A Different Place

Chapter 7 - Underground Break-in

Teisel Bonne grunted in impatience, scratching the several days' worth of stubble that adorned his face. How long was Tron going to take, anyway? He wouldn't be able to hide the Golden Refractor for much longer, at the rate Loath had his shanghaied Diggers working. Teisel had actually found it buried deep in a pile of ancient rubble, only a day after his arrival. Knowing that Loath would lock it away once it had been found, Teisel had placed the three-tiered refractor in a worn-out hole in the wall of the ruins. Then, he'd placed another metallic sheet in front of the hole, concealing it from all other Diggers---he hadn't even told Bon where it was.

"Oooh!" he shouted. "Where is that girl?"

Tron should have been here much, much earlier. Teisel realized they hadn't had the time to place the tracking device in his own armor, because Glyde had caught up to him well before he'd been ready. Still, the island wasn't that large. Looking manually, Tron still should have been able to locate him and Bon by now. Unless, that was, some other difficulty had come up of which Teisel was unaware.

A small, furtive tapping came at the iron door. "Excuse me," an unfamiliar voice called softly through the window slot, "are you Bon Bonne?"

Lost in his thoughts, Teisel waved an impatient hand at the unseen person. "No, I'm not! He's next door."

"Thanks," said the stranger. As Teisel continued to puzzle out just exactly what Tron was doing, the voice filtered through the door once more, a little bit softer this time. "He says Bon's in the next cell over."

"Yay!" cried a high-pitched voice which sounded suspiciously like a Servbot's. "Now we just have to find Master Teisel and we'll be done!"

"Well," corrected the other voice, "we have to get out of here first, remember..."

Teisel's head snapped up as the importance of these current events dawned on him. "Hey!" he ejected, leaping onto the thick door and rattling the bars, "It's me! I'm Teisel! Oh, let me out, why don't you!?"

"Master Teisel!" yelled a Servbot.

"Stand back," said the unidentified voice. "I'll blow the door."

Teisel crouched behind his bunk, covering his head with arms. After the shattering boom, he rose and watched smoke rise off the door to his cell, which then abruptly fell to the ground. "Number Fifteen! Number Three!" he called out joyfully to the Servbots, who were waving at him and beaming smiles.

"Let's get Bon out," Teisel ordered, and the Servbots quickly repeated the process of attaching explosive charges to Bon Bonne's door. He eyed the newcomer, a boy he did not recognize. He was about Tron's age, maybe a year or two younger, and had a head of unruly brown hair, save for one white lock at his left temple. His clothes looked plain---the white shirt and brown trousers both looked well-worn, as though he'd not only worn them for years, but two other someones before him had done so as well. "And who might you be?"

The boy nodded to him. "I'm MegaMan Tr..." After flinching a bit, he recovered and said, "Your sister sent us to get you. We split up about..hmm...three corridors back."

"MegaMan?! Like my favorite TV show?" Teisel nearly laughed. So, Tron had finally caught herself a boyfriend. If Teisel's late father had been here now, he'd have broken out in a conniption fit.

MegaMan's eyes narrowed, only for a split-second, but Teisel still caught it. "Not exactly. Look, we need to get moving pretty fast, and I noticed a small car just around the corner. Do we need keys to use it?"

"I don't think so. Even if we do, I can use an old pirate trick of mine to start it." Okay, hotwiring a car wasn't really an old pirate trick---he'd learned it in his misspent youth, skipping the lessons his parents had so painstakingly arranged for him and gallivanting around Marabonne City. Well, he'd arranged his own lessons on the street, and those were certainly coming in handy now.

Teisel and MegaMan had reached the vehicle, a loud explosion sounded, indicating Bon was now free as well. "This isn't precisely what I'd call small," said Teisel. The car had no top, but had plently of room, with two seats in front and a wide bench in the back. In addition, a rather large chaingun was mounted to its rear, with a platform for the gunner to stand upon while the car was in motion. Teisel utilized his "old pirate trick," then hopped into the gunner's roost, signaling for MegaMan to get in the driver's seat.

The boy looked flustered. "Umm...I've never even driven a crane before..."

"You've gotta learn sometime," Teisel said, rolling his eyes. Before MegaMan could protest again, the two Servbots and Bon Bonne rounded the corner. Bon crowed in delight as he saw his brother free. "Hey, baby brother! Ready to get out of here? Hey, meet Tron's new boyfriend!"

