A/N: …Can it be? An on-time chapter?! *collective gasp* It's a miracle!

I typed this up in two days; easiest chapter I've done in a while. I haven't reviewed my outline in a while, so I thought it would take me to one place, when it in fact took me somewhere else entirely. So, enjoy some surprise TechxSive and a check-in with Rev! (I thought we wouldn't see him for another chapter or two; glad I'm wrong!) Admittedly, not much happens in this chapter, other than escalations with Rev and the folks. There will be some action and a problematic development next chapter, though!

Special thanks to Candlestic, Molly Grace 16, Halloween Witch (surprise! got your wish!), Luna246, Angelus Draco, and iwolf208 for reviewing! Your kind words are what keep me motivated to keep working!

"So they were just miraculously fixed, just like that?" Tech asked skeptically as he furiously typed at the keyboard in front of him. The other Loonatics were surprised he didn't break the keys with how fast his fingers were flying across them.

After the rest of the team returned to the tower, they found the two coyotes already down in the lab, working on finding some sort of records on their thieves. It had quickly become apparent that "Jet" and "Slo-Mo" were just aliases (big surprise there), and since Torres and Rodriguez were such common last names, they had a lot of searching to do. However, knowing that they were anthros- anthro mice, specifically- would help narrow it down by a lot. Because of how populous mice could be, though, it still left a large pool of suspects to sift through.

"It was weird, yeah," Lexi agreed, watching picture after picture of potential suspects fly across the screen as Tech inspected a file and discarded it at amazing speed before repeating the process. "Duck was blasting this God-awful excuse for music-"

"Hey! That's quality stuff there!"

"-so we were all distracted for a second, but when we turned back, they were all suddenly freaking out about what had happened," Lexi finished, completely ignoring Duck's indignant response over what she felt was a well-deserved insult.

"Maybe de effects of da memory wipe wear off after a set amount of time?" Ace suggested with a shrug, unable to think of any other reason the recording men may have snapped out of it.

"Then why don't the victims of the earlier robberies remember anything yet?" Sive asked rhetorically, shaking her head. "Sorry, Ace, but it's never that simple."

"And here I thought we'd had enough problems ta deal with already," Ace lamented with a shake of his head. The sudden loss of a team member compounded with the uprising of a troublesome villain was proving to be more stressful than anything they'd faced in quite some time. "Anybody else got a theory?"

"Perhaps they were enlightened by hearing good music for the first time," Duck suggested haughtily, turning his bill up in a show of assumed superiority as he flopped down in an empty deck chair, sprawling across its arms and folding his hands behind his head.

Slam rapidly shook his head, making many negative-sounding grunts in disagreement.

"Maybe you damaged their ears so much they were shocked back to normalcy," Tech deadpanned, earning a withering look from Duck and twitters from everyone else. He narrowed the search by eliminating all who didn't have a police record relating to theft, either petty or grand theft. It still left him with almost a thousand results to filter through. Trying a different tactic, he eliminated all who were younger than 15 and older than 30; it still left more than two thirds of the previous search pool.

"This is going to take forever…" he grumbled, starting to go through the results. He could get through about ten results a minute; at a few hundred results, it would take a few hours to get through them all.

"Maybe we should just narrow the field a little more?" Lexi suggested, trying to be helpful seeing as Tech always insisted on handling anything at a computer himself. "What if you plugged in their physical characteristics, like fur and eye color?"

"Brown eyes and brown fur? That would only get rid of fifty possibles, maybe. It's not worth reloading the system for that," Tech explained, continuing his search slower than before as he contemplated anything else to plug in to the search engine.

"What about any who have been deported?" Ace asked, noticing many faces flash across the screen with a big, red "DEPORTED" flashing across the bottom of their picture. "If it happened recently enough, then I doubt it could be them."

"This is true," Tech agreed, reopening the search tools and plugging in the residency requirement, as well as Lexi's physical characteristics, seeing as he now had to reload it, anyway. A few minutes later, after the official database had sifted through all of the files again, they were left with about half of the original results. "Anything else?"

"…What about getting rid of anyone who wasn't hospitalized around the time of the meteor hit a few years ago?" Sive asked. "You guys said you all were hospitalized dealing with the effects of getting your powers; maybe they were, too."

Tech plugged it in, while Lexi turned to Sive curiously. "It was tough acclimating to getting the powers; we all had to let our bodies adjust to the sudden changes. Was it easier for you?"

"Well, since I was so much farther away, I didn't get the direct radiation effects you guys did, so it was a little more gradual. Plus, Navy District hospitals are scary places," she explained with a shudder. "It's better to chance it on your own over there."

