Legends 3
Endgame
By Emerald
Tête-à-tête
"You told her what?!" Tron Bonne screamed with such utter disbelief and inconceivable volume, that the Gesselschaft itself seemed to quake before the female pirate's fury. Outside the nearly quivering front windshield, the reason for the young woman's anger could be viewed as it flew through the dusk sky. That rapidly vanishing object was Roll Caskett in a stolen Drache, flying as far away as possible from the treacherous pirates. As for the person who Tron's fury was currently directed at…
"I-I told her that we'd pulled of the theft?" Teasel, the supposed leader of the Bonnes, seemed to absolutely cower where he stood in the face of his sister's ferocious gaze. Bent low and holding both hands in front of his face, the eldest pirate looked the part of a naughty child, warding off the 'thwack' of a vengeful parent's rolled up newspaper.
"Why would you do that?! Didn't it ever occur to you that we might just have wanted to keep that a secret from miss goody two shoes?!" Tron continued to interrogate her terrified older brother, in what had to be the loudest game of 'twenty questions' in the history of Terra. A clear space surrounded the two squabbling siblings, one which no serve-bot dared enter for fear of being torn apart by shear sonic force.
"I thought she'd be impressed! After all, it's not every day that six serves can hold up a bank using only ears of corn!" Teasel tried to defend himself, referencing an event far too complex to explain in a simple and concise manner. But the prematurely grey-haired Bonne's flimsy excuse was not enough, judging by the fact that Tron still looked as if she was planning to eat him alive.
"Uh, Miss Tron?" A tug at the hem of the woman in question's skirt directed her attention to the brave Serve-bot 17, which had braved the line of fire with a clipboard in hand. We're it not for the fact that Tron herself had asked for this information, it never would have tread into the impromptu battleground. "Our main computer has found out the Drache's auto-pilot destination.."
So protective of their ships, were the Bonnes, that they'd built tracking devices into every single one of the miniscule aircrafts. Not only could they know where the Draches were, but also where they were heading. This information passed through the young pirate's mind in an instant, though for no particular reason, as she looked at the timid serves trembling arm which held the results of the protective measures taken.
"Give me that." Tron replied as she not-so gingerly received the pad of paper and the cardboard it was clipped to. Teasel lowered his guard, glad for the distraction that this transaction was providing. His security proved false, however, when he was swatted atop his head by the clipboard. "That's for having no common sense!"
As Teasel rubbed his smarting skull, his sister quickly scanned the pad for the information requested. It took her several seconds to read the handwriting, as it proved supremely difficult for serve-bots to write with a pen; why hadn't they simply printed out the result? Once she had gathered the meaning of the scribbled text, she tore it from the board and crumpled it absentmindedly in her fist. Using her other hand, she gestured to the serve-bots who had been watching the exchange and placing bets on whether 16 would live another day.
"Alright everyone! We're heading for Kattolox island, and I don't wanna hear any whining!" The commanding young pirate order her crew, which almost immediately jumped up and headed to their respective posts on the deck. Soon enough, the Gesselschaft began to slowly drift in the direct that Roll was, in comparison, hurtling towards at the speed of sound. With a sigh, the brunette wondered if it was even worth following the insufferable mechanic.
"But," Tron mentally reminded herself, "as much as I hate to admit, its only with her help that I'll be reunited with my Megaman…"
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As the sun began to set over the peaceful island of Kattolox, a lone Drache prepared to touch down in front of a familiar yellow airship. So different than the last time one of the Bonne machine's had come near the island, the purpose of this craft's arrival was nothing but to simply visit. Not blow the place to high hell, Roll thought as she stepped out the open hatch, the ghost of the anger that'd led her away from the pirates still evident on her frowning face.
Upon boarding the ship, Roll and Tron had gone their separate ways. Roll had joined a nearly frenetic Teasel on the deck, where it had taken her a solid ten minutes of explaining the concept of a cloaking device before the pirate would leave behind his idea of 'ancient chicken voodoo magic'. Then, miffed that a flying piece of driftwood was apparently more high tech than his Gesselschaft, Teasel had mentioned that he would spend all the money they had stolen that day to buy such a device. A scant five minutes later, an alert was broadcast over the intercom system that Roll had abandoned ship.
