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Chapter 34: A Different Lifetime

"Teisel? Teisel, it's time to wake up."

Teisel blinked his eyes open, only to find himself in a blindingly white room with a blurry, blue blob standing at his bedside. He couldn't tell if the other person in the room was concerned or starting to get impatient from the tone of her voice, but as strange as the circumstances may have been, she certainly didn't seem at all hostile. "What's happening...?" he slurred as he tried to blink his vision back to normal, but the image remained frustratingly indistinct.

"You have to get up, Teisel," the unidentifiable fuzzy shape standing next to the bed replied, "You may be on vacation, but you just can't sleep in past noon every day like this."

"...Mom?"

He sat up straight in the bed the second he finally recognized the voice. He shook his head and squinted closely at his conversation partner. Once their faces were about a foot apart, he was able to discern that even though she'd aged quite a bit, and even though her hair was as gray as his was and pulled into a loose, messy ponytail, this was, no doubt about it, his mother, standing next to his bed in a blue shirt and jeans. He scuttled backward into a heap of pillows as his mind kicked into overdrive trying to piece the situation together. He even pinched himself just to make sure he wasn't dreaming. "That son of a gun killed me down there!" he groaned. "Everybody on the planet is going to die because I just couldn't beat that little blue twerp!"

His mother frowned. "Teisel, you must have had another one of those crazy dreams of yours," she sighed. "You're not dead. Nobody's going to die. You're just at the summer house on Tronne Island. I saved some pancakes for you down in the kitchen. They're probably cold now, but that's what you get for sleeping in every day..."

Teisel rubbed his forehead and inhaled before shouting at the top of his lungs, "IF I'M NOT DEAD, THEN WHY THE HECK IS EVERYTHING SO BLURRY?!" he roared.

Without even flinching, Mrs. Bonne responded, "Because you're not wearing your glasses."

Her son stared up at her in complete and utter confusion before raising a finger to poke himself in the eye. Instead of hitting mechanical implants, he recoiled the instant he felt his finger make contact with what was clearly a run-of-the-mill, organic eyeball. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. If Mom's alive, then obviously my eyes would be back to normal, Teisel thought to himself. He immediately rescinded "normal" when it fully registered that everything over two feet away from him looked like an indistinguishable blur. Before he even realized it, he found himself wishing that he still had his implants installed.

When it became apparent that Teisel wasn't about to move or reply anytime soon, his mother, with a heavy sigh of exasperation, reached over to the nightstand next to the bed and handed him a slim pair of eyeglasses. "I don't care how old you are, Teisel," she declared. "You have lost your liquor cabinet privileges for the rest of this holiday."

Teisel was too bewildered to even care. He hopped out of bed and raced into the hall to the bathroom he knew was two doors down on the left. The house's layout was exactly as he'd remembered it from his childhood, before Bon was born and everything had started to crumble. He skidded on the tile floor in his socks and careened to a stop in front of the mirror. There was no questioning it. Those were the same old green eyes he'd grown up with. Exactly the same shade as Tron's, their mother's, and the vast majority of the population's. He also noticed that his hair was long again...and braided. His mother still braided his hair before he went to bed.

"Max was right," he muttered while he examined the end of the braid and wondered if his father had ever stopped giving Teisel and his mother crap about that particular bedtime tradition. "I look really weird with regular eyes."

He splashed some water onto his face, fumbled around with his glasses when he realized that he needed to wipe them off afterward, and pinched himself again. It still hurt. If what his mother had said was true, if all that stuff about everybody dying was really just a very vivid and possibly alcohol-induced nightmare, then why couldn't he recall anything that happened between 8401—the year Bon was born—and that very moment, aside from the fact that somewhere along the line, he'd needed to get glasses? Whatever it was that had happened to him, he'd probably wind up scaring his family senseless if he started asking them a ton of really obvious questions. This was assuming, of course, that what was happening was even real. Despite his mother's reassurance otherwise, he hadn't quite taken the possibility of getting himself killed down in the heart of the Klickelan ruins off the table, either.

