Tycho

The hallway was quiet, save for the muffled yelling coming from behind one of the doors of the offices. It was amazing how well the decrepit walls could keep sound from escaping. The shouting began to ramp up, in both frequency and intensity, until the sound of scraping chairs and heavy footsteps could be heard. Two people dressed in dark blue jackets and grey jeans looked at each other, and then back around the corner they were hiding behind.

Suddenly, the door crashed open and a young man with matted black hair stumbled out, yelling, "Oi, watch the jacket, you-"

He was abruptly cut off as another man with shoulder-length green hair took one step forward and brought a glass bottle down on the other's head, causing it to shatter and spill the alcohol all over him and the floor. He screamed in pain at the force of impact and fell backward and braced himself with a hand. Two others came through the door, one of them was dressed in full black robes, of all things, and sported shaved lavender hair and a fu manchu moustache while the other, a blonde, held the man who had attacked the other back.

"You ungrateful bastards!" the youngest shouted. "...Fuckin' hurt!"

"If Laurence lets me go, you're gonna hurt even more when I shove this bottle up your ass!" the other yelled.

"Tycho, Bishop!" Laurence yelled. Both of them stopped shouting at each other, though the death stares remained. Laurence himself let go of Bishop's arm and shoulder, but that only made him start up again.

"You're a worthless lump of trash, T," he spat. "I'unno why we've kept you around for this long."

"'Worthless?'" he cried indignantly, "You're the one who's doing nothing but chugging that low-brow piss-water all day!" motioning to the broken glass. "I should kick you out!"

Bishop threw his head back and started guffawing and Laurence swiftly interposed himself between them. "Both of you," he said sternly. "You keep this up, I'll break both your necks. Bishop!" He stopped his laughter and looked at Laurence in an almost robotic fashion. "You and Aristo get back to the number crunching. Now."

Tycho smirked as Bishop squinted at him and he and Aristo went back into the room. He stopped when Laurence glared back at him. "And you…" he muttered, "get out."

"...What…?" Tycho hunched forward, his arms and jaw dropping in disbelief. "You're takin' his fucking side?"

"As much as I hate to admit it," Laurence replied, crossing his arms, "Bishop's right. You really haven't been pulling your weight around all that much in the past couple years." He leaned forward and scowled directly into Tycho's eyes. "You're getting weak. You know we can't tolerate weakness here."

Tycho remained frozen in shock for a moment before scowling right back at him. "If you weren't my brother, you wouldn't be tolerating these hands," he seethed, holding his fists up.

"And you're right," Laurence shot back, "I won't. You've got two hours. Pack your shit. Get lost. Never come back."

Tycho remembered being hit pretty hard before. Hundreds of times catching hell from Bishop, and when other members of The Tempest Tides tried to be smart with him...but what Laurence said would've floored him if they had any force and weight behind them, like an actual punch. He only stared, stunned, at his brother, who did nothing but glare back down at him. There was dead silence in the hall for another minute before Laurence turned and started walking away. "I'm telling the boys that once you're gone, they're authorized to use force to get you to leave if you come back again. Grab what you need and get the fuck out."

Tycho was still frozen as Laurence walked away, and he stayed quiet for another minute before the gravity of the situation hit him and he screamed at the top of his lungs.

"Y'know what…? Fine! Since you jokers think you can handle your damn selves, I'll leave ya to it, but don't bother callin' me back if ya need a big target picked! 'Cause by God, the next time you see my face again, I'll be strong...Strong enough to kill everyone in this gang by my own fucking self if I want to…!" he yelled after Laurence. Once he got it all out of his system and could see through the moisture in his eyes, he realized there was no one else in the hallway...so he sniffed, blinked a couple times, and turned around to leave, muttering to himself.

