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Chapter 24: Back to the Island

"What were they THINKING?" Teisel sputtered as he walked into Teomo Harbor for the first time in ten years, with the Bright Bats at his side. Even though it was still early, the docks were swarming with sailors and merchants, none of whom seemed to bat an eye at the motley crew wandering toward the boat shop. "This has got to be the biggest...! You're telling me those...idiots...from the government really named that lousy island after him?!"

"They say the kid saved the planet," Grill tried to reason with the strategist. "If that's really true, then you should consider yourself lucky they just named the one island after him. It's not that bad of a name once you get used to it."

"Besides, if the place makes you uncomfortable, you'd think having it named after someone you never really liked that much would actually fit," Max pointed out. He sauntered up to the counter and slapped his credit card down. "We'd like to rent a boat to Volnutt Island, please."

Once everything was ready, Aero took the helm, and the Bright Bats set sail for the island. Grill didn't fit inside the Drache, and it was probably for the better that he didn't. This whole day was going to be an emotional minefield for Teisel already. Over the past year, he'd eventually managed to get to a point where he could sit in the back of his old airship without getting wrapped up in his recollections, but he didn't want to take any more risks than he absolutely needed to take. The gang had sworn to keep everything they could influence under their control, to the best of their ability, if it meant making that one day easier for Teisel to endure. If that meant renting a boat, then they'd rent a boat.

Roll had been incredibly accommodating when Teisel had finally decided to call her back with Grill's cell phone and explain as much as he could. Somehow or another, he'd managed to inform her of his brother's passing, albeit with more than a twinge of remorse that he couldn't bring himself to do it in person. It had been hard enough for him to explain it over the phone in a voice that was steady enough for her to understand what he was saying. When Max asked him about it later, he couldn't even remember Roll's reaction to the news.

He found that he didn't need to when Roll ran up the dock once their boat had anchored. As soon as he stepped out, she pulled him into a tight hug. "You have no idea how much I wish I could've done this over the phone, Teisel." She whispered. "I really appreciate you coming out here, even with all of that stuff going on."

The memorial hadn't even started, and Teisel could already feel himself starting to choke up. He had no idea how he managed to hold onto his composure once she let go. "Y-you're sure you're okay with us stopping by so early?" He asked.

Art stood back at the opposite edge of the dock. The Sparks-Casketts had parked the Flutter close to where he was standing, with Data dancing merrily at his feet. He waved at the group as they filed out of the boat.

"Of course we're okay with it," Roll insisted as she led Teisel over to solid ground. "If you need a few more hours, then that's fine by us. Is this your gang?"

"Yeah," Teisel replied with a nod. He stepped aside and gazed across the expanse of the island. Aside from a small freelance ruin entrance and the additions Roll and Tron had added during their stay, Volnutt Island was relatively unremarkable. The shoreline was steep, and there were several trees dotted about. The launchpad was still standing at the island's highest point, a testament to Roll and Tron's engineering prowess, and it dwarfed the old R&D lab, which seemed a little smaller than he'd remembered.

Max took the opportunity to shove his way in. He grabbed Roll's hand and shook it so enthusiastically that she had to clamp her hat down with her other hand to keep it from falling off. "Name's Max. I'm the leader of the Bright Bats. We're the worst bikers on all of Klickelan Island! These guys over here are Pic, Grill, and Aero."

"Is it really worth it to advertise us all as the worst bikers on the island, Max?" Grill sighed. "We might not even be that bad anymore, since T-Bonne's so heavy-handed with the accelerator."

"Hey Roll," Aero piped up. "It's good to see you again. You remember me, right? I used to have pink hair, and..."

"Of course I do!" Roll cut her off with a smile. "Hey, Art and I need to get ready for this afternoon, but once that's all done we can catch up, alright?"

"Need any help with the prep?" Grill offered.

Art frowned. "Didn't Teisel need you guys around for support?"

"Probably not all four of us at once," Max shrugged. "I mean, he's already wandered off to that lab of yours without us...he'll be fine as long as we're available if he decides he needs us later, right?"

