Chapter Two

Upon landing the Super Robot next to the treehouse to recieve the covers of the enchanted journals, the entire Hyper Force was in awe of what they seen, especially the monkeys of the team. Chiro couldn't really blame them, for they had their memories erased as soon as their transformation into cybernetic warriors was complete, and their lives as ordinary monkeys was a blur to all of them... just being here felt nostalgic to every single one. Before long, Otto found the covers they came for under a loose floorboard near the shelf Jinmay found the picture frame, and it was time for the hard part.

Knowing that the gaurdian formless would alert their master of their presence upon seeing the Super Robot, it was agreed best for the Hyper Force to travel through the Savage Lands on foot, confident Jinmay could look after herself this time. Every single monkey had their weapons at the ready, except Gibson, who needed his hands for the portable computer that had the map programed into it, and Chiro, who had no weapons at all... yet.

"It would be certian that we are going the right way," Gibson moaned, "if somebody didn't step on this thing the last time we were here!"

"Hey! Watch it brain-strain!" said Sparx, "I have enough guilt to deal with as it is!"

Chiro rolled his eyes hearing that arguement. If they were this way while he was a monkey himself, it's little wonder that Nova, who was trying to break up those two at this moment, ended up third in command.

"Don't you two ever shut up?!" She said to them, almost happy that she had her nerve back becuase of the boys' antics, "Anyhow, judging by how we narrowly escaped a bunch of Shuggazoomian flytraps just a few minutes ago, we must be close by the Alchemist's lab by now. At least this part of the forest seems firmiliar, hard to tell since the cave ceiling has cracked."

Everyone fell silent, as the memory of how they first met Valina somehow spooked them. That witch had put them and herself through so much trouble to reserrect the Skeleton King, though none know if she did it because she really wanted to or because she was brainwashed to being loyal to him since her childhood. One thing was for sure: she expected great power in return for such a ritual... maybe even wanted to become his queen... and how did that bag of bones "thank" her in the end? By turning her to dust, that's how! Now the Skeleton King was back and badder then ever, and had filled an entire year with his evil before the Hyper Force were granted this illusion of victory... an illusion that won't become real unless they restore these journals and their connection to the "Jewel of Hope" they were told about.

Soon enough, they reached the Alchemist's lab, and while inside, they found a dozen gaurdian formless and half that many undead warriors pounding against the farthest wall in the back, only to be repelled by some kind of energy.

"This got to be it, team," Chiro whispered, "the back room has to be behind that wall. Gibson, put that scanner away and get your drills ready. It's your turn to play decoy. Antauri, you get there and try to find a way to open the door for the rest of us. The rest of us will cover for Gibson, understood?"

Receiving a few nods, Chiro silently signalled everyone into their positions, which they took as Gibson activated his drills and prepared to use one of his spin shockers to get the enemies attention. "I dispise this part." he sighed, but he went on to do his task anyway.

"SPIN SHOCKER!"

In a single blast, Gibson had stunned the undead warriors, knowing they are the lesser threat and are best dealt with last. The gaurdian formless, however, were another story. They had to be lured into the traps made up of the other team members. It was a good thing that these ooze-born creatures aren't that smart.

Meanwhile, Antauri had just phased through the back wall, and found someplace that, even if his memory wasn't tampered with all those years ago, all but a part of him would have forgotten on his own. It seemed to be some kind of nursery, equaled only to a mix between a primate habitat at any zoo and a human child's summer camp. It was vine-covered, wall-to-wall, even the furniture from the chairs to the bookshelf seemed to follow the theme even before time allowed the vines to hold these things in place. The must unusual part of the room was the beds: eight of them. Six of them were different colored baskets, five dangling from the ceiling as though that was the original purpose of the vines (Antauri recognised the black one as his own) and the sixth basket, the orange one, had broke off and fell to the ground, shattering to peices. 'Almost like foreshadowing.' thought Antauri, recalling how Mandarin lead the team only to betray them. Before his thoughts wandered too far, Antauri noticed the two human beds on the floor ,each on a different side of the room. It would've been impressively semetrical, if these beds weren't two different sizes. The larger one obviously belonged to the Alchemist himself, but who did the smaller one belong to: Chiro's mother, or his father? More importantly, why would a child live with the Alchemist in the first place? Knowing he'd get answers soon enough, Antauri found a bundle of glowing pages under the pillow of the smaller bed, but when he touched that stack, nothing happened. That's when it dawned on him: The entire team must be present, otherwise the spell wouldn't work. Looking back to the wall he came in through, Antauri quickly found the door. Not only was it brick-laid from the outside, it was sealed with a protection spell as well. No wonder the Skeleton King's minions were using such brute force. Whoever did this was rightfully paranoid to protect this place! Phasing out of the room, he saw that Gibson was doing well as decoy, luring the gaurdian formless from one member to another, as they took out two each...