He turned the corner at the other end of the corridor and kept stomping forward. He saw there were two other members of The Tides loitering near the door at the end. They must have heard all the yelling. He sighed and hung his head, pretending he didn't notice as he passed them, though as he pushed the door open and left the building, they followed along like lost puppies. Tycho marched across the litter and dry oil-caked street to the warehouse complex next to the apartment building where he used to live. The complex had been abandoned by the New Pacific bureaucracy a dozen or so years back, and a year after that, Laurence formed The Tempest Tides.

On the way over, one of the boys looked over at Tycho, hunched over and face frozen in bitterness, and asked, "So, uh...what was all that about, boss…?" tentatively.

Tycho huffed. "Don't play stupid, shitstick." He pushed one of the rusty doors to the warehouse open. Inside was a large entryway that The Tides had turned into one of their many "social areas," usually filled with beer, cigars and hookah, and on the off-chance any of the punks could snag one, women. Today was a slow day, only two other members of The Tides lounging around and drinking. Of course, once they saw one of their bosses walk in, they sat up immediately and tried to look like they had been doing something important.

"We won't," said the girl to his right, "'cause we heard Laurie said next time we see ya, we're gonna be shootin' each other." They passed through the room and picked up the two other gang members, who quickly asked what was going on. Tycho shut them down. "And you said you'd kill us all," she continued as the other man explained everything in a hushed tone.

Tycho groaned and replied, "I'll kill them, that's for damn sure." He pulled out a lighter and held out his hand; one of the gang members hurriedly retrieved a cigarette from his pocket and threw it to Tycho. He lit it and took a drag. "One of you go find Damyen, tell him my chopper better be in working order."

"Got it, boss!" one of the boys exclaimed, and he ran off to the right and rounded a corner to a door that led to a connecting hallway.

"And if it ain't, tell him he's got five minutes to get it that way!"

There was a muffled, "Sure thing, boss!" from the door again before he heard it slam shut and Tycho sighed and took another drag. "All of you, get lost. I'm goin' to get my guns and then I'm gettin' gone." There was hushed muttering for a moment, but Tycho silenced them all by stating, "I said 'get.'"

So they scattered, some faster than others, but they left him alone all the same, and he marched forward, through a different connection hallway, and into a stairwell. He looked up the empty center of the shaft. It was at least seven floors up; he sighed and started stomping up the stairs, all the way to the sixth floor, and entered another hallway. It was long but not as wide as most others in the complex, and there were several doors on either side of the hallway. He walked all the way down, to about the second door from the end in a total of fifteen, and opened it up.

Inside was, to put it bluntly, a mess. Lockers on all sides of the room, crammed with old clothes and magazines, the floor was littered with toys that hadn't seen daylight in well over ten years, and in the back of the room, mounted on a wall, was a weapon rack, holding two steel pistols. Tycho walked in and down the open aisle in the middle of the room, something made and further refined after years of entering and leaving. He went up to the display and took the two guns and their holsters. "Valhalla Marshalls…" He spun them around his index fingers twice, and held them up to eye-level. "Twelve shots each…" He brought his arms back down and kept spinning them, around both fingers, before tossing the one on his right up into the air, switching the left into his right hand, catching the one he threw, and spun them in reverse. He tossed them both around his back in staggered succession, caught them, and aimed them. "...More than enough to stop a man dead in his tracks."

He remained standing like that, like some sort of washed-up action hero before sighing and wrapping them around his waist. The shock was gone. He didn't feel angry or disheartened anymore. Just numb.

The vehicle shop was full of whoever else could make it in, and instead of looking truly angry, most of the The Tempest Tides seemed confused and...almost sad. They mulled about, centering around some motorcycle with royal-blue paint and maglev wheels, until the door to the shop was thrown open and Tycho stomped in. They all immediately stopped and stood at attention as he walked over to his chopper and sat down in the driver's seat. As he gave the dashboard a once-over, a man in studded leathers and covered in piercings cautiously strode up to him. "...Boss…?"

"Fuck you want, Damyen?" Damyen paused a moment, which prompted Tycho to ask, "Fuck's wrong with this thing now, asshole?"

