Alright, chapter three.

Most of the action will take place in the second part, but I'm going to fit a couple fights I have planned into this part so it isn't so… blah.

Anyway, you're not here to listen to me ramble, so let's get started.

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Who Made Who?

Part 1: The Death Of What Used To Be

Chapter 3: My Jekyll Doesn't Hide

"Condemned To Violence, Arrested By Pain
Inside The Soul Lies A Man Insane
Conceived In Anger, Addicted To Hate
The Mutant Child Of A Twisted State

Beware The Contradiction
Beneath The Crimson Void
'Cos In The World Of Fiction
My Jekyll Doesn't Hide"

- Ozzy Osbourne

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Sheldon stared at the closed locker, no closer to opening it than he was several minutes ago.

They were getting better, he'll give them that. This time there was less evidence that someone had opened the locker before him. The small piece of tape he left in place at the end of everyday was ripped and the tumbler for the lock had been moved.

He entered the combination and hesitated before raising the handle, curious to what prank was awaiting him today.

"Hey, Sheldon, how's it going?"

Without looking away, he shrugged, "Trying to figure out what's in store for me today."

Knowing all too well what he meant, Brad instinctively took several steps back. Sheldon took a deep breath and raised the handle.

'So far, so good,' he thought.

Quickly swinging the door open, he slid to the side as a large mound of mud tumbled onto the floor, an avalanche of worms following shortly behind.

With no explosions or similar dangers, Brad approached cautiously and crouched to investigate.

"Worms?"

Sheldon nodded, "They must be losing interest. I can deal with worms."

"What do you wanna bet it was Don Prima?" Brad asked, wiping his hands on his pants while he rose back to his feet.

"Too messy for him. Probably Richard or Brent, under his orders."

"Is it always worms?"

"More often than not," he answered.

Sheldon adjusted his footing and gently slid the pile of mud and wriggly worms aside while they attempted to coil themselves around one of his laces.

"That's rough, even for them," Brad said, crossing his arms, "How're your books?"

Not having the foresight to fill his books with the mud, the covers had endured most of the abuse. Nothing some elbow grease and soap couldn't get rid of.

"The books should be fine, I'll just take off the covers for now. First class is P.E., so all I'll need is my gym bag."

As he went to grab the bag, a loud vibration came from the open pouch. Looking at each other out of confusion, they both shrugged. Sheldon slowly reached in and carefully lifted the flap. A large snake lunged through the opening, causing him to stumble backwards and shout as he fell. Everyone in the hall turned and looked toward them.

Instantly he jumped to his feet and slammed the locker closed, putting his back to the door and sliding down it.

Brad had backed to the opposite side of the hall and kept his arms held in front of him.

"Did you happen to see what color it was?" Sheldon asked between breaths.

Unable to speak, Brad shook his head.

With a heavy sigh, he stood and put in his combination again. Taking another deep breath, he quickly opened the door and grabbed the snake in mid strike.

"Impressive reflexes, hombre."

Sheldon lifted the snake from the bag and looked it over, starting with it's tail. The snake had began to vibrate it's tail once it felt threatened and continued doing so. The red, black, and white colors repeated themselves over it's entire body and became thinner the closer it came to the tail.

"Is that thing poisonous?" Brad asked.

"Red on black, friend of Jack," Sheldon said as he loosened his grip, "Red on yellow, kill a fellow."

Brad looked over the colors and nodded, "So, it's not poisonous?"

"Yeah, it's a harmless King snake. They must have gotten him confused with a Coral snake."

"That's borderline murder…"

"As always," he said as he set it down and let it slither away, "They don't think ahead."

Brad leaned back and watched it continue into the girl's bathroom, "You're just going to let it go?"

Sheldon shrugged and further inspected the bag, "Why should I be the only one having an interesting morning?"

Muffled screams came from the bathroom as it's inhabitants began running out, shouting that a monster was inside.

"I think we should go."

Sheldon closed his locker and nodded, "Good idea."

Doing their best to not attract the attention of the group that began to huddle around the doorway, they turned down the first hall they came to and kept going.

"So, have you seen Jenny yet?"

Sheldon shook his head, "Nope."

"That's two days in a row," Brad said, "I wonder what's wrong."

"It's probably nothing."

"No, Jenny never misses more than one day at a time. I'm gonna ask Ms. Wakeman what's up. You should come with so I don't have my soul taken away..."

"Can't," he answered, doing his best to keep the tone of his voice level, "I've got some errands to run after school."

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The drone arrived in roughly the same condition. Give or take a few missing parts.

The docking protocol was almost finished, a handful of uninformed workers making the simple procedure take much longer than needed.

"Alright, you can get off now."

Standing to it's full height, it ducked through the airlock of the drone, it's size making the ship creak as it dropped to the floor of the hangar. The guards had already slung their rifles from their shoulders and stepped back while it reached into the cockpit, never taking it's yellow eyes from them.

After a moment of fumbling through the interior, it grasped the weapon and pulled it through the opening.

They quickly raised their rifles and began to shout orders.

"Disarm, immediately!"

A blink was the reply.

The commanding officer stepped forward and flipped a switch on the side of his rifle, causing it to make a whirring noise.

"This is your final warning!"

Gripping the weapon, it's eyes began to change. The yellow iris appeared to glow as the sclera darkened to a pitch black. Thin lines began to appear, starting below the eyes and continuing under it's jumpsuit, becoming visible on the forearms and hands.

A look of terror crept over them as they turned to their commanding officer. Unable to speak, he began to fire, the rest of the squad following.

The beams hit their mark, doing little more than annoy the beast at which they fired. Raising it's own weapon, it fired, the pulses hitting their targets. Each shot that landed on the guards sent them flying, tumbling backwards until they met the resistance of the steel wall behind them.

