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Chapter 37: Goodbye

Back on the surface of Terra, everything seemed to have descended into a state of chaos. People from all over the hemisphere had their eyes to the skies. Those who didn't had them fixated on their computers in an attempt to analyze the few photographs of the strange, alien vehicle that had been snapped during its ascent. Teomo's government was in a complete state of disarray. The chief of police suddenly died after a bank robbery, and then Ghiotte Summit started shooting UFOs into the air, all in under 48 hours. Was Klickelan even safe to live on anymore?

Across the bay, on Volnutt Island, Roll had been intensely watching the sky from the lab's observatory. She'd been there since the initial news of the spacecraft's re-entry broke over the radio. It was the first time in ten years that she'd been able to bring herself to go back into that little room she'd worked so hard to keep closed to the public, and she was surprised to find that it wasn't as dusty as she'd expected.

She felt strangely numb as she sat on the same stool where she'd watched Mega Man and her mother die all those years ago and peered into the eyepiece of that same telescope. She watched the ancient ship grow larger as it descended to the planet's surface. After losing communications with Teisel and Data and seeing that ship blast off into space at sunrise, her mind raced with countless possibilities. Was Mega Man up there with them? Did they have something important to take care of? Did he remember them? Did he ask Teisel and Data about her?

Art wasn't with her. She had a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach that he didn't want to risk her rejection if he'd tried to join her at the telescope. She worried that his insecurities might wind up justified in their imminent future, if it turned out that Teisel and Data had managed to successfully bring back Mega Man.

But for the most part, she kept the telescope focused on the vehicle hurtling toward them faster than anything she'd seen since the last time she fired off a rocket. It made her feel closer to them. She needed to feel close to them now more than ever.

Pic, Aero, Max, Grill, and Art didn't need a telescope to watch the rocket's re-entry. The five of them sat on the edge of Roll and Tron's launchpad and sipped cups of bulk coffee as they watched the skies above. They occasionally spared a glance or two over at the lab, with its telescope pointed straight in the ship's direction.

None of them were expecting this ship to randomly explode on its way back, too.

Roll thought it was her mind playing tricks on her at first. Just another flashback to that horrifying day ten years earlier, like the ones she used to get if she stopped focusing on whatever construction project she'd latched onto at the time. But when she stepped away from the telescope and looked out the window to see the smoke still hanging in the air from the explosion and fading fast, she sunk to her knees, pulled off her hat in despair, and gripped it like a lifeline as the reality of the situation set in.

This time it was completely her fault. There was no excuse about not knowing there was a rocket under Klickelan Island the whole time to fall back on. There was no way around it. She'd sent Teisel and Data to their doom for a chance at maybe getting Mega Man back.

"Roll!" she heard Art exclaim as her husband's footsteps thundered up the stairs and grew louder as he approached the observatory. She couldn't even look him in the eye when he knelt down next to her and asked, "Roll, are you...can you say something? Are you okay? Roll?"

"All these years looking and we finally found him," Roll incoherently sobbed into Art's shoulder. "And I just screw everything up!"

"Roll, that's not true," Art reassured her. He was relieved that she hadn't completely gone into shock yet. "You didn't put him in the spaceship. You had no way of knowing about anything that might have happened. We knew going in that it might not work out and we might not get Mega Man back..."

"I'm not talking about Mega Man, I'm talking about Teisel!" Roll cut him off, which took Art by surprise. She noticed that his grip on her had slackened, so she continued, "He kept trying to tell me that he didn't want to go down there, but I wouldn't shut up about it. I probably guilt-tripped him into climbing the summit! Even though we never spent much time with each other back then, and even though I didn't like him very much before, I was so happy when I found him in that store. I was hoping we could start over and be friends."

Art resisted the urge to say, "Could've fooled me." The two of them had unquestionably underestimated how rough that man's recovery had been.

"And don't even get me started on Data," Roll continued. "He stayed with us for so long, even without Mega Man with him..."

