Hi again! Yeah I've written more than one chapter and I have plenty more in store. I'm trying to finish this one scene for another chapter and start on a new one.

Also Sakko is precious to me I'm just saying.

I don't own anything and all that stuff.

The Hyperforce store, filled with monkey team merchandise, sorta kinda made them feel sick. Not 'hate' sick, but the kind of sick that one would feel after falling out horribly with a group of friends and then seeing their pictures in a yearbook a few months later. Sakko walked around, glancing at the various toys, t-shirts, and other items.

"I didn't think they would have this much stuff." He muttered.

"It doesn't surprise me, they're so famous now it's inevitable they would have their own line of merchandise." Mandarin said, holding up a cup with the super robot's face on it.

"Hmm you don't think they're just a bit smug about it right?" Sakko wondered.

Mandarin shook his head.

"I don't think they are, Sprx maybe but I don't think someone like Antauri would." He said.

Sakko then walked by the toy line and looked up at it. He then climbed on the shelves to look around. Mandarin frowned at all the Antauri merch, confused.

"Why is Antauri silver? It can't be because of a color defect because all of his merchandise is like this." Mandarin wondered.

"Maybe he got a new paint job." Sakko said as he looked at a ton of the toys.

"But why though?"

Sakko soon came across a very concerning toy.

"Maybe the same reason why you look a lot more different with this toy." He said, poking it.

Mandarin blinked and went over to the toy line.

What Sakko was examining was an action figure that said, "Mandarin figure" but it was clearly not him.

This Mandarin toy had bone armor, a scarred face, and a huge claw for a hand. The sight of this made Mandarin's skin crawl. He scowled.

"Since when did you look like that or...is that not you?" Sakko asked.

Mandarin picked up the box and his grip tightened.

"It's not." He growled.

"Then it's a clone I take it? I think you mentioned clones a while back." Sakko asked.

Mandarin gripped tighter on the box, causing the cardboard to bend and break. His face growing more and more angry.

Sakko blinked.

"I take it as a yes but why would Skeleton King make a clone out of you?" He asked.

Mandarin was about to break the box in half, when his grip and expression softened. He then set the box down and looked at the floor. Sakko looked from left then to the right, worried that he peeved him.

"Uh if you don't want to talk about it I'll just go back to looking at this Chiro figure I mean wow they really screwed up his hair!" Sakko laughed nervously.

Mandarin sighed and gently poked Sakko, which made the pink monkey jump and turn.

"No it's fine, I do think it's time to talk about where I've been in the past year" Mandarin then motioned towards the scars on his body.

"and where these came from." He said.

Finally Sakko's questions would be answered, but he wondered if he should have asked at all.

The two sat down, now in a different part of the store and away from the toy area. They didn't look at each other for a while and Mandarin didn't speak at first.

"So...where've you been?" Sakko asked.

Mandarin still didn't say anything at first until he said, "Skeleton King's prison."

Sakko turned to him, eye wide.

"Skeleton King's prison?! He has a prison?!"

"It was for all of his failed minions to be executed whenever he wanted, somehow I didn't get to meet my end." Mandarin explained, not looking back at him.

"A-ah.." Sakko wondered why he's never been there.

"However that didn't mean that he ordered his servants to torture me at any chance they got for my negligence. That included my little replacement." Mandarin said, emotionlessly.

"Jeez! I-I thought my torture was rough but…to leave scars." Sakko trailed off, remembering the demonic Jack in the Box.

"Hey you're worse off, you lost an eye. I only have scars." Mandarin brought up, looking back at him.

"Th-that's true. But how did you escape?" Sakko asked.

"I'm getting to that, anyway I was there for a few months and one day I felt sick. Extremely sick, my stomach was feeling like someone put acid in it and I couldn't stop having cold sweats. Before I knew something was wrong because the day before I felt something was extremely wrong with the Power Primate. I seriously thought I was going to die but instead," Mandarin paused, trying to think of the proper explanation for what he was going to say next.

"what happened next was that some sort of dark energy left my body and it felt like all of my pores were vomiting." He said, making Sakko giggle a tad.

Mandarin looked at him.

"Sakko that isn't funny that actually felt really terrible." He said.

"O-oh right sorry." Sakko apologized, looking back down.

Mandarin sighed.

"Anyway, as soon as that dark energy left I felt different. Like it was if all of my evil ambitions and thoughts just disappeared." He muttered.

Sakko sat back a bit. So he did turned back into a good guy.

"So then why do you still have the Supreme Destructor form?" Sakko asked.

"I'm not sure of why I still have it after the dark energy left me. I would have thought anything having to do Skeleton King would have left me, I guess not." Mandarin shrugged.

"So then what did you do?" He asked.

