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Chapter 28: Recon

To absolutely no one's surprise, Grill expressed zero interest in helping Teisel rob the museum. "Sorry T-Bonne," he replied upon hearing the plan the next evening, after he and Aero had returned from work. "I never cared much for that part of being a Rebel Rider, if you know what I mean. If it's alright with you, I think I'll focus on figuring out what that weird purple crystal's supposed to be instead. That should be worth something, right?"

"That's fine," Max replied. "I can't see you being able to escape anywhere undetected, really."

"I resemble that remark," Grill snickered.

Aero, who had been slurping up a bowl of soup all the while, added, "You should call Roll and Art about that and look at it together. Art likes researching weird stuff, and Roll's probably the best mechanic on the planet right now."

"Can Aero, Pic, and I really handle this on our own?" Teisel faltered.

"Yeah, sure," Max explained. "You may be the 'official' strategist, but I've known this gang for a long time. Pic and Aero are probably the only two Bright Bats you'll need. Pic's crazy-good at sneaking around and popping up when you least expect it, and Aero's been tapping the police radios for ages. Add your driving skills to the mix and there you go. You're set. Thief, lookout, getaway chauffer."

Teisel raised his eyebrows and stared blankly at Max. "That's actually really helpful," he stated after allowing himself some time to process the suggestion.

"A gang leader who doesn't know his gang better than he knows himself isn't much of a gang leader," Max shrugged.

"Then it's settled," Teisel declared. "Aero and Pic and I will scout out the museum first thing tomorrow!"

"Sorry Teisel," Aero frowned. "I took a couple of days off already, remember? I'll definitely help you out when the time comes, but I've got to make rent this month and pay my phone bill."

"Okay then. Pic and I will scout out the museum first thing tomorrow!" he corrected himself. "In the meantime, Max, you get in touch with Russell. Grill, you get in touch with Roll. We're going to wrap up this Klicke Lafonica quest once and for all, or my name's not Bonne!"

Once Teisel had wandered off to the kitchen to grab some dinner for himself, Max leaned over and whispered to Aero, "Meet me at Johnny's tonight. We've got to start thinking of other things to call him."

Since Klickelan Island's museum was located close to the harbor, Teisel had never actually visited the place before. It was, as many museums the world over had a tendency to be, a fairly opulent building. However, this one was also squeezed into a row of shops and apartments with nothing but a tiny alleyway on one side to allow access to the back door. There would be no breaking in through a skylight with a bungee cord here, that much was for sure. Teisel paid both his and Pic's 500 zenny entrance fee and grabbed a copy of the visitors' map before the two of them set off in search of the final card key.

Pic had been quiet—even moreso than usual—when the subject of his experience with robbing high-security locations came up earlier that morning. As soon as the two of them were granted access into the building, he took off on his own. Whether he'd run off to go investigate a decent point of entry for himself or to just look around at the exhibits for fun was anybody's guess, but Teisel figured it would be more prudent to assume the latter.

Near the back of the museum, on the third floor, there appeared to be a section that had been cordoned off with caution tape. A security guard stood watch nearby. Behind the guard was a little room that seemed to be in shambles. Broken glass littered the floor, and a table looked to have been thrown across what he could see of the room. "What seems to be the trouble here?" Teisel asked.

"There was a break-in last night," the guard explained. "A couple of petty thieves tried to make off with a valuable diamond, but they tripped the lasers without realizing it. The system just sends a silent signal directly to the police station, so we don't usually have to deal with the perpetrators freaking out and causing a mess of collateral damage like this. For some reason, though, this time the thieves actually broke through a window in that room back there on their way in. Goodwin caught 'em, of course, but they made a terrible mess all the same...so as you can see, nobody's allowed past the yellow tape."

"There isn't a mysterious black and gold card back in that section, is there?" Teisel asked as he glanced around looking for any sign of a security camera. He made sure to keep his head perfectly still while he scanned the room. This was definitely one of those few instances where the mechanical eyes came in handy. Not having any pupils or irises to speak of made it a lot harder for him to get caught casing the joint.

"I don't think I'm familiar with that exhibit," the guard admitted. "If you can't seem to find it anywhere else, then there's a good chance it's back here, but keeping track of what's where isn't in my job description. If you can't find it listed on the map, you could also ask the curator if you're really just interested in learning about the one thing. He might be able to help you out."

"Thanks," Teisel replied with a nod as he walked off. Coming in straight off of an earlier break-in sounded like it would make their job a little easier, and something within him hoped that the card itself was still in that ransacked room. Then it would only be a matter of Pic climbing in through the hole in the wall, grabbing it, and leaving. Teisel didn't doubt that Pic knew how to climb a three-story building without getting noticed.

To his utter disappointment, however, the third card key was safely stowed away under a thick sheet of glass in the main exhibit room on the fourth floor. "Reaverbot Core Fragment?" Teisel read aloud from the placard. "This chip is believed to have come from within the central processing unit of an unknown Riverboat...oh, you have GOT to be kidding me!" He groaned. "They can't even spell 'Reaverbot' right on the placard?! This has got to be the most embarrassing excuse for a museum I have ever seen in my life! No wonder they've already been robbed!"

Teisel thought hard on the situation. There seemed to be cameras all over the place, and the guard had mentioned a substantial silent alarm system, at least. What this curator lacked in brains, he clearly made up for it by having a lot of money to throw around on security, and he definitely had a strong link to Gonzo Goodwin.

