses and a draw even, Iguazu.” Raven slipped IRON LUNG’s fingers into Iguazu’s sensor arrays as well.

“I would drag myself down to hell for you.” Iguazu moaned.

“Did I ever ask you to?” IRON LUNG kicked him gently between the legs, clearly knowing it wouldn’t do anything other than send a message.

“No, but you asked me to be your pet. Did you think I would be fine doing nothing for you when you’re miserable? I want to help you, I want to make you happy, but I can’t do that if you refuse to tell me what will help. I’ve hurt you, I know I’ve hurt you, but it’s because I don’t know what else to do!”

Raven sat up and popped open IRON LUNG’s cockpit.

“Come here.” He ordered. Iguazu popped open his own cockpit and climbed down ANUBIS’s arm until he reached IRON LUNG’s head. He was used to climbing around the outside of Melanders, so rappelling down to the cockpit was easy from there. Raven was suspended inside, still as much of a mess of wires as he was when they’d first met face to face.

Iguazu wasn’t sure which version of Raven scared him more, the skinless corpse god that had haunted his cockpit, or the bleeding mass of living flesh and machine that haunted it now. Iguazu was sort of a melding of flesh and living machine, but not like Raven was. He was a machine made living as in a machine imbued with life and intelligence. Raven was a machine made living as in a machine that could feel pain, a machine that could bleed, a machine that could make Iguazu understand just how much it hurt to be alive.

“I know what you’re thinking, Iguazu. It’s drilled into my bones, you’re not going to be able to get it off of me without paralyzing me for life,” Raven said, glancing at Iguazu’s concerned expression. “It’ll heal eventually, you’ve just got to give it time.”

“We could’ve figured out something less damaging I bet Carla would-“

“No. It needed to be permanent. I didn’t want anyone taking this away from me. This is Raven. This thing is Raven. I need you to be willing to understand that.”

“Why?”

“Because I can’t be with you if you don’t.”

“No I mean why this? Why not a full conversion or a part replacement?”

“Because I’ve lost too much, Iguazu. I don’t know what losing anything else would do to me.”

“Is that why you can’t kill me?”

Raven slipped a hand out of his clamps and cupped Iguazu’s cheek. He bent down and kissed him, his lips rough and chapped against Iguazu’s plating. As Raven pulled away he left a bloody handprint on his face.

“If I killed you I wouldn’t lose you I would own you. Your memory, your legacy, all of it would be tainted by my hands. No one else would be able to lay a claim on you like I had. I can’t kill you because some fucked up little part of me still likes you.” Raven smiled, the crazed look hadn’t left his eyes, but there was also fondness there too.

Iguazu got to his knees in front of him. He took Raven’s leg in his hands and began to lick the blood off of the harsh metal of his exoskeleton. Raven slipped out of his clamps completely, landing heavily on the floor of the cockpit. He pushed his leg between Iguazu’s knees.

“Keep going.” He urged, gently nudging his cock.

Iguazu lowered himself to the floor like an animal. His long tongue coiled around the metal, making sure he cleaned every last bloodstain. Raven threaded his fingers through Iguazu’s hair as he worked. He wasn’t pulling or trying to guide him, just gently petting him, soothingly tracing circles over Iguazu’s scalp.

“Good boy.” He used his synthesizers to speak, his voice resonating pleasantly in Iguazu’s head.

“You let the last one get so disgusting it was more rust than metal, somebody has to keep this thing clean.” Though he grumbled, he preened internally.

“You like it though, don't you.” Raven scratched his head.

“I swallowed the memory card you gave me.”

“What?”

Iguazu pulled Raven closer to him, wrapping his tongue around the armature that shielded his hips.

“I swallowed the memory card you gave me.”

“Why?” There was no disgust in his voice, if anything there was a hopeful ache.

“Because I wanted you, but I also wanted to be you. I would’ve taken anything you gave me and tried to make it part of me.”

“Do you still want that?”

“I still want you, but I know I can’t be you. All I want is your respect. I want you to give me enough credit to think I’m responsible for my own decisions.”

“Alright.”

Raven hauled off and punched Iguazu in the face as hard as he could.

“There, we’re even now.”

Michigan stared at the memory card the medical team had removed from Iguazu’s stomach. It had been slipped to him immediately after the conclusion of Iguazu’s surgery, but he hadn’t looked at it. It couldn’t be anything other than incriminating evidence for something, he knew that much based on where they’d found it, but he didn’t need confirmation. He didn’t need to lose anybody else, not after Volta and Hakra, and he especially didn’t need to lose somebody to bullshit corporate politics. If it was Furlong he might’ve been able to convince the top brass, but at Balam, where he was a corporate hostage put in charge of a squad of fuck ups sent on a suicide mission, there was no chance. It was a shame Iguazu had forced his hand.

“Raven” had taken out some of their MT squads. Who the hell was Iguazu trying to kid fighting like that? He might’ve been able to pass himself off as Maeterlinck or maybe even Freud if he was really busting his ass, but he was doing a piss poor impression of Raven. Michigan had to know why. He had no clue where the fucker was based though, so this tiny little card, that might be too acid damaged to read was his only answer. He jammed it into his laptop and prayed to god that some of the fucking data was usable.

Some of it was stored as a file type he didn’t recognize, but there were two videos. He hit play on the first one. It was a flight record from an AC. When he saw it was arena data from a fight against Freud, for an irrational second he thought Iguazu had somehow gotten ahold of LIGER TAIL’s black box data, but the footage wasn’t quite right. This was a bipedal AC not a quadruped. That would mean this was…

Michigan’s eye was caught by the small photo he kept on his desk. Two young boys posing in front of the colonists memorial on Ganymede. One had a wide smile and his arm around the other, clearly in the process of yanking him towards himself.

“Come on, Walter! Act like we’re friends!”

The other was a serious young man, covered in burn scars, cane in the air as he was pulled off his feet towards the other boy. This was one of the few pictures Michigan had of him where he was smiling.

Michigan stared at it for a moment before flipping it face down on his desk.