With the rest of his men defeated so easily, his resolve crumbled, making his knees tremble and ultimately give way. His rifle tumbled out of his grip and landed on the floor with a loud thud.

Accepting his defeat, he did little more than stare up at the hulking form of his impending doom.

The sound of the blast doors sliding open caught their attention and a group of higher ranked soldiers walked in, running toward them.

The creature spun and leveled it's weapon, causing them to halt.

Stepping forward the leader began to reach inside her trench coat. Now it raised the rifle, signaling for her to stop.

Raising her left hand, she pulled a device from an interior pocket and quickly scrolled through it until she found what she was looking for.

"Tidas, I presume," she said as she extended the device, "We are here to escort you-"

She paused as it took the device and tossed it, the shattering sound echoing in the large, empty room.

"To Queen Vexus," she continued, "If you'll lower your weapon and come peacefully, we will lead you to her."

After looking over the group awaiting it's decision, Tidas exhaled, the color draining from it's eyes until back to the original. The lines began to dissolve and it slung the large weapon onto it's shoulder and started to the doorway.

Looking from her destroyed communicator to the traumatized guard, she adjusted her cap and turned to follow.

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Just when it seemed the day couldn't get any worse, it did.

Granted it was the same torture he was accustomed to, but today was different. It seemed to bother him more than it would have any other day.

But now he was sitting at his usual lunch table, his tray pushed aside, the Anti-Matter shield disassembled and awaiting reassembly.

'I don't know what I was thinking,' he thought, setting aside the rather large box that originally contained it while dropping the device's internals into an obsolete and somewhat bulky mp3 player he'd had in wrist case at the bottom of his locker.

In order to fit it he had to create a new circuit board roughly the size of the power cell he'd used, but it was still compact enough to fit together.

"Now to solder the connections in," he said as he picked up his cold heat soldering iron and slid the rest of the parts and tools into his bag.

Father away, but not far enough, Don Prima was having a delightful conversation with another of the school's outcasts.

"So, Daisy was it?" he began, "I am not pleased. Can you guess why that is?"

She nervously shook her head, the glasses she wore taking a moment more to stop, "N-no, I mean, I haven't a clue."

He sighed, "Here I am, sitting at the second best table, while I have to look across the room and see the nerd brigade hogging the best one for themselves."

"It's not fair," a dark haired boy beside him said, "Almost like you forgot your place."

"Thank you, Brent, I was just getting to that."

"We were here first, so," Daisy said, her wavering voice doing little to intimidate her targets.

"I was afraid of that," Don said with a sigh.

Tiff began to rise from the table, causing Daisy started to step back, "You want me to clobber her, Don?"

Britt pulled her cousin back to the table, "Let us not meddle with the actions of the less civilized."

Don nodded, "Right you are. So, Brent, why don't you go reclaim our table and make an example?"

The dark haired boy nodded and stood from the table, sights set on Daisy.

"W-why d-d-don't you just take the table?" Daisy asked, still backing away, "We can move if you w-want it that bad!"

Brent shook his head and swung his fist back, "It's a little late for that."

Daisy covered her face as he came towards her.

Sheldon quickly moved between them and held his hand out.

Brent's jaw dropped as his fist stopped and became halted in a blue force field that emanated from his wrist. Sheldon glared back at him through the shield that held the attacker still, his face tinted by the blue color.

The entire table Brent had just left stared in confusion at the sight they were witnessing. Daisy peeked through her hands and witnessed the same sight everyone in the lunch room had.

The battery having been depleted, the shield disappeared, releasing the dumbstruck attacker to stumble forward.

Sheldon reeled backwards and swung as hard as he could.

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Nora sighed and leaned back in her chair, the frustration slowly building up inside her.

All of XJ-9's backup drivers were mixed up with thousands of her personal files when the computer was restored. She had mistakenly reset the computer to a time before she catalogued all of the drivers in the XJ partition, so they were renamed and sorted in with the entire contents of her drive.

An hour of searching had proved fruitless with less than a percent of the files organized.

She rubbed her tired eyes, the hour of staring at a computer screen affecting her more than it should have, that being a large part of her work.

The sound of clanking on the laboratory floor caused her to spin in the chair, "How's the body treating you?"

Jenny blinked and looked it over in the mirror, "It's not so bad."

Instead of the light blue and silver her previous body was, this one was grey. The rockets, lasers, and all other weapon systems were either disabled or not installed, along with several amenities such as night vision and turbine travel.

It seemed well built and pretty sturdy, but none of it helped her memory return.

"I'm glad I held onto the old thing," she said while resuming her search, "Nonetheless, it's only temporary. As soon as your old body is finished we'll switch you back."

She continued looking into the mirror. Her head was the first part repaired, her pigtails and face standing out amongst the dull body. She reached out to touch the mirror, but instead focused on her metal arm.

"How long until it's finished?"

She shrugged, "It shouldn't be more than a day or so, I have the machines running at double efficiency."

"And what about my memory?"

She paused for a moment, then continued searching, "That's… another problem. Your systems were set to wirelessly back up your files to my computer, but I'm having trouble finding it."

"When you find it, will reinstalling it make me remember the accident?"

She nodded, "With the damage done to your body in the crash, I had no idea the amount of data that had been corrupted. So, I thought it would be best to do a complete restoration. Everything would be reinstalled and you'd even remember things that you'd long since forgotten."

"What do I do until then?" she asked, growing tired of her reflection.

"Just wait, I'll find them soon enough. The world can take care of itself until then."

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Another one finished, pretty good cliffhangers on the first couple story-archs, so we'll call it a day here.

Gonna move on to a few older stories, so I'll work on the next chapter when I get a chance.

Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed.