Motorplex

A great many ideas were contributed by my friend Red, who it turns out does have an AO3 account and it's the_red_one1223!

Fetching the boat was probably the easiest part of the trip. The weird guy who ran the park, nobody knew why or how he just did, kind of let them have the boat without doing much more than raising half an eyebrow at them as they passed. Harder was finding a way to strap it to Stronghorn. They eventually accomplished it, roughly, by just having ROTH extend his arms and hold the boat in place as they drove. They had agreed that taking one car, rather than trying to pack the entire fleet into the alcove again, was the better idea. Still, that left Stronghorn the only option that made sense as the only car with two passenger seats instead of just one. Two passenger seats and four Burners later, they all made their way back towards the acid beach amidst loud, nervous discussion.

"I think I packed enough," Chuck thought aloud from his spot between Dutch and the driver's side window. He just barely managed to fidget with the bag, folded and mashed into what would have been the door by Dutch's broad shoulders and refusal to give up his side of the bucket seat. "Do you guys think I packed enough? I got water, I got dried peas for snacks, I got bandages-"

Dutch could not project his groan enough in the tiny little space he was forced to share with Chuck. "Yes, Chuck, I think you packed enough."

"Okay that's the first part, the second part is worrying I packed too much. The batteries should be good but I'm not sure-"

"Chuck! Oh my god!" said Dutch. "Stop! You're fine! Mike's going scavenging, he's not leaving Detroit!"

"He's going scouting in unfamiliar territory!" Chuck countered. "What if something bad happens to him?"

"Children!" Texas shouted from the front. "Daddy Texas will turn this car around!"

Mike, meanwhile, just quietly sat in the other seat with Julie on his lap, watching it all go down with a slightly dazed air. Chuck freaking out over trips wasn't a new development, but Mike was waiting for Chuck to remember the very important bit that seemed to be escaping him at the moment. With Dutch and Chuck nearly at each other's necks just during the drive, he wasn't sure he'd be remembering anytime soon. Plus, he had Julie on his lap and his hands around her waist, and that was distracting enough on its own. Let no one ever say Mike Chilton didn't enjoy any opportunity to snuggle.

Julie, unbothered by the whole situation until then, pulled a face. "Can we not do 'Daddy Texas' again? Like ever again?"

Texas shrugged, never taking his eyes off the road. "Well, I suppose Mommy Texas can put the boys over his knee, if you're weirded out that much."

"Are we there yet?" Dutch asked with an urgency he did not have before hearing "Mommy Texas". "I am seriously feeling the need to be out of this car."

Stronghorn pulled onto the ramp that would take them down to the acid beach. Texas happily said, "Almost!"

"Today is gonna suck..." Chuck moaned. "I just know it."

Julie rubbed at her temple. "I think I would've rather had ROTH's seat."

Mike playfully poked her rib. "Ow, my pride."

"Tiny speaks!" Texas cheered. "That's the first thing you said since we left! I thought you were asleep."

"Nah," Mike assured him. "Just lost in thought."

"You're made of sterner stuff than me," said Julie. "If I had a girl on my lap for 20 minutes, I'm pretty sure my brain wouldn't be working anymore."

Dutch let out a loud, surprised laugh while Chuck, finally, cracked a grin and tried to hide how his shoulders were twitching. Mike snickered and jabbed at her ribs again to make her squirm. Texas pumped his fist. "Julie telling it like it IS!"

It figures that just as the ride was starting to get fun, it ended. The Burners spilled out of Stronghorn like foam out of a dropped can of beer, and Chuck immediately took the boat from Roth and carried it over to the acid beach. He flipped it onto its bottom and placed it down on the ground, then gently shoved it into the moat. It floated, and while the bottom did discolor right away, nothing else happened to the plastic.

Chuck huffed in relief. "Okay, the boat's safe."

Julie rolled her eyes. "Good to know that it floats. We might have put it in the water and it would have jumped 20 feet into the air."

"Don't patronize me, Julie!" Chuck growled. "You're making jokes now, but if Mike got into that boat and it sank into the lake of acid, you'd be sorry!"

"Woah!" said Texas, "And we're back to twitchy whiny mode. Chuck's got no chill today."

Chuck, free to flail, flailed with an energy he usually reserved for 560 miles per hour. "I can't have chill today! This is dangerous! We have a checklist to go over. Mike, you ready?"

