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Chapter 30: One Final Heist

At a quarter to one in the morning, when Max still hadn't returned from his recon mission with Russell, Teisel sighed and decided to just pack up and head out to the museum. There had been something on his mind that had been bugging him for a while. He'd planned to bring it up with the boss before he took off on his leg of the journey with Aero and Pic. However, as the hours ticked by, it became painfully clear that it would have to wait. He only hoped that he'd still be able to coherently converse afterward. None of the Bright Bats imagined they'd get back to the base at anything resembling a reasonable hour.

To complicate things further, Max had taken one of the motorhorses out to meet Russell, and Teisel had become completely fixated on the idea that he'd probably have a nervous breakdown in the middle of the raid while trying to drive with the three of them piled onto one bike. And even though he never discussed it out loud, his behavior had Aero fully convinced that even if Pic made it through without tripping the security system, they'd still need to be concerned about Teisel accidentally causing a scene and drawing attention. "Are you sure you're okay to drive?" Aero skeptically asked for the fourth time that night. "Triple riding's tough even when you don't have to worry about the cops trying to hunt us down. You know you could probably just stay back here and save yourself the anxiety, right?"

"It's a principle thing," Teisel tried to explain. "Roll asked me to do this favor, and it just wouldn't sit well with me if I outsourced all of the work involved."

"Do you not trust us to get the job done or something?"

"Of course I trust you," he sighed. "It's got nothing to do with either of you. Is Pic ready to go?"

"He's been waiting out by the motorhorse for ten minutes already." Aero replied. "Look, Teisel, if you really insist on doing the driving, then get your butt up on that bike and drive. We can't have you standing around worrying about it all night." She turned toward the front door and snidely added, "Oh, and by the way? You crash this thing, and you're in charge of getting Pic and me some decent medical care that has nothing to do with the hospital or my mother. Good luck with that."

Thankfully, Aero and Pic were both light. Triple-riding with the two of them was easier than doubling up with Grill, and despite the presence of a few cars on the road, they made it to the museum without getting pulled over for their egregious traffic violation. Once Teisel had the motorhorse parked, Pic plugged a pair of earbuds into a radio transceiver he'd attached to his belt, and Aero donned a headset. As soon as they verified that the communications link between the two of them was stable, Aero set to work tapping the police lines.

While Aero shimmied up the nearest telephone pole and fiddled with her portable radio, Pic checked out the hole in the third floor wall. It was still there. Nobody had tried to patch it up over the last eight hours or anything. He took note of a surveillance camera mounted to the corner of the building, near the employee entrance. The wiry young man reached into his pocket, withdrew a pack of gum, and popped as many pieces as he could manage into his mouth. Once the gum was sufficiently sticky, he crept underneath and jumped to slap it straight onto the lens, leaving him free to figure out a means of climbing the three stories up the side of the museum to break inside.

"Hey Pic," Teisel whispered. "There's a fire escape next door. Do you think you'd be able to climb to the roof of that building, jump off, and aim for the hole in the museum?"

Pic shrugged. "Probably," he figured. "I'm not as good at parkour as Barrett was, but I'm okay."

Teisel just stared at him with a stunned expression. If "okay" involved jumping across alleyways, he was definitely curious as to what that Barrett kid might have been capable of in their situation.

About five minutes later, Pic soared across the alleyway and landed square in the middle of the aperture, tucking into a forward roll to reduce the shock of the impact. "Aero, I'm in." Pic reported. "What's your status?"

"I've got the police line set to Channel B. I'll let you know when it happens if they mention anything about the museum. Until then, assume you haven't tripped any signals."

"Roger," Pic confirmed with a nod before he crawled underneath the caution tape and into the dark corridors.

The stairwell to the fourth floor had a few rows of conspicuous laser motion sensors embedded in the railing. He'd noticed them earlier in the day, even before Teisel had dragged him off to go check out the card. Taking the stairs was certainly out of the question, and using any of the exhibits as a stepstool to reach the fourth floor would have probably been a bad idea, too. Pic wished Aero had been with them when they'd visited earlier in the day. Disarming electronic devices happened to be her forte. Thankfully, the museum's trash cans and benches had no such protection, so he scrounged around for as many of them as he could find. He kept a sharp eye out for any kind of camera. All of this extra work would amount to nothing if he wound up featured in the museum's security footage later.

