#dutchxtennie

[tinfoil-jones]

Motorcity: Legacy, Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I do not own Motorcity, or the song. Motorcity belongs to Disney, and the song belongs to Lordi Title: Burners Legacy Rating: T-M depending on chapter Summary: He didn’t want to be his carbon copy, but he might have to be in order to rescue him from Deluxe. Pairings: MikexChuck, DutchxTennie, ClairexFoxy, DukexBabs, Juliex?, OCxOC Warnings: Don’t read if you don’t like or are triggered by violence, death or dystopian societies Author’s Note: Some characters you like died.

~~~

Chapter 1: Blood Red Man

\They called me “The Leather Apron” They called me “Smiling Jack” They prayed to the heavens above That I would never ever come back

Can you hear how the children weep? Chills of fear like a sawblade cutting deep\

“You look so much like Mike.” Was something Mitch was told frequently throughout his life; and it was true. He was already taller than Mike at age seventeen, taking more after Chuck in that regard, his hair was the same thickness but a slightly lighter shade yet still dark brown, and his nose was long instead of broad and his cheekbones were set slightly lower. His eyebrows weren’t as thick as Mike’s, and he lacked the signature sideburns. But other than that, he was a dead ringer for Mike Chilton. And when he was younger he loved it; his father was a legend amongst Motorcity after all, and being seen as ‘just like him’ gave his younger self a false sense of pride. Back then, Mitch even had a very similar hairstyle with short, but straight hair and a cowlick at the center of the part.

Nowadays, he hated the comparison. Not because he hated his father, but because people always told him he looked just like him with such amazement as if he didn’t already know that because he was told it constantly. It irked him so much he spiked up his hair with copious amounts of gel just to create some differentiation between them. But that was after the incident.

Then the incident occured when he was fourteen.

The incident was called ‘Hellfire Rain’ and for good reason. It started out as a siege of the Cabler settlement, which wasn’t an unheard of event. Mitch was left at Jacobs place with his baby sister while it happened, and his parents in Mutt left to respond. The everything went wrong. A series of bombs were thrown around by the Kane Bots and one caused a large cable to fall down and explode, which destroyed about ten percent of the Cablers settlement.

The cable had fallen right next to Mutt and then exploded; Mike had survived, but was unconscious and then captured by Kane’s forces, Chuck was killed either by the explosion itself or the resulting fire, either way according Texas all that was left was a charred body. Mitch really hoped, in a morbid way, that it was the explosion that had killed him, because he didn’t want his dads last moments spent suffering by burning to death. Chuck wasn’t the only one to meet his demise at that initial battle either, as Tennie’s father perished as well when he was trapped behind rubble and suffocated on smoke.

That was just the start though, Kane forced were rejuvenated through the capture of Mike Chilton and decided to go after the rest of Motorcity while they were at it, and a series of raids and bombings followed. No one was untouched by the Hellfire Rain; all of the Burners allies were affected. The Duke had a portion of his dump incinerated during a raid, he and his daughter Dutchess and some of his goons managed to survive the war, but some of his goons were killed, including his late wife Babs.

The assault on the lower half of Detroit lasted for four months. Near the end, during a last stand where the remaining gangs rushed Kane’s forces and drove the bots back to Deluxe, Claire’s wife Foxy was killed when her vehicle was T-boned by a warpod. Claire was from then on absolutely done with Motorcity and stayed in Deluxe, forcing their son Teddy to stay there with her (although he did eventually run away and return to Motorcity).

After the Hellfire Rain incident, Mitch saw less and less of the original Burners; with Tennie’s father dead, Tennie had to take his place as the Cablers leader and Dutch stayed by his wife’s side and helped her take care of the settlement. Julie had somehow upgraded from intern to an executive in Kane Co and was practically second-in-command, which was unexpended but not entirely unpleasant because she would still not hesitate to rally to Motorcity’s defense even if she couldn’t carry on being a full time Burner. And of course he never saw Claire since as her amity towards Motorcity was so strong she couldn’t even go down there to drag her son back to Deluxe.

Currently, Mitch and most of the rest of the ‘new Burners’ reside at Jacobs place, which was being run by Texas, as Jacob was too sick and frail to do much anymore.

“Still bummed about yesterday?” His co-conspirator Miles suddenly asked, as he laid on the hood of his car Moonstruck, one arm behind his head and the other holding a book in front of his face which he was barely paying attention to. Inactive, Mitch had his jacket in his room and was wearing only the black turtleneck he usually wore under it, his black jeans, and his black sneakers with a blue and green stripe.

Miles was an older teen, about nineteen, who was tall but stood a few inches below him still. She had light brown hair pulled into a ponytail and bangs held in place with a red hair clip, her eyes were the same color of her hair and framed by wire-rimmed circular glasses. She usually wore a yellow-trimmed red leather jacket with the Burners emblem on the back, but now that they were in the garage she had it off; she otherwise wore a sleeveless white v-neck, black tights and red-and-yellow converse boots. She had a red-and-yellow gaping-maw facemask that she usually pulled up to her nose when she was riding, but now that she was idle she had it around her neck instead. Mile’s wasn’t like the other Burners in the sense that she had no connection to the former Burners, the only thing she had in common with them was that she had also been affected by Hellfire Rain, as her mother had died during one of the assaults.

“Go. Away.” Mitch muttered, after yesterday’s failure in rescuing his father from Kane Co he was in no mood to deal with anyone right now.

“Oh come on Mitch you’ve been on the same page for an hour.” Miles told him as she leant over the black hood of his car; Miles wasn’t as into cars as the rest of them, which is why she had a motorcycle called Prowler instead. He sighed and put his book down; she was right.

“I got him Miles, I actually got him out of suspension and ten feet away from that port but I still lost him.” He said “If it were the other way and dad was saving me we would have made it back.” Miles adjusted her glasses at his self doubt.

“You did your best,” she comforted “for gods sake you phased through that building for three hours looking for the specific room he was in.” For over a year ever since he got a firmer grasp on hacking Mitch had been scouring all the files and archives he could looking for some reference to a private cell of some kind, as Mike Chilton was not listed as an inmate at the maximum security prison in Deluxe. After a while, Mitch came to the conclusion that there was no way that Kane would have any file that could be exploited by cyberterrorists such as himself. So he figured he had to manually sweep the building. Mitch had to do back alley deals and even resorted to stealing to get the tech he needed; he managed to snag himself a wristband that allowed the user and any person they were touching to become intangible and invisible; but when it was shorted out at Kane Co, the program that provided this function was too corrupted to allow further use so he had to delete them.

“My best? What does my best matter if I couldn’t even save my father.”

“We’ll try again another day!” Miles insisted “You know that Kane won’t kill him.”

“I don’t care, I don’t care until he’s finally home safe.” Mitch shot back, then stood up and walked away, back to his room.

Or at least he would have if an excited squeal followed by a crash didn’t suddenly permeate the garage from the kitchen, followed by a deep encouraging yell. Rolling his eyes, Mitch went to the kitchen to find what he expected; a ramp formed by a wooden board propped on top of a large steel pot, and his baby sister Little T on the ground with a small scooter about a foot away. Little T was laughing at what must have been a ‘stunt’ and their caretaker Texas has standing by and above her laughing also. Texas had matured but only physically he no longer wore his racing jacket and wore a white tank top instead, and his hair was gay-streaked and a lot longer than it used to be, making him look almost like a past era metal head.

“Yeah that was awesome Little T! Let’s do it again!” Texas whooped and struck an action pose, and Little T immediately got back on her feet and reached for her scooter.

Mitch picked the toddler up and held her in front of him “I think four crashes in one day is enough,” he said, studying his baby sister for any abrasions or bruises. Little T pouted at her brothers fussing.

“Stwong!” She complained and held up her arms as if to flex but all there was was baby fat “Awesome!”

Little T’s actual name was Tory, and she looked more like Chuck but still managed to hold a heavy resemblance to Mike and by extension Mitch. She had shoulder length brown hair the same colour as Mike’s, and she had his nose also. She had fair skin though, with freckles, and blue eyes. At age three she didn’t have all of her teeth yet and had a fair few gaps here and there, but it made it look adorable when she smiled, and she always wore a black t-shirt that was too big for her with the sleeves and the stripe down the middle red, and brown shorts. Since she usually stayed at Jacobs place she usually didn’t wear shoes and just wore mismatched socks instead.

Surprisingly, her main caretaker besides Mitch was Texas and he doted on the toddler. At first, he was pretty lost and confused because he didn’t know the first thing about taking care of babies let alone a baby girl. And as with any female he couldn’t even initially remember her name and just called her ‘Little T’, as in Little Texas. And the nickname was well deserved because as she got older and more active she was practically just like Texas. It surprised and relieved Mitch to no end that her first word wasn’t Texas, because now that she could say it she shouted it as a ‘battle cry’ just like the man himself.

“Just practicing with scooters before we move her onto cars.” Texas said with a grin as he crossed his arm. Bless his soul he meant well and he loved her, but sometimes it’s like he didn’t understand just how fragile three-year-olds really were.

“That’s not for another thirteen years.” Mitch deadpanned and placed his baby sister on the counter, he reach into the drawer and put a bandage on her nose where there was a scratch.

“It’s never too early to start little dude! She’ll be out racing you before you know it.” Texas exclaimed. “You were her size not too long ago!” Mitch only rolled his eyes again.

“Nap time.” He said to his baby sister and held her again.

“Noooo! Nap bad!” She said and thrashed around.

“Too bad.” Mitch said and carried her to his room, where he placed her on the bed behind him as he sat at the edge of it. Luckily, unlike Texas, Little T was actually quite obedient and begrudgingly crossed her arms to curl up for her nap.

Of the people who lived here, Mitch had the cleanest room; he had a clear desk with all of the contents in the drawers, a twin-sized ‘bed’ in the corner which was a mattress propped on top of another mattress but it was still neatly made, a bookshelf full of hand-me-down books and a few figurines, a closet with no door, a chest in front of the foot of his bed, and a black stratocaster in a different corner next to a beat up and obviously scrapped amplifier.

“Mit?” She said, it was a nickname she had for him because she was too young to say his name without making it sound like ‘bitch’.

“Yes?” Mitch responded as he grabbed his jacket - his jacket was actually the same cadet jacket their father used to wear when he was in the Kane Co military, it was just dyed and customized; it was mainly dark blue, with bright green where the white used to be, the Burners logo was where the Kane Co symbol used to be, and the ‘K’ on the other side was changed into a ‘B’.  People used to think he would wear his father dark-blue-and-orange jacket, but out of respect for his fathers eventual return he kept it in the display case in the garage where it had been ever since Hellfire Rain.

“When daddy home?” She asked, playing with the cover on the pillow. Mitch froze. She didn’t remember their parents, as she’d only been six months old when that fateful day came. She was, however, well aware that Mike was alive, and was always assured that he would ‘come home soon’.

“He’s… going to come home soon.” Mitch promised hallowly and kissed her cheek. She didn’t pout this time because this was always the answer she got, and she just closed her eyes to sleep. Given that she’d been raised primarily by himself and Texas, she didn’t quite understand the significance of ‘daddy’, it was really more of a word to her. “Soon…” He repeated, he placed his hands on his knees as stared at them as he thought.

Maybe going it alone hadn’t been the best idea, but what other choice did he have? The invisibility/intangibility function was limited to the user and anyone he was touching. He couldn’t sweep through the building with four people hanging on him and each other, not quietly or quickly at least. The current Burners consisted of him, the leader and software specialist. Miles, the scout. Dana, the hardware mechanic/specialist. Kameron, the muscle and spy. And Teddy, the resident medic. No… they couldn’t have been as much help as a hindrance. Going through Kane Co undetected was a solo mission and he messed it up and it was his own fault. He should have saw Mike’s weakness early on, of course he was going to be slow he’d been in stasis for three years.

And why did he have to tell him the truth about his other dad…

Right then had been the worst possible time to tell Mike the truth about Chuck. Mitch should have just lied and told him the truth later, he should have put his honesty aside just long enough to get his father back in Motorcity.

Whoever said that lying was a sin really should have put situations like that into consideration.

Making sure Little T was asleep, Mitch reached between the mattresses and pulled out a ziplock baggie, inside of it was a worn out picture frame which he took out of the bag. At the bottom of the picture frame ‘Chilton Family’ was sloppily scrawled in marker, the ‘L’ had been left out initially on accident and added later. The picture was a black-and-white faded image from three and a half years ago; he was thirteen and small for his age, Mike was standing behind him with his hand on his shoulder and was looking lovingly to the side at Chuck, who was a holding a just recently born and swaddled Little T. 

He gritted his teeth as he looked at the picture, and twin trail of tears ran down his face.

—

Julie stood by her father with her arms behind her back, staying quiet as her father was yelling; the now elderly ruler of Detroit Deluxe was pacing back and forth in behind his desk; in front of the desk were some of his other executives, Admirable Gordy of the military, and his ‘private contractor’, Red. Behind her was her son Kameron the ‘intern’, in his Deluxe issued clothing and holding the same pose as her. Unlike her, Kameron could not lie about his parentage, because he looked as much like her as Mitch did to Mike; he had the same rounded cheeks that she did but he had a squarer, more prominent jaw, and his eyes were a darker shade of brown, but he had the same dark red, smooth hair just in a short style. However, since there was still a small amount of people who knew that Julie was Kane’s heir, there was no reason at the time to lie about Kameron.

Red was knelt on the ground as he listened to the ranting of his boss and employer; Julie always felt a special contempt for the man; almost three decades and he still couldn’t let his hatred for Mike go and still worked on behalf of Kane, even though that meant he was a menace to his original home of Motorcity. Ever since Mike had been captured he’d been more mellow than he once was, but he was still twitchty. No doubt just wanting Mike dead instead of in stasis.

“I can’t believe Chilton almost escaped!”  Abraham Kane barked; he was past his seventies but due to the extended lifespan typical of Deluxe he was still strong and lively for his age, he hadn’t lost any muscle mass and the only thing different between him now and him when Julie was a teenager was that his hair was mostly white. “I thought the Burners were disbanded!”

“It appears these are new Burners, sir.” Red replied; Red had present during the initial Hellfire Rain attack that had Mike captured and Chuck killed, he’d sustained enough damage that his vocal chords were burnt by inhaling burning fumes and he had to be fitted with a mechanical voice module, which rendered his voice completely robotic.

“That Burner was nothing short of a clone,” Kane pointed out crossly; Julie knew that her father didn’t want a repeat of Mike “he looks like Chilton spat him out.”

The head scientist of Kane Co’s tech department was fiddling around with a projection screen, he appeared to be hacking into some files from Motorcity “It appears this boy is Mike Chiltons son; Mitchell Chilton. He’s seventeen years old.” He explained. Julie had to keep back a flinch at the previously unknown information about the existence Mitchell, but the hospital files in Motorcity weren’t as strongly protected as they would be in Deluxe and comparatively easy to hack.

“Another Chilton?!” Kane groaned in frustration and pinched the skin between his eyes.

“With him in the Burners it wouldn’t be far fetched that these other new Burners are also children of their predecessors.” The head of the tech department said; Julie saw a worried look briefly flash in Admirable Gordy’s eyes; his niece Dana was one of those new Burners.

“This is ridiculous, those Burners have been out of my hair for three years and they shoot up out of the ground like a ragweed by breeding like rats?” Kane inquired angrily, then looked down at Red, pointing at him “I want you to go down to that sewer and gather information on these new Burners.” Kameron, a Burner, was beginning to look uncomfortable as well.

“What kind of information are you looking for, sir?” Red asked, looking up at him from the ground; Julie imagined there was a smug look behind that visor.

“Whatever information it takes to end the Burners once for all.”

—

“That was a bunch of bull.”

“Language, Kameron.” Julie chided her son.

“But it was.” He said, looking down at her slightly; Kameron, being eighteen, was one of the oldest new Burners save for Miles who was nineteen, putting him in a slightly different position than she had been when she was a young Burner, even though he was also a spy. “Why don’t we just… you know.” Julie automatically elbowed him hard in the side which made the boy yelp a little “Oh come on! It’s not that much different than waiting for him to die, which could take thirty more years.” Kameron was adored by his grandfather, naturally, but Kameron believed in the liberation of Motorcity so much that unlike Julie, he thought it was best to just kill Kane.

“You don’t mean that and you know it, Kameron,” Julie tugged the younger redhead down slightly by the ear “you talk like that but we both know you’re not capable of that. And he’s your grandfather.”

“He’s evil.”

“Not entirely.” Julie insisted and let go of the boys ear, which he rubbed to relieve the soreness “If you were to… kill him, that wouldn’t make you any better than you think he is. And no one would rally to either yours or my own leadership if we usurped power instead of legally inheriting it, which is what we are going to do. Now, go to your room.” Hands up defensively, Kameron scrambled to where his room was, but no doubt he wouldn’t be there very long and would go to Motorcity within the hour.

Only two other executives knew that Julie was the heir to Kane Corporation, and by extension, Deluxe; the remaining original Burners still didn’t know. Her son Kameron was also sworn into secrecy, for his own safety. There were plenty of people willing to hurt Kane by any means, even if it meant going after someone who was on Motorcities side.

Julie sighed and headed to her office to ponder on what was said during the meeting; her father saw Mitchell and all he saw was another Mike, but that wasn’t the case. Kane was expecting another Mike Chilton and that was the mindset he was staying with; this put the actual Mike Chilton at risk of being terminated early just to kill Mitchell’s resolve.

Julie wanted very badly to save her friend from stasis herself, but there were some secrets Kane wouldn’t give even to her and that was one of them. He was the only one who knew were Mike was currently being held and he never put it on file, keeping that information to himself instead, the one place that could not be hacked. And as often as the blueprints for the building were updated there were so many changes so often it was impossible to saw where Mike’s pod was being kept, and she looked often but still found nothing. Mitchell had chanced it by manually phasing through walls. At this rate it might actually take until her father died of natural causes before she would know.

She had to passively stand by as she watched her old friend get arrested in front of the closed off ports, as he was dragged back into the building, and given another grandiose speech from Kane about how his time was over, and he didn’t even fight it as he was shoved into a new pod that would soon after be moved into an undisclosed location; her old friend had looked at her, and only nodded, as if to acknowledge that he knew that she had no choice.

In her office, she closed and locked the door; on her desk there was a projected image in one corner of her holding an toddler Kameron, and Claire with an infant Teddy. Time sure did go by quickly, at this point she’d really hoped her father would have accepted letting Motorcity exist autonomously, but of course he didn’t. He wanted to control everything. She sat down at her desk chair; she would always love her father, and would always believe he had good in him, for she’d seen it before and so had Kameron.

Sometimes though, she wondered if it was selfish of her to covet her father’s life at the expense of others…

Foxy, Chuck, Tennie’s father, Babs, and Tooley for example…

Her communicator started to beep and she made sure her door was locked before answering; a pixelated head icon of Mitchell appeared.

“Hello Mitchell.” Julie greeted with a bittersweet smile.

“Kam just called me and said something big went down at Kane Co, should I be concerned?” The head icon asked.

“Maybe just a little bit…” The executive began “Kane just sent Red down to Motorcity.”

“Red? Isn’t he satisfied enough?” Julie could hear the teen huff “My fathers already on ice what more does he want?”

“I’m afraid he and Kane are just a little bit…” Oh dear, how does one properly explain the ‘sins of the father’ trope? “…Off-put by your appearance, because, well…”

“Because I look a lot like my dad?”

“Mitchell.”

“…Because I look almost exactly like him?”

“Yes.” She confirmed “I’m going to send you specs of Red’s suit and warpod so you know what kind of weaponry your dealing with. Red’s old, but he’s no pushover.”

“Roger that boss.” Mitchell said “Can you queue that for an hour from now?”

“Why?”

“I have to clear some space on my hard-drive first.”

“It’s not that big of a file.”

“I know but…” He paused “My drives still kind of fuzzy since it shorted out, I need to do another scan to make sure any new files won’t be corrupted.”

“Alright Mitchell, and please keep an eye on Kameron when he gets down there.”

“No problem.”

—

Mitch hadn’t been lying when he said he drive had been fuzzy when it shorted out; but he’d fixed his wristwatch - the incident where it shorted out taught him a lesson he’d been told of but never realized the importance of until he failed in rescuing his dad.

Always have a your files back up.

That was something his late father always told him, but he didn’t quite grasp just how important that software concept was; some tech he was. No matter, he understood that now. He would still mainly use his wristband, but he had just finished syncing it to a chip; the chip was small, tiny even, but it was capable of all of the functions his wristband was; it had immediate access to his data cache and would have all of the applications of his wristband automatically downloaded to it meaning it would hold the same functions even if his wristband shorted out.

However, it was just a chip and needed some kind of carrier and external user that would allow it to carry out these functions.

And it was making him nervous, because he knew exactly what that ‘carrier’ was going to be.

Mitchell grabbed a bottle of lidocaine; a local anesthetic. Something Teddy used for minor treatments like stitches, but today he was using it topically. He grabbed an eyedropper and sucked up from the solution before dripping about two drops into his right eye, and blinked a few times until he was sure his eye was numb. He then grabbed a tiny fork-like spreader and used it to keep his right eye from blinking anymore once he was sure his eyeball was numb.

He grabbed a cloth and place it between his teeth to bite down on.

He grabbed the chip and began pressing it against his eyeball until the retina gave and allowed the chip to slip right inside. Both of his eyes teared up because the solution had been topical and only numbed the outside of his eyeball and not the inside, but he continued pushing it inside of his eye with a now trembling finger

And once it was right where he wanted it, he howled in pain; making the cloth fall out of his mouth.

—

Texas was in the living room with Little T “You can do it Little T,” he whooped at the toddler; she was standing on top of the TV “on the count of three jump off and do a backflip onto the couch!” He cheered, she nodded excitedly with a gappy grin as she prepared a dismount.

“AAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!”

The scream startled them both; Little T fell off the TV onto the floor, thankfully onto one of the cushions Texas had surrounded the TV stand with. Texas blinked in confusion and looked over to where the sound had originated.

“…Chuck?” He inquired; that sounded exactly like how Chuck screamed alright, he’d recognize that lady-like scream anywhere.

