"She's doing pretty well," Cam admitted, feeling decidedly more social over a plate of breakfast and his second cup of coffee. "I didn't realize she was so good with technical systems."

"Yeah, who knew Kapri had knowledge?" Hunter, too, had started volunteering more than one-word sentences without prompting. "On the ship she was all, 'hey, what happens if I touch this?' and 'oh, I didn't mean to break that!'"

"Sort of like you?" Cam suggested, more amused than alarmed by the reminder that Hunter had spent time on Lothor's ship.

"Hey," Hunter defended himself. "I can follow instructions."

"You just choose not to," Cam finished for him.

Hunter raised his coffee cup in salute. "Look who's talking," he said with a grin.

"More coffee?" Their waitperson waited for Hunter to put his cup down before she topped it off, then glanced at Cam inquiringly. He nodded, pushing the cup toward her, and she reached out to steady it while she poured.

"Thanks, Katie," Hunter told her, and she gave him a bright smile.

"Sure thing!" She disappeared as quickly as she had come, heading back toward the counter and the source of some exceptionally good coffee.

"You know, my dad thinks I drink too much coffee," Cam remarked idly.

Hunter shook his head. "No such thing as too much." He took a swallow from his own cup as if to prove his point, then wondered, "Your dad notices what you eat and drink but not how upset you are about the whole tech guy routine?"

Cam frowned, setting his coffee down. He was about to protest that he wasn't "upset," exactly, but since he knew it would be a lie he decided not to bother. Instead he said slowly, "It's not his job to notice, I guess. If I don't like what I'm doing, it's up to me to change it."

"Right on," Hunter agreed, in what was probably meant to be a show of support.

When had he started second-guessing everything Hunter said, Cam wondered? There had been a time when he took whatever the older Bradley brother said at face value: Hunter, moreso than Blake, was straightforward to a fault. But now he found himself listening more carefully, trying to decide what it all meant.

Probably because they didn't see each other as much anymore. He couldn't take Hunter for granted when he wasn't showing up in Ninja Ops every day, to train or to fight or just to spread his opinion around. He wasn't used to the new more responsible Hunter, either, and that probably confused him as much as anything. The Hunter he had known last year would never have given up his dream of motocross and let his little brother hit the national racing circuit without him. The teaching robes still threw him.

"What about you?" Cam asked abruptly. He couldn't remember Hunter saying one way or the other, and he was genuinely curious. "How do you like being head teacher of the Thunder Academy?"

Hunter shrugged. "It's cool." It might have been all he said, but then he added, "Hard. Worth it."

Cam nodded once, pushing what was left of his breakfast around on his plate. They ate in silence for a few minutes. It was nice to have food that hadn't been prepared at the academy for once, and finally he asked, "You come here often?"

"You kidding?" Hunter said with a grin. "I live at the academy. What else do I have to spend my money on?"

"The food's good," Cam admitted, looking around the snack bar. It was small, but there was a pretty good crowd this early in the morning. The place probably made ends meet by catering to people with odd hours. "What's it like to be home?"

He didn't know why he'd asked that, and it made Hunter pause. "I dunno," Hunter said at last, studying him a little more closely than he would have liked. "It's... weird, I guess. Why?"

"Just curious." Cam tried to shrug it off. "You didn't leave under the best circumstances, but you seem to be settling back in pretty well."

"Yeah..." Hunter was frowning down at his plate now. "I guess so. I dunno, it's... it's familiar, right, but it's all different. It's... easier, in some ways. And it kind of makes me wonder what I missed, growing up here. I mean--because I don't remember it being like this, y'know?"

Not really. Or maybe he did, a little... he too lived in the town he'd grown up in, and he knew what it was like to see childhood places through adult eyes. "You think maybe you didn't appreciate it when you were younger?" Cam ventured.

"Yeah." Hunter was watching him again. "That's it."

Cam put his fork down and reached for his coffee, uncomfortable with the scrutiny and pretty much done with his breakfast. His eyes wandered around the room, noting the hand-drawn artwork from local schools and the clunky arcade games near the door. A mosaic of menus covered the wall behind the counter, all of them written in dry-erase marker on some kind of reusable board. It was a friendly, casual place, clearly meant to serve a variety of clientele, and he wondered how Hunter had found it.

"You done?" Hunter asked, interrupting his visual survey and nodding toward his plate.

"Yeah," Cam agreed reluctantly.

He started to collect the remains of his breakfast, but Hunter didn't stand up. Instead he just leaned forward, grinning at him across the table. "Cool. You wanna play some games?"

Cam just looked at him. "What?"

"Games," Hunter said, gesturing toward the door. "You wanna play? I bet I kick your butt at Moto Rider."

Cam rolled his eyes, because yeah, that would be a fair match. "Hunter, those games are for kids."

"Nah, they're for people with fast reflexes," Hunter insisted. "It just happens that most kids have 'em. But I didn't outgrow mine, and judging from the way you fight, neither did you. So come on. I have quarters."

"Fine," Cam said, with a token sigh. "You're paying."

Hunter was so enthusiastic about dragging him over to the arcade games that Cam couldn't help asking, "Do you miss Blake?"

The moment the words were out, he wished he could take them back. Hunter was clearly trying to cheer him up, and he might not have asked for that kind of effort, but it was still nice. The last thing Hunter needed was for Cam to bring him down, too.

Unexpectedly, though, Hunter didn't even pause. "Nope," he said, positioning himself in front of one of the games and motioning for Cam to take the one next to it. "He's living the dream. Good for him."

"We're going to withdraw from the trials," the blonde-haired mechanic told him. "Every bike, no exceptions."

"That's crazy!" Blake burst out. "Just because of one intruder? A security breach no one can identify and the race is off?"

She held her hands up in surrender, shaking her head. "Don't shoot the messenger. They told me to make sure none of the bikes load into the gate and I'm passing the word."

"Where's Marlowe?" Blake wanted to know. He caught sight of the crew chief a little farther down the line and he didn't bother waiting for an answer. "Marlowe!"

"They're not going, Blake." He didn't even look up. "Factory Blue can't afford bad press if something goes wrong."

"My bike wasn't even on the trailer last night," Blake argued. "I was working on it late and I didn't bother to put it back. Check the logs."

"If it was outside it doesn't matter," the crew chief told him. "Someone got past security and they could have been anywhere. Doing anything. If you ruin your bike out there it's our butt on the line."

"It wasn't outside!" Blake insisted. "I needed the light! I was sleeping five feet from my bike the entire night--and believe me, if someone had gotten in I would have known about it. I'm a light sleeper."

Marlowe frowned, but the logbooks would support his story. "I'm gonna have to get approval on this one," he said at last. "Hang on."

It took a conference with three of the higher-ups, and recounting the story several more times--each time in greater detail--but finally Blake was allowed to prep his bike for the trials. The company handled registration, gate assignments, and trial times for him, which was still something of a novelty, but he was starting to like the fact that all he had to do was go out and ride.

When he was allowed to, of course. When they weren't worried about a possible saboteur, and people weren't trying to tell him that withdrawing was for his own good. What this place needed was some ninja security, Blake thought, smirking to himself. Too bad he didn't know anyone who could handle that.

So he had bulled his way back into the trials, and he didn't regret it. At first it was because he had no reason to--he was coming up along the outside, the track fast and dry beneath his wheels. Between the roar of the engines and the howl of wind around his helmet, his hearing was almost entirely subconscious. That was enough.

He knew something was wrong before he knew how, the change in someone's engine noise, a jerk out of the corner of his eye. Then there was something in front of him and no way to avoid it as his bike slammed into the obstacle at an impossible speed: he knew it was going to happen and he knew there was nothing he could do. They were going too fast, they were too close together, the fate of one was the fate of the other.

He couldn't prevent the crash and he tried anyway. Every aspect of the moment was supernaturally sharp and clear in his mind until a foreign sensation that barely registered as pain preceded the darkness.

Several minutes later, abandoned at an empty table just down the road from the Thunder Academy, a cell phone began to ring.