The Walking Life

So when our rich friend Silver decided he just couldn’t live without a Prius a day longer, we all tromped down to the Toyota dealer to watch him buy one. After an hour or so of wheeling, dealing, whining, cajoling and even a few tears, it became clear that there was no way Silver was going to be able to decide what colour he wanted.

The Salesthing, who had retreated to the cool of the office while Silver ummed and ahhed over the 17 available colour variants, stood with his meaty arms folded and sucked sweat off his moustache.

“I say,” I said, having followed him in there, “I thought there was a massive waiting list for the Prius?”

The Salesthing snorted. “In Los Angeles maybe,” he said. “But this is Penrith. Boys out here normally want something a little more..” The Salesthing grabbed at his own crotch. I winced, and backed away.

Back out on the forecourt, an argument was inevitably in full swing.

“I just think you’re totally insane, is what I think,” said the Guerrilla Gamer to Silver, as Silver ran his hands along the flank of an avocado Prius, while gazing longingly at a pomegranate Prius. “Why do you want to buy a car that offers no benefit to the environment beyond being a medium sized car that uses as much petrol as a small car?”

“And that’s not counting the higher cost of building the thing,” added Cmos, before leaning on the streamlined bonnet of a tangerine Prius, slipping off, and grazing his elbow on the baking concrete.

“It’s a hybrid,” said Silver simply. “More than that, the Prius is THE Hybrid. But why can’t I decide what damn colour I like the best?”

“Kiwifruit is nice,” I offered. “Cheerful.”

“Yeah but if I get kiwifruit that means I miss out on tamarillo.”

“What do you mean THE hybrid?” screamed the Guerrilla Gamer. “If you want an electric car, why not get a Tesla? They’re like one million times cooler. And if you want to use hardly any petrol, get a diesel Golf.”

“There are better hybrids,” nodded Cmos seriously. “I think the Honda Civic hybrid is pretty neat. And what about a Lexus? You’re a Lexus kind of guy, Silver.”

Silver shook his head. “Has to be a Prius. You think I should go ask the Salesthing if they have an aubergine one out the back?”

“Aubergine is the same as plum,” I told him.

“Really? Wait… is that an earthquake?”

Silver was right. The coffee in the complimentary coffees we’d been drinking from the dealership’s complimentary coffee shop were doing that little concentric circle dance thing, like in that classic movie. A shadow fell across the forecourt.

“Do you smell… fusion?” asked Cmos, who was still lying on the ground in the shade of the tangerine Prius. We looked up. An enormous Battlemech towered over us, canopy blazing in the sun, clanking and shunting and smelling of cordite, asteroid dust, and the worlds of the Inner Sphere.

“What the hell’s that?” squawked Silver, shading his eyes with one hand. The canopy so far above slid back, and my crazy ex-third flatmate Victor Ninox appeared with a megaphone.

“It’s a Mad Cat Mark II,” he bellowed down at us. “And it’s the ultimate response to the sissyfication, the prissyfication, of the Australian man’s car. Stand back boys, I’m about to get stompy on these fancy milk carts!”

We ran for the office as Vic backed the Mad Cat off to a more deadly distance. The mech shook, as if limbering up. It kicked up one heel, then the other, gave a final shimmy, then strode purposefully forward and stomped its entire 90 ton mass down on the tangerine Prius.

There was a great crash of glass, a crackle of plastics, and a dull whoomph as the Lithium batteries exploded, the blast partly absorbed by the mech’s Forging ZM15 Ferro-Fibrous armour, and then totally absorbed by the dealership’s plate glass windows, which all shattered. Vic lifted the mech’s foot, revealing a sad pile of what could now only be described as industrial waste.

“Carbon sequester THAT mudderfunker!” howled Vic through the still-open canopy.

The Salesthing exploded out of a back room in the office carrying, unaccountably, a hand-held missile launcher. He dropped behind a leatherette sofa and pointed the launcher through the broken front window.

“HA HA HA HA!” cried Vic, just like a sci-fi villain. “This is a Mad Cat Mark II, your puny human weapons will have no effect on its massive chest armour!”

So the Salesthing shot the mech in the left knee.

The joint evaporated in the explosion, leaving Vic in command of a one-legged walking tank. Naturally, the Mad Cat toppled immediately to the forecourt, the afore-mentioned 90 tons of mass destroying three more Priuses and a Land Cruiser. The noise was terrible.

“See,” said the Guerrilla Gamer, “I always said that was the problem with those things. Mechs. I never understood why you couldn’t just shoot out one of the legs. Turns out you can.”

But Vic wasn’t done. He raised the Mad Cat’s surviving arm. It was festooned with a Gauss rifle and two ER medium lasers.

“Run for it boys,” Vic boomed through his megaphone. “I’m going to Alpha Strike this dodgem-jockey.”

Blistering electric fire erupted from the weapons as Silver, Cmos, the Guerrilla Gamer and I fled the scene. I like to think the Salesthing survived, his artificial tan reflecting those killer beams of coherent light. We never knew, because after that Vic launched all 20 of the Mech’s LRM-10s and ejected. Apparently they saw the blast as far away as Kings Langley.

We headed for the pub. Silver left us with some final wisdom: “I still would have liked to see the aubergine.”