"Babu!" Bon said.

"I'm not really her---wait," MegaMan said, staring at the enormous Bon. "He's your baby brother?"

"Bab-oooo!" Bon agreed.

"Ah, you see," Teisel said, as Bon and the Servbots crowded into the seats, "that's kind of complicated. Just before our beloved parents---" Teisel was cut off by the sound of gunfire in the distance. "Never mind that now," he growled, "Tron may be in trouble. Let's MOVE OUT!" With this, Teisel pointed dramatically forward. When nothing happened, he pointed again, then demanded, "What's the holdup, here?!"

MegaMan jumped into the passenger's seat. "Number Three, take over."

"Roger!" the Servbot said, shifting the car into gear and taking off.

"I can't drive at all," MegaMan explained to Teisel. "I think I'll do a better job riding shotgun, as it were." He brandished said gun, re-loading it, then cocking the weapon.

"Fine," sighed Teisel. "Now, let's MOVE OUT!!!"

This time, the assault vehicle did, indeed, move out as was intended. Number Three seemed to be having difficulty with both using the pedals and seeing over the dashboard at the same time, though Teisel was not overly concerned. They weren't driving long before a couple of small robots appeared in front of them.

"Oh, no!" wailed Number Fifteen, shaking so hard in the backseat that Teisel could feel it through the floor. "Birdbots!"

"You mean those are the robots you guys are so afraid of?" MegaMan's voice sounded skeptical.

"Y-yes!" said Number Fifteen. "They're scary!!"

"Keh keh!" one of the Birdbots said as they drew closer. "You losers can't---" The robot's annoying voice was cut off by a blast from MegaMan's shotgun. Both Birdbots were thrown back, their gears grinding and smoking.

"They seem like easy pickings to me," MegaMan said smugly, re-cocking the gun.

Number Three stomped on the gas pedal, and the car took off once again, zooming towards the sounds of a furious battle. The problem with the builders of the ruins, as it turned out, was that they often took no discernable pattern when designing the structures. Poor Number Three had to take many twists, odd loops, and occasionally, right angles to make any progress, and with the way the he was constantly slamming into the sides and corners of the ruins, it made the drive uncomfortable, to say the least. Finally, the five pirates arrived at a large, ominous room, where the Gustaff was engaged in a furious battle with Glyde's slender robotic armor.

"What is that?!" said MegaMan, looking in a direction perpindicular to the combatants.

"That," said Teisel, "is the Colossus. Once Loath finds the Golden Refractor, he'll use it to power that giant machine. With it, he could probably take over all of the nearby island chains." Teisel rubbed his chin, a mischeivous smirk on his face. "I pulled one over on him, though. I found the Golden Refractor last week and hid it in a crater!"

"Oooooh," oooohed Servbot Number Three, who, distracted by the Colossus as he was, immediately rammed the car into a nearby wall, throwing all the car's occupants except Bon out of their seats.

"Number Three!" Teisel rubbed his head as he climbed back into the gunner's roost. "Bon! Get over there and give Tron a hand! I'll do what I can from here!" Teisel turned the chaingun completely around, so that it faced the car's rear, and, waiting for the right moment, let a volley of bullets fly towards Glyde.

Accustomed as he was to taking command, Teisel had forgotten the presence of MegaMan in his issued orders. Left to his own devices, MegaMan gave his current situation a bit of thought, then looked down at the two Servbots. "All right," he said tentatively, "do you guys have any Bonne Bombs on you?"

"Sure!" replied the two.

"Okay, then," said MegaMan, "let's head over to that Colossus thing and see if use them and the explosives I have left to blow it up!"

Three and Fifteen saluted, then followed MegaMan down the slanted floor towards the Colossus, which was big enough to seem like some sort of aircraft carrier. Acting on what seemed like instict, MegaMan darted behind a multicolored pillar, planting a timed explosive on its base. He was leading the Servbots on, looking back at them, when he ran into an obstruction and fell hard on his rump. It was man, but his girth seemed so massive as to be inhuman. He was covered in pastels: purple suit, plum shirt, pink scarf. He face was twisted in a cruel expression, and his prosthetic metal nose was pointed cruelly.

Loath grimaced down at MegaMan. "And just what do you think you're doing?"