The exciting continuation is here! I still have no idea where this plot came from, but I'll take it. Thank you to everyone who has reviewed this story, it means a lot. I hope this chapter answers a few of your questions (and raises more).

Disclaimer: I still don't own any of this, nor am I making profit in anyway (except emotionally) from this story.

Otto was worried. This wasn't an unusual occurrence, he worried about plenty of things on a regular basis (like whether or not his Quantum Jalapino Electronic Geoamplifier would disrupt the space/time continuum enough for reality to warp too much that it becomes cheese-less, or even if they had enough jawbreakers to last them through the month) but this time he was genuinely worried that something really, really bad was happening to his teammates.

The not-Nova was learning, it had already assessed that they knew that it knew that they knew it wasn't the real Nova, and was trying to make them think they were crazy for doubting it. They weren't crazy though--it had gone too soft at the end of the sparring session to be the real Nova (but he had to admit, before that it was doing a pretty good job, they must have really studied up before coming here). He was left to conclude that it was indeed still a pod-person. The question then became, what was it going to do now? Would it speed up its plans to replace them with pod-people and then use their real bodies as egg sacks? Or would it try to lull them back into a false sense of security?

He wasn't going to let it trick him again though. No matter how Nova-like it acted, he wasn't going to fall for its tricks.

He was shuffling along the hall wall, inching his way toward Sprx's room in an effort to re-group and re-strategize. The not-Nova was in there though. He was staying in the shadowed part of the hall and tried to keep his covert position until that impostor left.

"So..." Sprx intoned, dragging the syllable out.

"So." Nova was not as procrastinating.

Nova and Sprx were sitting in the pilots room, her with an annoyed and vengeful air, and he with a frightened and anticipatory one.

"What exactly were you thinking when you had Gibson and Otto attack me?" she asked. It was an on-going investigation, and so far she was not liking what she had found out.

"Well, I didn't make them attack you, it was all Otto's idea, really. We were all just really concerned about you because you've been acting kind of weird lately an--"

"I told you, I can be happy."

"I know, I know," the pilot quickly backpedaled. "I'm not saying you can't, I'm just saying that it's a little, uh, different than what we're used to. And you know how much we care about you, so we were brainstorming on what was going on--"

"Did it never occur to any of you that I was happy that Skeleton King is now and forever dead, the War is over, and we're all alive?"

"Well...no."

She gave him The Look. The Look basically indicated how stupid she thought he was and was usually followed by a swift beating of some kind. She punched him in the shoulder. Hard.

"Ow." Sprx rubbed his abused joint and looked poutingly at the monkey across from him.

"Well, you got your wish, Sparky. I am no longer happy."

"I didn't say we were trying to make you unhappy--"

"Then why did you try and attack me?"

"I didn't."

"You knew they were waiting there--you lead me to them. That's just as bad."

"I'm sorry, okay? I was just worried and then Otto came up with the pod-person theory and it sort of made sense and it's not like it'd be the weirdest thing that'd ever happened to us. I just got caught up in it all."

Nova glared at the red monkey some more as he coward in guilt.

"I really am sorry. It's just...weird to have you all happy to see me all the time and to not pound me into paste when I make some stupid comment. It's not bad, just not normal. I know you love me and everything, but it's still weird."

The glare didn't let up.

"How did you even hear about pod-people enough to think that I was one?"

"Oh, uh, some magazine article or documentary or sitcom or something, I think."

Nova gave a little growl of discontent and annoyance (which was actually kind of sexy, in Sprx's opinion, not that he'd ever tell her that (well, maybe, in the right place and if she seemed to be sort of in the mood to take it correctly)).

"Don't let it happen again," she warned. She leaned over and gave him a light kiss on the cheek before stalking out of his room to continue her interrogations.

Sprx watched her leave with a confused and dazed expression before sighing and simply titling this whole episode under the "Girls Are Crazy" category.

Otto peeked into his room a few minutes later; he was plastered against the wall and frantically searching the area for any more signs of "the enemy."

"Psst...Sprx! Hey, Sprx!" Otto whispered from the doorway.

"What?" the red monkey asked, never looking up from his search for...something, in the large mess that dominated the room.

"Did she get ya?"

"What?" Sprx paused momentarily to stared confusedly at his teammate for a moment.

"Did she get ya? She's a tricky one all right, almost had us fooled--but there is no way that's Nova."

Sprx continued to gape at the green monkey in astonishment (at the level of sheer insanity he had reached). "You're crazy," he finally said and continued to rummage around his room.

"That can't be Nova," Otto continued. "She's far too nice and scary."

"That's pretty much what Nova is," Sprx retorted.

"Well yeah, but not to the level it is. It knows we're onto it now, so it's trying harder. But don't worry, it's not going to fool us again."

"Otto," Sprx sighed. "There is no pod-person. That really is Nova, she's just really happy because the War is over and life is good right now."

"No, that's what it wants you to think. The real Nova would never be happy without something to kick around."

"I'm pretty sure that's what she keeps me around for..."

"No! You see--Oh my stars," Otto suddenly gasped.