Everything seemed to be working in Pic's favor, much to his surprise. The brunt of the security system seemed to focus on the normal entrances and exits and the more heavily-advertised exhibits, so he was able to stack a trash can on top of a bench and pull himself up over the railing and onto the fourth floor landing. Getting back down would be a lot easier, he figured, as he nonchalantly strolled toward the display case where the card was kept.

There didn't seem to be any kind of latch for him to pick, so he ducked underneath the case to check for a hatch at the bottom. No such luck. Before he could think of an alternative means by which the curator could have added or removed items under the glass, however, he heard Aero on the other end. "Pic, what'd you do!?" she yelped.

Pic was so startled that he whacked his head on the bottom of the case. "Huh?" he asked in confusion while he massaged the bump that was beginning to swell up.

"You seem to have tripped some kind of signal," Aero explained. "Somehow or another, the cops know we're at the museum! It was probably a thermal motion detector or something. They're just pulling out of the station now. Get the card and run for it before they get here!"

The young man grunted an affirmation, turned toward the nearest priceless sculpture he could find, and bashed the glass in with it, swiping up the card and hurdling over the balcony to the third floor. There really wasn't any time to question the situation.

Down in the streets, Teisel paced back and forth. He anxiously glanced from the giant hole in the museum to where Aero was packing up her gear and back. "I can't believe that little...how the heck did he get himself caught in a museum that doesn't even have night guards?!" he sputtered. He'd been grasping the bike's handlebars so hard that his knuckles had turned white. He peered down the street, but he couldn't see any sign of police activity. "If that IDIOT didn't get that card after all this trouble, I'm gonna..."

"Teisel, let me handle the driving." Aero cut him off. "Your hands are already shaking so hard you'd probably steer us into a lamp post!"

"Come on, Aero..."

"She's got a point, you know," Pic interrupted. "Remember what happened the last time you found yourself being chased by the cops?"

"W-W-W-WHERE'D YOU COME FROM!?" Teisel sputtered.

Pic just shrugged and flashed the card before sticking it deep into his pocket where it wouldn't fall out. "Let Aero drive this time. We can't have you swerving to avoid gunfire from some machine the rest of us can't even see."

"Look, I..." Teisel started, but he knew he wasn't going to win this one. "I just hate feeling so useless when stuff like this happens..."

Aero was about to offer some reassuring words of encouragement, but before she had the chance, a loud crash shook the ground. She found herself staring out into the road at what looked like a giant red and yellow street sweeper with arms making a beeline for the museum. It even appeared to be clutching a car in its grasp. "There's no time left to feel sorry for yourself now, buddy! Goggles on!" she shouted as she yanked her goggles down over her eyes and wedged herself in front of Teisel on the motorhorse. She motioned for Pic to follow suit. "We've got company!"

"Don't worry, T-Bonne," Pic added as he hopped onto the back. He latched himself onto Teisel's shoulders to keep from flying off the minute they started moving. "I'm still not going anywhere."

Aero gunned the engine as hard as she could, but it still wasn't fast enough to avoid the inevitable encounter with Chief Goodwin's latest machine. He pitched the car right into her initial escape route and sent her swerving back in the diabolical contraption's direction. "You're getting pretty sloppy with your wiretapping," the chief sneered. The speakers on the machine projected his voice so loudly that it woke up a good portion of the townspeople living in the apartments nearby. "I could tell you were up to no good as soon as you hooked your stupid little toy up to our radio network, and lo and behold, we have a museum heist! I've been waiting for you to slip up—you always do, after all. I figured chasing you down after the last jailbreak would just be a waste of energy if you were going to mess up again and wind up back in the slammer before too long."

"I knew I didn't set anything off!" Pic muttered as Aero clenched her teeth and resisted every urge to hop off and try to break in and strangle Goodwin with her bare hands.