Roll blinked and glanced over at the lab. With all of the new people around for her to focus on, Teisel seemed to have decided to slip off and check the place out himself. She spotted him loitering around by the front door, almost as if he were in the process of evaluating whether he wanted to enter or not. He inhaled deeply and pressed on ahead into the building. "I hope he'll be alright in there," she gulped, "especially considering the way he broke down in front of us back when we were all on the Flutter..."

"Yeah, we know that feeling all too well." Aero told her. "Emotionally draining and often gut-wrenching to watch? Been there. He's alright, though. Back when he was still digging, he brought in a ton of great stuff."

"So he does dig!" Roll exclaimed with an unusually excited grin before she realized she'd let her cover slip. "That's...nice to know. He never really mentioned it directly, and I'd always wondered about it, so..."

Art suddenly spoke up. "If you all really want to help out, we've got some folding chairs and a podium that need to be set up out on the launchpad."

Aero carefully stared at the two of them before she nodded and turned toward Pic, Max, and Grill. "Yeah, let's go make ourselves useful."

"Pic," Max added, "keep an eye on T-Bonne, but try to stay out of sight. If something happens, make sure he doesn't do anything that puts anybody in danger, okay?"

Pic nodded. He might not have been the greatest at offering words of comfort, but his uncanny ability to tail anyone whilst remaining completely undetected had its uses. He scrambled off toward the lab as the rest of the gang headed down the opposite path, toward the launchpad.

Unlike the Flutter, Roll and Tron's old lab looked completely different from what he'd remembered. It looked cozy, yet oddly museum-like. Like the kind of building in which Roll and Art would want to hold open-house memorial events. The décor served as a testament to its original function, with complex-looking pieces of machinery mounted under protective glass, a sterile color scheme, and a pegboard with a number of old pictures of the crew mounted to it.

There were old pictures everywhere. It made him feel a little bit uneasy. He hardly remembered anybody from the project taking so many pictures, but everywhere he looked, there seemed to be a new set that he'd never seen before. The fact that there were pictures of Tron and Bon that he'd never seen before blew his mind. There was even a shot of Aero shooting the photographer a cheesy grin and posing, with Roll smiling on one side and Tron caught in the midst of shouting something condescending on the other. There was no way to deny it anymore. Aero and Tron had definitely met.

He meandered across the room and down a short hallway. The bathroom was still the first door on the right, with the kitchen across from it to the left. Neither of those two rooms had really changed that much, aside from the massive beverage dispensers lined up on the kitchen counter. Teisel ducked into the kitchen, yanked the fridge open out of habit, and scanned the shelves for anything good. There were several plates of cheese cubes with toothpicks in them and other hors d'oeuvres for the guests to munch on later.

Guests. Right. There were going to be other people there, and he didn't live in the lab anymore.

Teisel lifted the plastic wrap and grabbed a handful of cheese cubes to snack on anyway. What Roll didn't know wouldn't hurt her.

Back when Roll and Tron were still working on the rescue mission, Teisel usually spent his time playing video games in one of the guest rooms upstairs, underneath the observatory. He didn't remember how many of his and Bon's belongings he'd taken with him when they made their escape that fateful morning with the Servbots. As he sped up the stairwell two steps at a time, he wondered what Roll and Professor Caskett had decided to keep.

From the look of it, they had kept the room intact. The TV looked much newer, and people had obviously been spending time up in the little bedroom, but from the look of it, it was as though they'd decided to turn it into a shrine for the Bonne family instead of actually using it for its original purpose. Of course. Teisel realized. Those guys didn't think they'd ever see Bon and me again. Of course they'd set up some sort of commemorative display.

