Press Start to Continue

The Picnic DLC

"Isn't this such a romantic spot?" Max mused. He leaned back against a tree and took in the sprawling wasteland before him while he took a bite of his sandwich and kept on talking with his mouth full. "The sunset's probably beautiful here. It's the perfect place to force a guy to give you a motorhorse ride to against his..."

He never got to finish his sentence, because Aero slapped him in the face. He nearly choked on his food and sprayed bits of sandwich out of his mouth.

"Way to ruin the moment, Max," Grill added for good measure as their gang leader scrambled for his water bottle.

Teisel just sat on the picnic blanket and watched on. He wasn't sure what to make of the scene, and it must have shown, because Pic told him, "It's okay. They're just teasing each other. If you're worried about a fight, you really don't need to be."

"I—I didn't think..." Teisel stammered, but he shook it off. "As long as they're comfortable with it, I probably shouldn't read too much into it, right? It's really just normal roughhousing?"

"Grill would have definitely intervened if that weren't the case."

Teisel glanced back at Max and Aero. Aero looked like she was pouting at something Max had said that he hadn't been able to catch. He wasn't entirely convinced that this Barrett talk was a great idea, even if Max had a far better sense of Aero's boundaries than he did. He shoveled the rest of his sandwich into his mouth. The longer the five of them stayed out on the bluffs, the more likely it became that one of them would say something that could seriously ruin their picnic.

As soon as he'd washed the last of the sandwich down with a bottle of water, Teisel stood up and dusted himself off. "I hate to have to cut this short, but I promised Bakerly I'd try a new donut recipe of his down at the, uh, shop, so..." he backed away toward where the Drache and the two motorhorses were parked.

Max glanced at Aero and sighed. "Guess it's time for me to talk him off the ledge again."

He pulled himself up to his feet, but before he could get very far, he heard a bloodcurdling scream from where their vehicles were parked, followed by an explosion. The rest of the gang jumped to attention and scrambled after him.

Even though he'd made it a point to travel by motorhorse that day, the gang found Teisel standing near the Drache, incomprehensibly sputtering to himself with his gaze fixated on the hatch, which for some reason or another, was wide open.

Max cautiously approached Teisel. "T-Bonne, are you..."

"R-R-REAVERBOT!!!" he shrieked, pointing at his old airship. Sure enough, a Horokko was hanging out just inside the small holding chamber behind the pilot's seat. "DID ANYBODY BRING SOMETHING WE COULD USE TO GET RID OF THIS MONSTROSITY!?"

The remaining four Bright Bats glanced at each other and shrugged. Grill checked his utility belt, but he just didn't have anything that would be able to destroy a Horokko on his person. "I don't think any of us were expecting to need a weapon on a picnic," he conceded.

"The real question is, which of you idiots forgot to close the hatch when we left the Drache?" Aero's glare shifted from Pic to Max and back again.

"Probably you," Max muttered under his breath, but from the look of it, Aero wasn't in the mood for joking around anymore. "Whatever, it's not like it matters now," he added. "Maybe we can try and bribe it out with a sandwich!"

"Reaverbots don't eat, Max," Pic pointed out, but Max had already started jogging back to the picnic blanket. The redhead knelt down, picked up a rock, and hurled it at the Reaverbot. "Get out of there! Come on!"

The Horokko reared back and gave the gang just enough time to scatter before lobbing a bomb at them.

Aero turned back to the group and asked, "What if we closed the hatch and let it bomb itself to pieces?"

"ABSOLUTELY NOT!" Teisel roared.

"Yeah, Polly and I spent way too much time fixing that thing to just blow it up!" Grill added.

The technician rolled her eyes. "Well, if any of you have any better ideas..."

"HEEEEEEERE, REAVERBOT!" Everyone stopped what they were doing and turned to where Max was running toward them with a turkey sandwich in hand, waving it around and getting lettuce and tomato all over the ground. "EAT UP!"

He held out the sandwich and gave it another wave for good measure in hopes that the Horokko would notice it. The Reaverbot just sat there.

"Come on, it's delicious! I didn't know if you liked mustard or mayo better, so I just added both, but you can't have it unless you come out here and get it!"

A good five minutes passed in silence before Aero walked up to one of the motorhorses and said, "Come on, guys. Let's just leave it here and come back for it later. Clearly, that thing's decided to make a nest out of the ship. If we wait for it to go away, we could be here for days, and we only brought enough food to last us an afternoon."

"What if I tackle the Drache and try to knock it out of the hatch from behind?" Teisel suggested.

"Sorry bro," Max said. "Just because you've put on some weight doesn't mean you can knock over an airship by yourself yet."

Aero sighed. "I don't think anyone can do that."

"We can always try, can't we?"

Grill, Pic, and Aero looked at Max like he was insane, but Teisel spoke up. "I think it's worth a shot. You can't really fault us for trying, can we?"

"You can go ahead and give it a shot," Aero said. "The rest of us aren't conveniently immune to blunt trauma, and I really don't want to have my mom involved in this."

"I wouldn't even risk that," Grill added. "You said you've dislocated your arm before, right? I wouldn't want that to happen again, even if we can pop it back in later. We should probably just leave the Drache here and wait until the Reaverbot moves on to pick it up and bring it back to the gate."

They begrudgingly admitted that Grill had a point. Teisel, Max, and Pic piled up onto one motorhorse, Aero and Grill jumped onto the other, and the five of them headed back to the city with their belongings. With any luck, that Horokko would eventually just abandon the Drache on its own.