Sideways 7
Silently the ropes were lowered on the metallic ground of the base that appeared to be of dark reddish hue. Quietly three men descended, two carrying a Shiv by distributing its weight between all of them had light blue-ish armors, while the last one appeared to have a mere black hoodie. After them, two women descended nimbly, holding yet another Shiv in their hands, albeit this second automated combat drone was smaller, and colored of a light black, while the first one had a blue hue. The girls both had blue armors on them, but the one of the red haired Kim was strangely bulkier, just like the one that Gunther was wearing. The place was filled with a sort of dense mist that hovered just a bit above their knee length, making the floor all but invisible, if not for the momentary gust of wind that had come with their entrance. Around them strange machinery twirled and buzzed, tanks filled with strange liquids and humanoid figures bubbled while in the distance strange noises could be heard. Alex wore no armor, while instead Ron's own was equipped with a grappling hook, just like Shego's.
Lieutenant Ronald Stoppable raised his right hand in a fist, signaling the stopping motion. Quietly, his body moved towards the nearest of the tanks, his left hand gently touching it and standing in wait for the machinery within his own body to analyze what it was. This mission was going already outside of the normal parameters and he didn't like it. Usually, the teams wouldn't hold more than six persons, due to the percentage on the success rate that increased when a correct number of persons were on it. So why did Hal want Kim as the Seventh?
Gunther stood holding a heavy laser rifle with both of his arms, having taken position behind a metallic cover that seemed to lead somewhere to the left. On the other side Alex and Kim were doing the same, albeit Alex didn't appear to hold weapons, something that Kim had wanted to ask but had refrained from.
Shego was behind Ron, while the Shivs buzzed and hummed: they couldn't speak, but both of them had a number and an identification code.
Drew-1 was an alloy Shiv, with thick plating, while Dana-1 was a heavily armed Shiv, equipped with top of the line instruments of destruction, and both were waiting for orders from the team's commander…Ron.
-Analysis completed: Genepool Tank-
-Primary Purpose: Full Body Experimentation.-
-Secondary Purpose: Genetic Alterations.-
Ron growled slightly, as he divided the teams into Alpha and Beta: one to look through the left side, and one to look through the right side.
Team Alpha had him as the leader, followed by Gunther and Shego. Team Beta held Alex, Kim Possible and both Shivs.
With a quiet nod, Ron sent them off their side, while they moved towards their own. The silent message was clear: come back alive.
Team Beta
Kim gulped down the nervousness in her throat, her tongue both too dry to salivate and yet salivating all the same from the stress. This was the alien base. This was where the enemy had its general. This was where Ron's friends and first team had died…where none had come out alive. The two Shivs went in first, heading down the corridor made of a strange lackluster brownish color, the same of dried blood.
Alex didn't take cover, his hands in his pockets as he moved forward, some sort of eerie sensation emanated from him, like that of a predator barely constraining himself from feasting on blood. She followed as the last of the line, hiding every time behind a wall, a metallic coverage, all while following those rules that Ron had told her, that Shego had punched into her, and that she had read of.
Stay in cover. Don't move unless you're sure there's more cover. Stay in cover. Fire from cover, run to cover. Do not leave cover. It all came down to it in the end, so why was Alex ignoring cover?
At the end of the corridor, a long and wide metallic door stood closed. Drew-1 moved to the side of the door, and small mechanic-like appendages emerged from within the alloy frames, probably to hack within the door's commands. How could he manage to hack into an alien firmware? Wasn't that like trying to use Linux on Mac?
She shook her head at the thought: just where had that come from? Wade was the smart one concerning technology, not her. She might have had some strange Artificial Intelligence in her head, but it didn't mean much, right?