"It's oka...erm..." Art trailed off. It wasn't okay, after all. "I'm sorry," he sighed when he felt the guilt sink in and realized that he was probably equally culpable for pursuing the line of research for as long as he did. He held onto Roll tightly and added, "We'll get through this. You've got Aero and me with you now. You're not alone this time."

When Roll and Art finally mustered up the will to leave the lab and check up on the Bright Bats, they were stunned to find that not one of the four of them seemed to have considered the possibility that Teisel had probably died. "The rocket exploded, right?" Max asked. "I mean, duh, we all saw it blow up. So yeah. He's fine."

"Am I allowed to call them insane?" Art asked Roll. "That's okay, right?"

"Teisel's got this thing," Grill elaborated before Roll could respond accordingly. "You kind of have to see it in action to believe it, but take it from me, a rocket explosion's about as effective as throwing food at him."

"A while back, he told me about this one time his old airship exploded with him in it," Max added. "This wouldn't be the first time something like this happened to him."

"That did seem a little weird...even the Kattelox authorities thought he and Tron and Bon didn't survive that explosion," Roll remarked. "If that's true, then it makes a little more sense as to why they kept bouncing back so often after Mega Man blew everything up...but what if he didn't make it out of the ruins? What if he didn't even get into the rocket?"

The four bikers glanced at each other. It was painfully evident that they hadn't considered that possibility. "If he was in that rocket, then he's probably trying to get back to us," Pic evaluated the situation. "If we don't see or hear anything by sundown, we'll have to go in and..."

"No." Max cut him off. "We'd have to call the Guild in on this one. Ghiotte Summit's a tough climb, and we're in enough trouble as it is...but I'm hoping it doesn't come to that! He's got to be out there somewhere!"

"If you guys get the Guild into this, then Roll and Art and I are going to have to leave by then," Aero warily added. "As much as I'd like to know where he's at and if he and Data are okay, Teisel did this to make sure I got out of here safely. I wouldn't want to make everything he did completely pointless."

They all stood in silence for an awkwardly long amount of time, until all at once, they kicked into high gear. Aero clamored into the Drache with Max to run a sweep on the ocean, while Roll and Art sprinted back to the observatory. It took a lot for everyone to keep their expectations in check.

"You know, having that sliver of hope that Teisel might have actually survived, unreasonable as the explanation sounds...it's kind of scary," Roll said as she refocused the telescope to zoom in on the ocean surrounding them and scanned the water for any sign of life.

Art nodded. "Yeah, I think I get what you mean this time," he replied. "I don't want to get my hopes up, but at the same time..."

Roll just smiled and waved her husband closer to the telescope. For better or worse, they'd work as hard as they could to try and find Teisel and Data before what was left of the Teomo City police force could catch up to them.

Despite Roll and Art's efforts, however, it was actually Grill who spotted Data riding on Teisel's back as Teisel swam towards Volnutt Island about two hours later. "Hey! Hey guys!" the mechanic shouted as he giddily ran past Pic and stumbled up the stairs to the observatory. It was the most exercise he'd had in years. "Data and T-Bonne are okay! Swing the telescope around in the other direction! He's been swimming this way the whole time! Radio the Drache and have Aero and Max head back to pick them up!"

For the second time that day, Roll had trouble believing what she saw in that telescope once she'd recalibrated the machine and caught a glimpse of them out on the water. "They're really alive!" she exclaimed. She squinted into the eyepiece. Part of her was a little worried that they could disappear at any moment, but Teisel and Data kept on swimming despite her misgivings. "It looks like Teisel's weapons got through too! I don't believe it! This is amazing!"

"Forget about his weapons! He's probably exhausted!" Grill cut in. "Someone's gotta pick him up!"

"Right, right." Roll shook her head. "Let's get him in the Flutter. That little airship of his doesn't have any place for him to rest up, and they've both got to be hungry, too. I'll call Max and Aero back right away!"

