Notes: I've been dealing with a lot of allergy frustrations in real-life. I decided to get some use out of it and use it as story inspiration. I tested some of this in an RP with Amber2002161 and decided I liked it enough to use it here. Mine thankfully isn't this serious, but it makes for interesting story twists. Ironically enough, there doesn't seem to be any canon proof that Radley guzzles wine (or any other alcoholic drink either), even though that's one of the most common fanon depictions of him. Canonically, he owns a diner, not a bar. Some diners do serve alcohol, so it's possible, but it's equally or more possible he's drinking a root beer, lol.

Chapter Six

Radley and the Bunch soon went upstairs to see how the fingerprinting was coming along. Kalin was already done and sitting at Radley's computer, seeking a match for what he'd found. He scowled at the screen.

"There's no match for the prints in any law enforcement database," he reported.

"So whoever it is doesn't have a criminal record," Radley sighed. "That's not very helpful."

"There's nothing on the security camera either," Kalin said. "I just checked the feed. It looks like they looped it."

"Oh great. So they're a tech genius too!" Radley exclaimed.

"No kidding!" Scotch said. "And the jerk left this big mess for us to clean up!" He sidestepped some papers on the floor.

Radley smiled a bit. "Technically, he left it for me to clean up," he pointed out. "It's my office."

"Yeah, but we're all gonna help you," Biff insisted. He bent and picked up some of the papers.

Kalin nodded. "Then we'll try to find out if anyone saw the break-in last night." He got up from the desk and nearly stumbled over a small, opened box on the floor. "What the . . . ?" He picked it up and a cylindrical object fell out on the desk.

Radley slapped his forehead. "I'll take those," he said. He grabbed the object, shoving it back in the box. "Even getting into these. . . . The creep has no sense of . . ."

"What are those?" Scotch blinked, pointing at the box.

"It's nothing," Radley said, a bit too quickly.

"Auto-injectors," Kalin said. "I think they're for allergic reactions."

"Serious allergic reactions," Billy chimed in. "It's epinephrine. It's supposed to help if you're allergic to something so seriously you're almost dying from it." He looked at Radley in bewilderment. "Radley, you're allergic to something that badly?!"

"And you didn't tell us?!" Scotch added.

Radley turned away, shoving the box into the filing cabinet to get it out of sight. "Nevermind that," he said brusquely. "Let's just get this mess cleaned up."

For a time everyone worked in silence. The Bunch seemed stung by Radley's attitude, but Kalin was thoughtful. He understood all too well the pain that accompanied a secret being kept. Radley obviously had a reason for saying nothing . . . although it had been a foolish thing to do. Loved ones needed to know about things like that in order to help if the situation arose.

It was when they were nearing the end of their task that Radley finally sighed in resignation. "Guys, I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to keep things from you. I just . . . my family hurt me really badly because of what I have and I didn't feel like talking about it to anyone. They drilled it into me that it was something to be ashamed of. I guess that finally sunk in."

"I'm allergic to dust," Biff frowned. "That's nothin' to be ashamed of. It's not like you can help it if your body doesn't like something."

Radley chuckled a bit. "Yeah, that's true." He sighed. "But it's a little more complicated in this case." He picked up another stack of papers and laid them on the desk before leaning against it and hunching forward, his long hair falling against the right side of his face and half-concealing it. "I'm allergic to my family's livelihood."

". . . Wine?" Kalin blinked.

"Grapes, and things that can be made from grapes. Wine, yeah." Radley laughed. "Isn't that a riot." He pushed away from the desk. "I was underage, but my family made me try their wine. I hated the taste and tried to get up from the table. My mom pushed me back down and I was forced to keep drinking it anyway. Then I ended up with a worse problem—I couldn't breathe." He gripped his arms, lost in the painful memories. "I fell out of the chair, I was so dizzy. I was choking and gasping and my mom and grandparents just stood there, insisting I was faking. . . ." His voice caught in his throat. "My dad was the only one willing to believe something was really wrong. He called for an ambulance and they got to me just in time. Of course, then he started bribing everyone involved to keep it hush-hush and out of the news. My mom and grandparents really ran the show, but he didn't want bad publicity either."

Scotch came closer, just staring at Radley in horror. "Seriously?! They could have killed you!"

Kalin clenched a fist at his side. He was furious now too. "Surely they realized you actually have a real problem after that!"

"Nah, they thought it was all in my head because I didn't like wine," Radley said bitterly. "They told me every day that I'd better not decide to have another of those 'fake' anaphylactic shock episodes and ruin the family name."

