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(Double) Trouble

Summary:

If there's one thing Chris doesn't like, it's being alone. On the other hand, he also doesn't like the idea of being sent to the pits, so he pretends to take it in stride when he has to separate from his family and friends. Twice.

Luck isn't on his side either, but that's about to change, the catalyst of said change being two brothers who decide to steal his car.

Chapter 1: Not His Year

Notes:

Hello all! This is part one in this series of fics, but again, they can be read any way once they're all published. I'm starting with the encounters where dialogue can't really be changed that much and slowly building up to the ones that will be changed a lot in later chapters.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

June 11th, 4:55pm

1100 miles from the border.

Chris grips the steering wheel in front of him as if it would fall off. Actually, that might happen considering how old the car is, and what it had been through yesterday. Hopefully, luck would finally be in his corner, and that won’t happen.

He tends to whistle when he’s uneasy, it wasn’t really a tune, more of note every other second til he somehow calmed his nerves.

It's been a week since his friend coaxed him and his sister into running away, and about 30 minutes since he and his sister ditched said friend after a run in with the police revealed a less than comforting truth...He shakes his head and shoves the slight twinge of bitterness that rose in his chest.

This really wasn’t his year.

He leans over and opens the glove compartment, taking a random cassette from it that his friend must have left it behind. He puts the tape into to the radio and presses play, hoping the music would calm his nerves.

“Keep your eyes on the road, man.” He mutters to himself in what he hopes to be an encouraging tone, it comes out as a pathetic whisper despite his best efforts. The music did finally break the whistling though, which was starting to sound more like a car alarm at that point. “Just...just a few more days...”

He had liked it better when he wasn’t alone, and wished that he and his sister didn't have to split up, but it was arguably the best and safest option right now. After he had...nervously gave too much information to that cop a few hours before. How was he supposed to react to being pulled over?! He hides that line of thought to the back of his mind. It didn’t matter now anyway, he was just gonna have to deal with the endless stretch of desert road in front of him, at least til he reached 96.

Yeah, like he said before, just a few more days. He could do it...probably.

Of course for him, things could never be that simple.

-

-

After about 10 more minutes of driving, Chris spots a figure in the distance. It surprises him at first, as he was starting to seriously consider that this road was devoid of any and all life except for maybe some plants.

He didn’t have much time to marvel at the prospect of human life though, or how oddly the figure was dressed, since they then decided to stand in front of the road. He slams on the breaks and his stomach lurches forward. He is suddenly very grateful for his sister’s weird obsession with seat belt safety, and how she forced him to click it before he left.

Shhhoot! He yelps, catching a swear on his tongue. Before he can even ask the weirdly dressed guy what he’s doing in the middle of the road, another man in the same getup appears next to the passenger window, which Chris had opened earlier for some much needed air. In his hands is the biggest gun he had ever seen, and it’s pointed right at him.

Oh god, this definitely wasn’t his week.

He tries to say something, anything really: ‘Don’t shoot’, ‘Here’s all my money’, and ‘what the heckity hell’ being some of his preferred responses at the moment. However, he can’t even bring himself to move or speak, his hands are seemingly glued to the steering wheel in front of him, but his arms still manage to tremble fine enough.

A gun. Why did it have to be a gun?

“Get in Mitch.” The man with the gun says, reaching over into the window to open the door from the other side. Which was pretty useless since the door was already unlocked, but he wasn’t gonna tell them that, on account of him not being able to breathe correctly at the moment.

“With pleasure.” ‘Mitch’ replies after getting closer to the car, taking the backseat.

“Don’t look at us!” Mr. ‘I have a freaking gun’ orders. Chris takes the advice and snaps his head to the road. In normal circumstances, he would ask why it mattered, since they had masks on. Instead, he averts his eyes as much as humanly possible and tries not to think about the gun probably pointed at him. “Drive.”

“Uhm, I mean- I would love to, but...that gun, it’s making me nervous.” He manages to choke out.

“Shut up and step on the gas!”

Chris quickly nods and does exactly that, almost swerving off the road completely when they start to pick up speed.

“Watch it!”

“It’s really hard to concentrate when you’re pointing that at me.” He says, and almost immediately regrets it. But instead of something absolutely horrible happening to him, the gunman just rolls his eyes,

“Kid- look, it’s not even loaded!” He snaps, then turns to his accomplice, who has been sitting silently in the back with a much less threatening crowbar.

“Not loaded...” He takes the risk to glance away from the road to get a better look at the guy. To his knowledge, all the ammunition on his vest was accounted for. That didn’t exactly mean it wasn’t loaded, though.

The man turns again, looking a bit more annoyed than before. Chris curses himself internally, he really hopes this guy is telling the truth.

“Uh, yeah. Ammo’s expensive in Petria, kid. Don’t want to use it if we don’t have to. Usually, having something scury looking is good enough.” He lowers the weapon to his lap, pointing the gun away from Chris, “Don’t go tellin’ other people that.” He points at him in a threatening manner.

“You’re telling him all our secrets, Stan.” Mitch finally speaks up, his tone sounds incredibly flat. ‘

Guess Mr. gun-haver has a real name after all.

"Shut up Mitch! The kid wouldn’t have been able to drive if I didn’t tell him.” He shakes his head, “If he tries anything, we still have the beast anyway.

Yep, Chris definitely did not want to know what that was, so ‘trying anything’ was out of the question.

“You’re doing the same thing you did at the laundromat.” Mitch accuses, “That was your fault you know.”

“It was my fault our moto didn’t start?! That’s rich, Mitch.”

“Am I- uh, in the middle of something?” Chris contemplates if he physically doesn’t know how to shut his mouth, even in potentially dangerous situations. These are criminals that could kill him, not cartoon characters.

“If you feel that way maybe you should get yourself a new robbin’ partner!” ‘Stan’ scoffs

“Maybe I should!” Mitch shrugs, “Like...this kid.” He gestures to Chris.

“Wait- wha- why me?!” He doesn’t take his eyes off the road, not wanting their attention at all.

“Fine, take the kid, he’s clearly a criminal anyway.”

Well, that was partly true. Chris’ arms stop shaking, and his hands feel a little lighter. He’s confused, the kind of confused you get when you’re completely lost-so far away from the point you don’t even know where you started.

“Hold on- before we end the best robbin’ duo ever, let’s take a deep breath.” Stan says, as if he wasn’t the main source of Chris’ anxiety for the past 5 minutes.

“Yeah, we shouldn’t rush into this, this is big.” Mitch agrees with his accomplice.

“...Are you guys even listening to me..?” He slowly asks, not wanting the gun pointed at him again, no matter how unloaded it may or may not be. “If you need help with relaxing, I mean, I could-”

He cautiously reaches out to the radio and tunes it to a random frequency. Another dumb move, but luckily these two don’t seem like the murderous type.

At least not yet

“Good thinking kid! Music’s just what we need to get our minds off the laundromat!” Stan nods.

Huh. It worked, weird. At least they didn’t look as ticked off anymore. Stan turns the volume up, and the familiar voice of Sonya Sanchez could be heard.

The last time Chris tuned into that, his group had to leave their safe house for the border. That happened only yesterday and it felt like weeks somehow.

"A laundromat robbery happened about an hour ago.”

“Geez...” Chris mutters, matching Stan’s much louder exclamation.

“Witnesses say the two robbers, who both dressed like they were into S n M roleplaying, argued the entire time.” Okay, so maybe the radio wasn’t the best idea after all. He could see the resemblance Sonya was describing, maybe later he could look back and laugh. If there was a later.

He decides it’s probably for the best to turn the radio off, and slowly reaches for the dial, when the two don’t yell at him for doing so, he reaches in and cuts it.

“..We’re laughingstocks.” Stan breaks the silence first.

“And Sonya reportin’ it no less. Ah geez.” Mitch adds on.

“Well...I think you guys are great together-I mean, that maneuver you did to get me to stop the car? Well coordinated stuff.” Chris nervously laughs. Although he was mainly doing it to avoid the chances of them getting upset again, he did mean that.

“Well, I guess that’s it.” Stan says, “Go ahead and partner up with the kid.” He gestures to Chris.

“Come on guys, you should really reconsider. I have like, zero muscle- I almost failed climbing class! I can’t even hold guns because they really-” He tries to plead his case, but they ignore him.

Guess he has no charisma either.

“Only one thing to do, to be sure this is the right move, and all.” Stan says sadly, “Give the kid ‘Mitch’s Ultimate bank robbin’ Quiz.” He continues before Chris can protest, not that he would, “Four questions, by which Mitch evaluates your criminal mind.”

“Huh, I mean- I stole a candy bar from a store once, is, is that enough?” Well, more like the cashier forgot to charge it and he felt so bad about it he went back and paid, but they didn't need to know that part.

“Not a bad start, kid.” Stan approves.

“Yeah! Maybe It’ll help- like studyin’. Not that I’ve ever studied...that’s just what I’ve heard.” Mitch shrugs. This somehow makes Chris a little less nervous, even though these guys had a gun to his chest just a few minutes earlier.

“Answer enough questions right, and you become Mitch’s new robbin’ partner.” Stan points to Mitch. “But don’t and we’ll have to...eh, I don’t want to spell it out.” Scratch that. A little nervousness is back.

“Wait- hold on, spell it out. SPELL IT OUT.” His eyes once again flick off the road and over to them. Even though Stan’s gun is still down, and apparently unloaded, Chris really doesn’t want to know what’s gonna happen if he fails. Even so, he manages to keep his cool and the car steady this time around.

“Okay, question number one: of the following, which is the best location to rob? The clock is uh..ticking.” Mitch leans over to show Chris a note card with multiple answers on them. The card’s surface was worn down, like it had been written over and erased many, many times. Stan hums some opening tune, as if they were on a…

Oh. this was some kind of homemade version of a game show, then? Well, maybe watching ‘Security! The best rated game show in Petria’ every Tuesday would finally come in handy.

“Uh…I’d say-” he thinks for a second, then a few more. It was really hard to tell what their angle was, if they were actually any kind of violent or not. Chris was leaning towards no at this point, what with the game show, the probably unloaded gun, and the fact they didn’t look they had any intention of hurting him (except the unintentional spike in his blood pressure he undoubtedly got from the gun being pointed at him).

“A fast food joint?” He answers randomly, he should be more careful, but he knows next to nothing about these guys. Going by the note card, he has three ‘lives’, better to sacrifice one of them than to short circuit his brain trying to find out what the answer was logically.

“Yeah, that’s right!” Mitch says, which snaps Chris out of his crowded thoughts, “Not much security, and there’s food.” Okay, now he could safely assume these guys were messing with him, and he feels a small boost in confidence.

“Though jealous, I admit, I am very impressed!” Stan huffs.

“Question number two: When is the best time to rob?” Mitch asks, flipping to a new note card.

“At night, or really, whenever it’s dark.” Chris immediately responds without a second guess. Easy.

“Wrong! That’s when the Sonya show is on.” Apparently not so easy then.

“The what-”

“Well, we gotta watch it each night when we can, to show our support. You know, because that’s what-”

“That’s strike one!” Stan interrupts his accomplice, grabbing something from his pocket. Chris flinches, but Stan innocently pulls out a marker, and crosses off one of the crudely drawn figures on the card Mitch was holding.

“But that doesn’t even-” Chris starts, but immediately lets it go. Kind of like when he and his sister selectively ignore each other for laughs, he knows they’re not gonna listen. He still doesn’t really know how to feel about this whole altercation as it is, but whatever, he still had 2 lives left.

“-Question three: What is the best getaway vehicle?” Mitch asks, flipping the card once again, but this time throwing it at Stan, who swats it away and glares at him.

When he sees his selection of answers to choose from, he starts to seriously consider if he’s being pranked, but then again, who would want to prank a random kid on his way to the border?

“A helicopter.” He sighs, not liking the mental gymnastics these two were making him go through in order to understand half of the chaos that was going on. All while driving.

“Yeah! Because when from inside it, people look like ants.” Mitch says in a very serious way. “Stan and I were saving up for one.

Chris can’t help himself, and bursts into a fit of giggles at the absurdity of what he just said, and because he still had 2 lives and 1 question left. He wins.

“Hey! What’s so funny about that? It’s no joke- we were point one percent there I’ll have you know!” Stan reaches over and takes the last card from Mitch, much to his dismay.

“Nothing, it’s nothing.” Chris stops himself, just because he is 95.3% sure these guys were harmless, he didn’t want to test them.

“Right, question four. The final question.” Mitch continues, “What is the best thing to do with your money at your hideout?”

“Hmm, jump on the bed with it, it’s the obvious choice.” He answers, noting that this time, his voice doesn’t sound like a whimper. Good.

“Is this your final answer?” Stan asks, as if it really matters.

“Considering I only have one strike-yes.” He nods confidently. Even so, he can still faintly feel a knot in his stomach, like when you turn in a test even though you know you did a decent job on it.

‘Yes! That is the best thing to do!” Mitch claps, so does Stan.

“We need not explain why, for obvious reasons.”

“Well, of course.” Chris nods, now fully leaning into whatever this was.

“Wow, you passed!” Stan sounds impressed.

“I know, I never even passed, and it’s my quiz!” Mitch says, Chris doesn’t even try to wrap his head around that one.

“So, you’re not gonna kill me now, right?” He asks, his voice is steady this time, but the question is still up in the air at this point.

“Kid, we don’t kill. Stan and Mitch rules.”

“Wow. I really wish you would have told me that earlier.” Chris would facepalm if he had a free hand.

“So I guess you and the kid are gonna partner up now, eh?” Stan sighs, turning to Mitch.

“Wait, hold on...”

“Though the kid and I’s robbin’ compatibility is through the roof-”

“-Oh, thanks man.”

“-No problem, kid-” He replies to Chris, going back to Stan, “I cannot imagine robbin’ with anyone but you.

“Nor I Mitch, nor I.” Stan answers, looking extremely touched.

“That was beautiful guys.” Chris says, and it was true, probably the nicest thing he has seen all summer, well besides that one time his sister said sorry for once, now that was the real miracle that couldn’t be surpassed.

“Come on, let’s keep the car, and ditch the kid.” Mitch’s words snap him out of his reminiscing.

“Wait, what-”

“Sounds good to me, Mitch.” Stan agrees, but thankfully doesn’t raise the gun.

“Come on! I need that to get out of here-” He tries to protest.

“You hear something, Mitch?”

“I did not, Stan.”

“Dang it...” Chris tries not to sound whiny, but it’s too late...okay fine then. If they wanted the car so bad, they could have it. To him, it was pretty clear it was bad luck anyway. First that crazy car chase, and now this. What did his aunt do to have her car be so cursed? He’ll never know.

Whatever, not the point. What was is that he’s gonna get the last laugh on these guys. He slams on the breaks.

The two are both flung forward as expected. Stan hits his head on the dashboard, while Mitch, against all laws of physics, manages to hit his on the back of Stan’s. Okay, so maybe he didn’t mean for them to hit their heads that hard.

“Ouch. Sorry guys! Must have stopped a little too soon...” he fakes a remorseful voice, even if he does ultimately feel bad. “Goes to show just how important seat belts are!” Before they can respond with more than pained groans, he grabs his backpack-thank god it was by his feet and not in the back- and books it behind an oil pump near the side of the road. Just in case they did try to chase after him.

After a few minutes of waiting, which he spent accounting for his belongings in the backpack, he hears the car start back up again, and the two criminals shouting their names into the air albeit in a tired tone.

Chris feels a sudden pang of guilt in his chest, “Geez, I hope they didn’t get concussed.” He thinks out loud, but eventually rules it out. They wouldn’t be able to drive that well if they were, and they seemed happy enough yelling while riding off into the sunset. He allows himself to walk past the pump and towards...well, north. “They’ll be fine...I will be too.” He assures himself.

“Maybe.”

Notes:

My in game explanation for the reality bending game show that happens in the car is just Stan making the sound effects in 'real life'. Also, it's my headcanon that Stan's gun is hardly ever loaded, if at all. The only time I remember him ever shooting it was in the prequel book.

Thanks for reading this chapter! Heads up: Next chapter will not have Stan and Mitch but they WILL be back and are basically in it for the rest of the time, so don't worry.

Edit 3/18/22: Changed the miles to a more reasonable distance
Edit (FOR ALL CHAPTERS) 5/21/22: Changed the miles to an even more reasonable distance

Chapter 2: Lights

Summary:

"You're real nice, and that's why the road is gonna eat you alive!" The guy drawls. It shouldn't bother him as much as it does, but he can't help but agree with him.

Notes:

Sorry for the long wait for the chapter, I have no excuse. I was just procrastinating by playing cuphead. Anyways, the chapters will have more of a schedule now I think, so stay tuned.

Edit 3/18/22: Made the miles a more reasonable distance.

3/27/22: I edited this a lot.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

June 11th, 6:37 pm

1054 miles from the border.

“Chris, it’ll be soooooo better if we just split up! There’s no way we’ll be caught then!” Chris mocks the words his sister had used to reassure him the hours before. He kicks a rock on the road, sending it barreling forward, not minding the big dark spot the rock made on the white of his shoes.

It had been 2 hours since those two guys had taken his car, and the sun was just about setting. He still feels like the biggest idiot on the planet.

At first, he had felt bad for the little prank he pulled on them for scaring him half to death, but a few hours walking in the middle of freaking nowhere changed his tune about the whole situation. Now he wishes that he would have done anything else. 

How could he just let them take the car that easily-even after he was almost certain they weren’t violent?! No wonder they targeted his car in particular, they probably sensed his loser energy or something. Yeah, it totally didn’t have anything to do with his car being the first one they saw on a desolate road or anything.

He kicks another rock, this time diagonally, sending it across the road and onto the other side.

“Yeah Chris, what are the odds of something happening in that car again? It’s not like it’s cursed or anything!”

“Safer. Yeah right Charlie.” His hands tighten around the straps of his backpack. Ok, It was fine. It was fine. Even if the plan that his twin made was the dumbest idea in the world that he's already facing the consequences of, he isn't just gonna take it lying down!

…That’s what determined people say, right?

Man, maybe he's the one who' cursed. 

He frowns and kicks another rock, this time sending it flying towards a makeshift wooden sign. The words are painted in bold white letters, and Chris almost cries when he sees it.

‘Night Skies Campground: 1.4 miles’

He thanks his lucky stars -if he even has any of those- that he won’t have to walk for much longer, and straightens his slouched stance. Just a little longer and he’ll hopefully be asleep somewhere where he doesn’t have to constantly watch his back.

He finally makes it to the entrance of the Campground around a half hour later. The sun fully set at that point, plunging the desert into a inky darkness only lit up by the dim lanterns of the camp. Chris wastes no time in walking into the place, fully ready to finally sleep somewhere. 

It might have looked like everything was covered in a generous layer of dust and grime, but the relief he felt when he entered the grounds was enough to almost make up for that day. 

In actuality, it wasn’t even close to making it up, like, at all, but he likes to celebrate the small victories when he can.

“Psst-Hey kid!” Someone calls out to him almost immediately after he sets foot in the campground. He looks over to the person who had called him, a woman in a rocking chair with a cat peacefully sleeping on her lap. She’s holding a cigarette between her two fingers, reminding Chris just how much he hates the smell of smoke. 

“I like your cat.” He responds, pointing to the small animal. 

“Oh, this little guy? His name is mister bottles.” She coos to the cat and scratches its head. “Now, he may look innocent and cute, but be warned- dude’s a wild man.” 

Chris takes a moment to admire mister bottles, and wishes he wasn’t allergic to cats. Even if his allergies were mild, it was hard to be around them for more than an hour… not that it ever stopped him from petting them.

“Anyways, you planning on voting?” She asks, absentmindedly petting the cat. It reminded him of the villain in that one action movie he and his sister would sometimes watch.

“I, uh, haven’t decided yet.” He settles with that answer, it’s probably best not to go running around telling people about his travel plans.

“Well you should, that’s another reason why Tyrak sends you teens you know where-”

The pits. He's heard a lot about them, mainly from hushed whispers from his classmates, then full blown in detail stories from his friend: It was some island work camp they sent 'disobedient' teens to-where you were forced to mine til’ you died. That is, if they didn’t experiment new ‘procedures’ on you first. He had more than a few nightmares about that in the past.

“-So your voice won’t be heard.”  He catches the end of the woman’s rant, must have zoned out there.

“Uh, yeah...” He slowly nods, hoping it would be a sufficient response to whatever she just said.

She raises her eyebrow, then sighs, “In one ear and out the other, huh? Must be a crosser then.” 

He stays silent and avoids eye contact, whistling one long note.

“Figured as much.” She nods, mister bottles perks up and jumps off her lap onto the small table next to the woman. He stares at Chris, tilting his head.

“Aw-” Chris reaches out to pet the cat, shouldn’t matter that much. Mr bottles leans into his hand, then proceeds to bite the side of it after a few pats. To add insult to injury, the faint sound of a sad trombone is heard further into the camp. 

“Ha! Told you he’s a monster.” The woman flicks her cigarette onto the ground and grabs the evil cat, the faint sound of the instrument blares out once again.

“What’s with the trombone, anyway?” He shakes the pain off his hand a few times, then makes sure to wipe it on his shirt. 