"I wasn't sure what I should do at first but as time went on the Formless guards went missing and no one would come in to torture me. So I attempted to get out of my cuffs and...well.."

Mandarin remembered the several tries he attempted to break out of those cuffs, but due to the super strong metal and the amount of precautions Skeleton King took just so he would fail in his escape, so he had to use all of his strength to pull the chains from off of the wall until they finally came off. The next problem was the bars, which were created to withstand his strength and powers. Mandarin looked over at the cell next to him, no one lived in that cell or any of the cells near his. So Mandarin decided to just break down the wall next to his and just walk right through there. That's when Mandarin got hit with a dose of electricity and nearly crashed through the wall of the other cell. Mandarin groaned, this was going to take some work.

"Pff you didn't know that Skeleton King would have a back-up plan if you tried to do that?" Sakko sniggered.

"In my defense most of my intelligence was lost while I was working for him and hadn't come back yet." Mandarin huffed.

"Now can I please continue?"

"Oh certainly."

Mandarin tried the second cell on the other side of the room, it too tried to electrocute him. Mandarin sat on the floor, thinking of what to do. He turned behind him and looked at the wall and he wondered. He punched out the wall and for a moment he felt a tinge of victory...when he looked down and saw a ton of spikes and can vaguely see mines sprinkled around. It can never be easy can it? He looked towards the window next to him, maybe if he broke in there...but what if he got electrocuted ?

There was one way to find out as he places his foot on the ledge and he slowly made his way over to the cell wall next door. He nearly slipped as he gripped on the bars of the window. Mandarin gulped and he shuddered.

With one hand he held onto the window and with the other he punched a hole into the wall a bit off from the window so that it wont come crumbling down and peeked in. He put his hand through the hole and jerked back.

No electricity, no traps.

Mandarin then entered the hole after swinging himself inside. The cell was completely empty, minus a bed, a sink, toilet, the workings. Mandarin smirked, Skeleton King was smart, but he didn't think through everything.

After destroying the prison bars and checking around for any guards, Mandarin high tailed it to the gate, quickly opened it and slammed it looked around, there were still no guards. This was getting suspicious. However, Mandarin was free and he could now figure out what to do next.

"So then I hid in several places until I heard that Skeleton King was dead and someone was trying to revive him."

"Then you decided to get me when my forums were processing for me to leave?" Sakko asked.

"Eh that was later down the line but I wanted to..." Then Mandarin paused.

Sakko leaned forward, waiting. Mandarin sighed and tried to speak again but he found it quite hard.

"At first I wanted to go back to them you know? I was hoping that there was a chance they could forgive me but after all that I did to them...all the pain I put them through...I knew I wouldn't go back to them." He then said, staring off into space.

"Them? Oh the monkey team..."

Mandarin nodded.

"I hurt them a lot...especially Otto. He was one of my closest friends." He pursed his lips.

Sakko wrapped his arms around his knees and pressed his chin against them. Mandarin then cleared his throat.

"So other than prison what have you been doing? Did you come up with any other plans with Skeleton King?" He asked.

Sakko froze for a bit.

"Nah w-we didn't." He muttered.

Mandarin turned to him.

"Really because I thought you would, you have the brains for some terrible schemes."

Sakko looked up at him and smiled.

"That's the nicest thing you've ever said to me, but no."

Mandarin blinked.

"Then what happened? Did he get rid of you too and replaced you with a clone?" He asked.

Sakko shook his head and hid his face under his large sunhat.

"No, hey I bet you with my brains that I can get that movie theater up and running!" Sakko said

quickly jumping off and beginning to leave but Mandarin picked him up.

"You do realize that it's pointless to try to run from me." He said.

Sakko pouted and crossed his arms as Mandarin set him back on the shelf.

"So what did he do?"

Sakko pursed his lips and looked down.

"It was...a while and Skeleton King ordered me to search the lower parts of the planet for some stupid item he needed. Well I found it and gave it to him when his ship arrived and..."

Sakko stopped there and closed his eyes.

"And?"

Sakko gulped before saying, "He abandoned me. He said I failed him too many times and he also felt I was no use of him anymore."

Mandarin froze.

"You...you can't be serious..." He mumbled.

"And when I tried to create my own plan to takeover Shugazoom but well when you saw me in prison I guess you can assume what happened with that." Sakko said, laughing a little at the end.

But he then stopped laughing and looked down.

Mandarin didn't know what to say, he felt surprisingly guilty for him.

"But yeah that's where I've been." Sakko muttered.

The two didn't say anything for a while, not knowing what to say or what to do next.

"Sakko I...I'm sorry that happened." Mandarin muttered.

Sakko looked up at him, confused.

"Why are you sorry? You had nothing to do with this, heck you were the one possibly in prison before me, you were even worse off."

"No, that was a pretty horrible thing he did."