"Like my new ride?" he added. "I call it the Anti-Rider Crusader 2—a fitting follow-up to the ARC-1 your boyfriend managed to disable back in the day..." he trailed off, and she could just picture his sneering mug even through the layers of armor on that monstrosity. "Oh, wait, he rejected you, didn't he? Well, I guess it's no big loss for him. While he's off on some other island checking out other women, I'll send you and your pathetic little band of Rebel Riders straight to the pen!"

Aero didn't reply. Instead, she just sped straight at the gaudy street sweeper. It lashed out at the little bike with its arms, and as it did, she could feel Teisel squeezing her lower abdomen so hard she was almost afraid she'd break in two.Yep, she thought as she sped down the road, the big lug is definitely not in any shape to be driving right now. She swerved to avoid being plucked straight off the road and hurled into someone's apartment building. That infernal machine looked like it would have a hard time doing an about-face in the middle of the street. Forcing it to loop around a block would give her a considerable head start.

She figured the best course of action would be to head uphill toward the wasteland and get the ARC-2 caught in the bluffs. This thing was already picking up unsuspecting people's cars and using them as weapons. Who knew what kind of collateral damage Goodwin might do if they kept their fight within the city walls?

Once the reinforcements started pouring in to block off their escape route, sirens wailing, Aero kicked it up a notch and revved the secondary thrusters. "Hang on, you two," she instructed. She hoped they could hear her. "It's time to fly!"

She doubted Teisel could even tell the motorhorse had achieved liftoff by that point, he was so far gone, and she knew from experience that there didn't seem to be much in the world that could phase Pic to begin with. The little fly carrier soared over the row of police cars, prompting Goodwin to snag a few of his own vehicles for ammo once he got himself turned in the right direction. Aero wasn't even sure he'd given his men an opportunity to evacuate as he jettisoned a couple of police cars straight for them and crashed through the blockade himself. A squad of cops on motorhorses peeled out from the mess of police vehicles and headed up into the sky after the Bright Bats.

"Please bring your motorhorse to the ground and pull over!" one of the cops instructed Aero, just before his own boss nearly annihilated his bike with a police car.

"We're past protocol!" Goodwin insisted. "Just shoot them down! That's an order!"

"Shoot?" Pic balked. The three Rebel Riders were well aware that motorhorse weapon attachments were prohibited by law.

Of course, everyone involved in the scuffle was also well aware that acquiring a lethal robotic street sweeper with arms and using it to throw police cars at people was even less legal, so Aero assumed all bets were off in this situation. Clearly, the Teomo City police force had decided that they were above their own regulations.

The ARC-2 was quite a bit faster than the ARC-1 had been. Between pushing their motorhorse to the top of its potential speed range, adding two extra passengers, and having to deal with the police shooting at her, Aero wasn't sure she and the others would make it out of the city alive. However, despite her expectations, after a gut-wrenching chase through the streets, she whizzed straight out of the Wasteland Gate and into the open, Reaverbot-filled plains ahead. Now all that was left to do was lose the police in the canyon.

Out on a plateau not far from the gate, Seedy Leigh and his goons each straddled one of their motorhorses as a certain rotund Rebel Rider glared across the canyon at them from atop his hog. Bullbreath and the Roast Beefs had waited far too long for a chance at a rematch with the Lightning Crusaders, and to top things off, even after a year, the aging gang leader still hadn't managed to replace his television.

"Okay then," Bullbreath declared. "It's gonna be me against Thunderhead here, no holds barred. Just like old times. Brisket hooked me up with a new pair of gatling guns for the occasion. You're goin' down!"

Leigh just stared out into the distance with his jaw hanging open.

"What?" Bullbreath balked. "Don't tell me you're gettin' cold feet! I've been waiting too long for..."

"B-behind you!" he stammered.

Bullbreath had no idea what to expect when he turned around, but "the Bright Bats being tailed by every cop in Teomo City and a giant robot" definitely wasn't on the list. "Hey Thunderhead, isn't that your crazy daredevil buddy out there, clinging to the girl like he's gonna cry or something? You know, that guy you kept telling me had no problem driving himself into the wall at the end of Brink Canyon?"

