Scary stuff happens at school sometimes. Example? The seventh-grade (no, I'm in grade eight) English teacher has a bulletin board in the class that he likes to pin up magazine clippings to. One of them has a red background with black lettering.
Guess what it says.
"Are you on the list?"
Ergh...that's so wrong...
Someone upstairs decided to vent their anger by buffeting the completely innocent city of Lazuli Island with what meteorologists called the worst ice storm in at least sixty years. Within two hours every reasonably flat surface on the island-including streetlights, sidewalks and the heads of anyone who dared to venture outdoors in the hellish weather-had been coated with a layer an inch thick.
Two boys, one nineteen and the other twelve, ducked into an alley and hid from the falling ice under a small balcony. The younger groaned and pulled down the hood of his sweater.
"D'you think we lost them, Thor?"
The other boy combed the ice out of his platinum blond hair. "Pretty sure. I didn't see 'em following after that last intersection."
"Good." He leaned against the wall. "Bitchy weather, huh?"
"Yep." Thor kept his voice down as though he expected the alleyway to be rigged with hidden microphones.
Raiden glanced around the alley; it contained a trash can, a dumpster and a door in the wall about fifteen feet back from the sidewalk. "I wonder how they caught up with us that fast."
The two robots didn't say anything for a bit, allowing their systems to cool down from the chase. After a few minutes Raiden chanced a peek around the corner where the alley met the street. "Dammit!" he hissed, pulling back and turning to Thor. "Mizuri and Spectre, fifteen feet and closing."
Thor cursed upwards of eight times and cast around the alleyway.
"In here!" He dashed over to the door and yanked on the handle. The knob rattled but didn't turn. The voices of the two LIST members drifted into the sidestreet.
"...can't believe he left." That was Mizuri.
"Those damned Americans can never decide which side they're on."
Raiden pushed Thor out of the way, ramming the end of a coathanger he had found in the trash can into the lock. After a couple of seconds worth of jimmying, there was a small click.
"Go check that alley, will you?" Spectre implored.
"Hurry up!" Thor hissed, his eyes flicking from the lock to the street. There was a second click.
"Icy around-waaaaah!" Mizuri lost his balance and fell on his end with a loud thump. The lock clicked again.
Spectre snickered. "Watch where you're going, you stupid human."
Raiden managed to coax two more clicks out of the lock. He threw the coathanger aside and pulled open the door. The two runaways bundled into the completely black room beyond, carefully closing the door behind them.
The Robot Master extended an arm into the darkness in front of him, feeling for the opposite wall. When he didn't find one, he took a step forward and would have gone tumbling if Thor hadn't snatched the back of his shirt.
"W-what're you d-doing?" he whispered so softly that Raiden almost missed the sentence.
"Stairs," he muttered back.
He grabbed Thor's wrist and led him gingerly down the flight of steps, only stopping when they reached level ground.
"Where are we?" Raiden asked quietly.
"U-under the M-museum of T-technology, I t-think. G-got a l-light?"
"Yep." The Wilybot brought his hands up, holding his fingers a few inches apart. A small arc of electricity appeared between then, flickering and dancing. He moved his hands away from each other until there was about two and a half feet between them. The light from the arc lit up the immediate area.
"Damn, you're handy. Lock-picker and flashlight on legs?"
Raiden chose not to respond and held his arms out over the shallow rectangular crevasse in the concrete floor. A metal track ran down the middle, following the depression out of the light's aura.
The doorknob at the top of the stairs turned noisily. Raiden swiftly killed the current. Mizuri's voice rang through the chamber.
"Aw, I'm not checking down here-it's all dark and crap! They wouldn't go down there. Thor wouldn't, anyway. He was always a wuss when it came down to places like this."
The door slammed a second time. Raiden paused a few seconds to make sure that Mizuri was really gone.
"W-what're you waiting f-for? Turn t-that light b-back on!"
The arc of electricity reappeared, exposing the two boys' faces. "What's the matter?" Raiden laughed, making sure to keep his voice low. He had learned from experience that he never knew what could be waiting for him out of sight. "You scared of the dark or something?"
"Yeah," Thor replied shortly. Raiden glanced at the much taller robot, raising one eyebrow.
"Uh, right."
He turned back to the small valley in the floor, motioning towards it. "What do you think that is?"
Thor frowned in the crevasse's direction. "Ermmmmmm...oh, I know."
"What?"
"That's a mine cart track. We're in a dwarf mine, like in Snow White."
"Dwarf-? No, it's not!"
"Can you think of anything else?"
"Well, no..."
"Then it's a dwarf mine."
"You're an idiot," Raiden said good-naturedly. "There's no such thing as dwarves and you know it. It looks like a train track or something."
"Oh, right! It's a subway tunnel."
"When the hell did this get here?! I could have used a subway when I went to meet you in the park earlier!"
"Thing is it hasn't been used for years. There was a cave-in that killed around sixty people and a bunch of scientists found out later that the ground was way too soft to have big concrete holes in it. Closed the entire line right up after that, Terukaima said."
"So nobody uses it anymore?"
"Nope."
"Do you think the power's still on?"
"Maybe."
"I'll go check. Wait here."
Raiden hopped into the pit, dousing the light and putting his hand on the rail. "Nah, it's dead."
"R-ray!" Thor squeaked. The Robot Master grinned, calling up the arc again. The six-foot hammer-armed American destroyer stood just inside the yellow circle, looking much like a frightened puppy.
"So if it's off-limits, how come they haven't filled it in or something?"
"City doesn't have enough money. They paved over all the street entrances and locked the service doors."
"Remember how you were talking about a 'secret base'?"
"A station would work great!" He scowled suddenly. "But only if we can get some lights working."
Raiden began to follow the track. "Don't worry. We'll find a generator."
Thor sprinted off to keep up with his friend and the light.