The database reloaded again a few minutes later, and everyone gained some confidence upon seeing that less than a hundred results remained. It took Tech less than five minutes to come across a result that gave him pause.

"I think this is too much of a coincidence for it not to be one of them, but just to be sure, is this Jet, Sive?" Tech asked, sending the image from his computer on the big screen. A mug shot of a young mouse anthro with brown fur and an un-amused expression filled the screen, the name Chet Torres labeled across the top. There was no doubt about it; this was a younger Jet.

"Yeah, that's him," Sive confirmed, shaking his head. "Very original name he came up with."

"No kidding," Tech agreed, digging around a bit in Chet's history before looking for Slo-Mo. "So, he was born in central Mexico, his family immigrated here near 2760, and since then, it's a long history of petty theft, property damage, trespassing, and a few assault charges. He's wanted in two states, both warrants issued after the meteor. There would probably be more, but I'm guessing Slo-Mo has everything to do with that. And to top it off, there's no current address; last known was just outside of Acmetropolis."

"Brilliant," Ace remarked, "it really never can be easy, can it?"

"Maybe he's staying with family somewhere around here?" Duck halfheartedly suggested from his lounging position in a nearby desk chair, playing a game on his phone.

Tech searched for Chet's relatives, leading to a long list of results. "Big family," Tech stated, "but none of them seem to live anywhere except southern California. Except…"

One more name had no address listed. Clicking on it, Tech almost laughed. "Guys, meet Sloan Montgomery Rodriguez, Torres' cousin."

Ace snorted. "Dey need a better understandin' of 'secret identity.'"

"What's the point of being so secret about it, anyway?" Duck asked, putting his phone down and giving his full attention to the task at hand. "What major advantage does this give us?"

"I was hoping this would give us an address to search out; they have to be putting all this stuff they're taking somewhere," Tech reasoned.

"Well, knowing that there's two of them to deal with helps," Sive stated.

"Right," Ace agreed. "Jet is impulsive, and Slo-Mo's da brains of de operation. Separate 'em, and Jet's a manageable catch- so long as we can keep up with 'im- and Slo-Mo is a well-armed, but slow movin', sittin' duck."

"I hate that expression," Duck grumbled, crossing his arms and scowling.

"It's an age-old figure of speech, Duck," Lexi said in exasperation, hopping off of her seat on a desk and moving towards the door. "Well, now that we know what we're dealing with, we just need to figure out how to deal with it. It's getting late, so I say we order some takeout and call it a day."

"Pizza!" Slam exclaimed loudly, excited by the thought of food as he rushed past Lexi out of the lab. Duck quacked out, probably to the living room a few floors up, while Sive and Ace made as though to follow Lexi. All three of the remaining Loonatics stopped upon realizing that Tech wasn't making any moves to follow.

"You comin', Tech?" Ace asked.

"I want to do some more searching on some other databases, see if I can find anything else relevant and, hopefully, helpful," Tech explained, already starting up a few more computers in preparation for a marathon, high-density search session.

"Not again, Tech," Lexi chastised. "You'll miss dinner with how long you'll be down here."

"I'll just reheat something later," he said dismissively, waving them off and keeping his gaze firmly on his computer, expecting that to be the end of it. This wasn't the first marathon session he'd ever done, but they all had noticed a change; without Rev around, his 'marathons' became more like triathlons. He'd spend far more time in his labs working on chasing cyber leads on his own than he did with Rev, leading to a few multi-day disappearances.

Ace, Lexi, and Sive all exchanged withering looks, irked by the coyote's behavior. They all knew that once he set his mind to something like this, though, there was no changing it, and he wasn't worn out enough yet for anyone to be able to drag him out. The two bunnies started moving back out of the lab again, but paused once more as Sive headed in the opposite direction.

Tech looked up in surprise as he saw someone in his peripheral vision take one of the chairs at one of the other computers he'd just booted up, and only just stopped himself from gawking as Sive opened up some more Federal search programs. "Uh, Sive? What are you doing?"

"Helping you chase geese," she deadpanned, pulling a Tech and resolutely keeping her eyes on the screen in front of her. "If you're going to insist on staying down here and working, there's no sense in letting you do it all yourself. We're a team- we should share the workload."

Ace and Lexi exchanged a knowing look before quietly slipping out the doorway.

"Uh…thanks for the offer," Tech began hesitantly, speaking slowly as he thought over how to counter that, "but you don't have to do this; I can do it quickly enough on my own. Besides, I'm probably not going to find much, and it'll take a while-"

"Then the two of us can find probably not much in half a while- and I wasn't offering," she concluded with a sense of finality. Tech was going to argue, when he paused, thinking about just who he was dealing with. Sive was notoriously stubborn in some areas, and while she rarely started arguments, she usually finished them. Verbally sparring with her, trying to get her to do something other than what she had set her mind to, would have been a waste of oxygen.

