Disclaimer: Dudes, two stories later and I still don't own the mice. Damn my luck...

Throttle, Modo, Vincent, Charlene Davidson, Rimfire, Chef Andy Steinhaur, One-Eyed Jack Monterrey are all characters from the original show. Silva (Modo's Momma) and Auri (Modo's lost wife/mate) are my characters, along with any others that pop up. Thanks!

Chapter 3

They drove to the outskirts of the city, one of the more posh neighborhoods of Las Vegas spreading out before them. "Guess this Chloe girl must be loaded," Vinnie said as he looked around at the manicured lawns and lavish houses. "What's she doing in a rock band?"

"Ten bucks says its teenage rebellion," Modo said. He whistled low as they pulled up to one of the biggest houses on the road. "Whoa, Momma. Wonder how much that set her family back."

"I don't want to know," Andy said. "Might as well get this show on the road. Or the driveway as the case turns out to be." He reached out the truck window to push the button for the gates, but a voice from the gate's com made him pull back.

"Go ahead, sirs, your party is expected at the main house. Please pull up to the front steps."

Everyone exchanged glances at that. Even knowing that their friends were waiting for them here, it always made them uneasy when somebody expected them. They pulled up to the steps, the front door opening to a very welcome sight. Rimfire raced down the stairs, a joyful shout as he jumped his relative. "Uncle Modo!!"

"Rimfire! You're okay!" The grey mouse wrestled his nephew a bit, easily tucking him into a headlock. "Kid, you have some serious explaining to do, you know that, right?"

He had grown in the last three years, the 17 year old now reaching 6 feet in height. He had put solid muscle on his young frame, nearly Vinnie's size, but it was obvious that he still had some growing to do. Rimfire still wore his yellow shirt, green army vest, and cargo pants, but now the belt was a twin set of laser gun holsters. It was a sign of his new rank in the Freedom Fighters as a squad leader. "(umph) Yeah, uncle, I know, (gah), you can let go now."

"You sure?" Modo asked. "You know your uncle Throttle isn't very happy with you right now." Throttle gave him a look for emphasis.

"On second thought," the younger mouse said, "I think I'll stay put."

Silva stepped out from the trailer, a huge smile on her face. "What, does that mean no hug for me?"

Rimfire's brown eyes went huge as his uncle let him stand up. "Grandma Silva? You're alive?"

"Very much so, sweetheart," she said, welcoming her grandson to her arms. The teen didn't even bother to hide his tears of joy, far too astonished to care how he looked. The sight of another female coming towards him made Rimfire gasp in shock. Auri smiled as she came forward to embrace her nephew. "Aunt Auri? How--Uncle Modo, how?"

"Long story," Modo said tightly, trying not to cry at the sight of so much of his family reunited. "How 'bout we take this inside?"

"Please do," came a soft voice. A young Asian girl with long black hair smiled politely at them all. She wore a simple black t-shirt and a pair of faded blue jeans with rips at the knees. Rimfire smiled as they all turned to face the stairs. "Everyone, this is Chloe Hong. She's been putting us up since we crashed the race."

"You mean won the Sutterfeild tournament on live international television," Throttle said in a low voice. Rimfire gave a nervous laugh. "Um, yeah, that too."

"And got invited to the Flier Tournament for a wish," Vinnie said with a grin. "Got anything in mind for that one?"

The younger mouse's jaw dropped. "H-How did you know about that?!"

"We'll explain inside," Throttle said. Once everyone was introduced, they headed to one of several living rooms in the mansion. Chloe smiled at their amazed looks at the rich interior. Classic paintings and fine antiques lined the walls, the atmosphere subtly stating the fine tastes and wealth of the household, and the living room had a solid wall of televisions. Two other mice were lounging on one of the couches, turning to face the newcomers. The dark red mouse spoke first. "So Rimfire, this is your clan?"

"Most of it," Rimfire said, turning to the Chicago natives. "Guys, these are my bros, Link and Thrash." Link was a solid black mouse with a long thick braided mane down his back, dressed in dark blue jeans and a denim button up shirt with a leather laser holster on his belt. He was tall but lean, almost wiry in appearance. Green eyes flashed with mischief as he shook their hands, leaning over and kissing Silva and Auri's. (Modo had an almost instant dislike of him.)

Thrash was a dark red short hair, shorter in height than his bros but built solid. His voice was surprisingly deep as he said his hellos, politely greeting everyone. He then went quiet, to the point that Vinnie privately thought he was being snobby. But the young mouse was actually listening intently to what everyone said, observing the action.

