|
Post by Loken on Jul 22, 2014 1:32:21 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by Kyle on Jul 22, 2014 13:37:25 GMT -5
Great story Dashe. As a fellow Teisel fan the first few chapters were hard to read. Hard for to read because of Teisel's plight, you say? If you've read Chapter 4 and solely think that, Loken, then we can no longer be friends.
|
|
|
Post by Dashe on Jul 22, 2014 13:39:19 GMT -5
Oh, sweet, you're back! I was all, "Damn, Loken's missing out on the largest Teisel-centric fic circulating now! It even includes hair! Maybe I should've tipped him off earlier."
Hard to read's precisely what I was going for. >: ] I was hoping more people would flip out in public and try to throttle me through the computer over that. Guess I must be the only short-tempered person on this site!
(Don't mind Kyle, by the way. He's a Tron fan. Though if you guys want to get into a bar fight over my writing, I'll take that to mean my writing's good enough to get into a bar fight over.)
|
|
|
Post by Loken on Jul 22, 2014 19:53:56 GMT -5
Ha well Tron drinking anti-freeze is about as bleak as it gets Kyle so I guess we can still be friends! Seriously though @dashenthe anti-freeze thing was extremely disturbing. I hadn't heard of humans committing suicide like that. That's how my dog circles died. I can certinly see the logic in how you've created this sad, sad story. What if the rocket never got to the moon? Well they would just keeping trying? What if Megaman had died up there/ in the rocket? Well Tron would be very upset. What if Tron killed herself over it? Well then the Bonne family glue would be gone. From there we see Teisel's sadness, the decline of the pirate business, the slow death of the servbots and Bon, and then alot more horrible Teisel sadness.
|
|
|
Post by Dashe on Jul 22, 2014 20:25:05 GMT -5
Apparently they recently had to make antifreeze taste bad to keep people from using it to poison their spouses' drinks. That got Mr. Ninja googling what it used to taste like for a while, but the only answer he could really find was "Tastes like death!"
This all could've been a lot bleaker if he'd been found by the Klickelan Police and thrown in prison for loitering on the hillside. Or if he'd been found by awful bikers instead of uncharacteristically nice ones. Then there'd be no Klicke Lafonica mission, no Reaverbot fights, and it would be so painful to write that I'd have just tossed in the towel without finishing, which would be the suckiest outcome of all of this ever.
|
|
|
Post by Dashe on Jul 24, 2014 8:45:15 GMT -5
Teisel cursed himself for not recognizing that clanking sound sooner. He’d explored plenty of ruins that were downright riddled with giant Sharukurusu! He had no excuse, and now they were coming at him from all sides. Worse yet, he couldn’t even count them without his spotter online. He whipped around to the left and hopped up on top of an outcropping of rock, blasting in the direction of the loudest clanking footsteps, regretting his decision to cut communications with Max, and hoping for the best.
As soon as he hit the target, the Reaverbot sprang into action, revealing itself and charging straight for Teisel. He dove to the side as the Sharukurusu slid into its signature lunge. Teisel swiveled on the spot and pumped it full of lead. “You’re not going to get away that easily!” He shouted as it lost its grip on its own cloaking mechanism.
Suddenly a long, bladed claw appeared out of thin air and smacked Teisel in the face so hard he went flying into the pedestal with the chest on it. He backed up against the small edifice as his current assailant made itself visible and started charging at him.
Teisel let loose a steady stream of gunfire straight into the Sharukurusu. It felt like the machine was inches away from skewering Teisel in the abdomen before it finally exploded in a shower of refractor shards and energy cubes. Teisel wasted no time in springing forward to collect what he could before leaping out of the way to avoid a head-on collision. There were at least four of them swarming him now, though he couldn’t really say for sure. All he could do was try and run away and get all of them chasing him from the same direction.
Running worked until he slammed directly into another attacking Sharukurusu. This one actually grabbed him in its claws, right on his chestplate. Any lower, he realized, and it might have sliced him in half. He pointed his gun at the robot and shot it until it blew up.
Teisel didn’t have a chance to collect the loot that time. He could see six uncloaked Sharukurusu closing in on him fast, and caught flickers further back in at least four different places. They just kept coming. It was no use. He dashed forward in a last-ditch effort to jump over the hostile throng, but another one materialized and swatted him out of the way like a pesky bug. As he slammed into the wall, he pointed his machine gun and fired. He just held the trigger down and let the bullets fly. There wasn’t time for a plan anymore. All he could do was shoot at them until they stopped moving.
As the Reaverbots closed in, Teisel could have sworn he could see the Gustaff flanking him on one side and Bon in his drill configuration on the other, poised for combat in his peripheral vision. At that moment, in his mind, even cornered as they were, the three of them were ready to take on the world. And even though he knew he was probably just hallucinating from the stress, it comforted him to know that if these Sharukurusu were to get the best of him right then, he had Bon and Tron there with him.
Then Tron fired off a shot from the Bonne Bazooka, and against all logic, the mirage actually managed to hit its mark. The explosion of refractor shards dissolved the illusion, and suddenly Teisel could see a volley of homing missiles rocket from the cavern’s entrance through the air, taking out more of the horrifying, invisible robots than he could count. He just sat there, pressed up against the treasure chest as an older-looking blond man with a neatly-trimmed beard, a rakish brown cape, and an impressive digging suit burst onto the scene and started slaughtering Sharukurusu left and right.
Teisel’s hands were shaking so hard he couldn’t even tell where he was firing anymore. His gun felt like it was on the verge of overheating, but he refused to throw in the towel. Even if it hadn’t actually been Tron and Bon who’d come to back him up, even if some random stranger burst onto the scene out of nowhere and did most of the work, he wasn’t going to just give up! Teisel managed to pull himself to his feet and climb back down into the battlefield, gun blazing, and although he couldn’t even manage to blow up any more of them, once they’d cleared the room, the other guy smiled at him and said, “Take’ em, Green Guy.” He gestured toward the pink swords Teisel had quite frankly forgotten he’d even found in the first place.
Teisel just blinked. “T-thanks.” He stammered as he wandered across the room and picked up his find. Upon closer examination, he could barely tell they’d been stepped on by at least two dozen rampaging Reaverbots.
The other man walked over to him once he was done collecting the fallen refractor shards and stuck out his hand for Teisel to shake. “Name’s Russell,” he introduced himself. “I’m what you might call a veteran digger.”
“Teisel Bonne.” Teisel replied. He took a step back and eyed Russell with more than a hint of suspicion. “You’re not with the local Digger’s Guild, are you?”
“Not at all. I’m sorry if I frightened you,” Russell tried to explain. “Back in the central hub, I noticed that the skulls on your shoulders looked quite a bit like a logo I’ve seen before, back in the Shala-Kun ruins on Ryship Island quite a few years ago. I just wanted to get a closer look, really, and make sure I’d remembered it correctly. Are you familiar with three little yellow robots and a flying pig with a propeller? One of the robots was driving a little vehicle with a drill attached…no, there’s no mistaking it. You work for #27, #9, and #35, don’t you?”
Teisel felt his legs start to buckle, but he held his ground. This man had met his Servbots. On Ryship Island, no less. He must have met them while Tron was working to bail him out of Loath’s prison. Not only that, but they’d made enough of an impression that he’d even remembered them thirteen years after the fact. He also got their hierarchy completely backward, but that was a minor detail, all things considered. All he could do was nod.
“Anyway, to make a long story short, the Guild didn’t see you take off into that passageway. They were after me. Since I carry a universal Class S license, I didn’t have much to worry about, aside from you getting away and running into this Sharukurusu den. To tell you the truth, though, I was hoping I’d get to see you face off against some Reaverbots…you can learn a lot about a digger by watching him in battle!” Russell chuckled. “And I must admit, those little guys certainly taught you well.”
“I…uh…” Teisel trailed off. “…You really think I did alright?”
“Most people would’ve been content to let me do all the heavy lifting once I showed up with my trusty rocket launcher and saved the day. You may lack the technical skill it takes to face thirty-eight invisible Sharukurusu on your own, but you more than make up for that where it really counts.”
Teisel couldn’t help but smile. Hearing something like that out of a guy who could annihilate an entire room full of some of the most dangerous Reaverbots out there made him feel all warm and fuzzy inside. “Thanks.” He uttered.
Russell reached into his satchel and held out what couldn’t have been any less than 30,000 zenny in refractor shards. “You should take this and use it to bulk up your arsenal, maybe invest in a good energy canteen. You have a lot of potential even at your age, and the little robots must’ve seen something in you if they decided to take you on as a protégé.”
Teisel shook his head, gently nudging the blond man’s hand back. “Thanks but no thanks. The Bonnes don’t take handouts, and I’ve already broken that code of ours enough since I...”
“What are you doing, man? Just shut up and take the money!” Max’s voice suddenly crackled to life around them. “You’re the only Bonne left to follow these stupid rules in the first place, so you can do whatever you want!”
Teisel’s mouth hung open in stunned shock. “H-how long have the systems been live?” He stammered. Russell just raised his eyebrows in mild confusion.
“I turned the power back on while you were getting swarmed by Reaverbots,” Max nonchalantly replied. “I figured you knew you were being swarmed by Reaverbots, so I decided I’d just let you do your thing.”
“Did something…happen…?’” Russell hesitatingly asked.
It was as if Teisel had been riding a bicycle and Max had just reached in and jammed his gears with a metal pipe. “…Why?” He finally managed to utter after spending an unholy amount of time scouring the far corners of his mind for words that made sense. “Why would you EVER bring something like that up around someone we’ve just met?”
Russell couldn’t help but cringe and take another step back while Teisel proceeded to tear Max a new one. What had started as a nice, potentially heartwarming conversation with a promising upstart had begun to turn very awkward very quickly. “Hey, you two,” he interrupted before the situation had a chance to get any worse, “If you’re just going to argue down here, it’s probably a good idea to head back to the surface and call it quits for the day. Pro tip—don’t stay underground when you’re fighting with your spotter if you can help it. It never ends well.”
“He just told you my entire family’s dead!” Teisel roared. He seemed genuinely unable to process anything Russell had told him. He grabbed the veteran digger by the shoulders and shook him as he continued his tirade. “That is PRIVATE INFORMATION! What’d you expect me to do, give him a cookie?!”
“I didn’t mention anything about them dying,” Max defended, “That part was alllllll you just now.”
