Closing Shop

Three Hours later…

In his simple bed, Tanner tossed and turned – restless and finding deep-sleep difficult. Instead, his mind dreamt and his actions in his dreams translated into his actions in real life.

"Mhm, Jessica." He moaned in his sleep. "You smell lovely today." Turning over and burying his face in his pillow.

The brunette was so caught up in his restless dream, he didn't notice the door to his room open or feel the presence that entered. Twisting and turning, Tanner didn't realise anyone else was there until they jumped onto his bed and trapped him on all fours. And even then, Tanner thought it was just a part of his dream.

"Oh, getting ahead of things are we?" he mumbled as he turned over. This time, the golden-brunette unconsciously reached up with his hands, encircling them around the body on top of him. "Mmh, honey, you need to shave."

Wait…

Tanner's eyes suddenly shot open at the realisation that not everything he was feeling was a dream, and almost fell out of his bed with a yelp as his eyes locked onto those of the dog standing on top of him.

The dog seemed to be some breed of shepherd's dog had a golden coat of fur with a few black patches across its body and covering most of its face, which was just barely visible in the low light of his room. Its eyes were a hazel-brown colour and its teeth looked too white and perfect to be real. It's fur was also soft and clean-looking, like it had just had a bath, while seeming cleaner than any dog should normally be.

Before the brunette was able to say anything, the dog jumped off his bed and left out the open door to his room. It was then that Tanner also realised that the lights in the hall were on, causing him to toss his blankets aside to get up and take a look at what was going on.

As well as find out where the hell did they got a dog.

Walking out of his room, Tanner had to give his eyes a moment to adjust to the sudden amount of light, just like last time. However, this time, the brunette also grabbed Beofield from behind the door to his room. It wasn't that he expected a fight or felt threatened, it was just that he still felt somewhat uncertain about the new company they kept.

Quickly taking in his surroundings, it seemed at first that the brunette was the first one up. He took a moment to look out the window of the apartment and a quick glance at the wall-mounted clock, finding out that he had only been asleep for about three hours.

Mentally shrugging it off, Tanner reminded himself that it wasn't anything new to him as he continued to sweep the apartment for T, annoyed at having been rudely awakened.

That was when the sound of static reached his ears. And not just static, but also the sound of sparks spitting, which was cause for concern itself. The sound was coming from T's workspace, and when Tanner rounded the corner to the workspace, the sight before him greatly confused the brunette.

T was at his table, tapping away furiously at the multiple keyboards as each screen began flashing with large error warnings and static while the hard-drives below began overloading and overheating.

"T, what's going on?" Tanner asked, now fully concerned to know that T himself was responsible for their condition.

For a couple of seconds, T didn't make any form of respond before he suddenly spun around in his chair and marched right past Tanner. "There isn't much time. Grab all your gear and wake the others up."

Completely forgoing any sort of greeting, T moved over to their war table to begin sweeping various tools and materials into different piles. This was the point that Tanner decided he had enough of the cyborg's ambiguity and confronted him directly, grabbing him by the shoulder and forcing him to look directly at him.

"Not until you tell me what the fuck is going on!" Tanner stated clearly with a glare. "What is going on? Why are we suddenly packing up?" he said, gesturing to the glass table. "When did we get a dog?" he cried out, waving his hands and his sabre around hysterically.

Locking eyes with T, the cyborg just shrugged Tanner's hand off his shoulder as he moved over to the foldable workbench that had been set up so that the war table could be cleared for mission briefings. "I'll explain once everyone's up." He said as he began knocking things off the workbench and onto the floor.

The brunette could practically feel the blood underneath his skin begin to boil as his Dust-infused scarf began to glow with a searing heat. He had just about enough of T constantly brushing him off and only revealing pieces of important information if he felt like it. However, just as he was about to go off after T a second time, a shout from the opposite end of the apartment caught his attention.

"Agh! Dog!" he heard the Vacuo-born rogue yell before the sound of steel being swung about followed the surprised tone. Turning around, Tanner watched as the shepherd dog practically leapt out of SK's room with the black-haired boy following close behind, falchion drawn and swinging at the dog. "Nobody panic, but there's a dog in the apartment!"