He even noticed a number of Bonne emblems stenciled on the walls. Those hadn't been there last time. Neither had the picture of him sitting on the edge of the dock with his brother and sister, or the binder of Tron's old schematics on the desk. He could have sworn he'd taken all of the blueprints with him, but there they were. At least ten machine designs that no other engineer on the planet could figure out, detailed on blueprints so convoluted that, as they were, they served as little more than works of art one might find in a museum. He flipped through the pages. Roll had recovered a proposed upgrade to their old Leopordo tanks, as well as some mech designs he'd never seen before. Seeteufel, Bismarck, and Riese Schaltiere almost looked like they would have been able to kick the blue kid to the curb.

No amount of emotional groundwork, however, could have prepared him for what he found on the last page. His hands started trembling before he even realized what he was looking at. "I-It's here," he uttered through a mouthful of cheese. He swallowed it all with a resounding gulp, despite his sudden loss of appetite. "The blueprint for Bon's suit was here. It was here this whole time."

He knew, realistically, that there probably wouldn't have been anybody who could have deciphered Tron's notes and saved Bon. If Roll Caskett couldn't even understand them, the chances of anyone else being able to replicate Tron's handiwork, even with a blueprint, were virtually nonexistent...but there it was. The one mechanical design that, instead of saving one baby's life as intended, wound up inciting the entire Bonne family's demise, and Teisel had it right there in his greasy fingers, protected only by a plastic covering.

"Come on, T-Bonne, not now," he instructed himself. He raked his hand through his hair and shook his head in an effort to fend off the nagging pangs of guilt creeping in for not dropping by with Bon while he'd had the chance. He knew they'd assault him in his nightmares later, but he needed all the time he could get to really pick the lab apart. That way, there would be no surprises for him to stumble upon with all of those people watching. "There's no way that Roll could have been able to understand this. You tried your best, but...well..."

He sighed, put the binder back where he found it, and eased himself onto the futon that had been set up across from the TV. Teisel still had one cheese square left, and he picked at it for a bit while he focused on keeping his breathing steady and took inventory of the rest of the stuff in the room. Among other trinkets, there were a few graphic novels and action figures he'd left behind, and somehow or another, they'd forgotten Bon's toy Gesellschaft in their escape. Bon had always loved that miniature airship, and although Teisel distinctly remembered picking it up to take with him on the Drache when they left the island, there it was, complete with the scratch on the side from where Bon had thrown it onto the sidewalk in the city and tried to make it actually fly.

If Teisel hadn't known that there would be a bunch of people showing up later, he might have pulled out some Resident Evil and lost himself in the Raccoon Island ruins for hours. Instead, he willed himself to sit up and finish his self-guided tour. There were still plenty of other places to check out. He rummaged around the dressers until he found a scrap of paper and a pen and wrote down the location of the Bon Mech blueprint. He knew he'd need to readdress that later, but he couldn't dwell on it too much at the moment. There was still a lot to do and a lot to get through. He downed the last of his cheese and flicked the toothpick into the little trash can by the door before pocketing the note and heading back downstairs, wondering if Roll'd had the foresight to install a bar somewhere in the building.

After thoroughly and unsuccessfully searching the fridge for anything even remotely alcoholic, Teisel sighed and plodded off into the hallway. There was really only one place left in the lab he considered obligatory to visit that morning, if only to ensure that he wouldn't accidentally wind up in it later: Roll and Tron's warehouse. The place where, almost ten years ago to the date, he'd walked in with a cup of coffee and watched on in shock as no fewer than five Servbots repeatedly prodded Tron's dead body in a misguided attempt to revive her. Unfortunately, just thinking about that morning made his stomach lurch, and a peculiar ringing sensation in his ears started to grow louder as the seconds ticked by. He needed to sit down, but there wasn't anywhere to sit, so he backed up into the kitchen again, curled up on the floor, and leaned against a cupboard to try and control his breathing as he struggled to keep the cheese squares down.

Teisel wasn't sure how much time had passed before Grill walked in looking for food. As the mechanic rummaged through the fridge, he didn't even notice his friend trying to keep himself from blacking out on the other side of the room. Grill grabbed a fistful of pepperoni to stuff in his face and nibbled on as much junk as he could get away with until Teisel actually called out to him and broke his food-frenzied trance.