Russell grabbed one of Teisel’s hands and pried it off his arm, twisting himself out of his grasp with a professional efficiency. “Hey. Spotter.” He raised his voice to address Max so that Teisel’s mic would pick him up. “You’re gonna want to back off here. That stuff is strictly the Green Guy’s business, got it?”
Max mumbled something that neither of the older men were able to understand, but Russell took it as an apology, or at the very least some sort of unintelligible acquiescence. He turned and started toward the exit.
“Well, come on,” Russell called out when he realized the other digger wasn’t following him out. “If you keep going in this direction, you’re only going to find yourself in more trouble. The next room’s full of Shoebafun and Karumuna Bash. Trust me when I say it’s not a fun combination to deal with.” He scanned the room for any hint of an invisible Sharukurusu and added after an unsettling pause, “And, uh, if you’re really just worried about me wanting to know what ended up happening to #9 and those guys, I won’t press for any details. Wasn’t going to. You have my word.”
“If you really knew my Servbots, I wouldn’t hold it against you that much if you did ask about ‘em,” Teisel replied. He walked out after Russell and examined the slash across the front of his armor. It would probably cost a lot to fix. “And they, uh…they worked for me, actually,” he added sheepishly. “My sister built forty-one of them to act as all-purpose servants, and after our travels took us to Ryship, my little brother and I got ourselves imprisoned by this loan shark…”
As Teisel recounted the story of how he almost got away with the Golden Refractor of Ryship Island, Russell decided to lead him back to the surface the long way. Even if he never did get to find out where #9, #27, and #35 wound up in the end, he was sure this guy’s tale was going to be worth his while.
|
|
|
Post by Kyle on Jul 24, 2014 17:32:58 GMT -5
Though if you guys want to get into a bar fight over my writing, I'll take that to mean my writing's good enough to get into a bar fight over.) *Smashes bottle against counter top* C'mon then, Loken! Chest hair ain't gonna' save you from this!
|
|
|
Post by Dashe on Jul 31, 2014 13:39:20 GMT -5
Russell was not disappointed with Teisel’s tales in the least. “Wow,” he mused as they rode the elevator to the surface. Due to safety protocol, Guild ruins could open from the inside for anyone, license or otherwise. “I never would’ve guessed you’d done all of your digging behind the controls of a combat mech. That isn’t something you see every day.”
Teisel opted to give Russell a very abridged version of the adventures that led him up to that point, making sure to completely omit any mention of what had happened to Bon and Tron, and any mention of Mega Man Volnutt at all. While the events immediately following the final rocket explosion were almost a complete blur all these years later, he'd ended up learning the hard way that the mission to rescue Mega Man had attracted global attention. It wasn’t surprising. Professor Caskett and Werner Von Bluecher had seemed to be under the impression that the fate of all life on the planet was at stake when that boy ventured out into space. The fact that someone had made it into space to begin with would have been enough to attract media attention, but a mission to save the world? That was quality headline material right there.
If Russell ever caught on that Teisel had been involved with the rocket, he’d be able to figure out all the intimate details of Teisel’s life story much too quickly.
“I arrived here a few months ago,” Teisel concluded as he hiked along the trail and tried to remember where he’d left Max out in the hills. “I ended up crashing my airship out on the cliffs somewhere. I haven’t spent very much time outside the city limits. I haven’t even seen the wreck since the night it happened. For all I know, the police could’ve just towed it away. I’ve been living in the city with some bikers. They’re nice kids, once you get to know them.”
“That would explain your spotter’s charming demeanor,” Russell quipped.
“Hey!” Teisel cut in. “Max is usually a good guy. He just doesn’t think before he talks!”
“So what possessed you to take up digging all of a sudden?”
Teisel deadpanned. “Promise you won’t laugh?”
“I’m not that kind of guy. You have my word on that.”
“I’m after the Klicke Lafonica.”
The ensuing silence was so thick that they could slice it with either of the beam swords Teisel had tucked under his arm.
“That makes sense,” Russell finally responded.
“Hey, what are you trying to get at!?”
“I’m serious, Teisel. It makes perfect sense.” He insisted. “Don’t tell me you’ve never heard the stories that say touching it makes you young again! They don’t call it the Fire of All Creation for nothing, and everything fits! You spent the prime years of your life living as a pirate against your will, trying to make ends meet for your family, and now that you don’t have to worry about that anymore, you want a do-over so you can pursue whatever it was that you really wanted out of life, right?”
Teisel contemplated that notion for a while. He was surprised that none of the books had covered this particular aspect of the legend. Each author had a lot of their own theories about the artifact’s function, but he couldn’t remember reading about anything like this. Maybe going after the Klicke Lafonica wasn’t the greatest idea after all. Turning back his biological clock sure wouldn't bring back Bon and Tron. It wouldn't bring back his parents. It wouldn’t let him warn everyone about the dangers of going public about Tron’s talents and prevent him from having to resort to piracy in the first place.
Even if he were dealing with a literal time machine, he still wasn’t even sure if he’d be able to fix his life to suit his liking. The way things had played out when Bon was born, assuming he now had a means to go back to that moment and make some changes, he’d have a brutal decision to make. Saving his parents’ lives would probably mean letting Bon die from HBD during his infancy like he was supposed to. He couldn’t help but feel himself start to choke up at the sudden realization that Bon wasn’t supposed to have lived as long as he did. He'd had almost fourteen years for that to sink in, so why didn't it hit him until just then?
The only thing he knew for sure was that whatever so-called magic this thing might work on him, should he wind up coming into contact with it, wouldn’t erase the baggage he’d accumulated in the wake of his family’s demise. An oddly masochistic part of him didn’t want it to, either.
Still, Teisel’d had a hard enough time coping with gradually losing his family over the last fifteen years. While he wasn’t exactly keen on the idea of ending his own life in a last-ditch effort to shake that baggage off at that present moment, now that he might actually have grounds to consider artificially extending it, he found he wasn’t fond of that idea, either. Not if it meant carrying his grief around with him any longer than he absolutely had to.
He hadn’t even realized he’d stopped walking until Russell tapped him on the shoulder. “I guess you really didn’t know about that part,” he stated. “It’s something to think about, to say the least.”
“I was just planning on selling it.” Teisel admitted. “I think I need to go back and re-evaluate some…stuff…now.”
“Well, if you decide you’d like to go for it, I’m working to get to the top of the summit and find it, too.” Russell admitted. “The paperwork might say I’m Class S material, but if we’re being honest here, I’m not the digger I was in my twenties and thirties. It’s really frustrating, not being able to do a lot of the things I could do back then. I could definitely use a few more years down in the ruins, even if it means tapping into some ancient technology to get it out of me. If you want, I’d be willing to teach you the ropes for 500 zenny an hour. I’d offer to do it for free, since you seem like a decent guy, but I think I can probably guess what you’d say to that. Since I’ve been digging for as long as I have, I could even get you through the red tape to get you a license right away. All you’d need to do is pass the exam, no waiting list or anything. The Digger’s Guild trusts my judgment.”
“Look, Russell, I don’t know about this,” Teisel hesitated. “Max wouldn’t react well to the idea of selling out.”
“Spotters don’t need to be licensed,” Russell shook his head. “Just diggers. Your biker buddy doesn’t have to worry about a thing. It’s really just something to keep you safe from those random license checks. It’d be a shame to get close to your goal, even if you decide to change that goal along the way, and wind up in jail all because you didn’t file the right paperwork.”
Teisel thought long and hard before answering, “I’m going to have to take some time to think about this tonight. If I could make what I made today, or more, during these training sessions, factoring in at least one day off for the exam...as long as the math is right, then I should be good.”
“Ah, the good old rental property days,” Russell mused.
“Yeah…uh…something like that.”
When Teisel and Russell reached the hidden entrance to the Shekuten corridor, Max had mysteriously vanished, spotting equipment and all. “Hm. That’s funny. He never mentioned anything about heading back,” Teisel frowned. “Last time he even waited so he could make me haul the equipment back to the base.”
However, before he had a chance to get himself worked up over the ordeal, he finally noticed the snoring coming from underground. He knelt down next to the hole in the hillside and stuck his head in. “Hey! Max!” He exclaimed in a voice that was probably quite a bit louder than he'd meant it to be. “You sleeping on the job?”
Max jumped to attention and almost hit his head on the rocky ceiling of the little antechamber. “Dang it!” He exclaimed, stretching out and knocking his arms into the spotting equipment he’d hauled into the cavern. He realized Teisel wasn’t in the ruin anymore and started fumbling around trying to disconnect all of the equipment in the dark. “Maybe moving all this stuff wasn’t such a good idea after all. I don’t think any Guild officials even came up here!”
Teisel squinted through the darkness at him and added, “I’m not even sure how you were able to decipher your own readouts down there. Just finding the tunnel to the ruins in the first place was a pain in the neck!”
The gang leader just scoffed and thrust the heaviest monitor into Teisel’s hands. “If your friend with the money followed you all the way out here, tell him to help me get this crap back on solid ground.”
It took some convincing, but Russell eventually persuaded Max that it was in everyone’s best interest for Teisel to get a Digger’s license. Once the three of them made it back to town and hid the spotting equipment in Max's room, Russell instructed Teisel to meet him in the Diggers’ Square at ten the next morning before he retreated back to his own lodgings.
“Hey Max,” Teisel piped up once Russell was out of sight. “I’m going to go take a walk. I’ll be back later tonight, but don’t wait up, okay?”
“Something on your mind?” Max asked, raising an eyebrow. “You’ve been staying out a lot lately. You’ve gotta be exhausted, too. I wasn’t even running around underground and I’m exhausted. Did something happen down there? You know, besides getting mobbed by Reaverbots and almost caught by the feds?”
“I’m fine. I just need to think about some things,” Teisel tried to explain.
“But you’re always thinking about things,” Max groaned. “You know I’m here for you if you ever need to talk, right? Just like I said before.”
“Yeah, I know.” Teisel nodded. “I haven’t forgotten, I just…well, it’s complicated. Talking through it would probably just raise more questions on top of the ones you already have.”
“Alright, if you say so…”
Teisel didn’t get back in until well past midnight, and by that time the others were all fast asleep.
If Teisel thought his muscles had ached the first morning after he woke up from digging, the second morning was ten times worse. He was so sore that he had second thoughts about meeting Russell for the license exam, but somehow he managed to pry himself off the couch and into the kitchen for a cup of coffee. Max had his feet propped up on the table as he read the day’s newspaper comics.