Scotch threw his arms around Radley. "I'll punch them all if I ever meet them," he vowed. "Well, maybe not your dad since he saved your life, but the others . . . ! UGH!"

"I'd like to do that myself," Kalin said in repulsion.

Radley perked up, definitely happier now that his loved ones were not ridiculing him for something his biological family had always scoffed and sneered at. "It's really okay with you guys?" he said as he returned Scotch's hug.

"It's not okay with us that you had to suffer," Scotch said. "But do you really think we'd care that you have an allergy?! You're still the same person you were ten minutes ago!"

The others chorused in agreement.

Radley smiled a bit. "I guess I thought . . . maybe you'd think it was a stupid thing to be allergic to."

"It's not like you can help it, like Biff said," Kalin intoned.

"Grape allergies are kind of rare, but they're real," Clint said, holding out his phone with an article he had just loaded.

"So the thing in the box helps you if you go into that shock thing?" Marty asked.

"Yeah, that's right, like Billy said." Radley unzipped his right jacket pocket and took one of the cylinders out. "I always have to carry one, just in case. But I avoid grapes and raisins and wine and anything else that might cause a problem. So far there hasn't been one."

"We'll help you make sure there isn't," Scotch insisted.

Kalin came closer. "How does the auto-injector work?" he asked in concern. "In case we ever do have to help you."

"I need the injection here." Radley brought the auto-injector to the outer side of his thigh to demonstrate. "It gets into the bloodstream faster that way. Time's pretty critical with anaphylactic shock." He sighed. "I don't know how I kept it a secret from Malcolm all those years. He would have really had a heyday if he'd known I was allergic to wine. And I wouldn't put it past him to have tried to poison me."

"I'm afraid I wouldn't either," Kalin said darkly.

"You can count on us," Scotch said. "We'll keep your secret!"

Billy's eyes flickered. He looked like he was thinking that he couldn't be counted on for anything. But he nodded in agreement when the rest of the Bunch chorused their determination and their insistence to be there for Radley.

Kalin laid a hand on Radley's shoulder and gave a gentle squeeze. "Any time you need us, we'll be right there," he promised.

Radley managed a small smile. "I know," he said. "But my body isn't the problem right now. Let's find out what we can about the intruder, if anything."

". . . And then we'll go to the Satellite in case my father still has whatever Mrs. Kessler was supposed to be protecting," Kalin intoned.

Radley looked at him in concern. "Kalin, are you sure?"

"We need to do everything we can to solve the mystery and lay the ghosts to rest," Kalin said. "If that means I have to face my past, then fine, I'll take it."

Radley slowly nodded. "We'll be here for you too," he said.

Kalin smiled. "I know."

Radley paused as they headed for the door. "You know, one other thing really does bother me about that mysterious intruder," he said. "Now somebody who's an enemy knows I need epinephrine. Maybe they don't know what I'm dangerously allergic to, but they know it's something. I don't trust them to not try to use that against me somehow."

Scotch looked around at the mess they had just cleaned up. "Do you have medical records or something they could look at?!"

"Locked in the safe, thankfully," Radley said. "I didn't trust them being left out for anybody to read just in case we had a break-in. But I knew it would be too dangerous to lock the auto-injectors up too."

"Maybe the intruder isn't anyone who'd actually try to hurt you, Radley," Jimmy said. "I don't want to think that; it's too awful."

"I hope it's not, but we have to consider the possibility," Radley sighed.

"We do," Kalin agreed. "As distasteful as it is." His eyes darkened. If anyone actually tried to find out Radley's secret and use it to poison him, they would never escape from Kalin's wrath.

"So what're we gonna do?" Scotch asked. "Just quiz everybody on if they saw any suspicious characters lurking around last night?!"

"That's all we can do," Kalin said.

"People go out at all hours around here, so they might not have even paid attention," Radley said.

And he was right. No one had seen anyone going into the diner, at any hour. In dismay and exasperation the group met back at the building.

"Just what the heck?!" Virgil exclaimed. "Who is this creep?! They even bypassed the locks without jimmying them or anything!"

Kalin frowned, pondering the problem. ". . . Are we absolutely sure the intruder is mortal?" he said. "What if one of the ghosts turned everything upsidedown? I've heard they can mess with technology just by their presence. One of them coming in could have made the camera go haywire."

"And then what?" Radley quirked an eyebrow. "You fingerprinted me?"