“Fun!” Little T babbled and laughed as she stumbled over to him, grabbing his leg with a giggle, Texas picked her up and held her under his arm as he went over to the noise to investigate the sound; he down the hallway and could hear the still continuing scream behind Mitch’s door, so he took the only action that made sense to him.

He kicked Mitch’s door down “TEXAS!” He hollered “I HEARD YOU SCREAM ARE YOU OKAY MITCH?” He yelled, seeing Mitch hunched over his desk in agony.

The teen turned around; his hand was covering the right side of his face and he was still mostly hunched over and has his head hanging. The brunet stumbled over, almost tripping a few times until he was by Texas and was gripping his shoulder seemingly for support.

“Mitch?” Texas inquired.

“01000110 01110101 01100011 01101011 (1).” Mitch groaned in agony; why he repeated ones and zeroes Texas had no clue other than it was the geek language that Chuck had taught the teen.

Little T laughed at her brothers pain and suffering “Bruber a sissy!” She mocked.

“Mitch?” Texas repeated, more sternly as he grabbed the teens shoulder with his free hand.

Rather than whimper Mitch looked up with a pained looking grin “H-Hold on.” He croaked as he pulled his hand off of his eye.

His right eye went from dark brown to green with a circuit pattern and a green comm screen was projected right from his eye.

“What the-” Texas had pause himself at just how awesome that was “dude can you shoot out laser beams?”

“Maybe later.” Mitch said as he straightened out and tested out the comm screen; he pressed a few areas on the screen and files streamed right in like a normal comm screen. “It worked!” The more apparent advantage of an comm screen out of the eye was that he could interact with the screen with both hands instead of just one like people who had their projection screens mounted on or implanted in a wrist.

“What did you do?” Texas asked; usually techno stuff like that didn’t impress him too much the the kid just summoned a comm screen from his eyeball.

“I inserted a chip into my eye; it connected itself to the electrical impulses in the nerves of my eye and is connected to my brain now.” Mitch explained, but Texas only paid attention to the first part.

The kid just shoved a chip into his eyeball - that was so goddamn /metal/.

“Dude that’s so metal!” Texas shouted.

“Mefal!” Little T tried to repeat, and clapped her hands excitedly; she didn’t understand much besides that it was apparently awesome.

Mitch breathed it deeply and tried to focus; the chip was controlled by his brain, but the impulses needed to activate it he needed to practice with, he’d summoned the screen but he needed to retract it now. He blinked a few times and focused hard, and the screen went away; his eye turned it’s natural dark brown color again.

“Duuuude you should put a laser function on that chip.” Texas said, putting his free arm around Mitchell best he could with their height difference.

“I’ll download the application later.” Mitch said, panting slightly at the pain in his eye he still had. “But I have to wait until Julie sends me another file.”

“What file?”

Mitch pulled back a little with a frown “…Red’s back.” and as expected, Texas flipped out.

“THAT GUY AGAIN?! FOOL ME ONCE SHAME ON YOU SHAME ON YOU, FOOL ME TWICE SHAME ON ME, FOOL ME THREE TIMES I BRING MY CAR, FOOL ME FOUR TIMES AND I.. I… TEXAS DOESN’T KNOW WHAT HE’LL DO BUT ITS NOT GOING TO BE PRETTY.” To augment her caretakers point, Little T did the punching the hand thing to symbolize a beating.

“Calm down uncle Tex, it’s going to be fine. He doesn’t want to fight us, I think…” Mitch hummed and pondered, putting his hand in his chin “…I think he’s just trying to study us.”

“NO ONE STUDIES UNDER TEXAS’S WATCH!” The stronghorn driver yelled and stormed out of the room.

“Texas wait!” Mitch said as he followed the older.

“TEXAS IS GOING TO FIND RED AND MAKE HIM REGRET EVERYTHING.”

“FINE JUST PUT MY SISTER DOWN SHE ISN’T GOING WITH YOU ARE YOU CRAZY.”

—

“I can’t believe you of all people would do something so reckless - it’s all fun and games until you get a vitreous hemorrhage - the fact you didn’t shocks and confuses me.” Teddy told him he as he dripped a drop of antibiotic eye drops into Mitch’s eye.

“I know.” Mitch agreed with a little bit of a guilty saw; with his left eye he watched Little T start climbing Teddy’s cabinet, no bout after his jar full of lollipops. “But, what’s the damage, doc?” He asked.

“Amazingly just a tear in the cornea - seriously Mitch one wrong move and you could have made yourself blind.” Teddy took out a roll of gauze and an eye pad; he put the pad over Mitch’s eye and secured it there with medical tape.

“Teddy I need to use the chip.”

“Not until that corneal tear is healed.” Teddy stated simply, but firmly, to further his point he diagonally wrapped gauze around his head, covering the eye and eye pad. “Keep that there for three days, no excuses. Also, let me look at that periodically; your body might have a immune response to a foreign body like that, or infections - did you even sterilize that thing?”

“Of course I did!” Mitch waved his concern.

Teddy was the resident medic of the Burners, and son of Claire and Foxy. About a year ago he ran away from home and down to Motorcity, as Claire had kept him away from the city ever since his other mother died. Teddy heavily resembled Claire; having the same skin, eye and hair color and even the same hairline he just kept his hair close-cropped. However, his angular, pointed face shape and nose shape came from his other mother Foxy. Teddy was the only Burner who wore Deluxe style clothing; He wore a white hoodie with a light blue burner symbol in the front, and light blue pants with white stripes down the sides, and white-and-light-blue sneakers. The older teen explained that it was to stick it to Kane more, but Mitch didn’t quite follow his train of thought there. He also had a pair of lab goggles that he usually let hand around his neck but since he was treating a patient he had them up over his eyes.

Teddy was a passive Burner in comparison to the others; he usually stayed at Jacobs place and operated almost entirely as support; his vehicle, Sunback, was actually a modified ambulance with a tractor plow in the front and monster truck wheels. He only came on the scene if there was a medical emergency in which he would put patients in his vehicle and tow their vehicle. Teddy was, what his late father would describe of as ‘a healer and tank’. Teddy’s medical knowledge came from being a academic prodigy in Deluxe; he graduate early and trained as a paramedic, although he wasn’t there long enough to make it to full paramedic and instead was a certified Advanced Emergency Medical Technician, an AEMT which was between EMT and paramedic.

Little T was now on top of the cabinet and was helping herself to some of the brightly colored lollipops in the jar; it was a really good thing the medic had recently moved his bowl of complimentary condoms somewhere else.

“Now, change your bandages every day for the next three days,” Teddy continued to advise, not noticing the toddler on his work cabinet “I’d advise taking it off right before going into the shower, and afterwords put only one drop of the antibiotic on it before putting on new bandages.”

“That’s enough suckers for now, Little T.” Mitch deadpanned to his sister; Teddy finally turned around, then stiffened up and threw his arms up in exasperation.

“Little T! Not again!” He exclaimed and walked over; the toddler squeaked and slid down the cabinet with the jar tucked under one her arms and ran off; Teddy chasing her.

Being a teen ‘parent’ wasn’t easy, but it sure could be amusing sometimes.

His wristband pinged with an oncoming message; he pressed a button and a head icon of Texas appeared. “Hey unc-”

“I NEED BACK UP.” Mitch cringed and drew his wrist back to save his ears. Then he could hear what sounded like energy blasts and crashing.

“I’m on my way,” Mitch told the older Burner as he started rushing towards Moonstruck; Miles was still in the garage, but there was no sign of Dana or Kam yet “I’m going to lock on your coordinates alright? We’ll be right there.” The head icon of his caretaker disappeared “Look sharp Miles we have a mission.” He shouted to his co-conspirator as she looked at him confused “Just follow me, I’ll fill you in on the details!” The older teen nodded, pulled her face mask up to her nose, threw her leather jacket back on and jumped on her red motorcycle, which made a puma-like roar as it sprang back to life.

Hopping into his vehicle, Mitch reached into the center console and pulled out an old, warn skull module and popped it on top of the stick shift, waking Moonstruck up with a howl-like rev of the engine.

With his car awake and sharp, he raced out of the garage and attempted making a call to the rest of his team, but only Teddy and Miles would answer.

“What just happened guys?” The blocky head icon of Teddy ask, the familiar sound of Little T giggling was in the background, meaning the medic must have caught her.

“Texas sent out a distress call, he didn’t say what it was but it sounded serious, you know he’s not the type to request backup.”

“Have you picked up on his location Mitch?” The head icon of Miles asked; the brunet checked his screen and struggled to watch both the road and his console screen with only his left eye “He’s about five blocks away, I’m going to patch you the coordinates.” He said and had the coordinates of the destination sent to both of the other Burners.

“Received.” Miles said, and her head icon disappeared as she rushed ahead to the destination; Miles served as a scout because of her vehicle being a motorcycle she could get to a destination much faster than the other Burners and could drive through tight fits a regular car couldn’t. What she lacked in armor and size she made up for in speed and maneuverability.

“Ping me if anyone gets hurt.” Teddy instructed.

“Course.” The younger Burner agreed and shut off the call with Teddy but kept Mile’s line open, when he was three block en route he put Miles back on speaker “Mile’s I need a status report.”

“Almost there-” A gasp and the sound of a energy blast of some kind “Kane Co warpod.”

“Is it red?”

“Yeah.” He heard the older teen curse under her breath and what had to be her wheels skidding on the rough pavement.

“Do you see Texas?”

“Hold on - um- wait, I see Stronghorn, it’s, parked?” She managed to stammer between skidding and energy blasts. Mitch attempted a call to Texas but it just continues to ring, which shouldn’t happen because any driver can answer a call while driving since their communication lines were synced to the cars themselves. This meant that Texas wasn’t in his car.

Mitch took a sharp turn, running a red light but he didn’t really care because this was Motorcity after all “Is there an alleyway there?”

“Two, why?”

He didn’t answer; he connected wirelessly to the warpods communicator but also accessed the data cache “The warpod is acting remotely,” he told the older teen “it’s motion activated, if you /stop moving/ it will stop firing. Just stop riding, now.”

“Mitch-”

“Just do it, Miles, I’ll be right there.” He commanded and pulled up near the area, but not in proximity of the warpods range, which was actually rather limited compared to most warpods, must have been an older model.  Making sure his weapon was calibrated, he pulled the skull module out of the stick shift and ran out of Moonstruck - he saw Miles in the area in front of the sinister-looked warpod, she was behind a car overturned on it’s side and had Prowler stationed right next to her.

He ran over and crouched next to her “What happened to your eye?” Was the first thing she asked.

“Just a scratched eye, doctors orders - listen, no ones in the Warpod or Stronghorn.”

“Then where’s Texas and Red?”

“They’re going hand-to-hand - I’ll look in the alley to the left and you look to the alley on the right. If you find nothing, come into the alley I went into, and vice versa.” He instructed, then peeked over the car slowly as not to activate the motion sensing weapons.

She nodded and adjusted her glasses, and got up, running might next to the weapon and having to dodge a few blasts on foot before making it into the alley. Mitch sighed deeply and slightly anxiously because he was going to have to do the same thing just on the other side of. He really hated being a rebel leader sometimes. Sucking in one last breath and holding it in, he ran out from behind the car and made a beeline to the alley, twisting out of the way of oncoming blasts and missing the shots by what had to be pure luck until he finally made it the the alley.

He heard a harsh exchange of words and ran further down the alley until he came to the end of the alley.

Texas was on the ground, on his knees clutching his arm with his other arm reaching around to hold what had to be a wound and was facing Mitch, but in front of him stood a man clad in telltale red lighted armor, and with his back turned to Mitch as he towered over the incapacitated Texas.

Texas tilted his head slightly to look up at Mitch, but this was a bad move because it indirectly signalled to Red that someone was there and the old enemy turned the hell to face Mitch.

Mitch pressed a button on his wristband to ping a medical distress call to Teddy.

“Well, well,” Red said in a robotic voice “if it isn’t the discount Mike Chilton I’ve heard so much about.” He said mockingly, circling slightly, Mitch circled back and kept his weapon hidden but ready “Didn’t your dad ever tell you not to poke your eye out?”

“What do you want, Red, my dads already in prison what more do you want?”

Red shrugged nonchalantly, which infuriated Mitch “Honestly I was fine with Chilton in jail, although I’d really prefer dead. But the big boss is concerned about his clone running around - I thought he was exaggerating your resemblance but now that I’m seeing you in person I have to say, it’s no lie. My eyes are bleeding just looking at you. I’m guessing that’s what happened to you?”

Angrily Mitch made a step towards the armoured man, who brought his fists up, they lit up and sparked in some kind bright red energy. They held an angry stare - well, Mitch held up an angry stare at least, he had to guess that there was an angry or mocking stare behind that visor.

“Go home kid,” Red mocked “I’m interested in Mike Chilton - not some wannabe clone who thinks he’ll ever live up to him.” This enraged Mitch to the point of boiling over and he charged at red with this hand fist going up as if to punch him; out of his wristband an energy-based spinning saw blade sprang out. Red just stood there until Mitchell was close enough, then ducked under him, grabbing his wrists.

“Argh-” Mitch gasped as the red energy tased him, but it was only a minor taze but enough to short out his wristband and deter him for a second, a second was all that Red needed to use the hold he had on his wrists to slam and pin him against the wall.

“Pathetic,” Red spat, laughing menacingly behind his visor. Mitch saw Miles running towards them from the entrance of the alleyway, Red turned to her slightly “STOP.” He bellowed, then placed one hand over Mitch’s chest, effectively stopping Miles “One more step and the kids getting his heart jump-ended.” Speaking of Mitch’s heart, it was absolutely pounding; how did this mission go so wrong?

Miles put her hands up in a defensive pause; the female Burner unfortunately did not have a long ranged weapon and couldn’t attack Red from the distance she was at.

Red turned back to Mitch, who he had was pressing against the wall with the type of force Mitch wouldn’t be able to outmuscle “Now,” he said “where were we? Oh that’s right; I don’t know why Kane even bothers with a baby-faced punk like yourself. You’re no Mike Chilton. Your father would have had me beat by now but look where you are,” Mitch grimaced at the comparison “yeah, you’re definitely no Mike Chilton.”

Mitch began to shake - but not in fear, he was angry. He was tired of this, he entire life he’d been compared to his father, not just because of their actual blood relation but because of how he looked and it was bad enough to get it from other Motorcitizens but now Kane and his goons were going to stick to that rhetoric like flies on shit?

“Bitch,” Mitch swore, which seemed to catch Red just a little off guard “my name is Mitchell.”  

He headbutted Red as hard he possibly could. It made stars dance in his vision but it was effective in getting the mercenary off of him.

And then suddenly Sunback came careening into the alleyway and slammed into Red; the hired gun was sent flying into the opposite wall of the alley; he was rendered unconscious, but alive, in a pile of old boxes and bottles.

Teddy jumped out “Get in!” He shouted, then fireman-carried Texas into the back of his vehicle, not questioning his orders Miles walked over and put Mitch’s arm over his shoulder, helping the now vertigoed Burner into the back of the ambulance as well. When everyone was secured into the back of the modified ambulance, Teddy drove out of the alley with a shriek from his tires, and headed back in the direction of their headquarters, getting an electronic tow-line on Moonstruck, Prowler and Stronghorn on the way.

“Are you okay Mitch?” Miles asked her friend as he sat wedged between her and Texas at the ambulatory-patient bench in the back of Sunback, he held his throbbing forehead in his hand, squeezing both of his eyes shut hard in an attempt to alleviate the pain. It didn’t work.

“…That really hurt.” He finally said, and she sighed in relief.

“Texas is fine by the way,” The Burners caretaker said from the other side of Mitch, which made Miles chuckle a little bit.

///

“You got such a knack for hurting yourself, I was wondering where your sister got it from I used to think it was from Texas but it must be genetic.” Teddy ranted as he shined his penlight into one of Mitch’s eyes and then the other one, he had taken the eyepad and bandages off of Mitch’s right eye so he could check both of them. They were back at the garage, and he was in Teddy’s workstation getting looked over. Texas was passed out in one of the cots, Teddy explained that he had no external signs of damage, meaning he must have been tased over and over instead “Okay… pupils equal round reactive to light.” He rambled “You shouldn’t have any real head trauma, but you’re going to have a killer headache.” The shorter teen put his penlight away and produced two tablets and a glass of water “This should help with the pain a little.”

“Thanks Teddy.” Mitch thanked, and knocked the pills back with a grimace. His little sister was ‘seated’ next to him in the doctor’s chair, and was bent on chewing on his arm and hand which he didn’t mind too much because at least she was distracted from doing anything destructive or harassing Texas. “I have a feeling Red isn’t done with us just yet, his mission is to study us and well, he’s already met me and Miles. This is far from over.” He told Teddy, who was nodding, still listening as he jotted down notes.

“Red bad?” Little T babbled, summarizing what what being said around her. He put an arm around her tiny frame, and she held his large hand in her two tiny ones but only to continue to gnaw on it.

“Red bad.” Mitch confirmed.

/Once again there is pain I bring flames, I bring cold I’m the Blood Red Sandman coming home On this unholy night I will make you my own Blood Red Sandman Coming home again I’m coming home again/

TO BE CONTINUED…

Authors note: Song is ‘Blood Red Sandman’ by Lordi. Cars revealed; Moonstruck= Wolf motif, black. Prowler= Cheetah motif, red. Sunback = Honey badger motif, cyan.

(1) He’s speaking binary, which translates to “Fuck”.

[tinfoil-jones]

I'm contemplating continuing this fanfiction, if anything to continue the #fightformotorcity, problem is for some reason none of my fanfictions show up on search in tumblr.

But I guess I do need to cover some details of this alternate future;

Legacy takes place roughly 25 years after the Genesis Pod incident, Motorcity stands much stronger than before because of the shared effort of protection from all of the gangs, but the threat of Deluxe is still there

The original Burners have had children;

Mike and Chuck got married had two children because scientific advances and artificial wombs (no mpreg): Mitchell "Mitch" Chilton, and Tori "Little T" Chilton.

Dutch married Tennie and they had three children; twin boys Cekis and Carlos Gordy, and a daughter Dana Gordy.

Claire and Foxy didn't get married officially because Claire stayed in Deluxe, but they were a couple and also using future technology had a son born in Deluxe named Theodore aka Teddy.

Julie had a son named Austin "Kameron" Kapulski/Kane.

Texas actually has two known illegitimate children, the two that are known are Fallow, whose mother is Kaia, and Tawny Chilton, whose mother is Capri Chilton. Given his history, he probably has more. Because of his reckless nature, Kaia and Capri both keep their children to themselves and don't get Texas involved, so whether or not Texas even knows he has children is unknown. Everyone else knows, though, mainly because Fallow has some resemblance to him.

The fanfic starts about 3 years after a terrible event called "Hellfire Rain" where Kane did an all-out bot assault on Motorcity, which not only ended in Mike being captured and then imprisoned in a suspension pod, but in the deaths of Chuck, Foxy, No.2/Babs, and Tennie's dad.

Because of this the original Burners were pretty much disbanded;

Claire in her grief refused to ever return to Motorcity along with her son Teddy (wHo eventually defected anyways). Dutch became a full-time Cabler to help support his wife whose was now the leader. Julie stayed in Deluxe full-time trying to prevent a repeat of this incident (silently also biding her time until she could inherit KaneCo)

The 2nd generation of Burners (The Legacy Burners) consist of Mitch Chilton, Kam Kapulski, Dana Gordy, Teddy and Miles Marquis (who is secretly the Duke of Detroits daughter, The Dutchess of Detroit)

Texas and Jacob are still around. Texas is still active but he mostly serves as support/mentor figure to the Legacy Burners. He is also the legal guardian of Mitch and Little T, since Hellfire Rain left them basically orphaned.

Jacob tries his best but he's mostly bedridden these days die to old age and cancer.

Currently the Burners main mission is to try to rescue Mike before Kane can execute him.

About the Legacy Burners;

Mitch: Broody/stoic leader. He is actually the youngest of the group. He is often compared to Mike because of how much he looks like him, but he's more like Chuck in the sense that he's very cautious and always thinks before acting, and he's very technological. His car is Moonstruck, a black wolf-themed rebuild of Mutt.

Miles: Second in command. Oldest Burner, always there to be a more impulsive foil to Mitch. Miles is secretly the Dukes daughter the Dutchess of Detroit, and is also in an arranged engagement with Fallow the Terra. Miles doesn't use a car, but a modified delivery motorbike with red-cheetah motif called Prowler.

Teddy: Teddy is the doctor of the group. No a literal doctor but he was a certified Advanced Emergency Medical Technician (AEMT) in Deluxe. As a pacifist he normally stays behind in the Burners HQ for medical support. His car is Sunback, a white honey-badger themed ambulance with monster truck wheels and a large plow in the front.

Kameron: As the secret grandson of Kane himself, he know's he'll inherit Deluxe all day, and for that reason he's got a superiority complex, but loves his friends and Motorcity nonetheless. His car is a green-squid themed Corvette Stingray called Leviathan.

Dana Gordy: Didn't feel like she belonged as a Cabler especially compared to her two golden children older brothers. She isn't as artistic as Dutch or a master electrition like Tennie, but she is a talented Mechanic, and retained just enough of her parents skills to not only fix cars but make them look good also. Her car is Stinger, a purple wasp-themed utility truck.

About other characters;

Kane: Has an artificial heart to increase his lifespan, he is waiting for Moorcity to crumble before killing Mike. Because of how close Kane is to both Julie and Kameron, the orkers at KaneCo (who have no idea she is actually his daughter) think that Kane is Kamerons father, which irks all of them to no end. Kane silently believes that Mike is Kamerons father.

Red: Secondary antogonist, mostly dwells in Motorcity to torment the Legacy Burners. But he seems to be slightly less villainous since Mike has been captured. Still works for Kane.

Little T: Only four years old, she's been so influenced by Texas she acts a lot like him. Her nickname is actually short for "Little Texas" for this reason. She was only a baby when Hellfire Rain happened, so she doesn't remember her parents. Because she was primarily raised by Mitch, she thinks that he is her dad.

Fallow: Kaia's son. He is the the bridge between the Terra's and other Motorcitizens and Kaia's heir. He runs one of the Terra's Cannabis stores. He is also the fiance (arranged) to The Dutchess of Detroit/Miles. His biological father is Texas, and Fallow along with pretty much everyone else knows this but its up for debate whether or not Texas himself knows.

Capri: Runs an old west type bar where Miles frequents at the edge of the Dukes territory (Where his Game show with the original Burners took place). She had her daughter after a one-night stand with Texas.

Tawny: Capri's seven-year-old daughter, and Mitch's and Little T's cousin. Much like her older half-brother Fallow, whether or not Texas knows he's her biological father is up for debate.

Rayon: Still around, has no children.

The Terra's: They have (for the most part) reformed and become active, powerful members of the Motorcity community. Most of the first generation keep to themselves and stay in their original territory, but the second generation are regular Motorcitizens of "Terra Race". The Terra's operate many nature based businesses such as flower shops, veterinary clinics and farmers market stands but their main income is their monopoly on Marijuana. Their affluence rivals the Duke himself. The second generation are only half-terra, because only the females of the original Terra's are fertile.

And that's as much background information as I can give without revealing too much of the plot hope that gets you hyped up.

Motorcity: Legacy, Prologue

Disclaimer: I do not own Motorcity, or the song. Motorcity belongs to Disney, and the song belongs to Iron Maiden Title: Burners Legacy Rating: T-M depending on chapter Summary: He didn’t want to be a carbon copy of his father, but he might have to be in order to rescue him from Deluxe. Pairings: MikexChuck, DutchxTennie, ClairexFoxy, DukexBabs, Juliex?, OCxOC Warnings: Don’t read if you don’t like or are triggered by violence, death or dystopian societies Author’s Note: Some characters you like died.