“Aero’s been leaving these out on the table all week,” Max replied after Teisel greeted him for the day. “I should really get around to thanking her for that.”
Teisel just nonchalantly sipped his coffee.
“You ready for that…test…thing?” Max piped up when it became clear that the new guy had nothing to add to that conversation.
“I think I’ll be fine as long as I don’t try to bend my arms or legs.”
Max sighed. “T-Bonne, if you aren’t feeling up to it, we won’t hold it against you if you decide to take a day off to get back on your game. You managed to get over 10,000 zenny yesterday! At that rate, we’ll be paid off in no time!”
“Yeah, and I almost got myself killed by Sharukurusu doing it,” Teisel pointed out. “I spent 200 last night on top of that. We’re probably a bit under the 10,000 mark now, not counting what I made two days ago with the Shekuten.”
“What?! I figured you were off selling those goofy pink swords you found in the ruins when you took off like that! Don’t tell me you still have them. What the heck are you spending our shards on?” Max demanded. “Couldn’t you have just borrowed my credit card?!”
Teisel bit his lip and awkwardly glanced away. “It’s nothing. If I keep up this pace, it won’t make a difference, especially if I pay Russell to help me out. He’s good.”
Max frowned. “You should’ve just taken whatever money he wanted to give you back in the ruins,” he sighed. “For what it’s worth, I hope you know what you’re doing, because if you get yourself really hurt out there pushing yourself too hard, then you won’t be able to dig for money at all. Then we’d REALLY have something to worry about.”
It would have made perfect sense for him to meet Russell, explain that it was in his best interest to take a break, rest for the day, and recuperate, but due to a lack of sleep, common sense wasn’t quite with Teisel Bonne that morning. He trudged into the square in his digging suit with a travel mug of coffee in hand and found Russell waiting around by a buster part stand.
“Hey,” He exclaimed, “Where’ve you been all morning? I was just about to give up and go underground for the day!”
Teisel nervously laughed and clutched his coffee a little tighter. “Sorry about that,” he replied. “I guess I’m not used to running around for hours on end…”
Russell let out a loud guffaw and slapped Teisel on the back, almost spilling the coffee all over his protégé. Teisel winced. “You crack me up, Green Guy. Now let’s head to the Guild and get you in the system!”
The Klickelan branch of the Digger’s Guild made its headquarters in the largest and most prominent building in the square. It was the first government building Teisel had set foot into on good terms since his start in the wide world of sky piracy, and even though it looked more like a waiting room in a doctor’s office than a vital cornerstone of the lawful side of the planet’s civilization, Russell found himself convincing Teisel that he had nothing to worry about.
“As far as these guys know, you’ve got a clean slate. They don’t really run background checks, and they certainly won’t if you’re with me.” He assured him. He glanced around the room and whispered, “You didn’t actually do anything to the Digger’s Guild back then, did you?”
It had been a while since Teisel had stopped documenting his ill-fated plundering attempts, and his mind was foggy to start with. Worst case scenario, he’d ended up attacking a remote Guild Headquarters after the rocket crash, and they’d completely forgotten the Bonnes since then. It wasn’t like his later efforts were anything worth remembering. He’d just become another petty thief flying the unfriendly skies.
He was more concerned about the Guild representatives remembering his name from the rocket fiasco.
“Pretty sure I didn’t,” Teisel uttered, muffling his reflexive gulp with a sip of his coffee. He walked across the room to examine a magazine rack hanging on the wall. He figured that if he kept moving, he’d have a slimmer chance of falling asleep. Most of the magazines were dog-eared and at least a year old. He pulled out a copy of Uncle Digg’s Monthly Tips and started lackadaisically flipping through the pages while Russell approached the front desk and explained the situation to the receptionist.
Just as Teisel was about to check out the crossword puzzle, Russell handed him a clipboard full of forms. “You’re in. Fill these out and hand them to the receptionist,” he instructed. “You can take the Class B test right away.
“Class B is pretty much your basic digging license,” Russell explained further. “If you’re registered with the Digger’s Guild, that’s what you start out with. Once you start climbing the bluffs you’ll need at least a Class A license to enter, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. The standardized Class A test is alright, but it throws a couple of Gorubeshu into the mix, so watch out for status effects. Class S, though…that one’s brutal. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemies.”
Teisel’s face fell. “Class A? I thought we could just…”
That was as far as he was able to get before Russell jabbed an elbow into Teisel’s side. “There’s a Guild rep right there,” He muttered through clenched teeth.
“Oh. Right.” Teisel uttered. He set to work.
Russell glanced over Teisel’s shoulder as he filled the paperwork out. Part of him wanted to make sure his protégé wouldn’t run into any trouble, and part of him was just plain curious about the guy. “Woah, wait, don’t tell me you’re eight years younger than I am!” The S-class digger couldn’t help but sputter when Teisel scrawled in his birthdate. “You’re…uh…quite a bit younger than I thought.” Russell stated, taking a moment or two to process the fact.
“I started getting gray hairs in my early twenties.”
“Fair enough.”
Russell decided to go read a magazine instead.
“You will have five minutes to complete the Class B Test.” An automated voice filled the room as soon as the lift ground to a halt on the testing floor. “Prospective diggers are required to clear the room of all Reaverbots before proceeding to the next room. The test will begin as soon as you open the door in front of you.”
It had taken a while for the Guild to attach the appropriate mods to Teisel’s gun, and all the while he was just anxious to get it over with, go back to the base, and take a nap. “Don’t worry,” Russell had told him. “This should be a cakewalk compared to what you were up against yesterday.”
Why was he worrying, anyway?
He took a deep breath and shook his head, almost as if trying to shake off the fatigue and aches with mixed results, before pressing forward into the first room.
Immediately, four garden-variety Horokko sprang to attention. The closest two slid into a spinning tackle and knocked Teisel to the ground before he had a chance to react. He hadn’t even fired off his gun yet, and he’d already been hit. This wasn’t good. He scrambled to regain his footing and leapt over the two in the back, then pivoted to propel a volley of gunfire into his assailants from behind. He managed to get a few good hits in, but he didn’t notice the Foo Roo that had silently sneaked up behind him until it was inches from his face and seconds from exploding. He sprang backward to dodge the inevitable blast and almost tripped over a Horokko as he opened fire on the mook quartet.
“What, no refractors?” He muttered out loud when he finally took out one of the little guys. Somehow it didn’t surprise him that the Reaverbots in the Digger’s Guild didn’t drop any zenny or energy cubes. “What a bunch of cheapskates…” he mumbled, grumbling a string of insults under his breath as he picked off the stragglers.
By the time the hall was clear, he’d taken up almost a full minute out of his allotted five, and it finally registered in his sleep-deprived mind that he was best off just plowing straight through, since none of these enemies had shields. Just like he’d done with the Shekuten swarm. He picked off a few Mirumiji and a Harin in an average-sized room after that, and then found himself in almost a play-by-play repeat of the previous hall with the Horokko and Foo-Roo.
This should have been much easier than Teisel was making it, but with his muscles aching and fatigue threatening to overcome him like the Sharukurusu horde from the real ruins almost did, this test was anybody's game. Teisel wasn’t sure how much time he had left when he burst into the next chamber. Two minutes? Three? There was no way to tell.
Three Arukoitan hopped into action as soon as the door slid open, and at least one of them let loose a fireball that almost set Teisel’s hair aflame. He circled around the room and took out the Orudakoitan first before laying waste to the disabled attack units, and mentally prepared to face down a third corridor of small fries.
Unfortunately for him, this hallway didn’t go as expected.
The fact that the thing no fewer than ten feet away from him was, in fact, a Jakko’s nest did not register quickly enough for him to avoid being bombarded with Jakkos, all diving at him like gulls on a dropped french fry. He spastically fired in a panic and took out a decent number of them before snapping back into focus. Or trying to. He couldn’t focus. He just couldn’t. Not on that amount of sleep. Not after two days of straight up bot-bashing. The little bugs were distracting him to the point where he wasn’t even thinking about everything he’d read about them.
Take a deep breath and concentrate on the nest, Teisel finally instructed himself. Forget the little guys. You’ve got a job to do.
It took more hits than he’d expected, but eventually the carapace shattered and let loose one last wave of Jakkos. He couldn’t stop to think about how much time he might’ve had remaining. All he could do was point and shoot and run as fast as he could to the green door at the end of the hall as he set off the Shekuten just like he did on his first day in the ruins.
He wasn’t sure whether he'd made it back into the elevator room before or after the buzzer resonated throughout the chamber, but he nearly collapsed onto the elevator platform once he was sure that he wasn’t in another area filled with Reaverbots. The automated voice might have said something, but he was just too far gone, and the motion of the lift didn’t help alleviate his lightheadedness at all.
Before too long, the platform slowed to a stop in the antechamber where Russell was waiting. “Congratulations!” His new mentor exclaimed with a grin. Then the veteran realized just how much of a toll the test had taken on Teisel.
“I made it?” Teisel managed to choke out in an exhausted rasp that Russell was surprised he could even understand.
“Less than a second before time ran out,” Russell explained.
The wave of relief that hit him right then and there almost made Teisel crumple to the ground and pass out, but by then, Russell had grabbed his arm to support him and was in the process of leading him off to a small office to pick up his license and get the attachments on his gun reset to their normal configuration. He couldn’t remember what the woman who’d administered the test even told him, but before he knew it, he was being escorted into what appeared to be an infirmary.
“He just needs to get some sleep,” Teisel heard Russell explain to the nurse while he plodded off to the nearest bed. Teisel thought it was a nurse. He couldn’t be too sure. If Russell had added anything else after that, it was anybody’s guess, because he was out cold the moment his head hit the pillow.
|
|
|
Post by Dashe on Aug 7, 2014 14:20:31 GMT -5
As the Einzelgänger’s engine roared around him and jolted him back to his senses, Teisel felt the cool, clean ergonomic grip of a thrust lever in his hand. Not just any thrust lever—a Tron Bonne original. He realized he'd been sitting in the cockpit of a green, bipedal mech shaped like an awkward chimerical blend of a kangaroo and a wolverine. It was equipped with claws that could shoot missiles out of its hands and power cores that had inexplicably been installed on the outside. He was also thirty years old. He could see Tron in the seat next to him. Over a dozen different monitors illuminated her face with an unsettling green glow. She had a clear view of Mega Man Volnutt in the largest one and tears threatening to break through her stoic façade, and that’s when Teisel realized what was happening. They were at Haffeston Harbor. They were on a raid straight out of Tron’s imagination, one where the three siblings had opted to invade a humble port while Tron and Mega Man found themselves in the midst of an awkward misunderstanding. It was the point in the story where Mega Man realized that the feelings he’d been having for Tron weren’t entirely platonic, and unbeknownst to this version of Tron, it ended in a fiery explosion of shrapnel and machine parts, just like the majority of their encounters had in reality.
