Aiyumi
Gorubeshu
Brazilian Kobun
Posts: 222
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Post by Aiyumi on Aug 28, 2014 19:23:26 GMT -5
So, I pressed start. I only finished chapter 5, but I'm liking it so far! It's the first fic with the Bright Bats that I read. I wonder what happened to Barrett, though. 12 years? Poor Teisel... Chapter 4 finally brings answers... Tron's notebook kept me curious for a long time. I thought it had notes for building something. I had never imagined she was writing a romance story! And (*gasp*) Everybody is... G-gone! How many were in that rocket? Were the Mother Units also there? If so, Yuna will never be able to give Roll's mother back! After everything that he faced, to think MegaMan would die in a rocket explosion, out of all things. And I had thought that Tron was immune to explosions. Yes, it does! But... Oh no! Bon also died! I had hopes of seeing teenager Bon... Someone bring him back as an AI... Program... Thing. I mean, something similar was already done before, somewhere... Chapter 5. Plans for adventure! "Center of the planet"? That sounds suspicious... And Teisel finally uses his trademark laughs! Next is chapter 6. That's where I stand now. I pressed start to pause, and will press it to continue again later!
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Post by Dashe on Aug 28, 2014 20:52:17 GMT -5
So, I pressed start. I only finished chapter 5, but I'm liking it so far! 5's a good place for a break. A lot of people seem to stop at 4 on instinct because they tackle it in two-chapter spurts or something. I wonder what happened to Barrett, though. Good. How many were in that rocket? Were the Mother Units also there? If so, Yuna will never be able to give Roll's mother back! After everything that he faced, to think MegaMan would die in a rocket explosion, out of all things. And I had thought that Tron was immune to explosions. About six or seven. Mega Man, Yuna, Matilda, Sera, and a handful of Servbots to pilot it. The Servbots made it out okay, at least until they stopped functioning due to a lack of maintenance, but everyone else on the rocket died. Teisel isn't sure if Yuna and Matilda split up on Elysium, but that's irrelevant now. Tron drank antifreeze a day after the fact, so the explosion thing still stands. Yes, it does! But... Oh no! Bon also died! I had hopes of seeing teenager Bon... Someone bring him back as an AI... Program... Thing. I mean, something similar was already done before, somewhere... Teenager Bon would have been intellectually on par with baby Bon. He did live to be thirteen, but you couldn't tell from looking at his mech suit, and his vocabulary never improved. Teisel isn't sure whether it was the HBD, a second pre-existing condition, or a result of Tron's interference. If you'd taken him out of the suit, even if he'd grown normally, he'd probably have wound up deformed from being crammed into a round cockpit during his formative years. Tron probably would have built him larger mech suits as he grew, but without her, he was pretty much stuck with what he had. Had the suit not broken down when it did, he'd have probably suffocated from a lack of space once he hit his growth spurt. Yeah, being immune to explosions doesn't make you immortal. You can still get heart diseases and poison yourself. Drowning, falling into lava, getting stabbed, getting shot, bleeding out, having your vital organs harvested, electrocution...there are plenty of ways to die that don't involve blowing yourself up. Take as much of that as foreshadowing as you'd like. "Center of the planet"? That sounds suspicious... Aero would be inclined to agree with you. Glad you're enjoying the story so far!
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Aiyumi
Gorubeshu
Brazilian Kobun
Posts: 222
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Post by Aiyumi on Aug 28, 2014 22:16:14 GMT -5
5's a good place for a break. A lot of people seem to stop at 4 on instinct because they tackle it in two-chapter spurts or something. Or because of the revelations . but everyone else on the rocket died. What happened to MegaMan and friends is like a saying we have here in Brazil. They survive a shipwreck and swim, swim, swim, only to die on the beach (it was so close...). And... Poor Bon .
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Post by Dashe on Sept 4, 2014 13:49:01 GMT -5
“Hey Russell, what happened to the rest of the ruin?” Teisel asked as he took in the scenery. There were so many pipes snaking their way up and down the walls of the room that it almost looked like they were inside a colossal pipe organ. He couldn’t see the ceiling at all. He was just looking upward into an abyss of darkness that loomed threateningly over the two of them. “It seems like that room with the treasure chest must have been some kind of an elevator,” Russell hypothesized. He started up the ramp in front of him, and his footsteps echoed as he walked. Teisel scrambled after him when he realized there really wasn’t much else to see aside from that one massive, round structure jutting up from the middle of the room. Even though the two diggers couldn’t tell what was at the top, they both had an unshakable feeling of foreboding as they pressed onward. Their suspicions intensified when they spotted the giant refractor rotating on a pedestal in the center of the platform. “Okay, now THIS is a trap.” Teisel assessed. “No shield. That right there definitely looks suspicious. I’ll grab the refractor,” Russell instructed. “I’m in much better shape than you are, so if I end up setting something off, there’s a better chance I’ll be able to dodge it at point-blank range.” “We’ll split the earnings 50-50, though, right?” “Hey now, you got the swords,” Russell reminded him as he yanked the refractor away and stuffed it into his satchel. Teisel flinched, ready to bolt at a moment’s notice, but the room remained unsettlingly quiet. The two of them exchanged a confused glance, shrugged, and walked toward the ramp. Just as they made it to the edge, however, the refractor pedestal and the ramp leading back down to the ground below both retracted into the platform, leaving them trapped. To complicate the matter, lava began to ooze out of the pipes surrounding the room. They couldn’t even jump off and escape the way they’d come in. “Max, can you pick up another exit on your monitor?” Russell shouted. “There’s a trap in here that’s cut off our escape route!” There was a burst of static. “I’m just not getting very good readings on that room,” Max admitted. “That elevator took you pretty far down the mountainside, but my map data looks incomplete, and I’m picking up a very large Reaverbot. It’s practically right on top of you, watch out!” “Oh come on!” Teisel shouted. “I don’t see any kind of Reaverbot around here, and I certainly wouldn’t miss a big…” But before he could finish his sentence, a squat, bipedal Reaverbot that hadn’t been in any of the library books he’d studied came crashing down straight into the middle of the platform. It sent a shockwave rippling out from under its feet. Russell instinctively jumped in time to dodge it, but Teisel found himself knocked to the ground by the tremors. Their foe was round and turquoise, with gold trim and what appeared to be a belt around its midsection covered in spikes that threatened to impale anyone who tried to rush it. Like many other Reaverbots, it had a large spike protruding from the top of its head, but this particular Reaverbot’s arms appeared to be nothing more than a pair of large-caliber projectile weapons that hovered next to its enormous body. It wasn’t anywhere near the largest Reaverbot either of them had ever seen, but it was hardly something to scoff at, especially since it was heavy enough to emit a shockwave every time it jumped. “Russell! What is this thing!?” Teisel shouted. He shielded himself with his blades as the behemoth charged straight for him. He hoped that the blades would be able to block spikes, but he hadn’t had to use them defensively before, and it was hard to tell if it would work just by looking at them. Before the robot could make contact, however, Russell knocked their assailant out of the way with a slew of missiles. The Reaverbot pivoted on point and took aim with one of its arm cannons. Unfortunately, it quickly became apparent that those cannons weren’t actually cannons. This Reaverbot was wielding a hovering pair of flamethrowers. Russell darted out of range and uttered, “I’ve never seen one like this before in my life!” before pummeling it with enough missiles to take out a small airship. “Hey! Watch the hair!” Teisel snapped as he ducked under the blast of fire and lunged at the bot’s legs. The Reaverbot leapt back and dropped a mine right in Teisel’s path. Teisel almost tripped over his own feet trying not to step on it while Russell maintained a good distance and whittled down its defenses, circling around the target to stay out of its way. Teisel hopped over the next mine and charged straight for the robot, which had crouched down to take another shock-inducing leap across the arena. Teisel picked up on the cue and jumped just as the Reaverbot came crashing back down. “Not this time,” he quipped as he took the opportunity to charge at the rotund robot and slice one of its flamethrowers in half while the other floated in Russell’s direction and wreaked fiery havoc unto the digging veteran. Russell ducked into a rolling dodge maneuver in order to evade the oncoming flames and continued to snipe relentlessly at the bulky machine. The Reaverbot, in turn, littered the ground with mines, each of which detonated automatically after a short while. Russell’s shots were hitting their mark and doing some damage, he knew well enough from experience, but that strange Reaverbot really knew how to take a lot of hits. “I’ll set off the mines with my missiles from back here,” he shouted to Teisel. “Get rid of that last flamethrower and we should be able to take this thing down for the count!” Teisel prepared to rush the errant appendage with a snappy retort ready to fire off at a moment’s notice, but before he had a chance to make his move, the Reaverbot hit him from behind and knocked him to the ground. “Okay, that’s it!” He roared as he stumbled to his feet and scrambled back towards his adversary. “You’ve messed with us for FAR too long, you pathetic bucket of bolts! If I had even ONE of those flamethrowers you can bet your core refractor that I’d have you roasted over a spit and sold for chump change on a Teomo City street corner!” Naturally, the Reaverbot didn’t understand one word of Teisel’s torrent of trash talk, and steadied its remaining flamethrower in Russell’s direction. “Any day now, Green Guy,” Russell groaned as he took off in the opposite direction to avoid getting his face barbecued. “Right, right.” Teisel shook his head and scrambled up to the floating gun as Russell picked off every mine the Reaverbot tossed his way. He jumped up and bisected the second flamethrower before he came crashing back down with a thud. “Did I make any shockwaves?” He asked with a hopeful grin. Russell didn’t even acknowledge the question. He grabbed Teisel by the arm and yanked him away just as the Reaverbot landed right where the two of them had been standing. The resulting shockwave knocked both of them down, but that damage was negligible compared to what they’d have sustained if they hadn’t bolted. Predictably, Russell was the first to get back on his feet, and he took a moment to reload his rocket launcher before opening fire again. Teisel charged forward and swung straight for the Reaverbot’s leg joints with both blades at once, and before the enemy could react, its torso toppled uselessly backward as its legs burst into refractor shards. “Now THAT’S how you use these swords!” Teisel smirked as he knelt down to pocket the loot. “Teisel!” Russell suddenly exclaimed. “It’s still moving!” “What the…?” Teisel whipped around to find that the bot had tucked its head into its body. There was now a new spike protruding out of the bottom of its torso, directly opposite its head spike. It had also begun to spin like a deadly, spike-covered top. Russell’s missiles just bounced right off of it. Russell glanced down at his gun. “This isn’t good,” he observed as he sprinted out of the Reaverbot’s path. “Projectiles won’t work on it while it’s spinning like that! It’s all you from here!” Teisel’s eyebrows shot up. “B-but I…do these things even deflect giant spinning Reaverbots!?!?” He sputtered. “There’s only one way to find out!” The Reaverbot, almost as if on cue, made a sharp turn and sent itself on a collision course straight for Teisel. It was moving way too fast for his liking, but he coiled back to take a swing and braced himself for the inevitable impact. He hoped all the while that he wouldn’t get tossed into the rising lava that was still pouring into the room. With an inexplicable yet satisfying clang that sounded and felt like metal on metal, the energy blades knocked the spinning foe back all the way across the battlefield. Teisel roared with laughter and exclaimed, “It actually worked! We’re not doomed!” “Never take your eyes off your enemy!” Russell shouted just in time for the younger man to get knocked to the ground from the side. Teisel skidded dangerously close to the edge, but maintained his grip and pulled himself back up to his feet. He clashed with the bot at least a dozen times and tried his best to keep it away from Russell, whose missiles couldn’t push it back quite as effectively as Teisel’s weapons could. It skidded closer and closer to the edge and the sizzling pool of lava with every strike, until it finally toppled over and tumbled into the fiery abyss. “Okay,” Teisel shrugged. “Now that our new buddy's out of the picture, what are we supposed to do about getting out of here?” “I’m not sure,” Russell admitted. “We can’t go back in through the elevator with the lava down there.” He cleared his throat and shouted, “Max, can you hear us?” There was quite a bit of static before Max’s voice picked up. “Yeah, yeah,” he grumbled. “Nothing’s changed from before…” “That’s…not good.” Teisel stated. Russell hoped beyond all hope that Teisel would be able to stay calm, but after a few months of digging with the guy, he didn’t expect his student to keep his cool in the middle of a lava-filled deathtrap at all. “I mean it,” Max continued. His voice was tinged with panic of his own. “Nothing’s changed on my monitor. Remember that Reaverbot you just said you destroyed? It’s still sending out a signal.” “WHAAAAAT?!” “Relax!” Russell cut Teisel off before his emotions could get the better of him. “His maps aren’t working right, so there’s a good chance there’s just a lot of lag, or a glitch or…” But just then, all three of them heard the searing sound of a laser being fired, and Russell seized Teisel by the shoulder and yanked him down just as a purple beam singed off about an inch of his hair. “Never mind! It’s back!” The older digger shouted as the two of them watched the Reaverbot, now reduced to just a floating head with a spike on the top, hover around the edges of the arena. Its mouth was jacked open, revealing a turret mounted on the inside. “Stay out of the way. It’s my turn!” Russell ordered. Teisel was