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Post by Dashe on May 22, 2014 17:42:27 GMT -5
Since I can't keep a secret to save my life, a lot of you probably know that I have been slightly quieter than usual lately because I spent the last six months working on an obscenely long fanfic that is, unfortunately, not as long as Traingham's now that I've compared wordcounts. I will be posting chapters weekly and should work or anything get in the way of my scheduled updates, you can expect updates will be early instead of late. If I am ever late, feel free to never ever let me hear the end of it. Title: Press Start to Continue Rating: T Summary: This isn't the Mega Man Legends 3 you wanted, but life isn't always fair.
“They aren’t coming, are they, Bullbreath?” Brisket, the Roast Beefs’ esteemed mechanic, asked from his lookout position up in the wasteland bluffs of Klickelan Island as he wiped the dust off of his construction helmet. If it weren’t for the two massive towers in the middle of the island basking the gang in a considerable wedge of shade, he’d have been completely sunburned already. “Give ‘em another thirty minutes,” A tall, thin man declared from atop a snazzy blue motorhorse. He called himself Ossobuco and had arrived on the scene dressed to the nines with a massive blond Mohawk. “They probably got lost or something.” Brisket scowled. “I wasn’t askin’ you…” “It’s the Bright Bats,” Ossobuco retorted. “Those losers couldn’t find their own way out of the entire Ambagry Archipelago even if all four of 'em came out into the bay to race us all at the same time. It’s a wonder they’re still Rebel Riders after ten years of pullin’ this kind of crap.” He sighed and turned to the massive black man sitting on the motorhorse next to him. “Why do we even bother racing these guys, Bullbreath?” Bullbreath shrugged. “We’re not exactly top of the heap ourselves nowadays,” he pointed out. “They may not be a bunch of whiny kids anymore, but they’re still easy targets, and I could really use a new TV right now.” “Well if they never show up, we’ll have wasted three hours of our lives that we will never be able to get back.” Ossobuco flatly stated as he stared back up at the towers looming over them. Pipes of various shapes and sizes snaked their way in and out of the apertures that dotted the dark, ominous structures. The landmark gave Klickelan and the rest of the Ambagry Arhicpelago an air of mystery. Ghiotte Summit, the residents of Teomo City called it…not that the three members of the Roast Beefs spent very much time in the city. For one thing, there were too many diggers running around looking for some kind of buried treasure, and for another, the government was not fond of the island’s resident motorhorse gangs one bit. In fact, over the years Teomo City’s popularity with the digging community turned the entire Ambagry Archipelago into one of the world’s most significant Guild-sanctioned digging hubs, and when a small group of diggers started some experiments with rockets about twelve years earlier on one of the satellite islands, Klickelan's population exploded as people flocked over to watch history in the making. Then, a few years later, after that project ground to a halt, the city officials first noticed small groups of low-grade Reaverbots starting to poke their way out into the wasteland surrounding the city. In retaliation, they reinforced the walls separating Teomo City from the wasteland. The Rebel Rider collective took it as a blessing in disguise. The gradual Reaverbot infestation meant that the outlaws were free to drive as fast and as recklessly as they pleased through the wasteland, since the police certainly weren’t about to patrol an area where they might have to deal with crashing into a Horokko. Bullbreath sneered at one of the awkward little Reaverbots as it ambled across the grassy field down by the ocean. The Horokko was the only sign of life, if one could call it life, that any of the Roast Beefs could see. “Where are those losers?” He wondered out loud. The way things had been going that day, it’d be just his luck if they showed up without any money to bet on top of their tardiness. Somehow he had a sinking feeling that he'd be stuck with his fizzy old CRT for quite a bit longer than he'd hoped. Two of the losers in question had crammed themselves onto a single red motorhorse, which was slowly chugging its way along the winding path into the bluffs where Bullbreath and his goons were waiting. Both riders appeared to be in their mid twenties, and the hefty driver alone put them well over the manufacturer's suggested weight limit. “Come on, Grill, can’t this thing go any faster?” The wiry fellow in the back demanded as he ran his fingers through his impeccably gelled quiff in exasperation. The chunky blond guy at the helm was completely unfazed. “Max, you know double-riding takes a toll on this thing! We need to take it slow or the engine’ll overheat, and we promised Bullbreath we’d race the Roast Beefs in the gorge at ten. We’re already behind schedule, and the last thing we need is for this old bike to break down in the middle of…” The driver trailed off and slowed to a stop. “Grill? Hey Grill, what’re you doing?!” Max yelled. “For what it's worth, this had better be engine failure! At this rate he’s going to think we’ve stood him up! You know how Bullbreath gets when he gets stood up!” Grill pointed to what looked like a rusty green lump behind a cluster of rocks. “I think there’s a guy back there!” He exclaimed. “What, you mean that pile of scrap metal?” Grill dismounted the motorhorse and wandered over to where an unsettlingly thin middle-aged man in a suit of armor a few sizes too big for him had passed out. Grill guessed that at one point the armor had actually been green and he wasn't just looking at grass stains, but even in broad daylight, it was a tough call. The old guy had a tangled mess of gray hair and was clutching a large hardcover book like a vise even unconscious as he was. “Woah, he doesn’t look so good,” He assessed. “We’ve gotta get this guy some help, fast!” “We don’t have to do anything,” Max groaned. “We’ve got an important race to win. Who’s the leader here, anyway?” “Max, you say that like we actually have a chance at beating them,” Grill groaned. “We haven’t beaten anybody at all in years, not even once! The only times we ever did win were back when we had Barrett with us. That guy was a real whiz on a motorhorse. You and I both know that if we actually go and race the Roast Beefs, we’re just going to lose whatever we throw into the betting ring. If we don’t help him out, he’s going to die up here!” He turned toward the strange man and gently shook his shoulder. “Come on, wake up,” he coaxed. “You okay, buddy?” Max sighed and plodded over to his partner. “Grill, sometimes I really wonder about you,” he sighed as he rolled his eyes. “He’s still breathing,” Grill stated. “We should take him back to base. If the cops find him wandering around out here they’ll probably lock him up! You know how they get!” “Base? Don’t you mean the hospital?” Max pointedly questioned. “Please, Max.” Grill groaned. “You know the police aren't exactly on our side. Goodwin’s men are everywhere. We can handle, uh…whoever this guy is…" He trailed off. Dealing with a complete stranger definitely sounded better than dealing with Gonzo Goodwin. "Besides, who knows? Maybe he’d even be willing to help us out. He might have some useful skills, and if worse comes to worse and he turns out to be some kind of crackpot, he’d still owe us a solid.” Max pondered that sentiment for a while. Grill had a point. And hey, if they were still letting that Pic kid hang around, then there was no reason not to take the old guy in for the time being. He looked a little wild, but they were Rebel Riders. What did they have to lose? The more Max thought about it, the better the idea sounded. It had been a while since they’d initiated a new member into the Bright Bats. Their reputation in the Rider circuit was so pathetic that he realized they’d have to do something drastic or risk losing whatever status they had left as a gang in the first place. “Alright, you got me, but only because I’m a real swell guy like that.” He sighed. “Bullbreath can go jump off a cliff. Let’s load this dude up and head back to town.”
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Post by Kyle on May 23, 2014 7:06:44 GMT -5
*Calmly sips his 'morning' cup of tea* It begiiiiins.
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Post by Dashe on May 29, 2014 7:45:31 GMT -5
Teisel rolled over, clinging desperately to the last lingering fragments of the dream he’d been having as he tried to drift back to sleep and pick up where he left off. The moment he realized he wasn’t holding onto Tron’s notebook, though, his eyes quickly snapped open and he glanced around trying to scan the hillside for where he might have dropped it. Unfortunately, at that particular moment, he wasn’t on the hillside anymore. Somehow or another he found himself on a couch inside a cozy, cluttered, dimly-lit room that he’d never seen before in his life. It smelled like soup and machine parts. There was a dented old television set resting on a pile of cinder blocks a few feet away from him, a fat guy with a tangled blond beard slurping something out of a bowl near a workbench on the other side of the room, and nobody else in sight. Just a bunch of random objects and cardboard boxes packed into the room. If he had to guess at its function, he’d have pegged the place for a glorified storage unit. The book was nowhere to be found, either. In a panic, he bolted upright. “Where’s my notebook!?” He hysterically exclaimed His gaze darted across the strange room as he looked for any sign of the tome he could find. The fat guy set his soup down on the workbench and swiveled around on the stool to face Teisel. “Woah, relax! I put it next to the couch, right on the floor. My name’s Grill Pitmaster. I’m the mechanic for the Bright Bats.” He explained. “Help yourself to some soup. You could probably use some food. Honestly, I’m shocked you managed to get so worked up so quickly.” Teisel glanced down to his right. Sure enough, Tron’s notebook was neatly propped up against the patched couch he’d been snoozing on, with the faded Bonne emblem in the center facing outward. “Oh.” He flatly stated, as if that sudden burst of energy had never even happened. “Right. Yeah. Food. Yeah. That…that sounds like a smart idea.” Grill stood up, nodded, and headed into the kitchen. Several minutes later, he returned with a bowl of broth and handed it to Teisel. “So, have you got a name or anything? What’s the last thing you ate? What were you doing up there, anyway?” “I crashed my la…er, my airship,” Teisel explained in between shoveling down spoonfuls of broth. It tasted better than it looked. He’d learned over the years that running out of food generally tended to make things taste better. “I ran out of rations that night. Was it last night? I’m really not sure what I was thinking, coming here. I couldn’t even find the place. They probably left years ago.” “Well, if you’ve got nowhere to crash, you’re welcome to stay here. All of us agreed yesterday that you could stick around as long as you’d like,” Grill assured him. He dismissed Teisel’s other ramblings and simply repeated, “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name…?” “My name’s Teisel. Teisel Bonne.” Teisel replied. “I could have sworn I’d mentioned it earlier...” “Don’t worry about it,” Grill shrugged. “Airship crashes can really mess you up sometimes. If it were me in your shoes I’d probably be forgetting all sorts of things.” “Forgetting things sounds pretty nice.” Teisel sighed. He finished up the alleged soup and pulled himself to his feet. He didn’t remember standing taking this much effort. “You have a working shower in this…er…” He trailed off. The more he thought about it, the less likely it seemed that they’d dragged him to a storage unit. He didn’t want to take any chances. He gazed lightheadedly around the room and tried his hardest to properly identify it, but he was completely stumped. For all he could tell it was half rec center, half garage. “Yeah, it’s down the hall on your right.” Instructed Grill. “Feel free to borrow some of my clothes so you can wash that suit you’ve got on, too. I’ve got a fresh change in a crate in the bathroom. No offense, but, uh, you smell like…” “None taken.” Teisel curtly cut him off as he picked up the book and wandered down the hall. He accidentally wandered into a real storage closet before he finally figured out which door Grill actually meant. Teisel had a hunch that Grill’s spare jumpsuit wouldn’t even come close to fitting him. He knew he’d lost a lot of weight over the years, especially as times grew tougher, but he still wasn’t quite prepared for the sight that awaited him when he caught a glimpse of himself in the dingy bathroom mirror after he stepped out of the shower. He wasn’t sure he’d have even helped himself had his and Grill’s roles been reversed. Part of it stemmed from the fact that he was just so used to seeing himself in that bulky suit of armor, despite how ill-fitting it had become over the last decade. Now he finally had a chance to really see how gaunt he’d become after all those years of failure stacking up on each other. He couldn’t remember if he could ever see his own ribs before then, and he couldn’t be sure how long he’d had those dark circles under his eyes or where all those wrinkles had come from. The scruffy facial hair wasn’t a great look for him, either, even though he’d tried to shave it as often as possible back when he still had the Drache. He just didn’t seem to have any spark left in him. It also didn’t help that the belt Grill had given him, figuring the jumpsuit would be a bit large, didn’t cinch close enough. He cracked open the medicine cabinet for a makeshift hair tie. Shaving with someone else’s razor was probably completely out of the question. At least he still had a full head of hair, he figured. There were a few times where that fact was the only thing that kept him going. It was a frivolous thing and sometimes he felt bad that he’d even consider it important in the first place, given the circumstances, but it was something. To Teisel’s surprise, the cabinet contained a jar filled with various implements he could use to keep his hair out of his face. He tied it back into a loose ponytail with a sigh and plopped himself down on the rim of the tub to collect his thoughts. “So this Teisel guy told me that he crashed his airship.” Grill explained as Max and the rest of the gang tried to piece the situation together over their share of the soup. They’d returned from the rematch with Bullbreath, and it hadn’t ended well. “Apparently he came down this way looking for something. Someone, it sounded like.” “And you didn’t press for more information?” Max chastised the portly mechanic. “The guy was just involved in an airship crash!” The Bright Bats’ wire tapper, Aero, reprimanded. She ran her fingers through her freshly dyed blue hair and heaved an exasperated sigh. “Max, he’s probably disoriented enough as it is. There’s no sense in turning this into an interrogation!” “He did go through that bowl of soup faster than me, even if I just gave him broth. I didn’t want to shock his system.” Grill shrugged. “He seemed a little on-edge. He took that book of his with him into the bathroom just now, too.” “Book?” Pic, the youngest member of the group, chimed in. He had a collection of books. He stacked them by color. His mind raced wondering what color book it was. “If I catch you trying to steal that man’s book I’m taking your gasket collection away!” Grill frowned. “I didn’t even ask what was in there. The way he kind of lost it when he woke up and realized he wasn’t holding it…I felt like asking about it was like an invasion of privacy. If he wants us to know what it is, he can tell us on his own.” Aero raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean by, ‘lost it?’” “Hey, it’s not what it sounds like,” The mechanic defended. He raised his hands and stepped backward. “He’s probably harmless. The red eye implants make him look a little intense, I guess, but he doesn’t seem dangerous or anything. As soon as he realized he still had his book with him he kind of slumped back down and acted…well, he acted about what you’d expect from a guy who just crashed his airship, wandered around for a while, and passed out in the middle of the wasteland.” Max glanced toward the hallway and asked, “How long did you say he’s been in that bathroom again?” “Oh geez,” Grill realized as he fumbled for his cell phone. “He’s been in there for…almost three hours now.” “Grill, that’s not normal,” Aero seemed taken aback. “For all we know he could be stealing my hair care products.” “He's a guy,” Max interjected. "He's probably stealing my hair care products." “He’s got a lot of hair. You never know.” "200 zenny says he's stealing mine." 