“Teisel, you’re in charge of the secondary guns.” She instructed.
Her voice did nothing to betray her emotions. If Teisel hadn’t remembered reading about how she’d been on the verge of a mental breakdown in her book, he would’ve been none the wiser.
“Hello, Volnutt,” she bitterly taunted over the mic as she shifted her attention to the blue boy onscreen. “It seems we finally meet again.”
Teisel’s mind was racing. He could fix this. All he had to do was tell her that those funny feelings were okay. Why was that so hard?
Mega Man stared straight into the camera from the docks of Haffeston Harbor and uttered, “Tron, I...I...why are you doing this?”
Tron couldn’t stifle her tears any longer. "You did this..." she sniffled. Everything was happening so quickly. "If you had answered me last time...I…I might have been able to forgive you!" Her grip tightened around the weapons control module as she shouted, “BUT YOU DIDN’T!" She clenched her teeth, took a deep breath, and added, "So much for a good guy!"
Before Teisel had a chance to interject and keep them from getting into the fight he knew was on the way, she pulled the trigger and let forth a volley of gunfire that rattled the cockpit. He opened his mouth, but against all odds, no sound came out. The words were stuck. He could have sworn he could feel his throat closing up the wider he opened his mouth to try to shout at them to stop fighting. None of it made sense. None of this was supposed to have even happened in the first place, but the alternative he was supposed to have been living was so much worse. It felt like his mind was being ripped at the seams as it tried to reconcile the two situations, and the rattle of the Einzelgänger’s missiles firing off on top of all of that turned what had once been a fantasy Teisel dove into when he found himself missing his family into a veritable nightmare.
Even though he was used to finding himself literally under fire, the tension between Tron and Mega Man was so palpable that it hurt, and before he realized it the explosions grew louder and louder until an alarm started wailing. He never had a chance to stop Tron from grabbing Mega Man with the Einzelganger’s front claw. She violently slammed him against the ground again and again and again.
“Stop!” Teisel wanted to shout. “You’re going to kill him again!” Unfortunately, that sentiment made zero sense given the context of the situation, and he was still frozen in his seat and completely unable to speak.
That was when Tron turned toward her brother in a hysterical rage. “Teisel, why aren’t you shooting him!?” She roared. “Now you can finally get him out of the way!”
Teisel could only bring himself to just shake his head, but before he could so much as blink, he was forty again and Tron suddenly had a plasma pistol pointed at him. Her eyes were sunken and bloodshot. As Teisel recoiled in horror she roared, “Is he dead yet? Isn’t that what you wanted since the day we met him?”
“I…I…I…I…” Teisel stammered. He’d read this part enough times that he knew this wasn’t at all what Tron had written there. Glancing down, he found that the harness strapping him into his seat no longer had a buckle. He wasn't just psychologically frozen in his seat. He was literally trapped there.
“You’ve always just been in the way, Teisel! You’ll never understand what I’ve been through!” She persisted. She knocked the gearshift into autopilot with her elbow, not once shifting the gun’s position. “The worst part is, if we get blown up again, it’s not going to do anything to you! This is the only way he and I can be together!”
Teisel desperately wanted to tell her that she was wrong. He did understand what she felt for the Blue Boy. There was no need to trap and execute him inside their mech! There just wasn’t enough time. “Sorry to have to do this, Teisel,” she uttered before pulling the trigger.
But nothing came out of the little gun. Teisel’s eyes popped open as he lay crumpled in his bed, soaked through with sweat, in the Digger’s Guild infirmary.
The clock read 8:21 PM, his new license had been placed on the dresser next to him, and Russell was nowhere to be seen. This had to have been the fourth nightmare he’d had in the past week.
The whole day had escaped him, and he was utterly alone.
A few hours earlier, Aero descended the stairs to the Bright Bats’ base, her arms loaded with bags of Manda Express takeout, and kicked the door a few times to let the others know she’d returned with their dinner. It had been a very lucrative day for her. “Guys? Anybody in there?” She shouted after three minutes of silence. The last thing she wanted to do was try and balance the bags in one arm while she fumbled around looking for her key single-handedly.
Pic arrived just in the nick of time to let her in. “Thanks,” Aero said with a nod as she walked into the common room and placed the bags on the coffee table. “Go get some silverware and place settings.”
As he wordlessly trotted off down the hall, she followed him and shouted, “Max! Grill! Teisel! Get in here and eat!” Then she retreated back into the common room.
It seemed like not even a second passed before Grill’s footsteps thundered down the hall and he came barreling in through the doorway where Aero had been standing not even moments before. “Manda Express! Alright!” He exclaimed. “Got any shrimp rolls in there?”
Aero stepped back into the hall. “Better hurry up before Grill gets into everything,” she added with a smirk.
Max trudged out of the bathroom as Pic scrambled back into the common room with dishes, forks, and knives. “T-Bonne isn’t back yet?” He blinked.
“Back?” Aero questioned. “How long’s he been gone?”
“He said he had some errands to do this morning.” Max shrugged it off and served himself a bowl of chicken curry rice. “I didn’t think too much of it at the time, really.”
Aero couldn’t help but remark, “I don’t know about this, Max. The longer this guy sticks around here, the more I think there’s something off about him. Running errands could mean anything, and he’s been gone all day.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Max brushed it off. “He’s probably at the library.”
“Aero, are you sure all this second-guessing isn’t really just about Barrett?” Grill said, momentarily glancing up from his shrimp. “Ever since he left, you’ve barely given anyone outside of the four of us the time of day. I mean, sure, I get that you were a kid and you liked him and all, but that’s no reason to shut out everyone else because it didn’t work out.”
“Don’t make me steal the keys to your motorhorse,” Aero threatened.
“You know I can hotwire that thing in seconds,” Grill reminded her. “Just…you really ought to watch yourself, or you might push a perfectly good new member away for the opposite reason this time.”
Aero resisted the urge to snap at the mechanic and tore into a box of beef stir fry. “I still think Teisel’s hiding something. He keeps coming back to the base later and later, and he does some weird things even taking his life story into consideration. It’s been bugging me for a while.”
“It’s a dog.” Pic stated. It was the first thing he’d said all day.
“Dude, we’re in the middle of a serious conversation here,” Max groaned. He hoped his sweat wasn’t soaking through his shirt. “Now isn’t the best time to spout random crap at us.”
Pic shook his head. “That’s what T-Bonne’s hiding. A dog.” He explained. “He goes out and gives one of the strays in town hamburgers. I’ve seen him playing with it in the alleyways. I’m 91% sure that he considers this dog his pet.”
The rest of the gang just stared at Pic with dumbfounded expressions.
“What? I’m just doing my job.”
“I can’t believe you’re using that ridiculous nickname now, too,” Aero rolled her eyes.
“A dog, huh?” Max mused. He wondered if Pic had also exercised his authority as the Bright Bats’ self-proclaimed information-gatherer to follow the two of them out to the ruins. He wasn’t about to test that theory anytime soon. “I never would’ve pegged him for an animal guy in a million years. That T-Bonne’s just full of surprises. And hey, maybe it’s about time we picked up a new mascot…”
And so it happened that quite a few hours later, when Teisel stumbled in late that night wearing his armor to find all four of his new roomies not only awake, but waiting for him, he had himself completely convinced they knew all about his digging expeditions. He mustered up a grin and stammered, “You’re still awake. That’s…uh…hi.”
Aero put on her sternest frown and interrogated, “So Teisel, when were you going to tell us about the dog?”
He sure wasn’t expecting that. “How did you…”
“Pic likes following people around sometimes,” Grill explained. “He likes to think of himself as an information gatherer of sorts. You can relax, though. There’s nothing wrong with wanting a dog or anything. We’ve had a lot of pets over the years.”
“We…?” Teisel trailed off. He was so embarrassed that he was sure that his face had to have been at least as red as his eyes. He thought he’d been more careful about covering his tracks. “I…I don’t know. Sprocket’s kind of…well…it’s complicated. I gave her my fries the night I told Max about…well, you know...it was, uh, that night. I’ve been keeping an eye out for her ever since. I’ve always liked dogs, and up until now I’ve never been in a position where I could have one, so...uh…”
“What’s complicated about that?” Max responded.
“I don’t know, Max,” he sighed. He wandered over to where Pic and Max were sitting on the couch and motioned for them to make room. It had been a long day. “There’s a part of me expecting someone to just take her away. It’s been so long since I’ve been able to do something just because I wanted to. I’m not used to that. And, to tell the truth, I kind of liked having the dog to myself. Looking after her gives me something constructive to focus on, and she wound up being someone I could go spend time with when I wasn’t feeling too well and needed some…some unconditional support, I guess. Even though I know you guys keep saying you’d be there for me if I needed to talk, there isn’t much that beats tossing a tennis ball around in an alley with Sprocket. She always seems to know when I need her most, if that makes any sense. I suppose I might just be worried that she wouldn’t be as strong of a support structure if I added you four into the mix.”
“It’s all good,” Grill shrugged it off. “We’re just saying, if you want to bring her around, you have nothing to worry about, and either way you shouldn’t have to feel like you need to hide anything from us.”
Teisel smiled and felt his ears grow warm again. “You guys are great,” he told them. “I couldn’t have asked to get taken in by a better ragtag bunch of misfits than you.”
Max slung an arm around Teisel’s shoulder and gave him a quick squeeze. “We love you too, man. It’s gonna be alright. You’re a Bright Bat, and we’ve all got your back.”
He decided right then that they’d meet Sprocket before the next day was through. In spite of all his misgivings, those guys just kept pulling through for him again and again. Perhaps trusting them completely wasn’t as crazy of an idea as he’d once imagined, and even though he wasn’t quite there yet, he found himself incredibly grateful to have them around at that moment.
