"Ho there! Found 'em!" Lance called out. He was dangling from a rope beneath a chopper, watching the ground, and he had just spotted his quarry.
The gears above him continued to grind out their whining symphony. Lance listened silently for a moment, enjoying the sound, then when they showed no signs of stopping, he called up again,
"Ho there I said! We found 'em!"
Still no response.
"I said, 'HO TH-"
"I heard you the first time," Janko said from behind him. He was hanging upside down from one of the many struts spanning the inside of their helicopter.
Although really, to call this sack of scrap a helicopter was an affront to helicopters anywhere. It would be more accurate to call it a "cracked-skull can of gears and pipes thrown together that flies purely on spit, sweat, and duct-tape", but that name had never really caught on. Janko liked it, but even he said it was too wordy for him to truly use anywhere.
"Then why ain't we stoppin'?" Lance asked, exasperated. He looked down at the ground, and frowned. They were spiraling around the target point. Or, more accurately, around a point about five feet to the left of the target. Or the right, now, because they had just went halfway around.
Well, now it was left again.
The copter had pretty good mobility, because it didn't have any of those sorts of safety features or good equipment like other modern vehicles had. In fact, calling it modern would be nearly as much of a lie as when Janko said that he could hold more than a pint of any sort of alcohol.
Optimistically, you might call it futuristic. If that particular future was an apocalyptic setting where everyone had had to scrounge together every bit of tech they had.
Oh, well. They would likely never have a place in this world. If they had been born somewhere else, they might have been more useful.
"Ya missed, Janko," Lance noted. The younger boy nodded, casting a critical eye at the landing zone, then disappeared, muttering about adjusting the altitude flaps. There were no altitude flaps.
Janko really was amazing. Even after he had created it, Lance had never guessed that the thing would actually fly. All the right groundwork was there, but without any of those shiny toys that the other guys in the air had, it was nearly impossible to even get liftoff, much less actually go where you intended to.
That being the case, Lance had decided to dub it Courtney. Well, after its first successful journey, that is. The name was because of their younger sister. She had been whiny and was never able to do what she promised, kinda like the chopper. Funny thing was, either one would respond instantly to Janko. Almost enough to make a guy jealous, it was.
It really seemed unfair that one of a set of twins would have all the luck with real people as well as machines. At least Lance could build them better, though. He could claim that cleanly as his own gift.
"Nearing touchdown point!" Lance called up. He was fairly sure the people on the ground could hear him now. Sure enough, another glance verified that they were looking up at him and Janko.
And of course, Janko was hiding inside, as always. Kinda crazy that he was both antisocial and the better one at talking to people and making them listen to him. Some people would call it manipulation, but Lance refused to use a word longer than four syllables, so he called it fancy folk talk. That was because most of the folks in suits that had used to come around their place had always tried to manipulate them. Those folks were lucky that Janko didn't answer the door much.
"Extend landing gear!" Lance called. There was no real landing gear that extended. It was just a spike made to scrape the ground and pull them to a forceful stop, as well as two ski-like sleds that would provide more surface area to slow them with friction and make sure nothing vital or leaking touched the ground, both categories of which had many things in them. Not a single one of those components retracted. Lance said it anyway.
Was it the dumbest way imaginable to land a helicopter? No, no it was not. There were worse options. Was it stupid? Yes, absolutely. And Lance never intended to change it.
He grinned as the metal ground against the ground, making a screeching sound along with dual groans, then one long shudder as it slowly shut down.
What a beautiful sound.