'What if he brought his own?" Aero retorted. Grill shook his head, “I’m just worried something might’ve happened to him in there. He seemed too shell-shocked to even think about robbing us. Spaced-out, disoriented…he just didn’t look well. Physically, I mean. He said he ate yesterday, but maybe he had too much broth. He could’ve passed out again, or worse…” He trailed off, glanced back at his fellow Bright Bats, and then all but scrambled down the hall toward the bathroom. “Hey, Teisel? Teisel, are you okay?” He called out in concern, knocking on the bathroom door. “You still in there?” After about a minute of hesitation that felt more to Grill like five, he heard Teisel respond, “Yeah, I...I’m here. I’m fine.” Grill took a moment to evaluate that and replied, “Okay, if you’re sure you’re alright...the rest of the gang’s back. I made sure to warn them not to overwhelm you or anything when they first arrived, so if you’re worried about that, there’s no need to be. Still, you should really go meet them. They’re nice.” His suggestion was met with a dead silence that seemed a lot longer than it actually was, but to Grill’s surprise, the door clicked open and swung inward. “Yeah, sure. Okay.” Teisel uttered. The jumpsuit barely hung onto his wiry frame and almost came up to Teisel’s knees. Even slumped over as he was, the new guy turned out to be pretty tall. Grill thought he’d been able to make a rough estimate of his stature when he helped carry him in, but clearly that estimate was off by quite a bit. Teisel was also still holding onto that book, which made the mechanic wonder if he’d been distracted reading it the whole time. “Where’d you put your suit?” Grill asked. “Where I found yours.” “I’ll go send Pic to drop it off at the cleaner’s,” Grill offered as he motioned for Teisel to follow him into the base proper where Max, Pic, and Aero were waiting for them. “About time,” Max muttered under his breath as Teisel gave them a slight, nervous wave. “I’m Max. I’ve been the leader of the Bright Bats for more than ten years now, so if there’s anything you need or anything you need us to know, I’m your guy. These two dorks are Aero and Pic. It’s good to see you’re up and about.” “T-thanks,” Teisel softly replied. “I’m Teisel Bonne. I guess Grill must have told you that by now. Sorry for the trouble.” “There’s no trouble here,” Max assured him, “No more trouble than we’re used to, at least. Trouble tends to come with the territory when you’re a Rebel Rider.” “What now?” Grill stepped up to explain. “Basically, we’re a gang. Teomo’s got more motorhorse gangs than you can probably imagine. We, uh, try to stay away from the police if we can help it. We’re not bad people, honest! We’re just…well…honestly, we’re not even that good at making trouble. Or racing, for that matter. We’re probably the lamest gang on the entire island.” “You one of those goody-two-shoes types?” Max skeptically asked. “You wouldn’t rat us out to the fuzz after we saved your life, would you?” Teisel barely knew how to respond to that one. All he could bring himself to do was shake his head as Pic wandered off to one of the junk piles in the corner and started rearranging things. Max heaved a sigh of relief. Aero, who hadn’t taken her eyes off of the rubber band holding back Teisel’s slightly damp hair, finally stated, “He totally stole my hairband, Max. Pay up.” The ex-pirate immediately felt his hands start to shake. “I, uh…I just…there wasn’t any…” “Aero, he probably just wanted to put his hair up so it wasn’t in his face,” Grill sighed. “If you care that much, I’ll give you 10 zenny and you can go buy a new rubber band. And to think, you were the one who didn’t want this turned into an interrogation! Does the phrase, ‘this guy almost died’ mean anything to you?” “I’m sorry,” Teisel muttered as he awkwardly fiddled with the drawstring on his borrowed jumpsuit. “I…I’ll buy one if you want. I’ll get some money and replace it.” Aero’s face fell and flushed in embarrassment as she realized Grill had an extremely valid point. “It’s fine, Teisel. It’s not important. Max and I were just betting on…ah, forget it. It was a stupid bet anyway. You don’t have to worry about paying me or anything.” “You do know you can sit down if you’d like, right?” Grill added. “Don’t feel like you have to stand this whole time or anything.” “Oh right,” Teisel awkwardly responded as he laboriously lowered himself onto the couch. His joints cracked audibly from a combination of age and abuse. “Sorry,” he added again with a nervous grin. “So what kind of things do you like to do?” Aero asked in, what was obvious to everyone save for Teisel himself, a blatant attempt to make up for her accidental indiscretion. Teisel paused. “I…I suppose I haven’t given that much thought in a while.” He admitted. “Nothing’s really coming to mind right now.” “Oh.” Aero responded. She wasn’t entirely sure how to feel about that. “What about reading? You took your book into the bathroom…is that one special, or do you just read a lot?” “Both, I guess,” Teisel replied. “I had a lot of books back when…” he trailed off. He wasn’t ready to talk about the Gesellschaft. Or anything from his past, really. At least not with people he’d barely met. They probably already thought he was a mess and all he’d told them was about the Drache crash he’d just been in. The last thing Teisel wanted to do was to come off as a burden or a crackpot. Grill waved a hand in front of Teisel’s lifeless eyes and whistled to try and get his attention. “You okay there?” He asked. “Bad topic?” “N-no, it’s fine. Really.” Teisel shook his head once Grill’s interjection registered. “I do like to read. I just haven’t been able to get around to it in a while.” He glanced at the book in his hand again and added, “Last night was the first time I even read this one. I wanted to save it for…er…an emergency, I guess. I got through it in one sitting but, well…it was a pretty tough read.” Max glanced over at where Pic was restacking his book collection. “Yo! Pic!” He shouted. “Got anything for this guy to read that you’re not, uh, stacking at the moment?” Pic glanced across the room at where the rest of the gang was staring at him in annoyance. The three of them had explicitly forbidden him from adding the new guy’s book to Stack N, and now they expected Pic to dismantle his carefully constructed book towers just to keep him occupied. It hardly seemed fair to the gangly teenager. “He only takes the ones on top.” Pic offered as a compromise. “If he puts them back in the wrong order, he has to get his own, but I’m 78% sure he’ll mess it up.” Aero sighed. “Why do we even keep that guy around?” She wondered out loud as she rubbed her temples in frustration. “Really, you don’t have to go to the trouble,” Teisel tried to cut in. “I’ll be okay.” “You know, the more you keep saying you’re okay, the less the rest of us are buying it,” Max sighed. “Aero, think you can hook T-Bonne here up with a library card?” “…T-Bonne?” Aero frowned. “You’re giving a corny nickname to a complete stranger who’s old enough to be Pic’s dad?” “Come on, Aero,” Max insisted, “He even looks like a T-Bonne! Huh? Am I right?” He glanced toward Grill and Teisel, looking for some sign of affirmation. If Teisel had an opinion on that one, he didn’t show it. Grill just shrugged. In his eyes Teisel looked more like a wreck than anything. “No objections? That settles it then!” He announced, clapping a hand on Teisel’s shoulder quite a bit harder than Teisel could handle. “Welcome to the Bright Bats, T-Bonne!” He reached into his pocket and produced a pair of goggles. “I went out and got these for you while you were out cold—there isn’t really a uniform, but all Rebel Riders have to own a pair of goggles. You can wear them however you’d like.” Teisel just stared blankly at the goggles in Max’s hand. “You really…you really want me to join your gang?” He tentatively asked. “As a member?” “Like I said, we talked about it after Max and I brought you in. You can stay with us as long as you need to. And that means if you want to stay with us forever, then that’s absolutely fine as long as we can still afford to stick together.” Grill explained with a warm smile. “You don’t have to even be there when we race our rivals. You just…this is stupid, but you look like you could use a family.” Teisel’s fingers instinctively tightened around the edge of his book as Grill’s analysis cut straight through his defenses. A surge of unexpected emotion came rushing forth to the surface and hitched in his throat. He looked from Grill to Aero to Max and even back toward where Pic had stopped moving boxes around. His mouth hung open as he struggled to bring himself to speak, but no matter how hard he tried, nothing came out. The amount of kindness these strangers had shown him was beyond anything he’d felt in a very long time. He could feel his eyes start to well up as he grinned a grin he hardly believed could still even fit on his face. He grasped the goggles with his free hand, and his voice cracked as he said, “Thank you.” It was the only thing he could bring himself to say. After all those years of nothing but one disaster after another, something had finally gone right.
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Post by Kyle on May 29, 2014 16:45:16 GMT -5
Great. Now I'm picturing Teisel wearing biker boots, a leather jacket with ripped jeans, playing a harmonica and singing "Bad to the Bonne". xD
Are these illustrations going to be the norm for your new chapters, or just a once-off sorta thing?
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Post by Dashe on May 29, 2014 17:02:20 GMT -5
Are these illustrations going to be the norm for your new chapters, or just a once-off sorta thing? It's going to be the norm. Ever since Unfriended I've really been into the idea of using MMLS's format to its fullest with writing/illustration combos, since all the actual writing sites online are text-only, so 1's going to pop up sometime before next Thursday. Plus it means putting the ole' altoids tin of watercolors to use for once.
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Post by Dashe on Jun 5, 2014 7:28:31 GMT -5
During his first few weeks living in Teomo City, Teisel aimlessly wandered around the small common room, unsure as to what he was supposed to do with himself while his new roommates went about their lives. He wasn’t comfortable checking out everyone’s bedrooms, and he didn’t want to bother Pic for any of his books. Over the past couple of days, that young man had proven to be unsettlingly unpredictable.
The Bright Bats’ television had a fuzzy picture. Somehow or another, Aero had managed to leech cable from the apartment building above their hideout. Teisel passed a good portion of the time watching game shows and infomercials. The nights in particular were especially difficult. He elected to continue sleeping on the couch, although there really didn't seem to be many other options for him at the moment. He doubted having a bed would help him doze off any better. So many thoughts were running through his mind that he found getting to sleep next to impossible. At least he had the local shopping network to keep him company while his fellow Bright Bats snoozed through the night.
His fellow Bright Bats. It still seemed like such an odd concept to wrap his mind around. He kept the goggles awkwardly strung around his wrist. It was hard to get used to. He couldn’t find any means of wearing them that looked any good, even when his digging suit came back from the cleaner’s. He couldn’t remember it ever being that green before, and at some point he noticed that it was finally starting to feel a little less loose on him. Every once in a while the others would talk about something and even though he never seemed to care enough about the details to commit any of the conversations to memory, the small talk in itself was a nice break from the silence he’d had to deal with up until his arrival on Klickelan Island.
So when Aero rushed in one afternoon and proudly handed Teisel an empty, postmarked envelope while he and Max were watching Balloon Fantasy, Teisel found himself asking, “What’s this all about?”
“It’s proof of address,” Aero explained. “For your library card, remember?”
“Huh.” Teisel examined the envelope. It did indeed have his name and an address in Teomo City emblazoned across the front.
“It took me a while to break into the post office and borrow the stamp, but this is as legitimate as it’s going to get,” She replied. “I can’t really see the library caring enough to dig much deeper than this. Every time I pass it on the streets, the place looks pretty empty. It’s a shame. This library’s only been around for a few years. All you have to do is show up with that and you should be able to get a card…and on the off-chance they give you any trouble, you can still read the books there for free no matter what Pic may tell you.”
“Thanks,” Teisel replied, still staring at the postmark. He reached over to the end table next to him and slipped the envelope into his book, turning back to watch the rest of the show.
“Hey, you haven’t been out on the town yet, have you, T-Bonne?” Max asked suddenly as he hit the power button on the remote. The bouncing red and blue balloons on the screen vanished into a sea of black. “It’s pretty great. We’ll pick up your library card and I’ll treat you to one of my famous shopping sprees! You really need to get some street clothes that fit, and I’m always at the cutting edge of fashion, you’ll see.”
Teisel took one look at Max’s gaudy Hawaiian shirt and bright orange cargo pants and raised his eyebrows in skepticism.
“Come on, I refuse to take no for an answer!” Max exclaimed, jumping up and grabbing Teisel by the hand. “Aero went to a lot of trouble to help you get your library card, and you’re gonna have to learn your way around Teomo City eventually. You’ll like it. There are a lot of cool shops in town. Maybe you’ll even find something that interests you out there!”
“Max is right,” Aero chimed in. “Even if nothing else out there catches your eye, the fresh air should be good for you.”
Teisel hesitated before giving a tentative nod. “Alright,” he said as he grabbed his book and allowed Max to pull him to his feet. “I guess it couldn’t hurt.”
Not long after they ascended the stairs to the surface and headed out of the alleyway into the Teomo City proper, Max realized that Teisel had been to this city before. The old guy never mentioned it as they walked uptown to the library, but something about the way he never seemed to miss a step along the way despite the winding roads and the overall hustle and bustle of the city...it was a pretty jarring contrast to how lost he looked while he was staying indoors.
Actually, Teisel didn’t mention anything as they walked side by side up the sloped streets, except at one point where he accidentally bumped into an old woman and muttered an apology as he kept plodding forward with his book tucked under his arm. The envelope poked out of it like a bookmark. Max could feel the citizens of Teomo City staring at the two of them and couldn’t shake how strangely uncomfortable just watching everyone else in the city interacting with Teisel made him feel.
They reached the library sooner than Max had expected, after more than a few failed attempts at small talk on Max’s behalf. The librarian lazily blinked a few times as they walked inside.
“Welcome to the Teomo City library,” she recited off of a note taped to her computer as Teisel awkwardly approached the counter with his empty envelope in hand. Her voice echoed throughout the large, imposing gray chamber. It looked like the building was completely empty aside from the three of them.
“I—I’d like a library card, if it’s not too much trouble,” He stuttered.
“I’m sorry, could you repeat that a little louder?” The librarian asked. “I’m afraid I couldn’t hear you.”
Teisel blinked a few times as though he’d just been punched in the stomach. After a profoundly uncomfortable silence he cleared his throat and repeated the request. It was almost painful for Max to watch, even though the paperwork went through without a hitch. When Teisel finally had the blue slip of plastic in his hand, he thanked her and shuffled off toward the door.
“Yo, T-Bonne!” Max shouted, seizing his arm. “Don’t tell me you came all the way out here and you’re not even going to borrow any books! You can’t just keep reading that one forever, especially after Aero went to the…”
“Please be quiet in the library,” the librarian reprimanded him before he had the chance to accidentally rat them out.
“Oh come on!” Max rolled his eyes. “We’re the only ones in here!”
“It’s okay,” Teisel reflexively replied, clutching his own book, “I really don’t think I…”
“It’s free books!” Max raised his arms in exasperation. “What’s there to complain about? It’s not like you’ve gotta trade the one you’ve already got for it or anything…” He thought to himself for a moment. “I’ve got it. If you really don’t want to hang around, I’ll just grab something at random for you to check out. I’m not much of a reader, but, well…I want to help. Know what I mean?”
“You really don’t have to go to the trouble, but if you insist,” Teisel shrugged.
“I’ll even read it, too,” He added as he wandered over to a shelf at random, completely oblivious to the library’s cataloging system. The only thing that mattered was the book’s page count. Max would do a lot of things to help a friend out, but spending hours reading one book was definitely not one of them. “It’ll give us something to talk about.”
So that was how Teisel and Max walked out of the library with a copy of Klicke Lafonica: Fact or Fiction? that evening.
Max made good on his promise to update Teisel’s wardrobe, and much to Teisel’s relief, the leader of the Bright Bats didn’t try and force him into a gaudy leather jacket or anything of the sort. Teisel mulled over the admittedly bizarre notion that this thuggish kid was technically his boss. He had a boss. He had a boss, and that boss was dipping into his own organization’s funds to help out a perfect stranger.
He did admit to himself that it was kind of nice owning street clothes again, even though Max advised that he buy them in a slightly larger size, since neither of them could guess how quickly he’d fill them out or what his normal weight was supposed to be. In the end he wound up decked out in a light green button down shirt, a dark green vest, and a slick pair of khakis, with an armload of other outfits to choose from later. He almost didn’t look like a panhandler, and opted to wear his new clothes out of the store to avoid any more odd looks from the townsfolk.
“Not bad,” Max assessed, quickly surveying the assortment of semi-formalwear and carrying it to the register. “Did you want to hang onto your old suit or should I chuck it?”
Teisel turned a bit pale at the mere suggestion, and Max sighed. “Guess I’ll just put it away for…later. Say, how do you feel about getting a haircut, too? That ponytail you’ve got doesn’t quite mesh with your new ensemble and you could definitely use a shave.”
Teisel thought hard on that one. “I’m not sure,” he finally replied. “I’ve had a ponytail since I was a kid. Having hair too short to tie back would be…weird.”
“Yeesh!” Max recoiled. “I don’t know exactly how old you are, but it’s definitely WAY too long for you to have the same hairstyle.” He sighed. “Come on, we’re going to the barber shop!”
“But…”
“What? It’s all on me!” The younger man exclaimed. He rifled through his wallet for his credit card. “Look, if you don’t like it you can always grow it back.”
“…Can I keep it spiky?” Teisel shyly requested, afraid of Max’s answer.
Max mulled over the idea for a bit, trying to imagine how that would look. “I can’t see spikes working on an old guy,” he admitted, “But if you think you can pull it off and it makes you more comfortable, then you should go for it.”