about to protest, but he realized that the persistent Reaverbot was circling way too far out over the lava. If he tried to land a hit on it, he’d fall in for sure. “Right. Knock it out of the sky!” He exclaimed. Russell wasted no time in pinpointing his target and bombarding the enemy with missiles, right in the laser turret. He didn’t want to even give this thing a chance to fire on them again. “Keep it up, Old Rusty!” The two of them heard Max exclaim from his post. “Make ‘im pay!” Russell almost dropped his gun at that. “Old Rusty?!” He balked as the Reaverbot floated higher into the air and zigzagged its laser across the platform. “Yeah, he does that sometimes,” Teisel brushed it off. He hopped over the laser and rushed forward to the edge of the arena to stay out of its line of fire. “It probably just means he likes you.” “Well, that's reassuring to hear in the middle of a life-or-death showdown with a guardian Reaverbot inside a room that's gradually being filled with lava,” Russell rolled his eyes and gave his gun time to recharge. He knocked the floating Reaverbot head off its bearings just as the laser was about to singe his boots. “Remind me when we get back to the surface to upgrade the rocket launcher’s rate of fire,” he added as an afterthought. “Did T-Bonne tell you our mechanic’s in on this now?” Max asked. “I’m sure if you ask nicely Grill’d give you a discount on that.” “Grill?” Russell blinked a few times, but managed to keep his aim steady. “Is that another nickname?” “…No.” “I hate to break up this charming conversation,” Teisel interjected from across the platform, “but you’re probably going to want to blow that thing up a little faster! The lava level’s still rising! Just how much can those pipes pump in here, anyway!?” Max stayed quiet after that, which allowed Russell to keep firing a steady stream of missiles at the floating menace while Teisel did his best to stay out of the way and keep his adrenaline in check. It was an uphill struggle, to say the least, but before too long the older digger landed a hit that blew what was left of their enemy into splinters. Before Teisel could voice any of his overwhelming concern as to how the two of them were going to avoid getting scorched into oblivion if they stuck around for too long, a staircase appeared from somewhere in the darkness up above them and extended down toward the platform, bolting itself onto the edge of the structure automatically. “Huh,” Russell commented as he grabbed the edge of the stairwell and shook it to test its construction. The pathway didn’t budge. “I guess defeating the guardian triggers the escape route. I wonder what kind of Reaverbot that was…” “Russell, the lava. We’ve gotta get moving!” Teisel insisted. He pushed his mentor onto the stairs and prodded him forward. Russell peered over the edge as he began his ascent, with Teisel following closely behind. The staircase wound around the perimeter of the room and seemed to go on forever. “Don’t worry about that,” he assured Teisel. The two of them stuck close to the wall to keep their balance. “It looks like the lava stopped flowing when the Reaverbot went down. I’ve learned that in ruins like this, there’s always some sort of way to turn off the traps. If there weren’t, then the government would never allow the Digger’s Guild to issue licenses to civilians so easily. Still, you have to wonder what use the civilization responsible for these ruins had for these refractors, considering how often they’re used as bait for traps like this. Were they just a power source, or did they have some other significance to these people?” “I never gave it much thought myself,” Teisel admitted. “I just kind of took it for granted this whole time that all of these ruins were supposed to have giant refractors in them. Now you’ve got me wondering about it, too.” “It’s something I’ve been wondering for a long time,” Russell replied. “You’ve got to wonder about the treasure chests as well. Some of the contents definitely come from other diggers tossing items into empty chests to help out the new kids…you know, old buster parts, pieces of junk. Still, there’s no telling where those chests originally came from or why they were put there.” They emerged on a ledge so far up above the battlefield that when the two of them glanced back down, it looked like a tiny circle floating in a long river of lava. They also spotted a door set into the wall right in front of them. “Hey, speaking of treasure…” Teisel grinned and pointed out a treasure chest situated on the far corner of the ledge, along the side of the enormous room. Russell glanced in the other direction, and sure enough, there was a second chest on the other side. “Okay, now this we can split 50-50,” he grinned. “I guess I’ll take the one on the left, and you can take the one on the right.” The two men carefully hugged the wall as they approached the chests. “I really hope neither of these are Mimics,” Teisel muttered as he opened the orange box in front of him. “I am not picking up any Reaverbot signals in this room.” Max pointedly stated as Teisel pulled out a strange purple crystal and mulled it over for a bit. “I’d have commended you on your spotting skills if you’d mentioned that before I had my hand on the box, Max.” Teisel sighed, turning back toward the door and trying not to look down again. “Hey, at least I try,” Max retorted. “Now if you kids’ll hurry up with your goodies and get into the door, that would be fantastic. I’d rather not have to explain to the others that the two of you slaughtered a giant Reaverbot and then fell off a ledge into some lava and died because you were too busy checking out the swag.” By that time, Russell was already back at the door and holding it open for Teisel. “Come on, Green Guy. The spotter’s got a point.” The next room housed the second-largest generator Teisel had seen in his entire life, next to the one that Tron had built in the abandoned sector of Kattelox to power that colossal robot after they lost the Gesellschaft. “What did we call that one again…?” Teisel furiously racked his mind for the name. It was short. “Bingo? Bertram?” “Talking to yourself?” Russell asked with a chuckle. He stepped forward into the dark chamber and took in the scenery. Two of the walls were completely covered in electronic paneling, with a small dashboard in the center of the area. It looked like they were in some kind of control room. It also looked like a dead end. “I’ve seen control consoles like this on other islands before, but I could never figure out how any of that stuff worked.” He explained. “All of the controls were always labeled in ancient writing…I could never find anyone interested in trying to decipher it.” Teisel strode ahead and examined the control panel up close. “Yeah, I’ve got nothing,” he admitted. “I mean, in a situation like this, we can’t even button-mash our way out. It doesn’t look like there are even buttons here to mash…just three card slots.” Russell snapped to attention. “Card slots?” He asked, suddenly intrigued. “That treasure chest out on the ledge had a weird card in it.” “You found a card in that treasure chest?” “Yeah,” Russell replied as he reached into his satchel and walked up to the console. When he withdrew his hand, he was holding a small, black card with an intricate circuitry pattern on it. “That looks just like the one I found on my first day in the ruins!” Teisel exclaimed. “I’ve been using it as a bookmark back at the base, but I have one just like it!” “This is the first I’ve heard about you picking up some kind of weird card,” Max scoffed. Teisel felt his face involuntarily flush. “Oh, uh…I, er, meant to mention that earlier…” he stammered while Russell inserted his own card into one of the slots. “Why do I keep forgetting you can hear everything I say down here?” The console immediately lit up. “Ignition drive card accepted. Two additional ignition drive cards are required for elevator activation,” an automated voice echoed throughout the chamber. “Please install the remaining two components to restore power to the central elevator.” The two of them stared blankly at the control panel. “Pfft, some ancient language that turned out to be,” Max snickered. “…You guys understood that, right?” “We did indeed,” Russell replied. “I suppose the only language barrier we have with the ancient civilization that created these ruins involves their writing system.” “Don’t worry, Max,” Teisel added. “You’re not special.” He stepped back and surveyed the room again. “Is your map readout back to normal up there? I don’t see any way out of this room other than the door we used to get in, and I really have to get that card out of my book. I’d bet anything that this is the generator we need to get to the Klicke Lafonica!” “Uh, about that…” Max started. “Crap. Don’t tell me our only exit’s been sealed off and we’re trapped in the ruins!” Teisel shouted. “Okay then,” Max replied, “I won’t tell you.”
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Post by Dashe on Sept 11, 2014 15:15:23 GMT -5
Teisel and Russell sat side by side, slumped against the one solid wall in the room that wasn’t covered in machinery. Although Russell backtracked to the lava room to try and check for anything they might have missed, it really looked like there was just the one staircase back to the battlefield. “This is just greeeeeat,” Teisel muttered, raking his hand through his singed hair once he’d deactivated his energy blades. He wondered if he’d even make it to the barber shop to get it touched up, now that they were trapped. “We've found the missing generator that’s supposed to lead us straight to the treasure, but we’re one keycard short and we ended up permanently sealing ourselves in! We’re going to wind up dying of starvation or dying of thirst or…or…or…” he stammered as he rubbed his temples. He could feel a headache coming on.
“Cool your jets, T-Bonne,” Max coaxed through the speakers. “Remember what I said about breathing? Yeah, that’s it, take a few deep breaths and don’t worry so much. We’ll think of something. We always do!”
“THERE IS ONLY A FINITE AMOUNT OF AIR IN HERE!!!” Teisel roared, jumping up in frustration and verbally assaulting his spotter through the mic. “IF I BREATHE TOO DEEPLY I MIGHT AS WELL JUST RESIGN MYSELF TO SUFFOCATION! MAYBE WE SHOULD HAVE JUST LET THAT REAVERBOT WIN!”
“Teisel!” Russell hissed in frustration. “If there really is only so much air in here, you should probably stop yelling so you don’t use it up any faster. Nevertheless, there’s no need for you to panic. The room we just left was huge. You’re getting yourself worked up over nothing. Now Max, can you get a read on our position as it relates to the surface? I’m wondering if there’s any way to break in here from the outside. It looks like that’s our best chance of getting out of here.”
Max turned a few dials on the control panel and examined the largest of his monitors. “Well, the good news is that it looks like you’re close to the crack where the pipeline goes into the summit’s auxiliary tower,” he explained. “That means that since the outer wall is already broken, you wouldn’t have to do as much tunneling to get outside. As for the bad news…well, if you’ve seen the auxiliary tower, you’d know that the crack where all the pipes are coming from is pretty much at the top.”
“So we need to get a hole in the wall on our side, then.” Russell figured. He took aim at the wall behind Teisel. “That should be easy enough. Come on, Green Guy, get back.”
Instead of telling Russell that he wouldn't have to worry about any accidental friendly fire, Teisel just ducked behind the control panel and out of the blast radius as instructed. Russell fired a few missiles at the wall. The resulting explosion knocked the blond man back against the generator covering the surface behind him.
Teisel peeked out from around the side of the console and blinked through the smoky haze that the impact had left behind. “Russell? You alright?” He asked.
“I’m fine,” he shook it off and examined the circuitry he’d crushed. “Nothing I haven’t had to deal with before, anyway. As long as the generator’s still operational, we should be good…”
Unfortunately, the wall remained intact. The missile barely even left a mark.
“Hey Max,” Russell reported back, “We’re having some trouble busting out of here from our side. Think you could figure out a way to break through from yours? I know this kind of thinking probably isn’t your forte, but…well…” He trailed off.
“Wait! I’ve got it!” Tesiel suddenly exclaimed. “Head back to town and get the rest of the gang! Between the four of you, somebody’s going to be able to think of some way to get us back outside!”
“You want me to just leave this equipment HERE?” Max retorted. “Won’t it get stolen?”
“Max, take a good look at your dashboard.” Teisel pointed out. “I wouldn’t have even stolen that pathetic rig during my bad years.”
“You’re right. This thing is pretty crappy. I’m going to go offline to get your card and see if I can track down any of the others.” Max resigned. “Try not to die in there or anything, okay?”
About half an hour later, Max burst in through the door and into the common room back at the base. “Pic? Grill? Aero?” He shouted. “Anybody home?”
No answer.
“Dang it,” he groaned as he plodded through Pic’s junk piles, down the hall to the bedrooms, and cracked each of the doors open. “Are any of you guys asleep or hiding or something? I’m kind of desperate here!”
As he trudged back into the common room, he caught a glimpse of Tron’s book sticking out from its spot between the couch and the side table. “Huh,” he muttered when he noticed the black and gold card sticking out of the top. “He really did find a weird card key out there.”
Max hesitated for a moment before grabbing the book from its spot. “One peek couldn’t hurt,” he convinced himself. It had been a while since Teisel had joined the Bright Bats, and he had to admit that he was curious about whether or not Tron Bonne was really as good at writing as Teisel had claimed. And hey, how often did he get the base to himself?
Before Max even realized what was happening, five hours had passed. He’d propped himself up against the coffee table with a bagel in one hand and Tron’s story in the other, snickering at the Bonne family’s hijinks with the legendary Mega Man Volnutt.
It was a strange experience, to say the least. Not only the act of reading itself, which Max typically tried to avoid whenever he could, but also mentally picturing what Teisel had been like when he’d still had his family and that ridiculous ponytail. Reading about Teisel trying and failing to convince Tron to watch an incredibly awkward DVD on the Caskett family’s airship. Imagining the way that Teisel would have jumped straight into crisis mode thinking he’d printed his family’s logo upside-down on all of their dish towels. Seeing a Teisel without all that baggage, assuming Tron’s depiction had any degree of accuracy to it. It was just weird. Tron’s writing wasn’t anywhere near as great as Teisel had made it out to be, but Max didn’t think she’d had much of a reason to misrepresent her own brother. Unfortunately, since Max and Tron would never have the chance to meet, he could never be completely sure.
It was almost scary how much this Teisel reminded Max of himself.