The next day, after Teisel finished digging and changed back into his street clothes, he gathered Max, Grill, and Aero together and, carrying a hamburger patty in one hand, whistled and called the dog’s name as he paraded them down a series of alleyways that made Grill visibly nervous.
“You sure we should even be down here?” He asked as his gaze darted up and all over the place. He half expected someone to jump out and mug the whole group.
“You know how spaced out T-Bonne gets,” Max whispered. “If he hasn’t been mugged out here yet, we’re probably fine.”
“Hey!” Teisel quipped. “I heard that!”
“Don’t try and deny it, either,” Aero added. “We’re all onto your shenanigans, Teisel Bonne.”
Instead of setting him on edge the way they might have a few weeks earlier, the gibes actually brought a smile to the older man’s face. “Well then, I suppose I ought to just admit it outright. We’re not actually visiting a dog…we’re going to break into the City Hall and steal all of their pens. This hamburger’s really just part of an elaborate scheme to convince you otherwise.” He bluffed, but the sparkle in his eyes and the ridiculousness of the assertion tipped the bikers off.
Before anyone could say anything else, though, Teisel stopped dead in his tracks. He’d heard the distinct sound of a large animal knocking over a garbage can, so he whistled again. “Sprocket? That you?” He shouted as he peeked around the nearest corner.
Aero, Grill, and Max followed him as he darted toward a moderately large, gray, fluffy dog with pointed ears. The dog stopped digging around in the garbage and jumped up at Teisel. “Hey, down! Down!” He ordered. The instruction was barely audible over Sprocket’s relentless yapping, but as soon as the dog caught a whiff of the other three Bright Bats, she bounded back again and regarded them apprehensively, letting out a growl and a series of threatening barks that made Max second-guess his intention of turning Sprocket into their latest mascot.
“Teisel, that dog has a collar and tags,” Aero pointed out.
“Yeah, I bought those. It makes finding her easier.” Teisel explained. He shot Max a penetrating glare before he could open up his mouth in objection and betray their plan to the others. He turned back toward the dog and continued, “Sprocket, they’re okay, calm down…there’s nothing to worry about here, those guys are alright…”
Max spoke up. “Yeah, don’t worry about us wanting to bring that dog into the base anytime soon, T-Bonne. No offense or anything, but she looks crazy.”
Teisel shrugged as he held the burger out at arm’s length and made his way cautiously toward the trash cans. “She’s not crazy, she just thinks you’re a threat.” he insisted. “Getting random street dogs to learn to trust you takes a lot of work and a lot of patience. And an open box of Diam…er, Johnny’s french fries helps, too.” He added as Sprocket gingerly stepped toward him and took the burger from his hand before she started barking at the Bright Bats again.
“You sure you’re the one looking out for her and not the other way around?” Aero sighed.
“Well, it certainly looks like she likes you,” Grill shrugged, “and any dog that makes you feel better is okay in my book, I guess. I can’t stress this enough, though, you shouldn’t have to worry about any of us kicking you out or resenting you for having a life outside of our base. No more sneaking around, got it? The only reason we even found out about Sprocket at all is because Aero here was getting suspicious about the way you’d just leave all day and come back really late for the past week or so.”
“So, uh, you wouldn’t mind that I got a Digger’s License, either, then?” Teisel awkwardly asked as he crouched down next to Sprocket with his hand on her collar and held her back in case she decided to violently rush his friends.
“Why would we mind that?” Aero frowned while Max cringed and frantically gestured for Teisel to end the train of thought there. “Max and Grill found you in a digging suit. I’m surprised it didn’t come up sooner.”
“No reason.” Teisel abruptly cut off the conversation. “Anyway, now that you’ve met my dog, we should probably head back to base. It’s getting dark, you know.”
As he released his grip on the dog’s collar and walked off, Sprocket scampered after him, leaving Aero and Grill standing in the alley even more perplexed than Aero had been the day before, and leaving Max seriously questioning whether they’d meet their deadline or not.
They had ten days left to raise 30,000 zenny. With Teisel using what was probably a decent part of their earnings to support this dog, Max wondered if he’d get out of this business with Seedy Leigh in one piece after all.
If he did, he intended to throw everyone a huge party and charge the whole thing on his Teomo Rewards card.
|
|
|
Post by Dashe on Aug 14, 2014 10:06:29 GMT -5
Scrounging up 50,000 zenny was tough. Not as overwhelmingly exhausting as accidentally walking into an invisible Sharukurusu nest had been, but tough nonetheless, and certainly much less exciting. Between paying Russell and feeding Sprocket, it took Teisel right up until the fourteenth to get enough together. There was no room to upgrade his equipment or anything, just one long, tedious zenny grind punctuated by enjoyable evening walks with his dog through the streets of Teomo City. When Max asked him why he hadn’t sold the blades he dug up, he shrugged noncommittally and dropped the subject, but the moment the two of them came up with the money, Teisel insisted that he come along when they pay Leigh off. He just didn’t feel right about leaving Max to do that on his own again. Max held the heavy bag in his hand as the two of them made their way toward 9th street. There was almost 60,000 zenny inside. “You never know when sharks like that might suddenly decide to charge you interest they didn’t mention earlier,” Teisel warned the previous morning. “Let’s take the extra day we have and scrape together a little more money, just in case.” It didn’t make much of a difference. They were almost a block away from Seedy Leigh’s building when a big fellow in a faded jacket slammed into Max from behind. Teisel could only look on in stunned shock as the satchel fell out of Max’s hands and sent the refractor shards scattering across the alley. Several of them clattered down into the drainage grates. “T-Bonne, what are you doing?!” Max shouted as he scrambled after the dropped refractor shards. “Don’t just stand there, grab the dough before somebody else does!” The two of them could only recover a little over 20 grand. Not even half of what they owed Seedy Leigh. “What’re the odds of some jerk crashin’ into us and making us drop the loot?!” Max exclaimed in frustration. He peered into the murky depths of the nearest storm drain and tried to make out any of the dropped crystals, but there was just too much junk down there to get a clear view of anything. “Geez, of all the rotten luck…” “That’s not luck,” Teisel shook his head. “This is obviously a setup. I’d be willing to bet the rest of our money that Seedy Leigh sent that guy out to do this.” “What do we do now, then?” Max asked. “We can’t just go in there with less than half of what he asked for!” Teisel wandered over to the side of the road as he evaluated his options. “What, exactly, do you know about this Seedy Leigh character, Max?” He asked. Max rubbed the back of his neck and took another longing glance at the storm drain. “Uh…not too much,” he admitted. “Even back when he was running his motorhorse gang, I never really thought to check out the competition or anything.” “…He rides motorhorses?” Teisel perked up. “Yeah,” Max shrugged. “He said he used to be on the Lightning Crusaders, back when they were still around. Even when he was laughing at me for sticking with motorhorse racing all this time, I couldn’t remember ever meeting him before that day I took out the loan.” “I think I can actually work with that.” Seedy Leigh sat behind his desk with a grim expression as he took a puff from his cigar and stared Max and Teisel down. “So…looks like your story about the old man checks out.” He observed. “You got the shards, Bat Boy?” He didn’t even need to wait for Max’s reply, but common sense and years of experience taught him to hold his tongue. “Er…about that…” As the younger man fumbled with his inevitably feeble excuse, Leigh tapped the cigar and let the ash fall into his imported ashtray. He had to suppress every urge to laugh at the naïve kid’s misfortune. It was no easy task. But before the sucker could get a word in, the older man stepped up to the table. Both of Leigh’s bouncers instinctively reached for their concealed pistols, just in case. “I’ve got a proposition for you, Seedy Leigh,” the stranger began. His voice sounded quite a bit younger than his appearance let on. “From what I understand, you used to be in the motorhorse business.” “Frivolous games,” Leigh scoffed. “Leaving that train wreck of a racing circuit was one of the best decisions I ever made.” “Perhaps so,” Teisel replied, “but you’ve got to admit, there’s certainly something about the rush of the wind in your hair that makes you really feel alive…” “What are you getting at?” “Max and I could give you the 50,000 now and go on our merry way, sure enough,” Teisel shrugged, “but where’s the fun in that? I’d be willing to up the ante to 100,000 zenny if we banked the outcome of this transaction on a motorhorse race between the two of us.” “You’re bluffing,” Seedy Leigh responded without even batting an eye. “You couldn’t get the money, could you?” Teisel narrowed his gaze and stared the information dealer down. “I got the money and then some,” He replied. Max could only stare slack-jawed at the conversation at hand as he held the bag of refractor shards to his chest. “Do you really think I wouldn’t account for any…accidents…that might’ve been liable to occur along the way, in an area like this?” Seedy Leigh leaned back in his chair, propped his feet up on the table, and hoped that they wouldn’t catch any hint of a reaction that might’ve flickered across his face. That old guy was pretty sharp. “And hey, come on,” Teisel added, “We’re the Bright Bats. I may be fairly new to the wide world of motorhorse racing, but I’m pretty sure we were no match for your Lightning Crusaders. At least that’s what the rest of the gang tells me. Even if you’re ten years out of practice, you’d still be up against the newest member of the Rebel Rider gang with the worst record in the underground racing circuit’s history. What’s a successful businessman like yourself got to lose?” “I dunno,” Leigh hemmed and hawed over the decision. “The last time the Bright Bats put a newbie into the circuit, they actually beat out the Roast Beefs. That almost cost Ole’ Bully his reputation and knocked the Roast Beefs out of the rankings for months. Unless something happened in the last few years, I don’t think they’ve won a race since. How do I know you’re not some kind of motorhorse racing prodigy like that other kid?” “Barrett was about half his age,” Max interjected. “It’s not the…” Teisel cut him off. He’d warned his boss about getting overly chatty and accidentally sabotaging the whole scheme at least twice before they'd buzzed themselves in. “I can give you 15,000 zenny up front, if that makes you more comfortable with this arrangement.” He added. “Win or lose, you can keep the down payment.” “15,000? Do you think I’m some kind of idiot?” Seedy Leigh sputtered. “I’m going to need at least half of the original amount to convince me to go through with this. I told everyone I was done with racing back when the Crusaders disbanded. If those guys find out I got back in the saddle to race the Bright Bats, of all the gangs on Klickelan, they’d never let me hear the end of it!” “Come on, Leigh,” Teisel bartered. “Don’t make this difficult. You take this deal, and there will be a very good chance of you walking away from the table with a hundred thousand zenny in your pocket. In refractor shards, no less. A hundred thousand…that’s a very large number. I personally wouldn’t pay half that for the location of a Shekuten nest, but Max here isn’t exactly what you’d call proficient in the negotiations department, either. I’d say 18,000 is about what that information’s really worth.” “20,000 or no deal,” Leigh stated. He had no idea where this old guy had come from, but he could tell he was probably quite a bit more skilled on a motorhorse than he’d come to expect out of the Bright Bats. “I’m not going any lower than 20k. There’s too much at stake here.” “20k sounds fair.” Teisel replied. He nodded to Max, who handed the bag of refractor shards over. He carefully counted out the down payment. They would have