~~~

Prologue: Chilton Be Thy Name

/I’m waiting in my cold cell, when the bell begins to chime Reflecting on my past life and it doesn’t have much time Cause at 5 o'clock they take me to the Gallows Pole The sands of time for me are running low/

Deep in Kane Co’s main skyscraper was a secret room. This room never appeared in any of the blueprint archives for the building, and the small square room was lined in a special material that made it electronically undetectable, if scanned it would only appear to be a duplicate of the office room it was adjacent to; it had no apparent entrance or exit besides a door that only appeared to be a door from the inside, on the outside it only looked like a typical wall. Only one person was supposed to know about this room.

What made this room so remarkable, a stark white room, a room no bigger than a small office? The room hosted a single occupant; the centerpiece and sole reason for the existence of this secret room. 

Keep reading

[tinfoil-jones]

Motorcity: Join Me, Epilogue

Disclaimer: I do not own Motorcity or the listed characters Title: Join Me Rating: T+ Summary: AU, Chuck and Mike never met in Deluxe; Chuck is leader of the Burners and Mike is still Kane’s Commander. Despite being enemies, Chuck and Mike find themselves having feelings for each other, but are both too stubborn to leave their sides of Detroit. Pairings: MikexChuck, DutchxTennie, FoxyxClaire(implied) Warnings: Don’t read if you don’t like or are triggered by violence or dystopian societies Author’s Note: For the sake of the AU to work Chuck is OOC and some events have been slightly changed.

~~~ 20: Present Trauma.

‘Six months already… where has time gone?’ Mike thought as he crossed out another day on the calendar in the bay. His black and orange jacket lay haphazardly on the hood of his car, Mutt as he’s christened it six months ago, to prevent getting grease stains on it while he worked under the car for minor repairs.

It’d been six months since the incident with the Genesis Pod; after Kane had flung them off of his war pod, he and Chuck had been falling to their deaths when the Duke of Detroit saved them using Chuck’s car Blonde Thunder, after ejecting the Duke Chuck had to be and backseat driver and hacker while the Pod was blasted by the last laser blast of ‘Bessie’, however in the chaos, Blonde Thunder was destroyed and Mike and Chuck were saved by a motorcycle fail-safe the blond had installed.

The battle was over in their favor, but the war was not.

For one thing, Chuck was horrendously injured - aside from his self-treated and rapidly returned hemopneumothorax, he also had head trauma, his synthetic left eye was busted, and his ribs were unsurprisingly broken. He had to be hospitalized.

Mike stayed by his side despite the other Burner’s being wary of his presence (minus Julie), for almost two weeks; Chuck was silent and despondent the whole time, having not said a single word to anyone. On day twelve of the Burner Leaders hospital stay, Mike had left the bedside for a minute to go take a leak, and when he came back Chuck was gone. Frantically he searched around the hospital, but video evidence proved that Chuck had escaped through the fourth story window and disappeared into the darkness of the nearby alleyways. With their leader gone, the remaining Burner’s had even more reason to not trust Mike, and they’d probably would have cast him aside like garbage if it wasn’t for Julie vouching for him. So he’d been taken in as a Burner, and was made their new leader no less than two months later.

Since Chuck had handed him the keys to the green car when he was prisoner, and because Blonde Thunder was totally destroyed and had only been fully rebuilt a week ago, Mike took the green car and finally gave it a proper name. The Burners had looked for Chuck for three months before finally giving up their search; Chuck was smart, if he didn’t want to be found there was no way they would find him. They could only hope that he was doing okay. Mike, however, hadn’t quite given up the hope of finding him. He’d search during his off-hours, and had exhausted almost every lead so far, even the LARPer’s hadn’t seen him, although admittedly during his time of searching Mike had become good friends with the role-playing group, and occasionally played D&D with them. “It’s been three years you know.” The rusty voice of Jacob said from behind him, making the brunet turn to the older man.

“Three years?” Mike inquired as he put his jacket back on - it no longer had the bandana wrapped around the Burners symbol on his arm, but he always kept the bandana in his pocket anyways.

“Since Chuck became a Buner.” Jacob told him, the older mans voice had a bittersweet tone to it.

“I see…” Mike replied, looking to the ground, slightly enough that only someone as close as Jacob could notice. In response, the Sasquatch driver put a comforting hand on the younger mans shoulder.

“You know… He really loved you.” Jacob consoled.

Mike cleared his throat “Clearly not enough.” Not even his support could keep Chuck with them.

“Now, now,” Jacob chided as he put a plate of bright green muffins on the hood of Mutt “you need to understand, Chuck had demons.”

“Demons?”

“Demon’s in his head my boy,” Jacob explained “Mental illness is something either tucked away or purged in Deluxe, so you tend to not hear about it much. But I believe Chuck had PTSD…” Seeing the confused look on Mike’s face, Jacob continued to explain “It stands for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder… It’s where a person is affected by a traumatic event, and effects them to the point of growing distant from loved ones, no longer enjoying previously loved activities, and having recurring stress and panic from the event, as if it’s still happening. I could see it in Chuck’s eye… He had what was called the ‘thousand yard stare’.”

Mike thought about what Jacob was saying, and applied it to Chuck; it was true, Chuck didn’t talk, but his eye would stare out blankly into space, almost as if he was looking right through everything. Not to mention Chuck did go through a lot of trauma in one day; being double crossed by the Duke, being captured and beaten half to death by Red, almost executed, having his entire city almost destroyed, then flung off a building and would have been killed if not for the quick intervention of the Duke himself. “But… Why just him… Why not me, or Julie, or…” Mike trailed off; he and the other Burners went through similar, why was Chuck the one fated to be struck by such a condition? “Everyone’s different, Mike.” Jacob told him “It doesn’t make anyone stronger or weaker. The best we can do is understand that it’s not his fault, and accept that’s how he is, and try to help him.”

Mike sighed “I’m going for a drive…” He picked up the muffins and put them in a brown paper bag, it’d be rude to throw them away even if they did look and smell disgusting. “Remember to call if anything comes up…” Jacob told him. “Of course.”

—

Once again a search through Motorcity yielded nothing.

By the time night came, Mike was tired and hungry, because he dare not eat the muffins given to him by Jacob, and ended up stopping at a fast food place. He didn’t bother to read the name of the food place, but when he walked in he was hit with familiarity. It was the same Burger Joint that he and Chuck had met when they started their relationship, it made his heart ache for more reasons than the greasy oil smell already clogging up his arteries.

He sat down to order a burger, fries and coke, which came immediately. He stayed at the counter and mostly kept to himself while he ate, and couldn’t help but overhear the conversation of some nearby patrons because they had no idea how to control the volume of their voices.

“Yeah Tory’s always willing to trade,” One of the patrons, a tanned girl with straight black hair said “he’s got good shit. Not for free though, I’ll tell ya.”

“Can I get tech from ‘im?” A male with curly brown hair asked. “Yeah. But only for whatever part he wants. He’s that guy with the eyepatch who hangs out in Lower Woodward.”

Mike’s attention was immediately caught - eyepatch? As in, one eye? Chuck had left the hospital before Jacob had finished his replacement bionic eye… It was far fetched, because people with missing body parts aren’t exactly unheard of in Motorcity, but it was the biggest clue he’d gotten so far. — Lower Woodward was, unsurprisingly, even more slummy than most parts of Motorcity. Now, income distribution wasn’t exactly great considering that there was a very small wealthy class, small middle class, and majority poor, but it was clear that that particular part of the city was populated completely by the very poor. At first Mike doubted that Chuck would be in such a squalid and possibly hostile area, but realized that it made sense, as it would be unlikely anyone would hide in such an area by choice.

The former military officer parked his car and made sure his security system was up to prevent theft or looting, and began walking down the street with his head down. Months of fighting Kane and the Burners were well known, even Mike at this point, but even with his infamy he didn’t doubt that there were a sizable amount of Motorcitizens who did not trust him or wouldn’t mind giving him a well-deserved beating.

His suspicions were confirmed when a seedy-looking man began following him, but Mike ignored him and kept his head down as he continued to weave about the streets, but every time he got a glance behind him, there were more and more shady characters, accumulating to form a gang of sorts.

Mike stopped when he came to a wire fence that split an alley in half and made an end “What’s up?” He asked calmly as he executed an about-face, not losing his military bearing to the face of the gang. If there’s one thing Mike was, he was honest (at least now), he wasn’t going to hide who or what he was to anybody. “Mike Chilton.” One of the men spat.

“That’s me,” Mike confirmed with his iconic grin but serious eyes “and how can I help you today?”

“Everybody’s been saying you’ve reformed,” another man spoke, with a voice heavy with hatred an an obvious lifetime smoking habit “but once Kanes lapdog, always Kanes lapdog.” Oh boy, this again. While he couldn’t blame the Motorcitizens from their weariness of him, especially considering how he played a direct part in the war and battles between the two sides of Detroit in favor of Deluxe, he’d naively hoped six months was enough to win their trust. This hope just couldn’t be applied to everyone.

Mike dropped his grin and lifted his hands up passively, he could definitely fight them off without Mutt, after all he had his spark staff in his jacket at easy reach; but he didn’t want to create more distrust with the citizens of Motorcity if he could resolve this peacefully. “Look, I don’t want any trouble.”

“Then you should have just stayed in Deluxe or fucking died.” The original man growled, which did cut a little deep in Mike; he knew that people had died directly and indirectly from Kane’s attacks on the city, many of these attacks he’d been the directly overseer of. While he did believe he could redeem himself, there were just some things he knew were unforgivable.

The gang stepped closer “Please,” Mike said “that isn’t who I am now.” He wasn’t Kane Co’s commander anymore, he was Mike Chilton, just Mike Chilton. “I don’t care.” The first man said, reaching into his jacked presumably for a gun or knife, but Mike still didn’t reach for his spark staff.

“Well, I do.” Mike couldn’t help his grin returning at this new voice; new to the situation but not new to Mike. The fence was shoved slightly enough for a person to slip between the wire and the alley wall, and Mike couldn’t help but chuckle at how even after everything they’d gone through Chuck still had a flair for the ‘mysterious entrance’ he’d often pulled at his LARP club, with the cape and everything, judging by how worn the cape was now however, it was definitely part of his regular attire.

“This doesn’t have anything to do with you, Tory.” One of the men said to Chuck as the blond man stepped between Mike and the seedy gang.

“Leave.” Chuck said simply.

“Tory-”

“I said leave for fucks sake, I’ll deal with this guy.” Hesitantly, the group of men actually turned and left. There was a moment of silence as they waited for the group to be completely out of sight, as Chuck turned to face his old flame with his hands shoved into his cloak pockets. His hair was slightly longer, and wilder than it used to be but the bangs were still parted and for the most part out of his face. His missing eye hadn’t been replaced, as indicated by an black eyepatch, and from his face to what could be seen of his body shape through his hooded cloak was very gaunt even compared his original petite self. Still handsome as ever, at least in Mike’s eyes.

Silence, all Mike could hear was his heart beating all the way up to his ears. Chuck sighed heavily “Why are you here?” He demanded, f his hands were digging around his various pockets until he produced a cigarette and a lighter, throwing Mike off slightly.

“I-” He began, Chuck didn’t let him finish, he lit the cigarette and stuck it into one corner of his mouth and used one hand to physically start dragging Mike out of the alley.

“I can’t fucking believe you,” Chuck reprimanded, not bothering to look back at him as he dragged him. “I can’t believe you came here, don’t you known this is a dangerous neighborhood?”

“I wanted to find you.” Mike told him, and it seemed to make Chuck skip a step, but only slightly.

“I’m taking you to your car, where is it?” Chuck asked, and Mike stepped down and made them both stop.

“I want to talk to you.” The brunet told his former lover sternly, rolling his wrist out of Chuck’s grasp, now that they were in close proximity Mike could study Chuck’s features more clearly; his cheeks were pale and seemingly bloodless as they no longer held a rosy tint, and his good eye was dark ringed, his neck and face had a few bruises that didn’t seem to be too fresh and there were some healed scratches scattered about his jawline and forehead. Clearly he’d been in several scraps over the six months he’d been gone. “…What happened to you Chuck? Why did you leave? Why didn’t you come back?”

“I don’t have to tell you anything.” Chuck practically growled, taking a long drag of his cigarette before looking to the side to blow the smoke out. “Look, I don’t know what you were hoping to accomplish by coming here. It’s been half a year Mike, if I wanted to come back I would’ve, if I wanted you to find me you would have a long time ago. So just do us both a favor and get lost.”

“You know I can’t do that Chuck.” Mike told him gently, placing a hand on his arm that Chuck thankfully didn’t shake off.

Chuck was quiet for a solid minute, the cigarette was in his hand but he was not longer actively smoking it, instead he was just looking down at the Burner with a sad eye. “…I know you can’t, and won’t.” Chuck said with a sad sigh “I’m sorry Mike… I’m not going back.”

“Can we please just talk…” Chuck didn’t answer, he took one more drag of the cigarette before flicking it away. “I missed you…” The blond stiffened up slightly, and Mike knew it was because Chuck had a hard time dealing with emotions. “…We can talk. Just not here.”

…

Chuck’s place was an apartment in a small complex, it was… kind of nice, given the area they were in, it had a small kitchen, living room, one bathroom and two bedrooms, although by the looks of it only one bedroom was being used as a bedroom while the other one seemed to be a room dedicated to Chuck’s technological side.

“How’d you afford this place?” Mike asked Chuck as the blond draped his cloak over the back of a chair - he wore an elbow-sleeved shirt very similar to the one he used to wear, except this was mainly dark blue with black sleeves and lacked the Burners insignia.

“I work human resources at a nearby tech firm.” Chuck answered, plopping down at his couch.

“Shouldn’t you be a programmer?” Mike asked, trying to lighten the mood as he sat at the other side of the couch.

“Credentials don’t transfer very well from Deluxe.” Chuck answered dry and matter-of-fact.

Silence. They just sat there awkwardly as Chuck grabbed a remote and turned the TV on, Mike knew Chuck didn’t watch TV very much, background noise just made the blond feel less anxious.

“So…” Chuck trailed off awkwardly, looking to the floor instead of Mike “what do you want to talk about?”

“First off, why did you leave?” It was a touchy subject, Mike could tell from the apprehensive expression that immediately appeared on Chuck’s face, but it was first thing he needed to know, it was where this all began.

“B-because,” Chuck began defensively, taking in a deep breath to collect himself and his emotions but this only sent him into a coughing fit. Concerned and overwhelmed with protectiveness over the man he -still- loved, Mike scooted over next to him and put his arms around him, patting his back to attempt to alleviate his coughing “L-look it’s hard to explain, I was a shit leader okay.”

“You weren’t a bad leader Chuck.” Mike consoled.

“Don’t bullshit me!” Chuck snarled and nearly shoved him off “I got tricked by Duke! I’m a genius and I got outsmarted by a man that wears curlers to bed!”

“…” Okay, Mike wasn’t exactly sure how to respond to that.

“I knew he was up to something… maybe not what he was up to, but I knew it wasn’t good. All I had to do was agree to not help him, even if he left me in the depths all I had to do was follow him out. Hell, I could’ve agreed to help him, and then ditched. But I didn’t, Mike. I got captured by Kane, Motorcity was almost destroyed, my car was destroyed, me and you… We almost… Almost…” He started to choke up and a a distant, but distressed look appeared in his single blue eye.

The thousand-yard stare that Jacob had explained, that Chuck had the entirety of his visit at the hospital.

“I know, I know we almost died.” Mike drew his arms around Chuck again, pulling him in close, into a familiar embrace that they’d shared many times when they were together. “I know you’re hurt, I know you’ve gone through a lot, and I know you’re having a hard time with how you’re feeling.”

“Oh how would you know how I feel.” Chuck scoffed, but he didn’t pull away or push Mike off of him “You handled that situation a million times better than I did. You accepted the possibility of death so calmly, you took charge without skipping a beat, and here I am, a mess. You don’t understand Mike… You really don’t.”

Mike placed his cheek on top of Chuck’s head, normally awkward given their height difference but Chuck was practically laying on him in this position “You’re right Chuck… I don’t understand.” He murmured gently “I don’t know what it’s like to lose an eye, I don’t know what a tension pneumothorax feels like, I don’t know what it’s like to almost lose my city, until recently I didn’t know what it felt like to constantly be attacked by another government and neither did I understand what it really meant to be a leader. Those men earlier were right you know, I was Kane’s lapdog… I was the commander, but I was never truly a leader, everything I did, I did because Kane told me to, and I was too stubborn to believe it. So no Chuck, I don’t truly understand how you feel… But what I do know is that you’re still hurt, and I will always love you.”

Chuck started to sniffle, as his barriers finally started to come down, and his sniffling increased into he was full-blown sobbing into Mike’s chest, and gripping the edges of the others jacket either in a vain attempt to feel grounded or for the sake of comfort. “What I do know,” Mike continued, holding him in even closer, close enough he could feel the sobs racking the others body, close enough he could feel his heartbeat “is that I want to help you. I know that you have a lot of friends, who also want to help you, because they care about you a lot, and every single one of us just wants you back.” And for what must have been the good part of an hour, they just sat there with Chuck crying against him, and Mike holding him and occasionally rubbing his back or stroking his hair, no words spoken between them but there weren’t any words needed, Chuck needed to finally express his emotions and Mike just needed to know he was safe.

When his leg started to fall asleep Mike attempted to shift their position by sitting up straight, but this put them at an awkward angle and it put the weight distribution in Chuck’s favor, with Chuck not attempting to correct it and his death grip on Mike’s jacket made them fall on Chuck’s side of the couch with Chuck accidentally pulling Mike on top of him. Mike had to remove his arms from around Chuck and to avoid tumbling on him he planted them onto the couch on either side of Chuck but this just inadvertently put him in the straddling position. Awkwardly, and slightly blushing, Mike looked down at Chuck, who was still sniffling and the left side of his face was wet and sticky with tears. “Please…”

Mike started to pull away, but his interpretation of Chuck’s plea being to get off of him wasn’t what Chuck as intended, because the blond immediately wrapped his arms around his neck and pulled him in against him with enough force to tell Mike that despite his gaunt appearance Chuck was definitely a lot physically stronger than he used to be.

“Please don’t go.” Chuck whispered to him - lying chest-to-chest Mike wasn’t sure if the strong beating was his own or Chucks, but in hindsight it was probably both. Their faces were practically touching and Mike could see that even with the sclera being bloodshot, Chuck’s good eye wasn’t as hazy as it seemed earlier, it was the pretty maya-blue color that Mike had in the past gotten lost and almost drowned it. One of them initiated a kiss, neither was sure who.

And history repeated itself as the two men so completely lost in each other and passion that the rest of the world seemed to melt away.

—

A beeping in the distance cause Mike to open his eyes with a struggle, when he finally did get them open the room was too dark for him to make anything else except for the soft glow of the TV from the living room leaking through the slightly open door of Chuck’s bedroom. Chuck was still asleep next to him and had his head resting on Mike’s arm, which explained why his arm was asleep. Muttering to himself and shifting gently as not to wake Chuck, the Burner rolled out of the bed and wrapped a towel around his waist for the sake of modesty and gently tiptoed to the living room where his jacket was strewn on the floor, he picket the garment on, but zipped it to create the illusion he wasn’t buck naked, and turned his communicator on. The head icon of Dutch appeared and the sudden appearance of bright light in the dimly lit room made Mike have to blink repeatedly.

“Mike! Where the heck are you man? You’ve been gone all day! Don’t tell me you got yourself lost in the depths again.” Mike just tiredly nodded as he seated himself onto the couch.

“Look I’m fine and I’m not lost I just uh… I just ended up further away than I intended and it got too late to turn back, I’m in a motel.” Mike explained, of course it was a lie but he wasn’t going to betray Chuck’s trust so soon “I’ll be back tomorrow, okay?”

“Are you sure you don’t want us to get you? Our tracking device is saying you’re in Woodworth, and that place is shady even for Motorcity.”

“I’m okay, I promise.” Mike waved off the Whiptail drivers concern “I’m going back to sleep, see you tomorrow Dutch.” And before the other Burner could protest or put another word in, Mike shut off his communicator. Yawning, he gathered up the clothes strewn about and returned to Chuck’s bedroom where the hacktivist was thankfully still out like a brick.

Placing the clothes on a dresser, Mike carefully climbed back onto the bed where his partner automatically rolled back onto lying on his arm, which was pretty cute even though Mike would definitely wake up with his arm asleep again, but he didn’t mind too much.

With his free arm he rested his hand on Chuck’s cheek, gently pushing his wild bangs out of his face “I’ll always be here for you, no matter what you’re going through.” He promised, even though Chuck was asleep. As if in response the former Burner snuggled closer to him, and Mike joined him in slumber.

—

“I don’t know, Mike…” Chuck trailed off as they walked down the street. “Aren’t they going to… I don’t know, freak out if they see me again.”

“Maybe a little bit, but in a good way.” Mike told him with a grin “The Burners missed you a lot, especially Texas.”

“I’m not surprised, he just isn’t the same guy if he isn’t taunting me to my face.” Chuck joked a little, although his tone was mostly flat. It was a start though, a definite sign that he was starting to warm up.

They stopped in front of Mutt, which was untouched, the car had a top notch defense system even when idle, which was how it survived the whole night without having it’s tires or undercarriage parts stolen.

“So you use the green car now huh.”

“Mutt.”

“Excuse me?”

“I named it Mutt.”

“Oh.”

They stood awkwardly by the car, and Mike started to notice the beginnings of a thousand-yard stare returning to Chuck’s eye. “Hey, what’s wrong.”

“I-I,” Chuck took in a deep breath “I-I’m scared of driving.” That was a shock to Mike, as Chuck loved driving, and he’d loved his car, and he was the one to introduce Mike to cars in the first place. However… it sadly did make a lot of sense, as Blonde Thunders destruction had saved Motorcity but would have killed them if not for the motorcycle fail-safe. The whole even had been so traumatic of course he could barely even be near a car.

“Hey, that’s okay,” Mike assured him, grabbing his hand and giving it a gentle squeeze “you take the figurative back seat on this, and literal passenger seat. I’ll drive us back - and very carefully.” Normally Mike was a speed demon when it came to driving, but seeing just how jittery Chuck was he was definitely following the posted speed limit this time.

“I-I still don’t know… I… I tried once but…” Chuck explained, having a hard time putting into words why exactly he was having such a hard time around something he used to enjoy.

“But you went through something traumatic and now you don’t enjoy this anymore, Chuck it’s fine if driving scares you, it’s okay. I’m asking if you can trust me.” Mike told him gently, but Chuck was definitely still jittery. An idea came to him and Mike opened the passenger door and reached inside, grabbing a paper bag “You really liked these didn’t you?” He handed Chuck the bag, and although initially confused Chuck practically lit up seeing familiar bright green muffins inside the bag.

“Are these-”

“Yup, okra and mayonnaise.”

Chuck straight up ate a whole muffin in what must have been one swallow and no chewing, Mike would have been impressed if he wasn’t already so familiar with the capabilities of others throat. It took a little bit more coaxing, but eventually Mike got Chuck into the passenger seat.

He took the drivers seat and buckled in, but instead of starting Mutt up right away, Mike looked over to the hacker, who was breathing heavily with anxiety. “Just tell me when you’re ready,” Mike consoled, reaching over to grab his hand again.

“Do y-you care if I can never drive again?” Chuck asked between quick, anxious breaths. The brunet used his thumb to soothingly rub the back of his shaking hand. And he waited until Chuck had calmed down a little before he answered. “I’d love it if you could drive again, but only if you’re comfortable doing it. If you never drive again, I don’t mind as long as you’re by my side; whether it be in my passenger seat, or in a comm screen.”

“Thank you Mike…” Chuck took in one last deep breath “I think I’m ready.”

“Thank you for joining me today.” Mike replied with a grin, and put the skull of his spark staff on the stick shift, bringing to Mutt to life.

THE END… Go home.

[tinfoil-jones]

Motorcity: Join Me, Chapter 18

Disclaimer: I do not own Motorcity or the listed characters Title: Join Me Rating: T+ Summary: AU, Chuck and Mike never met in Deluxe; Chuck is leader of the Burners and Mike is still Kane’s Commander. Despite being enemies, Chuck and Mike find themselves having feelings for each other, but are both too stubborn to leave their sides of Detroit. Pairings: MikexChuck, DutchxTennie, FoxyxClaire(implied) Warnings: Don’t read if you don’t like or are triggered by violence or dystopian societies Author’s Note: For the sake of the AU to work Chuck is OOC and some events have been slightly changed.