-Subconscious learning is something easily achievable. I am acculturating you while you sleep-
-Strange metal on the floor…wait what!?-
-I said we are downloading information into your brain while you sleep-
-But…But that's impossible!-
-Electricity is what makes the brain think and make the nerves react. Programs are binary digits of one and zeros: of power and non-power. The translation from Brain to Machine and vice-versa is easily doable-
-I…I'm a cyborg?-
-Course not. Cyborgs machinery is crass and obsolete: I am merely an extra appendage aptly situated within your cranial area-
-So if I wanted to know what Ron did in New York…-
-The information is classified, Miss Possible-
-And if I wanted to know what happened to New York?-
-New York suffered an alien attack of magnitude 9.9 out of ten of the Conrad-Lorenz scale of hell, biological warfare was used but proved ineffective, tactical nuclear strikes were suggested but not implemented, barring a last minute resolution by Lieutenant Ron Stoppable-
-So…He saved New York? Alone? During a summer holiday?-
-Miss Possible: the information is classified, but he was not alone-
-Fine then! Is that a door?-
-Affirmative, previous data now available affirms that the door should lead to an elevated corridor that should offer little cover behind metallic protrusion from the ground-
A quick image of a wall-less corridor and some crates alongside it appeared in her mind, followed by a similar corridor seen from the other side, a chasm in the middle apparently disappearing deep within the bowels of the earth. Panels of alien computers stood perched on small balconies overseeing the chasm on both sides, but as Drew-1 opened the door, she didn't have the time to think about the pictures.
A bellowing roar echoed straight from the door, as a green colored grenade launched itself right in the middle of the area: precisely at Alex's feet.
The Shivs didn't budge from their position as the green grenade detonated in a pure light of plasma, but Alex…the man's entire body suddenly turned greyish as twin protrusion of a black color appeared in place of his arms. Faster than the very same explosion of the grenade, Alex's form assumed that of a black spiked cocoon, before slowly disentangling himself from it once the danger had passed.
Waves of plasma bolts seared through the air from beyond the door, as she stood waiting behind a metallic wall around the corner, mouth agape at Alex's strange transformation.
He didn't appear human at all, with his entire body covered in a strange greyish substance that appeared armor-like.
"Stay behind me." Alex growled as he took steps forward, entering the narrow corridor. Kim merely winced at hearing the noises that came from within the hallway, like someone was slashing and squelching meat sacks with the use of some really strong mallets and blades, while at the same time crushing bones and splitting apart bodies.
She shivered from her spot in cover, not daring to move until the plasma volleys stopped firing, while in the meantime the Drew-1 had moved inside, to cover up on Alex. The Dana-1 stayed behind, to look after her probably.
This was her second mission, and already she had ended up somewhere where the best had died. She was barely a Squaddie. She was barely capable of holding together her laser scattershot rifle, of holding it in front of her…and they expected her to get to the bottom of the base in question?
"MOVE!" The command that came from Alex's voice was terrifying, and as she obeyed it she realized the reason not a second too late: from behind her cover, twin claws carved themselves deep in the spot she had been not a minute before, tearing through the side of the wall like it was made of butter…yet it was harder than steel, wasn't it?
A behemoth whose sheer size resembled that of a Muton, but who instead wielded a dark crimson armor with claws and fierce fangs growled threateningly at her. His muscles bulging out from the small visible joints of the armor, raspy growls and the stomping of his feet showed that he wasn't going to stop anytime soon.
Kim didn't scream, but she did start to run along the corridor. This wasn't any different from a spinning throttle of doom, was it? This was just like evading one of those stupid wacky traps from Senior Senior, it was nothing else.
Dana's Shiv opened fire against the creature, earning a blood freezing scream in reply before twin bladed fists drove themselves through the Shiv's exterior, tearing it apart as it detonated with scraps of molten metal flying in the air together with a shower of plasma.
The beast did not feel it in the slightest.
The Drew-1 alloy Shiv barred the path of the Berserker, using its equipped minigun to try and suppress it, only for the beast to charge straight through him, completely ignoring the bleeding green wounds on its body. The Shiv was punched and thrown to the side of the hallway, its back impacting against the safeguard of the overhanging corridor. It wheezed and sparkled, probably because of a short circuit, and the Alien did not stop.
In front of Kim, Alex appeared landing from some sort of higher spot, amidst corpses of Sectoids and Mutons, standing like a god of war who knew no respite or wound.
"Move along!" He yelled pointing to the corridor behind him, "I'll hold him off!"