As soon as everyone was present and accounted for, the Flutter engaged its engines and headed out for the open water. The ship hovered close to the surface with the ladder extended and the hatch open. Art took the helm while the rest of the group anxiously waited in the hallway. Roll even held a tray of cookies with Data's favorite cactus on it.

And as soon as Teisel hoisted himself into the airship, that tray clattered to the ground, shattering the pot holding the cactus. Roll's eyes widened and her face turned bright red. "You guys won't believe what happened after the transmission cut out!" Teisel animatedly began to explain before the others could say anything. He set Data on the ground. As soon as the monkey's feet hit the floor, he scurried over to his cactus and started frantically examining it to make sure it was still alive. "I'm pretty sure if I...HEY! What's with the weird looks? Didn't your dads ever walk around the house in their underwear?"

"...Uh, yeah, about that." Max piped up, laughing nervously as he glanced around the hallway. "I think something might've happened to whatever underwear it is you're, uh, talking about..."

"I think you broke Roll!" Pic chimed in.

The mechanic in question hadn't budged an inch since she'd dropped the tray. Data frantically scrambled around and scooped a mix of dirt and cookie crumbs back into the pot while he chattered away in a panic. Aero and Grill awkwardly shuffled their feet and stared at the carpet.

Teisel seemed to have lapsed into a comparable state of shock. His mouth was hanging open but, against all odds, no sound was coming out of it. Pic, who seemed to be the only one left in the room completely unfazed, added, "In your defense, it was probably better that this happened now and not last year. You looked really skinny and sick back then, but I think now I would rank you as 'relatively average.'"

The moment Teisel's train of thought caught up with him and he'd managed to verify that yes, his underwear had been blown off, and no, they weren't all messing with him, he let out an unearthly shriek of embarrassment and reflexively stepped back, which sent him stumbling over the edge of the doorway and splashing back down into the water.

"Yeah, this is going to be one really awkward group photo..." Aero muttered under her breath.

Once Max had found Teisel a towel to wrap around his waist in the bathroom, once Teisel had taken off his gauntlets to keep himself from accidentally slashing up any furniture, and once Roll had regained enough of her sensibilities to help Data repot the cactus, they had Art put the Flutter on standby and reconvened in the living room to discuss the Klicke Lafonica over tea. Roll tried to salvage as many of the cookies as she could, but most of them were a lost cause.

"Apparently it isn't just me who's supposed to be able to survive an explosion like that one," Teisel explained as he sat back in Roll's armchair and silently fumed to himself. What had Roll been thinking when she married a short, skinny guy? If she'd found somebody taller, Teisel might have been able to borrow some clothes. "I'm sorry to have to tell you this, Roll, but he didn't seem to remember either of us. He didn't even see Data as anything more than a walking backup device. That's really why we're all still alive now. Data didn't like having his friendship downgraded the minute Trigger's memories were restored to a body."

"Wait, so you're saying all of us could have died?!" Max exclaimed. "Was this Trigger guy some kind of homicidal nutcase?!"

"He seemed to like us well enough as a collective, but apparently we're evolving backwards." Teisel shrugged. "We all look like we're coping with it alright to me, but he decided it would be a better idea to kidnap me and kill everyone else so he could create other people who can blow themselves up and live through it. Trigger was also pretty worried about this Elder System that's supposedly lurking underground, to the point where he put me under for a while and tried to implant nanomachines with data for fighting moves directly into my body. He wanted to send me down into the ruins to destroy it with him once you guys were all dead. I think his genetic manipulation worked. I really wouldn't have been able to swim as far as I did, or stall Trigger long enough for Data to blow up the rocket without it."

"You can actually fight now?" Grill asked.

"Well, I can't exactly argue with these results," Teisel replied. He sipped his tea and kept one hand firmly holding the towel in place even though he was sitting down. He didn't want to take any chances. "It feels like cheating, though. I don't even like digging that much. I had such a hard time just getting my Class B License in the first place, but now I'm pretty sure I could upgrade it to Class A in my sleep!"

