A/N: …I hate school. Vehemently. *cough*Bio*cough*
Sorry for the lateness, but I have been busy beyond belief, and this one really didn't want to go from my head to the page. And I had troubles figuring out where to cut it off, so it's shorter than I had planned. =( Sorry! I really pushed myself to get this out today, otherwise it would have been another week of waiting, so I didn't edit it as closely as I would've liked and I wasn't entirely too happy with it. If anyone notices any outstanding errors or anything that bothers then, tell me and I'll correct!
So, in this chapter, another plan to catch the thief is executed, and another problem develops, this time starring Ace! Enjoy!
I almost forgot this, and gave myself a preventative bricking. (This is what I get for submitting chapters at stupid o'clock.) Thanks to Halloween Witch, Angelus Draco, Molly Grace 16, Luna246, and iwolf208! Your kind words are the only thing my writing muse will accept as payment!
The dim yellow light faded, and Slo-Mo could only watch with indifferent glee as his favorite ability took effect, noting the blank looks on the faces of the employees, customers, and the single, far-beyond-his-prime security guard that were all unfortunate enough to have been in the small store at that time of day. He knew exactly what was happening; their eyes yellowed as the effects sank in while they stood still like statues, and would for some time until the hypnosis allowed them return of the faculties it allowed them to access before returning to their normal activities, ignoring any anomalies they found along the way like reprogrammed robots. That's about all they amounted to at that point, anyway.
Jet casually walked out of the jewelry store they had just hit, Slo-Mo still held aloft on his shoulders because of how slow he moved without assistance. The younger, more impulsive mouse wasn't really paying attention to where they were going as he avidly sorted through their bag of recently-acquired loot. It wasn't like he needed to; the Loonatics hadn't shown up at all, and at that rate, the two mice would be long gone before they did.
Unfortunately for them, the Loonatics weren't running that far behind.
Slo-Mo gave a sharp tug on his cousin's ear, causing Jet to yelp and suddenly take a few quick steps to the side while the taller of the two disinterestedly watched as the spot they were just occupying blew up in a sudden flash and crash of thunder.
"Damn, I missed," Sive cursed as she buzzed the mice once on her jetpack, Lexi taking her own shot from behind her with similar results.
"We don't have to hit them," Lexi reminded the coyote as she watched the mice suddenly pick up the pace, running in the exact opposite direction from the pursuing girls and down a side alley. "We just have to drive them to Slam and skedaddle."
"Yeah, but they didn't force you to get lost in a subway for an hour." Lexi rolled her eyes, catching the not-entirely-serious tone from her not-so vengeful friend, but nevertheless, no more shots were exchanged (from their end) as they pursued the two mice using their jetpacks, going over buildings to follow them through the tight twists and turns of the normally impassable back trails through downtown. Eventually, Jet took them under a bridge, with a few highways on top, giving the girls no way to follow them- exactly what they were counting on them to do.
"Slam," Lexi called through the comm., "you're on!"
Only seconds after receiving her message, the blur that was the two mice rocketed past the Tasmanian devil's hiding place. It took him a moment to register what had just happened, but once he switched into tornado-mode, he easily kept up with his quarry, following them all across the low tunnels of the under city. He couldn't exactly attack them, having no ranged abilities, but that wasn't his goal, either; he was just supposed to keep them moving. Select pathways and tunnels were (conveniently) blocked by barricades or (spontaneous) debris, and Slo-Mo was starting to debate shooting at their pursuer in an attempt to put more distance between them, giving the mice time to try squeezing through a small opening, when he found that they wouldn't need to. They were rapidly approaching a mercifully unblocked tunnel that was so small, he'd have to duck his head from his perch on his already shorter-than-average cousin's shoulders to fit. There was no way the oversized Loonatic behind them could follow.
Slo-Mo was the smarter one; he noticed the pattern.
"Make sure to stop halfway through the tunnel," he ordered his partner below him, ducking as they entered the passage.
Slam, meanwhile, slowed to a stop well before encountering the relatively-tiny pinhole that his marks had just disappeared into. He activated his comm., grunting a quick, hurried message to Ace by way of an alert that his turn was up.
xoxoxoxox
"Got it, Slam," the bunny replied, deactivating his comm. and waiting patiently for the mice to zip out of the tunnel. He was perched on a small overhang just over the opposite exit to the tunnel Slam had just driven the two Hispanic havoc-wreakers into, a perfect spot to be able to jump up, jetpack activated, and follow them.