Leigh just squinted at the three riders. The red-haired kid in the back seemed to have noticed them. He was frantically waving his arm around and appeared to be shouting something while the ARC-2 snagged any Horokko within range that popped up out of the ground and chucked them at the unarmed Rebel Riders. "Looks to me like they could use some backup."

"Heh," Bullbreath grinned. "I suppose showing old Goodwin what we're made of sounds more interesting than shooting at each other until we drop." He turned to face his lackeys and added, "Ossobuco! Brisket! Get back on your bikes! The six of us are going to take down this island's crappy police force for good and earn us all some respect down in the city again!"

With a roar of approval from their four subordinates, Bullbreath and Seedy Leigh revved up their engines and led the way down the hillside and into the fray.

Teisel hadn't opened his eyes once from the moment Aero had initially pulled out of the alley next to the museum, but when he heard the roar of motorhorses coming from downfield, he blinked and glanced over her shoulder, wondering if the six blurry riders headed straight at them were all in his head. Were they really in the wasteland? It was hard to tell. It was too dark, and between the noise from the police sirens and the noise from the incoming gunfire that may or may not have been an actual threat, his mind was making a real mess of things.

He looked back up at Pic. The young man still had one hand clasped on Teisel's shoulder, but he appeared to be waving the bikers over with the other as Aero shot across the field. Before Teisel had a chance to realize what was happening, however, the six riders let loose a volley of plasma bullets that caused him to tighten his grip on Aero, duck down, and squeeze his eyes shut again.

Pic felt Teisel's shoulder tense up and quickly sat back down so he could hold the big guy in place like a human vise. The last thing any of the Bright Bats needed was to have Teisel jump off because he thought they were being shot at from both sides. To everyone else involved in the skirmish, it was painfully clear that the Roast Beefs and the Lightning Crusaders were really aiming to scare away the brunt of the police force. Pic glanced back over his own shoulder to see that their rivals' efforts were working somewhat. At least four police motorhorses peeled away from the group and headed back to the city.

"You cowards had better get back here!" Goodwin roared from the ARC-2. He pegged a Horokko at Brisket's bike, but the Roast Beefs' mechanic swerved out of the way just in time. The veteran gangs had decades of combat experience on their side that the chief just wasn't used to dealing with. "That's an order!"

Aero gave her rivals a nod as they crossed paths. Then she swung around the plateau, hugging the shoreline and ultimately parking the bike in an isolated cave close to the entryway into Brink Canyon. With any luck, the other gangs would be able to hold the cops off with their weapons. She really needed to catch her breath, evaluate the situation, and figure out what to do from there.

However, as much as she wanted to dismount the bike and regain her bearings, Teisel still had her locked in his death grip. She managed to twist herself around enough to slug him in the arm and snap him back into the moment. "Come on," she instructed, "If you squeeze my guts any harder you're probably going to cause internal bleeding. Bullbreath and Thunderhead are holding off the police."

"W-what about the Feldynaught heads fused to the tank treads?"

"Not real." Pic reported as he climbed off the back of the bike and crept toward the cave entrance. Even though the gunfire was loud enough to be heard clearly from their hiding spot, it was a pretty lengthy walk back to the battlefield. He kicked at the ground in frustration. He'd been hoping for a good view of the fight.

"On that note, I'm surprised Thunderhead and his crew were really up there." Aero added as Teisel loosened his grip enough for her to hop off, stretch, and assess the accidental damage to her midriff. "I never expected those guys to get back together."

Teisel didn't move from his spot on the motorhorse until Pic walked up, pulled him off, and led him to a spot where he could sit down on the ground. "It's okay," Pic stated after a particularly intense blast of gunfire from the outside sent a few small tremors all the way to the cavern. "They're not shooting at us."

Aero watched on as Pic tried to coax Teisel into focusing on him instead of focusing on the calamity going on outside. She'd have preferred it if Max were around, but at least the kid was better at keeping Teisel calm than she was. "I'm going to see if I can climb up the canyon and find a decent vantage point," she declared. "You've still got your radio, right, Pic?"