"STING RING!"

"ELECTRO-VIBER FORCE!"

"WERLING DISTRUCTO-SAWS!"

"CHIRO SPEAR-O!"

Figuring this had gone on long enough, Antauri decided to offer some help. Noticing the undead warriors were reviving, he finished them off with a ghost-claw attack and then went to take care of the remaining four gaurdian formless.

"MONKEY MIND SCREECH!"

Upon noticing that the area was finally clear, Gibson let out a sigh of relief before he collapsed before the returned silver monkey. "Thank goodness you came back, Antauri," he said, turning off his drills, "and just in time too. This decoy business seems to be more of Otto's forte."

"Not to worry, my friend," Antauri said with a smile, "if I recall correctly, his turn is next."

Antauri wasted no time explaining his discoveries to the rest of the team, which motivated all of them into helping to overpower the bricks. Their combined efforts weren't blocked like those of their opponents, so it was obivious the protection spell only works against evil creatures.

"Hey! Check it out guys!" Otto laughed as he climbed up and crawled into the green basket, "I think we could still fit in these!"

"Would you mind helping me into mine?" Gibson said, still exausted from the days work and noticing how comfortable Otto looked in the basket.

"Don't take too long getting cozy," Chiro said, touching the papers Antauri found and awakening its power to reveal the past, "I don't hink any of us want to miss out on one of my parents' stories."

It was summertime in Shuggazoom city, during the Golden Age. (Authors note: Considering how long Captain Shuggazoom was in hibernation, I would guess it was about 35 years before Chiro was born.) Many children were in the park playing with either their friends or their parents, if not both, except one boy who has neither. While is birth certificate had long labled him Henry Carrington III, he prefered his nickname, "Ace Ranger", as it, and a baseball passed down his father's side of the family for ages, was all he had left of his parents since the insident that orphaned him and landed him in Carrington Manor with his uncle, Clayton.

Many envied the fortune Clayton Carrington made on his eccentric ideas, while several business praised him for it, for if he hadn't found a way to make industrial trade with other planets possible, many stores in the city and several naighboring towns would never be open. The way Ace sees it though, everyone's barking up the wrong tree, for he knows that his Uncle Clayton only opened that form of business to be the only playboy to date real alien women, especially the kind with eyestalks...Ace had only one word for his uncle's taste: gross!

Still, what was their for a third-grade boy to do? Seeing that nobody was going with him, Ace decided to go to the part by himself, bringing his great-great-great-great grandfather's ball with him. Who knows? Maybe it'll give him luck and every kid in the park would want to play with him, even though his is disguised in the oldest outfit he could find in the rag bag. He had waited about for half an hour at first before deciding to make the first move, looking around for someone who might need as much company as he does. He even looked towards the local little league team, where the coach was barking at one of the kids: "For the last time, Gyrus Krinkle! We can't let you play on the team!"

'Purfect' Ace thought, looking at the disappointed boy before clearing his thoat. "Ahem! Uh, excuse me! Gyrus, was it?"

"Huh? Oh! Yeah."

"Want to play catch? It might cheer you up."

"Who? Me? Really?!"

"Yeah! Come on, get you glove ready."

The little league coach just took a sip of his coffee and spit-taked upon realizing what was going on. "Uh, kid! I wouldn't do that if I were you!"

It was already too late. Ace threw the ball to Gyrus, who caught it in one jump, but instead of throwing it back, he started to run off with it shouting: "I caught your ball! Ruin home!"

