Chapter 2: The Shane Gang
The smell of ozone and scorched stone still clung to them like a second skin as Fred ducked back into the forge’s thick, warm air. Voltage, buzzing with a contented, low hum on his shoulder, seemed to glow a little brighter against the sooty darkness.
Red Hook was already at his main anvil, not looking up as the door swung shut. “Efficiency,” he muttered again, the word gruff with amusement. “Next time, aim for efficiency that doesn’t vaporize my property. That dummy had sentimental value. Held my lunch once.”
“It was mostly rust,” Fred said, a grin in his voice. He approached his own cluttered workbench, the new blaster warm in his hand. It was a raw, powerful thing, but it was just a skeleton. The test proved the guts worked. Now it needed a skin, an identity.
He placed it carefully in the vise, not tightening the jaws fully. He looked at it, head tilted. A plan, half-formed in his head during countless hours of polishing compressor parts, began to snap into focus.
“Alright, partner,” he said to Voltage. “Time to make it ours.”
The first step was disassembly. With a set of precision drivers, he began removing the outer casing plates, the barrel coupling, the grip panels. Each piece laid out on the bench told a story of salvage: a scuff from a Rustburner, a weld seam from a Thresher model, the subtle curve of an old Mecha-Beast hydraulic line he’d hammered flat. It was a history of other people’s discarded machinery. He was about to give it a new one.
The barrel, once a neutral, pitted gunmetal grey, went into a small etching bath. While it soaked, Fred fired up a portable crucible and measured out pellets of a proprietary alloy Red Hook used for high-visibility trim on deep-cavern rigs. It melted into a liquid, shimmering crimson. Using a fine-tipped applicator normally reserved for detailing gear teeth, Fred began to paint.
He didn’t just coat it. He layered the color, heating the metal between coats with a small torch so the crimson sank deep into the steel, becoming a part of it rather than sitting on top. It dried to a deep, blood-wine red that seemed to swallow the forge’s light and glow from within.
“Flashy,” Red Hook observed from across the room, pausing his hammering.
“Distinctive,” Fred corrected, not pausing. “In a dim cavern, a standard grey barrel disappears. This’ll give the boys in back something clear to follow.”
“The boys in back being Trixie, you mean.” Red Hook’s chuckle was like gravel tumbling.
Fred felt his ears grow warm, but he kept his focus on the work. He switched to the indicator lights embedded in the stock. He carefully popped the green lenses out, replacing them with chips of synthesized amber crystal he’d traded for last season. He wired them back into the circuit. When he tapped the power cell, they glowed a vibrant, warm gold.
Next, the slug tubes. He pulled a mold from under his bench—a personal project he’d tinkered with for months. Instead of the standard blue polymer, he fed strands of clear, high-tensile glass and flakes of bronze alloy into the crucible. The mixture spun and melted, and he poured it with a steady hand. The tubes that emerged after cooling were astonishing: transparent, gold-flecked cylinders that looked like they’d been forged from captured sunlight. He held one up. Voltage, intrigued, leaned so far forward he almost tipped off Fred’s shoulder.
“Yours,” Fred said, and slotted the empty tube into the side-port. It clicked home, the gold flecks catching the firelight. It wasn’t just a container; it was a showcase, a jewel box for the living ammunition it would hold.
The handle guard was last. He took a blank of tough, lightweight steel and heated it in the coals until it was a brilliant orange. On the anvil, with Red Hook watching quietly now, he began to shape it. The hammer blows were not the heavy, shaping strikes of forge work, but precise, ringing taps. He drew the metal out, curved it into a sleek, sweeping guard that would protect his knuckles without compromising his grip. He notched it subtly on the inside, a perfect rest for his thumb. After tempering, he painted it with a matte charcoal-black polymer that dried to a texture like stone.
Finally, the grip itself. He peeled off the old, sweat-stained leather and wrapped it anew with a sheet of compounded rubber, the same stuff used on shock-absorber mounts. It was dark grey, almost black. He bound it tightly with wire, sealing the ends with a soldering iron until the rubber fused to itself. When it cooled, he took a razor and carefully cut a cross-hatch pattern across it, diamond by diamond. The result was a surface that promised absolute purchase, even coated in cavern slime or his own sweat.
He reassembled it all with the methodical care of a clockmaker.
Each crimson-coated piece slid against each other with a hushed, solid sound. The gold-flecked tube sat in the port like a crown jewel. The charcoal guard and deeply textured grip settled into his left hand as if they’d grown there. He tightened the final hex bolt.
He didn’t polish it with a rag. He used a soft brush and a tub of fine ceramic abrasive, burnishing every surface by hand until the deep red barrel shone with a subdued, deadly luster, the gold lights gleamed like feline eyes in the dark, and the charcoal parts drank the light around them.
He stood there for a long moment, just looking at it. It was no longer a collection of parts. It was a single, cohesive instrument. Aggressive, intentional, unmistakably his.
Voltage chirped, a clear, questioning note.
“Yeah,” Fred whispered. “I think so too.”
He turned, the blaster held across both hands, and walked over to Red Hook’s main anvil.
The big man had stopped working entirely, his arms crossed over his barrel chest. His eyes, in the flickering gloom, traveled over every inch of the weapon. He didn’t speak for a full minute. The only sounds were the hiss of the cooling forge and the distant drip of water in the cavern.
“Well,” Red Hook said finally, his voice uncharacteristically quiet. “Ain’t that something.”
He reached out, not to take it, but to run a thick, calloused finger along the red barrel, then over the textured grip. He gave a slow, single nod. “The dummy. It didn’t see that coming. Nobody will.” He met Fred’s eyes. “You made a tool. Now you made a statement. Don’t confuse which one is more dangerous.”
