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Chapter 26: Legends Never Die

While Teisel was busy saying goodbye to his new friends, the Bright Bats were in the midst of helping Roll and Art clean up. More specifically, Aero and Grill were in the midst of helping Roll and Art clean up, while Max and Pic were huddling by the door and shooting nervous glances at Roll every few seconds.

"The day's almost over." Pic whispered. "You've got to ask her."

"Pic, her husband's right there."

"You had all day to ask her while he wasn't right there."

Max looked over at Roll again. Tron had to have been exaggerating about...a lot of things. "Why don't you ask her?" he asked. "You're always asking awkward questions. For you this would be normal."

"We drew straws, Max. You lost." Pic insisted. "Ask her already!"

Roll glared at the two young men and stated, "You know I can hear everything you're saying, right?"

Max and Pic both turned bright red. "Errr...uh...that is..." Max found himself stammering before he even realized words were coming out of his mouth.

The rocket engineer walked over with a friendly smile. "Come on, you guys, I won't bite. What was it you wanted to ask me?"

The bikers looked at each other, and then Max finally asked, point blank, "Did you really have a secret crush on your brother ten years ago?"

Roll stared at the two of them as if they'd just taken a dump on the floor. "I...beg your pardon?" she uttered. "Where would you get an idea like that?!"

"Tron Bonne wrote things down in a notebook. T-Bonne had it with him when we found him." Pic explained. "He let us read it and it said you were in love with Mega Man like she was. She also had you stuffed into an elevator in Chapter 13."

"You miiiiiiight wanna ease up on the details, Pic." Max replied with a nervous grin as he jabbed the teenager with his elbow. "That's a little too much information, if you know what I'm..."

But before he could finish the thought, Roll spoke up. "He was very special to me, but it's nothing like what you're suggesting," she explained as her palms grew increasingly sweaty under her gloves. She hoped she was the only one who noticed that. "It's not like we were even biologically related, though. Not that I gave very much thought to it or anything, since I really just thought of him as a..."

"You're getting awfully defensive." Pic observed.

"I AM NOT GETTING DEFENSIVE!" Roll shouted. Everyone in the lab froze in their tracks.

"Roll..." Art began. In all his years of knowing her, he'd rarely ever heard her raise her voice. "I think we should probably talk. Alone. About...that project of ours. If these guys struck a nerve over some fifteen-year-old kid's diary, I don't know if continuing with it would be such a good idea...if you know what I mean."

"You know we've been over this before," Roll exasperatedly sighed the moment the two of them had left the lab and believed they were safely out of earshot. "Gramps said the first time he got reset, he was a baby. We'd probably have to raise him as our son. Even if there were any chance of me having feelings for him—which there's not—it would be completely out of the question if he were a baby again. It would even be out of the question if he ended up picking up right where he left off, as a fifteen-year-old boy. There'd still be too much of an age gap."

"That's not the issue, Roll," Art shook his head. "For the last ten years, Mega Man Volnutt has been, for all intents and purposes, dead. Say, hypothetically, you've still got feelings for this guy. Shouldn't you have moved on just a little? You'd think by the way you talk about it so much that he was involved in a recent accident. Between you and me, I've heard from a few of our friends on Kattelox that you may have had plans to marry him, even. I don't know. I just don't understand why you can't be up front with me about this! We've been together for years and you still refuse to discuss the exact nature of that relationship with anyone, even your own grandfather. All this denial just makes me worried you're still not over the idea of having him as a potential...partner. Maybe we rushed into this marriage a little too soon. I care about you, but I definitely don't want to just be the cheap bandage you slapped onto your unresolved grief issues."

"If you really want me to admit it, fine." Roll declared. "I admit I may have had a tiny crush on him back then. But I'm telling you, after ten years, the chances of something between us ever working out are practically zero, especially now that we know what we know about him, and where he came from. You were indispensable when I first started up the weapon business. You know I love you, Art. It's not going to be an issue if everything goes according to plan. Besides, what if the mission fails completely? For all we know, there could have been a translation mistake. All of this effort might only lead us to a giant refractor, or maybe some other ancient technology to study."

Art frowned. "You know as well as I do that there weren't any translation mistakes. Not the way Data was jumping around excitedly chattering when we asked for affirmation."

"So that settles it." Roll concluded. "All we need to do is get Teisel to agree to climb Ghiotte Summit with Data and..."