~~~

18: Fear and Loathing in Vega.

“Chuck, you’ve gotta lay off the alcohol.”

“I’ll lay off when I’m dead.”

Dutch and Tennie watched from the safety of other side of the room as Jacob tried (unsuccessfully) to stop Chuck from drinking himself to the point of blackout for the fifth day in a row. Dutch had gotten his girlfriend caught up on the news she’d missed out on, having not visited in over a month.

“Wowwww…. Just wow, he’s been like this for almost a week?” Tennie inquired, watching the usually zany leader of the Burners behave so depressingly.

“Yup.” Dutch confirmed with a sad sigh.

“Him and Mike…?” Tennie whispered as so Chuck wouldn’t hear her.

“Yeah… I kinda suspected it to be honest… But, I didn’t think it would turn out like this. Them break up and turning Chuck into a wreck. I mean, I know no one feels good after getting dumped, but I didn’t expect this from Chuck.” Dutch admitted.

“Is he still… Functioning?” Tennie asked “As the leader, I mean.”

“Well he’s kind of taken the metaphorical, and literal, back seat on this. He hasn’t even touched Blonde Thunder since what happened, now for patrols he sits in the back seat of Nine Lives because he’s too inebriated or hungover to legally drive. Not to mention the other day when we had to rescue Texas from Kane, he didn’t even come because he didn’t want to be anywhere near Mike.” The African American man explained, exasperated. Now, to say he hadn’t experienced breakup would be a lie, but he never quite turned into the mess that Chuck currently was. On the same side of a slightly different coin though, unlike the blond burner, Dutch was actually developed emotionally. Chuck had the emotional development of a brick. A brick that flirted with people and used flirtatious antics to mask his actual insecurity and social detachment.

“That’s troubling.”

“It is.” Dutch agreed, crossing his arms. “The only promising thing is that he’s still capable of decrypting under the influence, he’s getting through the chunk of data we collected the other day.”

Tennie looked around and noticed something different “Say, where’s Julie?” She asked, double life or not Julie was usually present during the day.

Dutch shrugged with his hands in his pockets “I think she said something about a meeting with her boss.”

~~~

For a long time she had seen the mutual attraction between her father’s right hand man, and her own leader. And she’s noted the obvious signs of them hiding something, and she’d long ago come to the conclusion that they must have been secretly having an affair of some sort.

Boy, oh boy did she sincerely hope that she’d been wrong. While she loved both of them to pieces, there was no logical way of such of relationship working out. They were both stubborn, and by extension very resolute to their respective allegiances, which were at conflict with each other. Chuck believed in Motorcity, and Mike believed in Deluxe. Mike was a high ranking military officer as well, he couldn’t do the same double-life thing she was doing, not without being recognized. The only reason that she could get away with it like she could was because there was only a small pocket of people that even /knew/ that she was the daughter of Abraham Kane. Even Mike didn’t know.

She hadn’t seen Mike following the wake of him and Chuck splitting, but according to Jenzen he’d been burying himself into work to the point of neglecting eating and sleeping; she didn’t need to guess that he wasn’t doing well. Mike buried himself into his work normally, but in the past few months had actually seemed to relax a bit (and now the reason why was apparent.) Now that his source of unwinding and freedom from his commander persona -Motorcity, and Chuck by extension- was gone, Mike coped by overdoing the very thing he sought refuge from.

Those two she knew for a fact were by no means stupid, really they were in her top tier of most intelligent men that she knew. However, the most ludicrous thing, the thing that made her want to pull out her own hair, was that they thought they could just pull a forbidden romance like that and be fine.

Her thoughts, but not her sprint down the hall, were interrupted by the familiar dopey voice of Tooley “Hiya Julie!” He greeted as she quickly passed him in the hallway, in a fast pace to get to her destination “Aren’t you supposed to be at the-”

“Can’t stop!” She cut him off as she rushed off into the briefing room, catching her breath and looking to the ground as the metal door shut behind her “I’m so sorry I’m-” she paused when a rather impatient-looking red hologram of her father popped up, rather than the man himself.

“Late.” He finished for her in a slightly scolding tone, his hologram turned and phased  ahead in the briefing room, to in front of the window.

She put on a mildly amused expression as she strode forward to the hologram “If I’d known we could have done it over comm screens I wouldn’t have been late.”

“What we’re doing here is important.” Her dad said, his hologram back still turned to here.

“I know, I know.” She sat down at the lone chair in front of the window.

He slowly turned around “If I can’t trust you to take these sessions seriously, how can I trust you to run this company when I’m gone?” He scolded, a rhetorical question really. He had his arms elbows bent for emphasis.

“Run it?” She echoed “Only like three people know I’m your daughter. I’m sure the employee’s would just love taking orders from some random intern.” Julie told him sarcastically, but seriously. Her dark gaze swept to the ground.

“If more people knew you’d become a target!” Kane repeated the mantra she’d be raised on, the one rule she was always to follow above all else. Something she couldn’t even tell the Burners, less she be accused of conflict of interest just like Chuck had. “I keep your secret safe to keep you safe,” his tone became more gentle, the tone he had reserved just for her “everything I do if for you.” But there was something else in his tone, not just the tone of a father speaking to his daughter. Something that sounded almost… Distraught.

“Dad, what’s going on?” She asked.

He looked away from her as he crossed his arms again “I had to leave the office for a few days, for, business.” His pause was questionable to her.

“Days?” She pressed.

“And it would help me to know, that if something should happen to me-”

“/Nothing/ is going to happen to you.” She interjected. She disagreed with her dad politically, especially when it came to his views on Motorcity, but he was still her dad, and she loved him, and would never wish harm on him no matter who from.

“But if it does!” He looked right at her sternly, then sighed to soften his tone again “It’d be comfort, to know that I’m leaving Deluxe in good hands.”

Julie stood up and looked up at him with a concerned gaze “Dad…” She trailed off, wishing he was actually there instead of just a holographic projection, so she could put a hand on his arm for comfort, as she did so often growing up. He sighed again, and his hologram phased out as he ‘hung up’ on her. “…Talk to me…” She sat back down and swiveled on the chair, and seemingly as soon as she did a comm screen call from Claire opened up.

Claire looked to be freaking out over something “Hey Jules! Foxy just called! Have you seen what just happened in Motorcity?! Some new guy just took on a whole fleet of your dad’s robots, and an ultra gollum; by himself!”

Surprised, and curious of the claim, Julie pulled up a restricted files access screen

~~~

Chuck groggily woke up to find himself lying on a stretched out cot, with a blanket over him, a wet hand towel on his forehead, and most importantly an IV line of 1000 ml of normal saline connected to his arm. Not to mention the less than pleased face of Jacob, who was sitting in a chair right next to the cot, watching over him.

“W-What’s going on?” The blond asked as he struggled to sit up, he wasn’t badly hung over like he usually would be, but he was still sore and his head had a dull ache to it. The increase of volume provided by the IV served to stave off the worse of a hangover. He weakly looked around and saw his blue jacket on lying on the nearby workbench, so his arm could be open for the IV tubing.

“We need to talk,” Jacob said, in a tone Chuck immediately recognized as the ‘lecture’ tone “all of this drinking and moping, it’s not doing you any good. I get your heart is broken, but wallowing in your own sorrow isn’t going to help anyone.”

Chuck chewed on his lip. He knew he was making an ass of himself, by drowning his sorrows in cheap moonshine from the Mama’s Boys gang rather than leads the Burners properly like he should had “I-I… It’s just…” He looked to his hands, which he folded onto his lap “It isn’t just the break up with Mike, okay? It’s… I felt like I let everyone down.”

“How so?”

“By literally sleeping with the enemy.” He almost huffed “I mean, I’ve got to be a real disappointment to the you guys - I’m supposed to be the strong leader here, supposed to protect my team, but I can’t even stand up to the charms of a cinnamon roll in cowboy boots.” He gripped the blanket. He was sad that he had to split with Mike. He really was, but something that upset him even more was when he saw the… the sheer disappointment in his teams face when he told them about his trysts with the Kane Co commander. “Am I even fit to lead if I get torn by a conflict of interest that extreme?”

“Regardless of what happened, you’re still the leader, and they still need you.” Jacob chastised, more gently than earlier “And even if you’ve disappointed them, you’re not going to prove yourself still capable if you’re drinking yourself near death and not using your vehicle.”

“I… I get it.” Chuck sighed, turning his eyes to the almost empty IV bag of normal saline, with a skinny frame like his he was naturally very vascular and could empty out an IV in little time. When the bag emptied out and all there was was a rapidly draining tube, he turned the knob to stop the flow of fluid.

“There’s a new face around these parts,” Jacob told him suddenly, piquing Chuck’s interest but just barely.

“Oh?” Chuck inquired as he picked up a 500 ml bag of lactated ringers and used it to replace the normal saline.

“A masked man in a car, defeated a fleet of Kane bots and metal gollums. ” Jacob explained, then brought up a comm screen that showcased a massive amount of collateral damage around Motorcity, mostly consisting of busted up bots.

Chuck quirked a brow “What could have done this much damage?”

“Dutch gave me some footage, take a look.” Jacob switched out the comm screen to a video of a masked figure in the car setting off electronic based attacks in a red steel car.

“You’re telling me one guy did all of that?” The skeptism leaked clearly into Chuck’s tone. “Who was the driver?”

“That’s where it get’s strange.” The door of the sick bay opened and Julie strode in, Chuck wondered how long she’d been waiting outside of the door “According to Kane Co, he’s a spy from an organization called Vega.”

Chuck thought of all the company patents and trade deals he’d witnessed while a programmer “I never heard of it.” He told the red-head.

Julie pulled up a comm screen from her wrist mount, a table of a map “Vega is an organization based in, get this; Cleveland.” She explained, alarmn bells went of in Chuck’s head.

“Cleveland?” He echoed, if memory served correctly it used to be a major city in the late state of Ohio. “I heard everything outside of Detroit was a wasteland…” Of course, there was always the possibility that was just propaganda from Kane. Remembering the file he still had to decrypt, Chuck brought up his own wrist-mounted comm screen and got back to work on that with his good hand, while still listening to the female Burners report.

“The real question is, what’s Vega doing in Deluxe?” Julie seemed to trail off, her head dipped down a little and a worried look flickered in her eyes, but only for a moment “Kane was acting kinda… different, this morning. He wasn’t mad it was almost like he was, he was worried about something.”

Chuck hummed at her elaboration on her own question, still trying to unzip the encrypted file “So, you can read his moods now?” He was slightly suspicious, but he quickly waved it off. Julie was a loyal Burner and friend.

“Uh, no, no, what?” She defended nervously then brought up another video of the masked man “Hey, look at this weapon, it was specifically designed to stop Kanebots.” The video showed him pulling some kind of cylinder out of the dashboard of his vehicle “What does that tell you?”

“That this guy came here looking for a fight.” Chuck deduced, still listening but not directly looking at her as he almost finished decrypting the file and also keeping a side-eye on the emptying IV bag. The lactated ringer’s making his mouth taste slightly sweet similar to how normal saline made his mouth taste salty.  The file finally decrypted, and as soon as he started reading it his blood chilled and his eyes dialated.

Jacob crossed his arms “That kind of tech wouldn’t be easy to build… Or cheap. A man like Kane’s got a long list of enemies.” The irony of Jacob being one of those men was not lost on Chuck or Julie “Vega could have some sort of score to settle.”

Chuck cut off their conversation “Uh, guys, you remember that encrypted file we grabbed yesterday? Well I decrypted it, and you’ll want to see this.” He inquired in a slight panic as he showed them the decrypted file. It was a threatening red color, and while it looked like a simple cube, in reality it was far more menacing, which was further highlighted by all of the caution, hazard, and beware pop up warning surrounding it.

“Genesis Pod…?” Julie read off the bottom of the file, biting her lip slightly at the sight of a file she had not seen “Any idea what it does?”

“Yeah…” Chuck replied, indignant “It destroys Motorcity.”

“It… doesn’t look so bad…” Julie offered weakly, although she was just as aware of the possible consequences as her leader was.

“Oh it’s bad, it’s shieded by pure polydenzium, it’s the worse thing Kane’s thrown at us yet! This things going to be operational before we know it.” He stopped the flow of the now empty bag and half-empty IV tubing and almost angrily ripped the IV line out of his arm. He quickly sat up and put a 2x2 gauze pad over the bleeding intravenous hole in his arm and wrapped coban around it to keep it in place. Groggily, the blonde almost stumbled off the cot to put his jacket on.

As he got up Jacob assisted him and tried to chastise him for rushing like he was, but Chuck didn’t care about his health at a time where there was such a huge threat like that looming over them. The sick bay door opened again and Dutch, Texas, R.O.T.H and even Tennie came inside, and Julie quickly briefed them over everything that they had discussed. And another discussion started around them.

“If our weapon’s can’t scratch it…” Julie started.

“Maybe Vega’s can.” Dutch finished. “You saw what this guy did to these bots, that kind of weapon would do a lot more than what we got.” He turned to Chuck, who was downing a large bottle of water, a refreshing change from the coffee he usually drank pot after another. “Chuck, we should find this guy before Kane does.”

Chuck finished the water bottle and wiped his sleeve across his mouth “Not to be crass guys, but fuck no.” A shocked  moment of silence swept across his team.

“Chuck are you still drunk?” Dutch argued “Nothing we have could even dent something like that!”

“Look I don’t mean to insult anyone’s intelligence here, but we don’t know this guy. And every time we think we can ask some unknown but powerful person to help us in the war against Kane, they turn against us. I mean, just look at what happened with Red, or with the Terra’s.” Chuck argued, more harsh than he meant to be, “We all have enough pattern pattern recognition to not make that mistake a third time. If this guy really is after just Kane, than more power to the resistance. We’ll find a different way to disarm the Genesis Pod, but we will not go after this Vega guy.” Chuck ordered, grabbing a bottle of aspirin and swallowing down two of them dry.

Chuck was a lot of things, and lot of those things weren’t necessarily good. But he was a programmer, and as such was a decent mathematician; pattern recognition was a basic skill of such a thing. Given their track record of what happens when they seek out unknown potential allies, the best thing to do was not to investigate Vega.

“Chuck…” Dutch began.

“Don’t, we’ll find another way. We always do, are you trying to imply that if this Vega didn’t appear we’d just sit here with our thumbs up our orifices?”

“You better drop that pretentious tone if you’re going to give us orders like that against popular opinion.” Dutch warned him, surprising the other Burners and Tennie.

Chuck paused, then sighed again “… I’m sorry, it’s just, we can’t blindly put our faith into an unknown entity again. I’m not risking our safety like that again, just… if we put our heads together we’ll find a way to destroy the pod just… Just trust me okay? I don’t have a good feeling about that guy. We can build our own weapon.”

There was some silence, and Dutch kept his arms crossed before he sighed in defeat “Alright man, we won’t seek out Vega.”

To keep up the comradery, Texas added “What’s the big deal about Vega anyways? I could totally take TWO fleets of grunt bots with one hand tied behind my shoe!”

As expected, Dutch rolled his eyes and gave his shorter teammate a look “You mean, your back?”

“Uh okay, my back tied behind my shoe. It doesn’t matter, Texas can handle it!” He struck a few action poses with his own sound effects as expected, the display made Texas groan aloud and Chuck smirk a bit.

Ah yes, he could never turn his back on them. Not ever again…

~~~

“I’m going to the Depths.” Chuck told Julie as he got his gear ready.

“Why…?” She asked, the Depths was part of the Duke’s territory, and Chuck… currently wasn’t a fan of the Duke. Not like he ever was, but ever since the stunt the Duke pulled outing him and Mike, only to be bluffing, Chuck really had some beef with him.

“I need to get parts for a weapon against the Genesis Pod, the best hardware is in the Duke’s territory but there’s a lot in the Depths we haven’t even touched upon yet.” This was true, the Depths covered a huge part of Motorcity, and had seldom been combed through or looted by anyone. Chuck checked over his vehicle slammed his fist against the hood in frustration (which didn’t harm the vehicle because it was very durable, and Chuck wasn’t very strong to begin with) “Damnit I told Dutch to fix my radiator this morning.”

“You didn’t ask him, you drank a bottle of moonshine, said you’d stop drinking when you died and then blacked out.” Julie corrected him.

“…I leave a note then.” Chuck grumbled and stuck a sticky note on his hood saying the radiator was out of order. “I’ll just take the extra then.” He said, referring to the green car that no one owned and was only used when one of their own vehicles was out of order for any reason. Chuck probably could replace his own radiator, but he preferred software over hardware and always deferred the more hands on stuff to Dutch. “Do you remember where the keys for it are?”

“Top drawer in the red tool box.” She told him, and he went over to it “How about I take you through the Depths? You’ve been my backseat driver for a the past couple of days anyways.” Truthfully, she didn’t want Chuck to go alone anyways, she doubted he was as stable as he said he was.

“Dutch and Texas are coming with me, but Julie-” He stopped himself so he could turn to face her “I’m going to need you to stay behind on this one.”

“What, why?” She demanded.

“I need you to find out everything you can about this Genesis Pod,” he began, but she cut him off.

“I can do it when we get back.” She countered, and he looked away briefly before back down at her.

“Julie I need you to not fight me on this one, you saw the kind of firepower Kane’s sending, if something happens to us-”

Julie cut him off again “Why does everyone keep saying that?” Chuck, not knowing the context of her statement, briefly wondered who else said that to her, but left it alone.

“Look, if something goes wrong I need to know there’s still someone who will fight for Motorcity.”

“Chuck, nothing is going to happen!”

“Will you do it?” He placed a hand on her shoulder, and Julie was both angered and softened by the familiarity of the situation. The redheaded teen sighed in defeat.

“Fine.”

The blond Burner mustered up a small smile “Thanks, Julie.”

