I don't really know when this story's set; somewhere towards the end of season 2, with Tezz and AJ and all the bad guys too (Zemerik, Kalus, Krytus etcetera). So if I get something wrong, that's because I'm not really sticking to continuity, I'm just taking the bits I want. There isn't much happening in this chapter anyway; the fun starts in chapter 2…

So yeah, I don't own anything, and any references to events (like the USA JSC for example) are completely made up and probably don't actually exist. And I have next to no mechanical knowledge whatsoever, so please don't eat me for getting details wrong. But other than that, read and enjoy!

Chapter One

The vast salt flats of Handler's Corners stretched out ahead of the magenta handlebars and she pulled the throttle, unleashing the full speed of the custom-built motorbike into the afternoon sun. She had some fond memories of this place. Many of her childhood years had been spent racing through the flat, featureless desert, not breaking the law since driving out there didn't seem to have any. That was the only thing she regretted moving out into the big city for. The speed, and the freedom to kick out as much of it as possible.

She waved cheerily at the black and white police car that had always sat somewhere in the middle of the flats, wondering to herself if it was still Sheriff Johnson sitting behind the wheel. Probably. Things didn't tend to change a lot around here. The car was a marker that her fun was almost up, a marker confirmed by the huge plastic pizza that stuck out above Zeke's Diner. She was nearly out of track. Yanking the bars hard to the right, the engine gave out a cough, reminding her why she was taking this detour in the first place, and she made a mental note to stop off for some pizza, pie and a milkshake on her way home. That should be just in time for dinner anyway; she wasn't planning on staying long.

Finally it came into sight; the Spectra Motors Hangar; her destination. More commonly known as the Wheeler Garage, although the faded sign over the front of the impressively build building still read the former. The exterior was where she recalled the impressiveness ending, and unless her brother had recently had a change of heart, it would still be that way. Her bike rolled her right up to the doors before finally fulfilling its promise and giving out, which she had been worried of it's doing since about ten miles before the salt flats. It was slightly spooky how often it did that; getting her exactly where she wanted to go before ceasing to function; but she wasn't going to question it in a hurry. She'd had the bike for somewhere near ten years, although had only been able to ride it for the last five and none of the parts were the same anymore. Really she needed a new one, but she couldn't bring herself to part with it. That was one of the reasons why she was where she was: standing in front of her brother's garage armed with a wrench and some nacho cheese potato chips.

She wasn't sure if she had been expecting a response to the loud announcement of her arrival. There was no reason why her brother wouldn't be home, but at the same time, she didn't think she actually wanted to see him. They hadn't spoken in three years, since she, their mother and the youngest of the three siblings had moved to the city. She didn't know what to say to him. She didn't know if he would even recognise her.

When the banging on the door and her shouting of "Hey, Vert, open up!" produced no response, she strode over to the keypad lock with a smile on her face. She would have the place to herself, for a while at least. It was amazing, really, how he hadn't even changed the code to the front door. It wouldn't surprise her if every one of the fifty people living in the area knew what it was, and so having it there in the first place was utterly pointless. But that was Vert, she supposed. He liked to keep things around for sentimental value.

The inside was precisely as she remembered it. Oil stains on the floor, an assortment of tools hanging on the walls with even more empty gaps where the ones lying around on workbenches should have been, dust coating everything. Something did strike her as slightly odd though. She tried to shrug off the feeling, but it kept on coming back to her as she pushed the now defunct motorcycle into her preferred corner of the workshop. As she took one last look around, it hit her. There were no pizza boxes, no soda cartons, none of those quirky little boxes Zeke served his speciality pie in. The dust on the floor; and everything else for that matter; was thick, and no vehicle had driven through it in at least... a year? Maybe two? She frowned. Why would Vert abandon the garage? Not only had no vehicle not been through it in years, not a single footprint besides her own had been made in the slightly yellow covering, and the air, she noticed, was stale, like the door hadn't even been opened in that whole time. Briefly she thought that he had moved away, but if that had been the case, why would he leave all his tools? It just didn't make sense. But there was nothing she could do about it before the Rustbucket was fixed. She would drive over to Zeke's later and ask a few questions there.