Max almost did a double-take. Teisel actually looked relieved. “Thanks,” he gratefully replied as Max charged everything.
Teisel found himself oddly mesmerized by his new haircut. The spikes were slicked up and stopped after about four inches. And it only required a quarter of a tube of hair product to stay in place!
“Hey, this isn’t half bad,” he remarked, running his fingers through his hair for the seventh time as he stared in the mirror.
“I can’t believe that doesn’t look awful,” Max shook his head in bewilderment as he charged the bill and tip and handed Teisel’s books back. He’d been so curious as to what it was in that one book that Teisel thought was so special, but he somehow managed to suppress the urge to check it out as he waited by the front desk. “You feeling up for a late lunch?”
“It’s dark out,” The cashier stated flatly, as if the street lamps illuminating the main road outside the window didn’t give it away.
“Come on, T-Bonne,” Max said. “Dinner, then. We haven’t eaten all day and I still haven’t taken you to our favorite spot - Johnny's Sandwiches and Internet Café! Their pesto panini is first-rate!”
“Alright,” Teisel nodded as they headed off into the city marketplace. Over the last few days, he’d learned it wasn’t a good idea to turn away food from any of the Bright Bats.
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Post by Dashe on Jun 12, 2014 11:42:41 GMT -5
Teisel admittedly spent more time focused on adjusting to his haircut than on taking in the café’s relaxing ambiance as Max led him inside and up to the counter to check out the menu. “Look all you want, but you’re really gonna want to try this panini. It’s the best thing they’ve got.” Max asserted. “Can we get some wings, too?” Teisel asked. Max looked at him incredulously. “I never would have pegged you for a wing guy,” he stated. “You know the panini comes with a side of fries already, right? I’m not too big on spicy stuff…ah, what the heck? It’s your first day out since we…er…since you got here. I can deal.” They placed the order, took their food, and sat down at a booth in the back, away from where the city’s kids were pretending to do their homework on a couple of the public computers. Max prodded at his steaming hot panini with a fork in hope that it would hurry up and cool down, and Teisel just sat idly across from him with his books and Max’s purchases stacked neatly by his side. Even though the food looked amazing, he found himself just staring into space. For some reason or another, this café gave him a strange, uncomfortable feeling in the pit of his stomach. He tentatively grabbed a drumette and took a bite. It wasn’t bad by a long shot. In fact, it was still crisp on the outside. These guys clearly made the food to order. “Like it?” Max asked. Teisel slowly nodded as he gazed into the distance, focusing for a moment on one of the vacant computers, closer to the front of the shop. Max shrugged it off. He figured he’d tried to force enough conversation for the moment. Then Teisel took a bite out of the panini, and uttered, “Oh crap.” This is THAT café! he thought to himself as the blood seemed to drain from his face and his chewing slowed to a halt. It’s under new management, and they’ve definitely redecorated, but I’d recognize this pesto panini recipe anywhere! Why didn’t I notice where we were going earlier?!Max waved his hands in front of Teisel’s face. “Hey. Hey T-Bonne, you alright?” he pestered, but Teisel seemed to be fixated on that computer again. The new guy absently loosened his grip and let the panini fall back onto his plate. “This place used to be called Diamond’s, didn’t it? My sister and I used to come here a lot.” Teisel finally articulated after a long, awkward silence, his voice cracking on every other word. Although he couldn’t recall the little details of any of the real panini lunches they’d had during the race to get a rocket into space, partially because there was once a time many years ago when he’d just wanted to forget them entirely, his younger sister had been so kind as to immortalize a frighteningly accurate idea of a lunch that might have been, all in writing. He didn’t even need to open the book next to him to check. In the past week living with the Bright Bats, he’d read over that scene far more often than he probably should have, and right then and there he found himself automatically watching the whole thing take place in his mind, as vividly as if his family were actually there. Teisel could see Tron sitting at that empty computer, scrolling and hitting the refresh button every few seconds, as if it were really ten years earlier, in a parallel world where Mega Man had managed to return to civilization safely. He could see a younger, goofier, more confident version of himself seated at the table nearby with a bowl of chicken soup, some kind of coffee, and about a dozen newly-purchased toy pirate figures scattered around him. Both of them had ordered the same pesto panini Teisel found himself eating at that very moment. It was completely surreal. He watched transfixed as Tron admonished his younger counterpart for dunking one of the boats into his soup, only for the other Teisel to quip back with a retort about how skimpy her wardrobe had become since Mega Man came back. It was the kind of petty argument he’d have probably forgotten a few months after the fact, had it actually been given the chance to take place. "I just don't want anything bad to happen to you, Tron. You're a decent-looking young woman, and I don't want anyone taking advantage of, er..." Teisel awkwardly fished the toy ship out of his soup and shook the broth out of the cracks and onto the cafe floor, much to the manager's dismay. "We really can't afford anybody taking advantage of you at this point," he added quite bluntly.
"I wouldn't let anyone take advantage of me. You know that!" Tron blinked and briefly abandoned the computer station, walking up to Teisel in determination. "I promise I won't let anything bad happen to me. I don't want to worry you." Then she smiled warmly and hugged onto her big brother.
"I hope you're right about that," Teisel sighed while Bon knocked on the window and peered at them from out on the streets. Being too large to fit in most shops was a bit of a setback.
Tron looked over at the window and waved at her little brother. "Oh Bon…" she giggled.“Hey! Come on, man!” Max shouted in Teisel’s ear, snapping him back to reality. “You’re kind of scaring me here!” Teisel just blinked a few times, trying to work the pain building up in his heart back down and out of sight. It had all just come on so suddenly. He didn’t even realize he’d yanked the book out from the pile and started thumbing through the pages until he caught Max staring at him. “I…I’m sorry…” he whispered, relieved they’d opted to sit in a more secluded spot. “Dude, it’s okay,” Max tried to assure him. “We’re a team, remember? The Bright Bats have always got each other’s backs, and just because you’re new doesn’t make you any less of a Bright Bat, got it?” “Yeah, thanks,” Teisel said with an oddly self-conscious smile. “I suppose I’ve got some explaining to do, huh?” “You don’t need to feel like you have to tell us what’s up or anything,” Max offered, finishing off his sandwich and taking a swig of cola, “I mean, it’d be nice to know what’s going on. It looked like your brain started glitching up as soon as you ate that panini. I know the food here’s good and all, but it doesn’t usually do that to people. Still, uh, it’s your call. No pressure.” “You have no idea,” Teisel solemnly stated, glancing across the café in a last-ditch effort to bring back the mental imagery of his family. It was no use. They were gone. After clearing his throat a few times he asked, “Max, do you remember the rockets?” “Rockets? You mean the ones that kept shooting off from one of our satellite islands a little over ten years ago to try and get some kid hero off the moon? How could anyone forget that? My parents almost filed a noise complaint!” Teisel fidgeted with his collar. “I…I had a little sister. Tron. Tron was…in part, at least…responsible for the rockets. She was really good with machines. She and our baby brother Bon and I used to be air pirates, but once that boy Mega Man went up to space in that…space…thing, we started living on that little island off the coast with another family for a while. Tron insisted that we needed to stay and help out. It seemed as good a place as any to try to raise funds so she and the other girl could get that rocket up there. Despite their differences, they always tried to play it safe with this new technology. They made sure to send Tron’s invincible robot minions up in the rockets instead of trying it themselves. She called them her Servbots. I can’t say I liked this Mega Man kid much, but I did promise that if he saved the world from the crazy gold Reaverbot that flew in out of nowhere…I told him that I’d buy him dinner, so…uh…hm.” he frowned. It made so much more sense in his head. “I guess you had to be there,” he conceded with a sigh. When Max realized that Teisel had started spacing out and staring blankly at his food again, he piped up to try and get the story back on track. “So you lived here with your sister and brother during the rocket days, but you didn’t like the guy, right?” Teisel shook his head. “Not really. Blue Boy and I had…a few conflicts of interest, if you will, but Tron had this crush on the kid, so she was really set on getting this rocket to work. She thought she was hiding it well, but it was always pretty obvious to me. Of course, if you remember the rockets, then you know what happened to him in the end.” “Yeah,” Max listlessly stirred the ice around in his empty cup as he listened to the strange story. Hearing Teisel talk this much on his own accord was enough to get his attention. “The rocket exploded on the trip back. No survivors. Your sister seriously built that?” Teisel nodded solemnly and continued. “Tron was always…well, she was smart, but she was the kind of person who’d let her emotions get to her after bottling them up for so long. I was so worried about what she’d do if she found out I knew she liked Mega Man this whole time. I should have told her. It’s not…I mean, well…” he faltered and rubbed his temples in frustration. “Sorry, I…I’ve never actually told anybody about this before. I know it was a long time ago, but…” Teisel trailed off and took a sip of his lemonade. “Point is, she…she killed herself over it. She got into the antifreeze in the warehouse and the Servbots—I told you about the Servbots, right? They just kind of led me over to her. They didn’t realize anything was wrong. I try not to remember that day very much, but...I still get nightmares about it sometimes.” “I’m…so sorry,” Max uttered after failing to find any casual means of delivering that message. He opened his mouth to speak again, but Teisel cut him off. “That was only the beginning. Bon and I grabbed what we could, including the book I brought here, took the Servbots, and left immediately. I just…I couldn’t deal with it. I can’t believe I left Barrell and his granddaughter to clean that up. I wasn’t thinking. “Now when I told you that Tron was good with machines, I didn’t mean that lightly. This girl managed to create dozens of sentient robots while most kids her age were more concerned with stuff like books and video games.” Teisel explained. “And, uh, back when Bon was born, she managed to attract a lot of media attention. I’m not sure if you’ve read about this incident, but among other deficiencies, our brother Bon was born with a heart condition that by all means should have killed him before he had a chance to leave the hospital. HBD. That ring any bells?” Max shrugged. “I was never really much of a news guy,” he unsurprisingly admitted. “Tron managed to build a robotic life support system for Bon. It was nothing short of amazing, and as soon as the press found out about it we started getting calls from all over the place offering her scholarships and what have you...of course, it goes without saying that not all of the attention was good. Late one night a band of pirates, far better ones than we’d ever been, broke into our estate and tried to kidnap her. My parents told me to take Tron and Bon and escape in our boat and tried their hardest to hold the pirates off, but…they didn’t make it. It was definitely rough, to say the least. I kind of just dove into my hobbies to keep from losing it altogether. We managed to get by, but we had to become pirates ourselves to do it. “So losing Tron wasn’t my first foray into, uh, that kind of thing. Without her, though, our weapons weren’t up to scratch anymore. Some of the Servbots could develop tech on their own, but their machines just weren’t as good as Tron’s were, and I have no aptitude for that sort of work myself. Believe me, I tried,” he shook his head and halfheartedly picked at a wing. “But after a few years of scraping together insignificant funds from tiny, under-defended islands, the Servbots started breaking down, and nobody could fix them. Not one of the mechanics I saw could wrap their heads around Tron’s blueprints.” “I wonder if Grill’d be interested in taking a look at them…” Max mused. Teisel shook his head. “Those are probably long gone by now. Either way, I…I’m not sure if I could handle seeing one of her machines up and running again,” he admitted. He paused and took a deep breath, gathering his thoughts. This part was always the hardest for him. “But yeah. Servbots. We lost a lot of Servbots,” he repeated, that familiar burning sensation welling up from the back of his throat as he fought to keep from losing his composure entirely. “Tron’s machines, ingenious as they were, couldn’t run forever. So when I remembered that Bon’s life literally depended on one of Tron’s machines…I…I just…” The entire restaurant suddenly blurred as the tears finally welled up. “Th-there was nothing…I could do…I didn’t tell him. I couldn’t tell him. It wasn’t fair. None of it was fair.” he sniffed and wiped his eyes with his arm, but it did little good. “He was thirteen,” he choked out. “A thirteen year old boy with a thirteen month old brain, but we could always understand him all the same. I hated her. Tron. I hated that she left us and…and...she left Bon to die like that. I hated that I hated her for it! I just took Bon out of his suit when it finally gave out and held him and I…and...I never…I never wanted to let go…I had to watch my brother die. I just…I can’t. I couldn’t. He was…he was the only family I had left…” Max watched as Teisel broke down in front of him. He felt a little dizzy taking all of that in. Lightheaded. Almost in shock, in fact, and he wasn’t even the one it had happened to. He just numbly handed Teisel a napkin for him to wipe his face off, wondering if he hadn’t been too hard on the old man. “That…that all happened pretty recently. I know it’s probably been closer to a year but it still feels like it happened yesterday. I think I tried to kill myself, too. I’m not too sure. I…my siblings and I…we’ve always had this weird thing. Explosions don’t damage us at all. I tried…I kept crashing all of the airships we had left. Maybe I was just trying to punish myself. Maybe I wanted to feel physical pain. I don’t remember. It was such a waste. I just held onto that book and flew around looking for new places to try and blow myself up. I crashed my last ship on this island looking for our old research lab on the off-chance that Barrell and Roll were still there, but I couldn’t find it anymore. I don’t even know if I want to find it now.” “Wow.” Max finally said. It was the only response he could think of. Teisel glanced down at the book again and, after a moment of deliberation, nudged it toward Max. “This is the only thing from back then that I have left,” he explained. “Tron wrote a story in her spare time, while she was working on the rocket. A very elaborate one. It was about Mega Man coming back. Naturally, there was a love story involving Tron and Mega Man, but I wasn’t expecting her to put in this crazy government conspiracy, too, and she captured all of us perfectly. I didn’t think there’d be so many action scenes. I wasn’t expecting to laugh as much as I did. I was trying to ration it and pace myself, but that didn’t happen. It was just…it was good. Great, even. Like seeing the happier world none of us had a chance to live in. I put off reading it for far too long and finally mustered up the courage to check it out right before you and Grill found me. It ended much too soon, and somewhere in the middle she wrote a scene where the three of us were having pesto paninis in this café, so…yeah. Here we are.” Max found himself feeling suddenly self-conscious and awkwardly responsible for bringing this on in the first place. He couldn’t bring himself to so much as touch the book now, much less go looking through it for himself. “Is there anything I can, uh, do? To help, I mean.” The fact that Teisel was the one doing most of the talking and he was the one doing most of the awkward conversational stumbling had hit him full force. “When we get back, explain everything that I’ve just told you to the others,” Teisel instructed. “I’m not sure I can bring myself to talk about this all over again, but they’ve got every right to know the kind of baggage they’re dealing with. If—if you want to…keep me around, that is,” he added, his voice breaking again mid-sentence as he wiped his face with another napkin. He dropped it into the pile with the others. “I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t.” Max stared at Teisel, subtly coaxing him into eye contact, and stated, “Teisel, I meant what I said. We’re a team. All five of us. So if you ever need to just talk or vent or anything, we’ll be there.” “Thanks, Max. I’ll...do my best to make sure you won’t regret it.” Teisel replied with a shy, but sincere smile. He could feel his eyes start to well up again. He couldn’t remember the last time anybody had been this genuinely good to him. “Okay, maybe Pic wouldn’t be there,” Max added as an afterthought, “but he’s one weird dude, so don’t take it personally,” he glanced across the table at Teisel’s panini. “You still gonna eat that?” Teisel shrugged. He wasn’t sure. It was delicious, but it wound up triggering a meltdown in the middle of a restaurant. “It’s cold,” he stiffly replied after prodding it with a fork, and Max figured he knew where Teisel was really coming from this time around. “It’s alright. They’re not bad reheated. Grill’s going to be mad we went here without him so he can definitely take care of that for you if you don’t feel like finishing it off. That guy’s like a human garbage disposal. It’s really convenient sometimes. Well, except during the dry spells. Then it’s a pain keeping him from eating all our leftovers.” Max sighed. “Want to get going?” “Yeah, in a bit. Once my face stops leaking.” “…Take all the time you need.”