Even though he knew Aero's radio could be used to tip Pic off if he tripped the system, the last thing Teisel wanted to do was get the police on their case again. If he had to be the one to get the three of them back to the base, he didn't want any distractions while he was driving. The last time he found himself on the run from the law proved to be so disorienting that if Pic hadn't come along to save him, he'd have been caught without question. Either that, or he'd have been run over by a car. He would need to do a much better job plotting out this one heist than he had done planning out any other attack in his last decade of piracy, without question, or he might as well just turn himself in to Chief Goodwin so he could get his jail time over with early.

After about ten minutes of wandering the museum in search of the Bright Bats' information gatherer, Teisel found Pic staring intensely at a painting of a scantily-clad woman posing suggestively with a Sharukurusu crystal fossil on the second floor. A little too intensely, if anyone were to ask Teisel's opinion. This really was the worst museum he'd ever visited. However, even though it looked like bad fanart, he could have sworn the boy was drooling a bit anyway. "How long have you been standing around here gawking at that third-rate pin-up garbage?" Teisel fumed in exasperation.

Pic nearly jumped out of his skin when he noticed his partner in crime scowling at him. He blabbered some kind of an answer that didn't sound like any language Teisel could understand.

"There's something a little more important up on the fourth floor, you know," Teisel groaned as he all but dragged the gawky young man back toward the stairs. Incompetent staff or otherwise, this was going to be far from an easy task. His entire plan thus far hinged on Pic being able to swipe the card key without tripping the security system, and if Pic could wind up so easily preoccupied, then he really had a problem on his hands.

While Teisel further contemplated the impending museum heist, deep inside the ruins, Russell trekked through tunnel after tunnel looking for some sign that he might be getting close to the main tower. While he couldn't use the elevator with only two cards, he could still make sure it was where it was supposed to be and get rid of any traps or guardian Reaverbots that might be standing in his way early on to save himself the trouble later.

"Max, am I getting any closer?" he asked for what felt like the millionth time that afternoon. "You'd think if you were able to pinpoint Teisel's location when he and I were stuck in that first tower, you'd be able to tell me how to get to the more important one!"

"I keep telling you, Old Rusty!" Max groaned. "My map data depends on how well you explore the area!"

"Yeah, sure it does," Russell grumbled. He ducked into a passage off to the side and picked off a few stray Guruguru. "And it sure picks the most convenient moments to just fail completely!"

"Do you want me to just pack up and go home?" Max threatened. "T-Bonne sure made it seem like you really wanted me spotting for you, but now that we're here, all you wind up doing is complaining about how crappy I am at navigating! You were the one who was so sure that using the Class A entrance would put us right at the bottom of the tower!"

"Fine, fine!" Russell submitted with a sigh. "Let's just focus on finding a way to the elevator. The sooner we check the place out, the sooner we can go back and get that last card." He spotted a cracked wall out of the corner of his eye and fired a volley of rockets straight for it.

"Dude, what are you doing?" Max demanded. "Don't you have a limited ammo supply on that thing?"

"I'm getting us into the main tower," Russell asserted as the dust cleared and he stepped into an impossibly tall chamber with a spiral staircase wrapped around the inside walls. Unlike the rest of the ruin, the walls here were a dull black with a gold circuitry pattern, just like the one on the card keys. There was a wide column in the center of the room. It extended to the top of the stairs, and if Russell squinted hard enough, he could see a catwalk linking the stairway to the top of the central pillar. This had to be the elevator shaft. Unfortunately, parts of the staircase seemed to be missing. It appeared as if something enormous had smashed the place to bits and left substantial chunks of debris all over the inside of the tower. "See? Piece of cake!"

"Actually, no," the spotter reminded him, "I don't see anything interesting. The only thing I've got is this lousy radar, remember? I mean, I can kind of figure from these weird lines you're in the middle of a tangled web of ruins directly underneath the...HOLY CRAP, YOU'RE THERE! What are you standing around for?! Get climbing, pops!"

"Are there any Reaverbots up ahead that I should worry about?"

"If you can't see 'em for yourself, there probably aren't any there," Max shrugged, still completely oblivious to that one time his own strategist got caught in a nest of cloaked assailants. "I guess if it makes you happy, I'm not picking up anything."

Russell smiled. "Great. As long as the room doesn't fill up with any lava or dump some giant defense system on me, we should be in the clear. From the look of things, someone's explored this place already. There seems to be another entrance on a ledge a few stories up, and some signs of a pretty significant fight that went down a while ago. I'm seeing major structural damage on parts of this staircase."

"You can still use it, though, right?"

"Of course I can!" Russell guffawed as he bounded up the stairs. "I'm just going to have to land a bunch of difficult jumps, that's all! Nothing a Class S digger can't handle!"

And land them he did...until, about a third of the way up, the area he'd landed on turned out to be structurally unsound enough to collapse with him on it. Russell hit the stairs below hard and tumbled down a few steps, only to fall off the edge to the ground floor with a sickening crunch and a wail of agony that, even over headphones, made Max jump in his seat.

"Russell?! What just happened?!" the leader of the Bright Bats shouted in a panic. "Are you dead? You'd tell me if you were dead, right?!"

For the longest time, there wasn't any reply, but just as Max was about to have a nervous breakdown, Russell said, "I think I might have broken both of my legs, Max. I can't move 'em at all. The pain's too..."

"How the heck am I supposed to get you out of there if you can't walk?" Max interrupted before the digger could elaborate. "Well?"

Russell mumbled something, but Max had no idea what he was trying to say, so the amateur spotter decided to take matters into his own hands. "Rusty, stay right where you are!" he shouted, as if the old man had much of a say in the matter. "I'm going in there!"