Four hours, seven packets of chips and many alterations later, she stood up to survey her handiwork. She had done a good job, even though she needed a new catalytic converter for the exhaust, and while technology had moved on, the specs for her bike had not, and getting one to fit the system would be next to impossible. She wondered if it was worth completely re-fitting the engine. Not now, though. Her stomach informed her in a loud protest that the visit to Zeke's she had been promising it was long overdue, and she scooped her helmet off a work surface, sweeping the dust off from where it had been in contact. It, like everything else she was wearing and owned, was a rather pleasant shade of magenta, or "raspberry," as people tended to incorrectly call it. She had always liked that colour, and had even tried at one stage to acquire bike parts to match. Unfortunately she had had to give that one up since doing so made the repair process even more difficult, but wherever she could, she liked to try. Dropping the helmet onto her head she swung up onto her faithful steed and sped out of the garage.

The drive took only ten minutes on borderline speed limit, and she was surprisingly the only occupant of the parking lot. She remembered it always being the busiest around seven PM. The whole place was starting to feel like a ghost town. Fortunately, the inside of Zeke's was exactly the same as it had always been; bright, well-lit and cheerful with its green seats and low-hanging spotlights. The man himself, unchanged since her last visit, sat at the counter, eyes fixed on the TV behind him playing some old alien-hunter series that was probably only six months away from being in black and white. She remained unnoticed until reaching the counter, whereupon Grace, another completely unchanged face in this town, swung the backroom door open and floated in, mop in hand. Her face lit up as she saw her.

"Well look at what the cat dragged in!" Leaning the mop against the counter, Grace ran towards her and enveloped her in a hug, attracting Zeke's attention at the same time. The two had been best friends as children, and Grace was possibly the only resident of Handler Corners she had kept up communications with.

"Well if it ain't little Ronnie Wheeler," the proprietor beamed. "I haven't seen you around here in... well almost three years."

"Three years and four weeks. Not that I'm counting."

"Come on, take a seat. What can I get you? The usual?"

"You still remember that?" she grinned, sliding onto one of the bar stools in front of the only large booth table in the diner. Her favourite seat.

"You ordered it once a day, every day since you were old enough to get on that bike of yours and drive down here," Zeke reminded her, turning away and setting about preparing her food.

"You still driving the Rustbucket?" Grace asked, returning to mopping the floor.

"Yeah, she's parked outside right now. That's the reason I'm here, actually; the exhaust system clogged about ten miles out. I was supposed to just be passing on an errand for mom but I figured a day can't make much of a difference."

"Why don't you stick around? It's still as uneventful around here as ever but there've been a couple of new faces over the years."

"Maybe, I dunno. Depends. Speaking of faces, is Vert still around?"

"Yeah, 'course. Actually, it's about the time they all pile in and grab pizza; give it a few more minutes and they'll all be here."

"They?"

"Vert and all his friends. Two years back five of them appear suddenly as Spectra's new test drivers, and then a little more recently two more showed up. They all hang at the Spectra hangar; they have a whole track out there and everything."

"That's funny. When I was over there just now the whole place looked deserted."

"Well I can't explain that one. The eight of them show their faces for an hour or so every day and then disappear back to the hangar. But they're cool. And I don't know how they built those cars they've got..." Grace trailed off, and Ronnie greeted her pizza with a roll of her eyes and a slight chuckle. She would get to the bottom of this eventually. If she stayed long enough. Which she was tempted not to do now that Grace mentioned it. She sighed to herself and took a bite, removing about half the pizza slice and swallowing with only three quick chews.

"So what else is new?"

"Well," Zeke interrupted Grace, "I have a feeling that brother of yours and all his friends are in league with the aliens." He said it with such conviction, such honesty, that Ronnie couldn't help herself. The splutter just slipped out; the eagerness in his eyes had been priceless.

"You may laugh young lady, but I'm telling you, there's been some funny business going on around here since you left. Mark my words, you stay here long enough and you'll see for yourself."

It had been a slow day, Vert reflected as he slid the Saber into his space in Zeke's parking lot. Come to think of it, it had been a slow week. There had been no news on Krytus, they'd gone through every training practise in the book, and everyone was getting bored and restless. Well, almost everyone. Tezz, who didn't seem capable of not exercising his enormous brainpower, was attempting to design a device that would connect to Sage's telepathic abilities and amplify them, making them better able to find Krytus and the reds. Or at least, that's what Vert thought he'd said. He tended not to ask anymore, for fear of the unnecessary albeit inevitable comment about his own mental inferiority. To be honest, though, he didn't actually know what the guy was saying half the time, so these probably weren't far from the truth. The rest of the team, though, were a different story.