“Oh, that’s Zoe, she’s been playing that thing every night for the past week! Drives the owner of the place crazy.” She waves him off, “Alright, I’ve taken up enough of your time. Do me a favor and stay safe out there, crossing the border is no cakewalk.” 

“I will.” Chris waves to the woman, the feeling of loneliness building in his chest worsens. He walks further into the camp, up a small hill towards what he thinks is the ‘check in’ or a trailer park’s version of that at least. He’s never been to one until now.

And of course, nobody is there. “Okay, this isn’t a problem, Chris. The owner’s still here obviously, just not here.” He reminds himself, sitting by the vending machine while trying his hardest not to feel defeated. “Just gotta wait a while.” 

Waiting a while’ lasted about 2 minutes before he got tired of it. It felt good to sit down, but he was too nervous he would accidentally fall asleep to really enjoy it at all. Then he hears that trombone again, along with some yelling, he really hopes that it isn’t something serious, because as said before, he’s done with today. 

Reluctantly, he decides to follow the noise. It’s not that he wants to find trouble, he was just…curious. Just one look and he’d go on his way and hopefully the owner would be back so he could rent a trailer. “Please, don’t let anything bad happen…” he mumbles, up from where he was sitting. 

He takes his time, walking along planks that were haphazardly made into walkways and bridges that connected some of the trailers. He’s trying to find a good place to maybe catch whoever the person yelling was without getting involved, since he had a knack for that recently. 

On his way over, he accidentally brushes past a tv antenna, spinning it into a completely different direction than it was before. Shoot. He flinches in preparation for the inevitable yelling, but instead hears a calmer, yet still excited voice. 

“Ma! The TV is working again-a miracle!” An unknown person yells out from the trailer under him. He silently sighs in relief and carries on. 

Eventually, after navigating through a maze of trailers and bridges, he finally makes it to where the confrontation is. There’s a girl sitting on a trailer diagonally across from him, who he assumes is Zoe since she has a trombone to her side. 

She looks unimpressed, glaring at who he assumes is the missing owner of this place…he’s wearing sunglasses for some reason, even though it’s night. Is it just him, or do these people get crazier the closer he gets to the border?

“Look- just give me the money and-” The man shouts

“For the fiftieth time, I didn't steal it!” Zoe retorts in an extremely annoyed voice.

While still unnoticed, Chris takes the chance to sit down, opting to silently listen to the argument. Maybe if he was quiet, they wouldn’t notice him eavesdropping.

“If you don’t return the money I-I’ll call the cops!”

“A guy got stabbed here two days ago and they never came.” She says firmly, “They’re not gonna show for this crap.”

Great, of course people got stabbed here. It wouldn’t round out his day right if there wasn’t a catch to this bit of good fortune. Sleeping outside was definitely out of the question now, not that he considered it much.

Zoe blares out another series of notes on the trombone over the man’s complaints. Chris recognizes it from his band class-what was the name again?

“Just admit it- Admit that you stole from me!” The weird sunglasses man shouts to her again. Man, this guy can really make a scene.

The song putters off, and she shifts the trombone down, “I didn’t steal.” She shakes her head slowly, “Just give it up, it’s not like you’re really gonna call the cops. You’re bluffing.” 

Uh oh. Chris has many, many problems right now, and he really doesn't want to add another visit from the police to that list. And by the looks of it, Zoe is egging this guy on to do just that. 

“Bluffing-I’ll show you what’s bluffing!” The man’s ears shift to a shade of red he didn't even know was possible. Not good.

Since leaving home, he didn’t butt in on things like he used to. It was a rule that he followed ritualistically so he wouldn’t die by making someone upset. Now, since the universe hates him, he’s at a crossroads. If he doesn’t interrupt in some way, and the sunglasses man isn’t bluffing, that could cause a major rift in his plans for the fourth time that week. Can today just be over already?

“Huh? What’s going on over here?” Chris feigns ignorance, as if he just picked up on the conversation. Zoe looks across to him, and slowly slides her trombone to the side. She’s about to speak, but the man interrupts her. 

“She broke into my office and stole from me. Two hundred, at least!”

“Well…do you have any proof?” Chris asks slowly, scooting closer to the edge of the trailer he’s sitting on.

“Who are you? Her attorney? I don’t have proof, because that criminal mastermind turned off my security cameras.” The owner points at her accusingly, Zoe rolls her eyes.

“You really think she’s a criminal mastermind?” Chris asks. In any case, if she did steal the money, she was still a better ‘criminal’ than Stan and Mitch. 

Ha! Burn!...Yeah, that wasn’t really a good insult, was it?  Considering it was to himself, probably not!

The man looks at Chris, and is about to say something before ultimately giving in.

“You teens and your…your- ugh! It’s not worth the hassle!” He throws his hands up in the air and storms off. Well, at least he can rent a trailer now…maybe. 

“Looks like my work here is done.” Chris hops off the trailer, sending a small cloud of dust up around his feet. 

“You didn’t have to do that, you know. I was handling it.” Zoe says, she sounds unimpressed.

“Yeah…but I didn’t really want him to potentially call the cops. I like the whole being alive and well thing.” He approaches the trailer she’s sitting on.

“Working towards your own selfish needs?” Zoe raises an eyebrow, “I like it.”

“I mean, Is it really selfish to not want to-”

“I was kidding. Besides, you kinda have to be like that out here, at least sometimes.” She crosses her arms. “Anyways, welcome to the Night Skies Campground. If you like crappy trailers, this place is the best. ” 

“You know…I’m starting to get to the point where I do love crappy trailers.” He nervously laughs. 

“Then this place is your little slice of paradise, man.” She laughs, “If you’re looking to rent one, you can go up there.” She points to the little shack on the hill. 

“I’ll go do that then. Adulting. Cool.” Chris never had to rent anything before, so this will be interesting. Does he have to like sign something or-

“Don’t think too hard on it, you just have to give the creep money and boom. Trailer.” She makes an explosion motion with her hands. “See you around...Don’t become roadkill out there, okay?” 

“I'll try not to!” He nods in thanks, even though the road apparently has it out for him, and would want nothing more than to make him the newest number in its rapidly growing death toll. 

He makes it back up the hill, noticing that the picnic table he was previously sitting on was now occupied by a guy with his head down, a half empty bottle of something clutched in his hand. Chris attempts to walk past him quietly.

The guy with the sunglasses is at the front desk, guess Chris was right about him being the owner. The owner doesn’t look happy about him being there, though.

“You again?!” The owner says loudly, even though Chris is very much in speaking distance. “What do you want?” 

“To uh, rent a trailer?” It was a simple enough question, but the way the guy is glaring at him makes Chris think he got it wrong somehow? 

“Fine. Twenty five a night. Take it or leave, I don’t have time for any more freeloaders.” He throws a yellow colored key on the desk in front of him. And people say Chris is a drama queen.

“Fair enough.” Chris nods, not wanting to make the guy any more upset. He grabs the spare money he keeps in his pocket and gives it to the owner.

“Good. Now get the hell out of my hair, and don’t you even try to steal anything- I’ll know” He disappears into the shack, probably to go complain to anyone unlucky enough to cross his path. Chris resists the urge to ring the bell on the table, it’s unusually shiny, and it reminds him of one he has at home…sadly, he eventually decides against it. Instead, he grabs the key.

“Hey! You..you got any money?” The guy from the table drawls, lifting his head. He’s got the darkest eyes Chris has seen in a while.

“Uh..yeah?” He doesn’t get any closer, his fingers ghost over the few remaining bills in his pocket. 

“Good!...Good! Can I have some?” He asks, extending his arm out.

“Uhm…okay.” Chris pulls out a 5 dollar bill and hands it to the guy, who looks at it and smiles. 

“Heh. You’re real’ nice. And that’s why the road is gonna eat you alive!” His head falls back down before Chris can even react. He knows it shouldn’t really bother him, but the small weight that eats at his chest is heavier than before, and that comment didn’t help at all.

-

-

The trailer was nothing special, just a table, chair, a bed, and one blanket-not even a pillow. The light switch didn’t even work, instead, a small lantern illuminated the room in a dim, eerie glow. That was just fine with him though. He locks the trailer, then pulls the small chair up against the door, just in case. 

Chris sits on the bed and puts his backpack down, he unzips it and pulls out a jacket. There’s a hole in it, embroidery used to be there. He absentmindedly runs his finger along the precisely cut area, finally taking a minute to breathe. 

He smiles fondly at the jacket one more time, then folds and places it where the missing pillow is supposed to be, finally, he shoves his face into it-still smells like the detergent his aunt always bought.

Even if it was a mess of springs and fabric, it felt nice after having to use a sleeping bag for so long. He closes his eyes and tries not to think about where he is or what he’s doing right now. Probably not good to think about family either. It’ll only stress him out more. It always does.

It was gonna be a long night.

There's a knock at the window, and Chris immediately jolts awake, he clutches his backpack, heart beating rapidly.

It’s the police, he’s dead, he’s done for, he’s-

“Hey! It’s just me. Wake up!” Zoe whispers and knocks on the window a second time. “Let’s go do something."

“You- you almost gave me a heart attack!” He breathes, trying to get his soul back into his body. “Thought you were police..”

“Sorry!” Zoe actually sounds apologetic this time around, “I…wanted to hang out, nobody else was awake. I- I’ll leave if you want.”

“It’s-” He grasps the fabric of his jacket. “I’m fine, I’ll be out in a sec.” He sighs and pulls on the jacket, zipping it up halfway. Well, it’s not like he was gonna get back to sleep after that, might as well hang out with the trombone stranger at-

He checks his watch, the digital numbers light up a dim green. -1:30 in the morning.

And he wonders why he’s a magnet for trouble.

“-Then I was like, no. They’re not getting out of this that easy after putting me through that. So I slammed on the brakes and they hit their heads hard. Seat belt safety is a real thing. They still stole the car though.” Chris finishes his story about what took place hours before, it may have been embellished a little but he thinks he deserves it.

“No wonder you looked so upset when you got here, you’ve been through some serious hell, my friend.” She laughs. “I still don’t believe you about the game show part, though.” She grabs a nearby stick and throws it into the fire, the sky overlooking the hill by Zoe’s trailer is illuminated in a way that made him question if it was even real. The two must have been there just talking and swapping stories for at least an hour at that point. 

She was the daughter of some government official, and left home willingly because of an overbearing father. Chris didn’t really judge her on that, he was more jealous that she had the choice to leave on her own accord.

He told her about his group, about their run in with the police and their subsequent stupid plan to split up- it was only fair. He leaves out their names, though. Even if Zoe was a crosser too, it felt too revealing in a way. 

He really didn’t mean to share so much, but he couldn’t really stop once someone who wasn’t an adult actually wanted to talk to him…Sometimes Chris forgets that he was in a glorified bunker with only 2 people for a week and a half.

“I couldn’t make it up even if I wanted to.” He sighs, rubbing his eyes, “I wish it was a joke, and the car just broke down or something.”

“Hey, don’t beat yourself up about it.” The slow rhythmic tapping of her foot halts, “This road can be a hellhole sometimes.” She puts her hands up to the fire. “But believe me- it’s way better than home…” She quiets down for a minute as the topic changes, and they both fall into an uncomfortable silence.

“Have you uh, ever seen the border before?” Stupid question. Geez-He’s awful at small talk. He can tell random stories for hours but can’t keep up a simple conversation- go figure.

“A lot of times, actually.” Her response surprises him, he fully expected this conversation topic to hit a brick wall thicker than the one at the border-because who takes random trips there? Apparently daughters of government officials, which actually makes a lot of sense now that he thinks about it. “It’s scary there, with all the security. They’re all so…trigger happy.” 

“Do you…think you’ll make it?” he asks, probably ruining the already tarnished mood that surrounded the campfire. Nice going, Chris.

“I…don’t really know. I heard only one percent of us do. And you know what happens to the rest of them.” 

“Yeah…I don’t like thinking about them much.”  He silently pulls on the ends of his jacket strings, making one longer than the other. The pits. 

“Yeah, I get that…uhm, do you like music?” Zoe steers the conversation in a completely different direction, which he’s grateful for.

“Heck yeah-I like making it too!” He pulls his backpack that was resting in his lap and starts to dig through the front pocket. “I think I have my harmonica somewhere in here…” 

“Pfft-A harmonica?” Zoe tries not to laugh.

“Uh, yeah. It’s the superior form of music, no offense.” He’s only partially joking about that, “I’ve been a pro since the seventh grade.” He rummages further into the bag, pushing back clothes and food wrappers- but his precious instrument was nowhere to be found. “Oh no…don’t tell me I left it in the car-

“Maybe those two robbers are jamming out on it.” Zoe pretends like it’s an innocent observation, but he can tell she’s being sarcastic.

“That’s not funny!...Okay maybe it’s a little funny.” He sighs, thinking about the funny image of the two trying and failing to play a harmonica of all things, “but I’m still kind of-sort of upset about it.”

“Don’t sweat it, man. If you still wanna play something, I’ll just let you borrow my inferior instrument.” She gestures to the trombone, did it always have that many stickers? “I was kind of going to let you borrow it anyway.” 

“Fine…” he pouts, carefully picking it up from the ground. Using his jacket sleeve, he wipes the mouthpiece. “I don’t really know how to play it though.”

“Eh, I’m sure it’ll be fine.” She shakes her head, “Let’s play bella ciao. You know-” She hums the tune to the song she was playing before. So that’s what it was called. If only he paid attention in music class instead of investing all his time in the harmonica, he would have known that. 

No. That was a lie. He doesn’t regret it. Harmonicas are cool.

“So…do you just kind of-’ He blows into the mouthpiece, and moves the slide in a random direction. The noise that comes out is weird, but he actually made some kind of note so…success?? He blurts out a few more random sounding notes, trying to replicate the song.

“Yeah, that’s- that’s great. Not bad.” Zoe says. Chris can tell she’s trying not to laugh. “Okay,now let’s try it with the actual music. She turns to the radio sitting next to her and messes with a few dials, they hadn’t used it at all up until now. 

The music starts to play, and Chris purposely readies the instrument as if he’s going to war or something. He almost immediately fails when the trombone comes into the song. He wasn’t able to keep up at all with the notes and he was so off tune it could probably be a different song entirely. Zoe is laughing the whole time, which makes him stumble over the notes more than once since it’s so contagious. 

“Man, I should be recording this!” 

The music starts to pick up the pace, getting faster and faster. Even though Chris couldn’t really keep up to begin with, he still tries because it’s funny. He plays it louder as the song goes on. 

“It is THREE in the morning! Put that away before I come up there!” The owner appears at the base of the hill with the same whiny yell as before, which is starting to really grate on his nerves. 

Chris rolls his eyes, and in a split second decision of pure brilliance, tries to play the sad trombone tune. It ends up not sounding like that at all, but Zoe laughs again, and the owner seems to get the picture.

“That’s it! Both of you are gone- understand me? And don’t come back-ever!” The guy yells, then storms off again. Well, there goes that, at least he got some sleep in. He’s starting to understand why people stole from this guy. Something else  dawns on him too, 

“Shoot- I got you kicked out!” 

“Hey, chill man, I was gonna leave anyway.” She waves him off, “I’m just sorry for you, I just added on to your horrible luck.” Zoe gives him the same look she had when she almost scared him half to death.

“Uhh…you wanna hit the road together then? Since we’re both leaving?” He knows it’s a long shot, but if he could avoid being alone on the road, he would take the chance.

“Heh, that’s sweet, but I think…I think I need to do this on my own. It’s important to me, you know?” She says slowly, as if it were an apology. 

“Don’t worry about it. I totally get that, I might whine about it a lot, but there are some pros to going out alone.” Chris nods, even though he feels a little disappointed. 

“Thanks for understanding…we should probably start packing before sunglasses yells at us again…good luck out there man.” She smiles, “Don’t mean to be rude, but from what you told me, you really need it.” She turns to the radio and ejects the cassette. “Here, to remember me.” 

The tape is surprisingly heavy in his hand; the title of the song is doodled on with black permanent marker. He puts it away safely in his backpack, “Thanks, and thanks for you know, talking to me and stuff.”

Dang it, that sounded cheesy as heck. 

“No problem man, it’s always nice running into a fellow ‘musician’” She makes air quotes with her fingers.

“Heh, yeah…” Chris shakes his head, “See you at the border.” He waves to her, heading down the hill. 

Notes:

Thanks for reading, also, surprise! It's a Zoe Chapter. I know people either love or despise Zoe so I hope you liked it or at least tolerated it. There's gonna be one of these in each 'Book' to kind of show what stage of the game's story we're in, since in a way Zoe's encounters are the easiest to track. But again, you can read these in any order you want, it really doesn't matter much.

Okay, enough of that. After this chapter, it's all Stan and Mitch nonsense. Get ready for the chaos.

Notes and stuff:
I changed a few things in the campground's layout/description to fit the story, mainly the guy you can give money to is usually near the middle of the camp. But because Chris has no reason to go to the middle of the camp, I moved the guy since I really wanted his line in this lol.

I also added more wooden bridges so Chris could sit on a trailer like Zoe, I think it would have been a little weird if Chris just stood there like you do in game.

Chapter 3: Not So Good Decisions

Summary:

"It takes him a few moments to force open his eyes. He has no idea where he even is, or who he is to be honest…Wait no, now he remembers. Chris, 15, Gemini, twin sister, friend, on the run from the cops and said friend. Right. Well, now he wishes he remembered a little less."

 

In which Chris makes bad decisions, which is quickly starting to become the norm.

Notes:

EDIT 5/21/22- Corrected some errors and added some punctuation, nothing too crazy.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

June 12th,

1,048 Miles from the border

So maybe leaving so late at night wasn’t one of his best decisions. Chris quickly figures this out when it gets harder and harder to keep his eyes open while walking.

Great. 

He’s not dead yet though, that’s all that matters right now. He’s not dead yet. 

Chris glances at his watch, 5:45 am… he’d been walking for almost more than 2 hours. He rubs his eyes and tries not to drag his feet too much as he trudges forward.

Maybe…he shouldn’t have provoked the owner so much at that trailer park, then he would have been able to actually sleep on that bed.

Yeah, on a bed, maybe he should just sit down and- 

Chris shakes his head, startling himself in the process. No, he’s not doing that, he’s walking, walking somewhere safe, then he could take a break.

The cloudiness in his head almost covered up how heavy his legs were getting. Is..is this what sleepwalking is like when you’re awake- 

-No, that doesn’t matter, just, just keep walking. 

After a few more agonizing minutes, a blur of dim lights illuminates the horizon. Chris squints, as if that would really help him see whatever was in the distance better. It didn’t, just made things blurrier. Luckily for him, it was easy to tell what it was by the colors alone.

A super…super something, he forgot the name. Or maybe he did know it, whatever- that didn’t matter either. What matters is that there’s a building, and when there’s a building there’s a parking lot, and usually in parking lots there’s-

-

-

As Chris wakes up, he notes how incredibly dry his whole mouth feels, and how much his legs ache. He’s clutching his backpack again and there’s this thick smell of dirt that makes him want to sneeze.

It takes him a few moments to force open his eyes. He has no idea where he even is, or who he is to be honest…

Wait-no, now he remembers. Chris, 15, Gemini, twin sister, friend, on the run from the cops and said friend. Right. Well, now he wishes he remembered a little less.

“Gemini…how do I even know that?” there’s plywood above his head. That’s good. At least he didn’t pass out on the side of the road. 

Chris nearly hits his head on the narrow ceiling of the shelter as he tries to sit up. After some more half-attempts at trying to crawl out of the makeshift cardboard shelter, he opts to just roll out of it instead, not even bothering to stand.

The sun stings his eyes more than he thought it would. Also, the dust that blew into them when he decided to barrel roll onto the floor wasn’t really helping either.

Geez, what time was it?

Chris lifts his arm-both to block the sun and to get the time off his watch- 2:30 pm. He dully counts the time on his fingers. 9 hours, No wonder he was so spacey. It was the best sleep he’s had in weeks, but he still doesn't feel rested at all. 

That was probably his fault, considering he doesn’t remember much of what happened after he saw that sign. Just that it was a super supper.

Oh wait. Duh.

He dully tilts his head up, lo and behold, he is in front of a super supper, well, more specifically the side of one.

So it wasn’t a hallucination after all..

“Oh, dude! You’re finally awake.” A voice snaps Chris out of his jumbled thoughts, someone’s shadow is blocking him from the sun now. The rational part of his mind tells him to run, but he freezes instead. 

The guy’s in a uniform, not a police one, though- far from it. He’s too young, only a few years older than Chris. Just a worker. “Glad you weren’t dead, 'for sure thought you were, but Herb said to give you a few hours.” The worker bends down and holds his hand out to him.

“Herb…?” 

“Oh, he’s the owner of this place-don’t worry, he won’t turn you in..” The worker extends his hand further. After a few seconds of contemplation, Chris takes it.

-

-

They’re both in some stuffy supply closet now, the worker, whose name he learned was Jerry, said that it was his 'unofficial break room'. Chris didn’t care much, he was just glad to be inside.

“...What’s this again?” He holds a paper cup with no lid that Jerry gave him, neon green liquid is almost filled to the top. 