"Nobody's panicking but you, dumbass!" Tanner yelled over the sound of chairs being knocked over as SK pursued the dog with his sword drawn while trying to properly fit his glasses onto his face. It wasn't until the shepherd dog had jumped up on the wooden table covered in different types of preserved food that the rogue stopped swinging wildly in order to line up the blade of his weapon for a stab aimed straight for the head.

However, as SK drove his sword forward, the shepherd dog suddenly angled its head in such a way that it was able to catch the blade of the weapon with his teeth, holding it firmly in its jaws as it tried to wrestle the weapon out of the rogue's grasp. SK stared at the dog with wide eyes as both his hands flew to the hilt of his weapon, trying to prevent the dog from tearing it from his grasp. As he turned to Tanner for help, he found that Tanner was frozen in a similar state of shock.

"Good dog…" SK cooed as he tried to calm the dog into letting go of the end of his blade, but all it did was elicit a growl from the canine. "Let go you son of a-" he began threatening, but it was cut short by a quick whistle, which caused the dog to let go of the end of the falchion and sit on its hind legs, head up in attention.

All eyes fell on T as he quickly pulled his scarf back over his face before speaking. "Dimples, play nice." Upon hearing the command, the dog let out a soft bark and jumped off the table to go sit against the wall. Immediately after, the cyborg fixed the rogue with a stern glare. "Do not harm my dog."

"I didn't know you had a dog!" SK yelled back as he began sheathing his sword, never taking his eyes off the dog.

"Well, now you do." T stated as he began sweeping the different bags of dried food into different corners of the table. "Dimples, company. Company, Dimples." He said as he waved his hand between Tanner and the dog.

"Company?" Tanner asked.

"Dimples?" SK followed up.

"Mason!" the berserker suddenly shouted, drawing everyone's attention to his presence.

"Whoa, when did you get up?" Tanner asked as he jumped backwards a few inches.

"And why is there a damp spot on your pants?" SK followed up once more, pointing at the large spot on the redhead's crotch. Because of the dark-brown colour of his three-quarter pants, Tanner wasn't able to tell what colour the liquid was, but decided it was best he didn't know.

Looking down to where the onyx-haired rogue was pointing, Mason just shrugged his shoulders while giving a cocky grin. "What can I say; I wasn't going to get much sleep anyway."

"Alright." T interrupted as he pulled out his Scroll. "That's enough. Now that we're all up I need everyone to grab their gear – we're moving to our secondary base of operations."

"You still haven't told us why-" Tanner was about to go off again, but T cut him off.

"Cinder knows where we are and is on her way right now."

Tanner's eyes widened in surprise at hearing this, and immediately followed it up with the question that everyone else had in mind. "How did she find us? I thought you had this place hidde-"

"I told her where we are." The cyborg cut the brunette off again, and it took him a second to process what he had just said.

"Why?" Tanner and SK cried out at the same time.

This time, T actually stopped what he was doing to regard the two. "We can't beat Cinder if she's always hiding in the dark – we need to lure her out." T spoke with clenched fists. "And not just lure her out, we need to lure her into our own turf where we can set a trap – get her while she's still sure of herself." With that, the cyborg tossed his Scroll backwards and onto the table, which caused it to project several three-dimensional numbers into the air. "ETA, fifteen minutes."

As the explanation went on, Tanner's expression changed from one of rage to a familiar understanding, though the anger didn't completely leave him. SK, not having been around T long enough, still didn't understand how things worked with him and was just as angry as before.

"And you didn't think to consult us before you went ahead with your plans?" he asked while waving his arms about incredulously.

To this, T walked right up to SK before speaking in a threatening tone. "I don't have time to waste consulting the likes of you. Deciding on our next course of action would lead us to indecision – time we could better spend fighting Cinder. This is how things work here; I tell you what to do, and you do it. End of story."

SK simply shook his head with a grimace in reply. "That's not how I do things."

"Well get used to it." He hissed out from behind his mask before turning back to Tanner. "You know what to do. Grab your gear and follow Dimples, he'll lead you to Overwatch."

"Yeah, sure." Tanner said as he turned in a small circle for a quick second. "Asshat." He muttered when he wasn't facing T before turning to face Mason. "Come on, let's go blow something up." He said with a beckoning gesture.

"You had me at 'blow something'." Mason conceded as he began following Tanner's lead. SK looked like he was about to follow the swordsman as well, but a robotic arm quickly blocked his path as T stepped in his way.