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Post by Dashe on Jun 19, 2014 7:22:00 GMT -5
“Are you serious?” Grill sputtered. “He used to be a real sky pirate? The kind with guns and ships and a massive crew of terrifying minions?”
“I’m still trying to process the part about his brother,” Aero admitted. She looked unusually shaken up by this turn of events. “On top of everything else, it’s all just…a lot. It’s a lot to take in.”
“Do I look like I’m making this up here?!” Max nearly shouted to his dumbstruck cohorts.
It was well after dark by the time Max and Teisel got home, but Teisel had insisted on hanging around outside until after Max had briefed the others on his background. The last thing he wanted after that unexpectedly painful dinner was to have to listen to the abridged version of his own life falling apart, so the four bikers congregated in the common room without him. Pic sat cross-legged on top of the side table, fiddling with his goggles. Aero was pacing around, Grill leaned against the workbench holding a bowl of ramen that he’d stopped eating when Max first brought up the rocket days, and Max had collapsed back onto the couch. He really needed to sit down to tell this story. Just thinking about it stressed him out.
“I kind of figured he’d seen some harsh stuff, but this goes above and beyond anything I could have imagined,” Grill stated.
“Yeah, I know,” Max sighed. “He just…I dunno. He totally fell apart at Johnny’s. I hate to think about what might’ve happened if we hadn’t found him when we did.”
Grill raised his eyebrows. “Weren’t you the one arguing that we ought to just leave him there and show up for the race with Bullbreath?”
“Oh come on!”
“Well then,” The mechanic grinned. “Glad to hear you’ve finally had a change of heart, Max!”
“I don’t know, you guys,” Aero finally spoke up after she’d been able to take some time to think about everything, “How can you be so sure that, given what you now know, he isn’t just going to be dead weight we have to pay for? I had to practically scrape him off the couch to get him to pick up a free book, and the guy says he likes reading!”
“He’s not going to be dead weight,” Max insisted. “He’ll bounce back if we give him a good environment and a lot of support. The four of us are already like family, so what’s one more?”
“If I catch him trying to take advantage of either of you, he’s gone.” Aero warned. “Just because you’ve labeled someone as family already doesn’t mean that you can automatically trust they’ll be worth the emotional investment. It’s not that I don’t want to help him out. I really do, more than you’re probably thinking I am right now. But I also think it’s important that at least one of us keep an eye out for anything off about him so it doesn’t backfire, and you two don’t seem capable of making an objective call on this one.”
“Well look at you, miss ‘watching our backs,’ getting all protective of us,” Max taunted with a wink. “It’s nice to know you actually care about our well-being!”
Aero rolled her eyes, but couldn’t help cracking a smile at that. At the very least, the gibe seemed to settle her nerves. “How long have we been friends again? Fifteen years? If I didn’t care about you by this point I’d probably belong in a mental ward.”
It took the three of them every ounce of willpower they had to not steal a glance at Pic, who seemed to have completely zoned out.
“So. That’s it, right?” Grill turned to Max. “That’s everything?”
“Everything he told me,” Max replied. “Of course, it’d take a lot to top that. If there’s something he isn’t telling us and something even worse happened to him after that, I think my brain would explode.”
Grill set his ramen down on the bench. “Alright then, I think we’d better go get him. The more I think about it, the less I like the idea of leaving him alone anywhere.”
Max, Grill, and Aero ascended the stairs and found Teisel sitting against a wall in the alley with his foam container open and his books carefully propped up so they wouldn’t get too dirty. “Huh, so you ate your fries?” Max asked redundantly as he noticed that the only thing left in the box was the panini.
Teisel looked up in their general direction with an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. He had a hard time looking any of the gang members in the eye now that they all knew what he’d been through. The fact that there were finally other people in the world who knew what was really going on should’ve brought him some comfort, but the idea of any of them feeling pity for him made him want to vomit. The last thing he wanted to do was start crying all over again. Crying in front of Max in the café was bad enough, but crying in front of everyone would have been worse.
Aero spoke up before Teisel had the chance to put his thoughts back in order. “Hey. You clean up alright for an old guy,” she remarked as he shut the container, picked up his books, and pulled himself to his feet. Grill nodded in agreement as she turned toward Max. “To think I was worried you’d put him in a bedazzled leather jacket for kicks.”
“Hey now! You’re acting like they make those in his size!” Max retorted. He started walking toward the stairs leading back into the base. “Besides, T-Bonne made most of the real decisions there.”
“Even I can tell that it looks better than my old jumpsuit,” Grill added. “Nicely done, Teisel.”
Teisel felt his ears and cheeks grow warm. At least they weren’t treating him with kid gloves. He couldn’t help but smile a little as he muttered a self-conscious “Thanks,” on his way inside.
He barely got past the threshold when Pic leapt off the table and darted over to give Teisel a sudden, bone-crushing hug that nearly knocked the wind out of him. Teisel stared down at the eccentric teenager in disbelief.
“Woah. I guess he was listening that whole time after all,” remarked Aero. She watched as Teisel wrestled his arms out of Pic’s death grip and responded awkwardly in kind. He looked almost like he’d forgotten how hugs even worked.
However, when it became painfully clear that Pic wasn’t going to let go without intervention, Aero and Grill had to pry him off before Teisel got too uncomfortable. “Is he always this physical with you guys?” The former pirate asked, wincing as he gingerly checked to see if his ribs were still intact.
Max shook his head. “I was just as surprised as you were.” He admitted. “There was this one time a couple of years ago when he went through this weird phase where he started randomly giving us all back rubs, but Aero punched him in the mouth over it back then and he’s kept to himself ever since. I guess your tragic backstory struck a chord or something.”
“Are you alright?” Grill asked.
Teisel sighed, and felt a pang in his sides as he did. “I’m probably going to be sore for days.” He groaned. Nonetheless, he couldn’t help but feel a slight twinge of vindication, knowing he’d managed to get through to a guy like Pic. Even if Max had been the one to actually tell the story. “But yeah. Don’t worry. I’ll be fine.”
Until the next disaster struck, at least. In the back of his mind, Teisel knew better than to rely on anything good to last very long.
The Bright Bats had a small kitchen down the corridor, right next to the bedrooms, which they used primarily for food prep and dishwashing. Like most of the HQ, it was dingy, dilapidated, and a lot of the appliances were held together with duct tape. But it was functional, and every morning, before the sun had a chance to rise, Aero would take the opportunity to make herself a pot of coffee and check the paper for potential odd jobs.
However, on one particular morning, a considerable while after Teisel got his library card, she wandered into the kitchen with her newspaper to find the mysterious newcomer not only awake, but sitting at the folding table in his pajamas, sipping a cup of coffee he’d brewed himself and mulling over his sister’s old book again. “Hey,” she said.
Teisel nearly jumped out of his seat. “W-what are…” He stammered. “Are you…were you having trouble sleeping too?”
Aero shook her head. “Nope, this is right around when I usually wake up. You know, if you’re trying to sleep, coffee probably wasn’t the best idea…”
“Oh, right,” Teisel replied. “I’m not sure what I was thinking. Force of habit, I guess.”
“Mind if I grab a cup?”
“Be my guest.”
The two of them sat across from each other and read in silence sipping coffee for a while. It felt strange for Teisel to have someone else so close by while he read Tron’s book. It also felt strange living with other people again, but Aero wasn’t really doing anything disruptive, so he figured it couldn’t hurt to keep on reading. He wasn’t anywhere near that fateful chapter where her handwriting just stopped and unceremoniously dumped him back from the fantasy world where Mega Man had come home safely and given Tron the relationship she’d always wanted, straight into the unfairly harsh reality he’d been trying to avoid.
He felt his breath hitch as he remembered that the story would never have the ending Tron had wanted it to have. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to read this with Aero, or anyone, in the room after all.
“Hey. Aero.” He suddenly spoke up with a distinct twinge of distress in his tone. “Anything good in there?”
Aero snapped out of her concentration. She hadn’t expected Teisel to try and initiate a conversation. “Huh? Oh, nothing really. I’m just looking at the classifieds. Want to read something else?”
“Does that paper still get the funny pages?”
The blue-haired young woman looked across the table and eyed Teisel curiously. That was one of the last things she’d thought he’d say, right up there with a request for the sports section. “Yep,” she replied, rifling through the newspaper and extracting the comics. “Just a heads up, though, they’re not very funny.”
Teisel nervously snickered. He was sure it was from the lack of sleep. “Good to know some things never change.”
“I guess you’re tired of reading that book,” Aero noted. “What’s it called, anyway?”
“It doesn’t have a title.” He admitted. He positioned the newspaper between the two of them. That lack of a proper title didn’t sit well with Teisel at all. Even a story that stopped in the middle without any rhyme or reason relevant to the plot deserved a title. “I can’t think of one that fits.”
Aero took the hint and dropped the subject. “Good luck with that.”
Teisel eventually managed to fall asleep after Aero left. At least until Max shook him awake sometime around noon with a manic expression and the Klicke Lafonica book tucked under his arm. “Hey T-Bonne!” He shouted. “Get up! You really need to read this book!”
“Ughhhhh…” Teisel groaned, running a hand through his disheveled hair as he pulled himself into a sitting position on the couch. “Why’d you have to do that? I was just…you messed up a really nice dream I was having.”
“Sorry about that,” Max shrugged it off, “But this is important! This book is our one-way ticket to Easy Street! I stayed up really late last night reading it…”
“…Sure you did…”
“…and it sounds like there is some SERIOUS scratch buried deep under this island!” Max finished with a grin. “This Klicke Lafonica thing is big. They call it The Fire of All Creation. Nobody’s been able to dig deep enough to find it, but I’m sure if we manage to do it ourselves we’ll be set for life!”
“Uh, Max…” Teisel uttered, “That book’s title seemed to hint that maybe the whole thing’s just an urban legend. Besides, it’s probably overdue, and I’m pretty sure you don’t even dig.”
“Hello?” Max scoffed. “We found you in a digging suit, remember? And you even told us you’ve done this kind of thing before with the rockets and…”
Teisel turned pale. “Not outside a mech!” He exclaimed, his voice leaping an octave as he leapt to the defensive. The sudden increase in volume actually made Max recoil in surprise for a moment. “Remember what ELSE I told you? The part about how I’m only immune to explosions? That suit was just a fashion statement, and even if I had some real hands-on experience and a decent robot to pilot, I’m getting a little too old to be running around underground, don’t you think?”
“But T-Bonne,” He pleaded. “You’re the closest thing to a digger we’ve had since Barrett ran off! We can’t just pass up the chance to look for a legendary treasure!”
Teisel thought back to the last legendary treasure he’d tried to make off with and cringed. “Max, I just...it really doesn’t seem like you’ve thought this one through.”
The younger man shoved the book into Teisel’s hands. “Read this first,” he persisted. “Then you can try and convince me that you’re not up to the task. But trust me, if you care about making money at all, you’re going to want to get in on this one!”
He felt the stiff edges of the library book digging into his palm. Did he even care about making money anymore? He’d spent so much time and energy desperately trying to scrounge together refractors, but with Tron and Bon gone, what would he even buy?
Max just stared at him with that insane grin plastered on his face, thinking of all the new clothes and gadgets he could snag for himself. “Trust me, T-Bonne. We’ll never have to worry about accidentally betting Bullbreath the last of our savings again!” And with that, he scrambled back down the hall at the end of the common room, presumably to his bedroom to figure out the best way to get into Klickelan’s ruin network.
Teisel examined the book he’d borrowed—well, the book Max had borrowed on his behalf—and scrutinized the fiery red jewel sketched in the center. If anything, he needed a break from losing himself in Tron’s work, enticing as the fantasy she’d woven had the potential to be. He was painfully aware that spending so much time mentally living out the happy ending he could never have was probably not healthy by a long shot, especially considering the emotional punch in the gut that happened when the ending, or so he’d been calling it, hit him full-force. At least this one looked like an easy read.
The notion of potentially becoming a burden on these bikers was still a very prominent concern as well. Setting the book aside and checking out something different would at least keep him from turning into a depressing liability. After all, he’d have to return the Klicke Lafonica book sooner or later.
The first time Teisel had lived in the Ambagry region, he’d spent most of his spare time relaxing at the lab Roll and Tron had set up. On occasion he took a boat out to Klickelan to make sure the Servbots hadn’t set the family’s gyro stand on fire. Even without the library to keep him busy, Teomo City genuinely seemed to be the most interesting thing on the map at the time. He was so tired of all of his earnings from their digging endeavors going straight into rocket development. He knew the Casketts and Tron would make him give up any real treasure he might have found, so there really wasn’t much of a point in getting into the digging scene back then. After all, there were important action figures to buy and Steel Prince marathons to watch instead.
However, as he sat curled up on the Bright Bats’ couch a decade later, researching the island’s legendary treasure in the empty common room that afternoon, he found his mind start to wander. According to the book, Ghiotte Summit, that giant, pipe-covered edifice that towered over Teomo City, required a Class A license to enter. A room at the top of its taller tower housed an out-of-service elevator that allegedly led straight into the heart of the Klickelan ruins, an area far deeper than any of the other entrances could take him. Some said it led straight to the center of the planet itself.
While this particular tidbit was clearly over the top, Teisel couldn’t shake the notion that there might be something up there worth checking out. A broken elevator with no clear point of exit anywhere on the island. He knew Tron would’ve been all over that challenge if she hadn’t been so busy with the rocket. Thanks to that other book he’d been reading, he was desperate for any connection to his family that he could grasp, no matter how tenuous it might’ve been. Even one based purely on speculative research.
Furthermore, the Klickelan ruins were well-known for their interconnected tunnel network. Aspiring diggers were constantly looking for new routes to help them bypass the Guild-regulated entrances, and there were entire factions devoted to rendering the Guild’s barriers obsolete. It was a perfect setup, really. It frustrated Teisel to think that he’d only ever really scratched the surface of the free ruins in the Donner Wels trying to raise funds for Tron and the others before that kid with the ponytail blew it up. Maybe he should have taken the time to talk to the other diggers instead of beating them down for their findings and running off with whatever he could steal.
He realized it would be a while before he’d be able to reach the top of that monolith, if he ever reached it at all, considering the fact that aside from the “freelancing” he’d done for Loath to pay off the Gesellschaft, he hadn’t done any digging without the safety of a mech to fall back on since he was a teenager. He didn’t even think he’d been that good, and back then he was in much better shape. Still, it was the first time he’d felt like he had any sense of direction in years, even if it was based in some ridiculous fantasy about his dead brother and sister teaming up with him to find a mythical artifact that probably didn’t even exist.
Before he even realized what was happening, he found himself laughing uncontrollably. It was the hardest he’d laughed in over ten years. It was so sudden. One moment he was concocting an elaborate plot to get back into the digging scene, and the next his emotions had kicked into overdrive. It was like he’d completely lost his fragile hold on reality itself, and like that breakdown at Johnny’s, it just wouldn’t stop. The thought of having a plan for his life again, any plan, was simply too much for him to deal with.
It was at that moment that Aero kicked open the front door brandishing a rusty pipe and scanned the room, poised to attack. She almost dropped the pipe when she realized that maniacal, psychotic sound was coming from Teisel. She recoiled on instinct. He barely even sounded human.
The moment their eyes met, Teisel’s voice caught in his throat and he froze on the spot. The two of them just stared at each other until Aero broke the silence.
“W-WHAT THE HECK WAS THAT?!” She shouted.
Teisel panicked. “I didn’t do anything, I swear!”
“Then what possessed that…that sound…to come out of your mouth just now?” Aero persisted, still clenching the pipe. “I thought some psycho had broken in and assaulted you while we were all away!”