just enough to buy a good lunch. “We’ll race at Brink Canyon in two days, then,” Seedy Leigh decided. “Ideally, I’d schedule the race for tomorrow at high noon, but I’m going to need some extra time to get myself a decent bike for the occasion.” “Let’s do it,” Teisel replied with a cool confidence that even had Seedy Leigh struggling to anticipate his next move. The loan shark sealed the deal and shook the hand of the man who, unbeknownst to him, had an inexplicable ability to bounce back unscathed from almost every sort of vehicular crash imaginable. Seedy Leigh’s motorhorse racing swan song was certainly going to be one of the more interesting rides of his career. “Dude, that was crazy! Do you even know how to race?” Max balked as the two of them walked back to the center of town. They’d snagged a couple of kebabs at a roadside gyro stand that vaguely reminded Teisel of the one he’d set up so long ago. “Didn’t you just go out that one time with Grill a few weeks back?” Teisel shrugged. He’d spent so little time at Oh My Gyros back in the day that he couldn’t even tell if the carts were the same style, but nonetheless something about grabbing kebabs from a stand like that made him feel a little uncomfortable. He chalked it up to narrowly escaping Seedy Leigh’s wrath and plodded down the street, wishing the tension in his shoulders would go away. “Motorhorses notwithstanding, I’ve got plenty of piloting experience,” Teisel reminded him. “We haven’t got any time to lose, though. I’m going to need to run a few laps in that canyon to get a feel for the place.” “You sure Seedy Leigh isn’t going to just send his clowns to scope out that area, too?” Max asked once he’d swallowed the last of his kebab. He casually tossed the stick into the street as they walked. “No chance. It looked to me like he was mortified at the mere idea of getting back on a motorhorse,” Teisel figured. “I’m guessing he probably didn’t pick an average racing day, either. Smart thinking on his part, really. This way he hasn’t got the entirety of the Rebel Riders seeing to it that he follows through on his end of the bargain, should he lose.” “What if he doesn’t pay up if you win?” Teisel dropped his stick in the next wastebasket the two of them passed. “Who cares?” He asked. “I’m more concerned about losing than I am about winning and not getting the money. We win and we’re out of that guy’s debt for good, payoff or no payoff. If we get the 100,000, then great. I can get Sprocket her shots and maybe even buy a digging suit that actually fits me. If not, I can just go underground and get some more money.” Max glanced up at Teisel. “You really want to buy a new suit?” He asked. “It went from being too big to being too small once I filled out again,” Teisel reminded him. “You were there when I tried to squeeze into it on my first day out. Russell’s been telling me that wearing a suit that doesn’t fit is almost as bad as going underground without a weapon, and apparently back at Guild HQ, the receptionist told him that my suit no longer complies with their safety regulations. They only let me test at all because I was friends with Russell. While I definitely don’t want to get rid of the old one, I should probably...er…yeah. I dunno. I can keep the old one, right?” “Of course you can keep the old one. You can keep anything that means a lot to you. Have you seen the common room? Pic’s probably a Class S hoarder.” “I sleep there every night, Max.” When they got back to the base, Grill was already home, seated at his workbench, and tinkering with something complex and greasy. He heard the door slam and snapped to attention. “Oh hey guys,” he exclaimed with a grin. “You came back earlier than usual today. I threw a casserole together expecting you to show up a little later.” “Is this casserole for all of us, or just you?” Max snickered. “Just me.” “That was supposed to be a joke, Grill!” The gang leader exclaimed with a horrified expression on his face. “You’re going to need custom tailoring on those jumpsuits if you keep that up!” Grill set his project down and hopped up. “Oh well, there’s some, er…actually…” he trailed off and tried to remember what was left in the fridge. “We didn’t come here looking for food,” Teisel cut in, “but we are going to need to use the motorhorse for the next few days. I, uh…this is going to sound completely insane, but I kind of ended up getting myself into a race with the Lightning Crusaders set for the day after tomorrow. Do you know anything about Brink Canyon?” “Teisel, the Lightning Crusaders disbanded at least five years ago,” Grill interjected. “I told you it was going to sound completely insane.” “Look, Grill,” Max added, “We’ve got a lot of money riding on this race. More than either of us can, er, afford to lose, if you catch my drift. I’ve never really seen T-Bonne in the saddle, but I know for a fact that the rest of us could never outrun any of those guys. Any… enhancements…you can install on our bike between now and then could make or break this. I’m not expecting a fair race on their end.” “Teisel’s okay. He’s…unusually reckless for an old guy.” He assessed, choosing his words carefully. “You’re lucky Brink Canyon’s one of the easier routes and the Lightning Crusaders were always one of the lousier gangs out there,” Grill shook his head with a sigh. “I don’t think I want to know what you two have managed to rope yourself into, but sure. I’ll help you out. Isn’t that what friends are for?” Max smiled and pumped his fist. “I knew you’d pull through, man!” He exclaimed. “I’ll prep the motorhorse first thing tomorrow,” Grill replied. He wandered off toward the door. “For now I’ll head back to the shop and check up on what kind of parts we have in the back to give you the winning edge you need to make it out of this on top. I guess you two can just help yourselves to the casserole in the meantime.” The casserole turned out horribly. Teisel could only hope it wasn’t a sign of things to come.
|
|
|
Post by Loken on Aug 16, 2014 2:13:27 GMT -5
I'm so excited to see Seedy Leigh! When the refractors were lost I thought for a moment they had disappeared like in the game!
|
|
|
Post by fAB on Aug 17, 2014 21:10:05 GMT -5
Subconsciously I must have known it was your birthday yesterday, Dashe, as something drew me here to read chapters 4 and 5. The writing remains solid, and so does my mental status thus far. Sad stuff to be sure, but I couldn't get too emotionally involved after references to Tumblr and One Piece. XP
I was somewhat joking when I said I'd always be 5-10 chapters behind (I was only 4 at the time), but it's ended up that way after all. Not surprising, I guess. Just how many chapters is this epic?
|
|
|
Post by Dashe on Aug 17, 2014 21:42:08 GMT -5
Not to worry. I took you completely seriously when you said it. It's 38 chapters in full, so you'll probably end up finishing it sometime before the next TLT demo comes out. I'm surprised you don't seem to be familiar with the Tron Bonne Tumblr, though. I thought everyone read that back when it updated. Must've been a Facebook thing. And don't forget Legends Abridged!
|
|
|
Post by Dashe on Aug 21, 2014 11:11:21 GMT -5
Tensions were high when Max, Grill, and Teisel showed up at the bottom of Brink Canyon. The sun was high that early afternoon, with hardly any shadows to make waiting in the dusty, sweltering gorge even remotely tolerable. The bottom of the crevasse had been so well-traversed by Rebel Riders that grass didn’t even grow there anymore. There were a few rogue Horokko waddling around in the dirt, but otherwise the whole place was completely deserted. Teisel pulled back on the brakes to park the Bright Bats’ fly carrier. He hoped Seedy Leigh and whatever backup he'd have with him wouldn’t keep them waiting for too long. Max and Grill had doubled up on the shop’s spare motorhorse and skidded to a stop next to him. The added weight made the motorhorse hard for Grill to control, but he had plenty of experience with doubling up. The mechanic had managed to incorporate a few shots of nitrous into Teisel’s engine, but there really wasn’t much else at the shop that could help him stack the deck in the Bright Bats’ favor. Thankfully, it worked well enough with Teisel’s breakneck style. Neither Teisel nor Max nor Grill had 100,000 zenny in refractor shards. They didn’t know if either—or both—of their motorhorses would even begin to cover collateral. There just wasn’t any option out of this other than winning. Teisel filled a zenny pouch with rocks to toss into the betting pool when the time came. It was all they could do. “If they don’t show, does that mean they forfeit?” Teisel asked after what felt like a half an hour of waiting in silence. “Only if the race is on the record,” Max explained. “So no. That just means we’re screwed. Anything other than your motorhorse getting to the end of this canyon faster than Leigh’s motorhorse means we’re screwed.” “How nice.” Teisel couldn’t help but utter. He’d never seen Leigh race before. He’d only ever met the guy once. The longer the three of them spent waiting in the canyon for him to show up, the more that notion had the opportunity to really sink in and fill him with a sense of foreboding. Before anyone else could voice their concerns, Seedy Leigh and the two behemoths from the office roared onto the scene on three matching, high-end, blue motorhorses. None of the Bright Bats could tell if they were rentals, if they were stolen, or if the information hustler had actually gone out and bought three bikes just for this occasion. “You guys ready to do this or what?” Max shouted. “It’s almost 12:30! Where’ve you been?” “No need to get all worked up,” Leigh brushed it off as he dismounted the machine, picked up a stick, and started drawing a small ring in the sand. “I’m a busy man, Max, not that a guy like you would have any experience with full-time employment or anything. We’ll use the standard rules. Both motorhorses need to stick close to the ground. I don’t wanna see you using the secondary thrusters to run the whole race in the air, got it? Now toss your chips into the pot and let’s see what your friend here can do on one of these little toys.” Teisel awkwardly walked up to the circle and placed the bag of rocks in the middle. “Come on, show us your hundred grand,” he instructed. “You remembered to bring the money, right?” “Show ‘em the money, Clint.” Leigh nodded toward the shorter of his two bodyguards. Clint reached into his jacket and tossed a similar pouch into the ring. Leigh locked eyes with Max and added, “Rest assured, this is the last time you racing rejects are ever going to see either of these money pouches again." “If there are no further concerns, then let’s just get straight to it,” he continued. “Gramps and I’ll line our bikes up at the usual spot, then Ralph’s gonna count us down.” “Since you were the one who challenged them, one of their guys gets to count down to start the race, and one of their guys snaps the photo finish,” Grill explained when Teisel shot his teammates a questioning glance. “Normally it’s a third party making these calls, but…” he trailed off and finished the conversation with a shrug. “What can you do?” Max walked over, gave Teisel a quick pat on the back, and nudged him in the direction of the motorhorse. “Look, try not to let the pressure get to you,” he reassured him in a manner that barely seemed reassuring. He lowered his voice and added, “I’ll take as much of the fall for this as I can get away with if things don’t work out…I really didn’t mean for it to turn out this way.” “I know,” Teisel replied with a nod as he pulled his goggles on and plodded toward the motorhorse. Grill kept a toolbox under the shop bike’s seat. Both he and Clint were going to function as their respective teams’ pit crews, so there were four motorhorses revving their engines at the starting lines. Max stood near the money and kept an eye on it to make sure Ralph didn’t touch either bag. “3! 2! 1!” Seedy Leigh’s tallest bodyguard counted. “…GO!” The four bikes kicked up a trail of dust so thick that Max and Ralph couldn’t even see them peel off into the distance. I should have figured the old man would be some kind of daredevil, Seedy Leigh thought to himself as he poured on the speed to catch up. They were neck and neck on the straightaway, but as soon as the first sharp right approached, Leigh had to pull back. Teisel, however, just whipped around that turn like it was nothing. He looked like he was just gunning the accelerator to the maximum amount the whole way through. He’s gotta be breaking a hundred on that thing...he’s just asking to crash with that kind of crazy driving. Maybe I should help him out with that.