To complicate the matter, now that Max knew that his newest teammate would actually be interested in checking out his whole action figure collection, he had no idea how to even broach that subject. It wasn’t exactly a popular topic with Pic, Aero, and Grill, and Teisel was a smart guy. He’d be able to tell Max had been reading Tron's book if he just happened to randomly bring it up one day.
Heck, Teisel was a pretty smart guy anyway, with all those books of his, and his planning and his weird strategy stuff. Max wasn’t even sure he’d be able to hide the fact that he’d invaded Teisel’s privacy to begin with. Suddenly, this didn’t seem like the good idea it had seemed like when he'd started reading. Especially now that he knew Teisel’s mood swings probably weren’t so much grief-induced as they were a constant fixture of his personality. Why didn’t he ever think anything through?
Max didn’t have very long to dwell on that notion before he heard the doorknob turn. There was no time to put down the bagel or hide the book. All he could do was sit there on the floor with it and hope whoever walked in through that door was sufficiently distracted. Yeah, he figured, If I sit still enough, they probably won’t even look down.
“Max, what do you think you’re doing?” “Crap. Aero.” Max uttered.
“You know, most people just say ‘hi.’” Aero admonished as she tossed her newly-earned satchel of refractor shards onto the couch and yanked what was left of the bagel out of his hand. “I’m already appalled that you’d read Teisel’s book, but seriously. Eating right over the pages like that? What’s wrong with you, Max?”
“It’s really…uh…” Max stammered, slamming the book closed. “I…look, this is…er…well, he did offer to let me check it out once. At Johnny’s. I kind of let him just keep it to himself because I felt really bad for the guy, but today he told me that he wanted me to go fetch this card key he was using as a bookmark, so I got it and it turned out it was this book that he’d put it in and I couldn’t…”
He stopped mid-sentence. “Crap!” He suddenly exclaimed again, cutting off his rapidly derailing train of thought. “That’s why I was here! T-Bonne went out on a dig with our friend Russell. I was spotting, and they beat up this huge Reaverbot, but now they’re stuck at the top of Ghiotte Summit’s auxiliary tower! We need to find Grill and Pic and figure out a way to break in through the crack at the top and get them out of there!”
“Hold on a second,” Aero stopped him before he could run off through the front door and up into the city with Teisel’s precious book in tow. “If you came here to get all of us to help save Teisel’s life, then how did you wind up wasting all this time invading his privacy and dropping bagel crumbs all over his dead sister’s writing instead?”
“You know how easily I get distracted!” Max defended as he flipped back through the pages. He feverishly hoped that he hadn’t dropped any crumbs in there. “What’s the big deal, anyway? I thought you were the one who didn’t trust him!”
“Not trusting Teisel and wanting Teisel to die underground are two very different things, Max.”
“Sure they are.”
“Just put the book back where you found it and come on,” Aero groaned. “Grill’s at work right now, but this is an emergency...and hopefully Pic didn't go anywhere too obscure today.”
Out in the alley behind the Teomo City motorhorse garage, Grill laughed and chucked the slobbery tennis ball in Sprocket’s direction, challenging the shaggy dog to snap it up before it had a chance to bounce behind her. She narrowly missed and went scampering off after the projectile. “Come on, Sprocket! Bring it back!” He egged her on. He fished into his pocket for a treat. Even though Pic warned him that it would probably be a better idea to save the treats for when Sprocket actually caught the ball, the mechanic couldn’t help himself.
Pic proved to be a big help in convincing Grill that Sprocket wasn’t a total loose cannon. Every once in a while, the kid would end up verifying that he was actually a valuable asset to the Bright Bats, despite what the rest of the gang sometimes muttered behind his back.
The dog trotted back with the ball in tow and dropped it in front of Grill. She anxiously wagged her tail in anticipation of the next throw. Grill checked his cell phone to make sure his break hadn’t ended yet, and tossed Sprocket a treat.
“Huh, I wonder what Aero wants,” He said, ignoring the ball as soon as he realized he had a new text message. “She never texts me at work.”
As soon as the urgency of the situation registered, he typed back a quick reply and darted off into the shop where his boss was tinkering away at a Duo-Case Z12 engine at her workbench. “Polly, you busy?” He asked.
His boss, an older woman with gray hair piled up into a bun and a pair of heavy-duty goggles clamped on over her glasses, turned to where her sole employee was leaning in through the doorframe. He had an unusually panic-stricken expression on his face. To her surprise, there was also a street dog nudging its muzzle into the garage, rubbing up against his leg. “Something happen, Grill?” She asked.
“Family emergency,” he replied. He pushed Sprocket out into the back alley and motioned for the dog to stay put. “You got an airship I could borrow?”
Polly incredulously stared at the blond and asked, “What the heck d’you need an airship for?”
“Uh…” Grill faltered. Sprocket snagged his belt loop with one of her paws and started trying to pull him backward, but his hefty frame was too heavy to budge. “It’s hard to explain quickly, but I’ll tell you all about it once all this is over. Promise.”
“I really wish I could help you there,” Polly sighed. She picked up a socket wrench from her toolbox and loosened a bolt on the engine. “I don’t even own an airship.”
“There are two diggers trapped in a room on Ghiotte Summit!” Grill urged. “How are we supposed to help them if we can’t fly?!”
Polly just shook her head and said, “It’s times like these when I really wish you kids would get over your darn hang-ups about calling the police…tell ya what. You can use whatever you’d like from the shop to help these folks out otherwise, but if you need a ship, you’re going to have to keep on searching.”
“Thanks, Polly,” Grill replied. He almost tripped over Sprocket as he ran as fast as he could to his motorhorse.
The dog followed him to the vehicle and tried to jump up onto the seat while he rummaged through his pockets for his keys, but her paws kept sliding across the leather upholstery. “Get down, Sprocket,” the mechanic groaned. “You’ve gotta stay here while we go rescue your buddy.”
Sprocket just whined and kept circling the motorhorse, almost as if she knew exactly what was going on.
“Stay put and I’ll give you a treat,” Grill bribed. He dug into his pocket and pulled out a strip of jerky. “Ready? Wanna fetch?”
He threw the jerky as hard as he could in the opposite direction, and the moment Sprocket raced off after it, he gunned the ignition and peeled out of the parking lot to meet with Aero and Max by the fountain in the city square.
By the time he arrived, Pic had already caught up to the others. “Sorry, I got here as fast as I could.” Grill explained as he propped the motorhorse up on its kickstand. “Polly said we can use whatever we want from the shop to help get up there, but we’re going to need an airship or something else that can fly if we’re going to pull this off.”
“We should look for T-Bonne’s ship.” Pic suggested.
“You mean the one he crashed?” Aero frowned.
“Yes. If the cops are still as scared of the Reaverbots as they were last year, there’s an 85% chance it’s in the wasteland where he left it.” He figured. “We should take Polly’s motorhorses out and go looking for it.”
Before any of the others could respond, however, a piercing bark cut through the air as Sprocket rushed through the midday crowd and jumped up on Grill. He was too big for her to knock him over, but it still came as a complete surprise. “Wha—Sprocket, what are you doing?!” Grill groaned. “I thought I lost her back at the shop! How’d she even find me out here?”
“Looks like Teisel picked up a pretty decent tracking dog,” Aero observed. She sat down on the edge of the fountain in deep thought. “I wonder…maybe we could use that and see if we can track down that airship a little faster. I mean, she knows what Teisel smells like and all.”
“I’ve got a better idea,” Max suddenly spoke up. “What if we had her sniff the book he brought with him and try to track down Tron?”
“His sister? Are you sure you’re not trying to get out of…” Aero started, but Max cut her off before she could incriminate him in front of the others.
“Aero, think about it.” He continued. “T-Bonne said he didn’t even crack that thing open until he got to this island, so I bet it has her scent all over the pages…and the only other thing on this island that would still have that scent on it is probably his ship!”
Grill shook his head. “Max, she’s been dead for ages! The chances of that airship wreck smelling like her are about as good as the Bright Bats taking home first place in the Rider Circuit this year!”
“It couldn’t hurt to try,” Pic shrugged.
The mechanic sighed and hopped back on his motorhorse. “I’ll…uh…I’ll go check in the garage for something with a sidecar, then. Pic, you’re in charge of Sprocket. Take her back home and get that book.”
“Okay then, so while you’re doing that, Aero and I will try and figure out the best way to dig our way to Teisel and Russell.” Max agreed. “We’re not going to lose our new teammate on my watch!”
As the Bright Bats scattered across Teomo City, up in the auxiliary tower, Teisel furiously slashed at the wall. “Why…won’t…this...work?!” He grunted between blows. “You’d think I’d at least weaken the support structure if these blades could slice through a giant Reaverbot like it was some kind of cake!”
“I think you managed to crack it a little,” Russell shrugged.
Teisel stepped back and frowned. He wondered how long it had been since Max left, and tried not to think about how long it had been since the last time he ate anything. “What we really need is some kind of a grenade launcher. Something more powerful than your rockets.”
“Good luck finding a grenade launcher in this room,” the S-class digger replied. “I’ll wait here and conserve my energy instead. There’s no point in talking yourself hoarse when you haven’t even got a canteen of water to ration.”
Once Pic grabbed the book and gave Sprocket enough time to catch Tron’s scent, the dog took off down the streets of Teomo. All the years Pic spent scampering around the city climbing buildings and leaping across rooftops as he spied on the townsfolk made him the ideal candidate for keeping up with her, and although she darted down paths nobody would even think to look for, he never had any trouble matching her pace.
After almost fifteen minutes of nonstop running, Sprocket skidded to a stop in front of a building in the commercial district and started barking. The commotion caused a few random people to glance over.
“Why’s that doggy so mad at Bakerly’s Bakery?” A little girl asked as she tugged on the hem of her mother’s skirt and pointed across the street to where Pic was slapping his forehead in frustration.
Pic shoved the book back in Sprocket’s face. “Sprocket!” He stressed, “Find Tron!”
Sprocket gave the pages another whiff. She glanced back toward the tiny bakery and walked around in a small circle, sniffing the air a few more times. The young man next to her frowned and led her off toward the Wasteland Gate. The closer they could get to the crash site, the easier getting her to trace the right scent would be, he figured.
While Pic and Sprocket were wandering around the wasteland with the book, Max and Aero took a seat in the Bright Bats’ favorite booth at Johnny’s with a pen and notepad. “Hey, you guys!” The host exclaimed with a grin. “I haven’t seen any of you Bright Bats around here in months! You two want the usual?”
“Yeah, sure.” Aero replied. “We’ve been…busy. I keep meaning to come down here. Nobody makes pesto paninis quite like you guys do.”
“We’ve got some work to do right now, though,” Max added. “Vic, you don’t know anything about digging through ruins, do you? Not like, you know, normal digging through ruins like where you run through tunnels other people made. I’m talking about digging THROUGH the outer walls and just making a new entrance.”
“Gee Max,” Vic sighed as he filled two cups with soda and brought them to the table. He handed each of them a straw. “I don’t even know much about digging in the first place. I thought you guys gave up on that whole scene.”
“Something came up,” Aero told him. “Max is the one doing the spotting this time.”
“That's a relief.”
“Vic, it’s almost been ten years. Let it go.” Aero groaned.
“Hey, not everyone goes to the trouble of building their own spotting deck out of a bunch of monitors and a wiretapping kit,” Max pointed out. “Which, in your defense, has actually been working pretty well for T-Bonne and me. Thanks for that.”
“What!?” Aero exclaimed loudly enough for the other customers to hear. “Max, why didn’t you ask first?!”
“T-Bonne didn’t want you to worry about him or anything,” Max improvised. “And hey, if it weren’t for your equipment, then I’d have never been able to tell he was on top of one of the towers, so we really don’t have to worry about him as much as we would have if we’d bought a discount rig at the junk store. If this works out, you can take credit for saving a couple of guys, all because you went and built that monstrosity.”
Vic looked incredibly confused at this point, so Aero added, “We haven’t been around because we’ve got a new…roommate…of sorts. He’s trapped in the ruins right now, and that’s why Max was asking about that whole ‘digging straight into the ruins’ business.”
“Okay, uh…” Vic thought out loud. “The only thing I can think of is if you were to use some kind of weapon to break through the walls. There’s a guy I see at the bar by the Diggers’ Square a lot once the sun goes down. He has an arm-mounted drill that he wears around town all the time. He’s always using it to find gifts for his mom in the ruins. Maybe he’d let you borrow one of his spares? He’s gotta have extra drills lying around.”
Aero smiled. They were actually getting somewhere. “Thanks, Vic. We’ll go check it out once we’re done with our paninis.”
With any luck, Teisel and Russell would be back on solid ground by the next morning.