"I need to talk to you for a moment." T simply stated as if it were a command he couldn't refuse. He probably can't refuse even if he tried. Tanner realised as he went back to his room to get the other half of his weapon set.

Releasing a sigh that he had been holding back, SK simply stared at T before asking. "What?"

For a while, T said and did nothing but hold the intense gaze as his cybernetic eye began to glow brighter and the rogue felt his resolve slowly being chipped away. It didn't take more than a few seconds before the black-haired teen began trying to look at anything else that wasn't the hacker in front of him.

However, as if it were some kind of unspoken test, T suddenly dropped his stoic demeanour as he reached behind his back to grab something off the table and hold it up for SK to see. "A gesture of good-will."

Staring down at the clunky bronze-coloured metal object in T's hand, the rogue gained a confused look for a few seconds before realising what it was: a bracer. "Thanks, b-but no thanks." He replied. Usually, SK wouldn't refuse a free piece of gear or equipment, but given what had just transpired between them, the rogue was finding it difficult in the dry, cold organ that was his heart to trust the cyborg just yet.

It's probably got like, three kinds of trackers, vital monitors and kill switches. Definitely kill switches.

However, T wasn't going to just let him pass up the display of charity as he pushed the bracer against SK's chest. "The open wound in your left wrist is a vulnerability that your opponent can exploit. If it won't heal, then this will protect it."

At the mention of the cut on his wrist, SK's first reaction surprise at how T knew about its condition. "H-how do you know that it won't..." however, the black-haired rogue was quick to cover it up with an indignant scoff. "It is not that big of a deal."

The cyborg proved him wrong when he used his left hand to firmly grasp the bandaged wrist, digging his thumb into the cut as he did and eliciting a pained yell from the rogue as he dropped to his knees. "I rest my case."

"Fuck, that hurt!" SK yelled as he got back up to his feet, making sure to keep his injured arm as far as he could from T while confronting him directly.

"Exactly." T stated as he held up the bracer to chest height. "This bracer has a built in Aura and vital-counter that monitors your physical and internal condition, as well as being able to adjust tight enough to effectively force the wound close, preventing any bleeding." The hacker explained as he forced the bronze piece of armour against SK's chest. "I'm not going have any vulnerability within my company, so either put it on or I'll put it on you in your sleep."

Hesitating for only a second, SK had no doubt that T would follow up his claim and reluctantly took the bracer, removing his bandages first before clasping the device around his left wrist, completely covering the injury as it locked into place. The rogue felt a slight pressure in his wrist as the device automatically adjusted itself so that it tightened around his wrist before settling on a comfortable, skin-fit.

"I'm guessing that's not all this thing does." SK mused to himself as he held it against the light, enjoying how its polished surface shimmered in the artificial light of the apartment.

"The bracer collects and transmits real-time data to your Scroll to look at later. Cartography, vitals, Scroll signals that you can intercept, the good stuff." T explained.

"Alright, then how do I-"

"I already synchronised it to your Scroll's signal." T cut him off, explaining the question before it could fully be spoken. "Just twist your palm upwards and wave your hand across the bracer to activate it."

SK did as he was told and was surprised at what happened next. His eyes widened in surprise as his whole left arm from below the wrist became encircled by different coloured screens of light, each representing a different function that the bracer had. How the hell does it know what percentage integrity it has?

"This is…pretty impressive." SK complimented as he lowered his arm to his side.

"There's something else." T continued. "The bracer also contains a micro-missile launcher that can launch a salvo of four missiles at a time." He said as he grabbed the bracer and tapped a button on the side to cause two compartments on either side of the bracer to pop up and reveal two missiles each, no larger than a Human finger docked in different miniature silos and ready to be fired. "Aim and paint with your glasses."

With that, T walked away to resume his packing, not explaining anything else to SK, which left him wondering what the cyborg meant by 'aim and paint'. The rogue was also confused about the hacker's motives towards having built a weapon just for him. He had no doubt that T had been honest about not wanting a weak link within his team – something he understood from his time in Vacuo, but he wondered if there wasn't an ulterior motive hidden under the layers of bronze and steel he wore. His inquiring eventually led to him asking himself how T was able to build this in under three hours. Even if he knew what he was doing, I doubt that he had the correct parts on hand to just put them together like that…which means… SK shook his head gently, putting the thought aside for a later date.