“It’s called extreme green energy, new stuff that super supper pushed out. It’s not even passed by the food safety board yet.” Jerry says, which is more than a little concerning.

“Yeah…Maybe I shouldn’t then-” He lifts the lip of the cup up to his nose-it honest to god smells like cleaning chemicals. “Yeah, no.”

“Come on man, It’s supposed to give you an energy boost-and extreme one, it’s not dangerous…I think.” He shrugs. “I mean, I tried it on the night shift once, I think I was fine.” The look on Jerry’s face shows that it was anything but fine. 

“Yeah, sure.” He takes another cautionary smell, then instinctively leans his head back, “You know what? I think I’d rather just stay tired.” 

“Your loss.” Jerry shakes his head, “I..still have like, 15 minutes left of break. Anything you wanted to ask me? I’m like, really good with advice and stuff.”

“What makes you think I need advice?” 

“Well, for one, you passed out in a police hotbed and didn’t know how you got there.”

“Huh. You do have a point there.” Chris shrugs, then absentmindedly takes a sip of the energy drink. It tastes how he imagines battery acid would, and he has to fight the urge to spit it back up.

“Gnarly stuff, It’ll keep you awake, though, at least til’ the sugar crash…”

“Yeah, you know, thanks for telling me that after I drank it.” He tries to use his teeth to scrape the acidic taste off his tongue- it doesn’t help.

“Hey, I was gonna tell you, but you said you weren’t gonna drink it-then you did.

“Yeah…that’s on me then isn’t it?” He sighs, one day he’ll figure out how to think things through, oh, and to pay attention better, that too. “Anyways…what’s with the pig?” He gestures to the piggy bank that Jerry had been holding onto since they first entered the building. 

“Oh, this?” he looks at it fondly, “This holds all my hopes and dreams, people say money isn’t everything, but it sure does help.” 

“That’s-not wrong.” Chris tries not to think about how he only has like…8 dollars in his pocket right now. Maybe renting that trailer was a bad idea. Now that he thinks of it though, his mind’s been full of them recently. 

“Gonna.. buy a house or something?” He asks the first thing that pops up in his head, even though it doesn’t make that much sense. He nearly drinks from the cup from his hand again, but stops himself. 

“A house? In Petria? Dude, I would probably need a million pigs to fund a dream like that.” He laughs.

“Well- I don’t know! I’m like 14- not the kind of person with long term plans.” 

“I feel that...You know, between you and me, I don’t know what I’m gonna do with the money either. But..it’ll be nice to have something when I find out what my hopes and dreams are.” 

“Sooo, it’s just your savings? Huh, I wouldn’t actually mind donating to that.” Chris throws better judgment to the wall and fishes out 3 dollars from his pocket, placing it into the pig. Guess he only has 5 dollars to his name now, oh well.

“Thanks! Hey, you know-” He looks around to make sure nobody is listening, “Herb’s somewhere, doing whatever Herb does…when my break’s over I’m gonna hook you up, but play it cool.”

-

-

Jerry gave him a burger, which Chris was grateful for. Just because he had 10 cracker packets in his backpack didn’t mean he wanted to eat them all the time. The dry flavor is already getting old, but at least he has food. He also brought the energy drink out with him..for some reason.

“You should stay, you know- make a difference.” Jerry comments out of the blue, “Vote Florres and all that.” 

“Didn’t even want to leave to be honest, but I gotta.” He shrugs, and looks down at his food. “I got..people waiting for me on the other side.” He ends it at that, trying not to think about how dramatic it sounds out loud.

He waits for a response, but gets nothing, “I know…it’s really weird but that’s all I can say, I could say more, but you'll think I'm lying.” Chris adds on, it was partly true, but also because there are other people in the place, he doesn’t want to blatantly give himself away.

There's still no response. When he looks up, there’s an unreadable look on Jerry’s face, he’s looking at the door. “What’s the m-“ He’s cut off by the door being kicked open. 

“This ladies and gents is what you would call a robbery!” A familiar voice yells. 

Really?

“Fast food place, right…” He mutters, accidentally taking another sip of the energy drink- why did he even bring it out with him?!

Trying his best to ignore the vile taste on his tongue, Chris silently counts the number of bullets on Stan’s vest as he walks towards the front counter- all still there.

Okay, it’s fine, he’s been through this once, he’ll be fine.

“Woah dude! Take whatever you want, we got burgers, we got fries-“ Jerry raises his hands.

“Your safe! Show it to me.” Stan points his gun at Jerry, he actually kind of looks threatening, well, duh. Loaded or not, he still has a scary looking gun. 

“Uh…this is a super supper-we, we don’t have a safe.”

“Wrong answer friendo! I’m holding a shotgun!” Well…that was significantly less threatening. Chris sighs, guess he’s doing this.

“They don’t have a safe, man!” and he wonders how he gets himself in these types situations. 

“And who asked you?!” Stan swerves the gun towards him. 

He still didn’t like the gun being pointed at him, but knowing about their ‘rule’ and the probability of it being unloaded dulls any anxiety.

“Well, he’s not answering, ‘friendo’!” Chris mocks him, and tries not to immediately flinch or freeze up when Stan steps closer.

“You little-“ 

“Stan!” Mitch shouts to him in a scolding tone. 

“Hey-hey! No need for that!” Jerry brings the attention back to him, “Super Supper still has a register!”

“That’s more like it!” Stan turns the gun back to the clerk. “Mitch, get the bag.” 

“Wait- I thought you had it!” Mitch shouts. Stan rolls his eyes, then turns the gun over to Chris again, did they not remember him?

“You, grab that pig-” He gestures to the piggy bank sitting next to the cash register. 

“But that’s my hopes and dream-” Jerry tries to interject, but Stan just points the gun at him again. “Okay, never mind-you can have it-hopes and dreams are overrated anyways” 

“Well, get up and grab it kid!” Stan orders Chris, he tries not to talk back, even though he really wants to at the moment. Instead, he just shrugs, sits up, and grabs the piggy bank. 

“Sorry dude..” He whispers to Jerry, who is currently cowering behind the register. 

“Hurry up and get the money from the register, it’s time to donate to the Stan and Mitch fund!”

“That’s good! Did you just think of that?”

“Mitch- how many times did I tell you not to-” Chris tunes them out almost immediately, guess arguing was a normal thing for them. Not the point- he’s got things to do. Very stupid things. 

He quickly slides over the counter and empties as much money as he can onto the dirty linoleum floor next to Jerry.

Chris: Defender of hopes and dreams. He shakes his head, now’s not the time to be dumb…

“Hey! Where’d the kid go-“ Mitch asks, interrupting their argument. Chris fumbles with the piggy bank before jumping up into view.

“Right here- just uh..emptying the cash register sir!” He says in possibly the most awkward way he could. Sir? Really?! Internally, he facepalms. Looks like some habits Petria’s school system drilled in are still stuck. Whatever- something else added to the rapidly growing ‘fix later’ list. 

“Sir? Aw no, just call me Mitch.” For a robber, Mitch is oddly polite. 

“Sure man. We’re all cool here…right?” He looks over to Jerry, who quickly nods and sinks behind the counter once again. 

“Now get back to robbin'! We don’t have all day.” 

“Yeah, okay, that’s kind of what I’m doing.” He climbs back over the counter, ignoring Stan’s annoyed muttering. 

He approaches a man and woman first, they look absolutely terrified, and it makes Chris really wish he could tell them they’re completely safe. That would be a lie, though, because even if Stan’s gun is unloaded, Mitch still has a freaking crowbar, and he’s not trying to complicate things.

“Uhm…you heard them, just, uh..” He awkwardly holds the bank out to them, but the man doesn’t seem to be listening to him, he’s shaking pretty badly too. 

“I’ll, I’ll hand it over- I don’t want to die!” He fumbles with his wallet, but can’t seem to open it with all the shaking.

“Richard, calm down..” The woman across from him looks just as nervous, “His heart can’t take this.” Chris contemplates whether or not just to skip them entirely, but that could be worse…

“I’ll..try my best to keep him calm.” He says, unsure if he can even keep that promise, but the woman seems grateful either way.

“Hey Richard…” he turns to the man, “How can I..calm you down?” He lowers his voice, as if that would somehow lessen the tension. 

“I..I just need a minute.” Richard puts his head down.

“I-okay, that’s cool-” He backs away, he’ll just go to the next person…which happens to be a woman with sunglasses.

“Hey kid!” She whispers, “I have a plan, but you have to trust me.” She lowers her glasses to look at him in the eyes. She has that crazy look, the look he usually sees on his sister before they both did something extremely dumb…that wasn’t a good sign.

“Uhh…what is it?” 

“When the time is right, I’ll scream my head off, then you jump on the one with the shotgun.” 

“I-That’s a really bad plan, for you and the rest of the people here-”

“-Well, if you won’t do anything, I will.” She pushes some of the papers across the table in frustration.

“I…just give me the money-” He shows the pig to her.

“Fine-take it” She glares at him, like it was inconsiderate for him not wanting to jump on the armed criminal, well, the gun wasn’t loaded, but she didn’t know that!

One more and he can be done with this, he walks up to the man, who looks more mildly inconvenienced than anything else. “Okay, you’re gonna have to give me the money-”

“I can’t, sorry.” The man says, and just by his tone, Chris knows this is gonna be an…annoying conversation. 

“W-why not?”

“Money is a big deal, you know.”

“They’ll…I think they’ll leave if you give them money.”

“Don’t you see? That’s what they want.”

“Dude.” Chris resists the urge to scratch his face off, he forgot how stubborn and annoying some people could be, “Just give me the money.” 

“No! If they take the money, they win!”

“Look man, I’m trying to make sure that guy over there doesn’t have a heart attack. The faster you give them the money, the faster they leave.” 

“Do you really think I care about that?” The man scoffs. 

Okay then, now he has no moral issues doing this. “Hey Stan! This guy won’t give me his money!” He points at the man. 

“Give it up!” Stan turns the shotgun towards the guy…and Chris. Which makes him wonder if the gun was loaded, where the heck would he shoot without hitting him?

The logic doesn’t matter in the end though, because the guy seems way more into coughing up the cash now. That was…mostly easy. He walks past the guy, and back to Richard.

“How are you feeling now?” He slowly approaches, making sure to not sound that threatening. 

“Better.” the man breathes, and gives Chris the money, the woman does the same. Cool. That was easy. This was fine.

“Hey, I know it seems bad, but everything is gonna be fine.” Chris leaves out the ‘probably’ he would have added on if it was someone different. They would probably be fine.

“Uh, Hey Mitch, I think I got all the money..” He hands the pig over.

“You made it rain, kid!” Mitch puts the piggy bank under his arm, “Stan, let’s go…and uh, you’re coming with us.” He gestures to Chris. 

“Right! It wouldn’t be a good robbery without a hostage.” Stan jumps off the booth he’d been standing on, “Stan and Mitch rules!”

“I’ll add that one to the list then..” Chris mumbles to himself. Hey, as long as they didn’t kill or turn him in, he's fine...probably.

Before they can even leave though, the crazy woman from earlier gets up and flips her table, sending the papers on it everywhere. Then, just as promised, she started to scream. Right

“What’s she doing?!” Stan turns his back on Chris, theoretically, he could do something stupid, like tackle Stan. It wouldn’t be the first time that day he’d done something dumb, after all. He would be lying if he said he didn’t entertain the thought.

…Nah. Who is he kidding? He almost failed gym!

"And they say we're the crazy ones." Stan shakes his head, "Let's get outta here."

-

-

“So you guys seriously don’t remember me?” 

They’re outside now, in the parking lot of some abandoned structure next to the super supper, crouched down behind their motorcycle. Apparently they fixed it. 

He’s starting to wonder if they hit their heads too hard when he slammed on the car brakes, because they didn’t recognize him at all. Maybe it was the jacket…?

“You two stole my car like- not even a day ago!”

“Ohh! Now I remember-that was you? The one who passed my quiz!” Mitch pauses, “Uh…sorry, but Stan wrecked your car real bad.” 

“No, I think I’d remember doing something like that.” Stan chimes in.

“Whatever- I’m pretty sure the car was cursed by a demon or something anyway.” Chris sighs. 

“I don’t know where you’re gettin’ all of this, Mitch. I’ve never seen this kid in my life.”

“Aw, don’t listen to him. He’s just jealous you passed the quiz.”

“Oh, shut up!” Stan snaps, “How much is in the pig, Mitch?”

“122 Dollars…” 

“Really?” His tone is lighter now, “Best. Robbery. Ever! We’re rich!” They both high five. 

Wait…how long have they been doing this if that was their best robbery? 

“Here kid, for the emotional duress.” Stan tosses a wad of money to him, 30 dollars.

“Thanks!” He shoves the money into the front pocket of his backpack, “I knew you guys weren’t violent. Also, I knew the gun was unloaded the whole time-”

“Hey! I told you not to tell anybody about that yesterday-”

“So you DO remember!” Mitch laughs and points at Stan.

“No! No I don’t-” Stan pauses, he looks really frustrated again, “Just-go scram before the cops get here!” 

“Okay, Okay! Geez, I’m going-” Chris is about to get up and leave, probably to get into more trouble, let’s be honest here.

“Wait, little buddy!” Mitch shouts.

“I can hear you dude-I’m right here.” 

“Oh, right. Well, I was thinking, since you passed the quiz and all, and you helped us rob that place…you could come with us? Rob some more places?”

Mitch. Can we talk about this for a second?” Stan sounds annoyed again, great.

They’re huddled up, but since Chris is literally inches away he can still hear everything. And people at school thought he was weird. 

“We’re really gonna take this kid with us?“

“Well, he did help us out, Stan-he’s got hands-on experience-“

“But he’s so-annoying!”

“Well, you’re just saying that because you’re jealous he passed the ultimate robbing quiz!” 

Am not!”

Are too!”

This goes on for a while, to the point where Chris contemplates if he should wait in awkward silence any longer, or leave them in this paradox of a conversation. 

“Enough! Okay! Fine!” Stan throws his arms in the air, “But I’m not jealous!” He aggressively points at Chris. 

“Hey! I never said you were!” 

“The kid can stay with us, but he’s your problem, Mitch.”

“Guys. I’m 14. I can take care of myself-”

“-Fine!”

“Again, with the not listening thing…” Chris mutters, wait…this, this could actually work. “Okay...I’ll help you guys rob places, on one condition.” He tries not to sound awkward, really not knowing how actual serious deals went down outside of the realm of movies. “You take me to the border.”

“The border? Why would you want to go there? Lots of cops.”

“He wants to cross, Stan.” Mitch deadpans.

“Oh…well, if you really want to do that , we can take you…when we get around to it.” Stan shrugs, “But you’re still Mitch’s problem, not mine.” 

“Jealous…” Mitch shakes his head. 

“We gotta go before the cops get here.” Stan sits up, “You can use the sidecar.” He gestures to Chris.

“But Stan!” Mitch shoves the piggy bank into his hands before he gets up, The sidecar is-”

“Not my problem!” Stan says in a sing-song voice, tuning out Mitch’s complaints.

Chris really hopes this isn’t a bad idea.

Notes:

Hope you liked this chapter, It was gonna be posted earlier this week but then I got distracted lol. Hopefully I can actually make a schedule now, I suck at meeting deadlines if you can't tell.

Chapter 4: An Encounter With A Would-be-Killer

Summary:

Mitch, his brother, and their new robbin' partner go for a ride. Also, there's another car chase, because Chris can't avoid vehicle related shenanigans.

Notes:

This chapter is Mitch's POV, it was kind of hard to write for him so I hope he's not out of character too much.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

June 12th, 6:33pm

1,023 Miles from the border

Mitch can’t tell anyone why he asked the kid to come with them. Maybe he's impressed by him passing the quiz, and how much money they managed to get when he helped rob that fast food joint, or maybe Mitch just feels bad that they stole his car and managed to wreck it.  

Maybe it's a mix of all 3. 

“But why would it be a taxi driver? Wouldn’t he have been caught by now?” The kid asks, it's been 30 minutes since Mitch told him about Sonya’s would-be killer, and he's been asking questions non-stop.

Mitch thought it was a good thing, Stan…not so much. He isn’t good with being patient, not at all. Actually, it's been almost an hour since they first got on the road, and Stan wouldn’t stop arguing with their new robbing partner. 

For someone who's supposed to be ‘His problem’, Stan has no issues picking a fight with the kid, who was almost 18 years younger than them.

“Kid, we have nothing- If we knew all the details, we wouldn’t be having this discussion right now, and Sonya wouldn’t be in danger!” 

“Hey, I’m just asking the ‘why’s’ here-”

“Do they even matter?” Stan huffs, “Point is, someone is after Sonya, if he gets to Sonya…” Mitch tunes him out, he doesn’t even want to think about something terrible happening to their sister.

“Well, I mean yeah. I think if we had a motive it would be easier to stop it.” he shrugs. “It could help us find out where he’s planning to…do it.”  Wait, that does kind of make sense…

“You know, I think he has a point, Stan.” Mitch finally decides to butt in before Stan can shut the kid down,

“Not you too, Mitch!”

“Well, we haven’t been able to find anything yet, so what if we just do what little buddy says, he is our new robbin’ partner now, might as well listen-”

“-Correction: He’s your robbin’ partner, not mine.”

“I have a name you know-” The kid is cut off by a bump in the road causing the sidecar to make a pretty concerning noise. Oh, Mitch almost forgot about that. 

“Stan, I told you the kid shouldn’t be in the sidecar, with the shape it’s in-” Even two expert robbers can’t protect the kid from the hinges on that thing breaking. 

“And I told you he’ll be fine.” Stan shakes his head, “Look, now you’ve gone and scurred the kid.” 

“No I didn’t-” Mitch looks down at the kid, he’s frozen in place, lips pressed in a straight line. “Ah shoot, I did, didn’t I?” He frowns under his mask, “Sorry little buddy!”  

“Am I gonna die? Because that’ll really put a wrench in my living plans.”

“Nope!” Mitch is behind him, but he can tell Stan is rolling his eyes by the sound of his voice. “Just lean into the turns, you’ll probably be fine.”

“You see, when you say things like that-” The kid whistles, Mitch had picked up that he only did that when he was put on the spot, or you know, when a gun was pointed at him.

“-Come on! It’s easy, just try it, like this!” 

“Stan, I really don’t think we should be turning too much with-” Mitch reluctantly grabs his seat with one hand and the kid’s jacket hood with the other as Stan swerves to the left of the empty mountain road. 

“I-I'm not dead!” The kid breathes, both of his hands are on the rusted handles of the sidecar. 

“See, I told you!” Stan quickly turns the bike to the other side of the mountain road, and this time the kid doesn’t seem half as nervous.

“...Okay, that was pretty cool!” He blurts out, “You two do that all the time?” 

“Yeah, but that’s nothing kid! Come here.” Stan gestures to the backseat. Mitch knows what he means, they do it all the time for the hitchers they pick up. 

“You’re serious right now?” He eyes them cautiously, taking one hand off the sidecar handles to wipe it on his jeans.

“Here, It ain’t that scury once you’re up there!” He holds his hand out to the kid, who has an unreadable look on his face, but eventually takes it and quickly hops onto the back of the bike seat behind Mitch. 

“Holy sh-''

“What do you think, little buddy?” Mitch turns to ask him, and to make sure he didn’t accidentally trip, that would be not good.

“This-This is freaking sick!” The kid is balancing on the seat like it was a skateboard, and he has an iron grip on the back of the bike, but he looks thrilled.

“Ha! I knew you’d like it!” Stan shouts back to them, “Stan and Mitch!” 

“Don’t forget the kid-” 

“..Fine! Stan and Mitch and the kid !” He yells again, “Happy now, Mitch?”

“Yep!” He ignores the sarcasm that’s clear in Stan’s voice.

“You know, at first I thought you two were weird for saying that, but I get it now!” The kid tells them. Stan just shrugs in response,

“Well, you can't have the best robbin’ duo without a catchphrase-” A car speeding down the road cuts him off. Stan quickly turns the bike to the left in response, and the kid starts to lose his balance. Mitch grabs the front of his jacket before he can tumble off the side. 

“Woah, I-I think I almost died that time!” He says in a surprisingly calm way, but it might just be that he’s more shocked than anything. He shakily regains his balance on the sidecar. 

“Jesus, kid! Are you trying to fall off?!” Stan yells at him.

“Oh yeah, because I wanted to fall to my doom!” The kid yells right back. 

Great, here they go again. Just when Mitch thought the two were getting along, some taxi driver had to speed in and ruin it… WAIT -

“Stan!” Mitch lets go of the kid’s jacket and points to the road in front of them, “That was a taxi driver!”

“Sonya’s would be killer! Shoot-why didn’t you tell me?!” Stan accelerates the bike, making it almost impossible to see without his eyes burning, “Kid-You’re gonna have to help us catch that creep!”

Oh shoot. The kid! 

Luckily for everyone, the kid fell right back into the sidecar when Mitch had let go of him, and was now scrambling for the sidecar handles once again. “Why does this always happen to me?” He sounds more defeated than scared.

“This happened to you before?” Mitch asks, his brother isn’t paying attention to them at all, way too focused on the road in front of him.