Kalin shrugged. "You don't have a police record. It's possible."

Radley passed a hand over his eyes. "Ugh."

". . . Well, are we going to go to the Satellite?" Scotch wondered after an awkward silence.

Kalin looked back to the computer. "I'm going to try to find out if my father is even alive first," he said. "If he's not, anything he owned was probably turned over to the city and sold at an auction."

"They wouldn't even contact you first?" Jimmy frowned.

"Not if I was dead too," Kalin grunted.

". . . Right," Jimmy said slowly. That part always confused him.

Kalin started to type. When the results loaded, his expression darkened. "He's alive," he said. "And still living in the same dump." He got up, his coat sweeping the side of the desk as he headed out.

Radley hurried after him. "He's leaving now," he said by way of explanation to the Bunch. Then, suddenly realizing something, he looked to Billy in concern. "Are you going to be okay with this, Billy? Kalin's father is an alcoholic. . . ."

Billy flinched but nodded. "Even if it brings back memories of my mom, I'm in this," he insisted. "I won't abandon you guys."

Radley gave him a sad but kind smile. "Then let's all go."

The Bunch quickly headed out with him.

xxxx

The ride was tense. It felt much longer than the previous day's ride, even though traffic was just as good, if not better, than then. Radley rode near Kalin, worried. He had managed to quickly text Yusei about the day's plan before leaving, but he didn't know if Yusei would be able to get away and come out. He knew Kalin would surely need his oldest friend on an encounter such as this.

Kalin, as usual, was outwardly completely calm and deadpan. But the closer they drew to his old neighborhood, the darker his expression grew and the more obvious was the tense and upset air exuding from him. By the time they pulled up in front of a badly worn and beat-up house, he was a rubber band ready to snap.

"Wow, why didn't he renovate this place?" Scotch wondered. "Almost all of the Satellite looks amazing now!"

"No doubt he still spends all his money on booze," Kalin growled.

Radley laid a hand on his shoulder. Kalin didn't openly acknowledge it, but from the way his muscles relaxed slightly, he was grateful.

He pushed open the gate and started up the old and cracked walkway, past the grass and weeds growing up through the openings in the concrete and onto the rickety porch. "Be careful," he warned everyone. "You might fall through."

Scotch leaned too hard on one old floorboard and it started to give a warning creak. He jumped away.

Kalin pulled the ratty storm door open and pushed on the splintered wooden door. As he had figured, it was unlocked. He stepped into a darkened room filled with nothing but painful memories for him. The screams of his child self still saturated the furniture, the frame, even the very air itself. He wanted to turn and run, but he forced himself to stay planted. He had a job to do.

". . . Are you here?"

It sounded strange to speak in here, as though he was attempting to break the supernatural spell and failing miserably. Nothing could ever dissipate the otherworldly chill in this house. From the Bunch's expressions, they felt it too.

"Who's there?" came a gravelly voice from deeper in the shadows.

Now Kalin could make out his father slouched into the couch with a bottle of whiskey. The man looked heavier, but otherwise the picture had not changed from his childhood memories.

"I'm a ghost," he said darkly. "I've come back to haunt you, Father."

"'Father'?! Oh, it's Kalin!" Mr. Kessler chortled. "Saw your mother the other day. Had to get good and drunk before she showed up."

"Is he ever not drunk?" Billy hissed.

"Not that I ever saw," Kalin retorted.

"Who've you got with you, Kalin? That doesn't look like that Yusei guy," Mr. Kessler said. "Not unless he figured out how to make all his hair go flat!"

"This is Radley," Kalin said coolly.

"Radley?!" Mr. Kessler snorted. "What kind of a name is that?!"

"It's better than Bradley," Radley said sardonically, flipping his hair over his shoulder.

"I'll come right to the point," Kalin said. "I'm looking for something that may have been passed down through the family line since the Old West days. I don't know what it is, but it may be in a box that only opens with a special key."

"You think I'd keep fancy stuff like that?" Mr. Kessler sneered. "It probably went off with your mother."

"If it was here, where would it be?" Kalin countered.

"Check the basement." Mr. Kessler took a long swallow from his bottle. "Or your room." He leaned back and stared off into space. The conversation was over.

". . . I thought he'd put up more of a fight," Billy remarked as Kalin led them to the basement stairs.

"He probably thinks we're all drunken hallucinations," Kalin grunted. "And that's fine with me."

Biff gulped as Kalin turned on the light on the stairs. "Are there mice down there?" he shuddered. "Or cockroaches?!"