"I'm telling you, Stanford, one more obnoxious remark about your "good" looks, and I will personally see to it that no one will ever think you attractive ever again," Agura threatened. He had been boasting about it for the last three hours; an event that usually occurred after talking to or about his brother, Simon.

"She'll do it," Spinner remarked.

"I'm only pointing out that my dear brother is sorely mistaken when he claims to be the better of the two of us," Sanford justified. "Besides, he's more obnoxious than me, too."

"If that were even possible," Sherman muttered. AJ laughed in his wild, cackling way, and Stanford glared.

"Just because you don't appreciate..."

Vert sighed and ignored them all. He climbed lazily out of the Saber's cockpit, looking absent-mindedly out over the salt flats in an attempt to tune them out completely. As much as he depended on and trusted his team, they really got on his nerves sometimes. He watched the Tangler and Buster pull up next to him, followed by the Reverb, Splitwire and Gearslammer. Finally, the Chopper skidded to a stop in the end bay, next to an old-yet-new motorcycle that looked like it had parts dating back to his dad's day. He frowned at it. It was vaguely familiar...

"What?" Zoom appeared at his shoulder, following his gaze. "You look like you're trying to decipher one of Tezz's programme codes."

"A feat that wouldn't be possible without a supercomputer and an enormous amount of data files," the Russian said, matter-of-factly. Zoom rolled his eyes.

"I know that bike from somewhere," Vert muttered, more to himself than anyone else.

"Wait, you serious? Of course you've seen that bike somewhere. That's the bike Lucinda Demorney won the USA Junior Stunt Cycle Challenge on last year. Borrowed it off a friend for the finals after hers was completely trashed in the semis." Zoom leapt up and raced towards the bike. "No one thought she could do it because it looked like it was held together by duct tape and glue, but she aced it! Won by miles, too."

"Fascinating story, but can we go eat now?" Stanford almost yawned. Zoom shot him a murderous glare.

"Don't diss. This bike's over forty years old."

That's when it clicked. Vert realised that he did know who the bike's owner was, and not from watching the JSC. That was his sister's bike, the one their dad had given her at the age of seven. He'd meant it as a sort of joke; there was no way the thing could've been driveable at the time; but Ronnie hadn't seen it that way. She'd tinkered, repaired and bartered for parts for five whole years until the engine functioned again and the framework actually stayed together when it was running, and she'd kept it that way ever since. He hadn't recognised it immediately because it had been three since he'd last seen it, and it looked like she'd done some serious work on it since. That meant...

That meant Ronnie was back in town.

"Hey Vert, you coming?" Zoom called from the Diner's front door.

"Hm? Oh, yeah. 'Course." he shrugged himself off the Saber and jogged over to join the rest of the team, most of whom had already set themselves up at their usual table. Hopefully, Vert thought, Ronnie had just parked in the Diner and gone off somewhere else, although that was unlikely. There wasn't anything else within a comfortable walking distance. But he could hope. It wasn't that he didn't want to see his sister, he just didn't want to have to explain everything, or rather the cover stories they'd thought up. He didn't like lying...

No. There was no chance. He'd spotted the magenta leathers as soon as he'd set foot through the door.

"Oh, and there he is," Grace announced; they'd been talking about him. Great. Slowly, Ronnie turned, and fixed Vert with a stare no more friendly than his own.

"Veronica," he said as a form of greeting.

"Vert," she responded just as coolly.

"What're you doing here?"

"Just passing through. I needed some supplies so I used the garage. Hope you don't mind."

This was getting better and better. She'd been in the garage, seen how empty it was. She'd want explanations. "Of course not." he sighed, dropping the hard face. "Ronnie, we need to talk..."

"Yeah, we do." she slid off her stool and scooped up her pizza box. "Thanks, Zeke, and see you around." With these farewells she made her way out of the diner and to her bike before speeding out down the flats. Reluctantly, Vert followed her out. She'd go back to the garage; at least there they could talk in peace. As he swung the door shut behind him he could heard a "Well that was sufficiently awkward," from Spinner, but then again, it could also have been his imagination.

Thanks for reading! Like I said, I've got some awesome stuff planned for chapter two, but that might not appear for a while, I have exams. But I hope you liked. Let me know what you thought by leaving a review!