Sprx turned around to see what might have caught the mechanics attention and was confronted with the green monkey gaping at him.

"What?" Sprx asked.

"Y-you've been--you're--" Sprx never heard the end of the sentence. Otto turned and ran off before he ever answered the pilot, leaving his comrade in even more confusion than when the conversation had started.

"Now, what was I looking for?" Sprx asked himself. "Eh, I'll remember later."

Otto ran full speed toward Gibson's lab, trying to muffle his screeches as he went.

"Gibson!" Otto burst into the lab. He startled the scientist into knocking over a few chemicals he was standing next to and spilling them all over the counter.

"Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear," Gibson muttered as he tried to wipe up the chemicals and save all the paper they were leaking on at the same time.

"Gibson, it's an emergency!" Otto yelled and began dancing around the blue monkey.

"What?" Gibson momentarily stopped his frantic cleaning and looked at the excited monkey.

"Sprx has been turned into one of them."

"What?" the blue monkey was even more baffled now.

"Sprx! He's been turned into a pod-person! He's not acting like Sprx!"

"Are you still on about this? Really Otto, this whole thing is exceedingly ridiculous and utterly impossible."

"It's true. He was just cleaning his room. And it was right after not-Nova left it. They've got him!"

"...While I admit that such a phenomenon is very unusual it doesn't mean that he is no longer Sprx. Perhaps he has had some sort of revelation in hygienics? Or Nova put him up to the task?"

"No! He's been taken and replaced with a pod-person!" Otto was becoming agitated now. He looked on the verge of tears, his face was red and he couldn't speak at normal volume.

"Otto, there is no such thing as a body snatcher or pod-person or anything of the like."

"But--" The lab exploded in a mist of dark grey before the argument could continue. Otto and Gibson stumbled out, hacking away the exhaust that had suddenly filled their lungs.

"Th-they're--they're try--trying ta--to ki--kill--us," Otto wheezed in between coughs. "Know--t-too--mu-much!"

The explosion had caused a stir among the other inhabitants of the Robot and sent them all searching for the origin of the noise. Antauri,Chiro, Nova, and Sprx all came racing into the Common Room and found the two monkeys still trying to clear their lungs out. They acted without command and pulled Gibson and Otto further away from the smoke storm emanating from the lab. Sprx hit the airlock vents which began sucking the toxic fumes out of the Robot.

"Are you all right?" Nova asked Otto; she leaned down and began rubbing his back in a comforting gesture.

Otto squirmed back away from her with a look of fear in his eyes.

"Otto?" Chiro asked. He tried the same tactic and got slightly better results of the green monkey just taking deep breathes in his rough wheeze. "You okay?"

Otto nodded then shook his head and refused to make eye contact with either Sprx or Nova.

"What happened?" Antauri demanded.

"D-don't know," Gibson said. His voice was rough and it severely hurt to talk.

"Know t-too much," Otto said.

The four healthy members of the Hyperforce looked at each other in confusion before shrugging and deciding they'd deal with it later. They had to take care of the two unfortunate smoke-filled monkeys at the moment.

Once everything was all taken care of, Gibson and Otto were prescribed bed rest and plenty of water as a recovery process.

Otto took his gratefully and passes out. He awoke a few hours later to the sound of conspiratorial whispering a little ways away from him. It frightened him more than the explosion had.

"What are we going to do now?" not-Nova said. "We've failed to annihilate the problem."

"We have to proceed ahead of schedule then," a voice that sounded like Sprx's replied.

"We'll just have to be more careful from now on. He could ruin everything."

"Don't worry about him," a new voice broke in--it sounded almost like Gibson's but only if the voice had been run through a wood chipper and then burned. It had to be the pod-person's true voice. "I'll keep him busy long enough that he won't even have time to think about interfering."

If his throat hadn't felt like sandpaper at the moment, Otto would have screamed and made a run for it. This was just too much. His friends were slowly being replaced by evil pod-versions of themselves. He had to put a stop to this. But who could he trust? What if they got to Antauri and Chiro before he could warn them? Worse, what if they had already gotten to Antauri and Chiro since he'd been put to sleep?

It was final then, he would just have to do this on his own.

He'd play along for awhile, but then, when they least expected it, he'd strike and show them that no one messes with the Hyperforce on his watch.

He began to drift off once more and the voices faded into unintelligible murmurs, and few (evil) snickers.

"Do you think it'll work?" Sprx asked. He was having a hard time reminding himself not to burst into laughter at the situation.

"It has to," Gibson rasped. His throat felt much like Otto's (but he could never never even contemplate giving up speaking long enough, even to help his voice heal quicker).

"There's only one way we'll know for sure," Nova said. Her smile was of a special evil-not-Nova style as she thought about the Master Plan set before them. She too, allowed a few snickers to escape between her lips.

"He's smarter than he appears," a new voice broke into the conversation.

"Yes, but that doesn't mean he isn't a gullible sap at times, Antauri," Sprx said.

"We'll know for sure in a few hours, either way. Time to commence stage B."

Every monkey's smile in the room (save Otto's) turned to match evil-not-Nova's.