Teisel needed some time to investigate the situation further before settling on any kind of definitive explanation. If this was, indeed, his mother on vacation in their inordinately massive summer house, located on a prime slice of real estate on the island his parents loved so much that they named their daughter after it, then every second he spent staring at his eerily unfamiliar reflection and contemplating his existence was a second during which he could have been eating the most delectable pancakes on the face of the planet. They were a rare treat even before 8401. His mother typically tried to avoid cooking when they weren't on vacation. To top it off, even if everyone in that estate swore otherwise, he hadn't had a bite of his mother's pancakes in almost fifteen years.

Teisel scrambled down the hall and nearly tripped over an unexpected Servbot as he raced to the kitchen. "Sorry, #32!" he shouted.

"But Master Teisel, I'm #4!" the Servbot cheerfully corrected him long after he was out of earshot.

The moment Teisel got to the kitchen, he glanced around the room and flung open the fridge when he couldn't pinpoint the pancakes on the table. "Where'd they go? I don't see any pancakes in here!" he grumbled more to himself than to anybody else in the house. "HEY! MOM! WHERE'D YOU PUT THE PANCAKES?!" he shouted in what he hoped was his mother's general direction.

She responded with something he couldn't quite hear, but he had a feeling it was probably something along the lines of, "No yelling in the summer house, Teisel!" After about a minute or so, she made her way into the kitchen. "You've really got to slow down, sweetie," she admitted. "It's hard keeping up with you these days..."

Teisel clenched his fists to keep himself from tackling her in a crushing embrace right then and there. He had to act somewhat normal, at least for the moment. "I can't find the pancakes anywhere," he uttered, only somewhat consciously aware that from the look of things, he'd managed to get unusually worked up over these pancakes.

"I put them on top of the fridge so Bon wouldn't eat them all in one sitting," his mother explained as she pulled over a chair and grabbed the plate from its hiding spot. "That boy's really got an appetite!"

Teisel grabbed some silverware, nuked a cup of stale coffee, and sat down at the table as his mom fixed up the pancakes with butter and syrup, just the way he liked them. "Where is Bon, anyway?"

"He went to the golf course with Ally and your father. You know how he is. If it's a sport, he's into it, even something low-energy like golfing. I suppose it's nice that your father has someone he can take to that golf course without running the risk of losing his membership...but enough about them," she added as she put on a fresh pot of coffee and slid into the chair across from him while the coffeepot did its thing. "Tell me more about this crazy dream you had."

"You really want to hear about that?"

"You know I always like hearing your stories. Dreams count, too. Come on. It's not like I'm going to get offended or anything if you killed me off in some dream of yours...and don't go telling me you don't remember it, either! I know you too well, Teisel Bonne. Once you get some crazy idea in your head it tends to stick until you either put it into action or get it out of your system otherwise!"

Teisel sighed and stuffed a forkful of pancake into his mouth. "I'm not going to get out of this, am I?"

Mrs. Bonne adamantly shook her head.

"Very well...but I've got to warn you, Mom, this is going to be one long, emotionally draining story."

As Teisel recounted his life of piracy, starting from the moment Bon was diagnosed with HBD, his mother nodded at all of the appropriate points and didn't belittle him when he got too worked up at the part where Bon died to continue the story. It was one of his favorite things about her. She just gave him a hug and helped him get the smudges off of his glasses when he tried to wipe his tears away and forgot they were there. By that time, the pancakes were gone and Mrs. Bonne was on her third cup of coffee. "You probably think I'm an idiot for all this," he mumbled.

"Of course not," she reassured him. "Don't listen to anything your father might have told you about crying when you're feeling upset. The fact you're getting so worked up over a dream just shows how much you care about us!"

"It got better in the end," Teisel cut in. "A bunch of bikers found me and let me join their gang, and things were looking good for a while. Max and I became best friends, and Aero met Tron back when we were building the rocket...I even managed to get on good terms with Pic somehow, even though he was a really weird kid..."

"Was Grill there, too?"

Teisel stared at his mom incredulously and wondered how she already knew about the Bright Bats. "Yeah," he finished. "He was always working at this motorhorse garage in Teomo City. Max and I decided to go look for the Klicke Lafonica...and I actually got there after running into Roll—you know, Tron's partner from the rocket thing? She told us that we could use it to revive the Blue Boy because he was actually a robotic space warrior who'd backed up his memories into their monkey. When I got there, he ended up reverting back to the old space soldier mentality. I was no match for him, and after he shot me while I was down, I woke up here."