“Yeah…and no! That’s kind of why I’m here in the first place, I was in a police chase-” The kid yelps as Stan dodges an oncoming car, “Long story-”

This isn’t fast enough, they're gonna lose them if they kept going this slow, “Stan! We need to go faster!”

“Oh, like I didn’t know, Mitch!” He snaps, dodging another car, “This is the fastest I can go without burning the engine out-”

“Yeah, I can tell!” The kid yells, “All I can hear is engine.

“Well-” Stan moves the bike to the right side of the road, then to the left almost immediately after, why were there so many cars?  “You’re just gonna- have to- deal with it-” Stan is cut off by a horrible screeching sound, Mitch cringes, then looks down at the kid.

“I-I’m okay!...I think!” He looks pretty shaken up, but fine for the most part. The sidecar on the other hand...

“Dagnabbit kid!” Stan shouts, because to him, there was always time to argue, even in a high speed chase.

Yeah, they really need to work on that patience thing.

“Dude! I have a name!”

“Is it, ‘I’m horrible at leaning into turns?

 Mitch tries to tune them out again, and focuses entirely on the road…and the trucks coming up that were blocking both sides of it…uh oh.

“No! It’s-”

Truck!” Mitch roughly shakes Stan’s shoulder.

Stan swerves to the far right of the road, hugging the cliff’s edge. The kid is leaning all the way to the left. He was saying something, but it was hard to hear over all the honking the trucks were making.

“-gonna die, I’m gonna die!” Mitch catches the end of the kid’s unintelligible yelling as the horns fade out.

“Oh, quit it kid, we’re fine!” Stan says, Mitch can tell he’s just as relieved they didn’t fall off that mountain. 

“Easy for you to say!” The kid’s voice cracks, “You’re not in the sidecar!”

“Well, I don’t see you driving!”

“...Would you let me?”

Heck no!” 

“-Stan, would you stop yellin’ at the kid?”

“Wait- guys- the taxi stopped!” The kid points to the now halted car on the side of the road. That was good, Mitch was starting to think they’d never catch up.

“Finally!” Stan makes the bike screech to a halt, then turns to Mitch, “Show that guy the beast!” 

“With pleasure.” Mitch  cracks his knuckles, grabbing his crowbar from the box behind the sidecar. 

“Wait, what if it’s a trap?” The kid turns around to look at him. 

“Go on Mitch, don’t let the kid’s whining stop you.”

“It’s not whining! You wouldn’t bring a crowbar to a gunfight-”

“-Now that doesn’t even make any sense!” 

Mitch rolls his eyes, those two will never learn. He tunes out their bickering as soon as he’s halfway to the car. The kid has a point, but he’s sure he can manage-even if the psycho does have a gun. He is the strongest guy he knows after all.

And this was for Sonya, he’d do anything for her.

-

-

This is it. They were gonna catch this creep and deal with him, Stan and Mitch style. What exactly does that entail? He's not sure, but the driver already has his window open.

“Oh, hi.” The taxi driver slowly looks up at Mitch, a cigarette illuminates the left side of his face. He's incredibly pale and has some kind of hat on, which obscured most of his features. The car reeks of cigarette smoke too, but other than that, nothing seems to be out of the ordinary, just a normal taxi.

“Uh…hey.” Mitch props his crowbar back onto his shoulder. He wasn’t expecting the guy to be so calm, and now he doesn’t know what to say. “Uhm…why did you stop?” He eventually settles on that question.

Oh. Well. As you can see, my car is having some trouble.” He gestures to the front of the taxi. His voice is monotonous the whole way through, but he doesn’t sound upset, he doesn’t sound like anything, really. 

Was..was this really the psycho they were after…?

Couldn't be.

“Want me to take a look at it?” Mitch points outside with his thumb.

“Mmm.” The taxi driver nods. Mitch doesn’t really know what that means, like, at all, but he’s assuming it’s a yes. 

Slowly, he walks over to the front of the taxi, and opens the hood. He knows next to nothing about car maintenance, but he’s too far gone now. He reaches for a random dial that looks right and-

-then the engine starts. Before he can even touch it. 

“Oh. It seems to be working again. Thanks.” The driver says, there's a faint bit of surprise in his voice now. 

“No…problem?” Mitch hesitantly closes the hood, gee, repairing stuff is easier than he thought. “Well, I hope you have a nice night-”

“-Wait.” The man says firmly, huh, maybe he was the would-be-killer after all

His hand tightens around the crowbar as the man reaches into his pocket-

This is it, crowbar to a gunfight.

-and pulls out a red tinted switchblade, closed.

“Your friend left this in here.” He’s looking at the side view mirror, where Stan and the kid are reflected. “Charlie.” He points to the kid in the mirror. 

“Oh…uh, thanks?” He turns to walk away, “Nice person…people like that don’t deserve engine trouble…” he mumbles, looking at the switchblade closer. 

Wait, no- it was a harmonica. The initials C.D. are carved into it.

“What-why are you coming back?! He’s leaving!” Stan yells to Mitch, he has one hand on his forehead in disbelief. The kid just looks…really confused.

“That couldn’t have been the killer, Stan.” Mitch sits back down on the bike seat, “He’s way too nice.” 

“You let Sonya’s would-be-killer go, Mitch!” 

“Well, I didn’t see you going up there, you was scurred!”

“I was not!”

“Guys! None of you were ‘scurred’!” The kid puts up air quotes, oh right.

“Kid, He uh, told me to give you this.” Mitch gives the red harmonica to him, “'didn’t know your name was Charlie.”

“It’s what…” he looks over the thing like he’s never seen it before, even though it's obviously his. 

“You know that guy?!” 

“No! I-this shouldn’t even-” He pauses and takes a breath, “Look. He puts his hands out for emphasis, “This is my harmonica, but my name is Chris. Charlie’s my twi-” He stops talking again, and it looks like he just saw someone run over an animal or something.

“What is it, kid?” Stan leans in closer, looking actually concerned for once, Mitch copies his move.

“Charlie is my twin! God, what is she doing...?"

“Nobody was in there, he said uh, she left it...”

“Oh-” He sighs, “What the heck, man? You could have started with that.”

“Hey, look on the bright side, 'least we know what that psycho looks like now.” Mitch nods, "One step closer to saving our sister-"

“Wait… Sonya Sanchez is your sister?!

Notes:

Thanks for reading! I tried to crank the sibling energy up here. Also, I kinda have an update schedule I think? I'll try it out but I'm not sure yet.

Explanations for stuff:
I didn't write Mitch as completely dumb, he has his moments in the game where he's actually smarter than Stan, so I wanted to build on that. (But still included 'clueless' bits I guess, like him not realizing that Stan and Chris arguing is the exact same thing he does. Also the whole letting Jarod go thing, but that was in the game already)

Speaking of Stan, he will get nicer, I swear.

Also: Harmonica is a surprise tool that will help us later. (Well, more like will help me keep up with the continuity of the two other stories after this but yeah)

Chapter 5: Waiting...

Summary:

Chris doesn't have all the time in the world to get to the border, but the fact is that this is his best option right now. He'll give it one more day.

Notes:

Sup. No, I have no excuse. Also there's a few more noticeable headcanons in this one. Also,Also I know that their hideout would technically be on the first floor in game but I'm just gonna call it a basement because it's easier.

Record amount of days without an update: 49

EDIT: Forgot to mention this chapter was possible thanks to my friend who listened to my scattered ideas for this.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

June 16th, 1996

523 miles from the border

“Today marks the anniversary of Lola's death. In exactly two years, I will take my-”

“Revenge on Sonya, yeah I know.” Chris pauses the tape that contains the ramblings of a pretty deranged man mid-sentence, “But why?- I mean, there’s a lot of reasons I guess…but who’s Lola?” Turns out solving a mystery is harder than he thought, especially when he doesn’t have all the pieces.

It didn’t help that they can’t ‘commandeer evidence’ as Stan and Mitch expertly put it. Actually, they can’t do much of anything really, because the motorcycle decided to up and die on them. Apparently, it was on its last leg after that chase, because the engine blew out about a mile before the hideout and they had to push it back.

Fun times. 

He really shouldn’t be surprised, since their bike inconveniently breaking down was how they first met in the first place.

Speaking of said hideout, it was a basement in the middle of the woods. It concerned Chris at first, because 1: Who makes their ‘super secret hideout’ near a roadblock of all places, and 2: Who builds a giant building in the forest, then abandons it?

To their credit though, it’s been 4 days and nothing bad has happened so far. It’s not like they were really keeping him here, either. Despite everything, they were still his best bet to the border right now, and he’s not on a time limit or anything…

Okay, maybe he was technically on a time limit, but knowing his sister, she’ll draw her trip out for as long as possible, and getting caught loitering at the border isn’t on his to do list. 

“Know anyone named Lola?” Chris looks up from the radio and over to Stan, who's attempting to fix the bike for the 10th time that day . 

“Like I told you-If I knew, then we would already be on that creep’s trail.” Stan doesn’t look away from the motorcycle, “But since someone decided to let the psycho go, we only have a bad drawing of the guy, and that tape.”

Hey !” Mitch appears from the basement, “You spent all night on that Stan, I think it’s pretty cool”

“I agree.” Chris holds up the drawing in question, an angry looking stick figure with the labels cigarettes and old surrounding it. All done in orange crayon.

“Whatever you say.”

“I don’t know why anybody would want to go after Sonya anyway.” Mitch climbs out and sits next to Chris, “She’s the prettiest flower in Petria, a national icon too.”

“I have my theories.” Chris only realizes after he says it that it probably wasn’t the best move.

“And what’s that supposed to mean?” Stan stops what he’s doing to glare at Chris, oh great.

“Uh, look, I didn’t mean it like that. ” He coughs, “I don’t think Sonya did anything to deserve… this” He has his suspicions, but death? A little much for him, “But that guy thinks she does, there must be a reason. Find the motive, find a way to stop the guy.” He said it back before that crazy chase, but he’s sure Stan wasn’t listening.

“It makes sense, Stan.” Mitch vouches for him again, but he knows that it won’t do much.

“What? No, it doesn’t Mitch, maybe the guy’s doing it because, oh I don’t know, he’s freakin’ insane?!”

“How will we know if we don’t check? It’s not like we have any other evidence the kid can go off of”

“Yeah, but we will, as soon as I get our moto fixed.”

“Aw, Don’t listen to him, Chris, he’s just bein’ stubborn again.” Mitch shakes his head, then turns to him, “So whaddya got?”

“Oh, you know, just the basics.” He pulls out a notebook from his backpack by his side and flips to a marked page, “At first, I thought she might have been a crosser or something, but that kind of thing wasn’t really on the Sonya show til’ the second GNN contract, which was around 1995-way after ‘Lola’ died…” He looks up, waiting for a response, all he gets in return are blank stares.

“Wow.” Mitch mutters after the most silent and awkward 10 seconds of Chris’ life-he said too much again, didn’t he?

“I mean it’s really just speculation right now, I still have to iron out the-”

“The kid’s a genius!” Mitch shouts, almost making Chris fall over.

“Okay, so the kid has an admittedly impressive knowledge of the best show in Petria, who doesn’t?” Stan finally speaks, sitting up from the motorcycle’s side, “How do you know that stuff anyway?”

“I, well-” He stumbles over his words, “I-uh, I used to be in a journalism class.” He digs around in his pocket for the embroidery with his school logo and shows it to them, “Watching archived tapes of the Sonya show was kind of the only way we got credit.” 

He remembers it pretty well actually: an absolutely soulless looking ‘GNN Representative’  turning on the tv and zoning out for the whole period while the assigned classroom cop in the corner failed at staying awake.

“You know, looking back, the class had nothing to do with journalism. Writing for the school paper was fun though.”  They basically could put in anything they wanted since the ones in charge were so careless,  “You know, 'til we got banned for life.”

“What? Why?”

“Tarantula Tuesday.”

“Tarantula what-”

“It’s exactly what it sounds like.” Chris shudders, “Sometimes I can still feel them crawling on my arms.”

That’s gross.” Mitch sounds genuinely disgusted.

“Ah, shut it ya’ big babies, arachnids are cool-when they’re at least five feet away from me. Stan gets on the bike and grabs what looks like a weird hook from his pocket, “-Not because I’m scared or anything, I just value my personal space. ” 

“Do you..not have the keys to that?” Chris watches as Stan shoves the pick into the ignition.

“Funny you think that we got this bike legally.” Stan rolls his eyes, “No, we don’t” 

“Wait-Is that my lucky lockpick?!”

“Oh come on, it’s not like you use it anyways, Mitch .”

“That’s why it’s lucky, Stan! Give it!”

“Nah, I'm good.” Stan finally manages to start the bike, “Ah great, now look what you did Mitch, It’s overheating!” Stan quickly pulls the pick from the ignition and jumps off the bike, “Dammit!”

“That’s what you get for stealin’ my things.” Mitch crosses his arms.

Chris isn’t really phased, they had a similar argument yesterday.

“It’s not stealin’ if it was already stolen from someone else.” He touches the bike, then hisses, shaking his hand wildly, “Yep-still hot.” 

“You need help there?” Chris asks, slowly putting the embroidery back into his pocket, "I used to work at a-"

“Thanks, but I don’t need help from some fourteen year old-”

“-fifteen.” Chris corrects.

“Wait" Mitch stops his pouting, "I thought you said-”

“Yeah, I did. And that was true until…” He checks the date on his watch, “Yesterday.” 

“And you didn’t tell us?” Mitch sounds hurt, even though he’s only known Chris for about 3 days total.

“Well, I mean- I don’t see why it really matters.” Chris whistles, “I’ll just celebrate it later when I get across, with my da-” He pauses, “With-with my sister. Hey, did I ever tell you we're twins?” 

“Wait, really? You know, people think Stan and I are twins all the time, but truth is, I’m two years older!” Mitch rambles on, thankfully forgetting what they were talking about. 

“Mitch, would you shut up? I’m tryin’ to focus here-'' Stan attempts to start the bike again, it makes the same sound as before then dies out moments later, “This bucket of bolts is drivin’ me insane!” Stan shakes the bike in frustration. To add insult to injury, the hinges on the sidecar break, and it falls off. 

Chris resists the urge to point out the karma in this situation.

“That’s it- I’m done!” Stan throws the pick on the ground and storms off. 

“Aw c'mon Stan, It’s not that bad! We can fix it-” Mitch jumps to his feet and chases after his brother, leaving Chris alone with his thoughts...he picks up the discarded lockpick instead. 


-

The sun is almost setting now, and it’s casting a pretty annoying shadow on the whole building. It’s totally not terrifying to be in a creepy forest in a kind of abandoned building presumably alone, but Chris has a flashlight so it’s kind of sort of okay. 

He has his harmonica in his mouth, absentmindedly playing it off-key while trying to pick a rusty lock that must have fallen off a door at some point. It’s been two hours at least, and Stan still wasn’t back from…wherever he went. 

He tries not to be too worried, but keeps his backpack close, just in case.

“Did it!” He lets the harmonica fall into his lap as the lock finally makes a grinding ‘click’, “I’m a genius, master locksmith extraordinaire-”

“Hey Chris!” Mitch appears from behind a pillar and Chris makes a sound that totally isn’t a scream. 

“-Oh, it’s just you-wait-where did you even come from?” He tries and fails at not tripping over his words.

“I was in the hideout, figured you didn’t want to be bothered.” He shrugs and sits next to Chris, “...Must be hard being so far from family.” It was, and Mitch probably understood that better than most. 

“I mean, yeah-” He scratches the back of his neck, “But…I’ve known Charlie since I was born...literally. She’s fine on her own -actually- she can handle herself better than me, and I’m doing great right now.” It’s half true, he thinks, because he knows she’s stronger than him, but on the other hand, that taxi guy knew her name.

Something was up, even if it wasn’t dangerous…he’ll keep that to himself. 

“What about your sister?” Chris asks slowly, not so subtly shifting the subject away from him “Why don’t you just tell her about the psycho guy if you’re so worried?”

“We’ve tried!...but she won’t listen, ‘says she’s untouchable or somethin’ like that.” He looks down at the ground, “She doesn’t really have the time to talk to us nowadays, being an icon and all…we don’t want to bother her.” He sounds dejected.

“You should reach out.” He says,“If Charlie gets famous- scratch that- when Charlie gets famous, I’ll never leave her alone, prank calls every weekend-actually, everyday at 4:33-that’ll really annoy her.” He smiles wickedly, can’t wait for that part of his life.

That is, if they make it.

“You really think so?” Mitch looks somewhere between skeptical and amused. 

“I wouldn’t be telling you if I didn’t think it was true.” Talking about feelings wasn’t the chat he thought he’d have with a criminal, but cool, this was fine. 

After a record breaking 15 seconds of awkward silence which really felt like 30 minutes , Mitch finally speaks up.

“Soooo…” He starts, “Why don’t you like your birthday?” It’s an innocent enough question, but it still takes Chris off guard. 

“It’s not that I don’t like it-” He answers almost immediately after he’s asked, “Just seems weird to do now, because…well, everything, really.” He grabs his harmonica and runs his fingers along the edges, “But…that’s fine, I can celebrate later, with my sister.”

“And your dad, right?” 

Wh-No! ” If Chris had a drink, he’d be spitting it out right now, I didn’t tell you that-wait..did I say that?” 

“Yeah, I remember! You said-”

“Oh…” Stupid, stupid, stupi-, “ Well - I didn’t mean that!” He says faster than he can think, “I haven’t seen that guy since I was four!” Crap. That was worse. Significantly worse. 

“You haven’t?!” Mitch sounds concerned, because who wouldn’t after someone you barely know tells you that?

“I uh, not really, no.” -not true, but it’s easier to explain- “I-It’s not really a problem, it’s not like I knew him or anything-” Nope, not any better-, “It’s…really, it’s not a big deal, just complicated- really, really complicated.” With that, he shuts up before he can talk himself into another corner.

“Well, okay.” Mitch backs down surprisingly easily, which Chris is grateful for, “...Hey! Look at this though-” He quickly changes the subject completely by taking a small box out of his pocket, “Can’t have a birthday without a present! Well, you could, but-”

“Woah…that’s really-” He takes the box and doesn’t hesitate to open it, there's a small pin inside shaped like a shooting star.

“It’s a lucky charm! We all got one-” He gestures to the one hanging on the crowbar by his side, “I think it glows in the dark too, but it needs to charge or somethin’.”

“I…thanks!” He doesn’t really know how to respond, since he wasn’t expecting anything at all, really. He shifts the charm between his fingers a few times, even if it isn’t charged it still has a strange shine to it, “Sick…

“Hey…guys!-” Stan runs up to them, again, out of nowhere. He’s clearly out of breath.

“Stan! Where have you been?!”

“‘Ran to the nearest gas station, y’know…for gas and stuff.” He takes a breath, “And I stole this-” He stumbles over to Chris and shoves a package into his hands. It’s a roll of cupcakes, “I almost got arrested for these!” 

“You did?”

“No.” Stan scoffs, sitting next to Mitch, “Besides, ‘can’t have a birthday without cake, well I mean, you could, but-but that’s not the point!” 

“You guys..are pretty cool.” Chris finally manages to get a word in.

“Well, of course we are-coolest people in Petria- right Mitch?”

“Yeah, the coolest, well after Sonya of course-” 

Chris looks down at the two gifts, then back up to them who were already bickering about something again, maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all.

Notes:

Hey people, as said above, I literally have no excuse. Thanks for waiting this long, though and I hoped you liked it.

Also, I deliberately tried to make the part about Chris' dad confusing, since he's trying and failing at deflecting, so there's some contradictions. Please let me know if it's just plain confusing to read so I can adjust it lol.

Also, Also:
Tarantula Incident (AKA tarantula Tuesday)-6 8th grade students released 30 tarantulas from the science lab during the saint Tyrak's day salute, claiming 'liberation from evil'. All involved were suspended.

Chapter 6: Stealing is (sometimes) Bad!

Summary:

Stan, Mitch, and Chris rob a Happy Taxi HQ for clues, it goes as well as you'd expect.

Notes:

Heads up! I edited the miles on all chapters again, so it's way shorter now.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

June 21st, 11:37 pm

418 miles from the border

A happy taxi office building. Of all places to collect evidence, why here? Just because the dude is a taxi driver? There’s only so much you can hide in a little office cubicle- that is if drivers even got that. Then again, maybe Stan and Mitch knew something he didn’t. 

“Aren’t you worried about security cameras?” Chris leans on the side of the building, flipping Mitch's lockpick between his fingers. 

“Where do you even get that kind of information?”

“We’ve been scoping out this place for weeks, getting their routine down. One security guard skips his shift every other Wednesday.”

“You sure it’s today Stan?” Mitch is peering through the window, “All the lights are on-”

“Classic trick Mitch, they do that to scur criminals— and if they need to do that…”

“...No security.” Chris responds.

“Now you’re gettin’ it!”

“Okay, let’s get this over with then-”

“Hold up kid-” Stan stops him, “You’re hardly an expert at this, you’ll be lookout.” 

Out here alone ?!” This was bad-for many, many reasons that Chris doesn’t need to explain,”What if I get caught-”

“Calm down, I never said outside.”