He reached for what looked like a custom hand brake on the left side of the handlebar unit and squeezed the trigger. A panel on the front of the motorhorse slid out, revealing a functional plasma shotgun. I didn’t think I’d need to pull out the big guns so soon, he mentally added with an amused grin as he squeezed the hand brake on the right and fired three energy blasts off. They whizzed past Teisel’s head, causing the former pirate to almost fall off the bike right then and there. “WHAT THE HECK WAS THAT?!” He sputtered out loud as he skidded to avoid hitting a particularly large rock. He glanced over his shoulder just to see Seedy Leigh shoot off another round of plasma fire. Even though the motorhorses were essentially low-end hovercrafts, they had a tendency to snag on rocks and flip over, especially at higher speeds. He quickly drifted back to the left and felt the motorhorse wobble before he regained his balance. “HOW DID YOU—WHAT WAS…” “Still think you can maintain that speed and prevent yourself from getting blown to smithereens?!” Seedy Leigh shouted as he closed the gap, firing as often as his mounted weapon could handle. Teisel couldn’t hear a word of Leigh’s taunts over the roar of the engines and gunfire. They were in the middle of another long stretch of canyon, with what Teisel believed to be a hairpin left turn ahead that led into a more forgiving curve winding to the right. It was arguably one of the hardest legs of the route. If he could gun the nitrous and power through the rest of the stretch, he could shoot through the curves at the regular maximum speed and keep a safe enough distance between Leigh and himself at the risk of leaving Grill dangerously far behind. There wasn’t much time to think about that one, so he made a snap decision and went for it. Before he could so much as blink, he felt his goggles begin to dig into his face as the motorhorse nearly doubled its velocity. Leigh’s shots whizzed past while Teisel drifted and zigzagged down the straightaway. He hunkered down over the bike to give his opponent the smallest target he could offer. The sharp left was drawing closer and closer and Teisel knew there was no way he’d be able to get through it without slamming straight on into the wall, and while he’d probably get through that one without a scratch, the collision would, without question, total the motorhorse. He’d be out of the race for good, 100,000 zenny in debt assuming he'd even make it out of the canyon alive, and Grill would probably make him replace the motorhorse on top of everything. He never even got the chance to calculate his next move, because by then, Leigh had shot a few rounds straight into Teisel’s main thruster jet, sending the whole machine straight into a small boulder and catapulting its reckless rider sky high. Teisel crashed to the ground with a thud, and much to Leigh’s astonishment, jumped to his feet almost immediately after the impact. His hair looked like a complete disaster, but otherwise it was as if the wipeout had never even happened. Teisel frowned and checked the damage while Seedy Leigh zipped past him and shouted some sort of taunt that he didn’t quite catch. The motorhorse just had a few scuffs, but the buster had completely ruined the rocket thruster that kept his machine going. “GRILL!” He shouted at the top of his lungs, scanning the horizon for any sign of his mechanic. “GRILL, I NEED ANOTHER ONE OF THESE JET THINGS!” He exclaimed the second he spotted the shop bike. Grill revved the accelerator to catch up and pulled back on the brakes just in time. “The thruster. That’s what this thing’s called, right? I need a replacement thruster.” He repeated, knowing full well Grill probably hadn’t heard him the first time. “Seedy Leigh’s got a gun.” “The only spare primary thruster I’ve got is the one on this bike,” Grill reported. “Since both bikes are the same model, I can swap the two parts, but that also means you lose your pit crew for the rest of the run.” Teisel nodded. “Do it.” It only took Grill about a minute to swap the thrusters on the two vehicles. “Show that has-been what the Bright Bats are made of!” Grill exclaimed as Teisel gunned it directly into the twisted path, throwing so much dust into the air that Grill would find himself picking it out of his jumpsuit pockets for the next week and a half. Teisel’s turns were so tight his shoulder almost scraped the ground, but he made it through and into the right hand curve. Once the path straightened out again, he could see Leigh and his motorhorse zipping along at a speed that would have been impressive if he’d been in a normal race against a normal opponent under normal circumstances. The finish line was no more than 300 yards past the next bend, with a sheer wall of rock cutting the path off a bit past the finish marker. He didn’t have much time to close the gap, but at least he didn’t have to worry about that gun from behind Seedy Leigh’s bike. Teisel deployed another shot of nitrous and shot up the straightaway like the lightning his opponent’s team was named for. Leigh’s eyes nearly bugged out of their sockets behind his goggles when he looked back to find Teisel not only in plain sight, but dangerously close to regaining the lead. With another curve coming up before the finish line, he’d have to take the turn going full throttle as well if he wanted to even stand a chance at beating this maniac. There was no other way to put it. The way he just jumped up after flying off a motorhorse going full speed…there was just something wrong about that old guy. And Seedy Leigh sure wasn’t about to get shown up by a nutcase like that. He ducked behind the windshield and gunned it. He almost scraped along the side of the canyon walls as Teisel followed suit. Even five years earlier, when he still had all of his hair, he’d never taken a curve this fast. None of the Crusaders had. This was a move reserved only for the incredibly skilled and the incredibly insane. He never would have expected the Bright Bats to recruit someone who’d have the sheer guts to try it, but Teisel managed to slowly pull up alongside Leigh, who was too busy trying to stay on his bike to even take a few wild shots at him. This psycho’s got to slow down, Leigh thought to himself. There’s a freaking WALL up ahead on the other side of the finish line! If he doesn’t ease up on the throttle he’ll kill himself!
But Teisel wouldn’t let up. He seemed bent on drawing out this high-speed game of chicken for as long as he possibly could, with what looked like no regard for the potential consequences whatsoever. As Teisel pulled ahead, Leigh realized that if his opponent smashed head-on into the cliffside, he’d probably get caught in the explosion too. As soon as the path opened up into the final straightaway, Leigh put in one last-ditch effort to gun his opponent down before the inevitable crash. Before Leigh could even get a shot in, Teisel did the unthinkable and revved up another speed boost. The resulting collision was spectacular. Leigh skidded to a stop as the motorhorse erupted into an improbably huge blaze, shooting scraps of metal everywhere and splintering its power refractor into enough shards to buy a high-end pair of leather boots. The rider himself was, in fact, on fire. He flew through the air and landed a few feet ahead of the finish line with all the grace and daintiness of a brick. To Seedy Leigh’s dismay, neither of the two mechanics had shown up in time to witness this gratuitous display of complete madness. And neither of them were around to see the man pull himself back onto his feet, his vest still aflame, and walk up to where the other racer was just sitting on his motorhorse staring straight ahead. All the while, the old man laughed a laugh that sounded so psychotic it sent shivers up the veteran biker’s spine. “W-w-w-w…” Seedy Leigh stuttered. “What the heck just happened!? Who ARE you, anyway?” His opponent just pushed up his goggles and stared straight at the shady information hustler. “My name’s T-Bonne,” he replied with a triumphant grin, “and I believe the Bright Bats have just kicked your sorry excuse for a hide all the way to Forbidden Island and back!”
|
|
|
Post by Dashe on Aug 28, 2014 8:16:53 GMT -5
Teisel walked away from Brink Canyon with a few minor scrapes and burns, 100,000 zenny, and a bag of rocks in hand. Although nobody aside from the participants had been around to witness the end of the race, it was painfully clear from the traumatized expression on Leigh’s face which of the two contestants had managed to come out of the match victorious. “What did you do back there that had him so freaked out?” Max prodded him for information as the three of them hiked out of the canyon toward the Wasteland Gate. They took care to steer clear of any Reaverbots along the way. “That guy’s so confident he could probably smooth-talk a motorhorse dealer into giving him his paycheck! What happened?”
Teisel just shrugged. He was covered in soot, and his clothes had burned straight through in several places. “I suppose he just isn’t used to seeing a Rebel Rider drive his own motorhorse into the side of a cliff and then bounce back up like nothing happened.”
“I know you told us earlier about your uncanny ability to survive most vehicular crashes, but seeing the effects firsthand is just…” Grill trailed off. “It’s almost like you’re not even human. I didn’t even get to see the explosion and I’m still blown away…er, no pun intended. I can’t believe we thought that airship crash even did anything to you when we first met.”
“Yeah, that crash was nothing,” Teisel admitted with a wistful grin. “There was a time about, oh, thirteen or fourteen years ago when Tron, Bon and I had our flying headquarters destroyed. I dislocated my arm on the way to our escape vessel…then Tron got that one blown up some 10,000 feet in the sky. Hitting the ground after that didn't do much more than pop my arm back into its socket.” “Hold still, I think you missed a spot,” Grill instructed suddenly. He smothered out a smoldering patch on the back of Teisel’s sweater vest with his heavy-duty gloves. “Indestructible or otherwise, you wouldn’t want your clothes to burn off, would you?”