Mike's brain stalled. He was already starting to get into the boat when Chuck spoke. "Uh."

"Mikey don't leave yet, oh my god!" Lifting Mike up to standing by his shoulders, Chuck listed out the contents of the travel pack. "Look, I've got you some ropes, some eyelet hooks, a flare gun, some bandages, bottled water, those chipotle-flavored dried peas-"

"Oh," cut in Mike, "I like that kind."

"Yeah I know!" Chuck grinned, and got back to the list. "Some plastic gloves and baggies for if you find anything and want to bring it back, a flashlight, batteries for the flashlight, and one of those crappy magnet flashlights that you shake a bunch to get them to light, just in case." He thrust the little backpack into Mike's hands. "Now. Can you think of anything else you want to bring? This is the last chance we have to go back and get it."

Well, it looked like Chuck forgot. Mike smiled. "Yeah. This."

He threw his arms around Chuck and fell backwards into the boat. They landed hard, and the impact shook the boat off the ground and properly out into the moat, but they stayed dry. Texas was laughing, over at the car. Mike chuckled. Chuckles screamed.

"MIKEY WHAT THE HELL?!"

"Hey, traveling alone is dangerous!" Mike smirked. "You thought I wasn't bringing my best bro along with me?"

"I- look- You didn-" Chuck squealed. "Nobody said we were going anywhere!"

Over at Stronghorn, Dutch was leading the others in a little sashay and the song "Dumb Ways to Die". Chuck whimpered.

"Guys, come on!" Mike thumped Chuck's back protectively and sat up in the little boat. It was made to sit shallow in the water, so Chuck's extra weight made no real difference. It didn't leave much room to wiggle around, but they didn't particularly need it for a little trip. "I won't let anything bad happen to him."

"Just in case!" Dutch shouted after them. "I'm gonna have ROTH shadow y'all from above!"

"It's a good thing, too! Your expedition's already at a serious disadvantage!" Texas flexed hard. "A TEXAS deficiency!"

Julie waved. "Have fun stormin' the castle!"

"This is stupid-" Chuck tucked into himself, making himself a little shivering ball of misery in the middle of the canoe. "Only packed enough for one person..."

For what it was worth, it was a pretty awesome little cave system. Mike immediately hooked the rope into an eyelet hook and started a guideline from the entrance, tracing out a path and doubling back whenever the path lead to a dead end. Light filtered down from above in little patches that reflected off the acid, almost like the bottom of a pool, and the metal frameworks muffled the sounds of city noise from outside. Where they had enough room, Chuck took out the flashlight and looked down into the acid. It stayed crystal clear and still, and it made seeing the very deep lake bottom super easy. Chuck stopped looking down after that first attempt.

They traveled through those caves for something like ten minutes, slowly pulling themselves along by the pipework in the walls. They were blessed by the spaces being nice and wide, and the boat never lacked for room on either side. There was one patch where the ceiling dropped, though, and Mike and Chuck had to lie flat in the bottom of the boat and press close to have enough room to travel through. Mike tucked Chuck into his shoulder and pulled them along by hand.

"You know if you want hugs, you can just come get them, right?" Chuck grumped into his ear. "You don't have to contrive stuff like this and make me go on dangerous expeditions to acid lakes."

"Dude, there was no way I wasn't bringing you with me. Exploring's no fun without you!" said Mike. "This is just kind of a bonus."

"At least if you'd told me beforehand, I could have prepared..." Chuck wet his throat. "I could've packed another bag, I'd have more room to carry stuff if we found it, just all kinds of stuff I could've been ready for..."

Mike allowed himself a little sad smile. "You would've prepared yourself into a hole and not come with me."

"No I... Well I didn't want to come but if I knew that I would have to then-"

Mike could feel him struggling for the words. It was a twitch that ran all the way through Chuck's body, and it was easy to feel at the bottom of the boat. Feeling a little pity for his best friend, he offered Chuck an out. "Hey, acid dissolves metal, right?"

"Well, it depends on the metal, it's more corrosive than dissolving it outright in most cases, but-"

Mike huffed in relief. Chuck had taken in with enthusiasm, and Mike followed it. "So why is this thing still standing?"