“Oh, okay that’s good.” He sighs, “Wait…how am I gonna be lookout then?” 

-

-

“This sucks.” Chris doesn’t even want to think about the stuffy, narrow walls around him as he crawls through the vent. He holds back a sneeze, “Did I ever tell you guys how much I despise small spaces?” He talks into the two-way radio they gave him, “Because I really do.”

“That would’ve been great to know before you got in.” Stan’s grainy voice echoes through the speaker.

Chris doesn’t buy it. Stan would’ve still probably made him get into the vent anyway, since apparently this was an ‘integral part of the plan’. At least now he can test if his pin actually glows in the dark-it does, great.

First impressions of intentionally breaking into a place: not that good.  

“Don’t worry Buddy, anything goes wrong, we have the rope!

Right, the rope. Mitch thought it would be a great idea to tie it around his waist for some reason. He thinks it’s way too flimsy to realistically do anything, but it’s the thought. 

“What’s up with that, anyway?”

“Well, we don’t want him getting stuck in the vent like you did that one t-“

Shut up! You- you’re gonna scur the kid…” 

Chris doesn’t know whether to laugh or feel nervous about that, so he just smirks to himself…it’s a nervous smirk. 

Wait, is a nervous smirk even a thing? Well, it is now.

After what feels like forever, he finally makes it to the end. Surprisingly, there is a lock on the inner vent, albeit flimsy at best- it breaks almost immediately after he puts the pick he has into place.

“Ha! Hey guys!” He leans on the vent door, “I’m finally getting a hang of this whole lock picking thi-“ The next thing he knows, he’s on the floor, and his side hurts, “ouch…” that’s probably gonna sting later. 

“Chris? Chris! Are you okay?” 

“I’m…fine.” He rolls onto his back, “Just fell a little, give-give me a minute.” He’s almost positive he didn’t break anything, but that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt, and falling right on the hard vent door didn’t exactly help numb anything. 

“Whatever, we gotta get in anyway, let’s go Mitch.”  

Chris lingers on the floor for a few more seconds, before shaking it off and sitting up. 

He grabs the radio discarded on the floor, “I’m alive, in case you were wondering.”

“I was– glad you’re not!” 

“I wasn’t really that-"Ow !” Chris can hear Stan getting shoved or something.

“Stan was, too!”

“That…that’s good to know I guess!”

“Whatever, kid! Are you in the room with the cameras?” 

Chris looks up, there’s about 6 different monitors stacked on top of each other, all with different video feeds.

“Cool…” he mutters. For the most part, it was pretty mundane and normal, but you never really see where all the videos for security cameras are and—

Kid !”

“Oh uh, right! Yeah, there’s cameras here,”

“Oh good, so we did get the right day, ‘wasn’t too sure.”

“You what?!”

Nothing! Nothing. Just stay there until we get in.” The other end of the receiver sounds distant, “Hurry up with that lock Mitch!”

“It takes a while to force open a door, Stan. Besides, I don’t like to rush things.” 

“Mitch! Are you serious right now?!”

Chris takes the time to look around, it’s just a pretty typical office: papers, scratch tickets, buttons, and other junk cover almost all surfaces in the room, a phone sits on the wall next to the monitors–reminding Chris of the one he has at home. There’s also a jacket draped on the chair facing the monitors, the word ‘Security’ is in emboldened letters on the back.

It looks..pretty cool. 

“Yeah, I’ll just be…” He slowly picks it up, looks around, then puts it on, “Taking this now, it’s mine now.” It’s a little big, but beggars can’t be choosers. Besides, this was an obvious need, not a want, so it didn’t really count as stealing either. Right? Right?!

“Finally, we’re in! Hey kid–can you see us on the cameras?” 

Oh yeah, they’re mainly robbing this place for clues, not cool looking jackets. Chris scans over the six cameras, Stan is on cam two, knocking on the lens. Man, he’s gonna get all smudged up!

“Uhh, yeah! Clear! Over! Or–whatever!” He talks into the radio, “You’re in..” He looks at the layout, “The reception!” 

“Yeah, that’s pretty obvious!” He waves him off through the camera, then jumps down, “You know, since there’s a reception desk here and–”

Okay. I get it. ” Chris rolls his eyes. 

“Come on, Mitch! Let’s look for clues.”

“Would there even be anything in the reception?” Chris asks, sitting down onto the chair in front of him.

“Well, you never know, maybe the psycho hides his stuff where nobody expects.” 

“Oh my god!” Mitch shouts, Chris can actually hear his voice in the other room without the radio.

“What is it?!” Stan almost trips running over to the reception desk where Mitch is.

“They have lollipops here!” 

Mitch!”

“Wait, really?!” Chris scoots closer to the monitor, as if it would enhance the pixelated image, “Are there any purple ones?!”

“This is a break in–we’re not here for candy!”

“There’s always time for candy, Stan.”

“I think Stan should worry less.” Chris leans back in the chair, messing with his new and totally necessary jacket, “I got everything under control.”

“That’s rich coming from you .” Stan mumbles.

“Wait, do you hear that?” Mitch asks, but Chris is much more interested in handful of candy in his hand, score. “It’s beeping or something–”

The wailing sound of an alarm echoes throughout the whole building. Chris falls back on the ground. Ouch again. That definitely was gonna hurt later.

It’s an alarm! Kid, you have to turn it off!”

“O-on it!” Chris stumbles up and over to the buttons he spotted earlier–one of them had to disarm the thing. Instead of pushing them all individually like a normal person, Chris instead pushes them all at once by dragging his finger across the board. Something must have worked though, because the siren stops.

“Thanks, Chris!” Mitch sighs, “That could’ve been really ba–”

You didn’t tell the kid to turn the alarm off?!”

“I can’t remember everything, Stan.” 

“Well, maybe you should start–”

The phone next to Chris rings. He nearly chokes, this wasn’t good. Not good at all.

“Guys, the phone is uhh, ringing…no sweat though.” He nervously laughs. There’s no response, but he can still hear them arguing from the other room, “Guys!” Still nothing.

“Dang it.” He runs his hand through his hair. This was…not the best, but he could still get through it, “Okay Chris, you’ve taken stressful calls before, this’ll be simple.” He whistles, then picks up the phone.

“Hello, this is security, is everything alright?”

“Uhhh…” Play it cool, no big deal, “Yeah! The- it uh, it was a false alarm!” 

Nailed it.

“What triggered the alarm, sir?”

“It was a…a cat–yeah. It walked right in through a window and triggered it, funny thing.” A cat?! Oh, they were so screwed! “Sorry, I’m uh, I’m new..?”

“I see, you’ll want to lock the windows next time.” The person on the other end sighs, “You would have known that if they trained you correctly.” She says something off to the side that he can’t really make out. “Anyway, thanks for the explanation.”

“Oh,no problem.” Wow, that actually worked , “Okay buh bye–”

“Just a second sir!” Aaand there it was. Dang it, “You’ll need to enter Happy Taxi’s ten digit security code.” Double-dang it 

“Right, of course! Just, just give me a sec.” He cups his hand over the receiver and looks at the cameras. 

Stan and Mitch were done arguing now, and were instead trying to pry open the door next to the reception desk with Mitch’s crowbar. Chris grabs the radio. 

“Stan, Mitch! Big problem !” 

“What’s wrong?!” Thankfully, Stan responds.

“Sooo security might have sort of called -no biggie- buut they kind of want a passcode and uh- I don’t think it’s in here!” 

“Well, how am I supposed to know what it is? I’m not a wizard, kid!”

“Look just–” He pinches the bridge of his nose and lowers his voice, “Just try to find it, okay?”

“Fine.” He walks to the reception desk again, Chris really hopes it’s there and not in some long forgotten desk office. If it’s not, then this mission is gonna go downhill fast. 

“Sir, the security code?” The person on the phone asks again, this time more urgently.

“I am uh, still looking for it. Can’t expect me to memorize something like that, you know?” If he had the job he certainly would, but that’s not the point.

“We really  do need better trainers.” 

“Sorry..” and he is, for many many things he feels bad about right now. Not enough to stop though, no. He covers the receiver again, “Stan!”

“I got it! Try this: A45-D2R-CPP12

Chris somehow manages to recite all that to the person on the other end of the call.

“Thank you for your time, take care.”

“Uhh, yeah.” He puts the phone back down, “We’re good!”

“Geez, that could have been a disaster. Mitch, ‘you get that door open yet?”

Patience.”  

“The kid literally just got called by security, Mitch, we don’t have time to–”

“Got it!” Mitch is finally able to break the door open.

“Took you long enough!”

“You’re on cam one now.” Chris leans up to the tv in question, man, there’s a lot of cameras.

“Look–the manager’s office!” Stan points to it, and Mitch barrels over to attempt to pry it open again.

“You think the manager is our guy?” Chris asks.

“Maybe, but even if he isn’t, there must be something in there.”

“It’s…too hard to open, Stan.” Mitch throws the crowbar to the side and tries to kick it instead, it still doesn’t work. 

“Hang on Mitch, you’re gonna end up breaking something that ain't that door” Stan stops him from trying to kick it again, “Look–there’s a keypad! 'Must be a code in the security room!” 

“I mean, I’ll check.” He scans over the papers on the table, most are complaints and old newspaper articles, some date all the way back to 1986–days after the attack. 

Weird.

“Maybe it’s a date? Try 1986.” He folds the older articles and puts them in his pocket.

“Nothing.”

“Sh- okay, hold on.” Chris opens one of the drawers and looks around, because the universe hates him, there’s about 7 different 4-digit codes,all on different sticky notes. 

Great! How was he ever gonna find the right one?! That is, if there’s even a ‘right one’. What if the manager guy just keeps his passcode from everybody–

“Oh wait.” One of the post its is in a obnoxious lime green color, it’s titled ' Code for the creepy manager’s office- do not use  

Yep. That sounds about right. 

“Try this one–” Chris picks up the post it and repeats the code off of it.

“Four…Seven..” There’s a ding before Mitch can even finish muttering the numbers, “Hey, it worked!’

“Knew it!” Chris high fives himself, then flips the note over in his hands, “huh…” He shoves that note in his pocket as well, you know, just in case.

“What. The–”

“What’s up?” Chris glances to cam five, where the office should be, but it’s completely blank. There’s another post it in the same color as before, ‘Ask manager 2 fix’ 

…Things are starting to make sense now.

“Kid, are you seeing this?” By the tone in Stan's voice alone, Chris really wants to know what’s on the other side of that door now.

“The camera’s black on my end–is it broken?”

“I don’t think…wait! There’s tape on the lens–” The camera is uncovered, revealing…a whole lot of nothing.

“Can you see it now?”

“No, it’s all blurry–”

“Ugh–okay, hold on.” Chris assumes Stan wipes the camera, because things are a little clearer now, “How ‘bout now?” He steps away from the camera and gestures to a pretty creepy (and, he has to admit, impressive) evidence board, red string and everything.

“Guess the psycho was the manager after all.” Chris makes sure to write that down later.

“We knew someone was after Sonya…but this is cray cray!”

“The kid’s right–it must be the sicko after her!” 

“You two–stop!” A person that’s definitely not Stan or Mitch runs down the main hall. Uh oh.

“Guys! Shut the door–” 

Stan slams it before Chris can finish his sentence,

Who was that?!” Mitch backs away from the door.

“The security guard! He must have come back when he heard the alarm!” 

“Shoot!” Chris looks around, “Find anything yet?!” He stands from the chair, more than ready to get the heck out of there. The giddy panic of being somewhere he's not supposed to finally hits him.

“Hold on–we gotta get all these clues!” Chris can see them searching frantically for evidence, it's clear to him already that there’s no way they’ll be able to make sense of  it in time, “Come on, can’t we look at it all later?!”

“Looks like this journal has a lot of–”

“Dude are you kidding?! Take it!” 

“I was gonna even before you said anything.” Stan picks it up, “Come on Mitch, let’s get outta here!”

“Wait–I almost got the location!”

There’s a loud bang at the door that nearly makes Chris jump out of his skin.

“Open the door, now!” The real security guard yells, oh god, this wasn’t good at all, especially since he has the guy’s jacket on “...You don’t want any trouble, kid!  Give me the code and we’ll pretend this didn’t happen.”

“You really think I believe that?! I’m not a double crosser!” Well, he is a crosser, hey–that’s actually a funny pun–

“You’re gonna regret this!”

“I found it–He’s gonna attack at the border, near the top of the hill!

“We have to go, now!”

“But what about Chris?–” 

No time, Mitch!” Through the cameras, he can see Stan drag Mitch out of the office corridors off screen.

“Wait…what?!” But that wasn’t… but they had a deal!

“Oh, You’re screwed now, kid!” The man rushes the door again, and it almost gives in. It’s clear that Chris has to leave if he doesn’t want to be rotting in a cell somewhere or worse.

“Uhhh-” Frantically, he runs over to the vent and tries to hoist himself up into it- no luck, he really wishes he tried harder in gym class.

“Guys-I need help!” No response.

Did...did they actually leave? 

“Crap-” He…he could be on his own here! Oh he’s done, he’s so done ! Okay, it’s fine, it’s fine- 

He whips around and scans the room for something to climb on-

Oh, the chair, duh.

It’s barely enough of a boost for him to climb back into the tunnel,but it works, just before the guard breaks down the door .

“Shoot shoot shoot!-“ he tries to move as quickly as possible down the narrow space, which is even more suffocating than before. The added faint sense of betrayal didn’t help much either.

“Chris!”

His eyes flicker to the side when he hears his name called, Stan is at the other end of the vent! 

They...didn’t leave. huh.

Without another thought, he reaches for his hand. Before he can be pulled through, someone grabs his foot. He looks back, the guard apparently thought it was a great idea to go in after him. Crap.

“Should have just given me the code!” The guard grunts.

Let go!” He uses all the force he has in his other leg to kick back. 

It’s at an awkward angle because of how narrow the vent is, but he must have hit the guy, because the next thing he knows, his leg is free, “Thanks for the free jacket, man!–“ he isn’t able to finish his dumb comeback because he’s dragged out, almost falls again, but Stan catches him.

“We’re leaving, now !” He runs with Chris still in his arms, unceremoniously throwing him into the sidecar. They drive away before he can catch up with reality, so he kind of just…sits there. 

What…just happened?

“We got the location, we win!” 

“We always win, Mitch. Now how’s that for a robbery, kid?”

“I…I kicked that guy in the face!” Is all he can really say. To be fair, it’s true, he probably did.

“Ha! And he deserved it for trying to stop you!” 

-

“I’d say that’s our best robbery to date!” Stan sits near one of the walls of one of the many abandoned buildings a couple miles away from the HQ. Just until the police 'buzz off from the area' as Stan expertly put it.

It’s been about an hour since they left that place, but his head still feels like it’s in an endless spin.  

He can’t even focus on the purple flavored candy that Mitch stole for him, and that’s saying a lot, because he loves that stuff.

Kid, you in there still or did that security guard fry your brain?” He’s snapped out of his thoughts. Stan is in front of him, waving a hand in front of his face.

“Huh…?” He looks up from the candy he’s been zoning out in front of for about 20 minutes now.

“I said you did a pretty good job with keeping cool and stuff, for a dumb kid, you’re a pretty solid lookout.” He ruffles Chris’ hair.

Before Stan can back up, Chris hugs him. For once it looks like he actually catches him off guard.

“Hey wh- what’s this for?” He leans away, but then after a few seconds, actually hugs back.

“Aww-“

“Shut up, Mitch!”

“You..you actually came back for me.” Chris says, fully aware of how pathetic it sounds, but nowadays it feels like no one ever comes back.

“Of course I did!..Mitch would have been crying all day if you got arrested, didn’t want to deal with that!” He looks away, “Fine- okay, I get it, I’m the best. Kind of already knew that!” Stan lightly shoves Chris and dusts himself off, “You really need a shower, kid.” 

“You know where a shower is?!”

“Well, yeah!” Stan facepalms, “Did you just think we just–wait. Pause. What are you wearing?”

“Oh..it’s that guard’s jacket, I found it on a chair!“ Chris realizes he sounds way too excited about that, “I mean, you know, as a disguise- cool, right?!”

“Not gonna lie to you kid, that is pretty cool.” Stan nods. 

“They grow up so fast, ‘seems like only yesterday you were saving that kid’s money at the super supper, now you’re stealing other people’s stuff.” Mitch muses.

“No it’s not stealing! This was out of necessity , not-wait, what?..” The super supper?  What were they..? When he emptied Jerry’s money onto the floor?— “You saw that?!” 

“Well yeah, it was pretty obvious.” Mitch shrugs

“We’re not idiots, kid.” 

It’s pretty obvious now that they definitely weren’t, or maybe they were just making Chris dumber.

Oh well.

Notes:

Had a lot of fun writing this one. We got those found fam vibes coming in maybe! Imagining the hug being like the one Luz gives Eda in 'When I was a teenage abomination' [The owl house].

Anyway, rambling aside, thanks for reading this chapter. Next one might take longer because of finals, but it won't be a month again-promise! (okay I'm not good with deadlines so it's a maybe)

6/28/22 [Editing this and the other chapters late at night and I'm making myself laugh at the vent bc among us. I need sleep.]

Chapter 7: Letters and Albums

Summary:

Chris talks about his past.

Notes:

Sorry for the wait!

Also so funny story guys (you're gonna laugh) I completely forgot that a plot point I scrapped months ago is still in the first two chapters of this fic (whoops).

I'll explain more in the notes at the end but if there's some contradictions in this chapter, that's why-sorry for the confusion! (Also I have been editing tf out of the previous chapters)

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

July 2nd,

523 miles from the border.

It rarely rains during the summer months in Petria, but when it does, it pours. Chris is quickly reminded of this fact when a sudden thunderstorm forced him to relocate all his things to the mostly dry bottom floor of Stan and Mitch’s hideout.

Not that he minds that much, he’s pretty confident that he can call them his friends now, or at the very least, sure they won’t turn him in.

Stan still makes the occasional irritated or uninterested remark, but Chris is kind-of sort of sure he’s joking...half of the time, anyway.

Mitch is still Mitch, the dude is so nice he could probably make friends with a cop if he wanted to. Not that he would, it’s pretty obvious that he’s downright terrified of the coppers- and Chris can’t fault him on that.

In short: They’re cool, and he’s 98.8% sure they won’t stab him in the back anytime soon, if not ever. Overall, Chris is fine with those odds.

The hideout is pretty covered compared to outside too, which is impressive considering it’s a glorified basement with the only roof covering it being a story above them. There are some areas not covered by the structures, but in Stan’s words, ‘nothing a good bucket can’t fix.’..Chris doesn’t really get it, but at least the buckets kept most of the leaks out.

With that out of the way, his only real current problem (besides the whole crossing the border thing) is searching through all the evidence stolen from the Happy Taxi Offices.

It was never part of the initial deal for Chris to become some kind of private investigator to find out when this taxi driver was gonna attack, but he’s way too interested in this to ignore it now. Besides, it doesn’t sit right with him letting something preventable go like that, even if it has absolutely nothing to do with him.

He's entertained the thought of just staking the border hill out until something happened, but quickly ruled it out as an option. It isn’t realistic for them to stay there on the off chance they find the cabbie and loitering around ‘96 in general is bad news for a multitude of reasons.

That plan falling through didn’t matter much to him though, Chris is certain the date is hidden somewhere in the jumbled mess of a journal Stan stole from the offices–it’s just a matter of sorting through it all.

Speaking of the journal—well, it was really...something to say the least.

It’s more of a binder, having different entries on pages messily shoved up on top of each other, all taken from different spiral notebooks. None of them are in order by date, that is—if he was even lucky enough to get written date on one that wasn’t scribbled out. From what he could read from the scratchy cursive handwriting, this guy was on a downwards spiral, to say the very least.

Don’t get him started on the dozens of partially completed magazine style death threats accompanied by a few in-depth plans on how to ‘get rid of’ Stan and Mitch. Those concerned Chris more than a little, but they didn’t seem too worried about it for whatever reason.

He really can’t tell if the Sanchez family are extremely brave or just dumb...both?

Every once in a while though, tucked into hidden pockets in the journal, there’s photos of a girl with light brown hair...Chris doesn’t need to be a so-called ‘expert’ to put the pieces together on who ‘Lola’ is, and why her name was the code to that office. Even though the guy quite clearly had some serious issues-and that's putting it lightly-, sifting through pictures of someone’s dead loved one as if it was yesterday’s papers felt extremely wrong.

And even still, none of that explains why the cabbie -who’s name was Jarod, according to an old work ID shoved in one of the binder pockets- wants Sonya dead.

He checks his watch, the bright green numbers read 7:32 pm. Sighing, Chris finally leans back into the chair behind him. His brain’s no help at all when it’s practically overheating--he’s gotta take a break. He flips the pages on small calendar on the desk in temporary defeat, then glances over his shoulder.

Stan is sitting on a makeshift table situated next to the TV, watching some kind of cartoon, the pig they took from Jerry the cashier is in his arms. Mitch is on the floor near him, reading a magazine. It really makes Chris wonder why they have three chairs, but never sit in them, maybe it just gets boring after a while?

“Can you believe this goss mag, Stan?” Mitch asks, flipping through a few pages and showing him one, Stan doesn’t look away from the Tv.