Fred nodded, the weight of the words settling alongside the weight of the blaster in his hands. This wasn’t the end of the work. It was the beginning of everything else.
He slid the masterpiece into his holster. The fit was still perfect. He looked towards the tunnel leading out of Quiet Lawn, towards the deeper, darker arteries of Slugterra. Somewhere out there were slingers to test it on, challenges to meet, a gang to prove himself to.
Voltage’s crackle intensified, a building storm of anticipation.
“Thanks, Red,” Fred said.
“Don’t thank me,” the smith grunted, turning back to his anvil and picking up his hammer. “Just don’t bring it back in pieces. That’d be a damn shame.”
The hammer fell, a sharp, decisive clang that echoed in the smoky air. It sounded like a starting pistol.
Fred touched two fingers to his brow in a casual salute and walked out, the new blaster a comfortable, commanding presence on his hip, its golden lights winking once in the darkness as he passed into the tunnel.
Fred touched two fingers to his brow in a casual salute and walked out, the new blaster a comfortable, commanding presence on his hip, its golden lights winking once in the darkness as he passed into the tunnel.
The thick, sweet air of Quiet Lawn felt like a balm after the forge’s metallic heat. He took a deep breath, the scent of damp grass and distant cooking fires filling his lungs. It was a good place. A quiet place.
A sudden, sharp tremor ran through Voltage’s small form on his shoulder. The static crackle wasn’t eager or excited—it was a jagged, warning pulse that made Fred’s teeth ache. He stopped walking. The hair on his arms lifted. The cavern wasn’t quiet. It was holding its breath.
Something was wrong.
He scanned the curved row of houses, the empty lawns. A mother hurried two children inside, her movements too quick, her head swiveling. A curtain twitched shut. The normal twilight hum was gone, replaced by a thick, waiting silence. Voltage buzzed, a low-frequency distress signal.
“What is it?” Fred muttered, his left hand dropping to the charcoal grip of his blaster.
The explosion tore the silence apart.
It wasn’t a distant thump. It was a sharp, gut-punch crump that vibrated up through the soles of his boots, followed by the shriek of twisting metal and the terrible music of shattering crystal glass. Fred whipped around.
Towards the market quarter, a fat, black cloud mushroomed up, lit from within by a sickly red pulse. It climbed, blotting out the serene glow of the sun crystals. Echoes of screams, thin and sharp as needles, reached him a second later.
Fred was already moving.
His sprint was a full-bore explosion of muscle, boots pounding the soft turf then slapping against cobblestone as he hit the main path. Voltage clung tight, a stream of blue sparks trailing in their wake. Fred’s mind blanked of everything but the smoke, the sound, the vector. His breath sawed in his throat, in time with his pumping arms.
He shoved past a startled vendor, leapt a low fence, and skidded into the market square. The scene was chaos held in a frozen, terrible snapshot.
The front of Gable’s Gear & Provision was a jagged maw of splintered wood and bent stone. Smoldering debris littered the square. People crouched behind overturned carts, their faces pale smudges of fear. And in the center of it all, wreathed in drifting dust and smoke, were three figures on Mecha-Beasts.
The machines were spiked, rust-patched scrapheaps, pistons hissing. The riders looked carved from the same cruel material. Two men and a woman, their postures loose and arrogant. The woman, lean and sharp-faced, was laughing at nothing, the sound like breaking slate.
The Hooligang. Fred’s gut tightened. He’d seen them after their failed push into Quiet Lawn the week prior. They’d slunk away from the Shane Gang like whipped dogs. This was different.
This was wrong.
It was in their eyes, a flat, hungry shine that had nothing to do with laughter. It was in the slugs perched on their shoulders or clutched in their hands. A Thresher slug, normally a sturdy, metallic blue, was a mottled, weeping purple, leaking a viscous fluid. A Phosphoro flickered, it’s usual bright light a sickly red. They pulsed, visibly sick. They twitched.
Ghouls. The word landed in Fred’s mind with the weight of a tombstone. Dr. Blakk’s corruption. Stories you heard in whispers, hoping they were just bad tales from the deep dark.
The woman spotted him. Her head tilted, her grin widening. She raised a gloved hand. In it, the corrupted Phosphoro writhed, its red light casting hellish shadows on her face.
Fred didn’t think. He moved.
His right hand was a blur of practiced motion. He unclipped one of the new, golden-flecked tubes from his bandoleer. It felt cool and perfect in his palm. He held it up to his right shoulder, his eyes never leaving the distorted slug.
“Voltage. Now.”
The Tazerling didn’t hesitate. He gave one determined, sharp nod, his yellow eyes narrowing into focused slits. He launched himself, a compact bolt of blue, sliding into the transparent tube with a soft shhhk.
Fred loaded it. The side-port accepted the gold tube with that satisfying, magnetic click. He brought the blaster up in one smooth, continuous arc, the deep red barrel seeking its target. His finger found the trigger. The world narrowed to the sight picture: the woman’s smirking face, the diseased slug in her fist.
He exhaled, began the squeeze.
“Fred! Don’t!”
The voice sliced through his concentration. He knew it. Eli.
Fred turned his head, just a fraction. They were there, spilling into the square from a side alley. Eli in front, Burpy already flaming on his shoulder, his face tight with urgency. Trixie beside him, her camera forgotten, one hand on her holstered blaster, her eyes wide as she took in the ghouls. Kord a looming, blue mountain of concern, and Pronto practically vibrating behind his legs.
The Shane Gang had arrived.
The woman on the Mecha-Beast saw them too. Her smirk vanished, replaced by something infinitely colder. She snarled a word Fred didn’t catch.
She loaded her blaster, and shot the sick, red-burning Phosphoro slug straight at them.