"Nothing, nothing, man! I just…" he trailed off and looked around hesitantly.

"You 'what?'" Tycho implored.

Damyen scratched the back of his neck and muttered, "Well...we just...we don't know what we're gonna do without you, dude."

Tycho stared at him for a minute, then looked around at everyone else. The punks all gathered around wore various levels of concern; some hid it better than the others. Tycho, on the other hand, took one last puff of his smoke and tossed it on the concrete floor. He pressed a button on the dashboard of the cycle, and one of the garage doors slid up and open to the industrial street outside.

"You guys're fucked."

With his peace spoken, Tycho revved up the engine, and with a loud *crack!* the chopper lurched forward and he steered it out and down the street. Pretty soon, he had left the industrial zone, and was roaring along the main streets of the city. Just as downtrodden and grey as it had always looked. He scoffed and cranked the right handle, increasing his speed until he was going seventy-five in a forty-five mile per hour zone. If the authorities wanted to come after him, he wouldn't object. Maybe he'd kill a few before they could bring him down. "Fat chance they'll get me to talk about anything before my throat gets slit," he muttered.

After a couple minutes, he hit the freeway that led north and out of New Pacific. The highrises were streaming past him as a blur of glass and steel, and other cars would occasionally pass by as well, or in most cases, he'd speed by them, with a few obscenities exchanged. It usually ended with Tycho flashing one of his pistols. Before long, he'd made it to the "end" of the freeway, and took the next exit to go back down to a residential area, though in this case, "slum" was probably the more accurate description.

He wove around dilapidated apartments and half-collapsed storefronts before cutting through a couple back alleys until, finally, he'd made it out.

Tycho stopped his motorbike and leaned back in the seat. It didn't look nearly as grand as he had expected. There was just a wide expanse of grass and hills covering about seventy-five percent of what he could see, and the other twenty-five was what was directly behind him. He sat there, unmoving, for at least five minutes before he groaned and took the reigns again, revving up the engine and launching off into the horizon.

The countryside was as wide as could be, but it all passed in a blur. Tycho was beginning to wish he'd taken a pack of smokes for the road, as he began craving the taste of raw tobacco and nicotine. "Too late now, ya dumbass," he scolded himself.

He'd felt like he'd been driving days, but he figured, realistically, he'd been on the road for about four hours, breaking to stretch every few miles or so. He hadn't seen anything besides the green grass and a few forests, which he swerved to avoid, as well as birds flying across the horizon. Tycho spat as he sped along the open expanse. "Fuck. Me. 'Pick a goddamned direction and stick with it,' I said. Fuck's wrong with me?" he fumed. He would've harped on himself longer, but out of the corner of his eye, he noticed something off. While the rest of the sky was growing darker, there was one section in the east where he could clearly see light reflecting off the clouds. He stared for a minute...then it hit him.

Tycho jerked a hard right on the controls, speeding him along toward his new, gleaming destination. For once in his life, he felt a smile creep across his face.

He rode on, for another hour and a half before he could get a clear view of what he was chasing. He squinted at it. The buildings were almost all coated in dark grey chrome, certainly not an overlander city. Tycho kept staring for a moment longer before he noticed a highway ramp off to the side that obviously led into the city limits. He made another hard right and kept moving. He got a mile in and everything changed. As Tycho looked from side to side at the sidewalks, he saw no one else walking around. He grimaced. With what he knew of the world outside New Pacific's walls, he could only find one explanation for this.

Driving along, he saw, between the buildings speeding by, a palace, clad in grey and stretching up into the overcast sky. He stared at it for a second before groaning and spitting into the wind. "Goddammit." Tycho hadn't been taught much geography, but he knew enough about how purebred overlanders and mobians hated each other. He pursed his lips. Maybe he could get a free pass through Mobotropolis if he proved he could be just as ruthless. After all, he thought, these fleabags don't know about us blackstrains. Probably thought Megapolis was the only settlement of ours that disappeared into the ground.