“I don’t read those for a reason, that reason being: they’re stupid.” He says, still not looking away from the screen.

“But what if Sonya really is dating this bodyguard guy?”

“You mean that hairdresser on page seven? Doubt it.”

Bodyguard.”

“Eh? Same thing.”

“No, no it isn’t!”

Chris cracks at that, sometimes he forgets how funny their arguments can get.

“Look who’s finally back on earth!” Stan calls out, “I think that’s the longest you haven’t talked.”

“Yeah...my head hurts.” Chris rubs his eyes, then stacks and sorts the papers to the side, “I’m done for tonight.”

Finally.” Stan answers, placing the piggy bank down, “I don’t even know how you can look at all of that for that long without losing your mind.”

“Oh, I lost it at least two hours ago, I’m just real good at powering through it.”

They both pause. Stan looks up from the TV and Mitch lowers the magazine. They’re both staring at him.

“...Yeah, I think you need a break.” Stan pushes up from the table he’s sitting on.

“Come on guys- it was a joke!” Chris protests. Stan doesn’t listen though, and instead grabs the back of Chris’ chair, tipping it over until he falls on the floor.

Man, why don’t they ever his sense of humor?

“Either way, nothing good ever comes from overworking—especially for Velcro-wearing little kids like you.” Stan points to Chris’ shoes, which were in fact Velcro.

“First of all, Velcro’s awesome and not just for little kids…” Chris sits up from the surprisingly cold floor, "Second of all: You wear it too!” He gestures to Stan’s boots, patches on his mask and—point is, they wear way more than he does.

“Not the point!” Stan chides, kicking an empty bucket under a leak in the ceiling, “One time, back in prison-”

“...You’ve been to prison?”

“Yeah, yeah, only three months.”

“It was horrible.” Mitch shudders.

“So as I was saying- there was this guy, ‘don’t know why, but the guards really hated him for some reason. Would always make him work for days on end, more than anyone else.”

Thunder conveniently booms in the background, making Mitch flinch. Chris wonders whether this is a joke or not.

“One day, the guy just snapped—his head exploded.

“That’s not what happened!” Mitch sounds unnaturally serious, must have struck a nerve there “Stop being gross."

“Well, figuratively it happened that way.” Stan shrugs, “They really did fry that guy’s brain though.”

“Yeesh…” Chris can tell by the look in Mitch’s eyes that they’re probably telling the truth, just with a lot of Stan patented embellishment, “Still don’t know what that has to do with me taking a break."

“Not much, really, just a story from your friends.” Stan ruffles his hair, reminding Chris how much it ticks him off, he’s too distracted by what Stan just said to be annoyed, though.

“—You see me as a friend?”

Nevermind!” He lightly pushes Chris’ head to the side, almost knocking him down, “Now I’m bored.”

“We can always play cards,” Mitch suggests, pulling out a deck from one of his pockets.

"What kind of card game?” Chris follows Stan over to where Mitch is.

“‘Real obscure, you probably never heard of it before.”

“More intrigued, what’s it called?”

Go fish!” Mitch gives him 7 cards.

“Haven’t heard of that one before, have you?” Stan laughs, they both sound completely serious.

“Oh that’s...wow, you’re right, I don’t know that one.” Chris says it slowly, still not sure if they’re messing with him, he doesn’t want to hurt Mitch’s feelings if they are being serious.

-

-

You’d think go fish would be pretty cut and dry, but of course, Stan and Mitch have a way to somehow make it competitive. He doesn’t really hold it against them though, he and his sister are completely different people when they play four-in-a-row.

So 2 hours, 16 games, and 1 broken chair later, they’re still playing. Well, Stan and Mitch are—Chris tapped out around game 11 when things got unnecessarily serious, opting instead to lay on the floor and aimlessly play his harmonica.

“Got any...eights?” Mitch yawns, shuffling his deck for no real reason.

“Nope.” Stan replies, he leans against what’s left of the broken chair from earlier.

“You know…” Mitch glares at him, “I’m startin’ to think you’re cheating.” He clutches the cards tightly, slightly bending them in the process.

“Cheating?! It’s go fish!” Stan says in a way that definitely implies he’s hiding at least 4 cards somewhere.

I’m gonna get some air.” Mitch throws his cards onto the ground, then climbs out of the hideout’s exit even though it's still raining.

“That’s code for sore loser.” Stan rolls up his his left sleeve once Mitch is out of eyesight. 5 cards fall out into a pile.

“You two were both playing dirty, but at least Mitch didn’t cheat.” Chris spits out the harmonica and stands.

“Some people just hate seein’ me win.”

"I’m going to bed.” Mitch shakes his head, grabbing his backpack from the floor to find his jacket—the old one.

It’s embarrassing, but he can’t really sleep without it near him. It’s basically like a pillow now that he has his totally not stolen security jacket. The last time he checked, it still smells like home too...and a campfire.

He unzips the bag. Of course, in his haste to move everything before the rain got to it, he shoved the jacket at the very bottom. Chris sighs, then begrudgingly begins to sort it all out. His hand grazes over a thick book stuffed in a hidden back pocket sleeve.

He pulls it out gently, dusting it off—even though it was for the most part spotless: It’s a photo album. He raises his eyebrows, how does he have no memory of bringing this?

Then again, his packing when leaving home mainly consisted of frantically shoving things that seemed important into the backpack.

He doesn’t recognize the cover at all, and it looks like nobody has touched it in a long while—smells like it too. With hindsight...he probably should have brought something a bit more useful.

A photo slips out as Chris lifts the album up. He quickly drops the book and fumbles with the photo before It can fall to the floor.

He cringes when he realizes what photo it is: one of his school photos from a few years back. He remembers it well, mainly because his aunt made him slick his hair back.

Chris even remembers that the ice cream they got after school-- a bribe in exchange for him not messing with it. He’s still not sure whether the jeering comments from his classmates was worth it.

“What’s that?” Stan swipes the photo from between his fingers.

He flinches, geez, he keeps forgetting how good Stan and Mitch were at sneaking up on people. Well, it’s probably a good skill to invest in, since they are wanted criminals.

Crap, wait--

“Oh my god-” Too late- Stan’s already looking at it, “Is this you?” He fails at choking down a laugh.

Chris was never gonna live this one down, was he?

“Yeah okay, I know it’s funny-” He crosses his arms, trying his best to block out the internal screaming going on.

He attempts to quickly take it back, only for Stan to shift his arm away.

“Come on, man…” Chris tries to reach for it, but Stan holds it high over his head.

“Nah, this is kinda fun, and I’m bored.” He lifts his arm even higher when Chris jumps for it, “Almost got it that time.”

“You know I’m bad at this stuff.” Chris backs off to take a breath. Curse his shortness—actually, curse Stan for being so freaking tall, You can be such a jerk sometimes!

That was pretty harsh...Chris makes a mental note to apologize later.

“You’re already giving up?” Stan holds the photo a little lower, probably just to taunt him.

Bam!” Mitch jumps out from nowhere (seriously, he needs to ask how they do that) and hugs Stan from behind, pressing his arms down to his side.

“Mitch, what the hell?” Stan grunts, trying to break himself free.

“‘Needed to practice my sneak attack.” Mitch still doesn’t let go, “And you were messin’ with Chris.”

Not true!” Stan tries to move again, but Mitch has him pretty detained.

“Ha! That’s what you get.” Chris sticks his tongue out.

“What are you holdin’ anyway?” Mitch takes the photo from Stan and looks at it, “Awww, is this-”

“Yep, school photo…” He hides his face in his hands. Chris doesn’t have any experience with extended family, but he assumes this is what his friends meant when they complained about being embarrassed by them.

“Look-” He picks up the album and gestures to the photo, “Give that back to me and you can see all the other embarrassing crap I have in here.” He doesn’t really know what’s in it, but it can’t be worse than that, at least he thinks so.

“Deal!” Stan slips out of Mitch arms and manages to grab the photo back.

What did he just get himself into?

-

-

“That’s Charlie.” Chris points out a random photo on page 1, he’s in it too-it looks like it was taken in a photo booth.

“I dunno, you two are carbon copies to me.”

“Well, that’s only because it’s an old pictureeee-yoooour messing with me, aren’t you?”

I would never.” Chris can tell Stan is probably smirking under that mask.

“That’s like saying you and Mitch are carbon copies because of your masks!”

“That’s completely different- Mitch and I ain’t identical!”

Prove it then.”

“You’re never gonna see what I look like, kid.” Stan crosses his arms. It doesn’t surprise Chris, the guy takes secret identities to a whole nother level.

“Huh, guess I’ll just have to assume you two are identical then.”

“He’s got you there.” Mitch says, his voice is partially muffled by the candy bar he’s eating. His mask is halfway up his face, but it’s still mostly covered for Chris to make out any real features.

“Laugh it up kid, but I’ve grown an immunity to your so-called mind games. I could care less.” He says in a way that’s anything but unbothered. He turns the page.

“Ouch, you hurt me Stan.” He clutches his chest dramatically.

“Who’s this guy-your bully?” Stan playfully jabs him, Chris glaces at the page- it’s him and his friend. Said friend has him in a choke hold, holding up a peace sign with his free hand.

“That’s my uh...friend Derek.” He says, trying to ignore the bitter feeling that resurfaces. He hasn’t thought about what happened since he met Stan and Mitch.

“Is 'friend' code for he’s a jerk?”

“Not really--Kind of?” His answer sounds more like another question, “It’s complicated.” Like most of the stuff in his life right now.

“Stan, lemme see!” Mitch wrestles the book from Stan’s grasp and flips to a random page.

“That’s my aunt Lucy,” Chris leans over to get a better look at the photo-- it’s pretty old, even for this album, “She’s the best auto mechanic in Petria—best person ever, actually.” He waits for the inevitable ‘Sonya’s better’, but it’s never said.

“A mechanic?” Stan asks instead.

“Yeah, mostly cars, trucks, a few buses I think?”

“Where were you when we were fixing the moto?”

“Hey, I don’t know that much—that was more of my sister’s thing.” He puts his hands up defensively, “Besides, you said you didn’t need my help.” He shrugs.

“I did, didn’t I?” Stan smacks his forehead with the back of his hand, “Shoot.”

“Yep.” Chris leaves out the part where by his limited knowledge and some miracle, he actually did get the horn on the bike working again when nobody was around, just so Stan wouldn’t complain about it anymore.

This ended up backfiring horribly, since Stan now uses it all the time-just ‘because he can’.

“Awww- you’re like a little baby in this one!” Mitch interrupts, staring intently at another page.

“Huh…?” Chris glances at the page in question, he could have sworn most of these were from were only from a couple years ago.

It’s situated in the back...now he has a good idea of what it is...Sure enough, it’s a family photo—dated 1983. One corner is precisely torn off, but the rest is clear.

“I...forgot I had this in here.” He bites the inside of his cheek, contemplating whether or not to take it away- shove it back in the pocket where he found it never to be seen again. But they’re already looking at it.

“Who’s the guy in the glasses?” Of course, Stan points him out almost immediately. Mitch looks at Chris, then the photo again, then back to Chris.

“That’s your dad, ain’t it?” The somber realization in Mitch’s voice alone makes Chris want to duck and cover somewhere.

“Well, is it?” Stan asks, oblivious to what the other two talked about a few weeks ago.

Mitch stays silent, but his hands shift to close the album.

“Wait-” Chris reaches out for the book, he wants to tell them, he...thinks they deserve to know, “I uh, want to talk about it now, if you want.”

“Am I missing something here, or…?” Stan is cut off by his brother, who grabs his arm. Now they’re both looking at him again, the same way they did when he made that stupid joke hours before. Concern.

“Yeah, uhm-so that’s my dad...okay.” He whistles, “Sorry, I’m really bad at this, uh-” He squeezes his eyes shut for a moment, then pulls himself together, “He, uh, he’s not here. Not since I was like-” He brings his arm down to about half his height, “aaaand well...hesontheothersideoftheborder” He spits out the sentence as fast as he can.

“He what?” Stan sits up a bit from the broken chair.

“I’m not just gonna-” Chris takes a deep breath, “He’s...he’s on the other side of the border, okay?” He runs a hand through his hair, “-fell through the cracks, documents got mixed.” He stops at that, “I- it’s not that important though, not like he’s dead.”

“What about your ma?” Stan asks, despite the look Mitch gives him.

I don’t have one.” He responds almost automatically, “My aunt took us in when we were five I think…? Kind of why she’s the best, actually.” He fiddles with the pin on his jacket, focusing on the shine, trying to ignore the guilt tugging at the back of his crowded mind.

“...Jesus, kid.”

“Yeah…” He looks up, “Not all doom and gloom though.” Chris scrubs away a tear building in his left eye, “He still sends me letters, see?” He turns to the very back cover of the album, a variety postcards with simple designs are taped on it, “It’s funny, because he got smugglers to bring it over, but he still puts his return address on each-”

The next thing he knows, Mitch’s arms are around him. Stan’s there too, one of his hands is on Chris’ shoulder.

“...Thanks, guys.”

-

-

I don’t know why we have to leave…” Chris whispers, grabbing at his belongings randomly from his shelves and shoving them into his backpack as gently as he can.

You knew we had to eventually.” His sister casually packs her things, “This might be our only chance to get to dad before Petria boxes us in for good.”

“Yeah, that and three people went missing this week.” His friend Derek makes a ‘poof’ motion with his hands, “See the writing on the wall, man, Dryfield’s their next target.”

The guy’s been gone for a month and a half without so much as a word and the first thing he does when he comes back is tell them all to leave with him- and of course, Charlie agrees with him.

“Lucy said we could leave when we’re ready.” She zips up her backpack and analyzes the terrarium in the corner of the room.

You know this isn’t what she meant!”

“It’ll be better for you both if she doesn’t know when or where, so nobody can force it out of her.” Derek says, still balancing on the windowsill as if he isn’t asking the world of them.

There’s a sinking feeling somewhere in his chest.

Don’t say that.” Charlie snaps, her tone is cold, but her face is neutral, “You alright, Chris?”

I just-” He runs his hands along his arms, “It feels like you guys don’t even care, this is huge.” He grabs his jacket from the laundry basket, as well as a few more clothes.

“Make sure to cut the logo off that.” His friend points to it.

But it’s my favorite-” He stops mid sentence and drops it, then silently rifles through his desk drawer for scissors.

Don’t tell him what to do, Derek.” Charlie glances away from the tank, “We’re not going to the border just because you want us to, I got some things to do on the road, anyway.” She walks over to Chris and puts her hand on his shoulder, “So long as she doesn’t know where we are, she’s fine, we'll be fine.” She reassures, “You’re gonna be fine, promise.”

“I...yeah, okay.”

Notes:

Thanks for reading once again! So much backstory was in this-really wrote Chris as the king of oversharing in this one lol. I feel like there's kind of a tone whiplash there at the end, but I had a few friends read it over and they said it was fine.

Ok, so about that plot point: Basically, Chris and Charlie used to have an older sister, that idea was scrapped along with some of "Halfway to '96". Before I did this though, I mentioned her a bit in the first 2 chapters of this story, I'm going to edit those out now but I'm just gonna mention it to avoid any future confusion.

Again, sorry for the confusion and already kind of retconning myself lol. Luckily this is the only 'major' change this fic will ever have.

Chapter 8: The Best Uneventful Robbery Ever

Summary:

Chris helps Stan and Mitch rob a bank. Surprisingly uneventful.

Notes:

Just a fun little chapter where nothing bad happens :))))

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

July 6th, 12:00 AM

219 miles from the border 

If someone tried to explain to him two months ago that he’d be separated from his family on a road trip to leave the country, Chris wouldn't believe them. If they told him that on his way, he’d get sidetracked and make friends with two robbers, open up to them about his problems, then willingly volunteer to rob a bank with them…well, he really wouldn’t know how to respond.

And yet here he is. 

“How’s it lookin’, Chris?” Mitch’s voice crackles over the radio clipped on his belt loop. 

“Coast’s almost clear, I think…half an hour more at most.” He watches the entrance to the building he’s staking out intently as the last few workers and guards file out to their cars one by one. 

They’re in a town near a First Petria national bank, and he’s nervous as all heck. Even if it’s late at night and the town is relatively small, one of the last places a crosser wants to be is an even slightly populated place, and here he is about to for real break the law in one. It doesn’t really help that Stan wanted to do this on a whim as they passed by on road 88, which just so happened to connect to the town. 

Even so, it makes him feel alive in a way - kind of like the upbeat confident feeling you get when you watch a good movie. He still doesn’t know whether that’s a good or bad thing. 

As the clock strikes 12:32, the last security van leaves the bank. 

“They’re gone.” Chris glances down at this watch to confirm the time-only 2 minutes off his prediction, nice .

“You remember what to do, kid?” Stan responds this time.

“Yep!“, He turns to the alleyway he’s in, there’s a breaker box on the wall, “I got it.” He reassures them despite the slight nervousness that creeps in. He runs his hand through his hair, taking the lockpick that’s pinned behind his ear. After a few minutes of silent curses and shaky hands, the lock clicks off, “Hey, I’m getting good at this thing!”

“Would you be so kind as to cut the power before the sun rises?” 

“Very funny…” Chris doesn’t know the slightest thing about electricity, but going by the city plans Mitch swiped from god knows where, all the buildings on the block are connected by one singular power breaker-this one. There’s a small light shining green in the corner.

Slowly, he reaches in for the button, as soon as he does, a buzzing sound blares from the box and the small light flashes red. He glances behind him, all the building lights on the street, including the bank, are dark. 

"Alright, cameras are off- let’s do this already.” Stan relays. Chris can faintly see him across the street, barrel rolling out of a decorative bush with his shotgun. Mitch casually walks up next to him, crowbar balancing on his shoulder.

He watches as they both approach the glass door, and holds his breath when Mitch slams the crowbar into it. Luckily, no alarms ring out.

Really glad that button worked.” Chris mutters, loosening his shoulders just a bit. 

Stan turns and points in Chris’ direction from across the street, then lifts his radio “You stay there, got it?”

“Can’t I go in with you guys?” 

“Nah, you might be our robbin’ partner, but I don’t need you tripping any alarms… again .” 

“That was one time- and you guys didn’t even tell me it was there. ” 

“Still not happening, Chris. Besides, you’re great at being a lookout—and I trust you.”

“You’re only saying that so I'll stop complaining…” Chris crosses his arms. 

“Duh. Now I gotta go before Mitch accidentally breaks something, just do it.”.”

“Yessir” Chris makes a drawn out stupid salute.

“The things you say sometimes…” Stan sighs in an exasperated tone, then walks into the bank.

Chris waves to him, then leans back onto one of the alley walls. He checks every so often to make sure the blinking light is still off- just in case. The night sky is harder to see because of the streetlights, but it’s still pretty enough to keep his attention while waiting. The surrounding forest trees were nice too, but the thought of someone jumping out from behind them unnerved him a bit.

It’s…really quiet, and reminds him of the first time Mitch convinced him to go to a town for supplies- for some reason at night, everything, anywhere they went was eerily deserted. Unsettling, but also…calming in a way. And perfect for heisting hijinks like this one. 

Good thing Chris isn’t scared of being alone in the dark… Okay, so maybe he sinks further down the wall whenever he hears something that might be a person- only because he’s scared at the thought of being caught, not because he’s scared of the dark.

Still, he embarrassingly jumps out of his skin a little when the radio buzzes to life again. 

“See anyone?“ Mitch asks, there’s some kind of loud clanking in the background. 

“Nothing, just some stray cats…and an opossum I think” He glances over to the animals, who are currently licking something off the vacant street that he hopes isn’t roadkill, “Need any help? ” 

He can faintly hear Stan scoff at that in the background, then more clanking.

“Eh, Stan’s just trying to get the safe unlocked, he’s got this new method, I read about it- it’s awesome.”

“And that method is..?” 

“We saw it in a book, you put a magnet on the door near the lock, and it’ll break!”

“I…don’t think that’s how vaults work.”

“Wanna bet?” Stan radios in over Mitch. 

“You know betting isn’t my thing.” He reaches his hand out as one the strays from earlier slowly approaches, the cat brushes against it. Cute. 

“Good, because I’m about to…” something falls to the floor, he must have dropped the magnet “Well, that would have been it if you didn’t distract me.” 

“Uh-huh..” Chris sets the radio down to pet the cat with both his hands, “Definitely not how vaults work.”

“Well Mr. Smart guy, this is hardly even a vault door, it’s more of a regular old steel door.”

“Doesn’t that still count as a-” 

“Nope, no it doesn’t-I’m done talking now!” The radio cuts off and the stray runs, startled by the static, “Man, you scared the cat away.”

“Aren’t you allergic?” Mitch asks, the clunking from before is back again, along with Stan muttering something in the background he can’t really make out.

“Mildly. Your point is…?"

“Stop touching things that’ll hurt you, Chris.” Stan orders, sounding more like an annoyed sibling than a robber, “I don’t want to take you to the hospital.”

“I thought you were done talking.” He messes with the pin on his jacket, “Anyways, I’m not deathly allergic—and even if I was, I have gloves on.” He glances at the still red light and rubs his cheek, “Just gotta keep my hands away from my face… wait .” Dang it.