"Hey, how come the new guy gets a rocket-launching bracelet and I don't?" Tanner questioned as he hefted a crate with him towards the entrance of the apartment.

"Why would you need a missile launcher?" SK asked as he continued to fiddle with the different parts of the bracer.

"Why would you need a missile launcher?" Tanner asked, deflecting the question back at him.

"I don't." SK stated as he walked over to where his poncho hung off the coat-hanger. "I just need the bracer – the missile launcher is a bonus."

Eleven minutes later…

It didn't take long before everyone's necessities were loaded up onto the airship. Despite having told the others repeatedly to only take what they necessarily needed, T found that their perception of necessities and luxuries was greatly warped to the point that they overlapped, unnecessarily.

T also recognised that they wasted a great amount of precious time negotiating, so after the first two incidents, T just quietly unloaded anything that they put on his ship that he deemed 'unnecessary'. He would only be lying to himself if he said that he didn't expect them to retaliate once they realised whatever they had packed was missing, but the hacker also conceded that he would cross that bridge when they get to it.

After having decided that they were just about done, T pulled out his Scroll and began typing in a command for the apartment complex's airship docking system to begin its rundown. After the large machine had finished its start-up procedures, T followed it up with the command to return Overwatch to the surface for take-off.

Over the course of the last two and a half hours, T had spent all of his time performing as many quick repairs as he could on the Bullhead, while simultaneously planning out what to do next in his head. Like the airship, the plan wasn't perfect, but it would work until he had time to make it perfect.

Immediately, the various platforms inside the docking system began shifting to move the platform Overwatch was stationed on to the central elevator, which led them up to the surface. All this took about two and a half minutes, so he knew that they'd be cutting it short.

While he had lied about the estimated time that Cinder would arrive, that didn't mean they had hours to waste before she got here. Truth be told, he had only sent out the message to Cinder and begin the system-wide wipe just as he sent Dimples to wake Tanner up, which meant that they still had roughly ten minutes to get out of here before the ash-haired woman arrived. However, T was not one for taking chances, and wanted to leave as soon as possible.

As they approached the surface, the roof of the underground garage system opened up to reveal that it had stopped raining, though many clouds still dotted the sky, some obscuring the broken moon somewhat as the elevator stopped once they reached surface-level with the apartment.

Running his hand along the length of bow of the airship, T performed one last system check with his Scroll before initiating the pre-flight procedures. He climbed in through one of the open doorways to see that everyone was sitting in their respective corner of the ship. Mason was idly fiddling with his Scroll near the aft of the ship, while SK and Tanner sat in opposite corners closer to the cockpit, each going over their respective weapons and keeping their distance from the berserker.

"We're taking off." T announced as he climbed into the cockpit, not receiving any words of acknowledgement from the others as he picked up his earpiece and microphone from the dashboard of the pilot seat.

Just as he was about to power up the engines for the airship, he heard Tanner's voice calling from the passenger compartment. "Mind telling us where we're going?"

T thought for a moment about his reply as Dimples made his way over to the cockpit and jumping into the co-pilot seat next to him, eventually calling back. "Somewhere safe." With that, he turned to make sure that the scruffy dog next to him was firmly strapped into his seat and equipped with his own set of headgear before tuning out the rest of the world as he turned on his headset and focussed on flying the Bullhead.

"Pre-flight adjustments have been completed." Overwatch's smooth, accented voice said through his earpiece so that only he could hear her. "I would recommend further tests before we actually attempt-"

"No time like the present. Let's take her up." T muttered into the earpiece as he powered up the engines and took the airship into a hover above the ground before plotting in the coordinates for their destination and fired the thrusters.

As they began climbing in altitude, the airship shuddered from time to time due to irregular output from the engines, but the flight-path was steady and it never lost control.

"We've reached steady altitude and have blended in with the Mistral traffic." Overwatch stated as T switched over to auto-pilot as he relaxed into his pilot's seat. Having gone almost twenty-eight hours without sleep was finally taking its toll on him and the leather seat was beginning to feel too good not to nap in.

"Take us the rest of the way, Overwatch." T mumbled as his eyes began sliding shut and his body relaxed into the soft cushioning.

Before T was able to completely slip into unconsciousness however, a last request rang out from Overwatch. "Would you like some music, sir?"