~~~

“Chuck, the man, the myth, the… fashion disaster! Yow!” The Duke proclaimed with an arm wrapped around Chuck after stopping the Burners in their tracks in the Depths. It took every ounce of Chuck’s self-control to stop himself from turning on his fear inhibitor to a full ten and strangling the man where he posed.

He shoved the Duke’s arm off of him “Can I help you with something Duke?” He asked, his voice dripped with venom and noncompliance.

“It’s time for you to,” The Duke briefly twirled his staff “back off.”

“We’re just driving.” Chuck shot back.

Somehow Duke had appeared lying on the hood of the green car, twirling his baton up into the air. “Just driving yes, and I’m just, handsome.” Chuck had to disagree with him at that point “You’re going after our mysterious party-crasher and I’m afraid I can’t allow that.” The blonde assumed he meant Vega.

“The new guy? I don’t give a Cplusplus about that guy, we’re after equipment Duke. Kane’s about to-”

Duke appeared to not be listening to him and cut him off, also getting into his face again “The man is in MY territory, that makes him, and all of his toys, mine.”

“Are you also after the key’s to his chastity belt?” Chuck muttered to himself sarcastically, elaborating on the Duke’s statement in a crass fashion.

“What was that?”

“Nothing, nothing at all.”

The Duke’s security stepped out his limo, most likely to impose, but Chuck looked back to Dutch and Texas who likewise stepped out of their own cars in a threatening manner, while Chuck simultaneously pressed a button on the green cars keyfob to summon a torrent out of the hood.

“Don’t make this a situation, Duke.” Chuck warned him, and glared down at him. The Duke glared back in return, before Chuck noticed something behind the older man.

“Get back-!” The Duke shouted but to no avail as Chuck tackled him.

“Watch out!” Chuck shouted as they both tumbled to the floor, a laser beam from a Kanebot blasting at the spot where the Duke had been standing, and hitting his red sunglasses that became displaced from the tussle. Chuck hated the Duke, but he didn’t want him vaporized… Not yet, at least. “Burners, move it!” Chuck shouted as he rolled back onto his feet and ran to the green car.

Similarly, Duke ran off to his security force, who weren’t nearly as composed now that they were facing danger “Oh, you cowards! Get up! Get up and run!” As he ran to his own vehicle, he grabbed the back of the collar of one of his cowering men and dragged him with him as he ran, saving him from being blasted, which to Chuck showed just a glimmer of humanity in the Duke.

The green car, Whiptail, and Stronghorn started falling back rapidly “Texas, split them up!” Chuck ordered, and immediately following Texas fired at some of the fleet and drove off in a different direction at a fork in the road. Dutch was firing at the bots, and was getting bumped into by a nervously and likely unskilled driver of the Dukes, who soon after spun out of control.

Chuck felt his heart pounding all the way up to his ears, trying to best to dodge all of the blasts from the Kane bots, he maneuvered himself using the thrusters to get from one column to another, but he kept cursing himself because the green car just didn’t have the same maneuverability as blonde thunder had, even if it did have a more diverse weapon system and higher speed.

At one point her overestimated the range of the green car because of his unfamiliarity with it, and ended up not reaching a column completely.

“Motherfucker-” He cursed aloud as he fell down even further into the Depths.

~~~

“Urgh my aching…” Chuck groaned as he came to - he opened his eyes only to find it to be just as dark with his eyes opened as it was closed. He flipped a few switches to turn a few of the car lights back on. He looked around and could only see cables and rusted beams, recollecting his thoughts about what happened before he was out, he realized he was the bottom of the Depths.

He tried to turn his communication system, but unfortunately he was way out of range from any of the other Burners. He turned on his navigation system, but once again lady luck appeared to have metaphorically kicked him in the balls because there was no existing map for the Depths this deep down.

Smacking himself in the forehead, he did the only thing he could think of, something to do for the time being at least; he turned on his distress signal. Since the distress signal was electromagnetic based, and not completely electronic like his communication system, it had a much wider maximum range and efficiency range, and could be picked up by anyone with a radio or car, and even if it didn’t reach anybody, it at least gave him a quick comfort while he thought of something else to do to get out of his castaway situation.

Fifteen minutes later, and still no concrete plan, headlights appeared. For a moment he was elated to be saved, but his heart dropped when he saw it was a lone limo, and the Duke, who had produced another pair of red shades, and for some reason was still wearing them even in the depths of the Depths.

“Oh for fucks sake why couldn’t I have just died.” Chuck muttered to himself as he stepped out of his vehicle.

“That’s a mighty fine lady you’ve got there,” The Duke said with a wide, mischievous grin, admiring the green car Chuck was using. Chuck didn’t answer, and just silently questioned the Duke’s ulterior motives. “Need a hand?”

“You want to help me?” Chuck inquired, then glanced back at the single limo. No one else was there, besides his personal robot assistant, Cyborg Dan.

“You want to help me all of sudden, what’s the catch?” Chuck asked, but before he could allow the Duke to answer he reared up to his full height and got into the Duke’s face “Especially after that bluff you pulled, threatening to out me like that. I have half a mind to blast you where you stand.” Chuck had to admit, the older man was ballsy, to come down here and face him after what had happened, especially since this situation had a lack of witnesses besides the robot.

“Water under the bridge, my boy.” The Duke laughed and Chuck continued to glare “As much you annoy me with your lack of finesse, and lack of taste in men-” He grabbed Chuck’s arm lightly when he saw him reaching for his saber, an unspoken warning and plea at the same time “But I like you, just a little; you’re like the rebellious son I never had.”

“Dude you’re only like ten years older than me.”

“Nevertheless, we both need something; you need to get out of here, and I need someone to come with me while I confront our mysterious guest. Now, shall we get a move on?”

“We?” Chuck said skeptically, and the Duke put an arm around him again. And the younger blond really wished the Duke had more of a sense of personal space.

“Between you and I, my men leave something to be desired when it comes to… security.” With that the Burner’s leader had to agree, remembering how the Duke’s security had only cowered in the face of Kanebots, but this statement also made him to another conclusion as well.

The blond burner couldn’t stop a smirk from appearing “Duke, are you scared?” With that the Duke finally pulled away, a did a twirl.

“My boy, I’m not scared; I’m, an entertainer! Yow!” He then moonwalked backwards.

“That doesn’t really have anything to do with our current situation.” Chuck mumbled, ironically not entertained by the flamboyant man’s antics.

“In the end we both want something.”

“I told you before I’m not interested in the new guy. Besides, how would you know where he is?” The younger of the two men inquired, and Cyborg Dan started to walk up to them.

“No one get’s in or out of my territory without me knowing. No one.” He got into his face again, then turned to his robot “Cyborg Dan, if you would be so kind.”

“With pleasure.” Cyborg Dan said in its robot voice, then showcased a brief video of Vega’s fleeing vehicle up some kind of slope.

“We’ll find him faster if we work together.”

“Duke, for the last time, I don’t care about this guy. I just want to get out of the depths.” He exclaimed, exasperated. Why was the Duke being so pushy on the Vega issue? It was suspicious as hell for one thing, and uncharacteristic for another.

The Duke was now sitting on the ground criss-cross for some reason “Well you need to get out of here, and I need someone to help me find him. I the end we both want something, and we’ll find him faster if we work together. Don’t want someone else finding him first now do we. Then no one get’s his toys.”

The driver almost wanted to smack Duke upside the head, and also wanted to repeat that he didn’t care about Vega or his possible equipment, but pattern recognition told him that it would probably again go in one ear and tumble right out of the other “And what happens when we find him?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. What do you say? We don’t have to fight all the time.” Under normal circumstances, Chuck would leave. But doing so he would risk getting stuck in the Depths for maybe even days, and time was an especially important resource right now with the threat of the Genesis Pod.

“…Make sure you can keep up.” The blonde grumbled.

“Splendid!” The man and his robot got back into his limo, and turned on the tail lights for Chuck to follow. Chuck got back into the green car and nearly tailgated him out of the Depths.

~~~

The moment he was in range of the other Burners communications systems, he called Dutch. The pop-up head of the mechanic showed up, appearing frantic “What happened to you!”

“Took a nasty fall,” Chuck responded, keeping his eyes on the tail lights of the Duke’s limo “I got lost in the Depths and I was out of range, and didn’t have any maps that deep. I sent out a distress signal and the Duke ended up finding me. I… Had to make a deal, he apparently wants my assistance in finding Vega.”

“So we’re trusting the Duke now?” Texas chimed in as his pop-up head appeared as well.

“No way, which is why I’m keeping him close. This is too important. Besides, this gives me easier access to the junkyard.” Chuck replied.

“I don’t know man…”

“I don’t either.” Chuck admitted “I’m suspecting this is a trap, but I really need parts. If I don’t call back in like an hour, assume the worst.”

“Chuck!” Dutch almost yelled, aggravated at his leader nonchalance at the prospect of being double-crossed..

“I know it sounds bad but this is the only way. You guys hang back in case this /is/ a trap, I’ll check in when we get to point B. If something happens to me, I have files left on my computer on a plan for the Genesis Pod.”

“You have no idea what’s up there.” Dutch pointed out.

“Exactly, I’m not leading my whole team into a possible trap. I’ll call you if the coast is clear.” Chuck replied, his heart once again pounding and blood roaring in his ears.

He could hear something in the background of Dutch’s call, the all too familiar sound of a face palm. “Is that all you have to say?” The Whiptail driver retorted.

“Uh, hmm… Oh yeah. Also, if I don’t come back, please clear my browser history.”

~~~

The Duke lead him to a ridge, which only made him more suspicious. An isolated ridge with just the two of them bearing witness, yeah that wasn’t suspicious at all. As they climbed up the foothill of junk, Chuck spied the mysterious Vega’s car “Found the car,” He told Duke, and already started to back away “okay I helped you find the guy, now, I’m leaving, I’m taking some supplies on my way out.”

“Oh but there’s no sign of him is there?” The Duke inquired, grabbing his wrist and leaping. The surprising strength of the Duke made them both tumble down the ridge of junk into the crater where the car was.

“Duke what the hell!” Chuck shouted as they hit the ground no-so-softly. The Duke didn’t answer, just got back onto his feet.

Then, he could hear a faint zapping, a familiar and common sound around motorcity, but something about this particular buzzing made his blood turn to sludge.  He jumped onto his feet and turned to the sound, instinctively he turned his fear inhibitor all the way up to the ten setting.

“Well, well, well, hello Chuck.” Red said, surrounded by Kanebots and his fists alight with menacingly bright red electrical currents “Hope you didn’t miss me.”

“Not really, I hate when my past flames get clingy.” Chuck shouted back and drew up his saber, shoving the Duke away on the off-chance he wasn’t double crossing him “Get down!” He sprinted towards Red, and the Kanebots started shooting at him, and he hit the lazers with his saber to break up and absorb the energy through his weapon. When he hit and scattered a few of the bots, Red jumped at him attempting to hit, and Chuck just barely managed to dodge as the faceless man broke apart the car under them with the electrically enhanced fists.

Throwing his fist back far and powering up to what Chuck assumed to be it’s limit, Red threw a hard punch at him and Chuck used his saber to protect him. The electrical blunt force caused his weapon to not only fly out of his hand, but also caused it to reduce down to it’s baton form, and roll to the Duke’s feet. The Duke himself looked dismayed.

The blond burner was jumping around trying to avoid getting shot at “Duke, toss it here!” He shouted to the other Motorcitizen, holding his hand out ‘Please for the love of god surprise me in a good way here…’ he thought frantically. He saw the Duke pick the baton up agonizingly slow “Duke, toss it to me!” He repeated, and he thanked the data processor in the sky that Red apparently had the aiming skills of a stormtrooper and only managed to hit junk in his immediate vicinity, but not Chuck himself.

His heart sank when the Duke pocketed Chuck’s baton, and Kanebots flew from behind him towards Chuck, and the Burner was forced to run. The bots fire not only lasers, but missiles as well, and he war forced to hop, skip and jump around all of the junk.

He found a momentary safe haven under a metal sheet overhang, and looked over at Vega’s car, which was without its driver. With the green car parked at the cliff rather than at the ridge, the only option was the strangers car, sprinting he flung himself into the driver’s seat, and flipped the way-too-conveniently labeled weapons switches, and the cylinder poked itself out of the car. “Here we go…” He nervously said, and tried to push it down.

It didn’t budge, and he realized this was indeed an elaborate ruse. Before he could evacuate the vehicle though, Red jumped from a high vantage point and slammed his charged fists down right on the ground, causing a tremor that pushed up and flipped the car, Chuck was flung out of it and hit the ground, rolling quite a bit.

From the disturbed dust and weapons smoke ominously misting around him, he could see ‘Vega’ approaching him.

Narrowing his eyes as he weakly lay on his side, knowing this was all a setup, he looked up the the figure in a hood with glowing red eyes, the same figure that began to lowly chuckle, almost maniacally. A very familiar maniacal laughter bubbled up from the man’s chest.

Chuck flipped him off.

~~~

As Red punched him once again, Chuck’s back was slammed against the wall, and he coughed, trying to compose himself as his mouth filled with blood and his swollen eye tingled sharply. The faceless man chuckled at the suffering of his longtime foe “This is too much fun.” He said sadistically.

In spite of his current situation, Chuck grinned back up with him “I gotta agree with you there, I thought the chains were kinky enough, but hey I like it rough too.” Angrily, Red tightened his fists and slammed his face with yet another punch. Chuck’s vision went black and when he hit the wall this time he slid down to the floor, sapped of his strength. Panting, he looked back up at Red, refusing to give up his mind game “Yeah… Just like that.”

The door opened and Kane walked up, Chuck’s grin dropped when he saw a sullen Mike trailing not far behind his boss. “What’s the matter, lab rat? Not enjoying the view?” Kane mocked, Chuck looked up at him to avoid having to look at his ex-lover behind him.

“If you want me to validate that with a feeble violent response, you’ve got another thing coming.” Chuck almost hissed, staying where he was.

“You never give up do you?” Kane continued to mock, possibly references Chuck current lack of panic and overall confidence that things would be fine in the end “If only had just been a bit more… obedient, I might have given you a life sentence. But since you’re so nonconforming, I have no choice but to have you terminated.” He started walking away, and the announcement made Mike noticeably uncomfortable.

“Terminated? Really? You already fired me Kane, if you mean kill me at least say executed. We aren’t in a kids show.” Chuck corrected the overlords phrasing, mostly to attempt to antagonize him. It didn’t seem to work. “Even if you get rid of me, you won’t win,” the Burners leader spat, getting back onto his feet “Motorcity won’t stop fighting. With, or without me.” Chuck’s heroic speech didn’t seem to move Kane other than to amuse him.

“Oh but my dear boy, they already have.” The red-headed man told him, and on cue video screens appeared showing surveillance footage of Motorcity being overrun by Kane’s forces, and Chuck couldn’t keep a disheartened look off of his face at the display being presented to him “Look at them, fleeing like rats at the first sign of trouble. Does that look like civic pride to you. The people don’t care about Motorcity. No matter how much you like to pretend they do.” Overwhelmed, Chuck started sliding back to the ground, his mind racing at the thought of the safety of his team, and of his city “Now just sit back, and watch your city crumble.” Dramatically Kane and Red started walking out of the room, leaving Chuck alone.

Alone with Mike at least.

When the doors closed, Chuck looked up to the passive waste of a military commander that he used to be (and admittedly still was) in love with.

He flipped him off too.

~~~

Authors notes: Well Chuck handled that just a bit differently than Mike didn’t he… Well, the more things change the more they stay the same, I guess. - Fear and loathing in Vega is a reference to ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’ Or ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream’ a book by by Hunter Thompson. Which was also adapted into a movie in 1998. -Lactated ringers is an electrolyte solution for IV use. -Cplusplus is a programming language -When the Duke says Chuck is like the rebellious son he never had, this is actually a reference to an AU called crazy=genius by @asktheburnersleaderandprogrammer, where Chuck is then adopted son of the Duke, and Mike is the adopted son of Rayon. -Chuck did not want to go after Vega like Mike did in the series because he’s less impulsive in his decisions, and in the series original he was against Mike’s decision of going after Vega with the Duke. The only way Duke was going to get Chuck to that ridge was basically to strike a deal, and Chuck tried to get away without approaching Vega anyways. And again after what happened with Red and the Terra’s, Chuck wasn’t going to place blind faith into a seemingly powerful stranger.

[tinfoil-jones]

Motorcity: Legacy, Chapter 3

Disclaimer: I do not own Motorcity, or the song. Motorcity belongs to Disney, and the song belongs to Five Finger Death Punch Title: Burners Legacy Rating: T-M depending on chapter Summary: He didn’t want to be his carbon copy, but he might have to be in order to rescue him from Deluxe. Pairings: MikexChuck, DutchxTennie, ClairexFoxy, DukexBabs, Juliex?, OCxOC Warnings: Don’t read if you don’t like or are triggered by violence, death or dystopian societies Author’s Note: Some characters you like died.

~~~

Chapter 3: Never Enough

\In the end we’re all just chalk lines on the concrete Drawn only to be washed away For the time that I’ve been given I am what I am\

“My bike!” Miles exclaimed as she surveyed the damage from this mornings patrol -  the energy blasts from the hound bots did it fact hit her a few times, and now most of the paint had been seared off and the metal making up the body was damaged. Being a motorbike, Prowler just couldn’t tank hits like the other vehicles could.

Dana, the lead mechanic stood by her with her gloved hands on her hips, surveying the damage. Dana didn’t look much like her father, Dutch, she instead looked more like her mother Tennie; the most obvious thing being that she was the shortest Burner. Her skin was a cocoa brown color and her eyes were a deeper shade, almost black. Her black hair was set it short boxbraids and parted at the center that didn’t quite brush her shoulders. She wore a violet shirt with a sky blue burners symbol in the center of the chest, and blue denim shorts, and sky blue high-tops, under her clothes she always wore black capri leggings and a black skin tight elbow sleeved shirt. The most notable thing, however, were her violet electricians gloves that were far too big for her hands, which were actually quite slender and small. How she had mobility of her hands and fingers with those on, Miles could only guess, but it was probably a Cablers thing.

“It’s not too bad girl,” Dana assured her “I’ll have it fixed up by tomorrow more, just leave it with me overnight.”

“No problem.” Miles said, although she didn’t really mean it; she didn’t want to hoof it home, unlike the other Burners she didn’t mainly live at Jacobs place. And it was really best that she wasn’t seen along the way.

“Are you going to stay over this time" Asked Kam as he was laying under his vehicle, Leviathan, fixing something in the undercarriage; probably his transmission again, which always leaked no matter what they did.

“I have to go home, I’ll just take the bus.” Miles replied, leaning over the counter of her work station.

The shorter Burner motioned to her car, Stinger “You don’t need to, I’ll just drop you off-” Dana began, but Miles quickly cut her off.

“That’s nice of you but it’s fine.” She insisted, and Dana didn’t push it. Miles wasn’t upfront about her life outside the Burners, and the other Burners (for the most part) respected her privacy.

“Oh come on Miles, it’s been a year, would it really hurt to have us know where you live?” Kam, exception to pretty much everything, inquired as he slid out from under Leviathan; Miles had neat, dark red hair, and dark brown eyes with fair skin and a prominent jawline. His clothing as a Burner was a color-swap of his Deluxe clothing; he wore a dark green letterman-style jacket with light green sleeves and a dark green Burners logo on his right arm, olive cargo pants and brown trainers. Mile’s might’ve found him cute if he wasn’t so... himself, and if she wasn’t already engaged.  “I mean, I’m beginning to think you don’t trust us.” Miles simply sneered at him and grabbed a sanding block and a blowtorch to smooth out the charred and serrated metal parts of Prowlers body.

Dana put her hands on her hips again and bent over Kam, who was still on the ground “Mind your own business, Kam, everyone has a right to their secrets.” This seemed to convince the red-head, oddly enough, and he got up again, cleaned the transmission fluid off of his hands with one of the many small grease cloths they had scattered around the garage.

Sighing in relief, Miles put on a pair of heat resistant gloves and a face shield to start working out torching off some of the dings and dents in her bike; she was just glad her bike was easy to work on compared to the behemoths her friends drove. Dana and Kam were taking a break from maintaining their cars and were watching TV in the kitchen area that was offset from the garage.

Kam changed the channels when he came to Duke of Detroit television, Dana stopped him from flipping again “Wait! I like this show.”

“Oh come on it’s just a rerun.” He complained, grabbing a room temperature cola from the other side of the counter.

“Well I haven’t seen it yet.” Dana told him and watched intently. The show was a five-minute segment on DD-TV called ‘Crimes against Fashion’, hosted by the Duke’s daughter the Duchess of Detroit. Duchess had the same tall, lanky build as her father the Duke, but her face was more like her late mother No.2. The most prominent trait she had was her hair; it was in two differently coloured layers just like the Duke, except the top layer was bright red instead of brown, and her hair was much longer and smoother. She had a large singular fringe covering her left eye, and a plat on the other side framing the right side of her face. She had the same sea-blue eyes as the Duke, and wore candy-red eyeshadow on the visible eye. The older teen, who had to be almost twenty by now, always wore a white sleeveless v-neck, red tights with a white stripe down the side of both legs, and white heeled boots with red stripes down the sides.

In the segment Duchess was sitting in an extravagant chair, with a sly Duke-like grin, and was talking about the outfits worn by various people caught in shots around Motorcity. And surprisingly, after the two minute mark a snapshot of Mitch came up, where he was sitting on the stoop of an apartment complex and was playing his stratocaster.