The young girl smiled to see her new friends so happy with their guests. "Can I get anyone something to drink? You must be thirsty from your trip."

"I'll help," Rimfire said, walking with her to the main kitchen. "You can't carry everything."

Silva smiled, shaking her head in slight exasperation as she watched the two leave the room. "You know, I think he might just have a crush on her."

"Oh great," Vinnie groused. "All the cute ones get snagged, I swear."

"Vincent Van Wham, she's not even legal!" Andy said in shock.

"Legal? Huh?"

"The legal age of consent in this country is 18 for a minor," the human explained.

"Dammit," the white mouse muttered, dodging a swipe from Modo about his language. "So Rimfire can date her all he likes and I'm too old. Man, so not fair."

"I said the same thing," Link said. "Not to old, but hey, you don't try and steal your bro's girl, claimed or not." He leaned back into the cushions, eyeing the older mice. "So how much trouble are we in?"

"Loads," Vinnie said cheerfully.

"As in, 'we're doing KP duty for a year' loads of trouble? Or 'we're going to prison' loads of trouble?" Link asked nervously.

Throttle looked like he was honestly considering the last option. "You took your helmets off on internationally broadcast live television. I would chew you out, but I think I'll have to leave that one to Stoker."

"Aw, man"-

"And I know you'd rather have him do it than for me to leave you to General Carbine." Instant silence from Link and a quiet gasp of horror from Thrash.

"How is our beloved leader anyway?" Vinnie asked. "Haven't heard from the old soldier in a while for a check-up on her Up-tightness."

"Vinnie," Throttle rolled his eyes.

Link and Thrash exchanged quick looks before Link leaned over to his bro. "Didn't Throttle and Carbine used to go out?" He whispered. Thrash nodded. "Oh. Um," he adjusted his volume to be heard by everyone, "she's been okay, I guess. Not as bad on the up-tight scale as she used to be."

"Not as bad?" Vinnie gaped in amazement. "Really? I figured after the drama went down, she'd be going Godzilla on everyone."

"Vincent!" Modo exclaimed with a barely concealed worried glance to his tan bro. "Will you drop it already?"

Throttle shook his head at his friends. "Ladies, ladies, we can gossip about this later."

Rimfire and Chloe came back at that moment with several root beer bottles and a few of cola. "Okay, now that everyone's settled, who goes first?" Rimfire asked. He got a nervous look on his face. "And how bad are we gonna get killed?"

"Stoker makes that call, not me," Throttle said, ignoring the look of obvious relief on the younger mouse's face. "I'll go first." He gave a brief summary of everything that had happened recently, from Silva's arrival, to the destruction of the Last Chance, to Charley's rescue of Auri from the Tower. Rimfire's tail was thrashing by the end of the story, and his bros gave him sympathetic looks as he hugged his aunt and grandmother hard. "Praise the goddess you're both safe," he said. He looked to his uncle, "Where is Miss Charley? I want to thank her."

"She's over with at the High Roller Garage helping Tsu Kawasaki with fixing your rides," Throttle said. "I didn't see much of them, but those looked like A.I.'s. Am I right?"

"A.I.'s are bikes that move on their own?" Chloe asked from her spot on the couch's arm.

"Yep," Vinnie said. "They're the best bikes in the universe. They can defend their rider if he's unconscious, drive themselves if your hands are full, record your best tricks, come when you whistle, cool stuff like that."

Her jaw dropped in surprise. "That's awesome! So the bike you saved me on, that was an A.I.?"

Rimfire nodded. "Yeah. They're new bikes--well, kind of. Here, let me explain. We were out scouting that abandoned Plutarkian fortress out by Ducati City, a lot of energy readings were popping out there. Me and the boys rode out and the main gate's defenses came on and started shooting at us"-

"Shot out my bike," Link said mournfully. "A sweet little silver XB."

"Anyway," Rimfire shot a look at his bro, "we took out the tower cannons and Thrash here used his delicate touch with computers to shut down the rest of the base's defenses."

"He's a computer hacker?" Throttle asked in some surprise.

"Hardly," Chloe grumbled. "He took out my laptop with three keystrokes. I have no idea what he programmed in, and neither does the repairman."

The red mouse looked rather embarrassed. "Again, I'm very sorry, Miss Chloe."

"Oh, he's like Modo with electronics. So how big was the explosion?" Vinnie asked gleefully.

"I gave it a 6," Link answered. "It lacked duration and artistic flare, sadly enough."

"I thought it was good," the young leader said consolingly to his red-furred friend. "After we got in, we started exploring. You wouldn't believe all the stuff they left there. Crates of clothes and supplies and art stuff."