Pic fumbled around on his belt until he found the transceiver, then nodded.

"I'll let you two know if anybody comes looking around for us." Aero said. "If Bullbreath and Thunderhead can't hold the chief off on their own, I'll try and create a diversion so they don't find you guys. Stick with Teisel, keep your radio with you, and make sure nothing happens in here, okay?"

Before Pic could protest, she'd already darted out of sight.

Teisel, who'd barely looked up even once since they'd parked, flatly stated, "I really hope she realizes her hair is blue and Goodwin considers her arrest a top priority."

From the top of the bluffs, Aero managed to find a spot that offered her a decent amount of cover. As long as none of the police out there thought to look up, she figured, she probably wouldn't be spotted by accident.

It looked like most of the force had retreated, despite Goodwin's protests, and while the Lightning Crusaders' support squad was working their hardest to corral the straggling police motorhorses, Thunderhead and the Roast Beefs were concentrating their efforts on Chief Goodwin and the ARC-2. Goodwin had managed to find a Horokko spawn point that he felt confident would provide him with plenty of ammunition, and he'd even taken to gripping the little machines upside-down and aggravating them to a point where they would shoot bombs out at the bikers. It was as if he'd acquired dual bomb cannons that he could manually eject and throw as a projectile whenever he wanted.

The Horokko didn't always explode on impact after being tossed, which complicated things for Bullbreath and company. Each motorhorse could only shoot straight ahead, but Goodwin had the technology to allow him to toss Horokko and shoot bombs in almost any direction. It was all too easy to knock Brisket straight off his bike.

"Ossobuco!" Bullbreath roared. "Get back and cover Brisket. I want you two dingbats to clear the Reaverbots for Thunderhead and me, got it?!"

"Who you callin' a dingbat?!" Ossobuco retorted. Still, he peeled away from the fray anyway. The mechanic was already rushing back toward his bike, which didn't appear to have sustained any major damage during the hit.

Bullbreath and Thunderhead took off in opposite directions. They figured that the chief would have more trouble cutting them off that way. Unfortunately, the ARC-2 had two arms, and controlling them was intuitive enough for the old man that the two gang leaders were having trouble getting many shots in. Watching them floundering around out there was enough to make Aero wish Grill had equipped their own motorhorse with a gun.

Just when it seemed all hope was lost, the Lightning Crusaders' backup bikers—Aero was sure their names were something like Spark Plug and Voltage—came roaring back in from behind an outcropping of rock, guns blazing, ready to turn the tables on the chief. There wasn't a single police unit left on the battlefield aside from the ARC-2. Aero couldn't help but vindictively smirk at the scene before her. So many motorhorses had been chasing them, and not even one of them had ended up sticking to Goodwin's orders in the end. The Lightning Crusaders and the Roast Beefs totally had this situation under control.

As Aero watched the carnage from up above, back in the cave, Teisel had repositioned himself onto the edge of a fairly large rock while Pic stood behind him and massaged his back. "And you're sure this isn't creepy, T-Bonne?" Pic asked for what seemed like the tenth time.

"I'm sure." Teisel insisted. "So what if Max, Grill, and Aero aren't big fans of back rubs? That's got nothing to do with me. Especially with that mess going on outside."

"You've never had a tactile hallucination before, have you?" Pic suddenly asked. "Like temperature or pressure or...that explains it! You do all that touchy-feely stuff to keep yourself grounded when you're freaking out!"

"Just pressure. The way we'd get ourselves blown up every other week, temperature hallucinations happen all the...wait a minute!" Teisel suddenly snarled, although he found himself both surprised and amused at Pic's sudden burst of giddiness. The boy actually seemed excited to have pieced that scrap of information together on his own. "What do you mean by 'all that touchy-feely stuff?!'"

Pic just chuckled and replied, "You always liked hugging your family, didn't you? Tron thought so too. At least she seemed to write as much in her story."