He was supposed to drive them to Duck (after conveniently being unable to follow any longer once the path led to a space between two tall buildings with far too many power lines for Ace to follow in the air). Their trick was to keep the mice (namely Slo-Mo) from figuring out that the Loonatics were driving them to a specific location; the net trap had been cleverly placed last time, and with this type of trap, that wouldn't work, so they had to get creative. Once Ace got them to Duck, the mallard would then drive the perps into the trap Tech had set- a large, conspicuous device tripped by remote and given a speed boost from a magnetic pull from Tech to outdo Jet's speed. The trap was a large arm that would swing in a vertical arc once activated, much like a mousetrap snapping shut. However, unlike an actual mousetrap that was designed to snap the neck of its intended catch, this had a large, fishbowl-like container attached to the arm that would trap the mice and give them no gaps to slip through.
However, none of this could happen if they never exited that tunnel.
Ace reasoned that they could have been feeling their way along in the dark, looking for an alternate exit than the one right in front of them, but it really was taking a while. The yellow bunny was about to leave his hiding spot and sneak a peek inside, when the mice in question zipped out. Ace didn't even consider their sudden decrease in height; he just shot a couple of laser blasts in their general direction when they tried to turn down a side alley, intent on keeping them on the correct path as he reached for the controls on his jetpack. He was just about to give chase, when a small sound from behind him caught his attention.
Whirling around, he barely caught sight of Slo-Mo before being blinded by a yellow light.
"Lights out, amigo."
xoxoxoxox
Duck was not a patient person, as he made sure to loudly proclaim multiple times a week. He hadn't been thrilled to learn he'd be the one waiting for the longest to encounter the thieves; he specifically was needed, though, seeing as he was the only one who could keep up with the speedy mice on the ground and make a quick getaway if needed. So, stroking his ego with the knowledge that he was necessary to the success of this plan, he consented to wait. And wait. And wait.
And then he got fed up.
"Where are they?!" he shouted to no one in particular, dragging his fingers through the feathers on his head in frustration. "Tech said I wouldn't be here for more than twenty minutes! It's been twenty-two!"
"Keep making that kind of racket and they'll run off before they ever reach you," Lexi deadpanned over the comm.
"Easy for you to say! You've already done your part!"
Lexi and Sive, hovering high over Acmetropolis, sighed simultaneously, lowering the volume output on their comm.s as Duck continued his tirade. When Tech's voice interrupted Duck, coming in on a separate channel and blocking out the mallard, both girls quickly cut off the irate voice on the other line.
"Have they reached Duck, yet?" the coyote asked curiously, wanting to make sure that he had enough advanced notice to spring the trap. He wouldn't put it past the egotistical mallard to forget to give him sufficient notice to their approach.
"As he just explosively informed us...no," Sive stated dryly.
"Weird," Tech commented, "I made sure to give us excess time, but I figured we wouldn't need it with how fast Jet can run."
"You don't think something's wrong, do you?" Lexi asked, the first signs of anxiety starting to show. This was supposed to be a simple, very low-risk plan; she could see few ways it could go wrong, and what few ways she could see were enough to worry her.
"I doubt it," Tech replied matter-of-factly, trying to relay calm through reason and logic. "Ace had the hardest stretch to cover; odds are he couldn't keep them on the path and is now trying to redirect them himself."
"If you say so," Lexi said unsurely, pivoting around on her spot a few dozen feet above the roof of a building and nervously peering in the direction of where Ace was supposed to be. He was supposed to be on his jetpack; they should have been able to see him.
"I'm sure he's fine, Lexi," Sive reassured, noting where the bunny's attention was.
"Of course he is," Tech scoffed. "Ace can handle him- HEY!" Tech cut off the connection with a burst of static, a heavy silence, save for the hum of two jetpack engines, descending.
Until the loud clang resounded from where the trap was located a few blocks away.
With one quick look at each other, confusion and alarm painted on both of their faces, the girls took off towards the trap, knowing that something had gone wrong over there. It came into view quickly enough, the large machine sequestered in the middle of a wide, but fairly unused street as it was. Tech's magnetic green glow was just fading out along the arm of the device and from his hand just up the street. Slam was just arriving, ending up closer to the machine than to Tech and hurriedly looking around for anything that had gone wrong. However, nothing seemed out of place.
Landing near Tech as Slam poked around the sprung trap, the coyote looked thoroughly annoyed, dropping his extended arm after the magnetic glow faded and rubbing his shoulder, cautiously rotating it a couple of times and wincing as it came around.
"I, am going to kill Duck," he growled, menacingly looking around for the misplaced mallard.
"What did he do?" Sive drawled, both girls following after Tech as he briskly strode towards Slam and the fishbowl-end of the trap, still rubbing his shoulder as he went.
"He didn't give me the heads up he was supposed to," he explained, "so I had to pull the arm magnetically to get it down it time; probably threw out my shoulder doing it."
Lexi winced in sympathy. "Ouch. Can you fix that with regeneration?"
"Not really, but it'll heal quicker than normal," Tech informed as they neared the trap. "Not sure if it was worth it, though; I couldn't see if I caught them or not."