"Hey!" Ace paniced, "That was a family heirloom! You were supposed to give me a turn to catch it!"

"That's why I didn't want him on the team, kid!" the coach groaned, "That loony boy keeps getting the rules of the game mixed up! Better get a move on if you want your ball!"

Ace didn't need to be told twice, as he ran toward Gyrus at what might be record time for an eight-year-old, and tackled him, causing the ball to fly right out of Gyrus' hands and into a tunnel half way into the forest.

"Oh-no! Now look what you done you weasel! Now I got to go in there to get my ball back!"

"What I've done?! Wha-?! You're the one who wanted to play catch, weirdo!"

What happened to Gyrus after that was none of Ace's consern, as he started searching the dark tunnel for his ball, only to lose his footing and hit his head. When he came to his senses, Ace had realized he was back in the forest and it was night time, but something was off about it. That's when it hit him: The lights above him weren't really stars, but millions of glowing crystals on the top of a cave ceiling... he had heard stories about underground forests before in biology class, but actually being in one was mind-blowing, and terrifying! He could think of several creatures that live in caves as well as in forest, mostly bats and bears, but the worst part was that he couldn't get out the same way he came in... he could tell in the dim light that the hole he fell through was too high up on the slippery cave wall! He started searching the edge of the forest for a lower exit or some way to get up there, wondering wether or not he was officially lost when the sound of wild animals scared all common sence out of him! To that end, he ran deeper into the underground trees which seemed to get thicker the further he went in until, tripping up and spraining his ankle, Ace fell, cornered at the trunk of a large tree. There was only enough light to get an idea of what chased him. At first it seemed like a brown-furred Shuggazoomian simian, which got Ace debating how hard he hit his head on account that he heard that species of monkey was extinct, but as he closed his eyes in fear for his life anyway-

"Is this your ball?"

Ace looked again, as the crystals seemed to be getting brighter like night turning to day, and the monkey-like creature's image slowly started to fade to that of a human girl his own age, holding the very ball he came here for in the first place. That much would've convinced him the wild animal chase was all in his head, had it not for the tails sticking out of her robe. Two of them: one clearly being her own on account of the size, and the other belonging to a baby monkey with orange fur that crawled out of the robe to inspect Ace, with a menacing look.

"Well?" The girl said, "You can speak to answer can you not?"

"I-I heard about creatures like you." Ace stammered, "You're a 'changeling' right? A shapeshifter that lives as neither human nor animal, right?"

"I ask the questions here." She said, "Such as 'what are you doing in the underground forest of Pandora?' and 'had you not cut down enough trees on the surface for your so-called progress?' just to name a few. Obviously you were never told in your life how few followers of the Power Primate are left in this world, and how fewer we become each passing year. I was blessed with my abillity to change forms, as it seems that its only as a human that the words of my native tribe can be understood by humans."

"Look," Ace sighed, "I didn't come here to harm the trees or the animals, I just came to get my ball back. It's all I have left of my parents. I didn't know that this is the fabled garden of Pandora. My teachers all told me this place was poppycock!"

The girl laughed. "Clearly they are the ones who have much to learn, not like my own teacher, the Alchemist." tossing the ball back into Ace's hands, she continued her speach, "All the same, it would be wise to never tell anyone about this place if you want to see both your world and mine ever again. Let so much as a peep get out, I won't be so 'motherly' in keeping Mandarin from losing his temper. He's quite fisty for an infant, you should know. Just imagine how much worse he might be when he's grown up."

Just looking at the expression of the little monkey was enough for Ace to get the point. Manderin's eyes alone would remind anyone of a rabid dog holding back it's desire to bite; he even seems to growl like one. "Fine! Fine!" Ace said, waving his arms, "Just call off your banana-eating pitbull! I've been injured enough today!"

"My children don't eat bananas," said the girl, "it's to cliche." After making that point, she whistled one time while clapping twice, a signal Mandarin already knew all too well and reluctantly obeyed by climbing on the shoulders of his seregant mother.

"Wait? 'Children?!'" Ace said, as the girl started gathering the right near-by plants to tend to his wounds, "Plural?! More then one?!"