"They had some of the original Ford paintings," Thrash said reverently. "I thought they had shipped all of them off-world, but some are still there. Along with Buick, Volkswagen, Chevrolet, and Mercedes."

Chloe and Andy exchanged looks. Martian names: go figure.

"There were loads of medical supplies too," Link added. "But most of those crates were broken into. We found out by who pretty quick. Rats came from everywhere! They'd taken over that whole base a few years ago and have been selling off the medical stuff."

"Especially the pain killers," Rimfire said in complete disgust. "Restarting the drug market all over again."

"Son of a"--Throttle bit off the word he wanted to say. At the humans' confused looks, he explained. "Drug running on Mars has been illegal for centuries, for the same reasons it is here on Earth. But the government managed to almost completely erase it fifty years ago in the Mice population."

"'Bout the only good they ever did in the last fifty years," Modo said grudgingly.

"What happened after the Rats found you?" Silva asked. Auri leaned forward, her attention fixed on her nephew.

"Well, we got stripped of our equipment real quick and they snagged our bikes," Rimfire answered. "They dragged us down to the base's lab and locked us in there. We tested out everywhere we could think of for another way out, and found out that the floor was hollow. We figured it led down to another floor, so it'd be worth a shot getting down there. Link here managed to get some of the junk working in there, and made us a blowtorch so we could crack the floor open."

He raised stricken eyes to Modo. "We jumped down to see if we could get out that way but...there were...there had to be hundreds, maybe even a thousand"--his voice broke. Link patted his friend's arm, not looking too steady himself. Thrash looked like he was about to be sick. "Skeletons," Rimfire got out. "They were piled everywhere down there." He went white around his mouth, "Some of them were so small..."

"We spoke the prayers for them," Thrash said quietly. "It was all we could do."

Silva pressed a hand to her mouth in horror, Auri pulling Modo close and lacing her fingers through his. Throttle's fists clenched in anger and Vinnie's tail coiled in rage. Andy closed his eyes against memories from his war, some twenty years ago. Chloe shifted down from the couch's arm to sit beside Rimfire, so that her arm touched his. He unconsciously wrapped his hand around hers, and she found a smile for him. "That's when you found all the bike parts, right?" She asked softly.

"Yeah," he answered, clearing his throat. "There were dozens of A.I. bikes down there, pretty shredded, but some were still in good enough shape that they only needed basic repairs. We stripped down some of the others and fixed three of them so we could get out of there. We loaded up on the ammo we could find and blasted our way out."

"If only getting out of the rest of the base had been that easy," Thrash muttered.

"Yeah," Link groused. "The Rats blockaded the halls and forced us down to the old spaceship bay. It led right out to a cliff."

"The bikes were in no shape to jump something like that," Rimfire said. "We managed to bottle-neck the port's entrance so that we could take them on one by one, but they started prepping explosives to blast us out."

"Lucky us that Rimfire found a working transporter," Link said. "It was covered in old parts and junk, we first thought it was broke too. But she powered up just fine, and Rimfire punched in the codes, Thrash put a timed grenade in as we went and"-

"We shot straight out in the middle of this huge arena," Rimfire said, blushing red in embarrassment. He glanced over at Throttle. "Did you know that there's only three numbers difference in the codes between downtown Chicago and downtown Las Vegas?"

"You're still going to explain this to Stoker," the tan mouse said.

"Aw, man," the teen groaned.

"I think I want to meet this Stoker," Chloe said with a mischievous smile.

"No," Rimfire said.

"Oh yes."

"No."

She gave him a frown. "Why not?"

"Because he flirts with anything that's got girly parts and a pulse," Link said gleefully. "My Mohawk-ed bro"-

"Its not a Mohawk!"

--"is afraid he'll catch the eye"-

"I was born with this stripe!"

--"of a certain little lady that's been a real doll to us," the black mouse finished. Rimfire flushed red under his fur and launched himself at his bro. They rolled across the floor, wrestling hard. Thrash jumped in to not be left out of the fun, the trio becoming a blur of red, black, and light tan fur. Chloe looked startled, but Silva deftly avoided the tangle of limbs to sit beside the girl and talk with her a bit. "So, Miss Chloe, how did you meet my grandson and his friends?"

'At bike ride?' Auri signed. She frowned to herself, trying again. 'At bike race?' Silva helped translate the question.

"Oh," the human girl flushed a bit in embarrassment. "Well, that's an interesting story. My band, Project M, were invited to play at the Sutterfeild Tournament, it's a huge honor. We get there, start playing, everything's going great. We were set-up on a stage forty feet in the air; the support struts shook a bit whenever the big group of bikes passed. But we were dealing with it, my drummer Ru was actually using it for extra base, and then there's this flash of blue light on the field.