Slam was still walking around the fishbowl, trying to see through the opaque Plexiglas material. All they could readily identify was a shadow inside, but they couldn't tell much else. "Why don't we find out?" Sive suggested, walking forward and phasing her head through before she could be advised otherwise. Much to the other's confusion (and concern,) she pulled back a few moments later, laughing hysterically. She waved her hand in the direction of the trap, trying to convey what she saw, but was laughing too hard to be able to do it with any success.
As an answer to their question and a confirmation that their friend had not spontaneously lost her mind, Duck quacked in on top of the fishbowl, still in a sitting position and rubbing his sore beak, injured from when he'd run face-first into a spontaneously-appearing fishbowl. He'd been chasing the thieves down the street, when the next thing he knew, a wall suddenly appeared too quickly for him to quack away, resulting in a painful collision.
"You're despicable," he grumbled to the hysterical coyote below, who was now leaning heavily on the side of the trap to avoid toppling over as she tried to control her laughter.
Slam had a good laugh at Duck's expense as well, and while she hid it better, Lexi did smirk a bit. Tech, however, was still sore, literally and figuratively. "Serves you right!" he called up to the mallard.
"What did I do?!" Duck spat back. "You're the one who caught the wrong person!"
"Because you forgot to call ahead and tell me they were coming!"
"It's not like I had any more notice than you did!" Duck retorted, though he was wise enough to know better than to leave his perch right then. "Ace didn't call ahead to warn me!" This caught Lexi's attention, but the others were otherwise occupied.
"You still could have sent a silent alert! It's as easy as pushing a button!"
"Of course, you would know!"
"What's that supposed to mean?!"
"Sive?" Lexi called nervously, diverting the younger coyote's attention away from the fight just as she was about to take a step to break it up. "Where is Ace?"
The panic in Lexi's voice immediately caught her attention, and Sive mentally sighed, knowing that worst-case-scenario thinking whenever something went wrong was always the bunny's knee-jerk reaction as she looked around. A deep frown appeared as she realized that the team leader really wasn't there.
"Guys?" Lexi called tentatively to the arguing duo and one-anthro audience, without any results. "Guys!"
"Cover your ears, Lex," Sive advised, taking a step forward. Once Lexi did as she was told, Sive used two fingers to create a loud, high-pitched whistle that immediately got everyone else's attention, previous expressions of anger or awe disappearing at Lexi's panic and Sive's seriousness.
"Guys," Sive began calmly, "where's Ace?"
The other three all looked around, noting the bunny's absence with slowly increasing worry as Lexi attempted to reach him through the comm. It rang and rang, but there was no answer. Tech was already on his device, trying to locate the wayward rabbit with the tracers in their comm.s. Fortunately, unlike last time, Ace was giving off a strong signal…
"Three blocks away?" Tech muttered astonishedly. "That can't be right…"
"Where is he?" Lexi asked anxiously, already fiddling with the controls on her jetpack, ready to go after him at a moment's notice.
"You know the park about three, three and a half blocks away from here?" Tech asked, still seemingly skeptical about the results as he and the others followed Lexi up into the air.
"He goes there all the time!" she replied from her front position. "It's the only place with an ice cream vendor that has carrot flavor!"
"But why is he there now…?" Tech asked himself, already worried about the answer and speculating for himself. One possibility stuck out, and reason dictated that it was the most likely option. The question was, did Ace manage to make as quick and effective of an escape as Sive did a week ago?
The odds of that seemed lower and lower as they got closer and closer to their destination. According to the tracer, Ace hadn't moved an inch since he'd first found him, nor had he made any attempt to contact them. It didn't bode well.
Lexi allowed Tech to take the lead; he could find Ace faster with his signal triangulation than Lexi could by sight or hearing. She was hot on his tail the whole way, until she spotted him ahead, sitting on a bench near a clear field in the park, idly munching on a very orange ice cream cone.
"Ace?!" she called out, concern plain in her voice and on her face as she landed and bounded towards her boyfriend, the others not far behind.
Ace looked up, not even noticing the worry coming from his team, and smiled. "What's up, docs? Why're you all suited up? What's da hurry?"
It was only when they were right in front of him that they noticed the unnatural- for Ace- yellow eyes.
A/N: Glad I got that one done. The next one is going to be fun to write… There's a new development in dealing with the thieves, and a new development with the Runners! (I almost wrote Rev into this chapter, not in the family setting, and then I was like, 'Wait a minute…') Anyways, next chapter may not be on time; I have a LOT going on this week, giving me half the available free time to write. Apologizing in advance!
…I just had a lot of very sugary and delicious fudge, and it is very late where I am, so I'm going to sign off before I say something totally crazy. Please review!