Teisel balked. “That actually happens?!”
“Maybe we should buy you a mech suit for digging,” Max suggested. “It’d probably pay for itself by the time you got to the Klicke Lafonica.”
“Wait, what?” Grill piped up. “Is that why you got that Digger’s License?”
“Honestly? I don’t know anymore.” Teisel admitted. “At first I wanted to find it and sell it, but then my digging coach told me that, somehow, it makes old people young again. I don’t think I’d want that. It’d just be more time to have to live with the fact that my entire family’s dead. But then there’s this other part of me that just wants to find the Klicke Lafonica purely for the sake of finding it. Tron and Bon would have wanted to find it, that much I know for sure. It’s really complicated.”
“This is the first I heard about any anti-aging deal,” Max balked. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”
“It was a lot to process. I needed time to think it over first.”
“So are you any good at digging?” Grill asked. “Find anything interesting?”
“I’m alright, I guess,” Teisel figured. “Like I said, I hired a coach so I could get to Ghiotte Summit faster. His name’s Russell. He’s a good guy. He met a few of my Servbots once, a long time ago. And I found a couple of swords, too. I was thinking of buying a new digging suit if Seedy Leigh actually paid up after the race…”
Grill frowned. “You’re going to have to buy us a new motorhorse with that money,” he stated. “We can’t even take the shop bike back unless we come back here again with a spare working thruster.”
“Yeah,” Teisel frowned. “I suppose you’re right about that. I wouldn’t want to get you fired because of my crazy driving.”
“My boss would never do anything like that,” Grill assured him. “She’s like a second mom to me. I just really don’t want to leave her motorhorse out there in the middle of the canyon, even unrideable as it is. You never know if it’ll rain, or if someone else might show up and steal it. I’ll take Pic out tomorrow to go get it. You guys seem busy, and Aero would flip out if she heard you crashed two motorhorses in one race.”
“I only crashed one of them!” Teisel insisted. “The second one’s just missing a jet…Aero wouldn’t kick me out, would she?”
Max shook his head. “Don’t even worry about her. I’m the leader, and if I say you’re still in, then you’re still in. You’re already doing great if you ignore the secret dog, the wrecked motorhorses, and everything else that we’ve done leading up to this race. But now that you beat Seedy Leigh, you’re free to go out and climb Ghiotte Summit…or not. Your call.”
“Will you still spot for me if I do?”
“You bet.”
Teisel smiled and replied, “Well then, it couldn’t hurt just to try and get to the top. That’ll probably take a while…plenty of time for me to do a little more research, anyway. I don’t know where Russell got his information, and I don’t know if there are any counter-theories floating around, but I do know for a fact that there’s a lot of zenny down there for the taking!”
“Hey, and now that I know you’re going underground, I can help you out, too!” Grill piped up. “If you find anything good down there, bring it to me. It isn't just motorhorses that I can fix--I’m pretty good at cobbling weapons and upgrades together out of scraps, too. Sometimes I even manage to find something useful in those junk piles Pic brings in!”
“Awesome!” Max exclaimed. “It’ll be just like the good old days, only I’m shaping up to be way better at spotting than Aero ever was, am I right?”
Grill seemed a bit taken aback by Max’s statement, but he smiled and fiddled with his goggles. “Of course,” he brushed it off. “It should be fun.”
It took the three of them nearly two hours to walk back to Teomo City, but Max and Teisel knew it’d be smooth sailing for the Bright Bats now that the Seedy Leigh scare was a thing of the past.
Grill got a great deal on a used motorhorse that was the same make and model as their old one. It needed some minor repairs, but it was nothing he couldn’t handle, and it saved him the trouble of explaining to Aero why he’d had to replace the old bike. He didn’t fully understand the circumstances behind that race, and he doubted he’d ever really want to.
As he and Pic walked out of the shop after putting the finishing touches on the Bright Bats' new motorhorse, he found himself suddenly assailed by the sudden, sharp sound of a dog barking in his ear. In reality, Sprocket was more than fifteen feet away from him and considerably far down the alleyway, but to Grill, the sound was loud enough that she might as well have been right next to them.
“That’s T-Bonne’s dog,” Pic needlessly confirmed. If the teenager was anywhere near as apprehensive about being chased down the streets as Grill was, he sure wasn’t showing it. “Looks like she, er, remembers me.” Grill frowned. “I wonder what she wants.”
“There’s a 68% chance that she wants some food.” Pic shrugged. “She’s mostly just loud and jumpy. I don’t believe she’s the biting type. She usually just wants food when I see her out in the city. Got any pork buns left?”
“I was going to save those for later,” Grill mumbled, but his compassion won over, and he withdrew a pork bun from his pocket. “She’d probably love this. I mean, it’s meat shaped like a tennis ball. That’s like a canine two-for-one special.” He took one last glance at the pork bun before he pitched it in Sprocket’s direction.
Grill didn’t know what he was expecting, but it certainly didn’t involve the dog leaping into the air and snatching the pork bun in her jaws like it really was a tennis ball.
“Fun, isn’t it?” Pic rhetorically asked, flashing Grill a rare grin.
The portly mechanic didn’t answer. Instead, he pulled another pork bun out of his pocket and tossed it in the air a few times before lobbing it to Sprocket, who snapped it out of the air with ease.
From that day forward, Grill made sure to always save at least one pork bun through the end of his work day, and Sprocket made sure to loiter around the garage more often.
Teisel, meanwhile, was able to commission a decent digging suit with the rest of the winnings and get his swords mounted on top of his gauntlets. The blacksmith had even managed to make them retractable, so he wouldn’t end up jabbing himself in the eye by accident if he ever felt the need to fix his hair underground. However, Russell wasn’t too fond of the thought of him switching to a melee weapon.
“They just put you in more immediate danger,” He explained as they rode the elevator down into the main hub of the ruins the morning after the new suit was finished. It had taken about a month to forge and assemble, but it fit nicely, and more importantly, Teisel would be able to adjust the fit if his weight continued to fluctuate from his abrupt lifestyle change. “I never liked using short-range equipment. A Foo-Roo’s nothing if you’re sniping at it from a distance, but there’s really no way to put them down safely with a pair of arm-mounted blades.”
“I don’t know if Foo-Roo are even worth it, Russell,” Teisel hesitated, “Those things never drop anything good. And I don’t know about you, but I’ve been feeling much more inclined toward risk-taking these days.”
“At least I can still call you Green Guy,” Russell snickered. He declined to remark on the lack of mechanical skull insignia on the new suit. So far, Teisel hadn’t mentioned it either. Russell figured it would be best to err on the side of caution with that one. “The color really makes your swords pop, too. I don’t know what I would have done if you’d come out to the ruins wearing blue or something. ‘Blue Boy’ just doesn’t suit you.”
Teisel forced a laugh and shook his head. “I’d certainly say it doesn’t.”
The energy blades really packed a punch. Teisel dashed toward the first unattended Horokko he caught in his peripheral vision and sliced it straight in half. There was no fuss or anything. Just one swift cut, and the fight was over. A handful of refractor shards tumbled out of the bisected Reaverbot's hull. “I definitely like these better than that crummy old pea shooter,” he remarked, while Russell stared at the carnage.
“Well, uh, your technique could use some work,” Russell uttered. “Still, those are a lot more powerful than I’d have guessed. You really hit the jackpot in that Sharukurusu nest. I’m actually a little jealous you got there first.”
“Who knows? Maybe if we head back that way, we can see what else is up in that room where I found them.” Teisel suggested. “With firepower like this, knocking down those Sharukurusu ought to be easier than finding a restaurant in Teomo that sells hamburgers!”
Russell managed to talk him down from that goal, but he did admit that there were probably a lot of other undiscovered treasures in the general area. As he led the way up the spiral staircase and back into the scaffolding-covered corridor, he added, “If the power’s still out in that hallway you charged into the last time we came out here, we’re not even going to bother with it. I may know what I’m doing, but I don’t like keeping a light on my person. Usually the ruin walls themselves are good enough for that. There are a lot of Reaverbots that pick up on sudden light sources, and I wouldn’t want to accidentally set off anything I couldn’t handle.”
Teisel suddenly remembered the treasure chest he’d passed up when he was running away from Russell. “Hey, hold up,” he said. “I think there’s some loot behind this door.”
“I’m not picking up any Reaverbot signals,” Max broadcasted from the surface. “It’s just a small room. It should be safe.”
The two diggers opened the door and walked in. “It’s all yours,” Teisel offered, gesturing toward the treasure chest.
Russell walked up to the box, but before he even got close enough to touch it, he turned around. “It’s empty.” He remarked. “See how the lid’s slightly ajar? Someone else got to this one already.”
Teisel frowned, but then his eyes lit up as he spotted something he hadn’t noticed on his first trip in. “Do you think they caught that hole in the wall behind the chest?”
“There really isn’t any way to tell with those,” Russell admitted as he walked up to the hole and peered inside. It was dark. “I don’t see anything in here,” he reported.
“You’re not even going to reach in and check?”
Russell shrugged. “If you don’t mind risking your arm, you can always try your luck. I’ve seen accidents with seemingly innocuous-looking holes in the wall that would make you never want to touch a hole in the wall again.”
Teisel strode up to the hole and reached inside. “If I’d had your misgivings about these holes in the walls, we’d have never met, and I’d probably be dead right now,” he argued as he groped around looking for anything of value. “Huh. Looks like there’s a lever in here.”
“Okay, you might want to just back off there,” Russell warned. “At least make sure you aren’t using your dominant hand.”
Teisel paused for a moment, then switched hands before grabbing the lever and yanking it into its opposite configuration. Despite the odd grinding sound and the tremors the two diggers felt for a few moments afterward, the subsequent bloodcurdling scream that came out of Teisel’s mouth was so over-the-top that Russell didn’t believe it was real for one second.
“…I swear, Teisel, I don’t know you.” Russell flatly stated. “Now come on, let’s go see if pulling that switch did anything.”
The two of them left the treasure chest room and gasped. They stood in the doorway and gazed out into a large, regal-looking chamber lined with pillars and pipes. There was a round platform jutting up out of the middle. A ramp wound around the room and led straight up to the top of the platform, but otherwise, the room seemed to be completely empty.
And although Teisel usually had a bit of trouble finding his way around the ruins, he knew for sure that this was definitely not the area they’d just left.
|
|