Shaking his head and internally rolling his eyes as he turned back to his computer, Tech huffed. "You're just as bad as me, you know."

Sive smirked. "Yes, but I use my stubbornness to promote good, not reclusiveness."

"I don't promote it…"

"Just practice it. Extensively," Sive deadpanned. Tech snorted, not replying to that comment, knowing how true it was.

The banter continued as they searched, only pausing when one or the other found something that sounded important or interesting. Tech would write it down in a notebook to keep it all organized before the search, and the conversation, would continue. It went on like this for about three hours before things started to slow; relevant results began to decrease in frequency, and with the results went the drive to continue the search. Both coyotes slowed, now talking more than searching. They had exhausted many search engines, and as they had expected, hadn't found much of anything that was really helpful.

"So, how are we going to use any of this intel to help catch these two pipsqueak perps?" Sive asked, looking over their meager notes critically as she tried to decipher Tech's chicken scratch. She suddenly realized why he always preferred to type everything.

"Right now? I'm not sure," Tech replied, halfheartedly sorting through results. "Now that I know there's two of them, I have to reevaluate pretty much everything, make it a clean slate."

Sive hummed in understanding, giving up on reading the notes and handing the book back to Tech with a smirk. "Just need to figure out how to build a better mousetrap, huh?"

They both laughed at how bad the joke was, turning back to their respective monitors. However, Sive noticed as Tech's typing trailed off a moment later. Turning back to him, she saw that he seemed to be seriously considering something, idly chewing on the end of his pencil, staring holes through his monitor. She recognized his scheming look. She also knew it meant that they were done searching until his train of thought ran its course.

"Hey, Tech?" she called, trying to get his attention. It didn't work. "Earth to Tech!" Still no response. Putting both of her feet on one of the legs of the desk, she propelled herself sideways, her rolling chair gently bumping into Tech's. He jumped slightly, shaking his head to come out of his stupor.

"If you can think and chew on a pencil, you can think and chew on a slice of pizza." She gave him a wry look, smirking at his dumbfounded look as he shook himself out of his stupor and found her suddenly so close to him.

Tech could only try to process what he'd missed as Sive pulled herself back to her own desk and began shutting down her computer. He contemplated between continuing his search while scheming around his new idea, but concluded that microwaved pizza sounded better than searching for things he wouldn't find. Shutting down his computer, he followed Sive out of his lab, shutting off the lights as he went.

xoxoxoxox

If anyone were to look in on the events of the Runner house, they'd assume that something had gone horrifically wrong and that they were all rushing around with the intent of evacuating the house as fast as possible. Ma was dashing about the kitchen, working too fast with whatever food she could grab to be able to see what she was doing with it; Pa was finishing laundry work (as ordered by his wife), switching loads, folding, and delivering the towers of clean clothes to their correct rooms; Rip, unsurprisingly, was stationary, sitting on the couch and idly flipping channels on the TV. Rev, however, was far outpacing all of them, dashing back and forth between the kitchen and the dining room in his bid to set the table as fast as physically possible; any excuse for speed, after all.

"Whoa-there-son!" Pa exclaimed, catching his oldest about the shoulders as they crossed paths, forcing Rev to drastically slow so as not to drop his dad before he continued on his way back to the laundry room. "Slow-it-down-a-touch!"

"Sure-Pa-sorry-Pa," Rev replied, waiting until Ralph had disappeared back into another part of the house before continuing at his previous pace.

"Easy-there-Rev! Don't-hurt-yourself!" Ma admonished as she dropped off a finished dish on the table, watching Rev do a full circle around the table worriedly as he set down one round of silverware at each place at the table.

"Sure-Ma-sorry-Ma," Rev replied, waiting until his mother had disappeared into the kitchen before continuing.

Rip, from his position on the couch, huffed, rolling his eyes at his brother and the sad spectacle he'd become. It was like this all the time now; Rev would do anything he could around the house to be able to travel at any considerable speed. He'd even gone to the grocery store for Ma once, and didn't take the car to do it! Of course, it was kind of funny to see Rev walk in with both arms completely draped in shopping bags, but the old light in his eyes had been there, if only for a moment- before Ma and Pa had freaked out about the whole episode.

Harriet's voice rang out around the house. "Okay-everyone! Dinner's-ready!"

Pa let out an excited whoop as he dashed to the table, sliding into his seat and sending it up on two legs, almost tipping over before settling back fully on the ground again. Ma also dashed over with equal speed, though she stopped moving before politely sliding into her chair. Rev rocketed to the doorway before rapidly slowing, practically walking into the room.