Lights. Tycho snapped himself out of his thoughts and could see, far up ahead, the beams of floodlights aimed down the road. From what else he could see beyond the blinding rays, there seemed to be a security gate manned by two guards. "Ah, fuck," he spat again. It didn't take long for the two guards to see the cycle driving up the road, and Tycho was fairly certain they were waving for him to stop.

So he did.

He swung his bike to the side, bringing it to a stop so that it was perpendicular to the road, and he stepped off the seat in one swift motion, walking forward with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders slumped forward. His eyes hardened into a hateful gaze that could bore through stone.

But the two guards, dressed in their dull yellow uniforms, either couldn't tell or they were painfully oblivious to his attitude. The latter was most likely, as when they realized an overlander was approaching them, they both smirked...and then started laughing.

"Hey, Rail!" one of them exclaimed, "Looks like we got a sheep that's too far from home!"

"Holy shit, Marc, you right!" he replied. Rail took a few steps toward Tycho. "What's a li'l sheep like you doin' away from your crater, eh?"

Tycho was by no means sympathetic to his pureblood cousins' city's fate, but he wasn't going to take any taunts like that lying down. At least, not until the two of them came closer. "Well…?" Marc jeered, "what'cha doin', li'l lamb? Can't hear ya over your 'superior and peaceful ways.'"

The two mobians paused and shared a glance, then broke out in uproarious laughter. Yet, Tycho made no sign of moving. All he did was stand still; only blinking to show he was still alive, and by now, the two guards were eyeing him suspiciously. "Marc?" Rail asked, "He's not doin' anything. Y'think he's retarded?"

"Beats me. Maybe the little cunt's mute." Rail stared down at Tycho and then chuckled. "Hey, maybe he was a POW back in the day. I bet they tore his tongue out." They laughed, but it didn't last long.

Tycho, in the blink of an eye, pulled out his pistols and threw himself at Rail, and wrapped his left arm around his neck in an instant, and aimed the gun in his free hand directly at Marc. He pulled back with his arm, forcing a stunned Rail to start choking. Marc would've yelled something along the lines of "Holy shit!" but Tycho beat him to it.

"Open the gate," he demanded, doing his best to keep Rail from squirming.

"W...what…?"

"I said open the gate, you sorry excuse for an asylum patient." He kept his right arm aimed as close to Marc's head as he could. "Do it now, or you might be payin' this dumb cunt's life insurance."

Marc backed up, going closer to the control station. It was a small booth, but was still big enough to pilot the gate controls...as well as hide a proton rifle under the control panel. "Hang-hang on, man," Marc stammered out, "don't do something drastic."

Tycho paused and flicked his eyes down to look at his hostage. "...You're right," he said, "I don't need to do anything drastic." He remained still for a minute longer before he quickly turned his free hand around, pulled the trigger, and after the gunshot stopped ringing, let Rail's body fall to the road. He quickly aimed both his guns at Marc and added grimly, "Why do something drastic when I can do something efficient?" He approached Marc until his pistols were practically pressed against the mobian's nose. "Open the gate," he deadpanned.

After a tense, dead silent pause, Marc turned and fully went into the booth. He started to nervously fiddle with the controls, occasionally looking over his shoulder at a very angry and very impatient Tycho, who would shake his guns at him to get him to work faster. Still, after a few minutes of quiet punctuated only by buttons, the force gate in front of them fizzled out.

He stared down the road. The highway, from what he could see, took a right, and cut through the city center. Tycho sighed, and thanked whatever cruel God was out there that at least his bike didn't need physical fuel, then shot a glance back at Marc. He was still cowering in the toll booth, but he could feel the butt of his proton rifle with his boot. As soon as Tycho turned around, he'd be dead. Tycho looked back down the road one more time, and he stared at it long and hard. Finally, he cracked his neck, and then there was another gunshot. By the time Marc's body had crumpled to the floor, he had turned around and was walking back to his bike.