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Aiyumi
Gorubeshu
Brazilian Kobun
Posts: 222
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Post by Aiyumi on Sept 13, 2014 15:03:43 GMT -5
I finished chapter 15 yesterday (technically today).? I began reading and couldn't stop. I only stopped because the forum's page ended and it was past 12:30 A.M. So, basically Max gets into a huge debt to find an unmonitored way into the ruins, and in the end, Teisel gets a Digger's license and the debt trouble was all for nothing . Well, not really. Of course Teisel cleaning his act and getting a license is a very good thing! But they don't have much luck with money, do they? When it looks like they're getting a nice amount of Refractors, they either get stolen or break something and end up spending most of their hard earned money to fix it. Teisel acts more like a leader, and Max didn't notice or didn't really care. Teisel is putting his explosion immunity to good use . Did anyone else imagine Rock music playing during the race? Now I'm curious to know what the Klicke Lafonica is (probably nothing like they're imagining, as was the case with the Mother Lode). I hope it isn't a "time machine" that resets the world to a prehistoric age pre-Carbons and pre-humans... Or something. Because then there will be no more Teisel, and it'll really mean that all that trouble will have been for nothing... Edit: finished 17 just now! Drill Arm, uh? So, the "hope for salvation" is that guy that Max met in chapter 6, the one saying he didn't know what to get for his mother's birthday?
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Post by Dashe on Sept 14, 2014 10:47:58 GMT -5
I finished chapter 15 yesterday (technically today).? I began reading and couldn't stop. I only stopped because the forum's page ended and it was past 12:30 A.M. Awesome to hear. I think you're the only person who's marathoned this without me holding them at gunpoint! When it looks like they're getting a nice amount of Refractors, they either get stolen or break something and end up spending most of their hard earned money to fix it. Some things just never change. Teisel even went to the trouble of saving the extra money so they couldn't make him pay interest on his interest and they still lost it all! I'm sure no matter how many times he ever finds himself saving up to prevent himself from a terrible fate, and no matter how many precautions he takes, he'll always end up either losing the money or spending it on something that ends up being pointless. Buying a good digging suit seems like a sensible purchase, at least. That makes...one. Teisel acts more like a leader, and Max didn't notice or didn't really care. He cared back in Chapter 5. Then he realized that Teisel was a great deal smarter than he was. It doesn't really take much to be smarter than Max. A lot of people in the fandom seem to think Barrett is the leader of the Bright Bats in the Legends 3 prototype, too...but we only ever got four sentences and one piece of concept art for Max. I don't really blame 'em too much. Did anyone else imagine Rock music playing during the race? I never really thought much to give any of this a soundtrack, but I can definitely imagine it. Something like Magma Dragoon's stage theme would be cool. I hope it isn't a "time machine" that resets the world to a prehistoric age pre-Carbons and pre-humans... Or something. Because then there will be no more Teisel, and it'll really mean that all that trouble will have been for nothing... No, the time machine actually transports Teisel and the Bright Bats to the dinosaurs' era and Aero hooks up with Bullbreath. Then they all sing "Fancy Dress" from The Drowsy Chaperone. Grill plays the part of Mrs. Tottendale. He gets very into the role. Sorry to spoil the whole thing for you, guess I'll have to cancel the whole thing! So, the "hope for salvation" is that guy that Max met in chapter 6, the one saying he didn't know what to get for his mother's birthday? Their hope for salvation is Loken's uncle Troy. He wound up accidentally being my entry for the Legends 3 townsperson contest and it ended up winning. And the crazy pyromaniac digger in Chapter 9 is a winning Japanese entry from that event named Maki. Dynamitastic!
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Post by Dashe on Sept 18, 2014 13:35:44 GMT -5
It was well past sunset when Max and Aero arrived at the bar, a surprisingly clean but crowded venue called “The Rusty Zakobon.” Max had no trouble spotting Vic’s acquaintance. The man in question was seated just a few places down from where a young woman in a pith helmet was whining loudly about her horrible job. He looked like he’d just come back from the ruins. In fact, his drill was still attached. And unfortunately for Max, the reason they were able to find him right away was because this wasn’t the first time the two of them had crossed paths.
“What the heck?” The blond man nearly spat his drink out all over Max. “You’re that guy who tried to hit me up for a way to break into the ruins last month!” He exclaimed as he threateningly waved his drill around and narrowly missed a cluster of empty bottles on the counter. “You’re the third biker who’s come up to me this week! What’s the deal here? Do I have a sign on my helmet or something?!”
Aero eyed the digger with suspicion and glanced toward her teammate. “Do I even want to ask…?”
“I don’t need anything morally questionable this time,” Max insisted. “I just need to borrow your drill so I can break into the ruins!”
Needless to say, this complete stranger didn’t like the direction the conversation had taken. “Are you insane? How is this any different from the last time you tried to get me to help you break into the ruins? You do realize I use this drill to make a living, right? I’ve got a nephew who’s coming to visit soon, and I can’t just greet him at the docks empty-handed!”
“I thought Vic said he liked buying things for his mother,” Aero whispered. “Maybe we got the wrong guy.”
“Isn’t there anyone else with a license who gives their mom a share of the loot? Why do so many people think that’s weird?” The blond guy sighed. He voraciously chugged down his drink and turned back to the bartender. “Sheesh. At this point I might as well just get ‘Troy Carter: Class A Mama’s Boy’ printed on my license. Fill ‘er up."
“Look, dude,” Max pressed. “That friend of mine I told you about before—you know, the one who wanted to get into digging and totally wasn’t made-up? Well, he got an instructor, and now they’re both trapped at the top of the auxiliary tower. Two of our guys are out in the wasteland trying to recover a wrecked airship to get up there. We need a drill to break in from the outside, and Vic…you know Vic, from Johnny’s Sandwiches and Internet Café? He sent us your way and told us you probably had a spare drill. Come on, man, these guys have been in the ruins all day!”
The bartender and Troy exchanged a second mug for a fistful of refractor shards. “Okay, fine.” Troy resigned. “You can borrow my spare drill arm, but make sure you bring it back when you’re done, alright? They aren’t as cheap as they look!”
Aero and Max bumped fists and actually let out a whoop right there in the bar. “I’ll see to it that you get it back,” Max asserted. “Thanks again, Mr. Class A Mama’s Boy.”
Troy resisted the urge to drill a hole in Max’s face. Instead, the digger simply polished off his drink and led them out into the city.
By that time, Pic, Grill, and Sprocket had managed to find the wreckage of Teisel’s last Drache crumpled against a mountainside. The lower bow had taken the brunt of the damage, and Grill had hooked up a lamp to assess the extent of the repairs he’d have to make. “Pic, stop standing in front of the light,” he groaned for what seemed like the twentieth time since the sun went down. “I can’t tell what kind of gun turrets these are supposed to be.”
“Do we really need the gun turrets?” Pic asked. He’d been charged with holding onto Tron’s book and keeping Sprocket from getting in the way of the repairs. “All you want to do is get it to fly.”
“Well, uh, all of this engine work is…very custom. For all I know, the gun turrets might house half of its circuits. I could easily spend another day just trying to figure out how it functions. Even though the damage to that area is minimal, I think I’m going to have to rip out the whole thing and put a couple of Polly’s in. I think three of her Holon Units should work for short distance flight.”
“She’d give you three engines?”
“I just don’t know,” Grill sighed. “I mean, she did say we could use anything in the shop, but it’s an awful lot to ask. And we’re going to need to completely reconstruct the front end of this ship. It’ll take all night, and she’s probably getting ready to go to sleep right now.”
Pic shrugged and replied, “Just take the engines now and worry about the moral implications once T-Bonne and Russell are back.” He handed the book to Grill and added, “Take this back to the base, too, before it gets messed up.”
Grill tucked the book under his arm and climbed back up onto the motorhorse. “Alright,” he said out loud, more to himself than to Pic. “It looks like I’m going to be pulling an all-nighter…” And before Pic could say anything in response, the mechanic gunned the ignition and peeled out and back toward the city.
When Grill got back to the base, he found Max hunkered over the workbench, where Aero was bolting some kind of drill to a weird helmet. “Hey Grill, were you able to find the airship?” She asked once she'd glanced up from her work.
“Yeah,” Grill replied. “The mechanical work on that thing is a complete mess, though. I can’t make heads or tails of it…I’m not surprised there wasn’t anyone out there who could replicate Tron’s blueprints, to be completely honest.”
Max glanced up at Grill and said, “What are you gonna do about it?”
Grill shrugged and shook his head. “There isn’t much I can do besides disconnect the engine and swap it out for a couple of Polly’s. I’m not sure I feel right just taking a bunch of her engines like that. They’ve got fuel refractors in them and everything, and she did say I could help myself to anything in the shop, but…I dunno, she sells those things for a lot of money.”
“You should leave the original at the shop as collateral,” Aero suggested. “We’re only borrowing them to get Teisel and his coach back, remember?”
“Yeah, right, I probably shouldn’t worry too much about it,” Grill replied self-consciously. “What are you working on over there?”
“I’m building a drill helmet we can use to break through the wall,” Aero explained. “We figured it’d be more efficient to send Sprocket in through the crack in the ruins, since dogs tend to do a lot of digging anyway. It’s easy enough for me to rewire it so we can control the drill with a remote from outside, and if that airship has a tracking system, I could probably program it to track her progress.”
Grill frowned. “Guys, I don’t know…what if there isn’t anywhere for Sprocket to walk inside that crack in the ruin walls? What if it’s just a long way down? What if it turns out she doesn’t like airships? The guy’s already lost his family. Do we really want to risk his dog, too?”
“Hey, that dog’s been really helpful so far,” Max piped up.
“You’re going to need to have a backup strategy if it turns out there isn’t any solid ground beyond the tower’s outer walls.” Grill insisted.
“Well, sorry to inform you our strategist is trapped inside the tower,” Max scoffed.
“Can’t you build a remote-controlled drill drone instead?” The mechanic exasperatedly demanded. “Really, Max, I could see you coming up with these weird plans, but Aero? I figured you’d at least know a little better. You’re starting to sound really sleep-deprived.”
“That tracking idea, though? That one would work, right?” Aero asked with a little more than a hint of desperation in her tone as she cracked an awkward grin.
Grill sighed. “Yeah, sure. Maybe you two should turn in for the evening. I’m going to be up all night myself working on that ship out in the wasteland, and if I finish up with it tomorrow, I’ll need someone coherent to actually pilot it.”
“No way!” Max shouted before the one actually doing all of the work had a chance to respond. “The sooner we get this dog helm…uh, I mean, this drill drone up in the air, the sooner we can save T-Bonne!”
“Riiiiight…” Grill trailed off. He turned toward the door. He didn’t have much time to lose, either. “Good luck with that.”
By the time Grill made it to the garage, he figured that Polly had been sound asleep for at least two hours up in the apartment she kept on top of the shop. He fumbled around for the key she kept behind the loose brick in the alley and unlocked the back door. There wasn’t an alarm on the back door.
Even though Grill Pitmaster had been affiliated with the Rebel Riders for almost twelve years, he had never been very comfortable with the ‘breaking the law’ aspect of the job description. After all, he’d been the one who’d gone and got himself a part-time job as soon as he could, just so he’d never end up stuck pursuing solely illegal endeavors to survive. He figured the worst he’d ever have to do would be double-riding and outfitting motorhorses with illegal mods that would only ever be used outside the city limits. That much was morally ambiguous at worst, right?
But in his mind, there was no question that grand theft from his place of employment was inherently wrong. Even with his boss’s implicit permission. When she'd said “anything he needed,” she probably didn’t think he’d need this much stuff, did she? Grill silently padded his way over to the storage cubicle and glanced over the array of functional, ready-to-install Holon Units on display. They were worth about 180,000 zenny each, including the fuel refractor. Those refractors usually ran high. And that wasn’t even counting the sheet metal and tools he’d need to patch up the external damage.
He glanced toward the ceiling. Somewhere up on the second floor, Polly was obliviously snoring away, with her cat likely to spontaneously pounce on her face at any given moment. He couldn’t linger around for too long, so he grabbed the closest engine he could find and lifted it up.
Those engines were a lot heavier than they looked. There was no way they’d fit in the sidecar. Grill would need a whole trailer to transport those supplies. He set the engine back down again and bit his lip. What he’d imagined would constitute a quick trip into the garage to get some tools had quickly turned into a need to practically steal everything from his workplace that he could fit into one trailer, and then steal the trailer itself.
His train of thought was suddenly derailed when he heard footsteps behind him. “Grill, what’d y’all end up needing?” Polly asked. Surprisingly enough, she was still in her jumpsuit from work. There was no sign of any struggle with her cat whatsoever.
“Uh,” he stammered, “Pic and I found our friend’s airship out in…in the wasteland. It’s been crashed there for at least two months. There was a lot of damage to the engine. It’s very…custom. I was going to swap it for three of yours just for the night and let you take a look at the one in the ship. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life! You’re okay with that, right? I mean, yeah, it’s a lot of engines, but…”
Polly just raised her hand to signal him to shut up. “If it’s such an emergency, you ought to stop dawdling around back here and start hauling supplies. I’ll hitch the trailer to my motorhorse.” “You…you’d really…?” Grill trailed off.
“If this situation’s enough to get you to clock out early, I figure I might as well help you out with the mechanical work and speed things along.” Polly declared. “Enough chit-chat. Let’s go fix an airship.”