"I don't know what's down there," Kalin said. But he headed down anyway.

Radley hastened to catch up with him. "Are you okay, Kalin?" he asked in concern. "I know this can't be easy even though he isn't acting out."

"No, it's not," Kalin said. "But I'll be alright. If we can just find the thing and get out. . . ." He reached the bottom step and something crunched under his foot. ". . . That must have been a cockroach."

Biff sobbed. "No!"

"It was probably already dead," Kalin pointed out. "They move like lightning."

"That's still disgusting!" Biff exclaimed.

Kalin shrugged and shined his phone around the floor to avoid stepping on anything else. The basement was old, musty, and filled with all manner of assorted and random junk. Kalin made his way to an old trunk and flipped up the lid.

"Anything in there?" Radley asked.

"Nothing that looks like what we'd want," Kalin grunted. He pawed through the old clothes and memorabilia from his grandfather's Army days and scowled.

"Well, I guess it'd be too much to hope it would just pop out at us," Scotch said. "We'll probably have to go through everythi- . . . yikes!" He leaped back as a large creature jumped out at him and landed on the floor.

"Rat! It's a rat!" Biff shrieked.

Scotch was screaming too. He grabbed the nearest broom to try to chase it back into the wall or wherever it had come from. Behind him, a stack of boxes held in place by said broom tumbled to the floor.

"And I thought you were an animal lover," Virgil sneered, even as he jumped on the stairs while it raced past.

"Animals, not demons!" Scotch replied.

Radley was laughing in spite of himself.

"It's not funny!" Scotch wailed.

"It kind of is," Radley snickered. "Oh brother, guys. Come on! You're way bigger than it is! It's terrified of you!"

"Then we can be mutually terrified of each other!" Biff retorted.

The rat hissed and dove under a cardboard box. Scotch promptly sat on the box. "It is not coming out of here until we leave!"

Radley sobered. "I don't think you should sit on that box," he said. "Rats claw and chew through things, you know, and that's just flimsy cardboard. If it gets through the top and you're still on it . . ."

Scotch was up again in an instant, staring at the box in horror.

"We'll just put this on it to hold it down instead," Kalin said as he brought over a case of empty whiskey bottles. "This should be sturdy enough."

"Yeah! Better it get a mouthful of splinters than me!" Scotch exclaimed, shuddering at the thought.

Kalin shook his head. But as he turned back to his original task, he found that the nonsense had actually resulted in a positive outcome. Scotch's desperate grab for the broom had unearthed a much older, metal box, similar to the one he and Biff had found the past night but with gold trim. This one was also locked, and it looked like a regular skeleton key would open it.

"This was buried so deeply we might not have found it otherwise," he mused as he picked it up.

"Is that really what we're looking for?" Biff wondered.

"Let's find out." Radley brought the key over and turned it in the lock. As he lifted the lid, he found several antique pieces of jewelry laying on top of one folded sheet of paper. He slid the paper out and unfolded it. ". . . It's a map." He showed it to Kalin.

"It looks like Crash Town in the Old West days," Kalin remarked.

"And it's leading to something out by the mountains," Radley mused. "It doesn't say what."

"So let's go home and find out!" Scotch said.

Radley folded the map and put it back in the box. Kalin swiftly locked it and hid it inside his coat.

As they headed upstairs, Mr. Kessler was opening a new bottle. "You find what you wanted, Kalin?" he asked.

"I'm not sure," Kalin said vaguely.

"Well, come back around if you wanna try again," Mr. Kessler cackled. "Give the rats a workout! I heard you guys screaming down there."

Kalin walked outside without saying Goodbye. The Bunch was more than happy to follow him.

"What a crumb," Virgil said. "He never apologized once for what he did to you!"

"It's not like he cared," Kalin grunted. "I never meant anything to him."

Radley took out his phone and looked at it. Not so much as a reply text from Yusei. That wasn't like him at all. He had said he wanted to be contacted. He would never leave Kalin high and dry, especially on something like this. Maybe it was an inane thought, but . . . what if their enemies, mortal or otherwise, had decided to target Yusei?

Kalin looked to Radley with a frown. "What is it?"

Radley sighed in resignation. "I told Yusei what we were doing. I thought he'd be here. But I haven't heard back at all."

Kalin stiffened. "That's not like him."

"I know," Radley said.

Kalin got back on his motorcycle. "Let's go into the City and make sure he's alright."

He sped off before anyone could reply.