"Grill?"

The chunky mechanic swallowed what he'd had in his mouth and slammed the door shut. He glanced around the room to make sure Teisel was the only one who'd seen him sneak in. He took a deep breath and shouted, "PIC! I thought we told you to tell us if T-Bonne wasn't doing too well!"

"...Pic's been spying on me this whole time?"

"He's been doing a terrible job of it, but..."

Pic stepped in from the hall. Teisel had a sinking suspicion he'd been camped out in the bathroom. "I didn't hear anything," he shrugged. "Figured he was alright."

"He looks like he's going to pass out," Grill pointed out.

"I'm for—I mean—thirty-nine years old, Grill," Teisel grumbled. He braced himself and tried to stand up, but he found himself feeling faint again. He slumped back down against the cupboard. "Despite what it looks like, I can handle this."

"Come on, T-Bonne, it's just us," Grill tried to assure him. "We've never thought any less of you for anything like this before. Why are you trying to power through it all of a sudden?"

Teisel adamantly shook his head. "It's not just you," he explained. "There are people here right now, and more on the way, who haven't seen me in ten years. Most of them probably aren't even expecting me. It's completely different from when it's just us. They knew me...before all this. I don't think I can come close to the way they remember me, but the least I could do is try. I don't know what I'd do if I broke down in front of Werner Von Bluecher or the press!"

"I don't want you to push yourself too hard. I'm kind of worried this might be too much for you right now."

"It's not. It's just..." He let the sentence hang there until Grill coaxed him into finishing the thought. Teisel snapped back to reality and took a deep breath. "I was okay...sort of...until I tried looking for the warehouse where...where Tron and Roll did most of the construction work. I started to feel sick and needed to sit down, so I came in here. It's like my entire body was failing...like I would rather shut down than go in there."

"There's no warehouse here," Pic bluntly informed him.

Teisel deadpanned. "That's impossible. There's a left turn at the end of the hallway out there that heads straight to the tunnel to the warehouse. I lived here for about a year. I know my way around this place."

"We all would've seen a warehouse from the outside," Grill protested, but nevertheless, he stepped out into the hall to check Teisel's directions against reality. He hung a left just as instructed, only to find himself face-to-face with a commemorative plaque featuring the names of the individuals directly involved with the rocket project. Next to that was an emergency exit. Even then, he nudged the door open, and sure enough, sunlight streamed in from the outside. There was no evidence a warehouse of any sort had been there at all. "T-Bonne, it's gone!" He shouted. "It must have been torn down or something!"

There was no reply, but before Grill could head back to the kitchen, he suddenly heard footsteps racing toward him. Teisel skidded around the corner and gazed at the wall in complete incredulity. The doorway to the tunnel didn't exist anymore. He pushed past Grill and rushed through the doorway to find nothing but a grassy field. There was no sign whatsoever that it had been anything other than a grassy field.

Roll and Professor Caskett must've knocked it down right away. Finding Tron in there had been hard on them, too, Teisel realized as he stood in the grass, taking in the scenery. No wonder Roll's been so sympathetic and accommodating!

The sound of Grill and Pic's footsteps behind him snapped him back to reality. "Everything alright?" Grill asked.

"I'm not sure I know what alright is anymore," Teisel sighed, "but I don't think I'm going to pass out. I can make it through the day, at least. It's the least I could do."

"What do you mean by that?" Pic questioned.

Teisel waved it off. "Look, I'm going to go see what Roll's doing. There's something I think I'm going to have to discuss with her. If I need you guys for anything, I'll let you know."

"Got it," Grill said with a nod. "Try not to push yourself too hard, okay?"

"I won't," Teisel replied. "Thanks."

And with that, he wandered off to the launchpad, leaving Grill and Pic completely unattended with a nearly full refrigerator.

Roll and Aero, meanwhile, were in the midst of hooking up the sound system to the podium, while Max and Art set up rows upon rows of folding chairs on the launchpad. Every so often, Max shot Roll an awkward glance, but Roll didn't think too much of it. "You're actually pretty good with electronics, Aero," she remarked. "Did that spotting rig I helped you with come in handy?"