"Hey, you deserve a break once in a while," Max shrugged.

Teisel frowned. "I don't know if we can really count this one as a break, Max. These Elders are still out there in some of the deepest ruins in the world. When our Mega Man went to the moon all those years ago, he destroyed the system that was built to keep them in check. Trigger told me that even the Digger's Guild hasn't found this Elder System yet. If that's the case, then I might be the only person left on the planet who can keep them from resurfacing and obliterating everything. That sounds like the opposite of a break to me."

Aero glanced over and asked, "So what's the plan, then? Do you need to come along with us when we leave now?"

"Not immediately," Teisel replied after assessing the situation for a few moments. "Trigger seemed to be under the impression that it could take a while for them to catch on that his system's been shut down. We probably don't have much to worry about in the near future. Honestly, I think the smartest option would be to wait a while and leave after I've had some time to prepare. It seems like whenever Roll and Art and I end up in the same room, something bad happens, and Aero, no offense, but it's probably for the best that you and I go our separate ways for now. Neither of us should have to go around worrying about setting the other off by accident, either.

"That said, Art, I'd like to ask you a favor. I want you to spend some time with Data to find out as much about this Elder System as you can. Something tells me that it might be a good idea to research deep sea exploration while you're at it," he added as his mind drifted back to the fake summer house. The Languste and the deep sea digging operations couldn't have just been a random inclusion, could they?

Art whipped a pocket-sized notebook out of his jacket and jotted that down with a nod. "That'll give me something new to focus on, now that we know that bringing Mega Man back isn't going to give us the results we're really looking for," he replied. "Did...did he tip you off about that underwater thing or something?"

Teisel didn't feel entirely comfortable disclosing the exact circumstances under which he'd received that information, so he changed the subject. "Something like that. It's complicated. Right now, I think I'd like to spend a little more time here on Klickelan. I've got some unfinished business I need to take care of back in Teomo City. I promise I'll catch up with the three of you as soon as I can afford to buy myself a bigger ship...one that's big enough for me to bring my dog along, too."

"Hey, if you're going to start digging on other islands, you're not going to get very far without your spotter!" Max cut in.

"You really want to keep spotting for me, Max? Even after all this?"

"I keep telling you I've got your back. What's it gonna take to make that stick, huh?" Max asked with a grin. "We make a great team, and if you've got places you need to explore, I'm going to do what I can to help! You interested in coming along, too, Grill? We'll probably find a lot of interesting junk out there, and it'd be handy to have a mechanic on board with us!"

Grill frowned. "Sorry, guys. I kind of like working for Polly at the garage. It's stable. You can't really beat that, you know? Besides, someone's got to hold down the fort while everyone's away. We can't very well keep Pic in the base alone. It'll be completely filled with trash when you get back."

The Bright Bats all knew that getting Pic to travel anywhere would mean transporting his junk collection. There was no chance of that ever happening.

"I guess this means we're really splitting up," Aero finally admitted. "For a while, at least," she added, but they all knew deep down that, at best, it would probably be a very long while. She mustered up a grin and pulled out her phone. "We should probably take that group picture while we've still got the chance..."

It was, as Aero had predicted, one of the most awkward group photos they'd ever taken, but they were together. That was what mattered, really. Aero Goodwin finally had a picture of her whole family. And even though the strategist looked like he'd just stepped out of the shower with his jump springs on, and even though Data decided to photobomb them all by hopping up into Max's hair, she would go on to print it out and keep it framed on Professor Caskett's old desk for a long, long time after they'd swapped their farewell hugs and dropped the guys off at the Wasteland Gate.

As the Flutter headed off toward its latest destination, Aero stared at the screen on her phone. She smiled at the crazy cast of characters she'd grown to love over the last ten years, and their eleventh hour fifth member who'd swooped in and turned everything upside down at the end of it all. She'd had her misgivings, but in the end, she didn't regret opening their doors to that complete stranger one bit.

She knew she'd see them all again at the next rocket anniversary, that much was certain.