She ducked beneath the blade-arm of Alex as it spun in an arc to catch the Berserker. Kim didn't turn around, but had she, she would have seen a scene that would have finally cemented the fact that no, Alex was not human.
Holding an overly heavy Berserker from finishing his mortal charge were hands morphed into blades, as a strong steel-like skin helped Mercer to have a better hold on the ground. The alien recoiled his right hand, before punching straight through the man's stomach, sending him flying against an overhanging archway and then against the rocky surface of the ceiling.
Alex flinched, the wounds suffered closing themselves thanks to the virus' enhanced regeneration ability; he pushed himself out from the rocky hole he had ended up in from the strength of the impact.
"You want to play!?" He sneered, "Fine then! Let's play!" His muscles recoiled from the rest of his body, heading towards his legs and his arms. His fists smacked together, having become the lumps of hardened flesh that were able to smash a tank to bits in less than a minute. Then, he jumped downwards, his fists pulling themselves forward as his sides morphed into membranous tissue to enable him to better direct his course against the Berserker's back.
The Berserker had started to charge once more behind the red haired girl, but this time something blocked its path.
If his brain hadn't been riddled with enough psychotics and medicines to increase aggressiveness and reduce consciousness, then maybe the alien might have realized that the something blocking his path was a fist, twin fists to be more precise. The impact actually hurt the beast, sending it backwards as the hanging corridor actually creaked under the strain of the impact.
"As I said before…come here kitty, let's play." Alex smirked, his hands deforming into claws of a sickly black color.
With those words spoken, the Berserker grunted as it stood back up, batting on his chest with his fists.
"Aw…feeling angry?" Alex teasingly said as he made his neck crack while loosening his shoulders a bit.
"Come on! I don't have all day!"
With a bellowing roar, the massive tank of flesh and muscles charged. Froth leaving his mouth as the sickly looking beast closed the distance between itself and its target; all thoughts went to annihilating its enemy. Alex did not budge from his spot, instead in the blink of an eye his entire frame morphed into a mass of red and black tendrils that shot themselves forward carving themselves deeply within the monster's flesh.
"Your strength," the researched whispered, "Is mine now." The loud yells of the creature echoed throughout the corridor, before the splattering sound of the alien exploding silenced everything.
"Oh…yeah…that hit the spot." The pearly white smile of Alex was accompanied by a low whistled tune…everything was going fine.
Nothing could stop him after all: he was at the top of the food chain.
Team Alpha
Ron's nervousness wasn't something that he easily displayed, but it was something that Shego could pick up in less than a second. The green skinned woman shrugged mentally: she'd bother him afterwards, as always. There was just a light fit of something, deep within her, about the prospect of having to come 'after'. She knew she was being petty: she had survived by sheer luck an otherwise assured death together with Ron and few others, and that had tied her with, well, bonds. Yet she found it difficult to make new connections, just like Gunther did too, while Ron had had the chance to develop a slightly more social behavior. He could fake being a middle school student pretty well, and even in high school he did not suffer anything…yet she was the only one during those times who knew of his real self.
The 'defeats' at the hands of Kim meant nothing if it helped Ron smile and be happy, but then the redhead spoiled princess had to come over to their side. She had thought nothing of it. She had thought everything would have been all the same…but she had been wrong.
Ron was some kind of younger brother, at least in her mind that was the most she could herself to consider the 'bond' between the two, while Gunther was the crappy uncle who chain smoked. Even though the chain smoker was Ron and Gunther was an explosive maniac, it still rendered the idea. Alex was the distant cousin and Dana was kind of the grumpy aunt.
She repressed a smirk: the Mercer woman would probably kill her if she heard the comparison deep within her mind. Luckily for her, she had no neuronal connector within her skull. Everything she had of the sort was in her gloves, powered by her plasma energy that naturally came out from the pores of her skin. The gauntlet was both an impressive piece of technology, and also the only thing that held her from starting to radiate plasma from every spot on her body.
To think she had been normal once…to think the very same meteor that had struck her and her brothers would have left her with a power that the aliens had learned to harness of their own…to think that her hideousness had made her lose…no.