He sat down in the seat, revved up the engine, and took off down wherever the dark road ahead of him would go, and he drove on. After awhile, he noticed, out of the corner of his eye, a strange, dull silver light snaked its way up over the rooftops of the city center below. He couldn't tell where it was coming from exactly, but it looked like it originated in the open city square, just in front of the castle.

Tycho quickly looked back at the road and tried to ignore it. But with each passing second, the curiosity pestered him, wriggling like a worm in the back of his mind.

"Fuck's sake." He made another hard right on his bike, and launched himself off the highway, fell a few feet, and hit a local road, roaring toward where he'd seen the action about to go down.

There was groaning and some muttered curses as The Suppression Squad all stood up, still catching their breath. After taking a look around Alicia gritted her teeth and wiped the dust off the shoulder of her coat. "That went to hell in a handbasket fast. Can't really be surprised..." she trailed off as she shot a sideways glance at Scourge.

The hedgehog himself was looking around trying to place their location, but he did managed to hear Alicia's comment. When he saw her glaring at him out of the corner of her eye, he scoffed indignantly and spat, "Oh, so it's my fault now, allova sudden?"

"Kintobor-" Alicia coughed and corrected herself, "Robotnik backstabbed us and you didn't see it coming?"

"That's your job!" Scourge exclaimed, throwing his arms up in the air. "You're supposed to be the planner! The guy who sees how shit's gonna go down before anything actually goes down!"

Alicia gritted her teeth again. "I can't be your goddamn babysitter every day of the week!" she yelled. "I got my own shit to worry about!"

"Oh, like that pregnancy test you told me about a few days ago?" Scourge retorted.

"Shut up...!"

"To be fair..." Scourge and Alicia quickly turned their heads to look at Miles, who was adjusting his cufflinks. "You both screwed the pooch on this one. You got someone suspicious enough to look into a possible case of mistaken identity," he said, pointing to Scourge, "and you were dumb enough to stay in a clusterfuck of a fight at the end. Once again, this proves I've got to do everything around here."

Scourge's teeth suddenly grinded together like millstones and he stomped up to Miles. "Didn't see you cookin' up any backup plans, pixel-brain," he seethed.

"Because I thought you had everything under control!" Miles replied indignantly. "But as usual, I was sorely mistaken."

His collar was quickly snatched up by a now-furious Scourge. "Oh, now you're gonna get it!" He wound up his free hand, tensed and ready to strike, but at that very moment, like some sort of divine intervention, the sound of a hoverbike drew closer until it stopped at the edge of the plaza. The Suppression Squad whipped their heads around to look who had found them, expecting another civilian too nosy for their own good and had planned to deal with in the usual manner. An overlander on a bike, however, was the last thing they expected to see.

On the other side, Tycho saw a gathering of rough-looking mobians that he realized he shouldn't be dealing with right now. "Yeah, fuck that," he muttered. He revved up the engine of his bike again, but as he turned it, he heard one of them yell something he really didn't want to hear.

"An overlander! Get that sonovabitch…!"

"Are you fucking-" Before Tycho could complete that thought, he felt his bike get hit with some sort of energy pulse, and the maglevs shorted out. "Oh my fucking-!"

Boomer stood back up to full height after shooting a focused EMP from the augments on his forearms and he grinned. "One sitting duck for you, Scourge."

"Get his ass!"

Tycho heard that command yelled and heard several pairs of boots hitting the ground, running toward him. He paused. His gaze hardened. Tycho pulled out his two pistols and spun around, firing them off like a cowboy, and quickly recognized four possible targets: Alicia, Miles, Boomer, and Buns, which he began shooting at. Of course, the four of them were moving in from different directions, meaning he had to pick and chose which side he shot, decisions that severely impacted his focus.

