“Sorry did you want to listen to something else I can key in one of your classical pieces if you want just gimme the number and I’ll put it in.” Rev had turned, his expression amused and slightly anxious, as if he were waiting to see if Tech had gotten a joke he’d made but it was no big deal if not.
Tech, whose discordance had been smoothed over by watching the roadrunner’s elegant, lanky body prance naked around the room, made a show of looking at Rev’s dripping shaft and then jerked his gaze up to the roadrunner’s eyes. “Oh, huh? No, no, this is fine. You listen to dance music a lot?”
Rev grinned at him, shaking his tail feathers. “What d’ya mean dance music you should hear the stuff I dance to this is slow the kind of stuff I go to sleep to okay I’m gonna hop in the shower be out in a second.”
For a moment, Tech wondered if he meant that literally.
He turned his mind to the xion matrix problem for the ten minutes Rev was showering, but was no closer to a solution when the roadrunner got out and said, “Your turn,” so he lounged in the bed.
“I’ll wait ’til you get dressed,” he said, turning his body so his head hung off the edge of the bed and he was looking upside down at Rev’s naked body, feathers, glistening with moisture. Rev grinned and walked over to him, his shaft bobbing just above Tech’s muzzle. The coyote lifted his head and took a couple licks before Rev moved away and started pulling his uniform on.
“Aww,” Tech said, remembering the feel of his claws through the feathers, how they’d moved so easily through them and now would be foiled by the lycra barrier. And then he felt like a world-class idiot.
“The suits!” he said.
“What?” Rev paused in the middle of pulling his shirt on.
“The suits! Our environment suits. They’re designed to withstand meteorite impacts in space. I don’t think the needle darts are slender enough to pierce them. Can test that pretty easily, but I bet it works.”
Rev crossed his arms, a familiar red and black form where the cornflower and lavender had been. “You want me to get your space suit and uniform both?”
“Sure, could you?” Tech rolled out of bed and headed to the shower. He paused with his paw on the doorframe, looking at the motionless roadrunner. “Thanks. What?”
Rev grinned and just made a motion with his hand in a little circle. Tech’s smile broadened as he made a slow pirouette, showing off his tail and sheath and shaking his hips. Rev whistled, gave him a thumbs-up and a wink, and was gone.
The space suits resisted the projectile just fine, even when Tech loaded it into a magnetic cannon and fired it. It took him three tries to hit the suit, though, and that sent his mind down another connection.
This guy, whoever he was, had hit Duck with a split-second warning, turning nearly a hundred and eighty degrees around in the two seconds before Duck had quacked out. Tech tried the feat himself, and missed ten times out of ten, even knowing where the space suit was. He enlisted Ace’s help, and then Rev’s, and even the martial-arts trained rabbit and speedy roadrunner only hit once out of ten times each.
“What’s this all about Tech are we gonna have mandatory target practice now cause usually I don’t carry a gun not that I mind once in a while.” Rev stroked the barrel of the gun when Ace wasn’t looking and winked at Tech.
The coyote grinned at him. “No, I was just thinking about how that guy hit Duck. Either he got an incredibly lucky shot off, or he’s got some kind of enhanced power like we do.”
Ace rubbed his chin. “I was wonderin’ about dat.”
“And the neural disruptor might not be the only gun he has, in that case.” Tech looked up at the wall at his own arsenal. “He could have an energy blast, or a magnetic reversal gun.”
Ace followed his gaze. “Or an antimatter gun?”
“Well, no.” Tech let his eyes linger on it. “That one’s a custom job. I had to make the antimatter for it myself, and it took me three months to do. I don’t think there’s anyone else in the world who could figure that out. And have the facilities to do it,” he added.
“As long as we’re safer this time,” Ace said. “I don’t plan ta get close enough ta let him shoot. Me’n’Lexi’ll take him out and Duck or Rev can wrap him up.”
“I want to talk to him,” Tech said, holding up the neural disruptor needle. “Because I can only think of two places he could have gotten this, and I don’t like either of them.”
“We’re gonna do our best to take him alive,” Ace said. “If you’re all set, come grab some pizza before Zodavia’s call. I got Slam his own pie so we can share the other one.”
“Loonatics,” Zodavia began, looking down at them, “the mystery gunman has been identified from the footage you took. His name is Zebediah Fudd.”
“That’s a name that sounds like trouble,” Duck said. “What were his parents thinking, naming him ‘Fudd’?”
“What’s his story?” Ace asked.
“Avid hunter,” Zodavia said. “Mostly just at shooting ranges. Army training. Top marksman in his group every time. Won three shooting competitions. Then disappeared for a year and a half until three days ago.”
“Any locations he was known to