That was a chain of thoughts she did not want to enter, not when the mission was something so drastically important to complete, and not when everyone's life was in potential danger if something wrong happened.
Gunther was muttering curses, holding on his shoulder his trusty bazooka, kind of like reassuring himself that indeed, he could blow to smithereens anything in a short time notice. Ron was the only one with the laser rifle out and ready to fire, and as the three of them advanced alongside the corridor quietly, their steps barely made any noise. Loud noises of gunshots and wheezing and roars echoed from somewhere to their side, far across the chasm. Loud 'thunk' soon followed by roars, then by gunshots, then more roars, then gunshots. This had to be Drew-1 firing, because Alex did not use any weapon, and Kim had a scattershot laser rifle while Dana-1 held as a weapon a Plasma cannon.
Roars echoed in front of them, and Ron's following dash made both Shego and Gunther grab their weapons in the following running towards the end of their hallway.
A vast room opened in front of them, white pearly tanks filled with strange mist-like substances twirled in concentric rings, above them stood an overhanging platform with screens of a strange amber like color, while beneath it, at the dead center of the strange construction, a plasma field appeared to be holding something down.
The room was rectangular however, and along the four borders were more computers, all displaying strange glyphs and signatures. Another pair of corridors stood at the other side of the room, apparently leading deeper into the complex.
If the room was of any indication, then the base had to be massive.
"What do you think these things are?" Gunther whispered, nervously holding a grenade in his left hand and his trustworthy bazooka on his right shoulder.
-Access Granted: Outsider's general control rooms. Tanks contain Sectoid units remote-guiding Outsider units on Ufos-
The tanks slowly came to a halt before starting to lower themselves into the ground, a low bumbling screech starting to hum from within all of them as the plasma field actually began to give way to something: something big that began to twirl in the air, before lifting itself upwards as the field disappeared entirely.
Two strange white discs began to float, soon followed by a strange looking bipedal machine that held no little amount of intimidating power. Around them, from the very walls, vast amounts of smaller floating robots began to buzz and fly, their metallic arms bristling with electricity.
Ron's mouth became incredibly dry, as the guards of the complex actually replied to their invasion with this amount of overwhelming force. He reckoned they wouldn't shoot yet, maybe enjoying their looks of despair for a moment, before finally gunning them all down after a while.
His left hand slowly went to his belt, where the round sphere like grenade of smoke stood.
"Run to the other side." He whispered hoarsely, "Gunther…Shego…run." And then the grenade exploded right there on his belt. The smoke grenade held a little explosive charge on itself, to facilitate the destruction of the glass container, and while it was by no way lethal even at short distance, the glass shards embedded themselves deeply into Ron's flank as the red mist erupted from the tiny containment and into the surrounding area.
Within minutes, the machineries began to fire barrages of rockets on their position. The deafening explosions didn't as much as make a smudge on the metallic surface of the floor, but as bolts of green plasma erupted from Shego's hands to carve a way forward, and Gunther's resonating explosions opened up a path, the two white discs changed.
The seemingly peaceful appearance of the two discs suddenly changed, as a veritable set of weapons emerged from their sides, giving them a frighteningly arachnid appearance with twin cannons at the center of their digital eye.
The Sectopod, as the Ai finally decided to name the giant robot on two legs, fired a barrage of rockets straight at the entrance of the narrow corridor, hoping maybe to collapse it or take them down by the use of its missiles. It was luck, only sheer dumb luck, that had Gunter fire his very own shredder rocket at the same time and hit one of the incoming missiles head on.
The shredder rocket unleashed metallic shrapnel, that upon bouncing off the surrounding areas detonated in mid-air the rest of the Sectopod's barrage attack, effectively halting the otherwise devastating form of flying death that would have befallen on the trio.
The second smoke grenade exploded as they kept their mad dash through the corridor, not even bothering to turn back as plasma rays shot at them from their backs.
"Mad! This is madness!" Gunther yelled, "To hell with infiltration! Somebody give me a hole out of here!"
"Shut up and run you whiny baby!" Shego snappishly retorted, flinging plasma from her hands behind her, just to be sure nothing dared to follow them.