“And then there’s this guy!” Duchess said to the camera and audience “The leader of the new Burners himself. I don’t know if it’s a phase he’s going through but he wears too much black! We get it Chilton you’re an edgelord, it doesn’t mean you wear black all the way up to your chin!” Dana couldn’t help but stifle a laugh, Kam rose an eyebrow.

“Geeeze, she’s so hot it’s a shame she has to be such a bitch.” Kam said in regards to Duchess, Dana nudged him.

“Oh be nice Kam, she has a point you know; Mitch doesn’t exactly dress to impress.”

“Should he? And even if he doesn’t it isn’t nice to blast someone on television either when he was just minding his own business.”

“To be fair, I think it was the Duke’s orders, you know he doesn’t exactly like the Burners. Especially Mitch’s dad.”

“Doesn’t make it okay.” Kam muttered, taking a sip of cola “If you ask me, Duchess is just as bad as the Duke. Daddies girl or not, she’s just as much of an overdramatic brat as him.”

Dana nudged him again “Come on, that’s not fair; her mom died in Hellfire Rain, all she has is her dad.”

“And a ton of money, a ton of territory and a bunch of servants - she’s not the only one who lost a parent; Miles and Teddy lost their mom too. Hell, I don’t even have a dad and you don’t see me blasting people on television.”

They heard a yelp of pain and turned to see Miles was standing up and hopping about. “Are you okay?” Dana called from the kitchen.

“A cinder block fell on my foot!” She hissed painfully, and Dana began making her way over.

“Let’s go see Teddy.”

“I’m fine!”

“Come on, don’t try to be tough those cinder blocks weigh more than you do. I mean, it’s not hard to but-”

“Fiiine.”

—

“Your foot is fine, a little bruised but I don’t think you’ll get any sort of infection.” Teddy told her after looking Miles over.

“Thanks doc,” She sighed, Dana was seated at a different chair next to the doctors chair, and was reading an old magazine “What’s with the face mask?” She asked; Teddy had a surgical mask on since before they came in and hadn’t taken it off.

“There’s a flu going around - haven’t you wondered where Mitch is?” He asked with a quirked brow - his communicator, a usb-stick like device at the end of his layard started going off, a call from his mother, and like always he pressed decline.

“I figured he was brooding.”

“No, he, Texas, and Little T are all down with the flu - in fact, let me check you over.” Teddy went into his medical ramble and grabbed a thermometer and pulse oximeter.

“I feel fine- Teddy, really?” There was really no use getting through to the medic, as he already put the pulse ox on her finger . Sometimes he was really such a hypochondriac by proxy.

He got out his thermometer and put a probe cover on the stick “Open,” he ordered, and she listened, as it took a few seconds to take temperature he turned to Dana “I’m checking you right after.”

“Fine.” The mechanic deadpanned and turned the page of the magazine.

The thermometer beeped and he looked at the screen of it “You have a 103 degree fever.” She groaned a little bit, knowing Teddy was probably going to blow it way out of proportion “That’s a high grade fever Miles.”

“I’m- I’m okay.” She stopped herself from saying ‘fine’ for what must have been the millionth time that day. Teddy didn’t really listen to this and instead focused his attention on Dana, he took her vitals as well and she had a 102 degree fever.

“Everyone’s getting sick; that’s it, work day over, everyone’s going home.” Teddy sighed, adjusting the surgical mask and switching it for a a filter mask instead.

“But I live here,” Dana pointed out, Teddy gave her a stern look.

“I’ll take you back to your parents home at the Cablers settlement,” Teddy said, grabbing the keys to Sunback “I can’t nurse a flu for more than three people at a time. I’m going to check Kam quickly-.”

“I’m going home.” Miles announced and got up abruptly. “I’ll take my bike it works just fine just looks ugly.”

“Miles I’d highly advise-”

“I said I’m fine.” She said with more emphasis, irked at this pointed, and the medic didn’t push it this time. The brunet hobbled over to her bike, pulled her face mask up to her nose, and drove off.

“She really needs to start wearing a helmet,” Teddy said to Dana, and she nodded in agreement; really, at this point it was amazing the Prowler driver hadn’t cracked her head open.

—

The Cabler settlement was Dana’s actual home ever though she primarily stayed at the Burners headquarters. Her parents lived there, and as did her older brothers Cekis and Carlos.

“Get better, and have a nice day.”

“Thanks Teddy.” She smiled weakly as Sunback turned around, unlatching Stringer from the towline, and watched the vehicle as it drove off and disappeared from Cabler territory and her sight. Sighing heavily, Dana trudged her way to her childhood home.

She loved her family, she really did, but… she had her reasons for not coming home very often.

The short Burner knocked on the rounded door, and waited as she heard the electronic locks click, and finally the door opened. A much, much taller figure stepped out. “Baby girl!” Dutch exclaimed as he knelt down and swooped his daughter into an all-encompassing hug so tight she had some difficulty breathing. Being the patriarch of not just the Gordy family but also the Cablers themselves, Dutch wore electrician-style Cabler gear these days with a blue star on his shirt where his Burners symbol used to be. He still kept his hair up in a large afro, and also had a beard, but both of these had a few gray strands.

“H-Hey dad,” she coughed and smiled weakly, and she was dragged into the house. The cable house looked the same as it did every time she came back home, furniture arranged the same, picture frames where they’d always been. R.O.T.H, her fathers constant companion even to this day was charging on the kitchen counter.

“Tennie!” Dutch called his wife; he finally put his much smaller daughter down and had his arm wrapped around her instead.

“Dad I’m sick-” Dana protested and tried to pry out of his affectionate grasp, but this did little to deter him; her mother fast-walked from the hallway. Tennie Gordy was the Cablers leader and despite her unimposing stature looked the part; her hair was a lot longer and not kept in pigtails anymore, and instead flowed down to her back, but she had a blue bandana wrapped around her head to keep it all out of her face, and if it was off one would see that one of her ears was bright red and shriveled compared to the other one. A reminder of Hellfire Rain.

“Dana honey! It’s so good to see you!” Tennie said as she walked over and covered the teens face in kisses.

“Yuck, yuck- mommmmm.” Dana protested “Dooon’t, I’m sick.”

“You’re sick?” Her mother asked, concerned, Dana nodded and explained to them what Teddy had explained to her “Well, that’s no problem, we haven’t touched your room. Go lie down for a bit sweetie, I’ll bring you some food and medicine in a bit.”

Dana nodded obediently and Dutch escorted her to her room “Are… the twins home?” She asked, referring to her older brothers.

“No, they’re working on a centre right now.” Her father explained as he opened her door; her bedroom seemed to be a juxtopisional space, it looked lived-in but it felt lifeless. It had a hammock bed with a storage boxes under it, a dresser, a small desk and a few stuffed toys scattered her and there, along with clothes in the closet that she didn’t wear anymore but kept because it wasn’t like she’d grown any taller since she was twelve.

She lay down on  the hammock and looked as her father put a fleece blanket on top of her. “Just shout if you need anything,” he said and kissed her forehead.

“I’m too old for that, dad.” She reminded him, getting flustered at this point; he only laughed softly and left. Dana curled up into a ball under the blanket once she was left alone; and now that she was left alone to herself and her thoughts with the lights off she realized that her head and face did in fact feel really hot. Had she been this tired the whole time?

She closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep.

—

Muttering to herself as she parked her bike in a lot, Miles went into a pharmacy - not more than ten minutes since her diagnosis and she was already feeling the full brunt of the fever. It was almost like the knowledge she was sick made her ever sicker. Weird how that worked. If she was going to make it back home, she’s have to have some kind of pick-me-up. Maybe she should have taken the bus.

She went inside and looked around for some cough medicine, but they were sold out as usual; living in a subterranean city, they were always low on stuff like medicine, especially cold pills which people frequently turned into crystal meth. Ever since Kya’s son Fallow of the Terra’s opened up a weed shop hard drug usage wasn’t as bad as it was say, ten years ago, but it was still there.

Giving up her search for cough syrup, and picking up some ibuprofen, she came back out with a brown paper bag in hand. However, a few steps out of the door and she was hit with a wave of vertigo; she almost dropped the paper bag as she reached her hands up to hold her head, and cast her spinning vision to the ground.

She was vaguely aware of someone hooking their arm with hers and escorting her to her bike, but she was too dizzy to really do anything other than be dragged. “Thanks…” She muttered as she gripped the handles of her bike.

“No problem.” A robot voice said, almost humorously. She froze and turned back around to see it was Red. On impulse she reached for her communicator.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Red warned and red energy sparked around his fists, reluctantly the brunet listened “good. Not that they’d help you, everyone but your medic is sick too.”

“What do you want?” Miles asked, irked. She’d be confused even if she wasn’t sick; why would Red help her to her bike instead of just attacking her when she was weak?

“I wasn’t ordered to attack a bunch of Burner babies.” Red told her, snatching the baggy from her “I was told to observe. And I have to say, I’m not impressed.” He looked into the bag and reached his hand inside of it.

“Give me that!” Miles snapped and snatched the bag back “I don’t know what angle you’re playing at, but leave me alone.”

“Whatever you say,” Red began, bringing his face in a little closer, so he could mockingly whisper “princess.”

Miles already pale face drained of colour “W-What-”

“Don’t think I don’t know your little secret,” The armoured man said, and turned away “frankly, I’m surprised your little friends haven’t caught on by now.”

And then he was gone, and Miles was dizzy, feverish, panicked and confused all at once.

—

“Here sweetheart.” was a statement coupled with a gentle shake that woke Dana up from her uncomfortable fever sleep, but being awake again was twice as uncomfortable, she opened her eyes a crack to see her mother standing by her hammock; she’d brought a small one-person fold out table and had on it a steaming bowl of soup and glass of orange juice.

“Thanks mom…” Dana said quietly, grabbing the orange juice; she wasn’t sure how long she’d been out but apparently it was long enough to dehydrate to near death. Tennie smiled down maternally at her daughter.

“It’s so nice to have you home again! Of course I’d prefer if you were well - but still nice nonetheless. Your brothers are home by the way.” Dana coughed as she swallowed the wrong way. “They’re not going to bother you, but they’re home if you want to see them.” Dana’s older brothers, Carlos and Cekis were older than her by four years, they were twenty-one, and identical in every way. They didn’t live at home because they were jobless or bums or anything like that, but because like their parents they were influential figures among the Cablers.

They were the golden children, and she’d always played second fiddle to them as long as she could remember.

They were both prodigies and grew to be much-needed pillars of the Cabler community; carpentry, hardware repair, and electrician were a must-have in the Cabler settlement and the twins were skilled in all. Now, Dana was a skilled electrician also; but she was better with vehicle technical skills, which aren’t as important in the Cabler community as it was to the rest of Motorcity. Not to mention she hated doing general repairs and was poor with carpentry.

The twins were artists also, just like their father, something that inspired the rest of their community. She didn’t have that same spark. She was good at other things; she knew basic first aid, she was good at fighting, good at cooking, but…

She wasn’t good enough at anything that was important to the Cablers, or her parents, she didn’t live at home anymore because that meant living in her brothers’ shadows.  Kameron had been her childhood friend, like the other Burners, and he was the first of the original Burners children who got his license. Dana always tagged along with him driving, and when Jacob and Texas proposed restarting the Burners she jumped on that bandwagon right away. She wasn’t anything special in the Cabler community, but among the Burners she actually meant something. She could fix cars better than the others, she could make them look new just with a discerning eye.

As a Burner, the Stinger driver was important. As a cabler, Dana Gordy was just nobody.

“Do you need anything else dear?”

“No thank you, mom.”

—

The Dukes territory was a formidable place to trespass even if it was a junkyard; the guard dogs, the henchmen on patrol, all of the cameras. It was like there were eyes everywhere.

At least, that’s what you would think if you didn’t understand the territory like Miles did.

There was a narrow blindspot; this was a run where a lot of the guard dogs congregated, but they never barked at her because they knew her. Still, the area was narrow; but it was narrow enough for a speeding Motorbike like Prowler to slip through undetected.

Miles came close to the Duke’s mansion, and when she was close enough she stopped her bike at an overpass of junk; it was easy to hide her motorbike with the abundance of junk, and usually a pane of sheet metal did the job as she leaned it against a mound of junk. It was actually this area that she’d found Prowler; back then it had just been an ancient, rusted, delivery Motorbike but she’d fixed it enough to make it at least work.

And then one fateful day, over a year ago she’d come across Mitch. Moonstrucks radiator took a shit because Mitch neglected to change the water. But Mitch had only just got his license so it was a forgivable mistake since it was a common mistake for new drivers especially if they had an old car. She helped him fix his radiator, jumped his battery and opted to be his spotter on the way back to Jacobs garage. Here she met the rest of the gang, and became the last of the new Burners to join. They helped her fix up Prowler to its current sleek, destructive glory.

Keeping herself as small as possible, Miles went through another narrow blind spot; there was a large, mostly dead, monstrosity of a mutated tree next to the mansion, which blocked the security cameras view for a small range, but enough range for Miles to squeeze through; once by the mansion she opened the window; she had jerry rigged it to make it looked locked from the inside when it wasn’t. Once inside, she sighed in relief.

The room was mostly red, with some white accents; it was an overall plush, velvety room; it had its own large master bathroom , and walk-in closet with full-length mirrors on the doors. The bed was king sized and had a soft, bright red duvet, and an abundance of plush white pillows. There was a large TV in one corner with a red leather couch and glass coffee table in front of it. Finally, there was a large dresser with a number of accessories on it, including a large jewelry box almost overflowing with it’s tasteful content, there was a mirror attached to the dresser also, and a small velvety vanity stool. On top of the jewelry box, there was a small Titanium ring, made a shimmering green via anodizing, which she resented too much to ever wear.

Placing the paper baggy down, the Burner sat on the stool and looked into the dressers mirror. Her reflection stared back; a fair-skinned girl, with fever-flushed cheeks, tied up brown hair, and brown eyes bespectacled with geeky round glasses. Her face.

Sighing heavily as she usually did at this part of the day, Mile’s took her leather jacket off first and hid under her dresser. She undid her ponytail, and her brown hair fell to the middle of her back. She looked at herself in the mirror again as she took off her glasses; her eyes went from boring brown to a brilliant sea blue. Finally, she took her red hair clip out, and her bangs fell to the left side; the brown color of her hair shifted as the pixelated disguise faded out; her hair became softer, fuller and two-toned, with the top layer becoming bright red and the bottom layer blonde.

She looked into the mirror again and this time the Duchess of Detroit was staring back at her.

—

“Dude, autoscope.” Mitch complained into his headset to his online companion, who was probably some smug seven-year-old judging by their online gaming shenanigans. The brunet Burner was sitting at a couch with a blanket over his lap and a wet cloth on his forehead that stopped being cool fifteen minutes ago but he was too lazy to remove. His baby sister was curled up under the same blanket, and was sleeping with her head resting on his thigh. Fever had sapped her usual abundance of energy, and Texas was the same as Mitch hadn’t heard a peep from the older Burner all day. Mitch, however, had a hard time sleeping fever off, and decided to instead spend the day playing video games.

“I didn’t think I’d see a day where everyone was greener under than gills than me.” An old, rusty voice croaked; Mitch put on a weak smile when he craned his head to the doorway to see Jacob. The old man was not in good shape these days; most people in Motorcity didn’t live past seventy because of respiratory issues, and Jacob was still kicking. Probably because of his diet being heavy in vegetables. Among other age-related issues, his worst ailments were rheumatoid arthritis, and lung cancer.

The only reason he wasn’t heavy on treatments was because he didn’t have a very aggressive form of lung cancer, he reasoned that old age would kill him first. Depressing thought, but he fought for the free thought of everyone, he had the right to have a say in how he’d die. He consumed a lot of cannabis edibles these days.

“It’s just a bug, they pass.” Mitch said, and the old man hobbled over. Little T hummed and gripped the blanket, burrowing deeper into the fluffy cocoon.

“I’m impressed, neither of you two are as insufferable as your father when he got sick.”

“Which one?”

“Mike,” Jacob said “he was just- just, awful when he was sick, especially when he was around your age. ‘But I have to do this’, ‘but I have to do that’, ‘but it’ll only take an hour to blast all of those hound bots’.” Jacob impersonated, which made Mitch snort a small laugh “We had to use a whole bottle of cough syrup to put him to sleep to keep him from doing anything. Your other father had a heck of a time dealing with that.”

Now that Mitch thought about it, anytime Mike was sick he was basically in a coma for the whole day. He used to think that was just how sick people recuperate, but in retrospect Chuck probably drugged him with a bunch of cough syrup or something, because it /was/ weird that Mike would be inactive for such a long stretch of time. Much like Little T, he had to always be moving, and couldn’t sit still for long. Mitch was restless too, but not because he felt the need to constantly be doing something, but because he just naturally functioned on small amounts of sleep. Chuck would always tell him it was hereditary, but he may have just been trying to excuse his own bad habits.

“By the way,” Mitch inquired as Jacob sat at the other side of the couch and grabbed a controller as well “was Kam sick too?”

“No,” Jacob told him and toggled on the two-player “Teddy sent him back to Deluxe for safety though, illness is so rare in Deluxe it’d be really strange if he suddenly came down with the flu.”

“So everybody but Kam and Teddy is down?”

“Mhmmm.”

“Well, I hope it doesn’t last too long; if Red reported this Kane would jump at the chance to attack us.” Jacob hummed thoughtfully at Mitch’s observation.

“I don’t know…” Jacob began “Red’s changed… he just, doesn’t seem very destructive. I don’t think he takes the Burners seriously anymore.”

“That’s fine with me,” Mitch shrugged “if he doesn’t think we’re a threat, that’s a benefit to us. Kane will underestimate us. And dad always told me there wasn’t a bigger blunder than underestimating a foe.”

—

“Oh princess! Are you home?” The knocking at her door almost made Duchess jump out of her skin, but it was just her father. She was glad that being a girl, the Duke never just barged in, she was especially thankful that he’d shown up right after she’d gotten into her pajamas.

“I’m here dad.” She said, sliding under her covers to make it look like she’d been there the whole time - just in time for Duke to throw her door open.

“What are you still doing in bed sleepy head! It’s three in the afternoon!” He bellowed, but jovially. He walked over, she looked up at her father and smiled weakly.

“I’m sick.” She told him, sitting up slightly. And he frowned, making the age lines in his face much more apparent; the brown layer of his hair, and his once well trimmed but now scruffy beard was streaked in gray while the blonde layer was streaked with white and he just seemed to add more and more colourless streaks each day. Even though he was older than a lot of people realized, he’d managed to retain a youthful appearance; that was, until her mother died.

“Oh sweetheart why didn’t you say so! I’d have gotten one of our servants-”

“It’s just a flu dad.” Duchess insisted.

“Still, only the best for my little girl. This isn’t from that fiance of yours is it?”

“Dad you know as well as I do that I’m never around him unless if I have to be.” She reminded him, and she looked up at him with narrowed eyes as she did. It was an arranged marriage, arranged by him when she was only eleven.

The Duke kissed her forehead, which might have been for affectionate purposes but was definitely mostly to check her temperature. “Darling you’re absolutely burning,” he concluded “no more Crimes against Fashion for you this week.”

“Okay,” Duchess said with a sigh, sinking back into her mountain of plush pillows.

“Don’t worry about business this week,” The Duke continued “you just focus on getting better princess.” She just nodded and turned onto her side with her back facing him. He turned out her lights and then left, and when he did she flopped back onto her back to stare at the ceiling.

Duchess felt like more of an asset of her father than an actual daughter sometimes. Okay, pretty much all the time she felt this way. And everyone else saw her as just an extension of the Duke as well, instead of as an individual person. When she was younger she loved it; everyone wanted her attention, wanted to be her friend. As she got older, she realized they just wanted a piece of the Duke’s money and power, and saw her as a meal ticket. Or people just assumed she was a spoiled heiress without a thought in her head, like Kam did.

Over time, she realized that in order to be herself she had to stop being… herself. She used some of her father’s connections to get pixelating technology; a hair clip that made her hair appear brown, and rounded glasses that changed not only the color of her eyes, but also made her eyes appear rounded instead of the natural almond shape.

Once she had those, all she needed was a ride, different clothes and a name. She’d scavenged her bike from the dump, she bought more casual, palette-swapped versions of her regular clothes and a leather jacket. The name Miles was typically a male name, but it had special meaning to her; when she was little she had the childish habit of talking a lot, and talking fast, to the point her mother frequently told her she ‘talked a mile a minute’.

When she was Miles, she wasn’t the Duchess of Detroit, she was just a nerdy biker chick. She’d gone to the same high school as Mitch, Dana, and Dana’s brothers and none of them knew that she was really Duchess. When she’d ‘met’ Mitch that fateful day at the side of the road, he saw her as a stranger.

And she was not just fine with that, she /relished/ in it.

As Miles she could ride Prowler instead of a limo with someone else driving. She could be taken seriously, she could get in as many fight club brawls as she wanted, she could be seen as a person and not just an extension of Duke. She could be a Burner.

She loved her father, she really did, but he coddled her, and almost kept her hidden from the world; she wasn’t allowed to have many friends as a kid, anytime she went anywhere she had to have an entourage of bodyguards with her, she was rarely allowed to even drive the limo unless if she was racing because ‘that’s what the help do’, she had to always wear red-and-white, she wasn’t even allowed to date because he arranged her a marriage for power and affluence.

His over-protectiveness and coddling wasn’t always so bad, but it got worse after her mother died, though not immediately. He pushed her away at first out of grief, for about a year, but then suddenly he was all over being her father again and she was smothered to near death after a year of being neglected.

Duchess pulled the blanket up over her face; sometimes she wished she could wake up and be Miles forever. Well, okay she didn’t really wish that. She was at a constant impasse with her identities because she loved being Duchess too, just not all the time.