He'd been punched several times, by Alicia, then Buns, then Miles, then Buns again, and he was fairly certain, after receiving a nasty jab to the face, he'd have a great big shiner to parade around for a few days. Tycho bent low to the ground, spreading his feet apart and fired off another volley at Buns. Thanks to having been hit in the head multiple times over, not a single shot landed. He slid the power packs out and hooked them to his belt before sliding the two spares he had in, letting the old ones recharge.

Tycho looked up just in time to see Miles coming at him with a kick, which he raised his arms to block and threw Miles off. "This...won't get any easier," Miles said, breathing hard, "There's seven of us and...one of you. Just give up."

"I'll die first," Tycho spat back.

Suddenly, he felt something hit him in the side of the head and it sent him tumbling through the grass for a few feet. He struggled to keep himself from spontaneously blacking out, kneeling on all fours, panting heavily. Tycho hadn't seen anything happen; he only heard someone running and then a rush of wind. He looked up to see a streak of blue moving around the perimeter of the city square. He felt something running down his lip and wiped it off with his hand. Blood. "That hedgehog…"

Tycho forced himself back up and began taking potshots at Scourge. Each one fell just short of hitting the mark, as least, that's what Tycho guessed. Scourge was moving too fast to tell. Tycho, then decided, to take aim where he guessed Scourge would be; although he had to jump backward when he saw Alicia swinging her whip toward him. Once he was safely far enough away, he took aim and fired.

He didn't expect Scourge to change trajectory on a dime and come barreling toward him. That was the last thing he saw before he saw something coming straight for his face and his vision went black.

Scourge, Alicia, and Miles strode down through the dungeons. Tycho had been quite uncompromising the past few hours, but repeated interrogations had given them the insight to his mind. It was slowly breaking down, they could see it in his eyes and his posture. The three of them reached the lowest level and went to the third cell on the right, and there he was.

He was in a sorry state now, sitting on the floor hunched over, breathing heavily. Scourge grinned when he saw him, and Tycho could seem to tell right away when he had company. He brought his lowered head up some so that his face was partially visible under his shaggy black hair, furious scowl and all.

"So…" Scourge began, "Care to spill the beans on who you are an' why you're here? Or do we have ta go through the motions again…?"

Tycho remained silent, but he stood himself up and leaned back against the wall of the cell. His face and voice remained completely void of emotion as he said, "Fine. I'll talk." The three others shared a quick mildly-surprised, but still victorious smirk with each other. "...On one condition."

Almost immediately the smiles disappeared, and Alicia looked about ready to flog Tycho right then and there. Scourge held her back with an outstretched arm, and Tycho casually walked up to the proton beams. He stood there, glaring the three of them down and letting the silence sink in before he asked:

"Can I have a smoke? It's almost been a day an' I need my damn fix."

They all looked at each other for a moment before Scourge scoffed and raced out of the corridor and out of the dungeons. He was back a few seconds later with a cigarette, which he tossed in between the cell bars. "Need a light?"

Tycho grabbed it out of the air, looked it over for a second, and then muttered, "...Yeah."

"Ha! Forget it, asshole," Scourge taunted.

Tycho stared at him as Alicia and Miles shared a hushed chuckle. After awhile he shrugged, reached into his jacket, and pulled out his own lighter. "Gotta do everything my own damn self, don't I?" he muttered bitterly. He took a drag and watched the other three's wide-eyed expressions in a sideways glance. Finally, he exhaled and watched as the smoke congealed and dispersed just a few inches above his head. "...Fuuuuuck."

He was content to stew in the silence before he heard Scourge bark, "A'right druggie, you've got what you wanted. Start talkin' or I'll come in there myself an' make you wish you'd done it sooner!"

"Hrm. Guess you're right," Tycho said. He took another drag, breathed out, and explained, "Tycho. New Pacific. Got kicked out."

Scourge sighed and covered his face with his palm. "Gee, thanks, that explains a lot of fuckin' nothing! Gimme a complete fucking story, ya walleyed inbred!"