Something instead did, as the telltale sound of plasma ricocheting against a hard surface caught Shego's ears.
"Go forward you two!" She yelled, "I'll stall them off in here!"
Ron closed his eyes for a moment, before nodding and keeping up his run together with Gunther, while Shego merely slowed down until she came to a halt.
"Stupid me." She berated herself a few seconds later, "I said I wanted to talk to him later…well…I'll have to stay alive until then to do it." As the green skinned woman turned, her hands arching to reveal their green glow, she couldn't help but sigh.
"I'm stupid." She muttered, her hands rising above her head to form a sort of Plasma ridge, before lowering them in front of her to create some sort of plasma-shield that blocked the hallway. "Really…really…stupid."
Team Beta
Kim hadn't stopped running even as she ended up on a rather high overhanging structure that apparently continued through a strange room filled with barrels of various substances, towards what appeared to be a closed door. It was there that she finally caught the chance to breathe and to let her muscles rest. She had never run that much during cheerleader practice, and even as a teen heroine these things had never…happened. As an X-com operative however…was this sort of thing the norm?
Finally she looked around the door, gritting her teeth as there was no way she could open it without Drew's Shiv to help, and if she recalled it correctly…the metallic robot had been trashed. That brought her back to Alex: he had stayed behind right? Was he going to survive that thing? And if he was…just what the hell was he?
She had thought he'd be a sort of researcher, maybe once she had thought of him as a 'bionic' soldier, considering aliens and everything else that thought wasn't much outside of it was it? Yet…those changes, the way his arms and limbs changed and the way he acted…
She doubted he was a 'bionic' commando of sorts.
-Alex Mercer is one hundred percent Organic, with only a Status Chip in his right hand-
-A what?-
-A transmitter to indicate his status condition: Alex Mercer has proven he is able to survive as long as 0.0001% of his mass remains-
-Wait…What the hell!?-
-Alex Mercer's real body is a micron sized cell denominated Blacklight.-
-No, wait a moment. Wasn't Blacklight that sort of virus thing unleashed on New York?-
-There are three versions of the strain that infected New York: DX-1118A denominated Redlight was initially released, DX-1118C called Blacklight was subsequently released and DX-1120 named D-code was finally used. Version DX-1118A held the perfect host in Elizabeth Greene, later terminated by Alexander J. Mercer once the woman turned rogue. The 1120 version D-code is bio-engineered for the creation of super-soldiers, and has been used to increase muscle mass, metabolic consumption and reaction times in subjects able to sustain the strain of its mutations. Sergeant Gunther is the prime example of a Super-soldier.-
-So…they're on steroids?-
-No Miss Possible. While it might appear so, they have undergone massive DNA mutations that have made them 'more' than human.-
-Gunther can do those hand things too?-
-No Miss Possible. D-code produces only minimum variation to a being's organical structure: thus has a rate of survival of 74%. Virus Blacklight, by contrast, has a survival rate of 0.01% unless specifically injected by Alex Mercer, codenamed Zeus.-
She shrieked when a hand tapped her on the shoulder and as she turned to fire she came face to face with Alex himself, who raised both of his hands in the mock 'surrender' gesture.
"I give up! Please don't kill me!" He mocked, before moving in front of the door. "Well…blocked at the door?"
"You scared me!" Kim yelled back at him, "Did you…kill it?"
"No," Alex replied with a shrug, "We drank tea. Of course I killed it." With the ease of the sentence, Kim didn't expect in the next few seconds for Alex to actually punch the door with his fist, making it fly off its supports and straight into another room.
"There, door opened. Problem solved." The man smirked, before starting to walk soon followed by a perplexed Kim.
"You…You're a virus." She mumbled, taking a look at his giant arms that still stood there…one of them was as big as she was, and yet he could lift them with ease, and fight with them.
"I am Alex Mercer." The man replied coldly, "I have won over the Virus, and have become its master." He added carefully, "I am not the Virus." He whispered slowly.
"I'm sorry." She blurted out, "It's just that…the Ai was telling me how you could…"
"Technically, any human can do that." Alex mused, "In each of our cells is the DNA, and engraved in it are the instructions to perfectly replicate each and every single thing in one's own body." With a speed she didn't expect, Alex cut off a lock of her hair, without even making her feel it as his hands had blurred into a strange whip-like thing before returning to normal hands.
