A problem of historians, archivists, and storytellers since the beginning of time has been the decision of what to put in a tale and what to leave out. There is always a richness of detail necessarily omitted for the sake of the narrative, detail that has little if any impact on the actual events, but which could give us insight into the men and women who made that history. To preserve that richness and offer that insight into common men in uncommon situations, I have begun this collection of the very personal moments that official histories rightly overlook.
-- Risk.

To Each His Own
Courtesy of Reno
as told to Risk⁰

Perfect Tommy often gazed long and unblinking at places and people and things, his head tilted, his lips curved in a vague smile, amused by something only he would find humorous and that, more often than not, only he could see at all. But he was not given to staring blankly, only half aware, particularly at the lacquered rest that held Buckaroo's father's swords directly across from where Perfect Tommy sat insulated from World Watch One. But then, he wasn't given to crying either, and his eyes -- and my own - were red from it.

We loved Rawhide. And Rawhide was dead. Felled by a red Lectroid spider meant for Buckaroo.¹ His last act was one of such selfless courage that we doubted our ability ever to do justice to the example he had set for us. Yet, with John Emdall poised to destroy our world to save her own and Buckaroo Banzai alone charged with preventing it, we all would quite likely have to try.

Dying, as Rawhide had, for B. Banzai and the world, was not what frightened us. At least what frightened me had nothing to do with death, but with our standing by Buckaroo, lending strength when his threatened to fail him, providing a pragmatic vision when chaos trapped him in its whirlpool, offering direct and simple suggestion that only a man uncluttered and unimpressed by the confusion could discern. In short, be everything Rawhide had been to the Boss, to Team Banzai and the Institute.

I doubted we could do it. I knew I couldn't, not alone, and I didn't want to try. Rawhide was more that just a friend with a quiet shrug and a fast gun; he had been our rock in a stormy, too-adventuresome way of life. He had been our anchor, as well as Buckaroo's, and now in the face of Armageddon, we were drifting free. If I had been less numbed by grief, I would have been more terrified than I had ever been in my life.

As if reading my thoughts, Perfect Tommy levered his gaze away from the braided sheaths and looked straight at me. Tommy cultivated a self-image beyond his years, but in this confession his youth was painfully obvious. "I've never been scared like this."

"Neither have I."

But the answer hadn't come from my voice. Buckaroo Banzai leaned in the doorway, his weight supported through his arms by the doors frame on either side of him. We both looked up at once, no longer surprised at his silent approaches, and rose in unison in the assumption that he wanted the privacy of his room returned. He had been generous to offer us this solitude, while Big Norse filled him in on what had transpired in the time we had stolen from Earth's final hours to lay our late friend to rest in the cryogenics vault.² Now that the Boss was once again abreast of events, it was natural for him to seek the same solitude, for rest and for making his peace with the loss of his best friend.

He leaned back, taking his weight from the doorway, and entered the narrow room. He looked at us both with more understanding and concern than any lesser man could have mustered in the face of such a deep, personal tragedy. Perfect Tommy drew from that sympathy and seemed to snap back into focus. The sharp, clean lines of his shoulders and the arrogant angle of his jaw returned once again to perfection. Buckaroo smiled and squeezed his shoulder.

"Big Norse needs relief downstairs. Think you can handle it?"

"Of course," Tommy quipped back with a hint of offense in his tone. To imply that he couldn't handle it implied that he was less than perfect. But Buckaroo reassured him with a wink as he watched the youngest Cavalier stroll out the door.

When he was gone, Buckaroo faced me, his eyes indicating the sling that held my wounded arm immobile. "Are you okay?"

The simple, gentle question was more than I could bear. So often the fate of the world had lain on the head of Buckaroo Banzai. Too often he had held someone he loved in his arms, helpless, as they died. Presidents and generals turned to him for aid, and even we Cavaliers depended on him for hope and answers when the times were too dark for hope and there were no certain answers. But when was the last time anyone had asked the great Buckaroo Banzai, with any compassion, if he was okay?

I had made my peace with Rawhide's passing as I helped carry his body to deep freeze. But I could never stop the pain I felt every time I thought of what Rawhide had meant to Buckaroo. My throat swelled with anger at the injustice that would steal that last true sanctuary from him now. Yet I couldn't ask what I wanted to. Not because my voice was trapped in the anger, but because I wasn't Rawhide, and only he had ever returned B. Banzai's concern as an equal. I turned away to prevent Buckaroo from reading the tangled rush of emotions from my face, but I moved too late. I saw his pain for me in his eyes even as I turned, and that made my own pain cut that much deeper.

"Reno, don't," he said. "I need you to be able to look at me." He waited while I tried to quiet the grief I felt for this man and all he had lost, then he added softly, "Please."

I faced him and asked, "Are you okay?"

Buckaroo smiled, a faint image of his best smile, and tipped his head in a shrug. "He's with Peggy. They'll look after each other, keep each other company...-³

There was more, but his gaze left me as his eyes moistened and his composure trembled, preventing him from finishing. I said it for him. "And wait for you."

His lips reformed that same faint smile and he focused on me again. "And wait for me. Which might not take very long if we slip up."

"We won't."

"We'll see."