Even though Teisel knew better, it almost seemed as if the explosions outside heard Pic mention the book and quieted down, just for that one moment. He looked up at the teenager standing behind him, and, in an even, deliberate tone, asked, "Hey Pic, do you...do you think Tron would have minded if I finished that book of hers?"

Pic stopped rubbing Teisel's shoulders and stepped back, but instead of sitting down next to the older man, he paced across their makeshift hideout in deep thought. Even though Teisel had planned to ask Max that very question before the three of them left, something about Pic's straightforwardness compelled him to blurt it out right there in the cavern. He wasn't disappointed with the kid's immediate reaction, either. Teisel could tell that Pic was taking his time to evaluate all of the information he had to work with. Yes, he realized, Pic was definitely the person to ask about this, not Max.

Pic finally stopped pacing and glanced back over at Teisel. "She'd want you to go for it."

"You're sure about that?"

"Well, she didn't mean to start the story and leave it half-finished, did she?" he elaborated. "And if anybody could have asked her to pick one person out of everyone alive in the world right now to finish it for her, I'm fairly confident that she would have picked you, even if you asked her more than once. You knew her better, though...can you think of anybody else out there that she might have preferred?"

Teisel shook his head. "Not really," he admitted. "But...I don't know, Pic. I'm not sure I could match her writing style. I don't know what to do about that. Everything's just changed so much..."

Before Teisel could even finish the thought, Pic had hopped up on the rock next to him and cut off his sentence. "None of that little stuff matters. Tron cared about you a lot," he explained as he swung his legs back and forth and bounced the heels of his shoes off of the side of their perch. "If she had any idea how much that book meant to you now, if she could see how much it hurts you to remember that the book suddenly stops in the middle, to remember why it suddenly stops in the middle, she'd be okay with it."

"And you're really sure about that?"

"One hundred percent."

Teisel opened his mouth to reply, but an earth-shattering explosion from outside cut him off before he could get a word in. Pic instinctively glanced up and yanked him off the rock, shoving him to the ground as a stalactite broke off from the ceiling and came crashing down dangerously close to where they'd been sitting. It wasn't the only chunk of rubble that had broken loose, either. Other pieces of rock clattered to the ground, one of which narrowly missed scratching up the motorhorse.

As soon as he was sure that there wasn't going to be a cave-in, Pic dug into his pocket and flipped his radio on. "Aero? Aero, we felt a big explosion a few seconds ago. What happened?"

The line was dead silent on the other end. He clenched his teeth and fiddled a bit with the settings. "Aero, can you hear me? Are you okay?"

As Teisel watched Pic become more and more unexpectedly concerned the longer he shouted at the machine, he felt his stomach clench up. "No..." he mumbled to himself as he curled up on the ground and squeezed his eyes shut. He hadn't made much of an effort to pull himself back up in the first place, but now he wasn't even going to try. He'd spent nearly a year figuring out how to fit in with this gang, and it seemed like just when he'd finally adjusted to his new life, now he had to cope with Aero getting herself killed because she'd decided to watch some other people fighting each other on motorhorses.

In all the months he'd spent with the Bright Bats, even during his own brushes with death, he'd been so preoccupied with missing his family that the concept of anything happening to the rest of the gang never even crossed his mind. He should have known better. "I can't do this anymore..."

"Aero!" Pic gripped the radio so hard that the edges painfully dug into his hands and his face scrunched up in an unprecedented display of emotional distress. "Say something!"

"...is thing on...?"

Pic froze. He adjusted the dial on the radio, and Aero's voice grew clearer. "Pic? Teisel? Are you guys okay down there?"

"We're fine!" Pic shouted, completely oblivious to the emotional meltdown Teisel was having no fewer than ten feet from where he stood. "I think the dial just slipped to the wrong channel when the radio was in my pocket. What about you?"

"I ducked down into the canyon when the ARC-2 started spewing smoke everywhere. I didn't get caught in the blast, but I got worried when I tried to call you two and nobody answered. I thought there might have been a cave-in or something." Aero explained. "Anyway, none of that matters now. We're alive. It's all over. And Gonzo Goodwin is dead."