"These wicked looking bikes come from nowhere and start tearing up the track. They're faster than anyone on the field, they make up the laps the others already had and start pulling ahead of everyone like its nothing! Some of the other riders weren't happy about that and tried to box them in. Link kicked one of them out and accidentally sent the guy spinning into the tower. The guy jumped in time to not get hurt, but the bike slammed into the stage supports and exploded.

"I was the farthest out near the edge of the stage." She sighed in self-disgust. "Well, the bike hit, and it jarred us so badly that I stumbled and fell off. I thought I was going to die, but then one of those wicked bikes rides straight for the stage. And rides right up the supports. Literally up the supports, like it was defying gravity!

"He reached out and caught me and we kept going up as he sits me behind him. He turns the bike and we do a sideways cartwheel, in midair! He lines up with the supports on the other side of the stage, and as we go back down, he lands on the stage, and helps me off the bike. Without missing a beat, he apologized for the upset and rides right off the platform, back down the struts, and rejoins the race like its nothing."

"Tell 'em what happened next!" Link got out from the hold his bros had him in. "It was--so funny!"

"It was not!" She shouted. The girl tucked her black bangs behind one ear as she fidgeted. "I'm not fond of heights, so after he set me back on stage and left," she blushed, "I fainted. By the time I came to, those three had just finished their final lap while everyone else still had five to go. The whole crowd was going nuts, cameras were flashing everywhere, and then they took off their helmets.

"We saw they weren't human, which explained a lot, and the reporters were just loosing their minds. Human or not, I owed them my life, so I made up a story and got them out of there. We snuck them out of the arena and got them on our bus, the bikes in the back end with our band stuff."

"How did you get them out of there if the reporters were everywhere?" Throttle asked.

Chloe smiled. "It helps when your dad is the main sponsor of the event and owns the arena. He owns a couple casinos on the strip," she explained. "My security staff got us out of there like it was nothing. They're talented that way."

"You have your own security staff?" Vinnie asked incredulously.

"If I get kidnapped, my dad can shell out quite a bit of cash," she said, her voice resigned. "I'm a valuable commodity. So my guards follow me everywhere."

"Okay, that just begs for teenage rebellion," Modo whispered to Silva. The older mouse nodded in agreement.

"And what do your guards think of Martians in the house?" Throttle asked.

Chloe found another smile. "Sir, they're paid for confidentiality."

Vinnie and Modo hit the floor, doubled over with laughter. "You got 'sir'-ed!" Vinnie howled. "You're an old man!"

"Somebody find him a cane!" Modo hooted.

"No, no, no! A walker!" the white mouse called.

Throttle dove on both his bros, fists flying. Rimfire, Link, and Thrash stared from their positions on the floor, scrambling out of the way as the fight rolled in their direction. Thrash quirked an eyebrow at the dueling trio. "They outrank us?"

"Yeah. Isn't that a scary thought?" Rimfire smirked.

"Gives me some hope," Link said with a considering look on his face. "If they can make it, anyone can." The younger mice made it a whole two seconds before laughing. Vinnie got their revenge as his tail swept their feet out from under them and sent them crashing to the floor. Six mice now rolled across the floor, a huge mess of fur and tails and testosterone.

Silva smiled. "Just like when Modo was little. You remember, Auri-dear?" The mute girl nodded fondly, her canines flashing with her smile.

Andy shook his head in mild exasperation. They were heroes, the bravest and strongest men--er, mice--he'd ever known. And right then, he would have sworn they were all ten years old. "So Miss Hong, have the boys been behaving for you?"

Chloe laughed outright. "You're joking, right?"

Silva sighed resignedly. "What did they break?"

"How do four floors of an office building sound?"

The man and two lady mice didn't even flinch. "That sounds about right," Andy said. "Actually, that's a pretty slow day for the older ones, but I suppose the young ones are still getting into the swing of things."

Silva was up and standing over the now cowering fighters. "I do not believe you boys! You know better than to go out and break other people's property!! How could you be so irresponsible?!"

"B-but we didn't even do anything!" Vinnie protested before Modo elbowed him hard in the ribs. "Ow!!"

"Shut up or it'll get worse!" The grey mouse whispered urgently. "Just nod and say you're sorry or you'll really get it."

"Oh, you'll get it alright, but not until I get some answers," Silva said, in the terrifying manner only a mother could do. "Now if anyone has a perfectly reasonable explanation for blowing up four floors of an office building, you just speak up now or forever hold your peace."

&