"Okay, I don't know what's going on here, but I'm not doing any more digging!" Teisel exclaimed in frustration as he stepped out from behind the side of the lab. "Here I am, just walking back to the lab hoping there might be some cheese squares left over, minding my own business, and all of a sudden I hear you guys talking about sending me up Ghiotte Summit! Are you two out of your minds?!"

"Were you spying on us this whole time?" Art exclaimed. He took a step back and stared wide-eyed at the hulking giant watching them from afar.

"I swear, I was just passing by and heard my name come up next to 'Ghiotte Summit.'"

"Teisel, there's...something important we need to tell you," Roll admitted. "I kind of neglected to mention it back on the Flutter, but...we actually did stumble upon some important information from Data." She paused for a second to gauge his reaction, just in case. The older man looked a little stunned, but he just nodded, implicitly giving her permission to continue. "The memorial wasn't the only thing that brought us to Klickelan this time. Usually we just spend two days on Volnutt Island and that's it. We just didn't want you to get upset when you found out..."

"Found out what...?"

"I think you're going to want to sit down for this," Art interjected before Roll could explain any further.

Teisel walked over to the small staircase leading into the back hallway and sat down, bracing himself against the second step with his hands. "And just when I thought this day was going to turn out alright in the end," he muttered with a sigh. "What sort of crazy scheme have you two been planning to rope me into this whole time?"

"Where do I even begin?" Roll sighed.

"I think we should start by mentioning that Mega Man...and we're not talking about that Bronte kid you've been hanging out with either...he wasn't even human."

Teisel blinked and furrowed his brow. "That's it?" he asked. "I figured there was something going on with that back in the Main Gate. I was really expecting something a little less obvious."

"You were in the Main Gate with him?!" Roll sputtered.

"Perhaps you should be the one sitting down, Roll." Teisel chuckled.

"What happened down there?" Art asked. His eyes glistened with excitement from behind his glasses. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a little notepad. "I've always wanted to ask Mega Man what happened in the Main Gate, and I never would have guessed I'd get the chance to find out!"

Teisel was taken aback by the researcher's enthusiasm, but he tried to recall the event nonetheless. "Well, uh, it went down in a giant spiral for a long time," he explained. "At first, we hit a dead end, so Tron and I decided to follow him the second time he came around. We figured he would unlock the door for us. But instead of finding any kind of treasure behind those three doors, he accidentally woke up a giant...floating person. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd wager that this was one of the Ancients, and it seemed to recognize the Blue Boy as...Trigger? I think that was it. Mega Man Trigger."

"Data mentioned that name, too." Art replied as he hastily scribbled the information down.

"I can't believe the Ancients and my family both named him Mega Man," Roll added. "Talk about a strange coincidence."

"Mega Man wasn't even a common name back then," Teisel agreed. "I can't speak for parents today, of course, but back to the story. This floating person, a THIRD Mega Man, who called himself, uh...Juno? Was that it? Mega Man Juno? I know I wrote it down somewhere, but I wouldn't be surprised if...oh, never mind. I suppose his name's not terribly important. He said a lot of confusing, technical-sounding things, which Blue Boy here managed to guess, somehow or another, meant that this guy wanted to kill everyone on the island. Then this Juno person stuck him in some sort of force field and took off. Tron rushed in after that and kicked the trap until it stopped working. I guess from there, he defeated Juno and saved Kattelox, since you two ran into each other later and the Brontes are still selling vegetables there."

"So you actually helped save our lives?" Art asked. From the puzzled looks on their faces, neither of the Sparks-Casketts were quite sure they believed what they'd heard.

"I didn't really do anything, personally." Teisel admitted. "Tron was the one who thought to kick the force field generators. I just kind of stood around like an idiot."

"Big deal. Tron helped him out once." Roll muttered under her breath. "Let's just get back to the real discussion here..."

Art just shook his head in exasperation. It was painfully obvious that she still had feelings for this guy. "Here's the deal," he began. "We mentioned how we figured out how to understand Data before, right? Turns out Data has Mega Man's memories and genetic material backed up inside him, like some kind of sentient USB drive. He says that the mythical treasure hidden under Klickelan Island called the Klicke Lafonica is, in fact, a tool the Ancients used to recreate extra bodies for themselves—which includes our old pal Mega Man, the First-Class Purifier Unit. All we need is a digger with enough skills to figure out how to find this thing."