“Hey. Russell. What time is it?” Teisel groggily asked. It was impossible to tell whether the sun was up outside or not. Against all odds, after wearing himself out trying to slice that wall open, he’d somehow managed to fall asleep curled up against the control panel in the ruins. He couldn’t remember if he’d had any dreams. He had a hunch that this was probably for the better.
Russell, who up until that moment had been sound asleep himself, glanced over at the watch built into his left gauntlet. “About three in the morning,” he replied. It was the first thing he’d said in about four hours.
“…Max didn’t forget about us, did he?”
“You know Max better than I do,” Russell admitted, but when he saw Teisel’s expression crumple across the room, he quickly added, “Look, he’s probably working something out. We’re at the top of Ghiotte Summit, after all. Maybe not the tower we were aiming for…but if there’s one thing I do know about your friend, it’s that just like every other person in the world, he can’t fly unassisted.”
Teisel wasn’t convinced. “I don’t know about this,” he mumbled. “I’m...I don’t know if any of this was such a good idea. Good things don’t usually just happen to me without some kind of a catch.”
“What are you even talking about? We’re at the top of the auxiliary tower in an area that nobody’s ever explored before. We probably defeated a one-of-a-kind Reaverbot down there. I know researchers who would pay a lot of money for information and sketches of that thing we just blew up. And sure, we’re stuck in these two rooms at the moment, but usually when I go underground, I don’t have a spotter at all. The fact that you had someone tracking us in the first place is what’s going to get us out of here!”
“You just…you make all of this sound so easy.” Teisel responded as he shook his head. “I thought things were actually looking up for me for a while, but what if the Bright Bats really did think I was just getting in the way this whole time? What if they were afraid I’d do something crazy if they told me the truth? What if Max ran off so he could finally get rid of me for good? This is probably going to end up just like when we stole that huge refractor and tried to open a department store, or when the Servbots threw Ryship’s big treasure out with the garbage, or when they cancelled the Giga Guy Myths series’ big comeback…”
As Teisel rattled off his doubts at an unsettlingly quickening pace, Russell found himself unsure as to how to even respond. He’d dealt with Teisel in various states of rage and panic before. He’d been there when he wiped himself out passing a basic digging test. This time, though? He wasn’t sure what it was. The precariousness of the situation at hand, perhaps? The fact that Teisel didn’t seem to have the strength left in him to yell? Maybe it was their overwhelming dependence on Max’s ability to follow through on his word. No matter what he could say to reassure Teisel, the truth of the matter was that Russell had only known Max for a few weeks, and nearly all of their interactions had been through a radio system. He barely knew Max on a personal level at all.
Whatever it was, it sparked a level of desperation in the rookie that didn’t sit right with Russell. “You can’t say for sure that he’ll come back, can you?” Teisel challenged. He glanced around the generator room to make sure he hadn’t overlooked anything. His voice was shaking. He looked like he could emotionally collapse at a moment’s notice. “How long has it been since Max signed off? Twelve hours? Fifteen? Why hasn’t he checked up on us?”
Russell suppressed the urge to roll his eyes. “Because it’s three in the morning. He probably thinks we’re asleep.”
The blond man stared at the crisscrossing patterns in the dull turquoise floor. Teisel seemed perfectly fine—thriving, even—while he was slicing up that Reaverbot in the heat of the fight, but evidently, sticking him in a completely harmless generator room, no immediate danger in sight, and telling him to just wait for his friends to blast through the walls and provide them with an exit was enough to cause a psychological meltdown. Sure, they hadn’t had anything to eat or drink in that time, and there weren’t any guarantees that they’d get out, but dwelling on all of that didn’t make any sense to Russell. And although he knew Teisel had lost his family and had been taking it pretty hard for a while, he found himself unable to connect those events with their current predicament.
“I don’t know, Russell,” Teisel said after what seemed like hours of awkward silence. “Maybe we should just jump off that ledge into the lava out there. It seems like a much more efficient way to die than to sit here waiting for those guys to come back until we dehydrate.”
So much for getting any more sleep, Russell mentally noted, with more than a twinge of regret that he was more annoyed than concerned over that statement. He was a digger, not a therapist! Now on top of everything, he had to worry about the Green Guy trying to hurl himself off of a precarious ledge. Falling off of that ledge had seemed like an easy feat even when they were trying to stay on it.
“Don’t do that,” he finally replied. “I really think they’ll pull through. I mean, that probably doesn’t mean anything to you right now, but…uh…” He glanced down at his watch readout. It hadn’t even been twenty minutes. There had to be something different between this situation and the fight against the spike-covered Reaverbot. They were even looking at the same pit of lava. How could one scenario prompt Teisel to go out of his way to avoid falling into the lava, and another, seemingly safer one goad him into thinking about jumping into it? What was going on in that man’s head?
“That’s it!” Russell exclaimed out loud before abruptly covering his mouth with his hand. He didn’t want to incite any more of a panic in his student. It had just slipped out in his excitement.
Teisel was thinking. Back when he was up against the insurmountable horde of Sharukurusu, not to mention the giant Reaverbot they’d just faced, he didn’t have any time to dwell on much beyond the scope of “Crap! Reaverbots! I can’t let them beat me!” Russell had a digging student who was so focused on winning that he'd even refused to let up once the real pro jumped into the fray to save his hide. But up here, trapped indefinitely in a generator room with no conceivable way out from the inside? It was psychological torture. The whole situation was giving Russell a headache. And while he had no way of knowing what random thought had started Teisel on this downward spiral, he really didn’t like the way the effects were turning out.
He had to create a diversion, even if it meant that he’d use up what was left of his energy faster. #9, #27, and #35 certainly would have wanted Teisel to escape if they’d gone to all the trouble of finding the Aurora Stones just to bust the guy out of debtor’s prison.
“Hey.” Russell started. He hoped he wouldn’t have to stall Teisel for very long. He didn’t know how long his own voice would be able to hold out without water. “Tell me as much as you can about that Reaverbot we blew up down there. I wouldn’t be surprised if it were really the only one of its kind, so we’ve got to remember as many details as we can.”
“Huh?”
“You know, that Reaverbot.” Russell began. “Start with the visuals. It was blue and something. Blue and brown, right?”
“Lighter than brown,” Teisel corrected. “I think it had some bronze in it. Just on the edges. It was big and round with spikes around the middle…”
As Teisel listed off a number of details Russell hadn’t noticed, the more experienced Digger hoped beyond all hope that he was right and Max was actually working to break in and rescue them. It was all he could do.
No less than ten minutes later, Grill and Polly had the Drache airborne. Pic was curled up on the ground nearby, fast asleep, while Sprocket attacked any errant Reaverbots that dared get too close to the crew.
The guns on the airship were damaged beyond repair, but two commercial-grade engines ended up being enough to get it flying. “Call your friend with the drill,” Polly shouted from the cockpit as she parked the machine and lowered the gangway. “As far as this ship’s concerned, she’s all set.”
“Thanks again, Polly,” Grill said with an exhausted smile as he wiped the dust off of his goggles with his bandana. “I’ve got this under control.”
“Alright, Grill,” Polly replied. She dropped Tron’s engine into her trailer and hopped onto her motorhorse. “Be careful.”
Guile’s theme blared through Max’s cell phone speakers and jolted the gang leader out of a particularly entertaining dream involving a road trip to a castle in the middle of a boring suburban sprawl. He squinted through the dark and groped around the top of his crowded desk, knocking about twelve thousand zenny in collectable figurines over until he finally stumbled upon his cell phone.
“Sup?” He slurred. He was clearly still riding the aftermath of his suburban castle adventure and trying to cling to the imagery of the fabled sword of…what was the name of the sword again? He flipped the switch on his desk lamp to look for some kind of writing implement hiding somewhere in the mess of toys, and grabbed the nearest pen he could find. He hastily doodled the sword in question to the best of his ability on the back of a receipt as Grill spoke.
“You awake, Max? How are you and Aero coming along with your drill drone?”
Max squinted at the sword. It was frustrating, the way his drawing abilities never quite seemed to match up with the picture in his head. At least this time it looked sort of like a sword. “Uh…kind of?” He winced. He left the room and shuffled back down the hall to make sure Aero hadn’t passed out over the workbench. He hadn’t even woken up enough to realize his response made no sense.
“Max! I can’t believe you fell asleep!” Grill scolded.
“Come on, Grill, it’s me,” Max groaned as Aero glanced up from her work. She had three empty energy drink cans in front of her and a tangled mess of wires connecting the drill to a motor. “What’d you expect?”
“Point well taken,” The mechanic replied.
“Give me that,” Aero muttered, snatching the phone straight out of Max’s hand the moment her self-proclaimed leader got close enough. “Grill? You there?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve got the parts working, but I can’t quite figure out how to make an outer shell that actually flies. You know how programming and electronics were always more my thing,” Aero explained.
Aero could just picture Grill massaging his forehead in frustration as he asked, “Why is it that the two of us can’t catch a break, and Max and Pic get to just sleep through it all?”
“You’re asking the wrong person, Grill. Wake Pic up and have him watch the ship so we can get this drone finished before the sun comes up.”
Up in the ruins, a strange concept to anyone accustomed to doing their digging underground, Teisel went over the details of the Reaverbot fight for the fifth time. “You sure you really need to hear this again?” He asked. His voice was hoarse from overuse. Russell doubted the man had it in him to get up at all at this point, much less throw himself off the ledge into the lava, assuming the lava itself hadn’t cooled by then.
It wasn’t like plummeting into rock would yield a different result from plummeting into lava, Russell figured. It’d be messier, sure, but there weren’t any other diggers who would be able to reach that spot to begin with, so he doubted it would matter too much in the long run.
The difference in the way the two men instinctively responded to the same situation almost would have been fascinating to Russell if the situation in question hadn’t been so immediate. In all his years of experience, a day stuck in a generator room should have been nothing. In fact, he’d been lost underground for nearly a week once without a spotter, but even then, he never just lost all hope for getting out of the ruin alive like that. Russell had always been the kind of guy who stockpiled survival techniques, and now here he was, squandering his most basic strategy—energy conservation—because it seemed like running his mouth was the only thing that would keep Teisel from descending into a full-on, life-threatening meltdown.
“Yeah.” Russell said with a nod. It took way more effort than it should have taken for him to pronounce his words properly. He needed a drink. He needed sleep. He needed them both, in some order. “There could be a lot of money in it for us if we’ve actually discovered something new. That’d be great. It didn’t really pay off much when we took it down, you know?”
“…And they won’t need any real pictures? Like on a phone?” Teisel asked when he realized Russell was finished talking.
“I don’t know, but I’m sure they wouldn’t blame us for defeating it.” Russell figured.
Teisel reached over and picked his purple crystal up off the ground next to him. He'd been so busy worrying about being trapped that he'd completely neglected to stick it in the equipment pack built into the back of his suit. “This thing looks weird.” He mumbled as he took some more time to inspect it.
“We must’ve picked up some of the Ancients’ original treasures,” Russell mused. He stood up, stretched, and walked over to take a better look at the loot. “We know what the card key does, but I can’t even begin to guess at what you’ve got there.”
“Maybe it’s just a fancy refractor,” Teisel guessed after lazily turning the crystal around in his hands a few times.
“…I’ve never seen a refractor that looked like that in my life.” Russell replied. “You must be in worse shape than I thought.”
Before Teisel could process Russell’s sentence, a violent tremor shook the room. Russell ducked and pulled Teisel flat onto the floor with him. “Hit the deck!” He exclaimed as bits of stone and metal shot toward them from the wall Teisel had spent all that time attacking. “We’ve got Reaverbots flying in!”
Teisel blinked and stared upward helplessly as a compact, pink robot with a propeller on top and a disproportionately large drill at the front end hovered in the air for a moment before it turned back around to widen the passage. “…It’s a…drill Finkel?” He uttered. He was scarcely able to believe what he was seeing. “Why’s the Finkel here? Did I fall asleep again?”
Russell had never heard the name “Finkel” before, but he couldn’t help but notice the similarities between this and the little flying pig robot that he’d seen with the Servbots that one day back in Shala-Kun. “That’s what that thing was called, huh?” He said as he stood up, raising his weapon and slowly walking over to the aperture to check it out. He glanced inside and could see the faintest hints of the morning sunlight filtering in as the robot chipped away at the wall and cleared a path to the outside world. “I doubt it’s your family, though. If anything, I’d be willing to bet it’s your spotter! Didn’t I tell you he’d pull through?”
All Teisel could do was lie on the ground where Russell had left him and stare up at the hole in the wall with a slack-jawed gaze.
“Come on, Teisel,” Russell stated. He walked back over to the control console and crouched down next to his student. “Get up. I can’t let you just pass out in here when we’re so close to getting out!” He prodded.
Thankfully, Teisel shook his head and managed to pull himself to his feet using Russell and the control panel for support when he needed it. His legs had fallen asleep sometime during the night, and the mere act of standing made it feel like the room was spinning out from under him. He hoped he wouldn’t have to climb very far down the side of the tower. Just getting from the control console to the hole leading back outside looked nearly impossible.