The door to the Flutter swung open with a metallic whine, startling the downcast Roll. She looked up and over the ladder that led to the entrance of her old aircraft, which was more like a floating house, and she saw Barrel Caskett leaning his withered head out the doorway. The old man looked down and met his granddaughters gaze, and his eyes would have lit up were they not mechanical. As such, his mirth showed outwardly only on his smiling face.
"Roll! I wasn't expecting you to show up today." he called down, stepping out onto the balcony so as to better be seen. "In fact, when I saw that flying crate you came in, I din't know what to expect. Old pirate phobias, and such."
"It's best not to leave your guard down, Gramps." Roll said as she began to climb the ladder, a flimsy aluminum thing that was painted the same bright shade of yellow as the Flutter's exterior. Paint that had begun to chip, the mechanic noticed silently. "Sometimes phobias exist for a good reason."
"Hmm, I take it you've been having some trouble dealing with a certain pirate family once again?" Gramps, as Roll had taken to calling him, replied once the mechanic had completed her climb. Clad once more in her trademark red coat, shorts, and pilot's cap, Barrel couldn't help but smile once more at the way his young charge had grown into such a lovely woman in such little time.
"You can not imagine the hell I've been through." Roll answered uncharacteristically, a weary grin plastered on her face. She pulled her grandpa into a quick embrace, and then allowed him to lead her into the interior of the ship. As the creaking door was closed behind her, the mechanic noted how the place had begun to degenerate in her absence; Gramps couldn't be expected to clean to keep the place in ship-shape, due to his condition.
"Why don't you go sit down in your room for awhile? I'll pop in with some coffee in a few minutes." Barrel said as he clapped and then rubbed his hands together.
"Gramps, you know I can't drink coffee; I get all hyper." Roll said with a roll of her eyes as she entered her old room, sitting down on the edge of the bed. Last time she'd went on a coffee binge, the Flutter had crashed into the roller coaster on Isla Dasnae. In her defense, she had only been twelve years old, and shouldn't have even been driving, let alone drinking coffee.
"Fine then. A cup of tea for the young'n, and cup of coffee for me." the elderly Caskett settled the matter with a nod of his head. He turned around, an effort that seem to cause him a degree of pain as he almost stumbled and fell. He closed the door behind him as he left the room, and Roll was left staring at the door.
Silently the young woman wondered just how much her grandfather's health had deteriorated. While it was somewhat common practice for diggers to install reaverbot parts onto their body, as Barrel had done, there were commonly known risks. After many years, the metal compounds began to break down and disperse through the blood stream. This lead to the contraction of the dreaded 'Sigma' virus, a deadly disease rumored to be in trace amounts of all metal on Terra. Many brave diggers had braved death by the virus in the hopes that their reaverbot parts would let them achieve fame and fortune during life. Others, like Caskett, were victims of accidents and could not survive without them.
Roll didn't realize how deeply she had been caught up in this line of thought, and when Barrel walked back into the room holding two steaming mugs, she felt as if no time had passed at all. She took the cup of tea almost automatically, not really thirsty but unable to pass up her grandfather's generosity.
"Now then, tell me about your day." Barrel began the conversation as he sat down in a wooden chair perpendicular to Roll, motioning to her with his cup of coffee.
"Well, it started when Tron and I went on a dig in the Saul-Kada sub ruin." Roll replied, her eyes cast to the side as she took a sip of her tea. She knew what was going to come next, but there was no real way of avoiding it.
"Roll! Why would you do something so dangerous?!" her grandfather's sudden outburst made his coffee cup jitter and send some of the brought liquid onto his striped shirt; luckily, he had not been drinking it when he heard the news or Roll would have witnessed a true-to-life spit-take.
"We needed… supplies for the next ship." she lied; if she told Gramps that they were having money problems, there was a very good chance he would offer to contribute some of his personal funds to the cause. Roll didn't want that to happen. "It-it was the only way to get them."