First, she needed to sleep. She reached over to grab the bottle of ibuprofen from the paper bag, but it fell from her nightstand when she grabbed it wrong. When she looked to her floor, her blue eyes widened in shock.

There was a bottle of ibuprofen, but also a new bottle of cough syrup.

/I’d rather hate you for everything you are Than ever love you for something you are not I’d rather you hate me for everything I am Than have you love me for something that I can’t

It’s never enough, it’s never enough No matter what I say It’s never enough, no it’s never enough No matter who I try to be It’s never enough, no it’s never enough No matter how I try to change It’s never enough, never never enough I’ll never be what you want me to be/

Authors Note: Cars introduced are; Leviathan = squid motif, green. Stinger = wasp motif, purple.  Mile’s lives a double life.  Parallels can be drawn between Dana, who just wants to be noticed, and Miles who just wants to not be noticed so she can be herself, but both of them just want people to appreciate them for who they are. Also, who’s Miles engaged to? And why would Red go out of his way to intimidate Miles, just to also turn around and give her the cough syrup she needed? The song is ‘Never Enough’ by Five Finger Death Punch.

[tinfoil-jones]

Motorcity: Join Me, Chapter 19

Disclaimer: I do not own Motorcity or the listed characters Title: Join Me Rating: T+ Summary: AU, Chuck and Mike never met in Deluxe; Chuck is leader of the Burners and Mike is still Kane’s Commander. Despite being enemies, Chuck and Mike find themselves having feelings for each other, but are both too stubborn to leave their sides of Detroit. Pairings: MikexChuck, DutchxTennie, FoxyxClaire(implied) Warnings: Don’t read if you don’t like or are triggered by violence or dystopian societies Author’s Note: For the sake of the AU to work Chuck is OOC and some events have been slightly changed.

~~~ 19: If Tomorrow Never Comes Chuck continued to flip Mike off, not saying a single word. The brunet cleared his throat to break up the awkward silence “Can you… please stop flipping me off so we can talk?” He started approaching him. Chuck scoffed, but didn’t put his middle finger down.

“Oh? Talk about what? How lovely the weather must be up here? Sports? Or how about how your boss is trying to kill me?” Chuck shakily stood up “And if you’ve come here for one last booty call, I’m afraid I’ve got a headache, and a faceache, and an everything ache because Red’s been using me as a punching bag for hours.” He bit his lip and finally ended his one-fingered salute to the officer. He didn’t know if he was weak-kneed because of how many times Red had kicked his knees and shins, or if it was because he was at the mercy of Mike Chilton, he really wanted it to be the former but knowing himself it was probably the latter.

When the brunet was close enough, Chuck tried to punch him, but Mike ducked down slightly and wrapped his arms under his and around his chest, pulling him into a tight hug “I’m so glad you’re okay.” The military officer told him gently, hugging him for all he was worth and not giving the blond any wiggle room whatsoever “I didn’t know about the plan until you were already captured, I thought… I came here as soon as I heard, I didn’t want you to get hurt.”

“A little late for that isn’t it.” Chuck narrowed his eyes angrily and thankfully Mike was hugging him so tightly the shorter of the two had no way of looking at his face and seeing his lips quiver and his eyes glisten “Hurt me? Mike Chilton you’ve got some nerve. You /heard/ Kane, he’s going to kill me.” He told him harshly.

“No, shhhh, he won’t, I won’t let that happen.” Mike continued to try to comfort him but it didn’t seem to work well, and he knew it wouldn’t because he knew his ex boyfriend to be too logical to believe emotional appeals, when he looked up at him he paused noticing a detail he hadn’t noticed earlier because of the poor lighting “What’s wrong with your eye Chuck?” His left eye wasn’t the same maya-blue shade as as his right, not only was it swollen almost shut, but the iris was a glistening silver almost… almost metallic. “I don’t have a left eye Mike,” Chuck admitted weakly, as he realized his contact lens must have fallen out when Red had given him a black eye. “Your lackey Tooley beat me to near death before I left Deluxe, I lost my eye. I’ve had a bionic one.”

Mike frowned further “Chuck…” He trailed off, tucking some of Chucks hair behind his ear in a further attempt to comfort him. Chuck hated it, he really hated it, but given their history together and his own present unfortunate situation he was melting the Kane Co commanders arms. “Save it Mike, you had to see this happen. You wanted Kane to win and if he did win, what did you think would happen, they’d put me in a white and blue jumpsuit and I’d go back to being a law abiding Deluxian? I’m a registered terrorist in Deluxe, and nothing you could do would have saved me from persecution.” He wrenched himself out of the commanders embrace “Just… Just leave Mike. I’ll probably die but dammit you haven’t killed my team. They’re good people, and they won’t let Motorcity fall… Just, just leave me alone.”

“You know I can’t do that Chuckles.” Mike reminded him and gently held up the others chin, which was more humorous than sweet because of the height difference between them “I still love you.” Chuck’s heart skipped a beat, but he kept his resolve. “Yeah well you also love your nation… and I love my city… ” Chuck responded, once again pulling away from him “Kane’s going to destroy my city, Mike.”

“He’s relocating all of the residents Chuck, no one’s going to get hurt.”

“Are you blind or just that gullible? If something comes up, Kane’s would sacrifice thousands with no remorse. And the seeds of dissent were sown in every Motorcitizen and have blossomed for years. No one will become an obedient Deluxian like you.”

Silence roared between them. Mike stood still, now about two feet away from Chuck, whose gaze was turned to the ground. “What we had…” Chuck began, looking back at him, Mike was surprised to see a defeated look in his eyes. “I loved what we had. I loved you Mike.” He admitted, and Mike’s heart twisted at them impending ‘but’ “But we were so stupid to think we could somehow make it work. I couldn’t have you and Motorcity. You couldn’t have me and Deluxe. That’s why we ended, that’s why we can’t be together. That’s why I have no clue what exactly you thought you’d accomplish by seeing me here.”

“I… I just want to help you Chuck.” Mike surprised Chuck this time by his statement ending off in small whimper. “I don’t want you to get hurt. I don’t want to hurt you-”

“Don’t you get it you dumbass, we’re way past that!” Chuck shouted, the suddenness of his raised voice made the brunet take a step back in shock, Chuck composed himself but his face still held a sour look “It’s not our fault we love our causes more than we loved each other. But damn it Mike it still hurt-” Mike shut him up by grabbing his face and slamming his lips against his - it was an effective way of shutting him up to because the familiar but sudden action. Chuck’s eyes widened, and his body froze in place. For a moment everything seemed to freeze. Slowly, but surely, Chuck’s eyes closed and he pressed back. 

Old habits died hard. If they ever died at all.

When oxygen became required, Mike pulled away but the deepness of the kiss resulted in a string of saliva between them, further proof of Chuck’s weakness for the other. “I’m going to help you…” Mike promised, and held both of Chuck’s shackled hands in his own. The Burner’s hands were shaking.

“Do you really want to help me?” Chuck asked softly.

“Yes Chuck, I do.”

“I need you to save my friends… To save Motorcity.”

“Chuck-”

“Mike nothing you do is going to stop my death sentence. Nothing. I don’t want to die for nothing. And the Duke was not only willing to sell me out, but sell out all of Motorcity. He’d sell you out if it was convenient for him.” Chuck warned him, and Mike realized he was right. While he did want both sides of Detroit to be unified as they should be, there was no telling what would happen if Duke outed him for having Chuck as a lover. “Do you remember the green car?”

“Well yeah-” Before the soldier could finish, the rebel leader reached into his back pocket and gave Mike a set of keys attached to a skull-head keychain. “These are the keys to that green car, it’s probably still with the Duke. Just… Just do what you have to.”

Mike looked to the keys, and he thought long and hard. The Genesis Pod, if it came to full fruition, would destroy Motorcity, all of the residents would become part of Deluxe. And Mike was loyal to Deluxe, it was his home and he was sworn to it’s people. However…. He didn’t want Motorcity destroyed, it was different from Deluxe, and in comparison it was almost backwards in it’s ways. But it had a right to exist, a right Chuck and the Burners have been fighting fiercely for. “I will Chuck.” Mike agreed, and pecked his lips again quickly “Sit tight okay, everything’s going to be fine.” Giving him another quick squeeze of a hug, Mike ran out of the room.

“I don’t know about that, Mike…” Chuck admitted in a hoarse whisper to himself, wondering if he’d made the right move in trusting Mike.

~~~

Mike walked out of the holding cell and was surprised to see Julie, the intern appeared to be messing with some sort of file, and he was about to question her when he heard his boss’s voice “WHAT? The Duke double crossed us AND you let the Burner’s get away with their cars?!” He saw Kane was yelling at Tooley, who looked guilty as he usually did when stuff like this happened. Which was all of the time.

“Uhhm,” Tooley was scratching his head to think of an excuse “At least we’ve still got the Burner’s leader.”

“You idiot!” Kane yelled again, something so common for him to say it must have been an impulse at this point. Mike slowly walked over, he might have to diffuse a situation if one rose, but it was unnecessary as Kane sighed and rubbed his temples “Clearly I’m just going to have to handle this myself. This ends now…” Something about the tone of his voice made Mike’s hand shake, and clearly he wasn’t the only one, he looked over to Julie and they knew they had to step in.

“Sir!” Mike called, nipping at their leader’s heels with Julie as well “Sir, what’s going on? Sir, stop.” At that, Kane did stop on his way into his pod, and turned to them, albeit appearing annoyed.

“Just listen to us.” Julie pleaded “You promised you’d give the Motorcitizens time to evacuate, doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

“This isn’t a debate.” Kane informed both of them sternly, “You want to know what real leadership is? It’s making the hard choices,” with that, the red haired man yanked Mike’s arm, pulling his military commander in with him “You’ll learn that one day…” Mike believed he was talking to him… but the way he looked at Julie when he said that, it seemed to insinuate something he had no idea of. Julie tried to call them down in vain “You can’t do this, just listen-” The door to the pod slammed shut, and they flew off. Mike swallowed hard, and he looked to the dash panel to see that the Genesis Pod was at 30%.

—

Chuck had barely gotten a minute to himself when the door opened again, he weakly looked up expecting to see either Red or Mike again, but was surprised to see Julie run in. “Chuck… ” She whispered sorrowfully, but clearly in a rush still.

He looked up, covering his left eye with his hand so he wouldn’t have to give her a nasty surprise “You shouldn’t be here!” He told her, almost in a commanding tone. This didn’t appear to phase her, as she immediately turned to the prison access panel, button mashing away no doubt trying to free him.

The fail safe voice of the panel kept repeating “Access Denied” in a monotonous mantra.

“You have to get out of here!” Chuck covered up his left eye with his blood and sweat soaked bangs as he rose onto his feet “If they catch you-”

“Come on…” Julie whispered fiercely to herself and she continued to try and fail to crack the system. Which wasn’t going to happen; Kane knew who he was imprisoning, he had imprisoned one of the greatest hackers in Motorcity, he wasn’t going to put anything in that access panel besides some of the greatest anti hackware. And Julie was getting frustrated.

Chuck looked to the door, getting as frantic as she was “They’re going to be back any second.” He informed her, putting more emphasis in his tone

“Good, let them find me!” She retorted.

“Blowing your cover won’t help me.” He reminded her.

Boiling over, she kicked the wall and turned to him in a huff “Well I don’t know what will!” Once the brunt of the frustration was out for him to see, she huffed out a sigh and looked to the side.

He walked over to her “Do you know why I asked you to stay behind the other day?” He inquired, using the full extent of a ‘big brother’ tone as possible.

The younger Burner was looking to the floor “To watch your back…” She replied softly. “Look where that got you..” His heart panged, he did not want his friend to blame herself for his capture, at all. He put a comforting hand on her shoulder. Her forehead rested against his chest softly, and this was probably the most physically contact they had received from each other. Neither of them were particularly touchy, and never had been, but the situation was dire and stressful.

He looked to the ground as well “I knew that if something happened, you’d be there to pick up the pieces.” He told her. Julie was the youngest Burner, she was fifteen when they met and was not even eighteen yet; but he could see in her the qualities of a leader he himself didn’t even possess, she was strong but level headed, and if he would leave to Burner’s to anyone, it would be her. Touched by his words, Julie looked up at him at first surprised, but then she smiled softly, and he smiled back down at her.

Just then the door opened, and Tooley stepped in. Once the light from the adjacent hallway hit them and made them visible, Tooley called out “Hey! Who’s there?” Julie did the only thing that could be done to cover her ass in this situation.

She slapped him so hard he ended up spinning as he fell back to the ground. Damn, for such a small hand she had a hell of a slap.

Julie then ran back to Tooley feigning fear “Julie…?” Tooley inquired, confused to see the intern there.

“I-I don’t know what happened.” She lied on the spot “I was bring him food, l-like you asked me to.”

“I asked you to?” He echoed, confused as usual.

“Yeah,” she ‘confirmed’ and continued her excuse “and then he tried to make a move so I uh, I uh, I hit him!” Oh the deep red five-star on Chuck’s pale face really cemented in that story. “Oh, Tooley,” she continued to play damsel in distress by ‘hiding’ into the henchman “I was so scared.”

Kane’s goon hugged her back, and Chuck’s stomach churned at the sight and he could almost feel the ghost of his left eye tear up, remembering how the seemingly infantile man had beaten him almost to death “There, there. Tooley’s gotcha.” He turned to Chuck with a reprimanding look of disgust “How could you?” He scoffed lowly, and escorted Julie out of the cell.

Chuck was once again left sitting there in the dark. Once the shock finally settled, he groaned aloud “Oh great, now they’re going to add pedophile to my criminal record aren’t they?”

— About ten minutes or so after the incident with Julie, Chuck was still slumped against the wall but at this point was nearly asleep, when someone else walked into the cell. “Oh come on how many visitors am I going to get today? I was sleeping.” He hissed sarcastically.

“Kane wanted to deal with you himself, but,” Red said from behind his visor, as he walked up to the blond menacingly and then stopped barely a foot away “I got sick of waiting.”

“Yeah, I have that effect on men.” Chuck said with his usual mocking grin, but he didn’t bother to open his eyes or look up.

Red knelt down, so used to Chuck’s remarks by now they didn’t phase him as much as they used to “Don’t tell me you’re tired. I’m just getting started.” He chuckled.

“I love a guy who can get it up.” Chuck couldn’t help but put a double-meaning to his enemy’s words. However, this didn’t stop him from rushing Red and tackling him. Red reacted immediately by trying to push his off but the Burner responded by weaving an arm over his neck and slinking behind him.

With Chuck literally on his back, Red forced them both backwards against the wall, smashing the Motorcitizen between the wall and his body, but this didn’t deter Chuck in the slightly as he continued to apply a chokehold. They’d removed the booster from his wrist. However, they didn’t know he had another booster in his bionic eye.

Red elbowed Chuck hard in the ribs and then used the arm over his neck to quickly snap forward and arm-throw Chuck off of him and toss him back to the ground.

Chuck looked up angrily at Red - the iris of his bionic eye was now flashing red, and his other eye was completely flushed scarlet. While he’d put a fear inhibitor function on the booster that he’d kept on his wrist, the booster in his eye followed the original function of just enhancing physical abilities.

With Chuck on the ground again, Red attempted to stomp him, when Chuck moved out of the way he tried to punch his head but Chuck rushed him again this time with a headbutt and a shove with his shoulder. Now back on his feet, Red started boxing at him, but Chuck guarded his head, neck and torso with his wrists. And then shoved Red away, finally creating some distance between them.

Red stood his ground, looking more annoyed than threatened. Chuck panted, he was having a hard time breathing now for some reason and the never used booster in his eye made his entire face tingle even worse with the amount of facial trauma he’d already sustained. Yet he grinned, and did the universal ‘bring it’ motion with the left hand.

At the gesture, Red charged his fists with his characteristic bright red electricity, and rushed at him. He threw his first back and threw it forward in a punch, giving Chuck the opening he was looking for. He dodged the punch and got the the side of Red’s arm, and grabbed it in both of his, making sure that his hard-light energy shackles wrapped around the electrical gauntlets of Red’s fists that were still sparking.

The resulting interaction between the shackles and the gauntlets had the consequence he was hoping for - the electricity of the gauntlets overcharged the shackles, and there was a combustive force that threw Red across the room, and did the same to Chuck; although now the blond was finally free. The blunt force knocked Red out since he hit the back of his head directly, but since Chuck landed on his side he managed to stay conscious. Chuck shakily got up, he was still panting, he still couldn’t seem to catch his breath, and he ran out of the holding cell.

And immediately was barraged by blasts from Kane’s security bots.

“I hate my life.” Chuck wheezed as he sprinted down the hallway, at this point the only thing keeping him from getting blasted was blind faith. Which actually seemed to work.

Now out of the signal-blocking holding cell, his comm systems resurrected and almost immediately Julie’s pop-up call head came out “JUMP OUT OF THE BUILDING!” She commanded.

“Julie I know you want to help, but now’s not the time to compassionately take me out of my suffering.”

“JUST DO IT!” There was enough of a growl in the inflection of her voice that for a second, he was more afraid of whatever consequence she would impose on him for not listening to her than the thought of death by jumping out of a building, bracing himself he rammed his shoulder into the glass of a window and started ascending hard towards the ground.

“Um, Julie? JULIEEEE!” He shouted, his right eye teared up hard.

Then he was scooped up by her pod.

He hit the ground hard and groaned, his chest felt so tight…. Actually, he could only feel one side of his chest rise normally.

“You can never just stay put and wait for a rescue can you, lab rat?” Julie said humorously, and offered her hand to help him up, he shakily took her hand, still wheezing.

“I-If Red wanted to be my lover, he’s gotta get with my friends.” Chuck couldn’t help a reference, although Julie didn’t get it. He kept struggling to breath and hastily took his shirt off.

“What are you doing?” Julie asked confused.

“R-Red elbowed me really hard in the chest, and it was aggravated by a blast I’m g-g-getting a tension pneumothorax.” He told her, he breathed hard and started counting his ribs starting from the center of his collarbone, and stopped his finger under his second rib right above his third rib. “Give me a straw and a knife.”

“What are you-”

“Julie please!” He yelled out hoarsely, she scrambled and managed to get him the requested items. He rolled up his shirt and bit down on it. Shutting his eyes hard he sunk the tip of the knife into the intercostal space, and once he heard a hiss he dropped the knife and shoved one tip of the straw into the hole. The tension is his chest started to lesson as trapped air escaped and his lung had room to expand, he signed out in relief but tears were pouring down the right side of his face from the pain. With a shaky hand he cut the straw short, and used some duct tape to keep the straw in place. He’d need proper treatment for his pneumothorax soon. He would really have to thank Jacob soon for all those crash courses in field medicine.

Still taking deep breaths, he put his blue shirt back on. Although still concerned, Julie approached him again “I think you forgot something.” She held out his earlier confiscated blue Burner’s jacket.

“Thank you, Julie.” He replied sincerely.

—

For several minutes Julie tried to re-establish contact with the other Burners, and during that time Chuck sat and waiting, hoping that his tension pneumothorax wouldn’t return. He was truthfully glad it was just a pneumothorax and not a hemopneumothorax, because a straw wouldn’t cut it if his lungs were filling with blood with air.

“Dutch, Dutch!” Julie called as she finally got back in touch with the Whiptail driver. “I’ve got Chuck! What’s your status?”

“Chuck? Thank god you’re back!” Dutch repeated, sounding relieved and excited, but this died down quickly “Now help us fix this.” Pop-up screens of the Genesis Pod appeared, with that appeared to be some form of hard light circuits branching off of it. “We hit the Genesis Pod with Bessie-”

“Bessie?” Julie repeated.

“That’s what we named the weapon. But the pod’s defenses just heal itself.” He explained in a panic.

“We’re going to have to take out the control module.” Julie said as she looked up to her leader.

“Where’s that?” Dutch and Chuck asked in unison.

A crestfallen look crossed Julie’s face. “Kane’s Warpod.” She told them.

“Is there any way we can get inside?” Out of habit Chuck crossed his arms momentarily - before the sharp pain of his shabby chest decompression stabbed him hard enough to make him drop his arms again with a cringe.

Julie looked around as she thought hard “I can think of a way. Chuck,” she turned to the blond rebel leader “take me hostage.”

—

Mike stood behind his leader in the warpod as said man was typing away at the progress of the Genesis Pod. His heart was sinking as the scheme of Motorcity’s destruction was drawing closer and closer with each passing moment. “Sir…” Mike started, keeping composure “I’m… Not sure about this?”

“What’s there not to be sure of, Commander Chilton?” Kane began, not bothering to turn around, and if he had he would definitely see the confliction clear in Mike’s face “You’ll be standing by my side as we build a better world from Motorcity’s ashes. This will be our victory Chilton, /ours/.”

“Ours…” Mike repeated, but much quieter. Now that he thought about it, Kane used words like us, we and ours quite a lot… Up to this point, Mike had always assumed that the nation’s leader was referring to all the people of Deluxe collectively. Now… The more he thought about it, the more and more apparent it was that Kane was referring to them. Them as in, himself and Mike. Just them.

Their relationship was beyond that of simply just a soldier and his commanding officer. Kane had singled him out since even before he was a cadet, grooming him… like a father and son.

Mike was too eager to follow his orders, to be something far greater than himself. He wanted… he wanted…

He had wanted to be just like Abraham Kane.

Now that he watched the screen of the Genesis Pod’s progress however, the one thing he did know was that he definitely didn’t want to kill hundreds of thousands of people.

He remembered what Chuck said… everything that Chuck had said. Every time he told Mike that he was sheltered, that he was clueless, that he was a cinnamon roll whatever that was. All the time’s he told him that he had no individuality and freedom.

He was the commander of Kane’s Army, but in the end… He wasn’t so much Michael Chilton as he was an extension of Kane.

Suddenly his bosses comm screen came to life, and Mike was shocked to see the battered and bruised face of Chuck there, standing in what seemed to be a pod.

“Hello Abraham.” Chuck greeted gruffly.