Rip languidly got up to follow, uncaringly tossing the remote onto the couch as he stopped on a news channel, before pausing, paying attention to what was being shown. "Hey, Rev?"

Rev, about to take his seat, froze at hearing his brother's voice. The uncertain, worried tone was what did it. "Yeah?"

"You should see this…"

Not even considering his parents, Rev darted out of the room at full speed, his parents not far behind. Rip was still standing in front of the couch, focusing on the TV in front of him. Rev saw where his brother's attention was, and looked there as well, giving the aging newscaster on the screen his full attention.

"…as the thieves, now identified as Jet Torres and Slo-Mo Rodriguez, attacked the Sundown Records building today, intent on taking their recently acquired, Centennial Award; a valuable gold trophy. Their endeavor failed, all thanks to the Loonatics.

"Unfortunately, the resident superheroes' plans to catch the masked mischief makers failed as they learned the hard way that the culprit they'd been having trouble with for the past few weeks turned out to be two culprits, resulting in a failed trap and Sive, their youngest team member, suddenly disappearing-"

The TV suddenly switched off, drawing an indignant "Hey!" from Rip and a panicked gasp from Rev as they both turned to the cause; Harriet, standing behind the couch next to Rev and holding the remote, giving a disapproving look to her sons. Ralph, not too far behind her, was just as disappointed.

"We-really-shouldn't-be-watching-TV-while-we-eat. It's-just-not-polite." Harriet tucked the remote in a pocket hidden in her apron, and both she and Ralph moved back towards the dining room, expecting their sons to follow.

Rev had other ideas.

Vaulting the couch before Rip could begin cursing out his parents (as he looked too keen to do,) Rev crouched and pushed the power button on the manual controls on the TV set, holding it down so that while the screen would turn on, Ma couldn't turn it off again with the remote. Someone would have to wrench his hand away to do it. Rev could hear both his parents loudly protest, but he didn't care at that point, listening intently as the newsman reappeared, finishing the story with-

"…strange turn of events, the Loonatics found their missing teammate an hour later emerging from a subway station a couple of miles away, unharmed."

Rev sighed in relief, flopping onto the floor and releasing the controls, allowing his irritated parents to finally do as they wished and turn off the TV.

"Rev!" his mother exclaimed, a disbelieving note accompanying her chastisement. "You-know-it's-a-rule-not-to-watch-TV-at-dinnertime!"

"Since when?!" Rip exclaimed, still shocked at just how far his parents had gone. "Besides, you saw that, one of his friends was in trouble! Why is it wrong that he wanted to make sure they were okay?!"

As usual, Rip was completely ignored. His words didn't even faze his parents; their attention was solely on Rev. "Son," Pa began, approaching his oldest and completely bypassing his enraged youngest son, "none-of-that-is-any-of-your-concern-anymore. Sure-you-used-to-be-friends-with-them; that-was-then-and-this-is-now. You-shouldn't-involve-yourself-with-any-of-this-any-longer. It's-over."

Rev was expressionlessly staring at his father. Rip, shockingly, was lost for words, eyes bugging out and beak wide open; under different circumstances, he would've looked quite comical.

"…Let's-all-just-go-back-to-dinner-now, huh?" Harriet chirped, seemingly unaffected by everything that had just transpired. Rip shifted his incredulity from Pa to her.

Rev, however, didn't seem to notice. Rip was the first to notice the change; the way his brother's hands balled into fists, the slight shaking that slowly overtook his entire body, the subtle change to an expression of pure rage. The two elder Runners didn't seem to notice anything until their son's eyes began to glow bright red.

"Rev-" Pa began, but before he could say anything else, Rev had shot up to his feet, rocketing out of the house to displace a few lighter objects, slightly singing the carpet. They heard the front door crash open, but no one made a move to stop him.

"What the hell is wrong with you two?!" Rip shouted accusingly, rounding on his parents with a look that rivaled his brother's earlier expression. Unsurprisingly, they seemed unfazed by their younger son, staring off after their oldest with unreadable faces.

A/N: Not too much has happened these past two chapters, but it'll pick up next time, I promise! …And on a side note, I don't think there's that much farther to go in this story. It seems early for this warning, I know, but I did say that this wasn't going to be a twenty-some-odd chapter epic like it usually is. I'm going to get started on my outline for my next story (even though I have two I'm debating between for doing next) very soon so as not to have another multi-month wait. Between the stories I'm debating between, one is very short (like, three-shot short), and the other is more epic-ey than usual, so I want to jump ahead.

The next chapter should be up in two weeks, but I am restarting school Monday, and you all know just as well as I how much my teachers like spontaneous projects.

Read and review, please!