“No! That’s not…” He faltered. He’d never thought his own laugh was that off-putting before, but then again, the only people who’d ever heard it much were his own family, the Casketts, and everyone he’d ever tried to rob. He had no real way of understanding just how strange it must have sounded to an average bystander without the context of a hostile takeover in effect. He couldn’t help but remember how Max had reacted to the outburst he'd had earlier in the day, either. The last thing he wanted was to get kicked out of the Bright Bats on an insanity charge. “I…I always laugh like that,” he begrudgingly admitted.
Aero raised an eyebrow skeptically and let the pipe drop to the floor with a clang. “…Always…?”
“When I really laugh.”
It didn’t come to Aero as much of a surprise that none of them had heard him laugh over the past month or so, but it did pique her curiosity. “What brought this on, anyway?” She inquired, setting aside her wariness for the moment and sitting down on the sofa next to him to get a glimpse of what it was he’d been reading.
Teisel held the book up with the cover facing outward so she could see it.
“Klicke Lafonica: Fact or Fiction...” Aero read aloud with a smirk. “Yeah, I don’t blame you for laughing that hard. Well, whatever makes you happy, right?”
Telling Aero what he was plotting clearly wouldn't have been a wise move, so he just nodded absently, suppressing his relief…along with any other extreme emotion that might have accidentally slipped out with it. He really had to be careful about that, at least for the moment.
Teisel finally mustered up the nerve to knock on Max’s bedroom door once he was sure the others were asleep. He hoped it was Max’s room. The placard nailed to the front had Max’s name on it, but one could never be too sure about those things. And even though he didn’t know the gang all that well yet, he had a hunch Grill would probably be too concerned for his safety to let him try going on a dig.
He heaved a sigh of relief when Max actually answered in the gaudiest purple bathrobe he’d ever seen. “Oh hey T-Bonne,” Max greeted him, poking his head out into the hall and glancing around to make sure they were alone. “This about the…er…you know?”
The taller man held up the Klicke Lafonica book and nodded. “Yeah. Count me in.”
“Great!” Max exclaimed, reaching to grasp the book from Teisel. “Goodn…”
Teisel snapped the book away from him and tried to catch the doorframe with his other hand before his boss could run off. Max ended up smashing Teisel’s hand in the door, and Teisel clenched his teeth hard to keep the bloodcurdling scream stifled. “Not…without…a plan.” He uttered as his eyes watered from the pain. He didn’t have the strength to push the door open, but he could sure stop it from closing all the way.
Thankfully he didn’t need to wedge it open much longer. Max quickly pulled it back as soon as he realized what he’d done. “Oh crap, sorry about that! Nothing’s broken, right?”
Teisel shook his head. His fingers were throbbing in agony, but at least he could move them. “I’m fine,” he choked out, blinking away the tears, “Just let me in so we can plan this out. Please.”
Max, taken aback by Teisel’s sudden persistence, opened the door wider to let him through, revealing a small bedroom filled with dirty clothes, action figures, and empty boxes. It was as if the Home Shopping Network had exploded in someone’s basement. “I guess you can sit at my desk,” he shrugged. The desk in question boasted an older desktop computer and was covered in papers and little toys, which Teisel couldn’t take his eyes off of.
He instinctively picked up a little figurine of a robotic samurai with his uninjured hand. He’d never seen the character before, but somehow it looked strangely familiar.
“Hey, hands off the merchandise,” Max suddenly exclaimed. “It’s almost impossible to find Nickel Samurai stuff anymore! I had to pull an all-nighter to snipe that dinky thing in an online auction!”
Teisel immediately put the little guy back where he found it. “Sorry,” he apologized.
Max sighed and plopped down on his bed. He muttered something about nobody understanding the value of collectable figures anymore and sighed to himself as he balled up a dirty sock and tossed it across the room, where it bounced off the side of his laundry basket. “So what kind of plan were you thinking, huh?” He prodded Teisel after several moments of awkward silence. “I figured you’d just go in the ruins, find the treasure, get out, and sell it.”
The lack of foresight involved in that “plan” was disheartening. “Max, I already told you that I have next to no experience at this.” He shook his head. “I’m not sure what kind of experience you have with digging, but unless you’ve got skills like that…that blue boy…you can’t just expect to be able to run straight to Ghiotte Summit right away. When you tried to shut the door in my face, I was trying to catch it and push it back open. That’s the kind of shape I’m in right now. And when I was still a pirate, Tron used to make all of us robots so we could just rush in with our guns blazing, but…well, we just don’t have that kind of luxury anymore.”
“Oh. Crap. Yeah, that’s a really good point,” Max conceded.
“For this to work I’m going to need some kind of ruin network directory,” Teisel continued, massaging his sore hand as he brainstormed out loud. “After picking up a decent weapon from the parts shop, we need to find a free entrance point that isn’t going to dump me off in the middle of a deathtrap. We’ll also need to rig up a spotting system, all on a budget.”
“You don’t have to worry about that last one,” Max replied with a grin. “A while back Aero thought she wanted to be a spotter, but she never got the hang of it. She managed to rewire a telephone to function as a walkie-talkie and connect it to some radar equipment, though. It’s still somewhere in the common room.”
“That’ll probably be harder to find than the perfect reference material for studying the Klickelan network.” Teisel groaned. “If you don’t know what you’re doing yet tomorrow—scratch that, I’m sure you don’t. Go into the city and start looking for groups of unlicensed diggers. Talk to them and find out where the best places to learn the ropes are located. While you’re doing that, I’ll find myself a weapon I can actually use, and then I’ll go back to the library and try to find as many good books about the ruins here as I can. Meet me there an hour before closing time, and we’ll formulate the best strategy to tackle this there.”
“Hey, how come you’re the one giving the orders here?!” Max suddenly realized. “I’m the leader! No way am I letting the new guy tell me what to…”
“Have you got any better ideas, then?”
Max couldn’t argue with that logic. “Sure. Fine. I’ll do it. You know, you’re the only person I know who likes doing this planning stuff. It’s a good thing, don’t worry,” He added quickly. The last thing he wanted to do was set the new guy off. “I’m glad you want to do this, for whatever it’s worth.”
“Yeah,” Teisel pensively replied, standing up and pushing the desk chair in and walking toward the door. “Me too. See you tomorrow.”
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Post by fAB on Jun 19, 2014 20:12:36 GMT -5
*finally grabs some time to check out Chapter 1* Interesting beginning, particularly the time frame which was totally unexpected...
I think you know by now that I don't have much love for fan fiction, but seeing as it's yours I'd like to see where you take it. As with all things, expect me to always be about 5-10 chapters behind. XP
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Post by Dashe on Jun 19, 2014 20:53:50 GMT -5
Awesome, thanks for tuning in! You can expect exactly what you've grown to expect out of me, so take that as you will. And if you find yourself in need a good therapist a few chapters from now, by the time you get to it, Kyle might've found one who specializes in "Stuff Dashe Makes."
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Post by Kyle on Jun 21, 2014 13:18:52 GMT -5
And if you find yourself in need a good therapist a few chapters from now, by the time you get to it, Kyle might've found one who specializes in "Stuff Dashe Makes." I'd prefer to just deal with my emotional overloads by myself, but if fAB is in need of help, then I'd be more than happy to assist in some electrotherapy.
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Post by Dashe on Jun 26, 2014 13:04:57 GMT -5
Max briskly walked down 7th Street toward the digging sector. He’d given Teisel an allowance of 10,000 zenny to pick out a good weapon for himself. It was the last of the cash he and the Bright Bats had on hand, but he trusted that his new lackey would spend it well. He couldn’t have asked for better weather for this recon mission. Even from twenty yards away, he could see that the square was packed with diggers who were decked out in various combinations of street clothes and armor.
He scanned the premises for anyone who looked unlicensed. He knew that the Digger’s Guild prohibited certain attachments from being used while testing, but he’d never cared enough to actually look up the specifics. He spotted an older-looking blond guy with a drill for an arm sitting on a bench and waltzed straight up to him. “Yo, have you got a sec?” He asked the guy, flashing him a slick grin.
The man eyed Max suspiciously. “What’s this all about? Whatever gang you’re from, if you think you’ve got trouble with me you’ve got the wrong guy! There are a dozen other guys out here who look just like…”
“Dude, relax.” Max assured him as he tried to get the stranger to keep from yelling. “We’ve never met before. Promise. I just want to know some stuff about digging, that’s all.”
The stranger looked at Max as if he’d just suggested they team up to join a hula dancing class. “Really?” He skeptically asked.
“I’ve got this friend,” The biker replied, inwardly cringing at how suspicious that one must have sounded. “He’s interested in taking up digging as a hobby. He’s pretty old and out of shape so I’m not sure how well he’d do with the exams. Know of any points of entry around here that’re good for noobs?”
“Look, pal, I don’t know what it is you’re really plotting,” The digger quipped back, “But if you’re really trying to help some old guy learn to dig, you might want to think about investing in a digging coach. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got two weeks left until my mother’s birthday and I still haven’t figured out what I’m going to get her.”
“Geez,” Max sighed. “You try to be friendly…”
The blond man huffed and snapped, “If you’re REALLY that desperate, why don’t you go try and smooth-talk Seedy Leigh down on 9th or something?”
“…Who?”
“Oh, forget it.” He groaned. “I’ve had enough of this.” And with that, he stormed off into the crowd.
It took all the effort Max could muster to keep himself from chasing the guy down and beating some sense into him. “Nope, I can’t afford to make a scene here,” he reminded himself. “There’s too much riding on this…now who the heck is this Seedy Leigh character, anyway?”
Upon hearing Seedy Leigh’s name, a cluster of well-equipped diggers pointedly moved away from Max. “Huh.” The biker observed.
He realized this job was going to be quite a bit more difficult than he’d anticipated.
9th street was just off the Diggers’ Square. He found himself accidentally walking in the wrong direction for a while, but he eventually realized he was headed the wrong way when he caught a glimpse of the Wasteland Gate. He did an about-face and jogged back the way he came…only to skid to a stop in front of an alleyway.
There was no mistaking that dorky green vest or that spiky gray hair. Teisel was crouched down at the intersection of a side street, holding a hamburger patty out at arm’s length and staring intently ahead, completely oblivious to the fact that his boss was right there watching him. He couldn’t have been much closer to the shopping district or the library than Max was to his own destination.
“T-Bonne! What do you think you’re doing?!” Max shouted. He heard a loud scuffle from somewhere around the corner as Teisel snapped to attention, fumbling with the burger, which tumbled to the ground. The look on the old guy’s face made it seem like he’d just been caught murdering a kitten. “These alleyways are full of stray dogs! You could get hurt!”
Teisel wanted to reply. He really did. “I…I…I…” was all he found he was able to articulate. Everything else was stifled in his panic as Max grabbed him by the arm and led him back out onto the main road.
“I thought I told you to spend that money on a weapon,” He scolded. “Did you even make it to the part shop?”
“It was…it’s not what it looks like!” Teisel exclaimed. He looked like he was on the verge of hyperventilating. “It’s just a hamburger, it was cheap! I…I…”
This day wasn’t going well at all. “Stop wigging out on me and get back down to the market.” Max instructed. He pointed in the opposite direction and sighed. “Just head downhill the way you came and then follow the street signs to the Harbor District. The market’s along the way. You can’t miss it.”
Teisel looked back down the alleyway to find that his burger had disappeared. “Right,” he mumbled, clenching the satchel of refractor shards in his hand. “Sorry I…er…uh…sorry. I-I got lost.” he added as he stared off into the distance.
“Eh, it’s been a while. Teomo’s not an easy town to navigate if you don’t know what you’re looking for,” Max shrugged. “I’ve got a lead to track down in the other direction, so I guess I’ll just see you later. And remember—those are the last refractor shards we have. Make sure you use them for a good weapon, got it?”
“Yeah,” Teisel wistfully replied, squinting intensely down the alleyway and only half listening to what Max was saying. “Got it.”
Max gave Teisel a good, long glare in an effort to drive the point home before turning on his heels and walking down the road toward the sketchy part of Teomo. He glanced back after a minute or so of walking. Teisel was already out of sight.
“What a strange dude…” Max muttered. For all he knew, maybe that thing with hamburger was a part of the plan he just didn’t know about. Whether it had anything to do with his past or not, the Bright Bats’ new strategist was shaping up to be one interesting fellow. …Strategist?
Max smiled. He liked the way that sounded.
The west end of 9th Street looked decidedly more like the kind of place where a guy named Seedy Leigh would hang out. Max was able to obtain several matching sets of directions to his hideout, which was conveniently located in an apartment above a pawn shop. “Refractors for Gold. Huh.” He read off of the handwritten sign as he meandered down the alleyway to a boarded-up side door and pressed the buzzer mounted on the dilapidated brick wall.
“State your business.” A voice on the other side snarled. It sounded like the person was right on the other side of the piece of plywood they called a door.
Max faltered a bit before he replied, “My name’s Max. I’m looking for Seedy Leigh. I heard he could tell me the best route for a beginner to get into the ruins without a license.”
He could hear a few voices whispering from the other side of the plywood before the door opened, revealing a narrow, unlit staircase and no sign of anybody else in sight. After a moment’s hesitation, he started up the stairs. Once he made it about three steps up, the door slammed behind him. He turned around to find two men almost as wide as the staircase, one right behind the other, staring him down and blocking his exit. “Go on, punk. Move it.”
Somehow this didn’t seem like the good idea it had seemed like five minutes ago. Max didn’t have much of a choice, so he proceeded up the staircase. The steps creaked the whole way up and he was sure they’d give way with those big guys climbing up behind him, but one way or another, he made it to the door at the top.
Thankfully, this door had a doorknob attached, and once the big guy directly behind Max started complaining that they didn’t have all day, the leader of the Bright Bats walked into Seedy Leigh’s hideout.
The place was dimly lit and filled with artifacts that had been clearly excavated from the local ruins. Whether Leigh had excavated them himself or extorted them from diggers he’d dealt with in the past wasn’t quite clear. Max didn’t doubt this guy had ways to hunt his clients down. There were maps and charts everywhere, and the room itself was so smoky Max had to squint to see through the haze.
The proprietor of the operation sat behind the desk wearing a faded business suit, with his thinning red hair slicked back. He sported a goatee and had a cigarette dangling from his mouth. That cigarette nearly tumbled out of his mouth and onto a stack of flammable-looking paperwork the minute he laid eyes on Max. “Y-you? You’re the Max who wants to get into the ruins?! Did you finally realize how lousy you were at racing fly carriers or something?”
Max blinked. “Do I know you?” He asked, raising an eyebrow.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Leigh groaned, grinding his cigarette into the ashtray. “You really don’t remember, do you?”
Max shook his head, wondering if he really wanted to remember how he knew this man in the first place.
“I used to have those stupid-looking dreadlocks when I was your age,” Leigh said. “I rode for the Lightning Crusaders back then. Ring any bells?”
“Uh…” Max tried to recall to the best of his ability, but he could not remember anybody with red dreadlocks. He usually remembered the interesting haircuts, but he was drawing a total blank on this guy.
“Eh, I guess it doesn’t matter that much anymore,” Seedy Leigh sighed. “It’s not like the Crusaders were the laughingstock of the Rebel Riders or anything. Even now that I’m in the ruin navigation business, I’d never forget the infamous Bright Bats—the only team we ever really slaughtered out there.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“Digging’s where the money’s really at,” Leigh added. “I guess you’ve probably figured as much seeing as how you’re in my office…”
“Actually, this is a favor for a friend,” Max explained. “He’s new around here. Bit of an older guy, not too keen on dealing with the feds. Those guys take too long getting their affairs in order, and he really doesn’t look like he’ll make it very far before losing interest, anyway.”
“You sure your ties with Goodwin’s daughter don’t have anything to do with this?”