"Not in the way I'd expected," Aero admitted, "but yeah. It did. We ended up getting a lot more use out of it than I thought we would. I still don't get how you manage to make functional equipment out of what seems like random garbage, though," she replied. "That's really impressive. Grill can build weapons out of scraps, too, but you? You're amazing! It's like you can craft powerful weapons out of random trash that doesn't even have anything to do with weapons development!"

Roll smiled and shrugged it off. "It just takes a lot of practice," she replied. "You get used to thinking outside the box after a while, and before you know it, you're looking at normal household items and wondering if it would be possible to turn them into something that a digger would want to pay money to be able to take underground."

Before Aero could offer her any more compliments, however, Teisel jogged up to the podium and interrupted the conversation. "Hey, uh, Roll? Mind if I have a word with you over...somewhere?" He asked. He glanced over his shoulder every so often and fidgeted with the edges of his pockets in hopes that she'd catch on to the fact that he wanted to slip away from the rest of the group.

"Just a sec, Teisel," Roll responded as she fiddled with a set of knobs and dials on the amp. "Aero, you can finish up with the replacement motherboard, right?"

"I've got this," Aero gave her a nod as she fired up the soldering iron. "Go do whatever it is you guys have to do."

Teisel led Roll off toward the lab again, since Grill and Pic seemed to have disappeared. "So, uh..." he began. "I don't think there's any easy way to say this, but...er...I'm sorry. For running off with Bon and the Servbots right after you lost your mother and the blue boy, and for leaving you and the professor behind so you could...er...yeah. I'm really sorry about that."

Roll smiled reflectively and replied, "I know, Teisel."

"What?!" Teisel balked. "How did...what did I...?"

"You were always really bad at hiding your feelings," Roll elaborated, teasing him in spite of the otherwise heavy atmosphere the day brought with it. "It's easy to tell just by looking at you. The expression on your face right now is hilarious!"

"But...but...but..." Teisel sputtered. He couldn't believe that the conversation had managed to take such a wild turn so quickly. "Are you crazy?! I finally muster up the guts to come back here and apologize to you about this after ten years, and now you're laughing at my face?!"

Roll just couldn't help herself. "See?" She exclaimed with a laugh. "That's exactly the kind of thing you'd do, Teisel. Even though our history hasn't exactly been the best, I always liked that about you. I've been trying to focus more on the good qualities in everyone lately."

"I've never really considered that a good quality," Teisel stated after dwelling on the notion for a bit.

"If you hadn't been the sort of person who wore his heart on his sleeve like that, I don't think I'd have trusted your family to come stay with us here on this island for as long as you did," Roll admitted. "I'd have been too worried about you three stabbing us in the back...but with you around, it would have been really easy to tell in advance if any of you were plotting something."

"If that was supposed to make me feel good about myself..."

"Teisel," Roll spoke up before he could launch into any kind of tirade. "I don't know exactly what you and Bon did after you left, or what your life was like, but I can tell that you've been hurting for a long time. You decided to come out here anyway. Even if you didn't come out here for my sake, I know it took a lot of courage for you to do it. I'm not going to hold something you did ten years ago against you."

"What'd you guys end up doing with her, anyway?" Teisel asked with an uncomfortable cringe. There really wasn't any easy way to ask that question, no matter how much Roll insisted she'd forgiven him for everything.

"Gramps buried her over by the lab, under one of the trees." Roll explained. "We were actually using the tree as a marker for a while, before we built a real gravestone. Since we never knew Tron's birthday, we left that part blank in case you or Bon ever came back."

Due to various unfortunate circumstances, Teisel had never been able to visit the gravesites of any of his family members. He doubted he could even recall the coordinates of the little island where he'd had to leave Bon behind. "...Can you show me?" he asked.

Roll just nodded, took Teisel by the hand, and led him back across Volnutt Island.