This isn’t working!” He can hear what was most likely the magnet being thrown to the side. Well, that was quick.

“I can go in and help if you want!” Chris grabs the radio and jumps up from the ground he probably shouldn’t be sitting on anyway, “This is like, my third robbery, I got this in the bag.”

“Yeah, right.” Stan sighs, “You need to be an expert to-” His voice is muffled by a loud creaking sound, Chris cringes and lowers the volume.

“...”

“Huh. ‘Door was unlocked the whole time.” Mitch sounds mildly surprised.

“...Of course it was.” Chris facepalms. Petria’s finest forgot to lock the door…

“Woah…There’s so many stacks in here!” 

Wish I could see it.” Chris laments.

“Well, you’ll still be able to see all the money once we get it out of here. Grab a bag, Mitch, it’s payday.” Stan sounds like he can barely hold in his excitement, “We’re gonna be rich!”

“Might have to take a few more trips, though, there’s a lot of…”

“What’s up, Mitch?”

“That’s…that camera in the hallway’s blinking- it’s on !” Mitch shouts from the radio, “Didn’t you turn the power off?!”

“I did-!” Chris’ eyes quickly flicker to the breaker box, the light is still blinking red.

“Damn, these things must be on batteries or somethin’!” Stan runs out with a bag of money in one of his hands, Mitch stumbles out a moment later with two more.

Chris sprints across the street to them, silently apologizing to the cats as they scatter, “How…how would battery powered cameras even work without anyone to-” 

“Heck if I know!” He throws the bag of money into the box behind the sidecar. There’s the  distinct sound of police sirens in the distance, “ Shoot, let’s just hightail it outta here before they get to us!”

“Ugh, this is all my fault-“ Chris hides his face in his hands, it’s hard to hear much of anything, what with the bike, wind, Mitch’s panicking, and the faint police sirens being so loud. 

“Couldn’t be avoided kid, I mean, how were we supposed to know they had battery powered security cameras? That makes no sense!” Stan sounds mildly ticked off.

“Oh we’re screwed we’re so screwed-“ Mitch keeps nervously looking behind them as the police car gains.

“Can it Mitch- I’m handling it! ” Stan quickly answers, Chris can tell he’s nervous. The bike speeds up significantly after that, “If he starts to shoot, we’re goners! Anyone have any bright ideas?”

“Nothing!” Mitch chokes,  “What about you, buddy?”

“Uhm, uhhh…” He looks around, but there’s nothing but open road and trees for miles, the spaces in between the forest were too narrow for the bike to realistically fit in. He considers throwing the money at the cop car for a second but …no, that would never freaking work!

The cruiser catches up to the bike and sharply swerves to cut them off, Chris tries his best not to freak out, since Mitch is doing plenty of that right now

“Oh geez, I can’t go back to prison, Stan, I can’t!” Mitch starts to do something close to hyperventilating, which just seems to agitate Stan even more.

“Mitch, be quiet- I told you I’ll-” He pauses, as the cop steps out with his gun drawn, “ Shhiiiit .” 

This can’t be good.

“So any reason why you three weren’t stopping?” The officer asks him after forcing Stan and Mitch into the back of his cruiser in cuffs. 

“Well sir, we didn’t uh…didn’t want to waste your time..?” Good one, Chris. He’s still trying not to freak out, they’ll think of something…eventually.

“Sure, sure, sure—sounds about right.” The cop’s voice drips with sarcasm. He looks to the cruiser for a few moments, then glances back to Chris, there’s noticeable bags under his eyes even with the sunglasses, “Huh, well, today’s your lucky day, kid. No room left.” He sighs tiredly, “Now get out of here.” He turns to the front of the cruiser. 

Wait, no– they can’t leave yet! 

“I…I have money!” He sputters, ignoring the clear crack in his voice. The cop halts, then turns to face him.

“Hm..I suppose I could take bail right now.” He grins, adjusting his glasses (Seriously, what is up with people and sunglasses at night?) , “Don’t know how much it’s gonna be, though…”

“Oh! Uhm-“ Chris fumbles with his pockets, pulling out all the cash he has, “Thirty dollars.” He presents it to the cop…he doesn’t look impressed. That doesn’t matter though, he just has to stall ‘til Stan and Mitch get out of those handcuffs.

“Kid, these are the two biggest pains this department’s had to deal with in the last nine years , the bonus I’ll get for catching them is better than that .”  

“Oh uh, well-we have more, just…I uh…” he puts his hands up, then points to the back of the motorcycle, “..Everything in there is yours if you let them off. I promise.” He crosses his heart.

The cop tilts his head, then shrugs, cautiously checking it out, the gun is still in his hand. He pauses, then whistles at the amount.

While the cop is still ogling the money, Chris quickly glances to the cruiser, catching a glimpse of Stan holding up his now unlocked handcuffs stupidly, like a kid showing someone their drawing. Chris would roll his eyes if he wasn’t so intimidated by the gun.

Okay, at least they’ve got some kind of protocol for this then. He really should have asked before. 

“Huh, okay…” The cop comes back with all three bags in his arms, it’s hard not to notice the contained excitement in his voice, “…I think with all this bail money I can look the other-“

Another siren cuts them off right before the cop can finish his sentence. This time, a van drifts to the side of the road next to the first cop’s cruiser. As soon as the driver exits, he can feel his heart rate skyrocket again. This really isn’t good. The man who exits also has sunglasses on and a police uniform, but his badge is a different color.

“I’m assuming you’re Chris, far from Dryfield, aren't you?” 

His stomach sinks, nails involuntarily dig into his palm. He’s on the missing teens report, so there's always a chance to be recognized…but they don’t go after specific people, this doesn’t make any-

“Sergeant! I was just uh, confiscating this stolen money from the robbery up near Stolia.” The cop drops all three bags to the ground, “What are you doing here?”

“There’s been some reports of these two dragging one of our youths into the criminal gutter—even ‘held up a super supper at gunpoint a month back.” He slaps the hood of the cop’s cruiser, “I’ve been doing my own research, 'wanted to see for myself if it's true.” He smirks, “So kid, any reason you’re out here helping the lowest of the low?”

Chris bites the side of his tongue and tries to keep his breathing under control, he doesn’t say anything and tries to ignore the shaking in his arms and legs.

“Not talking, huh?” The sergeant puts his hands on his hips, he’s about the same height as Stan, but something about his stance makes him tower over Chris, “That’s fine, you’ll have plenty of time to talk in interrogation.” 

He still doesn’t say a word. He’s just gotta wait a little longer- Stan and Mitch can get them out of this, they can, he just has to stay calm and-

…But how would they? The cop watching them isn’t even distracted anymore. 

This can’t happen- Stan and Mitch definitely go to jail, and he’s not relying on the off chance that their sister would find out and bail them out before something bad happened. He doubts they’ll be popular in prison after escaping… Might even end up like that guy from the story they told a few days ago, if it was true. 

Chris feels like he might puke.

“Sergeant, with all due respect- shouldn’t I…take these three in together?” He asks, slowly kicking the money bags to the side of where he’s standing.

“That won’t be a problem.” He shakes his head, “The back of your cruiser’s full. Besides,” He turns to Chris once again, “The sooner we book the kid, ‘sooner we can let his guardian out of police custody.” 

He nearly breaks the skin of his tongue when he hears that, then actually does when the Sergeant roughly grabs his shoulder and begins to drag him to the van. 

He tries to plant his feet on the floor- to get away, but his shoes feel like cement bricks. His arms refuse to pull away, seemingly frozen in place. This is it, game over.

You better start moving before I -“

The next thing he knows, he’s on the ground, and both the cop and sergeant are on the floor-Mitch is there too, apparently tackling them. 

“W-what…”

“Not the time to be in shock!” Stan doesn’t take his eyes off the dog pile on the ground,  he wraps his hand on Chris’ shoulder and tugs him back behind the bike. 

Chris practically sprints into the sidecar, he can’t stop his shaking.

“Stan, come on!” Mitch stumbles up and runs to the bike.

Stan turns to grab one of the money bags off the ground, then flips both of the cops off before jumping on the bike and speeding off. 

-

-

“Okay, I’m fully taking the blame for that one.” Stan comments, still sounding out of breath from the altercation, “Nothing we couldn’t handle though, right? Just gotta lay low for a while.”

Chris doesn’t respond, instead focusing on the road in front of them. His hands tighten around the handlebars of the sidecar, heart still beating like he just ran a marathon. 

The thoughts crowding his head only get worse. The cops almost got him- they know who he is- what if they know who his sister is too? They already know they’re gone, and if that cop wasn't bluffing, his aunt's in jail.

He doesn’t even know how to describe the feeling, and that just makes it so much worse. Everything feels compressed and out of any real control, he can’t do anything about-

“Chris-“ Mitch taps his shoulder, startling him out of his mind. His eyes dart around, they’re stopped now, somewhere on the side of a forest road. He must really be out of it, “You okay?”

“I- yeah of course I am…” he tries to reassure him despite his emotions threatening to boil over, “why…why wouldn’t I b-“ He chokes and curls into himself and breaks down right there.

Notes:

So maybe I lied a bit, but nobody got arrested/taken to the pits, so you can *say* that nothing bad happened.
(I didn't put any warnings but if you feel there should be let me know and I'll update it)

Anywho, thanks for reading up to this point and I hope you liked it! I really wanted to have a normal setup then gut punch with the sergeant randomly showing up. I always think my tense/emotional scenes are cheesy, but hopefully they're not from a reader's perspective. [Also I looked at the map and I have no idea if it says Stolla or Stolia rip if it's wrong]

Chapter 9: Lying Low

Summary:

Chris is having second thoughts on this whole robbing thing, not for the reasons one would think.

Notes:

Very brief mentions of prison guard/police(?) brutality. It's implied and very short but mentioning it just in case.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

July 10th, 9:45 pm,

97 miles from the border

On principle, Stan doesn’t mind being chased down by the cops. It’s always a possibility, and happens almost every time he and Mitch take their robbing endeavors a bit too far. Safe to say they’ve done this at least thirty times over throughout their tenure as the best robbin’ duo in Petria. 

Their perfected way of dealing with this is simple—lay low and stay quiet for a few weeks. It’s easy enough, even easier given their backup hideout is an old mega hotel construction project that fell through years ago. It’s behind a way smaller running one , Bluewater or something like that. Nobody will ever suspect it, probably. He and Mitch have been stashing stuff in the empty husk of a lobby for as long as they could remember.

So long as they steer clear of the road for a while, they’re fine–actually, they’re better than fine, great even.

Too bad Chris just had to go and start an argument about it.

“You want to do what?

“I said…” Chris mutters, grabbing at the straps of his backpack aimlessly, “ I think I should leave .” 

He’s lost it- “ Stan turns from him, only to whirl back around a second later to point. “Kid. You can’t just take a vow of silence for almost three days, then lay that on us.”

Stan.” Mitch warns in his annoying as hell older brother voice, then turns to Chris “You sure that’s what you want, bud?” 

“No—I mean yes! I just…I already got you guys in a lot of trouble…I-I should leave for the border before we all get arrested.” 

“For the record, we were famous wanted criminals before you showed up.” Stan shakes his head, “It’s not that big of a deal.” 

“This is different though!” He drops the backpack to the floor. “I’m a runaway, and the cops know you’re with me.” 

“So what? Come on Chris, lighten up, it’s been like, almost a week .” Stan shrugs, “We’ve been through worse before.” Self righteousness is so annoying.

“But I haven’t—!!” Chris stops halfway through talking, as if someone pushed a pause button. He breathes heavily through his nose, and drags his backpack sleeping bag to the far end of the room behind some cinder blocks. 

“I really don’t get it.” Stan turns away once again, ignoring the bad feeling he definitely does not have in his chest. 

“He’s got a point.” Mitch comments while digging through some of their supplies.

“You always say that, Mitch. You know, it wouldn’t hurt for you to trust me on this one"

“I’m no expert, but I think when they start makin’ posters like these, it’s not a good thing.” He gestures to a relatively new missing teen poster cast off to the side, which only has Chris’ silhouette on it.

“I dunno, I for one, think it’s pretty cool.” He scoops the poster off the ground, “Took us a while to get our first wanted posters.” 

“‘Not that good for a crosser, Stan.” Mitch snatches the poster back, much to his annoyance.

“Now that’s crazy talk. Kid’s hardly ready to cross.” 

“I don’t think anyone can be ready for something like that , and we can’t just keep him here forever.”

“I know that it’s just—!!” He pauses, trying to think up a good reason, “We promised we’d take him to the ‘96 if he helped us, we gotta go through with it. Stan and Mitch rules.” 

“Well if that’s the case, let’s take him tomorrow, then. Border's only an hour away.”

No! you’re seriously not getting it, Mitch.”

“We can’t stop him from goin’ if that’s what he wants!”

“But he doesn’t!” He hisses to be sure the kid can’t hear. “Chris wants to leave right now because he feels bad.” He leans in closer to Mitch, “‘Feels bad over something he shouldn’t even feel bad for ‘cause we’re fine!” 

“...”

“Huh…do you need to talk about anything?” His brother asks, because of course he does. 

“No! Just-“ he growls, raking his hands over his covered face, “I gotta check on the moto. ” He storms out before any other thoughts can get to him.

3:34 am 

Stan almost chokes on his own spit when he wakes up. He grabs at his mask and takes it off, then rubs his face a couple times. It takes a few moments of heavy breathing to realize where he is. 

Did he really just have a nightmare? So freakin’ embarrassing.

Stupid cops, messing with the kid and bringing back bad memories. 

He glances over to Mitch, who’s still fast asleep- tangled in a mess of sleeping bags blankets on the unfinished lobby floor. 

He huffs in amusement and pats his brother’s shoulder lightly before standing up. He’s gotta check on the kid, even if he’s being a brat. 

For the record, Stan hates being the bigger person, especially when he’s right.

Quietly, he makes his way over to the corner the kid barricaded himself behind earlier. Chris isn’t  there, though, neither is his stuff.  

Oh, Crap. He went and did it, didn't he?

“Mitch, where's Chris?” He whirls around back to his brother, but he’s still dead asleep. Stan groans and shakes him, “Mitch!”

“..ugh…five more minutes…” 

“We don’t have-!!” He pinches the bridge of his nose, then rushes out of the structure.

“Ah, geez...” He looks around, but Chris is nowhere to be found in the area they set up in. Not good. The kid is gonna get himself killed. Or worse…

Stan hops on his bike and starts riding away from the construction site. There’s a chance he left hours ago, but then again, Chris is probably one of the contenders for the slowest walker on earth prize. Shouldn’t be too hard to catch up to him. If he took a bus though… that’ll make things a whole lot more compl–

Oh, no wait. Stan spots him almost immediately in a phone booth near the running hotel. 

He squeezes both of the brakes, which leaves dark skid marks on the road. Chris doesn’t even look up. Jesus, this kid was gonna give him a heart attack one of these days. 

Stan notices his backpack is thrown to the side of the phone booth as he approaches, he really isn’t being subtle about this whole runaway thing.

Or is it a double runaway since he left twice…? Wait, that doesn’t matter!

No, what matters is the kid was dumb enough to walk on the road alone while double wanted by the police.

“See, what part of lying low don’t you get? 'Cause I can tell you, it ain't this.” Stan sighs, but Chris still doesn’t respond. He doesn't move either, “Silent treatment? Wow, that’s–”

“Did you really think there wouldn’t be consequences? You should turn yourself in, maybe then they’ll let her outta prison. There’s a woman on the other side of the phone clutched in the kid’s hand, yelling loud enough for Stan to hear, “She must be ashamed of you both, you know that? You had it good.” The caller continues their shouting, Chris still isn’t saying anything. “What? Cat got your tongue, runaway-“

Stan takes the phone from his hand, not that there was any real effort in doing so,  “Oh fuck off lady.” He smashes the button to hang up, not bothering to put the receiver back into place, “Don’t bother listening to that…some people just don’t get what prison's like.” He mutters the last part under his breath. 

The kid seems to hear that though, and turns to face him--he’s crying, mumbling something about how something’s all his fault.

Ah shit . Hey hey- wait, okay I said something dumb-“ He puts his hands up, “It’s..really uh, not that bad.” He tries to backtrack, failing horribly. 

The kid’s eyes are glued to the ground and he’s hugging himself. Against his better judgment, Stan gently puts his arm around him, “Hey, Let’s just..get back to Mitch before he freaks out, yeah?”

Somehow Mitch is still asleep when they get back, missing everything that happened in the past 30ish minutes. Sometimes Stan envies him for being such a heavy sleeper. 

Chris is mostly calm now, but opted to sit on one of the heavy pieces of abandoned machinery, a bulldozer or something like that. Stan doesn't know, and doesn't really care either. 

“Got you a soda.” He hands a can to Chris, who looks at it dully. 

“It’s purple flavored, or uh, whatever you call it.” Stan climbs up and sits next to him.

“Where did you even get this?” He asks, slowly tapping the lid with his finger.

“Told you before, 'been stashing stuff here since ‘88.” Stan cracks open another soda and takes a sip, “Weird they tried to build this big hotel in the middle of the woods, huh? No wonder it got left in the dust."

“...Sorry for being such a crybaby earlier.” Chris mumbles after some silence only filled by his tapping on the unopened can.

“Kid, a month ago, before we met, Mitch cried over dropping his ice cream.” He snorts, “…eh but I can’t blame ‘im, he says it’s better to be ‘honest’ about your feelings.”

More silence.

“...Is uh, prison really that bad?” He asks. In hindsight, Stan should’ve expected that question, but it still manages to throw him off. 

“Uhm…well uh–if you look at it one way, It’s not that–” 

“Be…be honest.” Chris taps the can a bit faster.

It’s not like Stan doesn’t want to tell him anything, but he also isn’t too keen on spilling every little detail. He doesn’t want to think about the tasers, or solitary, or Mitch coming back from a beating with his arm broken, or the fact that they were only in there because he was too stubborn to leave that shootout when they should’ve in ‘86–

There’s a reason we planned an escape after a month.” Is the answer he eventually settles with, even though it’s not a good one. 

The tapping halts, Stan notices Chris has the can gripped in both of his hands now.

“You okay, there?” Stan asks slowly, 

I’m no better than them now. ” He says, sounding… haunted in a way. 

“What do you mean?” 

“That was my aunt’s landlord on the phone…the cops, they weren’t lying, Stan. She’s in prison. ” His voice is shaky, Stan pretends like he doesn’t notice,

“Hold on. So What? You run away so the cops get a free pass to arrest her? That ain't your fault.” He tries to reassure, but it seems to only stress Chris out more.

You don't get it. We all knew that could happen if we left. I could’ve…could’ve stayed and…and maybe this wouldn’t have happened. But I didn’t…” He puts the can down, “I left her- just like they did to me.” He chokes, “and I was gonna do the same to you– I still have to .” 

“They…?” Stan knows about his dad, but from what Chris told him a week ago, that..didn’t sound right.

“Nothing.” He brushes off the question, and hugs himself again, “..I don’t even know if my sister’s okay because I let them go too.” He wipes his eyes. 

Hey, listen up.” Stan jabs a finger in his direction, “You said your sister is stronger than you, and you’re fine, aren’t you?” Chris nods slowly, “And you said your aunt is the best person ever, that’s better than Sonya, so I sure as hell know she’s gonna be fine too.” He’s not really sure how true either of those statements are, but screw it, the kid needs to hear it.  

“You…you remembered all of that?” He looks genuinely surprised, which slightly offends Stan since he has ears and a memory, and the kid never stops talking, but he’ll let it go this time.

“Duh! You’re like, a friend. ” Right, his friend, and friends don’t make other friends feel crappy —Stan and Mitch rules. Well, it’s more of a Mitch rule but you know, “And I’m uh, sorry for bein’ so rude earlier…and last week…and a month ago…” he trails off, “Point is, I won’t complain if you leave, it’s your choice, always has been. We'll be here if you need us th-” He’s cut off by Chris hugging him.

“You don’t have to be sorry just because I’m being a sad sack, you know.” He sounds kind of embarrassed. 

“What? I can’t be sorry on my own?” He dramatically crosses his arms, which makes Chris laugh, it reminds him of when he used to cheer Sonya up whenever she was upset. “Really kid, everything’s gonna be fine, okay?” That’s what adults say to kids who need stability, right?, “‘Try not to blame yourself too much, either. It gets you nowhere .” He says, because it’s much easier than going in circles trying to convince Chris he’s innocent in this shitshow of a situation. 

“Believe me,” Stan hesitates, before continuing, “I got guilt too, and it just holds you down .”

Chris nods slowly, then lets go of him, he looks a little more relaxed than before, which is a win in Stan’s book.

“I think I’m done crying over stupid stuff now.” He leans on Stan’s shoulder while messing with the glow in the dark charm on his jacket. “…Maybe I should stay with you guys longer, you know just in case they’re camping out at the border looking for me, dying and or being exploited to mine iron is not really on my agenda.”

“Yeah, I think that’s something you wouldn’t want on there.” Stan doesn’t like to think the pits are real, at least, he hopes they aren’t, but Stan's no idiot, it's weird how hellbent those cops are on catching hitchhikers. Even if the pits weren't real, prison's bad enough as it is...