There was none of the predictable cynicism or doubt in his clipped response, just a simple observation of fact. We would see, and before the sun set on this very day. I thought of Pecos then and wondered if she too were waiting with Peggy and Rawhide⁴, and if the evening would see us all reunited. I hadn't realized the length of minutes we shared in silence until Buckaroo spoke again and put them in the past.

"Reno, I want you to take Apache into Yoyodyne."

I straightened in shock. "But Apache is..."

Our eyes met, and held, and I didn't finish the sentence. Apache was Rawhide's unit, and Buckaroo knew that even better than I did. To state the obvious would sound like a protest, and looking into Buckaroo Banzai's eyes and seeing the reason for the request reflected there, I couldn't object. I had assumed Apache force would stay and guard the Institute, Mustang Sally having never led a combat raid. Capable as the brown-maned mathematician was, I doubted the Boss would risk the fate of our entire species on her untested leadership. I had assumed I would fight beside my own Bravo Unit, striking the Lectroids in their nests and, probably, dying with them of paralysis from a Lectroid spider dart.

But I hadn't thought as widely as B. Banzai had. I hadn't considered that to the interns of Apache, Rawhide had been more than a friend. He'd been their drill sergeant, their teacher, their conductor, their confessor, mother and father all rolled into one Rawhide was their leader and none of them could stay behind while others battled the evil that had torn him from them. They would want... they would need to avenge him in honest combat. Or at least try.

But I still had my reservations. Bravo would voluntarily stand down and patrol the Institute and be tormented by the inaction, just to give Apache their justice. But Apache belonged to Sally now, not to me. Buckaroo, watching me, must have read the thought from my face.

"I've talked to Mustang Sally. She wants it this way as well."

And still I hesitated, and for a moment I couldn't isolate why. Then the reason settled over me like a pall, reviving the fear that B. Banzai had, for a moment dispelled. It wasn't Mustang Sally I'd be replacing. It was Rawhide.

"I can't."

"I don't want you to."

His eyes searched mine, open and supportive, and I knew we were both responding to the same unvoiced thought. He laid a hand on my right shoulder, avoiding the injured left, and stepped closer, enveloping me in his hypnotic, trusting and trustworthy gaze. I knew if I stood fast to my refusal, nothing would be held against me. In fact, I felt certain Buckaroo would find an honor and loyalty in my refusal equal to that he would see in my acceptance. All he asked was that I think about it.

He turned and walked from his room.

But the picture was wrong as I watched him pass through the doorway. No one peeled away from the wall where Rawhide would have leaned, waiting patiently, ever alert. No one followed B. Banzai as naturally as his own shadow followed, to protect his back. Buckaroo left me and returned to his duty in World Watch One very much alone.

I pivoted away from the sight and found myself eye to eye with my reflection in Buckaroo's mirror. Another time I would have wondered at the coincidental allegory, but the abrupt realizations left me no quarter. I would not be the one to fill that loneliness for Buckaroo, and it endeared the man to me even more that he would not expect me to try. I wasn't Rawhide and I could never be. But I could lead Rawhide's team - the best the Banzai Institute had ever trained thanks to Rawhide's inimitable leadership -- against the creatures that had killed him and Sam and so many others I couldn't then know.⁵ I would lead them and, if we survived, I would hand Apache, and Rawhide's legacy in them, into Mustang Sally's care and continue to be Reno Nevada, B. Banzai's friend, if not his brother, and happy for that.

As the decision formed itself into a comfortable future, I found the camouflage black Buckaroo kept in the drawer at my right and drew a jagged, horizontal line under each eye. It was undoubtedly far from true Apache war paint, but it was for Rawhide, whose spirit I hoped would stand with us through the coming battle. And for Buckaroo, a tear on each cheek, as black as the void Rawhide's death had left in his life, as black as the sorrow in each of us - but big like a clown's happy tear, because somewhere the fates had to be laughing for sheer joy at the love Rawhide had planted in us.

I joined Buckaroo Banzai moments later in World Watch One, just as he ended his transmission to President Widmark. He saw me as he straightened, and his gaze hung on me as if reading every intended meaning into the camouflage black on my face, though I had not intended it to call his attention. He nodded and pressed his hand against my back in gratitude as he squeezed by, summoned by New Jersey at the microscope at the other end of the console. And as Buckaroo joined him, that comfortable future grew a lumen brighter. I recognized in New Jersey's unassuming innocence and intensity, as he explained the anti-Lectroid-biotic Professor Hikata had developed that afternoon, a man who might fill B. Banzai's aloneness, though Rawhide would doubtless disapprove his inexperience.

I smiled briefly, watching them. Then, biology not being my forte, I looked over Perfect Tommy's shoulder at the readout on the Black Lectroid ship. Judging from the awing data there, we had a long afternoon ahead of us before we could relax and enjoy any future. At the end of New Jersey's bioanalysis, Perfect Tommy half-turned from the console to Buckaroo to report on the doomsday armament from Planet 10.

"They're armed for bear, Buckaroo," I agreed, properly subdued.

But then, so were we.

---

0. Familiar to many outside the Institute as D. C. Black

1. Though our grief was premature, we had no way of knowing that and sparing ourselves that torment.

2. See "Rawhide Rides Again"

3. See Extradition from Hell

4. This, too, was premature. Pecos escaped handily, as she has chronicled elsewhere.

5. Mustang Sally herself would be added to this list before the day was out, never to take the reins of Apache.