"I know I keep saying this, but you should really sit down and write a screenplay," his mother suggested. "You've got such a brilliant mind that it's almost a shame they've only got you doing voiceover for that Mighty Number 4 show!"

"Mighty Number 4 show...?" Teisel uttered, before he realized that if he'd really turned out to be a voice actor, he probably ought to at least know the name of the show he was in.

His mother just laughed. "Oh, Teisel, I'm kidding. I know it's really called Mighty Number 9. Still, you make such a great villain that it's almost a shame they didn't name the whole thing after your character!"

"That's...good?" Teisel replied. He frantically tried to piece together the information. In this reality, however real it might or might not have been, he voice acted for a TV show called Mighty Number 9, where he played a villain called Mighty Number 4. He hoped that was at least close. As wonderful as his mother was, he knew her well enough to know that she probably hadn't committed the details of his cartoons to memory. He'd have to take anything she said about his job with a grain of salt. However, the idea of getting involved in the production of a television show sounded both incredibly appealing and almost certain to frustrate his dad, especially since there was a good chance this was a cartoon. There was voiceover work involved, at least. It actually seemed like the perfect career for someone with such a distinctively psychotic laugh, right next to "desperate sky pirate."

"I know I don't say it anywhere near enough, but I'm so proud of you for going out there and following your passion," his mother added as she took a sip of her coffee. "Your father's going to realize that these cartoons are important to you sooner or later, but until then, I'll do what I can to pick up the slack."

Even though Teisel had absolutely no idea what his relationship with his dad was like at that moment besides questionable at best, he hugged his mom. "Thanks for being there for me, Mom," he said. "I love you so much."

"I love you too, Teisel," Mrs. Bonne replied. "And if you keep working hard like you've been doing, you're going to have your own show someday."

Before Teisel could respond, the Servbot from back in the hall walked into the room carrying a nice-looking cell phone. "Master Teisel, a representative from the Light Talent Agency wishes to speak with you."

"Huh. Give it here, #32." Teisel replied as he let go and reached for the phone.

"I told you, Master Teisel, I'm #4," the Servbot insisted as it handed the device over. "There are only ten of us, remember?"

"He's a little off today," Mrs. Bonne informed #4. "I've revoked his liquor privileges for the rest of this vacation."

"Aye-aye!" #4 exclaimed with a salute. "I'll make sure that #8 and #5 keep the bar secured!"

Teisel, meanwhile, gripped the cell phone, which he presumed was his own, and uttered a hesitant, "Hello?"

"T-Bonne, it's Tom," the man on the other end exclaimed in excitement. "There's this script going around for some new game called Azure Striker Gunvolt, and we'd like you to come in and do a cold read for us down at KTOX on Tuesday. We'll send a ship for you on Monday night, and..."

"Woah, wait, I'm in the middle of a vacation here," Teisel stammered. He had to think fast. "I'm already on Tronne Island now. QCTV's got a recording studio right in the city, and I haven't seen much of my family in a while..." He didn't know what day of the week it actually was, either, but he figured that information wasn't something he needed to be sharing with some agent, no matter how friendly the man sounded on the other line.

"Uh, it doesn't work that way anymore," Tom responded after a long, awkward pause. "Remember the cheeseburger incident? QCTV isn't letting you back in there until you get your drinking under control for good this time. Anyway, I'll give you some more time to think about it. You sound like you just woke up or something. We can fly you out from Tronne no problem. Call me back when you make a decision, alright?"

Before Teisel could even say goodbye, Tom had already hung up. It took Teisel a while before he checked the date on his phone. If it was correct, it was Saturday. Two days after he'd supposedly left to find the Klicke Lafonica in the other reality, in fact. That gave him a few days to brush up on the bits and pieces of this new life he couldn't remember before he had to go out and audition for some role in a video game. To say the least, it would probably be in his best interest to audition. He was already confused enough. He didn't want to end up confused and broke.

"Hey Mom," Teisel started, "This Tom guy wants me to go to Kattelox and audition for a video game in a couple of days..."

"That's wonderful!" Mrs. Bonne exclaimed.

"...You don't mind if I hop on an airship and ditch you guys on our summer vacation?"