The hacker wasn't even really conscious of his answer as he replied back with, "Play my favourite song, then put on my playlist."

With a soft ping to indicate that there had been a switch in applications, an upbeat tune began playing right after Overwatch's voice chimed, "Now playing 'Best of You' by the Food Fighters."

As the song played on T's mind carelessly drifted off to a time long since passed and to some things T would rather left buried. Gradually, no matter how hard he tried to keep his eyes open, the cockpit, the airship, every slowly faded into a grey blur as he felt his body relax.

Years Ago…

Taking a moment to catch his breath, T was sure he was going to feel that last punch in the morning as he dived out of the way of the large boy's next punch.

"Hold still, rat!" he cried as he rolled out of the way of a kick and a stomp from one of the other kids participating in the fight. Scrambling to his feet, the brunette took the moment of distance between himself and the other kids to get a sense of his spatial awareness.

In front of him were three of the toughest, most brutish boys in the village that he lived in. He didn't know their names – heck, he didn't really know them at all – but they had all exchanged their fair share of punches with T over the last minute or so. Surrounding them was a circle of children – all members of the village as well. They cheered on no one in particular, simply expecting a good fight and possibly some broken teeth.

So far, T wasn't handling himself all too well. The other kids were faster, stronger, tougher, and overall better at this thing than he was, but he saw no other way out of this than to fight them.

Suddenly all three boys charged towards him. T's first instinct was to put some more distance between himself as them to think of something else. However, as he tried to backpedal away, he found himself against the ring of kids watching the fight. As he tried to back away from them, one or two sets of arms reached out and held him in place by his shoulders and arms, giving the three boys in front of him a clean shot at his whole body.

The first punch landed in his gut, which caused him to wretch forward before an uppercut threw his head back up, before a third subsequent punch hit him square in the cheek. By this point, T wasn't sure if the feeling in his mouth was him about to throw up or the taste of blood.

"That's what you get for stealing from us!" one of the boys shouted before punching him in the stomach again. The boy shouted several other things insults to T right after that, but he couldn't hear anything over the ringing in his ears.

His eyelids fluttered as his mind threatened to give out from the pain as another punch caused his legs to give out from the pain, crumpling to the floor at the feet of his tormentor. Looking up into the green eyes of the larger boy, he braced himself for another beating, but none came.

It took a while for his vision to clear up again, but after a few seconds, he saw why no more punches were being sent his way. The circle of boys had parted to make way for a figure no taller than any of them, but much more threatening than anyone amongst them. The three boys that had fought him moments ago now backed away from his curled up body with fearful eyes as they looked at tthe figure who stared right back at them with a death-glare.

However, all T saw was his savior.

A/N: I'm leaving this Author's Note down here for the sole purpose that I don't want people to miss this one (and not because I forgot and only remembered an hour later).

First off, I want to start by thanking anonymous reviewer "Trase". You have no idea what that means to me and the rest of the team behind this story. To think that someone appreciates the amount of planning (there isn't actually THAT much planning, only a base layout) we put into the story is amazing and had me grinning like an idiot. That said, I also wanted toREDACTED

SECURITY FIREWALL STATUS: Breached

WORM IDENTIFICATION SOURCE: Codename T

MESSAGE INTERCEPT Thank's for the review

WORM CONNECTION Status: Terminated

And it always helps if you could follow and favorite us as well, if not, then anonymous reviews are cool as well, just tell your friends about us later.

Along with that, I just did a thing that made communication between viewer and reader all the more easy; I made the story a blog on Tumblr. You can find the blog under the name MSTT/DAWN, and you can find links to ALL the chapters on it, both for MSTT and for DAWN. Along with that, a plethora of content that you can only find on the blog will be put on the blog, including fanart, special messages and much more.

What did everyone think of the surprise shepherd dog? Every good story needs an animal companion, and I just introduced ours. He's also got a ton more to him than meets the eye, so you can be sure that he'll play a big role in the future. Stay tune for the next chapter, it'll be up around sometime next week and it'll give us all a first look at one of the story's main antagonists, and a character with more STORY to him than this one.

Also, I'd like to see if you, the reader, can pick out all the references I've hid in this chapter. You can start off with the song I included towards the end of the chapter (please don't sue me).

Until next time.