"Then those pirates should have done it themselves! There was no reason for them to drag you into it." Barrel's voice rose in anger, and Roll bit her tongue. She held back her reply, that she had actually wanted to go on the dig, because telling him that might make him even more upset. "I don't want you to be caught up in their ways; I don't want to see you become corrupted."
"Well, you won't have to worry about that." Roll replied sullenly, crossing her arms as she remembered the reason she had gone to the flutter that day. "The Bonnes and I have had a parting of ways."
"Now why is that?" the older Caskett questioned, his tone changing considerably. His granddaughter sighed before replying.
"Well, I'd agreed to go on the dig with them under the rule that they would stop stealing stuff. Apparently, when we were down in the digout, Teasel was commanding servebots on the side." Roll explained, voice full of indignation. To her surprise, Barrel only shrugged his shoulder.
"That's all?" he finally asked, realizing that was the whole story. Roll nodded slowly, looking confused. "Roll, forgive me if I sound a bit cold hearted, but what the pirates do on their own is of no concern of yours. Do you understand?"
"Not really." she answered truthfully. When her Megaman had been around, it was considered their business to stop piracy. Was their policy now to change during his absence?
"The Bonnes are pirates, and pirates are pirates. They're deceitful, conniving thieves, but that's just their natures, and nothing can change that." Barrel explained levelly, showing that his concern lay with his surrogate daughter rather than the safety of strangers' pocket books. "The important thing is that they don't change YOU."
"I guess I understand what you mean." Roll replied, though questions still remained. She couldn't force the Bonnes to be something they weren't, so she would have to put up with their thievery if she was ever to see her Megaman again; that much, she understood and accepted. "What should I do now?"
"Well, judging by that rumbling I hear, it sounds like the Bonnes have come to pick you back up. Gonna go with them?" Barrel asked with a tilt of his head. Indeed, a distant sound like an earthquake had begun to echo through the Flutter's hull, and it was a sound Roll had become quite accustomed to during her prolonged stay on the green coated Gesselschaft.
"I guess I don't really have a choice." Roll smiled, placing her mostly full tea cup on the bed as she stood up. Suddenly, a thought hit her from left field, one which she was surprised she hadn't thought of earlier. "Oh, where's Data? I didn't get to say hi to him yet."
"Data… Something is wrong with that little monkey." Barrel stood up, suddenly serious, an unreadable expression on his wizened face. "He left the house about a month and a half ago. I don't know where he went, but when he returned…"
Barrel opened the door and waved a hand, signaling for Roll to following him. Walking slowly, they left Rolls old abode and reached the door to Megaman's room. The elder Caskett turned the knob slowly, and opened the door to reveal a room in absolute shambles. Books were strewn across the floor, a picture frame was busted, and the cactus that Megaman had watered for years now had several bites taken out of it. All this and more struck worry into Rolls heart, which was nothing compared to her reaction to the thing quivering at the back of the room.
Standing with he face in the corner, no longer dancing but shivering uncontrollably, was the shell of what had formerly been the lively robo-monkey known as Data.
"I don't know what happened to him; he's been hold up in this room since he came back. I tried to talk to him, but it's not like I can speak monkey." Barrel answered the unasked question before it was asked. "I don't want you to worry about him. I'm sure he'll be fine just as soon as you bring Megaman back."
"I promise to." Roll promised, tearing her eyes off of the disturbing sight to look her grandfather in the eyes. Before anything else could be said, a sound very much like an enormous car horn pierced both of their ears. Of course, it was another emission from the Gesselschaft, one which Roll hadn't been previously acquainted with it.
"Impatient bunch, aren't they? You'd best get going." Gramps said as he closed the door to Megaman's room behind him. He looked at Roll, and saw that she was still torn about her decision.
"There's one more thing, Gramps…" Roll struggled to ask the question she had been meaning to ask ever seen he had nearly fallen down earlier. Seeing the worry in her eyes, Gramps knew immediately what she was getting at and decided to cut her off.
"Don't worry Roll; I won't be going anywhere for awhile yet." the man who had raised her nearly from birth replied. He didn't fear the Sigma virus that he knew must surely be in his system by now; he had lived a full life, though he hoped with all his heart that he would live to see Megaman's return.