“Charles Torrence.” Kane growled in rage, and Mike wasn’t sure if he was more surprised by the call or by the fact that Chuck actually had a full name. “Where did you- how did you-!”

“I have someone I think you might.” Chuck coldly cut him off.

“A hostage?” The red-headed ruler insinuated, then laughed “We both know you’d never hurt a civilian.” That was a sentiment about Chuck that Mike had to agree with, surely Chuck could never harm a soul, let alone an innocent one.

With that the Burner let out a cold, cruel laugh of his own “I’m a programmer Kane. I’m a man of logic, not a man of emotion. There’s a lot of immoral things a scientist is willing to do for the greater good. /You/ taught me that, Kane.”

The Kane Co commander wasn’t sure what to think, with all of the one on one confrontations he had with Chuck (of war, and pleasure), he’d never seen him act so cold and detached.

“I’ll give her back, when you turn off the Genesis Pod.” Chuck finished. Mike’s eyes widened at what his ex-lover was suggesting, a gesture that Kane did as well.

“Her…?” Kane questioned, his tone confirmed that he and his soldier were thinking of the same person.

Chuck reached over off screen and forcefully pulled Julie close to him, his face cold and devoid of all emotion.

“HELP! PLEASE!”

—

Something about this was wrong, very wrong. His ex-boyfriend holding his close friend and colleague hostage was wrong on it’s own. But this… this wasn’t logically right either.

Although Julie appeared to be a meek intern, Mike knew her better than that. She was tough, she was strong, she was stubborn she was, she was a god damn survivor, a way better one than most of Mike’s personally trained soldiers. And for some reason, she was very well versed in most forms of defense combat anyways.

She was by no means a damsel in distress.

Not to mention that Chuck was no perpetrator.

For one thing, he could barely even talk to women let alone hold one hostage. And he wasn’t very physically strong either, and Mike knew from the whiteness of his sclera that he wasn’t on his booster at the time of the call. Even if he was stronger than Julie, she was strong enough to give him a hell of a fight. Chuck didn’t have any scratches (Red dealt blunt for and electrical trauma, not scratches) to indicate a struggle, and Julie didn’t have a mark on her either. And for the majority of the call, Chuck wasn’t even holding her down in any way. There was no way Julie would just be a passive prisoner.

Kane was too panicked to see it the way that Mike saw it either, as he rushed his war pod to the rendezvous point. Maybe the ruler was still somewhat set in the old ways and could only see girls and women as damsels…? While it would be easy to say that Mike’s lingering affection for Chuck was the reason that he doubted this whole thing, the logic just didn’t fit.

Kane stopped his pod and beckoned Mike to follow him, the two of them climbed to the top of the pod and from the roof they saw Chuck holding Julie. Although, Mike immediately noticed he wasn’t holding her too firmly, the blond seemed to quickly whisper something to the intern, but she said nothing in response. Kane looked down almost gently at Julie, which caught Mike off guard, but then his angry look reappeared as he looked back up at the rebel leader. The commander looked back to his former lover as well; Chuck side-eyed him sadly but only for a moment.

“Let’s get on with it.” Kane grumbled.

“It’s simple,” Chuck began, holding both of Julie’s biceps as he held her in front of him, raising more suspicion in Mike, as it was a weak hold and Julie could easily wrench out of it “I’ll send her over, she turns off the Genesis Pod, and then I’ll surrender. No escapes, no protests.” Chuck bargained.

“And what happens if I don’t agree to your terms?” Kane challenged back, Mike looked to Julie and tried to mouth that it would be okay, but she wasn’t looking at him. “Don’t tell me you came all the way up here with just a bluff.” He took a threatening step forward.

“One more step and I drop her!” Chuck threatened, pushing her forward just a little bit but still gripping her.

“No you won’t!” The Deluxe ruler spat back at him “You don’t have the stomach for this.”

Mike noticed Julie’s facial expression change ever so slightly, she looked down, then at her captor.

And then Chuck seemed to push her off of the edge, and then catch her before she could descend for real.

“N-No!” Kane shouted, getting into a defensive stance. Chuck was holding Julie, dangling her off the edge. He was the only thing that standing between her and a violent death.

Mike however, wasn’t as blinded by fear as his boss was; he saw right through it all. Julie had pressed herself back into Chuck and flung her own self over to make it look like he was pushing her, but she was clearly moving on her own will, it was especially easy to see because Chuck had the same horrified look on his face as Kane.

This was staged.

This wasn’t a hostage situation at all.

But why… how was Julie in on this?

Chuck gave Kane a threatening look “I should let her go.” He challenged.

“No wait!” The ruler of Deluxe nearly stammered “I’ll do it,” he finally agreed, defeated, which Mike didn’t see coming. He knew that Julie was treated a lot better than other interns, but he didn’t realize that their boss cared about her this much, to this extreme “just, don’t hurt her.” He pleaded. “Please!”

With a bit of a cough and a huff, Chuck struggled to heave Julie back onto the roof “If I didn’t know you better, I’d almost believe you cared.”

‘That make’s two of us…’ Mike wordlessly agreed.

Slowly, Chuck had the pod approach the war pod, until it was close enough for Julie to walk over. She said something quietly to their boss that Mike didn’t catch. However, he did catch Kane’s words to her “It’s okay,” he replied, and his eye’s narrowed as he kept them fixated on his long time thorn in his side “you’ll be safe soon.”

Julie stopped in her tracks and she tried to whirl around but was whisked away by a forcefield. “No! No!” She shouted as she pounded against the hard light. This confirmed Mike’s theory; this wasn’t a hostage situation, this was a coup, somehow Chuck got her on his side. And Kane didn’t notice any of this.

“No!” Chuck yelled, dejected as the red-haired girl was pulled away. His only leverage in this situation.

“Now…” Kane began, and he curled his fists “Let’s finish this!” He yelled and charged at the blond. Mike followed, but he had no intention of attacking Chuck.

It wasn’t much of a fight, Chuck pressed against his bionic eye which activated his booster, but that still didn’t compare to someone of such greater size, strength and fight skill. Chuck didn’t stand a chance. But he tried, oh did he try. He was a scrapper at heart, he was going to try to fight until the bloody end no matter how much it hurt him. In less than a minute, he was standing with blood running down his face from his forehead, even more busted up and broken than earlier. 

The blonde could barely stand, he was wobbling as he tried to get into a fighting stance, and Kane wasn’t having any of it “Pathetic….” He snarled and threw his fist back for a fishing blow.

“No!” Mike shouted and threw himself between Chuck and Kane.

Kane was shocked.

Chuck was shocked.

Mike was still conflicted, he wasn’t thinking straight.

“Chilton what are you doing!” His boss barked, “Get out of my way!”

“I won’t let you hurt him!” Mike shouted back, his words had little to no thought behind them, yet so much at the same time.

“Chilton step aside-”

“I love him!”

Silence, at first Kane was dumbstruck, and then he just became angry all over again. And even more so this time. Meanwhile, Chuck could barely register what was going on, he definitely had a concussion at this point, and his makeshift decompression needle had fallen out, so his pneumothorax was returning, and he was bleeding profusely not just from his head, but internally as well. He could taste the coppery red fluid dripping out of his mouth. He was so disoriented, so afraid… so…so…

So sure he was going to die.

He whimpered and weakly gripped the back of Mike’s jacket, and before he knew it Kane was holding both of them over the edge of the building by the fronts of their shirts.

“You’re choosing some sewer rat over Deluxe!” Kane roared into Mike’s face “You were like a son to me! You could have had it all!”

“I’d never stand by you in a world build on the graves of thousands of innocent people! That was never going to happen!” Mike shouted back.

“…I know that now.” Kane said, in the most chilling voice either of the two younger men in his grasp had ever heard.

And he dropped them.

Chuck feebly looked to the ground, it was far away now but it would be close all too soon. He was vaguely aware of Mike holding his hand, and the comforting sound of his voice. Mike was so brave… And Chuck still loved him so much… He’d just literally fought against his own tyrannical ruler, and gotten thrown off of a building, for the greater good. And he was still trying to comfort him, even as they were falling to their deaths.

Some shitbag of a leader and a lover Chuck was, he couldn’t return all of the sentiments Mike was giving him, he couldn’t be the strong one here, he couldn’t comfort Mike back or even tell him that he still loved him.

All he could think of was death.

All he could think of was how close he was to death.

All he could think of was how scared he was.

—

Author’s note: Chuck isn’t quite as accepting to his ‘fate’ as Mike was in the original series. And there you have it, now all that’s left is the epilogue. And just to make it clear, Mike did not just betray Kane for Chuck’s sake. Yeah his love for Chuck is what made him save his life, but the reason he went so far as to disobey Kane was because the whole Genesis Pod thing made him realize that Kane was a genocidal megalomaniac.

[tinfoil-jones]

Motorcity: Join me, chapter 17

Disclaimer: I do not own Motorcity or the listed characters Title: Join Me Rating: T+ Summary: AU, Chuck and Mike never met in Deluxe; Chuck is leader of the Burners and Mike is still Kane's Commander. Despite being enemies, Chuck and Mike find themselves having feelings for each other, but are both too stubborn to leave their sides of Detroit. Pairings: MikexChuck, DutchxTennie Warnings: Don't read if you don't like or are triggered by violence or dystopian societies Author's Note: For the sake of the AU to work Chuck is OOC and some events have been slightly changed. ~~~ 17: Texas Told’em “TEXAS TOLD YOU NOT TO STICK YOUR DICK INTO EVIL.” While Dutch, Jacob, R.O.T.H and Julie was stunned into silence, Texas did not miss a beat in yelling that, jumping out of his chair and grabbing Chuck by the collar of his shirt, the intimidating effect was unfortunately not lost by Texas’s inferior height. “I-I-” Chuck stammered, the less bold aspect of his personality started to surface at his anxiety, he was cut off when the Stronghorn driver slammed him against the wall and drew his fist back to punch him. Chuck froze at the remembrance of the beating he’d gotten from Tooley that resulted in his artificial eye. “Knock it off, Texas!” Julie snapped and grabbed the dark haired man's fist, effectively stopped him as he was grounded slightly out of his angry state. Blinking, he absentmindedly dropped Chuck. The leader was still shaken, but fixed up his jacket anxiously nonetheless. “Chuck… You’re not serious are you?” Dutch asked, looking to his robot companion before back to his programmer leader. Damn the Duke, damn the duke right to the recycling bin of the netherworlds. “I’m… I’m serious.” Chuck confirmed, soft and morose. “You’re… You’re DATING Mike Chilton?! Chuck, dude - he’s Kane’s right hand man!” Dutch near stammered. “I’m aware, Dutch.” Chuck had his arms behind his back, as to silently and unseenly up the level of his fear inhibitor. It was becoming increasingly difficult to keep a straight face. “How… How did this happen?” Julie inquired, there was something else in her voice that Chuck couldn’t immediately pick up on. “I… I… well...” The blond swallowed hard, “He… He sneaks down here because the freedom we have down here intrigues him- well, mostly the food and cars actually. One day a couple of months ago we were both at the same fast food place at the same time, and, we couldn’t fight with so many people around and instead had a conversation about loyalties and ideals… and, well…” “Then you stuck your dick into evil?” Texas broke in when Chuck trailed off. “...Bluntly, yes. We… Started dating soon after.” Chuck admitted, raising the level of his inhibitor to half-strength, the sclera in his natural eye became a rose shade. “...Dude.” Was all Dutch could say, R.O.T.H was chirping something of similar meaning in his robot language. “Guy’s… Guy’s I...” Chuck swallowed “I’m sorry, okay… I’m sorry; I knew it was wrong to lie and hide this from you. I know it’s wrong to feel this way about someone who’s our enemy.. But...” “You can’t continue this relationship with Mike, Chuck.” Jacob half-consoled, half-scolded as he approached the younger man and gently touched his arm Chuck got onto the defensive “You don’t understand - Mike’s different.” He himself wasn’t sure why, but he knew deep down Mike was different, he wasn’t the same as Kane, the other Kane soldiers or even Dutch’s brother. He just… was different. He just didn’t see the true corruption behind Kane’s execution of his ideals. “You can’t have your loyalties divided like this Chuck.” Jacob argued back “Chilton still fights on the behalf of Deluxe, he’s a soldier and it’s a soldier's job to follow their orders. He’s not just any soldier either, his orders come directly from Kane.” Chuck’s expression twitched and then faltered, like a drooping leaf. In response Jakob placed a hand on his shoulder, sensing the distress he was beginning to fall into. “I’m not heartless Chuck, I understand how both love and infatuation feel. And however strong the feelings you are you can’t balance the safety of Motorcity on them. Chilton is military official of Kane’s army, and he himself will eventually have to choose between you and Deluxe…. Settle this with him now, Chuck, or.. You can ‘t be a Burner anymore.” His blood spiked with ice - not be a Burner anymore?! That was all he was! He dedicated absolutely everything for the cause of liberating Motorcity, for the cause of liberating people in general from the oppression of Kane. “You can’t be serious! Isn’t that a bit overkill?” “It is not overkill, Chuck. If you were dating some random from Deluxe - hell, any /other/ soldier than this wouldn't be a problem. But this is the commander we’re talking about… talk to him tonight, tell him he can either choose Deluxe, or choose you.” This was some Disney plot inconvenience bullshit right here “So you’re trying to tell me either break up with my boyfriend or I’m booted out?” “That… may be what’s best, Chuck.” Dutch drawled out slowly “I mean, this relationship between you and Chilton? It’s messed up. But… We can’t tell you how to feel, or who to feel for. Just… go find him, tell him to pick. You’ve been trying to recruit him forever so… I guess now’s your chance? We don’t want to lose you man.” He kept frowning, he turned his fear inhibitor off, and realized he was actually quite close to tears but he didn’t want his team, especially Texas, to see it. “F-Fine… ” He stammered “I’ll… tell him to meet me at the charging ports, and I’ll ask him if he’s willing to leave Deluxe...” “Do you want one of us to go with you?” Julie asked. “No… It’s between me and him.” ~~~ His radio really liked being as ironic with his life problems, because the song that came on once he was halfway to the charging ports was “I Hate this Part” by the Pussycat Dolls, a song and band from the time before dystopia. Chuck heavily sighed, he really could drive faster than five miles below the speed limit, but he was too nervous to confront Mike with this. “You okay nerd?” Texas asked as his head appeared from the back seat. “Not really- WHAT THE-?!” Chuck swerved and had to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting anything. Once parked temporarily, he twisted around to face his unexpected passenger “What are you doing here?!” He demanded and summoned his sling-shot for good measure. Texas put his hands up defensively in the face up of the other Burners weapon “Hey hey put that thing away!” “I told you I didn’t want to bring anyone with me!” “I’m here as back-up to make sure he doesn’t attack you!” “Texas I swear to-” Chuck inhaled deeply and pulled back, reminding himself to be the adult here. This wasn’t the first time Texas went against his orders after all, so he’d have to take this with a grain of salt, it was too late to take him back. “Fine, but when we get there stay in Blonde Thunder okay? Only come out if you see that I’m in danger, okay? Keep yourself hidden.” “Roger that nerd.” And with that Texas ducked back into the junction between the front and back seat. The song ended as Chuck pulled up to a spot near the charging ports, Mike was already there, mostly in uniform but he was wearing his Burners jacket rather than his uniform top, and his hands were resting in the pockets. When he spotted the approaching blond, he flashed him a smile. A knot formed in Chuck’s throat and his legs grew heavier with each step. “H-Hey Mikey...” “Hey Chuckles- you alright babe?” He asked, concerned as he noticed his usual confident partner was shaky and seemingly timid. “I-I, u-u-uh-” Chuck began with a stammer, Mike had to grab his upper arms to keep him from falling over with how shaky he was; Chuck held onto him back and in his current state, instinctively hid his face between the shorter male's neck and shoulder. Confused but concerned, Mike drew his arms around the blond in return in an attempt to calm him down “Woah… is, something wrong?” He asked, kissing the back of his head. Why did Mike have to make this harder by being so damn sweet? “...Promise me to not be mad.” “Excuse me?” “Promise me!” “I… I, I promise?” Mike agreed, albeit reluctantly. “Whatever it is… I want you to know, I… I love you.” If you strained hard enough you could hear something akin to glass breaking in the distance. That was Chuck’s sanity. Of all times to tell him? Of all damn times? Chuck looked up from his shoulder slightly “D-Do you mean that?” A hand stroked him back gently, making the whole situation even worse. “Of course I do.” Chuck wasn’t exactly the most emotionally developed guy out there, but by the sound of Mike’s tone he knew that he meant it. “...Itoldtheburners.” “Huh?” The brunet inquired, Chuck had spoken too fast for him to quite catch what he had said, only really picking up ‘Burners’. Chuck sucked in a breath, trying to internally stabilize himself as he continued to cling onto the pillar of strength that was Mike Chilton “I told the Burners.” He paused, then continued to clear the confusion “About us. I told them about us-” He started to ramble, starting with the incident with the Amazons and the Duke, and finished where they currently were, sans Texas being in the car. Although Mike was very stiff, he continued to hold him in anyways “They… Know about us?” “Mike I can’t keep doing this...” Chuck admitted, gripping the black fabric of his jacket, he noted Mike’s shocked and nearly horrified expression “Like this, I mean. I want to stay with you- because I l-love you too.” His voice started to lurch with his body, a sincere if somewhat forced confession he’d been saving for a less tense time “I can’t date the right-hand man of Kane, not when he’s the very person I’ve staged this rebellion against. Mike… the only way for us to stay together, is if you join me (1).” There was a long silence, stretched farther than the eye could see. “Chuck...” The shorter man began, his tone was soft but his hold on the other was growing limp, a bad sign “You know… You know I can’t do that.” Chuck pulled away from him, his eyes were streaming tears. Well, only his right eye was. His left eye wasn’t his real eye. He wanted to be angry, he wanted to be upset. He wanted to scream at Mike all of Kane’s injustices and crimes against humanity. About the Terra’s. About Red and the fate of Red’s home. About how Kane had not only exiled him for trying to do the morally right thing, but had him beaten and taking his eye away. Back when he had been loyal to Deluxe and Kane, just like Mike. He wanted so badly to be enraged. But all he felt was mutual sorrow when his maya-blue eyes met Mike’s dark brown ones. Of course he should have seen this coming. They had talked about this at the fast food restaurant all of those months ago, when their forbidden liason’s began. They were both loyal. Loyal to their respective causes, to their people. Mike was loyal to the people of Deluxe, he was a soldier and he served his people first. Chuck was loyal to Motorcity, to his people, and to their liberation. He swiped his sleeve across his right eye “Well then… I guess this is where it ends.” More silence, Mike stood there still. Chuck knew the other commander wasn’t heartless, that this was hurting him as much as it was hurting Chuck. He stayed silent. Up until Chuck turned to leave “Come back with me to Deluxe… I’ll put a word in for you.” “You know I can’t do that Mike.” ~~~ Texas was almost asleep when his leader finally returned - Chuck had opened the door fast and had slammed it closed equally as fast - the Stronghorn driver peered out and saw Chilton had exited through the charging ports. “So he said no? No surprise there nerd, you really know how to pick them.” Texas said, as he sat up. “...” Chuck was silent and had his back turned to him as he sat in the driver's seat, and started up Blonde Thunder. “You’re better off without him anyways-” Texas was surprised when a sob ripped itself away from the other Burner, followed by shaky sniffles, but Chuck refused neither to turn back nor even cover his face with his hands to cover his most likely devastated expression “You, uh, you alright nerd?” Chuck didn’t answer. Not to his question, not when the other man's arms went around his shoulders and drew him in for an awkward bro-hug, not when his sniffles began dying down. Yet he realized, that maybe the painful choice was the right choice… because even though giving up Mike was painful, he could never give up the Burners… A the usually insensitive Texas providing him with comfort in his moment of weakness further vilified his resolve that they were his family. A weird, loud, sometimes dysfunctional, and chaotic family, but they were all he had. ~~~ 1: Don’t you just love it when the title of something appears in the dialogue. No I’m not giving up this story, now that I’m out of Korea (I was there for work purposes) and back in the states with a… mostly, stable connection, I can go back to regularly writing. Thank you for your patience. There’s like… two to three chapters left.

[motorcity-legacy]

Chapter 1, introduction to most of the new characters and Red as the main antagonist

Motorcity: Legacy, Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I do not own Motorcity, or the song. Motorcity belongs to Disney, and the song belongs to Lordi Title: Burners Legacy Rating: T-M depending on chapter Summary: He didn’t want to be his carbon copy, but he might have to be in order to rescue him from Deluxe. Pairings: MikexChuck, DutchxTennie, ClairexFoxy, DukexBabs, Juliex?, OCxOC Warnings: Don’t read if you don’t like or are triggered by violence, death or dystopian societies Author’s Note: Some characters you like died.

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Chapter 1: Blood Red Man

\They called me “The Leather Apron” They called me “Smiling Jack” They prayed to the heavens above That I would never ever come back

Can you hear how the children weep? Chills of fear like a sawblade cutting deep\

“You look so much like Mike.” Was something Mitch was told frequently throughout his life; and it was true. He was already taller than Mike at age seventeen, taking more after Chuck in that regard, his hair was the same thickness but a slightly lighter shade yet still dark brown, and his nose was long instead of broad and his cheekbones were set slightly lower. His eyebrows weren’t as thick as Mike’s, and he lacked the signature sideburns. But other than that, he was a dead ringer for Mike Chilton. And when he was younger he loved it; his father was a legend amongst Motorcity after all, and being seen as ‘just like him’ gave his younger self a false sense of pride. Back then, Mitch even had a very similar hairstyle with short, but straight hair and a cowlick at the center of the part.

Nowadays, he hated the comparison. Not because he hated his father, but because people always told him he looked just like him with such amazement as if he didn’t already know that because he was told it constantly. It irked him so much he spiked up his hair with copious amounts of gel just to create some differentiation between them. But that was after the incident.

Then the incident occured when he was fourteen.

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