"True but…"

The two then went silent again. Now knowing where they've been and how much pain the two have been in, the two ex-villains didn't know what else to do. Sakko sat back down.

"So...now what do we do? We obviously can't work for Skeleton King again, you not being evil anymore and I can't go back because it wouldn't be right."

"Yes after what the path of evil has done to us why should we go back to it? All it caused us in the end is pain and-" Mandarin was then interrupted by Sakko.

"Homelessness?"

Mandarin nodded, they have no where else to go now. Shugazoom would be knee-deep in fear of just the sight of them, so living there was out of the question. Other planets have heard of their evil deeds and would refuse refuge to them. They have the mall to live in for now but after the war if the Hyperforce wins, people will start to come back here and the two would be forced to escape. So where else could they go?

"So… I guess we can both agree to never be evil again?" Sakko asked.

"Unless Skeleton King brainwashes us then yes of course."

Sakko sat down and began to kick his legs back and forth.

"We also can't go to the Hyperforce...I mean I can't because I have no purpose there. I'm not a fighter unlike you." Sakko said.

"That's true, but Gibson's not much of a fighter either but he has a lot of purpose on the team."

"Scientist of the team, I know I know." Sakko huffed.

"You can design battle armor...bikini battle armor." Mandarin grumbled looking down.

Sakko groaned.

"Not this again! It does not look like a bikini Mandarin!" Sakko argued, motioning towards the buff monkey's armor.

"It does! Look at this and try to tell me that it does not look like a woman's bathing suit!" Mandarin yelled, pointing to his body.

"It doesn't! I swear it doesn't look like a bikini Mandarin it looks like-"

"Well what does it look like then?" Mandarin asked, crossing his arms.

Sakko began to answer but he paused, looked at Mandarin's amour more closely, then he looked horrified.

"You see?!"

Sakko placed a hand on his forehead, trying to digest his design mistake, but he then snapped out of it.

"I swear I didn't mean for it to look like a bikini Mandarin. I was trying to make it look tough." He said.

"Really?" Mandarin asked, not buying it.

"Yes of course."

"Because nothing is more fearful than an overly muscular monkey in a bikini. Well not fearful...just creepy. " Mandarin muttered.

Sakko glared.

"Then pray tell why aren't you demanding me to find a way for you to be your normal self?" He asked.

Mandarin paused and thought for a moment.

"Because I guess in a way...I don't want to part with this body." He said.

"...Huh?" Sakko asked, frowning.

"Well I mean even though it's extremely difficult to move sometimes, I sometimes miss being small, my fingers are too big for buttons, and as you saw earlier tonight I can't fit through doors." Mandarin complained.

Sakko nodded, understanding his complaints. However he still didn't get Mandarin's statement. Mandarin then looked down at his hands and his expression turned solemn.

"Despite those complaints though I've actually grown to appreciate this form. It's not just that I can find a lot of great uses...like a lot of great uses but I've also grown attached to it."

In a way Sakko got what he was saying, Mandarin's gotten used to it and he's actually enjoying his body.

"Actually when I was put in prison I was curious if they would do something so that I would no longer look like this. You would think Skeleton King would revert me back to how I used to be because he would think I don't deserve this power." Mandarin said before he scoffed.

"I guess he thought that looking like this was a form of punishment."

"Maybe in a way…" Sakko muttered.

Mandarin then stared off into the distance.

"However I don't think that this is a punishment. At least for me."

He placed a hand on his chest.

"This body is mine, and I refuse to ever be ashamed of it." He said.

How was Sakko supposed to respond to that? That was extremely confident of him and all he could do was just sit there!

"T-that is...pretty inspirational of you." He finally said.

Mandarin frowned at bit at his comment.

"I'm only saying what I was thinking Sakko, I wasn't trying to inspire people or anything." He said

He sat back a little and smiled.

"However if my words do happen to inspire someone then I suppose it's a good thing."

Sakko hopped up onto his shoulder.

"So now what?" He asked.

Mandarin began to think.

"Well I've been thinking, we might need to prepare if my clone and his army just happen to show up." He said.

"Eh? Why would he come all the way here?" Sakko asked.

"You'd never know. Either to claim territory or for some other reason."

"Hmm okay I'll give you that but what can we do? I highly doubt that there's a weapon store around here for us." Sakko pointed out.

Mandarin nodded. They had no supplies to make any armor or weapons with besides power tools, so what could they do besides rely on what missiles he had left and his sword? Sakko began to think.

"Maybe there's something in the staff rooms we can use!" He said hopping down.

Mandarin frowned and began to follow him.

"Yes my clone will tremble in the face of staplers." He muttered.

"After what I'll do to them he just might!"

Body positive Mandarin and precious baby Sakko are important to me.

See you in the next chapter!