Brick met body as Yama slammed the slim teen against the wall. "No one hustles Yama!" he grabbed the small robot out of Hiro's hands and turned away. "Teach him a lesson," he said over his shoulder to the three thugs. One eyed Hiro's legs.
No. He couldn't get hit there, he had to stop them before anything serious happened or in time for someone to stop them. He was just a kid; surely someone would stop this if he held out long enough. "Hey fellows," he tried to plead, "let's talk about this."
A rumbling echoed through the alley as the three punks closed in. Bright white light flooded the narrow street and the punks backed up as Tadashi's scooter threatened to flatten them. He jerked to a stop and glared at his younger brother. "Hiro, get on."
"Tadashi," Hiro said as he leapt onto the scooter. "Ah, good timing!" The elder brother slapped a helmet over his wild hair and revved the engine into action.
"Are you okay?" Tadashi asked over the wind in his ears.
"Yeah," Hiro answered as he caught Megabot. The bot had done a good job, punching that Yama thug right in the face, several times from the look of it.
"Are you hurt?" Tadashi asked."
"No."
"Did they mess with your braces?"
Hiro rolled his eyes. "No, they're perfectly fine. Really, you think I'd let-"
"Then what were you thinking?!" Tadashi reached back and swatted at his younger brother. "Knucklehead!" Quickly, he put on an extra burst of speed and outdistanced the thugs still chasing them. "Hiro, why do you go off by yourself like this? If something happened to your braces, how would you get home?" He braked as the dead end of the alley came into view and quickly turned the scooter around. Hiro yelled from excitement when Tadashi took the ramp and jumped right over that idiot Yama's head. Oh, that felt almost as good as trashing the guy's robot in the ring.
Hiro rolled his eyes. "Come on, I made these things out of carbon fiber. You know how hard that is to break."
Tadashi grinned against his will. Sometimes, having a genius for a brother really made it hard to deliver a decent lecture, especially when he had a point. But he wasn't done with the teenager yet. "Well if you needed to get out, why'd you have to do this? Bot fighting is illegal! You're going to get yourself arrested!"
Hiro wanted to roll his eyes again. "Bot fighting is not illegal. Betting on bot fighting, that's, that's illegal, but so lucrative!" He brought out the bundle he'd won that night and waved it by Tadashi's check. "Just think of the new parts I can get with this! Maybe some rubber casings for the electric parts to make them waterproof."
Tadashi batted the bundle away from his face. "It's still-" Then he heard the loud wailing combined with tires screeching on the pavement. "Oh no." The exit of the alley was completely blocked by cops. They were so busted.
Before either boy could blink, they were taken off the bike, handcuffed, and shoved in the back of one of the many police cars. Hiro determinedly did not look at his brother's glaring face, so watched the lights of the city flicker by outside the window. Tadashi could say bot fighting was wrong as many times as he wanted, but that didn't change the fact that he needed that money if he wanted to keep improving his tech. Brother had that big fat scholarship to college, while Hiro only had their garage full of hodgepodge equipment to work with. He still refused to look at his brother when the cops unloaded them and put them through security.
Tadashi saw the metal detector and winced. He knew it was necessary, but…he took off his belt and shoes and walked through the frame without so much as a peep. Then Hiro stepped into it.
Beep! A cop rushed forward and grabbed his brother. "What are you playing at kid?"
"It's just my braces," he boy answered, rolling his eyes. He pulled up a portion of his pant leg. "See?"
Tadashi had to congratulate the cop on not freaking out and calmly stating, "You need to remove those so we can put you in custody."
He reached for the foot part. Hiro pulled back. "I'll get them back when I leave, right?"
The uniformed man nodded. "We'll give your brother his bike back too. Do you need anything after you take them off?"
"A wheelchair. I can't walk without them." Tadashi flinched. Because of his brother's braces, something he'd invented himself, the older Hamada often forgot that his brother was paralyzed from the waist down.
The cop nodded and asked one of the desk workers to bring the wheelchair. He asked for a regular plastic chair for Hiro and the kid sat down in it. He removed the slim headband from under his hair and the braces fell to pieces inside his pant legs, falling out onto the floor as he pulled them out or just jostled them enough that they came out by themselves. The policeman helped gather them up and put them in a bin that he handed to another desk worker, telling him to keep it by the bike for when the boys were able to leave. Hiro pulled himself through the metal detector, this time without the annoying beep, and was met by the wheelchair on the other side.
They slammed Tadashi into a cell with all the other adults, which was unfortunately packed to the brim with people from the bot fight the cops had crashed. Hiro had the juvenile cell to himself, but he would have gladly gone into the other cell if they'd let him keep his braces. He hated being defenseless like this. It was the reason his first serious invention had been the braces.
Aunt Cass came to pick them up a little later and the cops came and got the boys. Tadashi left to reassure Aunt Cass that both boys were fine while the cop who'd helped him earlier went into the bathroom with Hiro and helped him put his braces back on. Watching as the boy snapped each piece into place and finally put the headband back on, the cop was impressed by the level of technology. He expected to see that sort of gear at the college, not on a delinquent. "You know," he commented, "if you showed those to the professors at the University, they'd probably give you a scholarship or something." The kid just rolled his eyes and walked towards the door out of the bathroom and towards his irate aunt.
Please excuse me. I have no idea how it actually works when you get arrested, so if someone wants to tell me how it's really done, I can make this chapter better. But did this surprise anyone? I actually love giving characters disabilities since I have one. Please Review!