"There were-hold still a moment- but that is practically the reason I am doing this here and not at the Alchemist's lab." She gathered a lot of energy into her hand and pressed it into Ace's forehead, to show him what she's talking about.

The Hyper Force watched as, just above the memory of how Chiro's parents met as kids, a different set of memories appeared... simular to what they seen while the Skeleton King trapped them in the Dream Lands where they freed themselves with the memory of how he created them. It was becoming clear that while the six of them were babies in a set of fetus tubes, the seventh monkey they seen in that dream, shouting praise as he was flipping the switch, was the Alchemist's apprentice in her truest form.

"After I was given the ability to blend in with the human world, the spirits tasked me to watch over what our prophecies had called the 'Embassadors of Wukong', six gaurdian monkeys orphaned at birth but developed under a sorcerors care. It has been said that they will one day straighten the bond between humans and nature without changing in any way except by the work of he gave them strength enough to keep their lives from ending before they begun. Since magic has become a dying art,the Alchemist, who gladly took me as his apprentice, was the only sorceror of which I knew of. A few months ago, I had to preform a ritual my teacher refered to as a 'c-section' upon several widowed mothers to be who couldn't live long enough to birth their children properly otherwise on account of sickness or injury. As foretold, only six underdeveloped babies survived long enough during that time for him to help them properly. While I gathered the children, he invented a device that will not only color code them to prevent the possibility of an identity crisis, but will also pick up their development prosess where it left off in half the time. I soon noticed the latter part almost worked a little too well, and I had to place the essance of the Power Primate into them while they were in that blasted mashine to stablize their youth, and while that worked, it also overloaded the systems. Since I practically messed with the natural order of things trying to save them, the mashine temporarly became a teleporter which has scattered every single one of my children to other parts of the universe, except for Mandrin, as his capsle was the closest in my reach as I attempted to get them out of there. The Alchemist has been angry at me ever since."

Ace blinked as he returned to the current moment he was in. "I don't think he's upset because you ruined that experiment,"he said, "by what I seen, he was just as eager to meet them as you were, and that's why he rushed their growth patterns like that. After what happened, he propably thinks that temporary rift in the natural order distroyed them, but you have seen that wasn't true and we can prove it to him. Just meet me at Carrington Manor tonight, addressed at the corner of Star St. and Command Ave. The place is large enough for its own zipcode; you can't miss it if you tried."

"I may know my way to the surface, but all the same, your directions would confuse me even if I had actually been outside of the underground forest of Pandora before." she sighed, "I do not even know what a 'zipcode' is! Maybe you can just show me where it is. With a sprain like that, you shouldn't be walking home yourself anyway."

"If you say so. Just... don't get mushy about it, we're too young for that. My name is Henry Carrington III, by the way, but those who know me call me Ace. Who are you?"

"I have no title, except Heng-Shi Kunshuizan, meaning 'life and history of the world itself'. I have a complicated past to say the least."

"You wouldn't mind if I just call you 'Zoey Sulphur' would you?"

Everyone almost laughed at the image of young Mandarin looking like he was about to throw up when they noticed that they were back in the secret room of the Alchemist's lab just the way it was when they got in there, except the stack of papers had been placed in the two enchanted journal covers. Gibson checked the watch built into his tail and gasped at what he saw.

"Several hours in a flashback while time stood virtually still in the real world," he explained to the others, "this is bizzare even beyond my calculations!"

Everyone agreed silently as they recalled the letter Chiro's parents left them all before they started this task. Such distortion was more toiling then the war alone, but they knew that if they are to forever distroy the Skeleton King and finally allow the soul of the man he once was, the Alchemist, to rest in peace, they have to continue this task as soon as possible. As the rest of the team, despite some reluctance, started to return to the Super Robot, Chiro tagged behind a few moments longer, wondering what parts of that vision from his mother's childhood was true and what parts were just the results an overactive imagination. He knew only this much was clear: monkey team and had been seperated the first days of their lives, and his parents started to form their bond trying to get them back. 'You were probably a pest as the Alchemist's apprentice, mom,' he thought to himself on the way out, 'but even at the age of eight, you were a natural at being a mom.'