"OH jeeze Mike don't ask me questions like that when we have two inches of clearance between the ceiling and an acid bath..." Chuck swallowed again and coughed. "It could be resting on a very structurally unstable network of half-dissolved metal struts, or maybe a loose pile of plastic trash that could shift at any minute, or it could be suspended from the ceiling and something could happen and it could break-"

The ceiling finally rose again, and Mike sat up to stretch. "You have a crazy good imagination dude... and I think I might agree, that was a rough question to ask."

"Mikey..." Chuck, still low in the boat and looking forward, tugged at his jacket. "Look up there. I see lights."

"Yeah?"

"Neon."

"Woah..." Mike hooked the rope onto the nearest pipe and started pulling them towards the new light source. Neon, here? There wasn't any neon in this part of Motorcity, not for miles...

A few more minutes of pulling themselves through the cave, and Mike broke through the outer wall. The metal superstructure rose above them in dome. The acid lake spread out from there to the opposite side, just barely within sight, and at the center of the round acid lake was an island. It was a hilly, trash-covered island with only enough room for a single building.

What a building it was. A rectangular monolith, it towered up from a yellowed white base level into a multi-story complex without windows and only a single front glass door. Featureless at first, Mike took a closer look and saw that each story, moving up to about twenty that he could count from here, was made of a different material. One wood, one concrete, one glass, one made exclusively of plywood, another of compressed plastic; it all made him a little nervous to look at. Only the base was decorated with blinking neon lights, spelling out a single word above the doors: "MOTORPLEX". The shattered and burned-out remains of other neon tubes stuck scattered along the rest of the walls.

"Oh my god..." Chuck smacked his forehead. "Oh my god I didn't think to bring paddles! There's no way to reach it!"

Mike realized that, indeed, they were a good 100 feet or more from the island. "Oh."

Dutch's voice shouted from the other side of the wall "Reach what?!" before he popped onto the comms. The signal came through fuzzy and overlayed with static. "I can hear Chuck screaming from here! What'd you find?"

"It's an island with a big building on it! Says 'Motorplex' on the front in neon." Mike gave it a hard appraising look. "It... kind of reminds me of Jacob's place."

Dutch, confused, asked, "The diner, or the garage?"

"No, the store, but taller. Like it's been built up from the bottom." Mike tugged on his earlobe. The static was making his teeth itch. "Why are you coming in fuzzy?"

Chuck opened his comm to chime in. "It's probably whatever was keeping us from seeing inside the dome before it caught on fire. Could be anything!"

Dutch asked, "It's not interfering with ROTH, is it?"

"I haven't seen-" Mid-thought, Mike checked the skies. There was ROTH, floating down to help. "Wait, there he is. I don't think so? You okay, ROTH?"

ROTH, worryingly, greeted them with a distressed chirp and a droop once he leveled out. Chuck patted his faceplate and told Dutch, "He's not looking too rosy. We should lay down the rope on the shore so we can pull ourselves back when we're ready, and maybe send ROTH home."

"I'm thinking that's the better call, yeah," Mike agreed. "I don't wanna fish ROTH out of the lake."

ROTH took Chuck's hands and pulled the boat the long way to the shore. Stepping out onto the plastic beach, Chuck sunk an eye hook in deep in the first sturdy plastic thing he could find and immediately triple-tied the boat onto it. Mike got out alongside him and gave ROTH a farewell pat before sending him back to Dutch. He opened up the comm. "ROTH's on his way."

He got a fuzzed-over response that only vaguely sounded like Dutch's voice.

"This is getting less and less safe by the minute..." Chuck wrung his hands. One of his feet was half-sunk into the refuse collection. "Let's beach-comb, or something, see if we can't find anything good and then head back-"

Mike shook his head. "Nuh-uh. We want something worth coming for, we gotta go in there."

"Mikey, at least give it a look!" Chuck pleaded. "We can always make a pile and come back later!"

"Unless another gang finds it and loots the place before we find anything." With a hand on Chuck's shoulder, Mike lead them right up to the glass doors. "No, we're gonna look for some good shit, and then we leave, and come back with nice big bags and do it again."

Mike threw his shoulder at the door to open it. It slid open automatically as soon as his boots touched the welcome mat. Chuck squeaked and recoiled in shock, only kept from retreating by Mike's hand on his back. Standing in Mike's way was a wall of stained cardboard boxes, stacked up to and past the top of the door. Something inside the building dinged at their arrival.

A lone box shifted back into darkness, and a voice from inside spoke.

"Thank you for shopping at Motorplex. How can I assist you today?"