Russell either didn’t seem to notice or didn’t seem to care how dizzy, tired, hungry, or thirsty his protégé was. He pried the crystal out of Teisel’s hand and guided him forward. Before Teisel even realized it, he was being lifted up and into the hole in the wall. “Hope you’re not claustrophobic,” Russell muttered under his breath. He remained determined to get the two of them out of this ruin alive, even if it meant shoving Teisel all the way up that tunnel himself.
He wasn’t immediately sure if Teisel was going to respond, but something clicked up there and the former pirate eventually figured out that he needed to climb up.
When the younger digger stopped in his tracks at the very top and blocked off their exit, Russell prodded him and shouted, “You gonna just stay there all day, Green Guy? What’s the holdup?”
Even though the hole in the ruin dumped them out on top of a massive duct that gave them a fairly decent amount of surface area to stand on, the only thing Teisel could focus on was the Drache hovering at the end. There were metal patches all over the vessel, and the guns were missing, but there was no mistaking it. That was his ship.
Russell shoved the flabbergasted man along the ground and pried himself out of the tiny passage. It didn’t take long for him to recognize the ship as Teisel’s. Suddenly the Green Guy’s sluggishness made sense. He motioned for the pilot to lower the gangway as Teisel shook off his stupor long enough to stand back up. While Russell couldn’t exactly see any windows, the pilot had to have some way of noticing that he was ready to board.
Sure enough, the hatch opened and a plank of steel lowered onto the edge of the duct. “Hurry up and get in!” Max shouted as he stepped out and frantically gestured for them to proceed.
“You came back!” Teisel exclaimed in a hazy mixture of relief, exhaustion, shock, and vertigo. He clumsily scrambled toward the ship, with Russell trailing behind and hoping neither of them would slip and fall off. As he stumbled into the Drache, he clung onto Max as if he’d disappear forever if he ever let go. “You didn’t just run off and sell all of our possessions on the internet! You’re the best spotter I’ve ever had!”
Max sheepishly grinned. “Yeah, uh, thanks,” he said. He shrugged his strategist off while Teisel babbled on like an emotionally incontinent madman. Seeing how happy Teisel was to see him only made him feel worse about reading his sister’s book.
As the reunion transpired, Aero shut the door from the only seat in the crowded cockpit. It had taken her over an hour to figure out the controls. Just looking at the dashboard for too long gave Max a splitting headache. Neither of them could believe that this was the kind of machinery Teisel was accustomed to driving. On top of that, there wasn’t very much room in the Drache. Squeezing four people in there was really pushing the little ship’s passenger capacity, and Teisel was a really big guy. “We put some water bottles and energy bars in the cooler if you want ‘em,” she offered.
“Yeah, we want ‘em.” Russell flatly replied. He scanned the compact compartment for the cooler in question and flipped the lid open once his mind registered its location, tucked safely underneath Aero’s seat. “Hey T-Bonne, can you catch?” He asked, offering a bottle of water.
By this time, Teisel was curled up on the floor, propped up against a wall and blathering on to himself about white pizza not being real pizza. Russell took that as a cue to crack the bottle open and slip it into his hand. “Drink up, buddy. We’re taking off.”
Teisel looked at the bottle for a bit before taking a sip, then proceeded to down the whole thing in one chug. Being back in his Drache was a strange experience, to put it lightly. An unsettling one. It felt like every time he blinked, he was back in the cockpit, desperately scanning the skies for any sign of the launch pad, or even just a glimpse of that little island. Trying to figure out whether he’d rather gun down the old lab with everything he had, or drop in to see if there was anything worth taking left inside. He found himself remembering the days when the machine was on its last legs and he had nothing to his name other than someone else’s story. Back then, he didn’t think he’d make it out of that archipelago alive for one second. He couldn’t remember the last time he felt this relieved that the Draches didn’t have real windows. Knowing that the vessel was operational at all gave him a rush of giddiness and nostalgia that threatened to crumble into agonizing distress at any given moment. If any of the people on board had asked how he felt, he wouldn't have even been able to begin to describe it.
“Launch the Drache!” Teisel announced. He didn't even realize he’d said it. He could already tell that getting through the next few days would be a lot harder on him than any Reaverbot fight could ever be, but he would be back on solid ground again soon enough. There were a lot of cartoons for him to watch back at the base.
Of course, the only thing he could say for sure was that those Bright Bats were nothing short of the best friends he’d ever had, and that he felt ridiculously lucky to have them around for him. In that moment, that was all that mattered.
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Aiyumi
Gorubeshu
Brazilian Kobun
Posts: 222
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Post by Aiyumi on Sept 18, 2014 16:51:15 GMT -5
Awesome to hear. I think you're the only person who's marathoned this without me holding them at gunpoint! It looks like things tend to get very violent around here. I saw a bar fight on the other page... Teisel acts more like a leader, and Max didn't notice or didn't really care. He cared back in Chapter 5. Yes, but I thought he would bring it up again. Did anyone else imagine Rock music playing during the race? I never really thought much to give any of this a soundtrack, but I can definitely imagine it. Something like Magma Dragoon's stage theme would be cool. Or something like Avalanche Yeti's stage theme (from X8).
I read chapter 18. Oh! Soundtrack! ... Sort of. And... They did it! They did it...! Yes! The rescue happened a bit sooner than I expected. I thought it would be only in the next chapter. Hahahaha! The reunion was great. Last but not least...
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Post by Dashe on Sept 25, 2014 15:20:08 GMT -5
It wasn’t until the fifth day after the rescue that Teisel remembered his card key wasn’t in Tron’s book anymore. It already felt like a lifetime had passed since he’d been trapped in the ruins. Every morning, he woke up hoping the whole thing had all just been a bad dream, but the moment he caught a glimpse of that purple crystal on the end table, he realized that he'd really had himself convinced the Bright Bats were going to abandon him up there. It got so hard for him to deal with that he eventually just stuffed the artifact into the old zenny pouch from their bet with Seedy Leigh. That way, he wouldn’t have to look at it anymore. More than anything, he wanted to put that whole ordeal behind him and find something new to take his mind off of things, but in order to do that, he didn’t want to leave any unfinished business behind that would have the potential to nag at the back of his mind later. “I told you to get that card for me, right, Max?” He frantically asked as he paced the floor in front of the TV, holding Tron’s book in one hand and flipping through the pages. “You have it, don’t you?” “Uh…yeah.” Max replied. The two of them had been watching a show about a blue robot, and when the hero picked up a card key with a similar pattern, Teisel suddenly remembered that he still had a vital component required to reach the Klicke Lafonica in his possession. He knew he didn’t want to go back down into the ruins again, at least not for a while, but he figured Russell would probably want it. He hadn’t heard from his coach since they got back to Teomo City, and the longer he put off telling him that he wasn’t planning on continuing his career as a digger, the less he wanted to contact Russell at all. Max reached into his pocket and suddenly frowned. “I, uh…oh man. Yeah. Crap. I know you told me to get it, and I know I went straight back here and found the card in the book right away, but…uh…I don’t think I remember where I put it!” “Did you leave the base with it?” Teisel pressed. He stared at the gang leader with an intensity that would have had any stranger convinced that he was the one in charge. “Well…uh…wait!” Max suddenly exclaimed as he hopped off the couch and headed for his room. “Maybe I left it in my other pants!” As Max and Teisel passed by Pic’s room, the reclusive young man cracked the door open and glanced down the hall after them. “Looking for something?” He asked. “Yeah,” Teisel replied. “I put a small black card in Tron’s book and told Max to get it. You’re good at finding things, right? Think you could help us out?” Pic opened the door the rest of the way. Teisel didn’t want to know what kind of trash the boy kept stored in there if he had junk piles spilling out into the common room. “He checked his pockets from that day, right?” He asked. “Checking them now!” Max shouted from within the depths of his own hoarding cache. The youngest member of their gang thought hard for a few minutes. Then, without warning, he darted into the kitchen. Not even a minute later, Teisel and Max heard him shout, “Found it!” “Are you serious?” Teisel sputtered. “What’s it doing in there, and more importantly, how the heck did you think to look in the kitchen first?! Pic calmly walked back out and handed Teisel the card. “I had your dog use your book to track your ship’s position and she took me to a bakery instead.” He explained. “The only logical explanation is that the last person who read that book got up to go get something to eat. Probably bagels. That shop makes good bagels.” If Teisel’d had pupils, he would have rolled his eyes at the revelation. Of course. “Maaaaaaax!” He groaned. “How much of that book did you end up reading when I told you to get that card?” Max froze in his tracks with a pair of dirty boxer shorts, some socks, and the pants he’d worn five days earlier clutched in his grasp. That guy was too perceptive for his own good. “It was an accident!” He heard himself shout before he had the chance to work out some kind of an excuse. “Does that mean I can read it too?” Pic asked. Teisel ignored him and marched straight down the hall to Max’s room. “Max, how much of it did you read?” Teisel repeated. “Enough to know you probably liked watching Rockman Hyper Adventure as much as I did just now?” Max sheepishly forced a grin. Teisel just frowned and impatiently crossed his arms. “Come on, Max, that’s not what I meant.” “Aero caught me when I got to the part where you were on the roof of the airship shooting at the bad guys and you were just about to fall off.” Max sighed, twisting a graying sock in his hands as he loosened his grip on the rest of the garments he’d been holding. “And, uh, if it’s any consolation, it’s the only thing I’ve read all year that didn’t have pictures. You can tell me how it ends if you want. I felt really crappy about getting distracted and reading it instead of trying to find everyone, anyway.” “I hate to break it to you, but it doesn’t.” “It doesn’t?” Max squinted at him in confusion. “What do you mean it doesn’t...” he began, but then the likely conclusion smacked him right in the gut. “Oh.” “Yeah.” Teisel finished for him. “She never got to write the ending. She didn’t even make it to a decent stopping point.” The two of them just stood awkwardly in the bedroom until Max balled his sock up and aimed it at his laundry basket. Like most of the clothes he tried to toss in there, it missed. “Did you ever think about just finishing it yourself?” he finally asked. Once it slipped out, he immediately realized how stupidly obvious that must have sounded, but if it made the conversation any harder to get through, Teisel certainly didn’t show it. “All the time,” he admitted with a wistful sigh, “but it just…well, you know…no matter how hard I could try to write the way she did, and no matter how much time I could spend picking through all the little details and trying to get into her head, it still wouldn’t be the ending Tron meant to give it.” “Yeah, I guess I can see what you’re getting at. Could you at least tell me what happens next? Aero kind of interrupted me in the middle of a cliffhanger.” Teisel shook his head with a surprisingly playful smirk and replied, “Nope.” “What? Hey, that’s not fair!” Max shouted as he kicked a cardboard box in frustration. Upon realizing the hard way that it contained a set of weights he’d ordered online, he clenched his teeth and began to hop up and down clutching his foot. Teisel bit the inside of his cheek to keep from bursting into hysterical laughter. The last thing he needed was for Pic to rush in thinking something had happened to them. Still, he couldn’t help but let an awkwardly subdued chuckle out. “You’ve got to read it yourself,” Teisel elaborated once Max stopped making such a ridiculous ruckus and the two of them had calmed down. “Just, uh…don’t eat while you’re reading it, okay? If something spills on that book, I can’t exactly go to the store and buy another one.” “Sorry about that.” “You know you could’ve just asked me and saved us both this conversation, right?” “Oh come on!” Pic cut in. The other two men nearly jumped out of their skins as they turned to find him loitering on the fringes of the doorway, rocking on his heels impatiently. Neither of them could say for sure how long he’d been there. “I asked if I could read it at least six minutes ago and you didn’t say anything!” “Oh.” Teisel frowned. “Yeah, sure, go ahead, I guess. But no food around that book, alright? “And you can’t add it to your weird book piles, either,” Max added for good measure. When Teisel cast a skeptical glance in the leader’s direction, Max assured him, “You’ll need to worry about that more than the food thing. Trust me.” Teisel finally willed himself into leaving the base the next evening. When he first woke up after that long night in the ruins, he learned that Grill had completely exhausted himself fixing the Drache and building the drill drone. As thanks, Teisel had explicitly promised the mechanic that he would buy him a five-star dinner for his efforts, and it was high time he made good on that promise. He also needed to get his hair touched up. As soon as he'd decided he was coherent enough to use a pair of scissors, he'd tried to repair the damage that the Reaverbot’s laser cannon had done, with questionable results. The meal was worth the trip, even though Grill and Teisel were both pretty sure that the waitress had herself convinced that the two of them were on a date. It probably didn’t help that Grill had shown up in his mechanic’s jumpsuit and Teisel had opted to pick that moment to give Grill the crystal from the ruins to check out. “Awww, isn’t that sweet?” The waitress gushed as she topped off their drinks. “He’s researching it, not keeping it on his vanity table as a trinket,” Teisel sarcastically grumbled. Grill deadpanned and uttered, “H-how did you know I have a vanity in my room?” “You’re not helping with this, Grill.” The waitress was beside herself with gawky fangirlish giddiness. For an employee at an upscale establishment, she sure didn’t seem concerned about how big of a tip they’d give her later. As she scurried back into the kitchen, Grill just shook his