"Alright. I love you, grandpa." Roll did her best to smile, but a few tears still managed to slip from her eyes. She hugged her grandfather tightly, and then stepped away wiping the wetness from her cheeks. "I'll see you later?"
"Count on it." Barrel confirmed, opening the front door and letting Roll step through before closing it behind them. He saw the Gesselschaft as it towered ominously over the comparatively miniscule Flutter, and then looked down to make sure that the young mechanic he had raised did not trip on her way down the ladder.
Roll completed her decent gracefully, and then looked up to wave goodbye one last time to Barrel. Her wave was returned, and she had to turn around again before she lost control of her emotions again. Strolling casually up to the hatch that descended to allow her entry without another look back, she didn't notice when Data appeared next to Barrel on the outside of the flutter. The robotic monkey watched as the blonde haired girl disappeared inside the Gesselschaft's, still shivering as if suffering from a perpetual cold.
The moon hung bright in the sky as the enormous aircraft took off into the night, carrying away Megaman's only hope. And Data couldn't even warn her…
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"All right, it were great seein' ya, too bad ya can't stay longer, but I feel we must really break this off now fer the bird-bots get to talkin'." Captain Amadeus practically shoved Glyde into the small aircraft he had arrived in earlier that day. The night was black, the sky nearly cloudless. After Glyde had coerced him into retreating from the Gesselschaft, an action Amadeus hated more and more by the second, he had reluctantly agreed to fly his co-Captain to the flag ship of the bird-bot fleet. Now that he had followed through on his promise, the red coated pirate wasted no time kicking the coward off of his ship.
"Take your hands off of me, sailor!" Glyde objected as he was forcibly sat in his seat, his choice of words sending the bird-bots under Amadeus' commanded into fits of laughter. Realizing that the sentence had sounded more threatening in his mind, the effeminate pirate clamped his mouth shut and began to earnestly concentrate on getting off of the ship with some shred of dignity left. The hatch on the duck-shaped craft slide shut, and soon enough it was headed for the flagship.
"Arg…" Captain Amadeus sighed wearily, massaging his forehead with the index and middle finger on his left hand. "That prissy pirate is gettin' ta be more of a pain every day."
"Keke! Why are we still following his orders? He's a total pussy! " one of the bird-bots spoke up, one that had particularly ingratiated itself to its new captain. For it's contribution, the mechanization received a warm smile and a condescending pat on it's metal head.
"I agree. But what say we leave the mutinous talk fer later? Our time will come soon enough." Amadeus replied as leaned over the ship's railing and looked at the black carpet above, amethyst eyes scanning the heavens as if looking for sign. "When next the shooting star falls."
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Authors Notes: Whoo! I was starting to wonder if I would get this chapter done on time. As you can plainly see, it was a big'un. I couldn't exactly split it into two chapters, as I had done in the past, because there was no good stopping point except at the end. I think it was the Amadeus & Glyde scene that really put the chapter over the top in terms of page count, but I couldn't think of any better place to include that scene.
Now for the part where I talk incessantly and you leave this story without reviewing the chapter! Anyways, there are quite a few jokes in this particular chapter, some of which appeared in a different form in my popular Kappa Mikey fan fiction, "Hit In the USA". Also, to those of you wondering, the title of this story means "intimate conversation for two." Thank you, windows dictionary! Last, but not least, expect a short humor story detailing the events of the robbery mentioned in this chapter. I wanted to have it completed when this chapter was posted, but time constraints… constrained me.
Readers Corner: Now for the part of the ending notes where I DON'T talk about myself and plug various fan fiction. First off, one of the most important people in the Legends fandom today, the almighty mod of the Legends Station forum, Dashe herself graces this story with a kind review! Consider my life's work complete. Also, Steffie Update! The Official Glyde Fangirl has now added this story to her Favorite Stories list. Can I get a 'hell yeah'? Finally, Dragge finally has his page up, and the first thing he does is add me to his favorite authors list. Ain't that nice? Make sure you check out his fics (under the name Dragge Trigger) when he posts them. Okay, that's it.
Long live America! Read and review!