Max shrugged. He figured it’d probably be best to leave Teisel’s pirating history out of this exchange if he could help it, so the less they discussed their aversion to the local police, the better. The fact that Seedy Leigh saw him as more of a joke than anything was proving to be a tremendously lucky break. Those bouncers of his looked downright lethal. The last thing he needed was for a back alley ruin expert to consider him or any of the Bright Bats as a threat.
“You really need my help to find a free ruin entrance for some random old man?” Seedy Leigh balked. “You know I charge for these services, right?”
“I’m really new to this whole digging thing.” Max admitted. At least that part of his story was true.
The ruins expert pushed his paperwork aside to reveal a large map of Klickelan Island underneath. Max recognized the Guild ruins right away, but Seedy Leigh had also marked off various other points of entry, including a handful right in the heart of Teomo City itself. Max had no idea there were really that many independent entrances.
“If your buddy can swim, I’d recommend starting him off over here, by this inlet.” Leigh pointed to a spot near the base of the summit. “You just dive in. One of my guys dug an underwater passage into the southern gate. It oughta dump him in a large, empty chamber…getting out’s a bit trickier, though…”
“Got any other options?”
Leigh rolled his eyes and scanned the map. “We’ve got one halfway up the cliffs on the west. There’s a hole in the ground right up against the rock, but you’d have to be looking for it to find it. As long as the grass stays tall, it’s not going to look like anything that's gonna be big enough for a person to squeeze through. It’ll put your guy in a run-down hallway that’s a magnet for Shekuten and mostly sealed off from the rest of the ruin, but as long as he’s quiet he’ll probably be fine. It doesn’t take much to take out a Shekuten. He just has to be careful about where he ends up from there.” He reached into his desk and handed Max a small copy of the map in question. “In case you forget.”
Max considered the proposition and nodded, taking the piece of paper. “That’ll do. Thanks, Leigh. I owe ya one.”
“I’d say you do. That’ll be 50,000 zenny. Pay up, kid.”
The brash young man whipped out his trusty credit card. “Just charge it on the ole Teomo Rewards!”
“Charge?” Leigh frowned. “Do I look dumb enough to take credit from a scumbag like you?”
“Who’re you calling a scumbag?!” Max bickered, breaking into a cold sweat. “You’re the one with the shady back alley ruin network dealings!”
Leigh suddenly seized Max by the collar and stared straight into his eyes. The younger man could really smell the cigarettes on the hustler’s breath now. “Look. I’ll buy your little story about the old man for now, so I’m gonna let you go. But if you don’t get 50 grand to me by the sixteenth…see my boys back there?”
Max didn’t even have to look back to know that the bouncers who’d escorted him up to the office were staring daggers at him from the other side of the room. He nodded.
“If I don’t get that money—in refractor shards—by midnight on the sixteenth, I can’t guarantee you or your so-called buddy will ever be fit to explore a ruin again. Capisce?” Seedy Leigh snarled.
“Got it,” Max gulped. “You’ll get your money. No problem-o.”
“Good. Now get out of my office.”
Max didn’t need to be told twice.
Max ran as fast as he could out of there and up to the library. At first, when he stormed in through the door, he started to panic since he couldn’t see Teisel anywhere.
Thankfully, Teisel had only holed himself up in a reference room. Even after getting lost, he’d still managed to amass a generous pile of books on the Klickelan network, Ghiotte Summit, and the Klicke Lafonica next to a large brown paper bag that Max could only hope contained some sort of weapon. He’d also taken a considerable amount of notes on the library’s printer paper.
In fact, he’d immersed himself so thoroughly in his research that he didn’t notice Max was even there until he collapsed into a chair in exhaustion. “Hey.” The gang leader uttered as soon as he managed to catch his breath.
“What the heck happened to you out there?” Teisel asked, setting his notes aside for the moment.
“Well,” Max tried to explain once he’d caught his breath, “I’ve, uh, got good news and bad news. The good news is that I got a very obvious set of directions to a candid training location. The bad news is that if we can’t scrape together 50,000 zenny in two weeks, this information dealer named Seedy Leigh is going to send a bunch of goons out to beat us up. Maybe worse.”
Teisel stared slack-jawed at Max. The color had completely drained from his face. “W-w-w-w-w-w…” he stammered as he broke into a cold sweat. “D-DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT YOU’VE GOTTEN YOURSELF INTO!?!” He roared.
Max couldn’t help but flinch, and he fervently hoped Teisel hadn’t noticed. “Dude, chill!” He urged. “50 grand isn’t that much. Besides, how was I supposed to know the guy didn’t take credit? If you go into this Shekuten pit and shoot them down as they spawn you’ll make that back in no time since they only take a shot or two to beat!”
That did nothing to reassure the man who was actually going into the ruins and doing this shooting. Teisel picked up a copy of The Digger’s Database and flipped straight to the page on Shekuten. “The payoff’s horrible for those guys. There’s less than a 50% chance they’ll even drop a refractor in the first place! Why would you pay for something like that on credit, Max?! That never works! He’ll probably expect you to pay him with interest you haven’t even thought to collect!”
“What’s interest?”
Before Teisel could go on a spastic tirade about the dangers of loan sharks and shady business agreements, they heard a knock at the door. “Crap!” Max shrieked. “That’s probably him!”
It was the librarian. “Gentlemen, you’re going to have to stop yelling in the library or I’ll have to ask you to leave,” she reprimanded.
“I AM NOT YELLING!” Teisel shouted reflexively, which took the librarian completely by surprise. The last time she heard him speak was when he’d applied for his library card. She’d assumed the noise had been coming from Max the whole time.
Max, of course, didn’t like where this exchange was going. He tried to subtly catch Teisel’s attention by pretending to zip his own mouth shut, but Teisel was off in his own little panic-stricken world.
“Well then, whatever it is you’re doing, you’re going to have to be a little more quiet while you do it,” the librarian firmly insisted. “You may be the only ones in the library, but you were so loud just now that I was worried I’d have to call the police!”
“Y-you can’t call the cops on us! This is a matter of life and death!” Teisel frantically argued, jumping to his feet and knocking over his chair in the process, as if she’d actually threatened to call the police. Max could see he’d broken into a sweat from distress.
“Sir, calm down or I am going to have to ask you to leave.” The librarian persisted.
“WHAAAAAAAAAAAT??!!” Teisel roared. At that moment, the AC hit him with a sudden chill that sent him reeling. He managed to keep his balance and gripped the edge of the table. That was it. They were done for before they could even get into the ruins. “We can’t just leave now! Not without a…”
“Dude, breathe!” Max cut him off before he got them banned for life. He jumped up and grabbed his strategist by the forearm to steady him. “I can’t take back what I did, but we’ll figure out something. I won’t let you get in trouble because of me, promise.” He turned to the librarian and said, “He’ll be fine. He just needs some fresh air. There isn’t a limit to the number of books he can borrow, is there?”
“I blew it, Max,” Teisel groaned as he slouched over. He rubbed his forehead in an attempt to make his headache go away, his extremities stop shaking, and the ground stop spinning. “I’m never going to be allowed back in that library again, am I?”
The two of them were seated on the fountain in the Market Plaza. It was still early enough in the evening for children to be out in the square playing a game of hide and seek nearby, but thankfully, other than that, it was a fairly quiet night. Max had carried the books, the paper bag, and Teisel’s notes the whole way to the square in a stack. It had made keeping Teisel from doing anything rash quite a chore, but they eventually managed to make it to a spot where they could sit down.
“You’re fine,” Max told him for what felt like the twentieth time since they’d left. “With the librarian, at least. We have the books, and you can go back to the library anytime. She never actually kicked us out. I mean, it’d probably be a bad idea to go back right this instant, but you can come back later in the week. It’s probably better if you go alone, though. Maybe. I’m not sure. What happened, anyway?”
Teisel squeezed his eyes shut for a moment and sighed. He still wasn’t convinced everything was alright with his library account, and he definitely wasn’t convinced he’d be able to raise 50,000 zenny in a matter of weeks. They weren’t even underground and things were already going horribly awry, but a barely-audible “I don’t know,” was the only response he could muster.
Max didn’t have any money left to even toss in the betting pool for a race, and he’d been so sure the credit card would go through without a hitch like always. That man really needed a “Refractor Shards Only” sign or something. Unfortunately, Max couldn’t return information the way he could return a new leather jacket if he'd kept the receipt. Their success or failure was almost completely dependent on how well Teisel took to digging. The Bright Bats’ fearless leader had almost no control over the situation, and the guy who did have the control was shaping up to be distressingly easy to set off.
The whole situation was unnerving, to say the least. Why did Max even tell Teisel he’d get him out of this mess in the first place? It wasn’t like he’d made a backup plan or anything like that.
They sat in silence for a while, until Teisel looked over and told Max he felt like getting some dinner and that he’d set a thousand zenny aside for food.
“Don’t worry about that. I can charge it.” Max assured him as they both stood up to leave.
Teisel just stared in a stunned silence as the all-too-obvious fact that he wasn’t the only member of the Bright Bats who had issues became increasingly apparent. “You really…you weren’t listening to a word I was even saying back there, were you?” He finally uttered, inwardly grappling with the rush of despair that threatened to rise up again and overcome him right there.
“We need as many refractor shards as we can get.” Max tried to explain, “If we charge dinner, then that means we only need to raise 49,000 zenny. T-Bonne, the last thing you need is more crap to worry about, so don’t worry about it, alright?”
Don’t worry about it? For all Teisel could tell Max might as well have said, “Go climb up the side of City Hall and backflip from the balcony onto the roof!”
“Just trust me.” He added. “It’ll be fine. You don’t have to worry about what I do with my credit card. I’m a grown man. I can handle it.”
He reached over to reassuringly pat Teisel on the shoulder, but Teisel stepped back and stammered, “Look, Max, I…I think I need…I have to go. I need to think. Alone. I’ll, uh, come back to base tonight.”
Before Max could open his mouth to try and convince him otherwise, he’d taken off into the streets, leaving his books, notes and the paper bag behind.
Max couldn’t bring himself to chase Teisel down. He just sighed, picked up all of the old guy’s stuff, and headed back to their headquarters. “That Teisel Bonne is one unpredictable dude,” he muttered under his breath as the street lamps flickered on around him. He hoped Teisel wasn’t doing anything too crazy…for both of their sakes.
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Post by Dashe on Jul 3, 2014 10:45:00 GMT -5
When Teisel came back in the early hours of the morning, he didn’t expect to find Max asleep on the couch with a large, wooden console resting near the nook next to the side table where he’d been keeping Tron’s book. That had to be Aero’s old spotting equipment. The library books they’d borrowed were stacked neatly on top of the console, and Max had similarly arranged his suit on the coffee table with the machine gun he’d bought loaded and ready to go.
Although he was incredibly tired, it felt wrong to just steal Max’s bed, even if Max happened to be the one directly preventing him from turning in for the night. They’d only known each other for what, a month? Two months? Teisel had a hard time keeping track of the days. The earlier ones especially seemed to blend into each other. He gently shook Max’s forearm to wake him up.
Max practically leaped off the couch, causing Teisel to recoil and almost trip over his suit. “Ack! I can’t believe I fell asleep!” He exclaimed as quietly as he could while he glanced around the room to make sure they were alone. “We’re lucky it’s just you, T-Bonne. We’ve gotta get this stuff back to my room before Aero wakes up. She’d throw a fit if she found out I stole her stuff.”
It took a few moments for Teisel to steady himself and process all of that. He fought the urge to flip out about the insanely high probability that Pic, Grill or Aero might have woken up in the middle of the night to use the common room and just nodded, his mouth clenched shut as tightly as it would go.
The two of them transferred the equipment without saying anything other than a brief goodnight once the task was through.
Since Pic typically made it a point to head into town before dawn like Aero, Teisel thought he’d be able to just snooze until Grill left. Normally, Grill was out by nine at the latest. He worked in a motorhorse garage during the week, and he was the only member of the Bright Bats who had anything resembling a stable day job, so Teisel and Max figured he wouldn’t be too difficult to work around.
Unfortunately, that day wasn’t exactly normal. “Hey, Teisel,” Grill whispered, prodding him gently in the shoulder under the assumption that he was still asleep. “Are you just going to sleep all day? I want to watch some TV.”
Teisel blinked a few times and tried to make it look like he’d just woken up. “Yeah, go ahead…” he mumbled as he pulled himself into a sitting position, wondering what was going on and why Grill wasn’t at work like he was supposed to be.
“Thanks.” The mechanic replied with a nod as he flipped on some golf. After a few awkward moments, he followed up with, “You okay there? You seemed like you were doing really well earlier in the week, but now you’re running off and staying out late and you’re back to sleeping past noon. It was kind of weird, seeing you more alert, actually. It was nice, but still weird. Did something happen?”
Teisel just stared blankly at him. How was he supposed to explain that the only reason he’d “slept” as late as he did was because he was waiting for Grill to leave for work so he could sneak out with Max to go into a dangerous unmarked ruin entrance and raise 50,000 zenny because their oh-so-competent leader spontaneously decided he’d like to be in debt to a black market information dealer, all as part of some crazy scheme to find some magic trinket the way he used to back when he still had his family with him? Why wasn’t Grill at work, anyway?
He racked his mind for a socially acceptable response. “I’m, uh…” He cursed the years that had eroded his bluffing skills. “Well, it’s probably none of my business, but I used to be really reckless with managing money too and, I, uh, I think Max has a credit card…issue…” He trailed off. Teisel actually still had a hard time grasping the nuances of the financial world, but he’d never just take out a big loan like that without a backup plan again. Working off that kind of debt wasn’t worth the hassle. “…He’s paying off all of those charges he makes, right?”
Grill just stared at Teisel, trying to determine what, exactly, was going on in that man’s head. “Yeah, he definitely has a problem with spending money he doesn’t actually have. Sometimes I lend him refractor shards myself, but I never expect it back or anything. That’s just Max for you. I’m not sure why you’re worrying about how he’s paying it, though. You should probably be trying to take it easy.”
“It’s a long story,” Teisel brushed that misadventure off before Grill could probe any further.
The mechanic felt bad that he hadn’t been around enough to really get to know Teisel, especially since he’d been the one to take care of him right when he woke up. Back when he was barely responsive to most attempts at conversation. “Say, have you ever been on a motorhorse?” He asked.
Teisel shook his head.
“If you really used to be a pirate like Max said you were, then you’d probably be pretty good at it! Get dressed and I’ll treat you to lunch and take you up to the shop!” He exclaimed. “Trust me, you’re gonna love this!”
“I beg your pardon?” Teisel deadpanned.
Grill smiled and hopped up from the couch and extended a hand to help Teisel up as well. “Don’t worry, I wouldn’t take you back to Johnny’s or anything. Not after what Max told me, anyway. There are plenty of good places to eat in Teomo. Your sister never wrote about Smokin’ Plasma BBQ, did she?”
Teisel took Grill’s hand and silently shook his head as he pulled himself to his feet. He couldn’t shake the feeling that all of these handouts would eventually come back to haunt him later, but as he’d learned, it usually wasn’t a good idea to turn down any food from the Bright Bats. Grill especially seemed to have a strong nurturing side to him. “You, uh, might want to steer away from tacos for a while, though.” Teisel self-consciously added. “Especially tacos from any kind of hole-in-the-wall establishment.”
Grill briefly debated asking what kind of a book would include such detailed descriptions of restaurants, but he shook off the urge and just said, “Noted.”
As soon as Grill disappeared into his room, Teisel knocked on Max’s door. “Max! Hey Max, it’s me!” He hissed through the door, hoping Max would hear him and Grill wouldn’t.
The leader of the gang ambled over and opened the door a crack. “Did he leave yet?” He whispered.