"When Aero mentioned that you'd been digging in the ruins here, we thought that solved everything." Roll elaborated. "We wanted to send you up with Data to see what you could find, but...well...I wouldn't want to pressure you or anything if you'd rather not."

Teisel didn't know what to say to that, but this time, he was glad he'd taken Art's advice and sat down. He felt completely numb for what seemed like an eternity, until a spark of rage suddenly began to flicker to life within him as he realized what, exactly, this meant in regards to his own situation. "You're telling me...that my sister killed herself over a guy who wasn't even entirely dead to begin with!?!?" he roared, jumping up and grabbing Roll by the collar. "MY BROTHER DIED BECAUSE SHE WASN'T AROUND TO MAINTAIN HIS LIFE SUPPORT! DO YOU REALIZE HOW COMPLETELY POINTLESS THIS MAKES EVERYTHING I'VE...HEY!" he snapped as Art struggled to pull the two of them apart. He seized the blond man's arm and practically threw him to the ground, and before he even realized what he was doing, he'd already clocked Roll in the face. "WHY WOULD EITHER OF YOU EVER THINK IT WAS A GOOD IDEA TO GET ME INVOLVED WITH THIS RIDICULOUS CHARADE?!"

"Help! I need some backup here!" Art shouted in the direction of the lab as he scrambled to his feet, ignoring the throbbing pain in his tailbone and hoping with everything he had that the Bright Bats would hear him from all the way inside as his wife staggered toward the door to the lab. "Someone's gotta hold him down before he does anything completely insane!"

"I'll show YOU who's COMPLETELY INSANE!" Teisel roared as he lunged for Art again in a rash attempt to externalize his intensifying resentment. "YOU'RE the one running around TALKING TO YOUR MONKEY!"

Before he knew it, though, Max and Grill had grabbed his arms and pinned him to the spot. It took far more effort than either of them expected to keep him from writhing his way out of their grip. "Dude!" Max exclaimed. "Knock it off!"

"Do you have any IDEA what those two just TOLD me?!!" Teisel hollered in his friends' ears as Art and Roll retreated back into the lab. "MEGA MAN VOLNUTT WAS TECHNICALLY IMMORTAL! THEY WANT ME TO HELP THEM BRING HIM BACK!"

"What?!" Grill balked. In his confusion, he accidentally loosened his grip and allowed Teisel to shove Max off of him.

Teisel raced to the back door to try and pry it open, but Roll and Art had already locked him out. He tried to ram the door a few times, but all he was able to accomplish was bruising his shoulder. "Tron...YOU IDIOT!!!" he shouted as tears started streaming down his face. "YOU KILLED BON OVER NOTHING!"

"T-Bonne..." Max began. He stood up and dusted off the seat of his pants, but found himself completely at a loss for words. At least everyone else had gone home for the night, so he wouldn't be too much of a safety hazard, and this wouldn't have ended up becoming the story on the front page of the gazette the next morning. "Please don't hurt yourself," he finally uttered as his strategist wedged himself up against the door and hugged his knees to his chest as hard as he could.

"It's just not fair..." Teisel whimpered.

"You're right," Grill replied once the magnitude of what Roll and Art could have disclosed to Teisel hit him full force, "It's not. I mean, running around attacking people is pretty horrible, too, but...I don't know. This is really complicated. They might call the cops on us, and since Goodwin's running the show there, that wouldn't do us any favors."

"Can I have a hug?"

"Of course you can, buddy," Grill said as he and Max walked over and sat on either side of him. They slung their arms over his shoulders and rubbed his back while he tried to shift his focus toward keeping his breathing steady. They were both beyond relieved that Teisel wanted their company. As awful as having to physically restrain him from causing permanent physical damage to Art and Roll had been, the fallout could have been a lot worse. "We'll get you through this. Promise."

Inside the lab, Aero was so livid that she almost made Teisel look harmless. "Why is it that every time Teisel winds up alone with you two, you end up telling him something that sends him spiraling out of control?!"

"Aero, we're not trying to do this on purpose," Roll tried to explain as she held a pack of ice against the side of her head. She could feel a lump swelling up anyway. "We had no way of knowing about that...time thing at the beginning of the week, or..."

"This isn't about that!" she snapped back. She paced across the room while Pic sat idly on the couch. He seemed to enjoy watching the argument play out as he finished up the snacks. "You're both smart enough to build a rocket and decode the Ancients' language. Can you explain to me why it never occurred to either of you that telling a guy you know to be emotionally fragile that the boy his sister killed herself over happens to be revivable might not be a good idea?"