“Your hair’s cool, by the way.” Chris snaps him out of his thoughts.

Wait…What?

Stan grabs at his mask and–oh goddammit it’s not there. Now he gets to freak out about something else entirely. Cool.

“Kid! Why didn’t you tell me?” He hides his face in his hands.

“Wait...You don’t know when your mask is off?” He smirks. Well, at least he still has the emotional capacity to be a little shit. That’s good. 

“No I don't, because It’s never supposed to be off.” Stan runs his hand through his hair, “You better not tell anyone my secret identity.” 

“...A random dude with a slight resemblance to Sonya Sanchez?”

Exactly.”

Notes:

Aye look, a Stan POV, hope I got his personality accurate enough. Also: As to why Stan and Mitch don't have their own wanted posters because of what happened: Their sister is Sonya (weak excuse, but from the game, we know she has the power to do that so I'm keeping it lol).

Anywho, sorry for the delay, thanks for reading this one!

Chapter 10: Almost Gone

Summary:

With only an hour to '96, stalling is only natural.

Notes:

Sorry if there's any errors, something weird happened when formatting. I'm pretty sure I got all of them, though.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

July 14, 3:24 pm

60 miles from the border  

“Say cheese, Stan!” Chris says, rolling the dial on his new disposable camera. Apparently, one of the things included in their impressive stash of random goods at the backup hideout was a pack of disposable cameras.

“I’m startin’ to regret giving that to you.” Stan groans, not looking up from the road in front of them. After a few days of failed attempts at distracting himself and chickening out, he finally built up enough courage to finally want to leave.

“You don’t mean that” Chris snaps the photo anyway,, “besides, we gotta document this, it’s big.”

“Guess you’re right.” Stan nods, “This does mark the end of our partnership.”

“The best partnership ever!” Mitch adds on in a more positive tone than Stan . 

“You know, cameras were always my sister's thing, ‘wonder if she found one on the road...”

“Bet you can’t wait to see her again.”

“Yeah, If she’s even there yet.” He taps his foot on the metal bottom of the sidecar in a rhythmic motion. 

“Don’t worry Chris, she will.”  Mitch reassures.

“Hold your sappiness!” Stan clutches the brakes, making Chris jolt forward. He can feel Mitch grab at the back of his jacket, “‘Cause we’re here!” 

“Wait- already?!” No, there’s no way the border’s that close to—

“Even better.” Stan turns and gestures to the place they’re parked in, which from the looks of the big sign out front, is a Biggie’s diner, “Thought you’d want a burger before you hit the road for good, you in?” 

“Is this stalling?” Chris narrows his eyes and scratches his chin.

Do you want to or not? ” Stan asks again. 

“Depends…can we get a milkshake too?” He asks, even though he has no intention of refusing.

“Duh, we’re not animals.” 

“Count me in then!” He punches the air, until he remembers their recent… popularity, “Wait a minute…is this really a good idea? What if they notice us?”

“Got that covered, kid.” Mitch pats his head, then places something on it. 

Chris takes it off to get a better look, it’s one of those trucker hats with netting in the back, “I’m…not following.” 

“When do you ever?” Stan playfully jabs, “We figured the most identifying thing about that wanted poster was your hair, wouldn’t be a problem if we ‘Cut it off’ ” 

“You’re not cutting my—oooh wait I get it now.” Chris pauses, the solution dawning on him. 

“Ding ding ding! We have a genius over here!”

“And what about you guys?” Chris tucks his hair into the hat to the best of his abilities it ends up looking kind of stupid, but it’ll do. 

“Well, my friend,” Stan pulls off his mask, he’s grinning, “It’s finally time to show you why secret identities are so important.” 

“Can’t believe you guys were wearing normal clothes under those the whole time.” Chris snaps a picture of Mitch, who waves at the camera. He’s in pretty high spirits, mainly because this is the most ‘normal’ he’s gonna get with Stan and Mitch, since they’re gonna put all the money they stole to good use and actually pay this time. 

Shh! ” Stan shushes, “We’re practically undercover right now.” He tilts up his menu like a face shield. Chris resists the urge to roll his eyes.

“Yeah, burgers are extra serious and important.” Mitch deadpans, but does it too. Chris tries to copy them for fun, but his menu is made of flimsy paper. 

”Man, they gave me a kids menu.” ?” He tilts his head. To be fair, it’s actually pretty cool: a map of Petria with all the biggie’s locations on it with some fill-ins. 

Lucky. ” Mitch looks at the thing like it’s the best thing since sliced bread. 

“You can have it if you—“ before Chris can even finish his sentence, the menu is in front of Mitch.

“Thanks Chris!” 

“Must’ve given it to you because of your baby face. ” Stan reaches over the table to ruffle his hair, really, it’s just his hat, but he gets the message. 

“Hey! I’ll take that as a compliment.” He swats Stan’s hand away, “I’ll be the one laughing in a few years when…”

When he’s across from the border, away from his friends, and with entirely new people he barely knows…

“Hey, whatever you’re thinking about: Stop it.” Stan warns in an uncharacteristically serious tone, after a few beats, he loosens his shoulders a bit and shakes his head, “We gotta be happy, this is our last night together, right ?” 

Mitch is about to say something, but is interrupted by a waiter, who looks like he’s not paid enough to be bothered. 

“Welcome to… man, I really don’t care about this…” He mutters the last part, “Just– what do you want?” They order without issue despite being two overgrown children (and one actual child), and of course, Chris got his milkshake. 

“Any place in particular where you boys are headed?” He asks afterwards. It's obviously uninterested small talk, but even that makes Chris nervous nowadays.

“Gotta drive our little brother back home to his dad’s.” Stan answers automatically before Chris can fire an excuse. 

“Sounds fun.” He yawns, then walks away without another word.

“Stan? You see me as a—“ Chris tries to ask as soon as the waiter’s out of earshot.

“You heard nothin kid!” Stan runs his hand through his hair.

“Huh, uh! I heard you too!” Mitch teases, pointing one of the crayons included with the kid’s menu at his brother.

“Whatever…” Stan bites the inside of his cheek, then points behind them, “Hey, what’s that over there ?” 

“That’s not gonna fool me again–” Mitch starts, but despite Stan’s obvious distraction, Chris does actually spot something interesting.

“No way! Is that Pwong?!” Chris turns in the booth and cranes his neck awkwardly to get a better look.

Pwhat ?” Mitch tilts his head and turns around as well.

“Only the best game ever. Derek and I would play this all the time at the arcade back home.” He muses. It’s been a while since he thought about his friends at all…it’s just– easier that way. 

“Let’s play then!” Stan sits up, “Mitch can wait here for the food.” He tactfully faces away from the dirty look Mitch gives him and practically drags Chris to the machine. Not that Chris minds much, he does feel bad Mitch is stuck at the table, though.

“Man, I remember the longest we played was like–fifteen minutes!” He eyes the machine thoughtfully, which has the title logo he remembers fondly on screen.

“Pfft–doesn’t sound that long.” Stan grins, even though Chris he’s 90% sure neither of the brothers have touched a game of Pwong in their lives.

“Oh yeah?” He questions while putting 4 coins in the slot, “I bet you won’t even get past twenty seconds...” He trails off as the screen glitches, then blinks out, “Aw, what?”

“He got this one too? A older looking man in a trucker hat walks up to them, a coffee cup is in one of his hands. Out of habit – one he developed recently – Chris freezes up. The man raises his eyebrow, “Huh, assuming you don’t know, then.”

“What, that this thing eats quarters?” Stan gently grabs Chris’ shoulder and pulls him a few steps backward.

“The damn thing works, just needs a little push ‘once in a while.” He shoves it with the heel of his hand, the screen comes back to life almost immediately. Instead of the bright blue screen he’s used to though, it’s a weird magenta color, fit with its own new title screen that definitely isn’t Pwong. 

Furious tanks…by Alex and friends ?

“Yup.” The man takes a sip of his coffee, “‘Some kid’s been rewriting the code on these buckets of bolts all ‘round the ‘86 with some new age tech malarkey. Kids just ain’t the same as they used to be if you ask me. ” He mutters the last part while peering at Chris suspiciously. 

“Good thing we didn’t .” Stan glares at him, and keeps the eye contact going til the guy shrugs and leaves them be.

“Oh well.” Chris pulls away from the weird feeling, “a game’s still a game.” spamming the A button to start. Two tanks appear on the screen, “And I’m still gonna beat you.” 

“Yeah right, kid.” Stan scoffs, “You’re so screwed… once I figure out these buttons .” He looks down and mashes the buttons randomly. The tank shoots a bullet, it bounces on one of the walls right back, making the tank explode.

“... Ha ! That’s one point for me already.” He glances at Stan, who looks dumbfounded at what just happened.

“Hey–no fair! I don’t even know what I’m doin! ” He grumbles, still messing with the controls frantically.

Fffffiiiiiine.” Chris sighs dramatically, to be fair, the game was pretty drifty, probably because it was hacked with so-called ‘new age tech’, whatever that meant,  “Thirty seconds to find out the controls.” He spins his tank around with the joystick aimlessly.

“You’re counting, aren’t you?” Stan asks, not taking his eyes off the game screen, from the looks of it, he’s still getting used to the controls.

“...No.” Chris mumbles and pauses the countdown in his head. 

Nerd .” Stan chuckles, the laugh teeters off. He looks down at his hands on the controls for half a second, he looks…somber in a way. That ceases almost as soon as it starts, though, as he shakes his head, as if getting rid of a bad thought, “Uh, know any good tricks?” 

“I’ve never played this before, remember?” 

“Right, right.”

“But ah, you know, Charlie used to have this combo we would mess with—it was like uh…” he surveys the buttons, “left left, down, right, BB, A, BB …or something like that I think.” He enters the controls as he mumbles them out.

He doesn’t expect anything to happen, really, he only did it to jump out of the pit of awkward silence Stan decided to throw them both in for some reason.  To his surprise, though, the machine makes a series of obnoxious beeping sounds, both tank sprites spin for a few seconds, then lettering flashes on screen.

Charlie was here. Rnd 100 sPeCiAL pRiZe 

“What the…?” Is all he can really blurt out in the moment, and somehow now, the time away from his sibling is crushing in his chest in a way it never has.“Would you look at that,” Stan whistles, “‘Think it’s her?”

Who else would it be?” He taps his fingers on the surface of the game quickly. Knowing Charlie, if there even was a secret, it wouldn’t be anything that game changing. And who in their right mind would play 100 rounds of anything in one sitting? 

“Hey, I know that face,” Stan shakes him out of his thoughts, “What’s wrong?” 

“We..." He hesitates, "We need to get to that.” 

“That means playing this a hundred times, huh?”

“Yep.” 

Naturally .” He nods, “Alright, not like Mitch and I have anywhere to be. Let’s do this .” 

The clock on the diner wall doesn’t work, but going off the position of the sun, and the much more reliable numbers on Chris’ watch, they’ve been here for just about 8 hours .  Luckily, the owner of the diner didn’t mind much, since they were still buying food, and he’s under the impression they’re paying for the game.

He’s learned that actually getting to level 100 of Furious Tanks is simple– on paper . The only real criteria being: 

  1. Someone winning, which always is a guarantee. 

and

  1. Having enough coins for 100 individual games, which Mitch cleverly bypassed by shoving a lock pick into the coin slot when nobody was looking.

The real problem comes with playing through 100 5 minute rounds of an arcade game about angry tanks killing each other. 

Throughout the time spent switching sides and tagging in and out, Chris has thought about quitting at least 20 times over. Stan and Mitch though, are hellbent on seeing this through for some reason. 

Chris doesn’t know whether to be flattered or bad that they’re going through this with him. He’s at odds with his feelings about all of it. He knows what’s behind those levels isn’t worth it beyond sentimental reasons but deep down, even that’s an excuse. He really should be at the border now, with his sister, coming up with a plan to cross…but the thought of leaving makes him want to choke up. 

He needs something for this headache in the making.

After game 97, Stan comes back to life from his near catatonic state in front of the screen “Okay, okay.” He croaks after a bout of focused silence, “Need some water, Mitch –” He turns to his brother, who’s got his head down on the table, a half eaten burger is in his hand.

Mitch lifts his head, “It’s done?” he asks groggily, standing up from his seat.

“You wish.” Stan snorts, “I’m getting a drink, tap in for me, will ya?.” He points back to Chris, Mitch nods and takes his place on the controls, randomly pushing buttons.

Technically, they can always just let the other win with no effort, but even that gets boring after a while when you’re playing for hours on end.

“‘Just realized,” Mitch comments after a while of silence, pointing to the corner numbers that now read 99, “This really is the end of Stan and Mitch and Chris, huh?” 

“Guess it is…” Chris mutters, not really paying attention to anything on the screen.

“Hey, but that’s okay.” Mitch jabs at the buttons randomly, “because you can do something new—like Chris and Charlie or…or somethin’ like that.” 

I guess..’still wish we could’ve found out when that taxi guy is gonna attack, though.” He kicks the floor with the toe of his shoe. It still bothers him that he never figured it out after all that searching.

“We’ll think of something, don’t worry.” 

The all too familiar beeping sound from hours ago. He fixes his eyes on the screen almost immediately, the tanks spin again, and party hats appear on top of them. A simple Congratz flashes on the screen.

Chris fumbles with the disposable camera and quickly takes a picture of the screen. Almost as soon as he takes it, the spinning and lettering cease, and the machine blips back to the start screen.

“Party hats?” Mitch deadpans, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Party hats.” Chris sighs in relief, in part that it’s finally over, and because it solidifies in his mind that the secret really was from Charlie, because only she could think of something so infuriatingly insignificant just to mess with some unlucky soul.

“Just…why?” Mitch groans, which reminds Chris that he basically tortured his friends for 8 hours just for pixels on a screen.

“Guess what I got!” Stan sings in a much more upbeat tone than before, he’s holding an industrial tub of something under his arm, “Shit, did I miss it?” He speed walks over, and takes one look at the screen, which is only the title screen, “What?! No fair! What was it?” 

“Party hats.” 

“Like, a new power up or a–”

“No. Tanks wearing party hats. For ten seconds .”

“You’re kidding…Ugh, forget that. ” Stan sneers, then rolls his eyes for good measure “Let’s celebrate something cooler than little dumb pixelated hats.” He gestures to the giant bucket in his arms, “Found some ice cream in the back, owner’s knocked out–didn’t notice a thing!

Chris wants to correct that it’s dumb on purpose, but mentally kicks himself, they don’t know he knows that.

They’re on the edge of the diner roof, Chris is sitting between two of the two brothers, the ice cream tub next to him. Stan takes the liberty to take a handful of it and throw it at the dark trees that surround the diner every once in a while just because he can.

“How much do you wanna bet that sign makes people out here crash?” Stan elbows Chris and gestures to the huge neon sign in front of the place—a staple for all Biggie’s diners, no matter how ironically small or insignificant. 

“I dunno…” he swings his legs over the edge, still somewhat guilty about making them wait that long.

The small bit of guilt eats at him. He had a good time at the diner, the disposable camera’s already halfway full with how many dumb pictures they’d taken, and they had at least 3 mini adventures while one of them was playing the game in the background. 

But that didn’t change the fact that he lied to them about his intentions for almost the entirety of a 9 to 5 work day. 

“What’s with that look?” Mitch asks, because apparently, Chris has a look when he’s got something on his mind, which in hindsight, explains a lot about his sister always knowing when he was upset. 

“Okay guys, I have to be honest about something.” He looks down at his scuffed up shoes, “I…I knew the super secret wouldn’t be that good.” He confesses, feeling the all too familiar shame rise up, “Charlie’s more of a journey person, you know? Friends you’ve made along the way and that stuff.” He mumbles, there’s no response for a solid 10 seconds, which makes his heart beat a bit faster, “I–Sorry for being a lying jerk.”

Mitch’s lips quirk up to a smile, then he starts laughing, Stan joins in. 

Oh god, he broke them!

Eventually, the laughing dies down, and they’re both left giggling. 

“You guys are mad, aren’t you.”

“Normally, yes, and I would forcefully tie your shoelaces together if you had any. ” Stan answers first, “... But I was kinda planning on wasting your time else anyway, had this whole excuse about the moto breaking down ‘n everything.” He sighs, “You just made it way easier for us.” 

“I…I was in on it too.” Mitch admits quietly, “Sorry.”

“You..you guys care about me enough to be lying jerks like that?” He asks, that came out wrong, but they seem to get the point.

“Are you kidding? Of course we would!” Stan snaps, “You’re like our br-” He trails off, “Best friend.” He picks up his sentence as if it’s not dead on the floor.

Mitch elbows him, then indirectly gestures to Chris with his open hand. Stan groans, “Okay, I see you as a brother.”  He reluctantly mumbles, “Is that what you wanted to hear, Mitch?” He taps his heel on the side of the roof.

“Yep!” Mitch smiles, putting his arm around Chris, “ I do too .” 

“Man, why are you guys so freaking nice?” Chris blinks away the tears building in the corners of his eyes.

“Stan and Mitch rules, buddy.” Mitch pats his shoulder a few times, “We should get ya’ to the border soon, though. Before the sun comes up.”

“Or, or!” Stan offers, “You can stay a few more nights? We won’t mind much.” 

It’s tempting, and half of Chris really wants to, but… “I can’t…gotta get to the border before things get worse, you know? My sister’s there.” 

“Right, of course. ” Stan mutters, he puts the tub of ice cream on the floor and jumps off the roof, “I’m gonna go start the moto.”

“Is he…gonna be okay?” 

“Yeah, don’t worry, he’s just…not that good at sayin’ goodbye.” 

Stan is quiet, actually, he’s been eerily quiet ever since they got back on the road. Mitch is the only one who’s acting like himself, cracking jokes, trying to make Chris smile. 

That all ceases when they finally reach the border, of course. Chris obviously knows where he’s going, but the sign reflected by the motorcycle’s lights still takes his mind out. It’s unreal in a way. 

Once the bike stops, Stan speaks up, “‘Farthest we can go without the cops gettin’ too close.”

Chris nods, then picks up his backpack by the straps and reluctantly, he steps out of the sidecar. He almost trips over his shoes, but someone grabs the back of his jacket before he can fall. 

“Careful, there buddy.” Mitch warns, pulling him upright. 

“I’m good–” He shoves his hands into his jacket pockets, “Just nervous.”

“You’ll do fine,” he hugs Chris, which he’s grateful for, then gestures to the charm on his jacket, “That there’s lucky, remember? It’ll keep you safe. My lockpick too.” He assures, handing the tool over to him.

“How…how are you so calm about this?” Chris questions, making sure his voice doesn’t crack.

“He’s not.” Stan sighs, “‘Just holding it in is all.”

“Untrue.” Mitch whispers, but turns away a little too fast and hides his face in shoulder, “hold up I got something in my eye-“

“We should go before the cops get here...” Stan mutters, and turns to Chris, clapping a hand over his shoulder, “But you can still bail if you want. We can get your sister and…oh, who am I kidding?” He yanks Chris into a back breaking hug that would put Mitch’s to shame. 

He lets go a second later, “Listen to be Chris, you’re not leaving us okay?.” He pats his shoulder with one of his hands, “You better not feel any damn guilt over this ‘cause I’m transferring it and shit here.” He uses his other hand to point at his own chest. 

“Only if you guys promise to talk to your sister more.” Chris counters, grabbing his arm and pushing it down gently.

“psh…Alright kid,” he laughs, wiping his eyes with his glove roughly, “I think we can do that.” He kicks at the dirt, “Now go on before I- before Mitch starts cryin’ again.”

Suddenly, it’s getting way too real for Chris, uncomfortably so, “I…but I don’t think I can..” the fear of leaving finally boils over, leaving him focused down at the cloud of dirt kicked up. 

Stan grins at him hopefully, but after a few beats, it devolves back into an unreadable expression, he shakes his head, “No…no, you can, you gotta .” He nods firmly, looking at Chris once more before backing away.

Chris nods slowly, “I…thanks, for everything.” He waves goodbye one last time, then slowly starts to walk the dirt covered trail. He can feel the tears welling up as he hears the motorcycle speed off in the distance with Stan and Mitch yelling their names. 

Then, the gravity of what he did hits him all at once, he just left the only people in the vicinity who cared about him, and he’s alone again . The lonely feeling that plagued him before he met Stan and Mitch crushes him at full force.

He has to convince himself multiple times not to run, physically refraining from looking behind in fear that it’s gonna cause a backpedal. It’s difficult not to feel like he’s right where he started a month ago, even if he’s exactly where he needs to be. 

It’s discouraging, he’s been under the impression that being with Stan and Mitch would give him some immunity to this stuff. But here he is, exactly the same, just without them.

He whistles, then gently adjusts the charm on his jacket. Just a few more miles and he’ll get to see his sister, and he’ll be fine.

They’ll be fine too. 

Notes:

Thank you all for reading through this! Sadly, this is the end of Chris' story (at least for now!). Not gonna lie, I'm gonna miss writing for him. Let's just say that for better or worse, Stan and Mitch are *technically* the most responsible caretakers in this series

Part 2 (technically 3) of Reaching '96 will be coming soon!

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