"Oughta work on your 'indoor voice.' Didn't your mama ever give you that lesson?" Scourge looked about ready to turn off the cell bars and race up to the roof of the castle so he could drop Tycho off of it, but he calmly continued, "My name's Tycho Cronus, and I'm from New Pacific City. It's a few hours' ride out to the west."

Scourge was about to fire off another slew of insults laced with the occasional question before Miles shoved him aside and began talking to Tycho instead. "How long have you...lived there?"

"My whole life," he shot back.

"How many years?"

Tycho sighed and looked off to his left. "Nineteen years. Give or take a couple months, I really don't care," he said after taking another drag. "Got kicked out of the gang I used to run."

"You're awfully...forthcoming with this information," Miles droned.

After pausing and taking another smoke, Tycho shrugged and stared back at his captors. "Got no other ties left there. Pacific could get nuked from orbit'n I won't bat an eye." Everyone was silent. Only Alicia and Scourge looked around to grin at each other, something Tycho noticed and didn't like. But then, he thought, it's not like I can really do anything above voice my discontent.

"Well, well, well…" Scourge began, "looks like we got us a new member of the team."

Tycho started choking on his cigarette after almost inhaling it from shock after he went to take one more drag. "...Burn in hell…!" he coughed out. It took him another minute of choking before he cleared his throat completely and yelled, "I'd eat my own eyeballs before agreeing to team up with you!"

This made Alicia laugh. It was surprisingly low-pitched for a woman, which Tycho found somewhat menacing. His training forced him to keep a straight face. "Then I guess you can rot in that cell," she proclaimed. She cracked her neck and continued, "Oh, don't worry, you won't get bored. We'll take you out at least once a day and keep you...how do I put it…? On your toes?" Alicia chuckled grimly again. "You'll know your still alive, that's for sure."

"More torture?" Tycho paused...and chuckled. "Just know beforehand that I ain't bein' held responsible for what I say."

"Screamin' for mercy won't make it any easier," Scourge taunted.

Tycho couldn't help but chuckle at his ignorance. Scourge ignored his previous comment and shrugged. "Suit'cher self," he said as he ran off. Alicia and Miles followed him.

This left Tycho to consider his options. Being stuck in New Pacific had led him nowhere, and now he was stuck in a jail cell and going nowhere even faster. He sighed dejectedly and leaned on the wall, mulling over his options for a moment before calling, "Hey! Come back'ere a sec!" He waited, half-expecting no one to show up at all, but to his surprise (and very, very, very mild relief) he saw Alicia and Miles return to his cell, gazing at him curiously. Tycho threw his cigarette on the ground and put it out. "I'll take your offer on joinin' this stupid team of yours."

This seemed to trigger another blue flash behind the two other members of The Suppression Squad, and Scourge pushed them both out of his way. It made Tycho scoff. "Selective hearing issues too, huh?"

"Nah, absolutely not," Scourge replied. He punched a few buttons on the keypad lock next to the cell and the proton bars evaporated, but before Tycho could even get up, Scourge had marched into the cell and grabbed Tycho by the collar. "But remember," he threatened, "you're followin' everything and anything I say to a 'T,' capishe?"

"Erck, Jesus!" Tycho struggled a bit as he tried to loosen Scourge's grip. "And if I refuse...?"

Scourge remained silent, only staring dead into Tycho's eyes...before he punched him in the jaw and letting him fall to the ground, spitting out blood that was now pooling in his mouth. "Then that happens." Tycho stared up at Scourge, who only grinned maliciously and ran off again.

He struggled to get the stars out of his vision and stand up when he heard Miles add, "And that goes double for us. You're weak until proven otherwise." The other two left, and Tycho was left alone. He sauntered out after the bleeding had died down some and looked at the long hallway, leading upstairs and to a strange new road. He checked his pistols, sighed, and resigned himself to marching up.

A/N: And we're back. I needed a break from writing this fic for awhile so I could focus on other projects/school. Mostly my other projects tho, I won't lie.