Teisel shook his head. “Change of plans. Again.” He replied, hoping his neuroses weren’t shining through brighter than the Malt Island lighthouse. “Grill wants to take me to lunch and drag me onto a motorhorse. Think you could bring my suit and the equipment to the gate at the edge of Teomo and wait for me? It seems to be the only way we’ll be able to get him out of the house.”
“Why isn’t he at work?” Max groaned.
“I’ve been asking myself that question all morning.”
Max glanced back at the pile of books and spotting equipment. He had a battery, a small satellite, and a pair of monitors he’d kept in his room that he’d have to bring, along with the box from the night before. It would be a lot to have to drag across town. “Ah, screw it. I’ll see what I can do to get this junk where it needs to go. You have fun out there, okay?”
Teisel gave Max a curt nod. “I’ll try.”
“Try not to freak out or anything.”
“…Right.” Teisel uttered after an uncomfortable conversational lull. “I’d better get going. Contrary to popular belief, this hair doesn’t spike itself.”
If Max had an eye for fashion, then Grill had a serious knack for finding the best restaurants in town. Smokin’ Plasma made the best ribs Teisel’d had in a very long time. “Their pork buns are good too,” he explained as they headed into the garage where Grill usually worked. “I usually pick up about six or so during my break at work. Today my boss has a conference over on Garrdan Island, so the place should be empty. She said I could have the day off, but Max and Aero and I have a motorhorse we usually keep in here for ourselves.”
He walked over to an old red motorhorse close to the entrance and flipped through his key ring. He pulled off a compact-looking key and tossed it underhand to Teisel, who fumbled to catch it, clapping both hands around the key and trapping it just before it could slip out of his reach and clatter to the ground. If Grill noticed the clumsy spectacle at all, he was too busy lifting the garage door open to say anything about it.
“So, uh,” Teisel regarded the machine’s controls, which were incredibly streamlined compared to the interfaces he’d had to master over the years. He could only see a hole for the ignition, a gas gauge and a temperature gauge. He couldn't even find the brake pedal. “Do I just hop on and start it up? Are there rules?”
Grill yanked the dust cover off of a blue motorhorse next to the red one. “Yeah. You accelerate by twisting the handlebars forward and brake by twisting them backward. The foot pedals engage and disengage the secondary thrusters so you can adjust your altitude, but that takes up a lot of extra energy, so try not to do that too much, okay? There isn’t much else to it. In town, you'll need to follow the same traffic laws as if you were driving a car, and riding with two people on one motorhorse is prohibited in the city.” He hopped onto the blue vehicle, but instead of starting it up, he continued the conversation. “It doesn’t stop Max, Pic, Aero, and me from doing it anyway, but I don’t want to get you in any trouble. I’d feel bad if I did, so I’m borrowing the shop’s motorhorse. I can fix it if anything happens to it. Feel free to practice in the parking lot until you get the hang of the controls, and come see me when you’re ready to hit the road.”
The motorhorse interface was as intuitive as Grill’s rambling, rapid-fire explanation of it wasn’t. It took Teisel a little while to adjust to the accelerator’s sensitivity, but he managed to stay on the vehicle the whole time. “I think I’ve got this,” he said as he rode up to Grill’s motorhorse no more than ten minutes later.
Grill grinned. “I’d say! I knew all that experience piloting those pirate ships would help!” He gunned the ignition on his own motorhorse and pulled out onto the road, waiting for Teisel to follow suit. “I’m gonna take you out of town. You’ll have a lot more fun riding out in the plains.” Before he turned around to lead the way to the gate into Teomo, however, he added, “You should put your goggles on, though. The last thing you’re gonna want is a face full of dust.”
That explained why all of the Bright Bats were required to own a pair of goggles. However, Teisel just raised his eyebrows and gently tapped the surface of one of his eyes. “These aren’t real, you know,” he reminded the chunky blond.
“Maybe not, but you wouldn’t want the lenses getting scratched up by debris, would you? Finding another professional who’d be willing to find and install matching lenses for you would set you back quite a bit if you end up damaging one.”
“Oh, right.” Teisel realized as he fumbled at his belt for his goggles. A few moments later, the two of them were off.
Grill didn’t seem to notice Max when he and Teisel passed him hauling Aero’s old spotting equipment down the main road in a red wagon that looked way too small for the heaping pile of junk inside it. The mechanic made it out of the Wasteland Gate and onto the plains without a hitch, and he skidded to a stop a good 20 yards from the city limits. Teisel caught up to him and surveyed the terrain.
Aside from the bluffs to the north leading up to Ghiotte Summit, the area was relatively flat, with a well-worn path leading across the plain and only a few Reaverbots waddling around. He spotted a Guild-regulated ruin entrance on the coast, surrounded by a small pond with a footbridge leading to the entrance. There were a few spotting vehicles scattered near the ruin, but otherwise, the area was relatively hazard-free. In other words, it was an ideal motorhorse training ground.
“Alright, Teisel, go nuts!” Grill exclaimed with a grin.
Grill never expected Teisel to take that statement as close to literally as he did. Before he could say anything else, the new guy gunned it straight for the bluffs. At the insane rate he was driving, the vehicle practically slid up the slope. He hung a hard left on the first outcropping and barreled straight off the edge, catching more air than Grill had ever dared attempt to catch in his life. For a moment, the notion that Teisel might be lapsing back into his old habit of crashing vehicles on purpose slipped into his mind, but when Grill caught a glimpse of the goofy grin on that man’s face, it became apparent that the portly mechanic had nothing to worry about.
Riding a motorhorse, Teisel decided as he carved up the hillside a second time, was far more exhilarating than piloting any robot could ever be.
Grill lost whatever interest he might have had in accompanying Teisel during his test run and parked the machine next to an outcropping of rock, perfectly content to watch as his typically taciturn teammate let loose with an uproarious burst of laughter and shouted, “HEY GRILL! WATCH THIS!!!” before catapulting the machine off of the outcropping again. He was, quite frankly, glad they weren’t double-riding this time around. Teisel’s approach to the sport was way too rough for Grill’s liking.
After a few hours and some wild gesticulation on Grill’s part, Teisel eventually caught the hint that it was time to put the toys away for the day. “I’m glad you found something that makes you happy…but I don’t want you to hurt yourself either,” Grill warned as they pulled back into the garage. “Be careful next time, alright? Still, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile like that before…you were like a kid on Christmas morning!”
Teisel sheepishly grinned as he strung his goggles back around his belt loop. Riding that motorhorse might have very well been the most fun he’d had in not just the past ten years, but in his entire life. “You’ve been working a lot. You just haven’t been around to see it when it happens,” he shrugged. “I think I scared Aero. She heard me laughing a few days ago and thought someone had broken into the base.”
“You do have an unexpectedly, uh, distinctive laugh,” he admitted, “but it’s nothing to be ashamed of!”
“Who ever said I was ashamed of my own laugh? I just don’t want anyone to think I’m completely out of my mind!”
Grill parked his bike and reopened the garage door. “Too late!” He exclaimed with a joking grin.
Teisel certainly wasn’t expecting that response, but he brushed it off with a chuckle and dismounted his motorhorse. Whether Grill legitimately thought Teisel was crazy or not was up for debate, but it was all too apparent that he liked seeing Teisel have fun. This detour was worthwhile, no question.
“Too bad I can’t make 50,000 zenny riding one of those bikes all day,” he thought to himself, wondering if there were any laws against attaching weapons modules to a motorhorse as he and Grill parted ways. Raiding an island with a team of Servbots on motorhorses could have been a real adventure, but for now it was finally time to hit the ruins.
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Post by Dashe on Jul 10, 2014 12:34:35 GMT -5
“T-Bonne! It’s about freaking TIME!” Max exclaimed as soon as Teisel jogged back through the Wasteland Gate again and up the hill to where he was waiting with the wagon. The little cart was completely overloaded with their spotting equipment. “Do you have any idea how long I’ve been hiding behind this pile of rocks? I thought Grill would catch me for sure!”
Teisel was still basking in the afterglow of his first motorhorse outing. “You were really here this whole time? Did you see me drive off the cliff?” He giddily exclaimed. “It was great! I didn’t even fall off!”
Max shook his head. “Dude, we can’t just sit around and waste time right now. I’ve been waiting out here for hours.” He tossed Teisel his digging suit and sighed. “Hurry up and change into this so we can get moving. Go behind a rock or something, whatever, you can talk about it later, alright?”
Right. His old suit.
Even though it had only been a matter of weeks since he’d last worn it, just looking at it elicited a peculiar sensation that grew more and more difficult to digest with every moment that passed. He hadn’t worn his own family logo for almost a month. There was once a time when he’d had that mechanical skull marking emblazoned on everything from lethal weapons to dish towels, almost to the point of absurdity. The fact that he hadn’t even had one on his person in the last month or so, aside from while he was reading Tron’s handiwork, really socked him in the heartstrings right then and there. All of a sudden he felt a surge of emotion rip the ground right out from under him and start to well up inside until…
“Woah, T-Bonne, it’s okay,” Max suddenly interrupted Teisel’s rapidly derailing train of thought. That distraught look on Teisel’s face as he stood there with his armor in hand came out of nowhere, and Max really didn’t want another meltdown to deal with. “It’s nothing personal. I’m not mad. It isn’t that I wouldn’t like to hear you talk about motorhorses right now. I like motorhorses just as much as you’d expect me to like ‘em. We just have a job to do and we don’t have a lot of time to get it done!”
“Motorhorses. Right. This is about motorhorses.” Teisel mumbled under his breath as he exhaled.
“That’s it, buddy, deep breaths. Gotta focus.” Max encouraged him, watching the taller man carefully as he struggled to concentrate on his breathing. “We’ll take you out riding again. That’s a promise I know I can keep.”
Once Teisel collected his bearings, he ducked back behind the rock to change.
He discovered that his suit was unexpectedly snug. Still wearable, but definitely more constricting than he’d remembered. Either his armor somehow shrank when it was being cleaned, or eating everything the Bright Bats gave him hadn't been a great idea after all.
Max snickered when he stiffly ambled into plain sight. “Aw man,” he shook his head. “No offense, but that hood doesn’t work with your hair anymore…at all.”
Teisel’s mouth dropped open and the color drained from his face. “B-b-b-b-but…how does that…what do I…” He stammered, looking over his shoulder to try and see the back of his own head. “You don’t have a mirror, do you?”
“Sorry, dude.” He shook his head. A few stray chunks of hair were sticking straight up out of the hole he was used to putting his ponytail through. Most of it didn’t even reach the hole anymore. “You’re gonna have to just take my word for it.” Teisel yanked the armored shell off his head and tossed it aside. It clattered to the ground and bounced down the hill toward town. He frantically pulled down the spandex hood around his neck, sending his hair into an even bigger state of disarray. “Max, detach this from my collar.” He requested. “It comes off. It should definitely come off. I think there’s a zipper or Velcro or something. I can’t reach it. I’m holding a gun, I’m not sure I’ll be able to pick it up again if I drop it, and I really don’t want to shoot myself in the face.”
Max balked for a moment, wondering how anybody could miss a zipper or Velcro at all, but he didn’t want to start anything. When Teisel got emotional it was stressful enough. The prospect of Teisel getting emotional with a gun was downright terrifying. He swallowed his unease and walked up to his subordinate, and after a few minutes of blindly feeling around for the seam in question, much to both of their relief, Max found a tiny zipper almost completely obscured by the material.
“How’s my hair?” Teisel nervously asked.
Max cringed, taking in what looked like the most awkward bedhead he’d seen on the new guy yet. Generally speaking, skintight headgear did meticulous hairstyles like Teisel’s no favors. “For shooting at Reaverbots it’ll work, I guess. The spot we’re looking for is about ten minutes up this path, so let’s just hurry up and get this over with. I hope you don’t mind dragging along the stuff, either. I’m the one who hauled it across town, you know.”
After twenty minutes of walking, they eventually found the place Seedy Leigh had described. It really blended in well. As Max changed the refractor in the spotting board’s main component and attached the peripherals, Teisel poked at the discreet speakers Max had clumsily wired into his suit. There was a small mic attached to his collar. He’d never worked with that kind of spotting equipment before.
Technically, nobody had ever worked with that kind of spotting equipment before, since Aero had just scraped the whole thing together out of junk Pic brought in a long time ago. Not only was it outdated, it was outdated and custom.
Teisel’s hands wouldn’t stop shaking. He assured himself that it was perfectly normal to be nervous about going underground again as he paced around waiting for Max to finish up. It had taken them far longer to get to where they were standing now than he ever would have guessed. The sooner he could just scramble into that hole in the ground and get it over with, the better.
“Alright, I think we’re ready to go.” Max said into the noticeably larger dashboard mic. “Is the headset working okay?”
Teisel nodded. “Yeah, it’s coming in here loud and clear. How about yours?” Judging from the look of the noise-canceling headphones Max was wearing, the only way he’d probably hear Teisel was if the equipment had picked him up.
Max nodded. “Okay then. Let’s do this, T-Bonne!” He exclaimed.
Teisel didn’t need to be asked twice. He pushed the tall grass aside and slid under the carefully disguised outcropping. He kept a tight grip on the edge with his free hand until he felt solid ground under his feet again. The only light that filtered into the tiny cavern came from that hidden entrance, but it was enough to lead him to a dark tunnel at the opposite end. He had to duck to get through, and he cursed himself for neglecting to bring a flashlight to duct tape to his other arm, but right as he was about to radio Max to see if he could get one, he found himself stepping straight into what could only be the Klickelan ruins themselves.
The hallway he’d entered looked both alien and familiar at the same time. A lot of those underground passages looked the same, really. Blue walls with geometric designs and incandescent embellishments lighting the way…for all he knew this could have been one of the hallways he’d stormed through in the Donner Wels without sparing the surroundings a second thought. Since that particular hallway had dozens of Shekuten scattered around the pathway, however, he found himself muttering over and over that he’d never explored this exact area before in an effort to stay focused.
There didn’t really seem like too much to explore. The corridor extended so far in either direction that he couldn’t make out any inkling of another passageway from his current position. If he walked far enough, he’d probably reach a door or something, but as far as he could tell it was just him and more of those explosive little guys than he could count.
“Alright Max,” he whispered into the mic, trying his best not to rouse too many of the little machines. Two popped up and waddled toward him on three awkward legs before he picked them off with his machine gun. Neither of them dropped any refractor shards. “I’m in.”
“I’d say!” Max exclaimed. “I’m getting some decent map readings on this monitor. It looks like you’re in a long hall surrounded by a bunch of red dots. Be careful, they might be Reaverbots!”
Teisel ran straight up to a cluster of targets and they sprang into action. “Those are the Shekuten we came down here to pick off, remember?” He fired off a few shots, all but one of which missed their mark. Maybe a machine gun hadn’t been the best choice for precision sniping. Holding his arm steady wasn’t easy. “This last one I just hit was the first that actually dropped a refractor shard. It doesn’t look like it’s worth much more than 10 zenny.”
“That’s not good, T-Bonne.”
Even though Max couldn’t see it from where he was, Teisel shook his head. “Nope.” He punctuated the thought with another gunshot and sent another tiny refractor shard flying.
He had a feeling he would probably be there for a while.
Eventually, Teisel stopped aiming at the Shekuten when he realized that goading them into activation and letting them detonate on their own would still yield the same amount of refractor shards. Running straight through giant clusters of them was much faster than taking the time to actually shoot them, and Max either didn’t notice or didn’t care how Teisel decided to get rid of the pesky things.
After running the length of the corridor, backtracking only to pick up the dropped loot, Teisel found another hole in the wall. “Hey Max, are you getting any readings from this?” He asked.
“From what? It just looks like a dead end to me.” Max shrugged.
“There’s a hole in the wall. You sure it doesn’t lead to a better part of this ruin? These small fries aren’t worth the effort!” Teisel argued. “I’ve been setting them off for an hour at least and I’ve only made 250 zenny. That’s not even enough to buy a cheeseburger!”