head. “You think she’s related to the manager or something?” He asked. Teisel just shrugged, took a bite of his chicken, and replied, “Just let me know if you can figure out what that crystal is. I’d do this research myself, but…looking at it makes me sick to my stomach right now.” “Oh, right. Guess I probably shouldn’t keep it out while we’re eating, then.” Grill exclaimed. He shoved the mysterious treasure into his pocket. “I’ll see what I can do.” The two of them parted ways after they finished their meals. Grill planned on heading straight back to the base, but Teisel had more unfinished business from his last trip to the ruins to sort out. He headed to Diggers’ Square. It was past sunset. The place was illuminated in the orange glow of the street lamps and mobbed with diggers of all skill levels trying to pawn off their latest finds. “Have you seen a veteran digger by the name of Russell pass through here?” He asked nearly everyone who made eye contact with him. “Nope.” “Sorry.” “Get away from me, you creep!” Finally, an old man in a green cap and a red scarf replied in the affirmative when Teisel asked him about Russell. He almost looked less like a digger than Teisel did at the moment. “Russell, eh?” He repeated. “He’s the blond guy with the cape, right?” Teisel grabbed the old guy by the shirt and exclaimed. “Yes! That’s the guy! You’ve seen him?” The old man seemed more than a little unnerved by Teisel’s desperation, but he nodded and replied, “He comes by my bakery almost every night once he’s done digging and orders two donuts and a coffee. Only missed one night this week.” “I really need to talk to him,” Teisel insisted. “You haven’t closed for the night, have you?” “Nah, I usually take a break right about now,” the old man shrugged. “What’s a baker doing taking a break in this part of town, anyway?” That old man shot Teisel a glare so surprisingly intense that Teisel started to break a sweat. “I’m just a baker, got it?” He snarled. Even though the statement made almost no sense in the context of their conversation, Teisel responded with a rattled, silent nod. “The shop’ll be back open around seven, and we close at ten. No sooner, no later.” Russell never did come around Bakerly’s Bakery that night, and after buying a cupcake and getting promptly ejected by the proprietor precisely at ten o' clock, Teisel plodded down the street. Somewhere along the way back to the Bright Bats’ headquarters, he heard the jingling sound of dog tags behind him. “Sprocket, that you?” He inquired, as if there were any other stray dogs on Klickelan Island with ID tags. His companion sprinted across the road. She knocked him to the ground right there on the sidewalk and licked his face. “Come on, now, it’s only been a week,” he said, though he couldn’t help grinning and petting her behind the ears as he did. “You don’t have to worry about me leaving you alone anymore. I won’t be going back underground for a long time.” Since spending some impromptu down time with his dog sounded a lot nicer than confronting Russell with his concerns, he sat down on the curb to get out of the way of any oncoming foot traffic. Sprocket cocked her head and let out a high-pitched whine as she gently sniffed around Teisel’s pockets to make sure there really wasn’t any food stuffed in there. Teisel wished there had been a burger stand open at such a late hour, and regretted not ordering a bigger meal at the restaurant when he’d had the chance. “Sorry,” he sighed. “I don’t have anything to eat tonight.” Sprocket flattened her ears against the sides of her head and snorted in mild annoyance before nudging her nose up against Teisel and going in for a snuggle anyway. That man had always been noticeably easier to interpret than most people, even if most of the noises he emitted didn’t make much sense. “…I don’t know if I want to go chasing Russell down every night like this,” Teisel mumbled. He absentmindedly stroked the dog’s back. “He’s going to need that card sooner or later if he wants to get to the Klicke Lafonica, right? It’d probably just be easier to let him come to me.” And on the bright side, he mentally added, despite Bakerly’s unsettling demeanor, that cupcake was the best he’d had in years. Back in the base, Pic and Max had decided to tackle the book together to save some time. It was probably for the better, since Max had a hard time remembering things that he’d read. They'd spent a good portion of the day rearranging the boxes in Max’s room and building a blanket fort so they could read by flashlight. “Chapter fifteen,” Pic read aloud in a hushed voice. It was half past midnight, and the two of them had been reading and guzzling root beer since before dinner would have been, if they’d bothered to get up and eat any. Teisel hadn’t told them they weren’t allowed any beverages around the book, after all. “Are you ready for this, Max?” The first time Max had picked up the book, he’d barely made a dent in chapter seven. Pic seemed to have a hard time getting through some of the more awkward sentences, and sometimes his voice slipped into monotone, but it was still easier than trying to read through the story himself and getting distracted as he imagined what it might have been like to actually know all of these people while they were still alive. The thought that most of them were probably dead was, despite everything, hard for Max to grasp without Teisel in the room to remind him. “Yeah,” Max nodded. He drained another can of root beer, tossed it into a pile in the corner of the fort, and leaned over Pic’s shoulder. The awkward teenager hunched over the book and began to read out loud: “Mega Man found himself scrambling down the docks to the Flutter. He wasn't watching where he was going and found himself barreling straight into his grandfather.
‘Ah, Mega Man! Looks like you've saved the island from those pirates!’ He exclaimed with a hearty laugh. ‘Good going. I'm proud of you...I was wondering when you'd get back into your old routine!’
‘Thanks, uh, I guess...’ Mega Man muttered awkwardly. ‘It's good to be back...?’
‘I'm sure you'll find yourself making headlines again in no time!’ The professor assured him. ‘You do have quite a bit of ground to make up. While you were away…this youngster named…Barrett…”
Pic trailed off, too stunned to continue past that point. “Come on, Pic!” Max exclaimed. “Finish the sentence already!” “That’s OUR Barrett.” Pic shook his head. “The professor goes on to describe a Klickelan-based digger who could keep up with Mega Man Volnutt. That has to be him. Tron Bonne must have known Barrett.” Max’s eyes grew wide. “You serious? Then that means…” Pic responded with a solemn nod that did little to betray how astonished he really was. He raised his hand to cut off his boss’s sentence before he could get too loud and wake anybody else. “Yeah. If Tron Bonne knew Barrett, then there’s a good chance that she knew Aero, too.”
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Post by Dashe on Sept 28, 2014 11:33:14 GMT -5
Time for an impromptu bonus comic! It takes place after Chapter 21 chronologically, but it's still spoiler-free from Chapter 19 onward and it kind of makes more sense to drop it here. Unless you were expecting either Max or Teisel to die in the next few chapters, in which case, BAM, spoiler'd. Way to wind up with your foot in your mouth and lukewarm coffee wrecking your hairstyle, Max.
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Post by Avegodro on Sept 28, 2014 19:25:58 GMT -5
I just read from chapter 2 to the end in one go. Whole story thus far is amazing, you did great on this Dashe! Makes me want to boot up the games, play em some and crank out some art.
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Post by Dashe on Sept 28, 2014 20:51:04 GMT -5
Thanks so much for tuning in! I've tried marathoning it, too, and it took me a while. I'm starting to wonder if my attention span got shorter over the years. Great to hear you want to replay the series, and be sure to post the art you come up with!
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Post by Dashe on Oct 2, 2014 14:57:39 GMT -5
Max and Pic stayed up to finish the entire book after that. Against all odds, Max managed not to spill any root beer on the pages, but to their disappointment, the Barrett Tron had mentioned never actually showed up again to truly confirm Pic’s theory. The two of them wasted absolutely no time in bombarding Teisel the minute they woke up the next evening, after spending the better part of the day passed out on the floor. “T-Bonne! We’re done!” Max exclaimed as he thrust the book in the older man’s face upon finding him in the kitchen in the middle of eating his dinner. Teisel nearly choked on the noodles he’d been slurping up. “What did I tell you two about putting that near food?!” He shouted as soon as he was sure that he could speak properly without hacking broth and partially-masticated pasta all over his sister’s handiwork. “I swear, sometimes having to put up with you two is worse than dealing with Servbots!” Max and Pic exchanged nervous giggles as some unusually vivid imagery of Teisel dunking a toy boat into his soup at Johnny’s sprang immediately to mind. Teisel groaned and shook his head. “Go put it back between the couch and the end table, alright?” Max took the book back and strode off to the living room, while Pic opened the freezer and pulled out a pair of TV dinners. “It was interesting.” He said as he popped them both in the microwave and heated them up. Teisel looked up. “What, the book?” “Yes. Syntactically awkward at times, perhaps, but you used to be really silly and short-tempered. I found that interesting. You seem like a different person now, though now that I think about it, watching your family die horribly could plausibly do that to someone.” Teisel felt a sinking feeling well up in his gut. He wasn’t sure whether or not Pic’s unsettlingly direct response was, somehow, meant to be a compliment. He’d never heard the kid give a compliment before, so there really wasn’t much to which he could compare the sentiment. “Uh…thanks?” He uttered in an uncomfortable confusion. “I really can’t tell if that was supposed to make me feel better about Tron’s writing or just really upset that any of that had to happen in the first place.” “Neither. I suppose that probably wasn’t the best choice of words. Do you want a hug again?” “Not while I’m eating, Pic.” “Max and I noticed something else when we were reading it, too.” Pic added. “I should wait until he gets back to discuss it, though.” “Discuss away,” Max brushed it off as he waltzed on in and opened the freezer. Before Pic could elaborate any further, he squinted at the arrangement of food inside and asked, “What happened to the TV dinners? Geez, that Grill eats like a…” “They’ll be ready in another fifty-seven seconds,” Pic explained. “I call dibs on the fried chicken, though.” Teisel finished his noodles and set the empty bowl aside. “Guys, is there really anything in Tron’s book that I might have missed? You’ve only read it once.” Max hopped up to sit on the edge of the countertop. “Remember that Barrett guy that the grandpa talked about in Chapter Sixteen?” “Fifteen,” Pic corrected. “Whatever,” Max brushed it off. “That dude used to be a member of the Bright Bats. Your sister knew him well enough to put him in her story by name.” The silence in the kitchen was palpable. Even when the microwave timer dinged, nobody could bring themselves to go get the TV dinners. “You sure she was talking about the same guy?” Teisel finally asked with more than a hint of doubt. “Barrett sounds like a pretty common…” “It’s him. She even mentioned Klickelan Island specifically.” Max responded. “It’s definitely our Barrett.” As the situation took a moment to really sink in, Teisel found himself starting to feel lightheaded. He balled his hands up into fists and focused intensely on the light switch by the door. Even though they’d seen him check out of reality plenty of times before, he still didn’t want to break down in front of the guys. “I’m not sure what to make of this.” He finally admitted a few minutes later, once he'd managed to convince himself that he’d be able to hold it together if he spoke to them about it. He couldn’t bring himself to add that, up until that revelation, a hefty part of the reason he’d been able to get by and adjust to his new life with the Bright Bats at all was because he could keep it separate from his past. There were times when he found himself struggling to get through the day, when the thought of moving on paralyzed him with a crushing, completely unfounded sense of guilt. The easiest way to cope with it involved pretending that he was off on vacation, or that he was dreaming, or that he’d been sucked into some kind of alternate universe. He’d always wanted that last one to happen to him when he was a kid, anyway. Whatever it took to convince himself that he could walk out and take his Drache back to whatever island Bon and Tron were camping out on and pick up right where they left off, as if the rockets and Mega Man Volnutt had never happened. It just sounded too stupid to ever say out loud, but knowing that these perfect strangers had a direct connection to his family, however tenuous it might have been, made it quite a bit harder for him to maintain the illusion. Teisel could already tell that he was starting to make Max extremely uncomfortable, and the atmosphere was contagious. “Go,” he softly added. He gestured toward the doorway. He could feel his voice breaking and knew the floodgates had the potential to open at any second. “Get out of here. I need to be alone for a while.” Pic and Max didn’t need to be told twice, and all but scrambled out of the kitchen, leaving their TV dinners in the microwave. The two of them decided to get gyros instead. When they got back, Teisel had completely disappeared for the night. Grill woke up the next morning to find him passed out on the couch. “We’ve really gotta get this guy his own room,” he remarked to himself as he gently shook Teisel’s shoulder to wake him up. “Hey buddy, I really want to watch some TV...” Teisel just grumbled something that sounded an awfully lot like, “I told you to leave me alone, Max,” and yanked a patched-up throw pillow over his head. Grill backed off and let him sleep in. Those TV dinners in the microwave still looked edible, anyway. Teisel didn’t wake up. Instead, at some nebulous point in the evening, he simply found it impossible to continue sleeping. What he’d thought was a minor throwaway character that Tron had decided to toss in for plot development turned out to be the missing link that connected his family to the Bright Bats. He’d barely given the character a passing thought. If any of the Bright Bats had mentioned the name Barrett over the months he’d been a part of the gang, it didn’t even register that this might be the same person. After skimming through the text to catch any other mentions of this kid, he found a short blurb in the homecoming party where he himself had mentioned a famous digger with great hair. Unfortunately, that was about it. There were so many questions running through his mind that he didn’t even know where to begin. The Bright Bats used to have another digger in the group. A digger who, in some capacity, knew his sister, who didn’t have very many friends to begin with. By the time Aero found him pacing around the kitchen the next morning and trying to piece everything together, he’d already gone through four cups of coffee and had another pot brewing. As