Roll and Art looked at each other. "We're really sorry about that, Aero," Roll admitted. "The last thing either of us wanted to do was upset him. I honestly don't think I was thinking this time. We needed a digger pretty badly."

"You do realize Klickelan Island is swarming with better diggers, right?" Aero replied, massaging her forehead in frustration. "I'm not saying his attacking you was okay, and I'm definitely going to talk with him about that later, but you can't just go dropping something like that on him and expect him to take it well. For what it's worth, I really hope this is the last thing he didn't know about Tron's suicide, because I cannot for the life of me imagine how this situation could possibly get any worse."

"I feel really awful about all this," Roll responded. She clutched Art's hand. All Art could do was nod his head in agreement. "Is there anything we can do to..."

"Yeah. Leave him alone." Aero cut her off. "Like you said, you've got no way of knowing what he does or doesn't know yet, so maybe it's just better to keep you and Teisel apart, at least until he's in a state of mind where he can hear something like this without losing his crap. You two are like an emotional minefield for him!"

"Uh...about that..." Roll argued. "I should probably warn you that Teisel's always been a little...unhinged. Even before Tron and Bon, he used to flip out over a lot of really trivial things without much of a warning ahead of time.Everything is an emotional minefield with that guy. I'm guessing he didn't tell you about that time he ravaged Kimotoma City and tried to use a priceless statue as a shield to keep Mega Man out of the ruins...did he? Or that time he razed Paulan Island and tried to kidnap me to force Mega Man to give Tron our supplies, all because she was having a bad day? And don't even get me started on what he did when they cancelled his favorite show..."

"The book backs up Roll's assertion." Pic remarked from the sidelines as he munched on some crackers.

Aero reflexively glanced back toward the hallway. The ruckus seemed to have died down outside for the moment, but she felt her stomach lurch in apprehension as she realized she might have prematurely begun to let her guard down around the newest addition to their gang. Vivid images of Teisel upending the living room earlier in the week flooded her mind. Wasn't this exactly the reason she'd been concerned about letting him join the gang in the first place? "He's never hit anyone before, though, has he?"

"Aero, he's shot people before." Art corrected her.

"But has he punched anyone before tonight?" she persisted. "It's one thing if he just overreacts. Like it or not, he had a pretty solid reason for completely losing his crap just now. But would he literally start attacking us if, one day, he woke up in a bad mood and discovered that we were out of coffee?"

"I don't know!" Roll flinched as she desperately tried to recall everything he'd done while they were living together. Unfortunately, paying attention to Teisel Bonne hadn't exactly been high on her list of priorities back then. "Everybody who'd be able to answer that question for you is dead!"

"If it helps, though," Pic added, "That book also has him taking the news of Tron and Mega Man's relationship a lot better than Roll takes it."

"That doesn't help." Roll said through clenched teeth while Art just heaved a defeated sigh.

"Are you sure I'm not just the consolation prize, now that Mega Man's out of the running?" he said, more to himself than to Roll.

"I don't know what to make of this anymore." Aero declared. She raised her hands in surrender and backed away toward the front door. "I'm going to go warm up the boat and think. Pic, tell the others we're leaving in fifteen."

The ride back to the base was a long, tense one. Nobody spoke at all, and Teisel ran off to try and find Sprocket as soon as they docked at Teomo Harbor. Pic wandered off after him once he was sure Teisel wouldn't notice him leaving, at Max's request. He thought about refusing and citing his first attempt at shadowing the older man that day, but he ultimately did as he was told. Even if all Teisel did was vent at his dog, it wasn't worth the risk of letting anything happen to him while he wasn't paying attention to his surroundings. The rest of the Bright Bats just headed to their rooms and turned in for the night.

When Aero wandered into the kitchen the next morning to read the paper, she found the place unexpectedly empty. She took a glance at her newspaper and silently read the "Ten Years Without Our Planet's Hero" headline. There was a picture of Roll and Von Bluecher below it. Aero briefly wondered if it was worth the read before she kicked her curiosity to the curb and flipped straight to the classifieds. Thinking too hard about the sort of person Teisel might have really been, and about the sheer scope of the psychological damage the Bright Bats had agreed to deal with when they took him in, made her feel a little queasy. It had already cost her several hours of sleep, and she had to be in top form if she wanted to find a job that day. Whatever the papers had to say about the previous day's events would have to wait until she got back from work.