“Well, if you think you can fit in there any better than you could fit into your suit, be my guest. Just don’t come crying to me if you get yourself stuck or anything, because this jacket’s worth about four times what we paid for your gun!”
Teisel knelt down and peered into the hole. It looked just big enough to crawl into. After taking a moment to collect his bearings, he crept inside. “That’s it,” he muttered. “Next time I come in here I’m bringing some kind of flashlight.”
It was so dark he almost impaled himself on a scrap of metal as he burrowed his way through the tunnel on his hands and knees. He was lucky. In spite of all the things in the universe that had the potential to slap Teisel in the face with uncomfortable emotions, he’d never had a problem with small spaces. In fact, a lot of the robots he’d piloted were designed explicitly for the purpose of burrowing into the earth’s surface in some capacity. He smiled to himself as he fondly remembered leaping through the desert sands in the Blitzkrieg on Saul Kada. That was what riding the motorhorse had reminded him of. The only thing that had been missing back then was the wind in his hair, but getting sand in his face probably wouldn’t have been worth the trade-off. All in all, though, the Blitzkrieg was fun. If the Bonnes hadn’t had a key to steal, he could have easily spent the day just leaping around in the desert outside of Kimotoma.
He fought the urge to curse Mega Man Volnutt’s name as he pressed onward. It’d be a waste of time dwelling too much on that. The Blitzkrieg's blueprints were probably long gone anyway.
Eventually he came to a fork in the tunnel. “Max, can you still hear me?” Teisel asked.
“Yeah,” Max replied. “I have no idea what it is you’re trying to do down there. The map doesn’t cover the area you’ve reached.”
“Left or right?”
“Huh?”
Teisel frowned. “Pick a side. Left or right?”
“Uh, left?” Max replied. “You’d better not get yourself lost down there, T-Bonne! The gang’ll never let me live it down if I got you lost in the ruins!”
“Thanks, Max.” Teisel just brushed him off and kept on moving forward.
The tunnel eventually dumped him outside, onto a ridge he’d never explored in his life. The sun was just beginning to set, and Ghiotte Summit loomed over him. He’d never been this close to the landmark before. Near the tunnel entrance, almost completely obscured by a clump of tall grass, was a small box. It didn’t look like the treasure chests Teisel was used to, but he kicked it open and discovered a weird-looking card inside. The card was jet black with what looked like inactive gold circuitry on it.
Teisel decided it’d be best not to tell Max about it. For all he could tell, it might have been someone’s credit card, and the only person who was worse with managing a line of credit than Teisel was Max. For a moment he briefly considered asking Grill to check it out, but then he remembered that the likelihood of Grill panicking and forcing him to quit digging altogether wasn’t worth the risk. It didn’t take very much to get Grill to worry, and going underground was perhaps the least safe hobby he could have picked up during his stay on Klickelan Island.
He took a few minutes to relax and take in the scenery before hiding the card on his person and climbing back into the tunnel. What the Bright Bats didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.
The trip back to the ruins seemed a lot shorter than the trip out had been. Teisel briefly considered exploring the path he’d passed up earlier, but Max was probably annoyed that they hadn’t found any money on his detour anyway. He figured the best course of action involved setting off as many Shekuten as he could. Most of them had probably respawned by then and there really wasn’t a moment to lose.
At the end of the day, he’d scraped together a measly 1,430 zenny.
“Hey, that’s not that bad,” Max remarked. Teisel was exhausted, sweaty, and covered from head to toe in dirt. His hair, somehow, looked worse than it had been when Max and Grill had found him passed out on the hillside. “I didn’t think we’d break the 1,000 zenny mark!”
“Are you kidding me?” He retorted. He was too worn out to even yell at this point. Against all odds, Max had convinced him to tow the wagon full of electronics back into town with his gun and suit. “At the rate we’re going, even if we round up, it’ll still take us two months to get what we have two weeks to get. We need to take a different approach here.”
“If you know how to swim, we could try another entrance.”
“You’d have to be a complete idiot to live on a planet that’s 95% water and not know how to swim.” Teisel quipped back. “Let’s give this section one more run tomorrow. The path I took wound up being a dead end, but there’s another branch I passed up. I want to check that one out before moving on.”
Max scoffed. “I told you, I got no readings on that tunnel. None.”
“Maybe your spotting equipment just isn’t up to par, then.”
“Come on, T-Bonne. Aero made this to impress some guy back when she was thirteen. What can you expect from a kid that age?”
For a split second, an extraordinarily vivid image of the Gesellschaft rising into the clouds for the first time flashed into Teisel’s mind, but he lost sight of it just as quickly as it had come. “You’d be surprised.”
“Okay, fine.” Max acquiesced against his better judgment. “One more go, but if you just hit another dead end I will never let you live it down, got it?”
“Got it.”
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Post by Dashe on Jul 17, 2014 13:21:42 GMT -5
The right hand path led straight into the central hub of the Klickelan Network. Teisel almost stumbled right back into the hole in the wall as he took in the vast blue cavern filled with diggers of all shapes and sizes running around and blowing things up left and right. The terrain had been completely excavated for the most part and had a few incandescent accents, but every so often he’d see some areas that hadn’t been completely uncovered yet. He noticed a few pillars and more than a dozen ramps and bridges connecting the various structures. And on top of everything, there were Reaverbots crawling all over the place.
“Out of the way!” a woman with a considerable tan and dual bomb cannons perched on her shoulders shouted at Teisel as she sent a volley of what appeared to be fireworks straight at a small group of Fingerii lurking nearby. Teisel ducked just in time to hear her exclaim “Dynamitastic!” as the Reaverbots shattered into fragments.
“Max, take note of my current position,” Teisel instructed, mentally adding, “If you can even read your map at all,” for good measure.
It was pretty hard for anyone, even a rookie spotter like Max, to miss the hub, and during Teisel’s original stay on Klickelan, it never failed to remind him of one of those online RPGs he'd become addicted to during the rocket construction. Not much had changed over the years. There were so many diggers running around…though terrorizing them from the cockpit of a mecha and running around on foot as just another face in the crowd were shaping up to be two vastly different experiences already. The central chamber was about five stories high, and contained more branching paths leading to different sectors of the ruin than he or anyone could really count.
From what he could discern so far, Teisel had emerged on one of the upper levels. To his relief, the area’s Reaverbots didn’t look too threatening. It would be the other diggers he’d have to worry about this time around. That woman with the fireworks seemed likely to cause a cave-in.
He scrambled down a ramp to a less-populated area where a bunch of garden-variety Horokko were waddling around. They may not have been the biggest targets, but at least they dropped refractors with some degree of consistency.
Just as he finished riddling one of the little guys with bullet holes, a short, stout man in a red helmet and mismatched armor burst onto the scene and took out half of Teisel’s targets, snatching up the refractor shards for himself. “HEY!” Teisel shouted. “YOU…”
The guy was completely out of earshot before he could even come up with a suitably memorable threat, and the distraction afforded one of the Horokko the perfect opportunity to tackle Teisel from behind, knocking him to the ground. His right knee hit the floor hard, but he rolled onto his back and sent a spray of gunfire into his assailant’s creepy red eye. The Reaverbot tipped over backward and exploded, dropping two 50-zenny refractor shards. Teisel pulled himself to his feet and stumbled to grab them before anybody else could take the opportunity to beat him to his earnings again.
“T-Bonne!” Max shouted. “These readings are telling me you took a hit! Are you alright?”
“I’ll live,” Teisel shrugged it off and turned his attention to an incoming pair of Horokko on the left. “I just picked up a hundred more Zenny. That would have taken me half an hour back in that hallway.” One of the Reaverbots lobbed a bomb in his direction. Teisel tried to shoot it out of the air before it could hit him, but he missed the projectile completely. But before the bomb could hit, a third Horokko tackled him from his right and knocked him out of the line of fire. He returned the favor by unloading a volley of machine gun fire at the lot of them.
“Looks like you’re kicking some serious butt in there!” Max exclaimed over the communications link. “You’re not doing too bad for a first-timer!”
Teisel brushed off Max’s compliment and gazed around the immediate area. “Can you see any unattended groups of Reaverbots on your radar? If we’re going to make this deadline, I can’t sit around waiting for them to come to me.”
“Try heading down a level. I’m seeing a bunch of small blips without any interfering signals coming from other diggers,” he instructed. “It should be about 30 yards northwest from the end of the staircase, near an opened treasure chest.”
“Roger that,” Teisel replied with a nod. He checked the amount of pressure he felt comfortable putting on his knee. It still felt a little sore, but it wasn’t going to slow him down anytime soon. He had a rougher time just getting out of bed that morning after running through the Shekuten hall for all those hours.
Those Reaverbots would never know what hit ‘em.
Teisel had pocketed somewhere around 3,500 zenny when rumors of a Guild check-in began to be whispered among the diggers.
“Hey now, what’s this Guild check-in stuff all about?” He asked as he tentatively approached a two-man digging team who looked like they were packing up their equipment.
The shorter member of the duo glanced up. “You must be new around here,” he stated. “Every week or so, a bunch of Digger’s Guild officials run a sweep on the ruins to make sure nobody’s digging here without a license,” he explained very quickly as he helped his partner collapse a tripod with a gun turret on top. “If I had to make a guess at it, about a third of the people in these ruins at any given time don't have one. Check it out.” He pointed across the chasm to a ledge, where three officials in matching blue and gray uniforms were in the process of apprehending a young brunette woman in a mining suit. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a slip of plastic. They nodded and proceeded to the next group.
“Rats…I didn’t think she had one,” The short guy sighed. The two men slung their equipment over their shoulder and made off toward the nearest exit. “Anyway, we’ve gotta get going. If they catch us again we’ll be spending the next month doing jail time.” He finished. The two of them scrambled for the nearest passage out of the immediate area before Teisel even had a chance to respond.
“T-Bonne, nobody ever told me about any license checks!” Max exclaimed. “If what that guy said is true, we can’t stick around!”
Teisel didn’t need to be told twice. He stole a glance over his shoulder to make sure the officials weren’t paying any attention and booked it after the guys with the tripod.
However, a few steps into the tunnel, he caught a glimpse of two more armed officials rounding the bend at the other end and closing in on the guys he’d been following. He broke into a cold sweat and scrambled backward and out of the way. Just how many men did the Guild send underground for these checks, anyway?
“Max, can you see the officials on your radar at all?” Teisel asked, ducking behind a pillar and scanning the hub area, taking note of a third group patrolling the level below him. “I’ve spotted eight of these guys already, traveling in groups of two or three.” He sprinted for another passageway with a steep path leading upward, taking care to scan the area for any more of those Guild reps. There seemed to be a lot of branching pathways down that particular passage and plenty of niches he could duck behind in a worst-case scenario.
“I’m not picking up anything but Reaverbots,” Max replied. “They must not show up on my radar. Get the heck out of there!”
Teisel frowned. He had his own problems to deal with. All this running around was really wearing him down.
He felt another surge of adrenaline hit him after a few minutes of running. “Chief, we’re heading up to level 5 through passage C-16. Over.” He heard an unfamiliar voice loudly state from the general direction of the hub, probably right around where the slope began. “Stockley thought she saw someone heading up this way. Looked like an older guy in armor.”
Now was definitely not the time to eavesdrop. Unfortunately, as the footsteps behind him grew louder and louder as he scrambled up the stairwell, he realized that he wasn’t going to be able to outrun his pursuer. The moment he spotted a side corridor he could use to try and shake the Guild off, he sprinted into it without hesitation.
This new hallway looked like it was undergoing major excavation efforts. There was still dirt and rock caked to a lot of the walls, and some scaffolding scattered about, but it was completely devoid of witnesses, and there were a number of doors lining the passage. The first one he opened put him face-to-face with a treasure chest, but the room itself was tiny and unembellished and looked to be a dead end. The second door was locked. He glanced back in the direction of the ramp. The ruin’s natural lighting cast a long shadow on the wall. The Digger’s Guild was still following him!
There wasn’t enough time for him to be picky. He raced into the third door, hoping with everything he had in him that he wouldn’t find himself stuck in another small room with nowhere to hide.
The room he’d just entered turned out to be a larger, dark hallway, with incandescent lights evenly spaced every so often. He deduced immediately that they weren’t a natural feature of the ruin. In the distance, he spotted a few glowing red dots hovering in midair. Miitan, most likely. Maybe Foo-Roo. Whatever they were, if they spotted him, he was as good as caught, and sniping them would do nothing to quiet them down.
If he stayed close to the entrance, however, it would be almost certain that whoever had been chasing him down would find him. It was then that Teisel spotted the generator box sitting on the floor, tucked close to the wall and out of the way. He decided that blindly making his way down the hall wouldn't be anywhere near as risky as letting the Reaverbots spot him and self-destruct. He grabbed the power cord attached to the lights and yanked the cable out of its socket.
The hallway went dark, save for the glowing red lights in the distance. “Hey Max, whatever you’re doing up there, do not contact me for any reason.” He hissed into his mic. “If you can completely cut off the communications system, you might want to do that. I’ve got dormant Miitan up ahead that could very well give me away if you so much as make one peep out there, got it?”
“What?! Are you nuts?!” Max balked on the other line. “What if you need me to warn you about something giant and dangerous at the end of…”
“Shut it down, Max! What if someone shows up? What if a motorhorse engine picks up on the mic? What if one of those officials happens to be patrolling the surface looking for unlicensed spotters?” Teisel whispered. He wasn’t sure if he was hearing things or if the mysterious footprints were really approaching the door. “Just…trust me.”
“Fine, fine.” Max mumbled. Even though Teisel couldn’t see him, he could tell that his spotter was rolling his eyes as he shut the communications system down.
It wasn’t a moment too soon. As Teisel crept directly underneath what he’d decided were probably Miitan, he heard the door to the room slide open.
Against his better judgment, Teisel took off. Two of the Miitan beeped and detonated. The explosions briefly illuminated the passage and revealed a door a few feet ahead of him on the right. He could have sworn he heard a man yelling for him to stop, but he wasn’t stupid. Not by a long shot. He slipped into the passage and hoped that the Klickelan Digger’s Guild rep they’d sent after him would have a rough time trying to avoid the remaining Miitan on his own.
This next room was reasonably well lit. The ruin’s natural incandescence was back in full force, and he followed a winding passage to a large, deserted chamber filled with phosphorescent rocks. He could see a small stream with a natural bridge over it. It looked to be powering some kind of turbine, and even though he couldn’t see anybody hanging around inside, there was an odd, persistent clanking sound echoing throughout the area.
In the center of the room, on a pedestal of sorts, was an unopened treasure chest.
Teisel reflexively started to ask Max if the chest was reading as a mimic, but then he remembered that he’d told Max to cut off the system. After a few moments of deliberation, he decided that even if he were dealing with a trapped box, it would still probably drop quite a bit of money. It was definitely worth the risk.
The treasure chest contained two glowing, pink energy blades. They looked like something straight out of an episode of The Steel Prince. He was half expecting the chest to blow up in his face, but here it was. A genuinely legitimate find. One that was probably worth something up on the surface, at that!
He was so caught up in trying to figure out the best use for them that he didn’t notice the invisible Sharukurusu materialize out of nowhere and tackle him to the ground, sending the treasure skidding across the room.
“WHAT THE HECK!?!?” He shouted as the Reaverbot vanished before he even had a chance to register that it had attacked him. He dove to the ground in an effort to pick up the swords again, but either a second invisible Sharukurusu or that same one from before skidded between Teisel and the treasure and lunged at him with a bone-crunching tackle. There was no mistaking that clanking sound now.
Teisel, in a frenzied attempt to avoid the Digger’s Guild at any cost, had accidentally stumbled upon an invisible Sharukurusu nest.
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