soon as he realized she’d entered the room, he greeted her, if one could call it a greeting. There was no “Good morning,” no “Help yourself to some coffee,” or “Anything good in the paper?” All he said was, “Tell me everything you know about Barrett.” Aero just stared at him and let the newspaper slip out of her hand. It fluttered to the linoleum below her feet as her face seemed to turn a shade paler. Her blue hair only served to intensify her dumbfounded expression. “Who told you about Barrett?” She finally demanded. She wasn’t sure when her palms had started sweating. She’d been hoping she would be able to put this conversation off for another few months. “Tron did. He was in the book.” Teisel explained with a frenetic urgency. He gesticulated wildly as he racked his mind to provide Aero with an accurate recap. “Max and Pic read it and noticed and told me he used to be in the Bright Bats. For some reason, my sister knew he existed and thought he was important enough to put in that story of hers, but I can’t for the life of me figure out how or why, or what she might have meant for him to do there. I have been awake for hours looking through this book for anything I might have missed. Please, Aero. I know you need to go to work, but this…I don’t know what to do about it. I can’t explain it. The questions just keep running through my mind. Part of me doesn’t want them answered, but I know if I just let this fester I’m going to explode!” Aero picked up her paper and propped herself up against the countertop. The speed at which the words tumbled out of the new guy’s mouth was more than a little unsettling. “Listen, Teisel,” she began, “For me, Barrett’s kind of like…I guess you could say he’s like the biggest regret I’ve ever had in my life. I mean, it’s not like you had any way of knowing not to talk to me about it or anything. I just…uh…really wasn’t expecting to hear that first thing in the morning. It literally came out of nowhere, I haven’t had my coffee yet, and I’m still not sure where I should even begin.” Teisel seemed to freeze on the spot. “Did something happen to him?” He cautiously asked as he cupped his hands around the coffee mug he’d been refilling throughout the night. “Yeah,” Aero admitted. “I did.” “You didn’t kill him, did you?” “No, no, it wasn’t anything like that. I just…look, I was at a very impressionable age when he showed up with his parkour and his black belt and his natural digging skills. If I had to guess, I’d say he and Max were probably the same age. None of us ever really asked how old he was, but for some reason he always seemed a lot more mature than the rest of us. He just…he knew about all sorts of things, and he had this way of carrying himself that made him look like the coolest person in the room no matter where he went, and…” “You had a crush on him, didn’t you?” Aero felt her cheeks flush just thinking about it. “I-is it that easy to tell?” She faltered with a self-conscious, reflexive grin. “You can probably guess that things didn’t work out, though. I, uh, I was kind of clingy when I was thirteen. Nobody told you about it?” “Nope.” “Glad to know I can still trust those guys.” Aero muttered to herself as she turned around and rummaged through the cupboards for her own coffee mug. She fixed herself a cup of coffee and sat down in her usual spot across from Teisel. The classifieds could wait. “I guess if you think about it, you’ve probably come to the right person if you want to know about Barrett. I’m sure I remember more about him than anyone else here. The only thing I probably couldn’t tell you is what he looked like without his goggles on. None of us got anywhere with that, but believe me, I tried. I tried way too many times for my own good. I probably shouldn’t have followed him everywhere, begging him to take me on motorhorse rides. I can definitely see how that might come off as annoying now.” “So he wore goggles before he even joined your gang?” Teisel asked. “Was he one of the original members?” Aero shook her head. “None of us are sure where he came from. He just showed up one day completely at random. I think he started hanging out with us because he felt sorry for us. We were even worse at motorhorse racing back then. Would you believe he was amazing on a motorhorse, too? It was like there wasn’t anything he couldn’t do. He might have literally been the perfect guy.” Teisel deadpanned. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” The idea of Aero—aloof, snarky, emotionally-distant Aero—finding herself so smitten with someone she hadn’t spoken to in almost a decade that she still couldn’t seem to remember any of his faults boggled his mind almost as much as finding out that the fictional rival Tron had given Mega Man had actually been a real person. When Aero talked about Barrett, it was as if this bizarrely bubbly part of her personality he didn’t even know she had in her suddenly popped up and completely took over. It was unsettling, to say the least. “I wish I were kidding you,” Aero frowned. “He didn’t really act like he had any problem with me asking him out on dates and following him around, ambushing him with hugs and stupid little gifts. That made it so much worse when he finally snapped and left after all that time he spent with us. He said that I was creepy! He even took our ferret with him! Do I look creepy to you?” “We’re getting off-track here, Aero.” Teisel replied without missing a beat. “How do you think Tron knew Barrett?” Aero bit her bottom lip and fiddled with the end of her braid as she tried to figure out the best way to steer the conversation onto a more comfortable path. “I don’t know. T-this is just gonna sound really crazy, Teisel,” she stammered. Teisel opened his mouth to ask if she was going to be okay, but before he had a chance to speak up, she started talking again. “Listen. I don’t know if you know much about me, but I’m not good with building things…at all. I’m better with electronics and computers. Grill can vouch for that. So, uh, you know how a lot of diggers and spotters hook up?” Teisel slowly shook his head. He sincerely hoped that phenomenon wasn’t as common as Aero seemed to think it was. “Yeah, that’s a thing,” Aero continued. “I really wanted to become Barrett’s spotter. I thought it’d give me a better chance to impress him, but I couldn’t afford any equipment, and making it from scratch would have been too hard for me to do.” She raised her coffee to her lips and took a sip in an effort to mask her hesitation to continue the story. If Teisel had been even a little bit less desperate to get the answers he wanted, he would have noticed how much her hands shook as she held her mug. He might have finally taken the hint and told her not to worry about it. Maybe save the rest of that anecdote for a day when they were both in a stable mental environment. But, as it was, he just stared straight ahead and nodded in hopes that it would usher her to the conclusion a little more quickly. He’d spent far too long coming to terms with Tron’s death for his liking, and he’d decided that the sooner he could wrap everything up into a tidy little package and stick a ribbon on it, the better. Unfortunately, in his quest to get a quick resolution, he never considered how any of this might affect Aero, or how that in turn might make the whole thing backfire right in his face. She’d stopped talking for a while and started snapping the rubber band at the end of her braid, just so she wouldn’t have to look the man at the other end of the table in the eye. “That was when I found out there was this girl…who was building a spaceship…” As soon as Teisel realized where this story was going, his heart began to pound in his chest. “Wow.” He uttered after a long, uncomfortable silence. “Yeah. I was the one who met Tron, not Barrett.” “That’s…” Teisel began, but he found himself at a complete loss for words. He’d been living with Aero for months now. He couldn’t believe that he'd never picked up on any sign that she’d known Tron whatsoever. So much for keeping his Bright Bats life and his family separated. “You’re telling me you knew my sister this whole time.” “…Yes.” “And you didn’t mention it until just now?!” He nearly shouted. “When did you figure this out? Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?!” “It’s complicated, Teisel.” Aero admitted as she nursed her coffee, absentmindedly stirring it as she spoke with a shaky, uneven resonance to her voice. “I realized she was your sister the minute Max told us that Tron was the one who built the rocket. I had no idea she died, and it hit me harder than I let on. I don’t think the others noticed. If you’d been there in the room too, right when I found out, you probably would have figured something was up, but…it is what it is, I guess. You just…you looked so vulnerable back there, I was worried that if I told you, it might have made everything worse. I was worried you might have done something crazy. We hadn’t had a new guy since Barrett, and Barrett…well, now you know. I went all in and lost everything.” “You lost… everything? Over one boy?” Teisel repeated. “That sounds extreme.” “Ugh,” Aero sighed. She ran her sweaty, trembling fingers through her bangs until they smashed up against her goggles and set them askew. “I really didn’t mean for that part to slip out. Crap.” Teisel stared as Aero clenched her hand into a fist and pursed her lips. “Come on, Aero. What happened that you’re not telling me?” “It’s got nothing to do with you.” “I’m probably going to find out about it sooner or later.” “Okay. Fine. I really don’t feel like arguing this early in the day.” Aero relinquished. “I guess the guys didn’t tell you my dad’s the police chief around here. Good on them, really, because like the rest of this story, it wasn’t any of your business. Being in a police family meant that my parents really didn't want me hanging around with the Bright Bats, so you can probably guess that some friction happened with that. Eventually, they wound up kicking me out of their house because I stayed out past curfew one time too many trying to hit on Barrett. I was sixteen. They told me if I wanted to spend all my time hanging around with a bunch of freakish Rebel Riders, I shouldn’t even bother coming back.” When Teisel didn’t respond right away, she quickly added, “Look. It’s alright. I’m fine. I’m over it. My parents were never very nice people, if you get where I’m coming from. Lawful evil, if you ask Max about it. You don’t have to worry about me or anything like that, got it?” “Hold on a minute. So what you’re saying is that you got yourself kicked out of your house over some boy who didn’t even like you as a friend?” Teisel finally summarized. “I can’t say I’m not disappointed to hear that, Aero.” Aero couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “You’re seriously taking their side?” “How old are you, anyway? If you were thirteen ten years ago, when you met this guy, then that would make you what, twenty-three?” Teisel asked. “When I was twenty-three, if you'd told me that I’d miss my father once he was gone, I’d have probably laughed at you. My mom and I were close, but my dad never approved of any of my hobbies. If he’d had his way, I’d have grown out of cartoons when I was six years old. Looking back, it really seemed like we wasted all of those years arguing about it…” “Listen, Teisel, I get where you’re coming from and all, but you never grew up with my parents,” Aero cut him off. “This is exactly why I didn’t want to tell you about this! You and your dad didn’t like the same TV shows? Mine kicked me to the streets! You’re acting like I’ve never tried going back to see if they’d give me another chance or anything, either!” “Your parents aren’t going to live forever,” Teisel countered, “and I don’t want you to have to go through your life with the same regrets I did because you took them for granted!” It took every ounce of restraint Aero had within her to keep herself from flinging her coffee in his face. Instead, she stood up, backed away from the table, and shouted, “These aren’t people you can just go and reason with!” “Family’s the most important thing you’ll ever have! Do you have any idea how many hopes and dreams I had to set aside because I didn’t want to lose what was left of my family?!” Teisel roared. “You have no right to yell at me for at least warning you about all of this before it’s too late, if clearly nobody else in your life is going to!” “I have every right to yell at you!” Aero defended herself. “As soon as I walked into this room, you went and asked me about the one guy who drove me to shut out every other person I met from that point onward. I finally open up about it after living with you for all this time, in response to a question you asked, and then you go and give me a lecture about taking my parents for granted? Of course I’m going to be mad! Face the facts, Teisel! Not every family’s worth caring about!” “...You guys woke me up.” Pic suddenly stated from the kitchen doorway. If he’d been listening in on the whole argument, it didn’t show in his expression at all. “I’m hungry.” “Go get yourself some breakfast, then.” Aero grumbled. She snatched her newspaper up and barged straight past him, leaving Teisel sitting in the kitchen with his thoughts and two tepid cups of coffee. “I’m done.” When Aero finally walked back into the common room after taking some time to calm herself down, Pic was perched on the back of the couch waiting for her. “T-Bonne took off a while ago.” He reported. “Why should I care what he does?” Aero snorted. She'd rolled the classifieds from that morning’s paper up, and they stuck straight up out of her back pocket. Even Pic could tell that she looked a little sloppy. “If I don’t hit the streets soon, someone else’ll take these errands.” Pic stared intensely at Aero. “…Are you really sure you don’t care what he does?” “What are you getting at, Pic?” “I’ll bet you 1,000 zenny that he’s on his way to the police station to try and talk to your dad.” “…I didn’t tell him my dad was the police chief back there, did I?” “Yes. You did. He also told me he was going to the police station. I can only assume that’s what he’s going to do there. In fact, I’m 97% sure of it. You should go catch him before he gets you into even more of a mess.” Aero smacked herself in the forehead. "Ugh..." she groaned. She wondered for the second time that morning how long Pic had really been listening in on their argument. She fished the newspaper out of her pocket and tossed it onto the coffee table. If Teisel had actually run off to try and fix her splintered family relations himself, then working that day was out of the question. She turned back to Pic in a fuming rage. “Why didn’t you try and stop him?! Come on, we have to try to catch him before he does anything stupid!” Pic shook his head. “This is between you and T-Bonne. I don’t want to get involved.” “Typical.” Aero grumbled, storming out the door, up the stairwell, out of the alleyway and into the bustling streets of Teomo City. She could only hope she wasn’t too late.
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Aiyumi
Gorubeshu
Brazilian Kobun
Posts: 222
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Post by Aiyumi on Oct 6, 2014 19:51:01 GMT -5
Did they (or will they ever) return uncle Troy's drill? XD Teisel is drinking too much coffee! This shows that few can resist Terra's coffee . Finally some info on Barrett... And Aero. I'm waiting to see how the talk with her family goes.
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