His mother just laughed. "You've been doing this sort of thing for years, Teisel. Why would I mind? You always come back, after all! Now go upstairs and get dressed before your father comes back with the kids."

Teisel cracked a smile and slowly backed out of the kitchen before breaking into a sprint and barreling up the stairs to the bedrooms two at a time.

After yanking on a green polo shirt and some khakis and fixing his hair into that awkward old ponytail, he followed the sound of drilling across the hall to Tron's room and knocked on the door. "Hey. Hey Tron, you in there?" he asked over the unmistakable din of power tools. He fiddled with the ends of his hair and decided, now that he'd taken the plunge and cut it, that he liked keeping it short a lot better.

When the Bonnes first realized that their daughter enjoyed spending most of her time building machines, they moved her bedroom furniture into the room directly over the garage and had a staircase constructed to allow her easy access to her tools. Tron wouldn't ever have to go too far to get to her workshop if she felt like building something. Teisel had to admit that when he was younger he'd been quite jealous that both of his parents indulged his sister's hobbies, but at that moment, he was just so relieved to see everyone alive again that none of those things really bothered him.

He barged straight in when it became apparent that his sister couldn't hear him at the door, and raced down the stairs into the garage. Most of the space was occupied by the skeletal beginnings of what looked like a giant metal lobster with enormous claws and a massive engine that contained a glowing yellow refractor. There were parts and pieces of scrap metal and weapons strewn about. Tron was on her back dressed in her lab coat with a pair of safety goggles propped up uselessly on her forehead while she fastened a shell of sheet metal around the exoskeleton. A pair of Servbots assisted her with wiring the engine to a transmission console near the front. As soon as she heard Teisel's footsteps, she crawled out from underneath the machine and pulled herself to her feet.

To his surprise, she didn't look like she'd grown much taller than she'd been when she was fifteen, but her hair stopped at her shoulders and looked like a complete mess. When had Tron stopped keeping up with her appearances? "Don't you ever KNOCK?!" she shouted in frustration as she waved her drill around with very little regard for her older brother's safety.

"I was standing at the door knocking and yelling for five minutes!" Teisel riposted.

"Well, now that you're here, what do you want?" Tron asked, point blank. She sure didn't beat around the bush.

Teisel found himself taken aback by her bluntness. "I don't know," he finally shrugged, after unsuccessfully trying to brainstorm a response that wouldn't get him admitted to the local psych ward. "I guess I just wanted to spend some time with you while we were here. You're always working so hard, I figured you could probably use a break. How long have you been down here, anyway?"

Teisel watched on in amusement as Tron's cheeks grew a little red. "Yeah, about that...I kind of didn't actually go to sleep last night..." she admitted. "Don't tell Mom, but I had to make some last-minute adjustments to the blueprints to account for high levels of water pressure with the..."

"What is this thing supposed to do, anyway?" Teisel asked. He wondered why his sister would need to build a robot like this one if there was no need for them to loot and pillage unsuspecting islands. "It looks pretty intimidating."

Tron's eyes lit up for a split second before she suspiciously eyed him over and asked, "Did Mom put you up to this?" It almost made him wonder how often the version of him who'd lived this life allowed her to talk about her creations.

Teisel shook his head. "Tron, I mean it. I'm listening."

"Okay," she conceded, not quite buying it, "but if you get bored, you owe me pizza."

"Deal."

They shook on it, and Tron began animatedly talking. "So you know how the world is mostly ocean, right? The research team I'm working with in the Digger's Guild discovered a whole bunch of ruins underwater. A lot of them are in deeper areas. The water pressure's too strong for a person to dive under and explore them unassisted, so I've been working on the Languste for a while. Once it's ready, I'll be able to operate it with a remote, and...wait." she suddenly stopped mid-rant. "What am I thinking? We should go up the mountain to the lake like we used to, Teisel! I'm gonna go change into something a little more comfortable and grab my purse. #1, #2, if I get back and the Languste's claws aren't functional, you're both in big trouble!"

"Aye-Aye, Miss Tron!" the two Servbots exclaimed with a salute. Tron, satisfied with their response, scampered up the stairs to her bedroom. Teisel decided that it would probably be a safer idea to leave the garage through its original entrance and hurried off to wait for Tron outside. He didn't quite know what their relationship was like in this world, but he would make up for the lost time somehow.