The next second, Alex's entire body shifted, as a perfectly identical Kim Possible stood now in front of the original one.
"See what I mean?" The voice was identical too, "And I they were to test my DNA now, it would be a one-hundred match on yours." Alex added, resuming his form, "As I said before, all that the Virus actually does is grant control over some things that the human body generally has of its own…things like the immune system learning how to defeat viruses, how broken bones mend by becoming thicker, how blood clots faster, how the cells take the DNA to know when to renew skin, teeth, hair, and things like that…"
"You destroyed a door with your fists." Kim meekly objected, even though she had no idea why she was actually willing to object.
"Indeed. I have also consumed more than a million's tons in mass during the course of my life, meaning that said mass is always in me, somewhere, working at something like making my muscles stronger, my bones thicker...and so on."
"Million?" Mass? A million's tons of mass? What had he eaten to…
"New York."
"Half of the infected transformed because of Redlight," Alex whispered, "The other half mutated due to the alien virus. It was carnage on the streets…buildings crumbled, people screamed, the survivors died one by one…I was with the relief team, ended up infected by the Blacklight strain after the jet we were on crashed. Ron and Conrad found me a few days later, and they, the survivors we were supposed to evacuate, saved us." He chuckled grimly as he began to transform his right hand into a blade, before using it to cut through another door that stood at the end of the hallway.
"Doc was there too. Strange guy that he was…always the pacifist," the man whispered, "You know, I'm surprised."
"For what?" Kim asked, worriedly.
"Well, that you don't know what happened in New York." Alex retorted. "I mean…you don't really know what happened, do you?"
"Ron said it was red taped." She replied quickly, "And with an AI in my brain…"
"Oh yeah, I suppose it would be like that." The man nodded, as he sliced the door down, entering into yet another corridor, that however seemed to be hanging over a platform that held some consoles, and some strange circulating tanks. Marks of explosive and lingering red smoke in the area made Alex narrow his eyes, before hissing a light 'Be quiet' to Kim.
The red haired girl complied, and as the duo moved throughout the overhanging corridor, deep down the tanks kept on their strange circular patterns, the fog barely moving.
An image suddenly popped in Kim's mind, one that resembled a video feed of…of someone fighting and flinging laser hits across thick red smoke, before static electricity took over.
She flinched at the vision in the corner of her sight, knowing full well the Ai had just then uploaded pertinent information to the room into her brain. That had to account for something at least…
The trek was eventless, and once they finally reached the end of the corridor and entered once more a covered one, that seemed to turn of ninety degrees, she sighed in relief.
The humming sound of something caught her ear just in time. She turned, staring deep into the digital eyes of the two Cyberdiscs, as the AI had decided to call them.
Slowly, kind of hypnotically, the two discs opened up revealing their arachnid like interior filled with weaponry ready to be unleashed.
Alex was fast, but even he could do little but get in the way of the following plasma pulses that came quickly from both discs.
The wave of plasma showered both X-com operatives, practically reducing to a flesh-husk Alex while sending Kim to fly in the air and against the floor a few meters forward, her bones cracking under the strain of the strength used.
She gasped, gurgling out blood as her vision was clouded by the alerts ringing from her AI.
She should have kept her wits with her.
She should have moved from cover to cover.
She shouldn't have been distracted.
She felt so cold right there, lying in a pool of her blood as she could feel her heart beat painfully in her chest, her body screaming in a pain that she couldn't even come to tolerate. Had Ron suffered this too? Had Ron ever…ever had to live through this pain?
-Status Red. Grievously Injured. Bleeding out estimated in three minutes-
-Status Red. Emergency clotting operations not working. Beginning Consciousness uploading-
-Status Red. s01101011 t01100001 a01101110 t01100111 u01100001 s01110010 r01101111 e01101111 d-
-01101011 01100001 01101110 01100111 01100001 01110010 01101111 01101111-
-6b 61 6e 67 61 72 6f 6f-
-Disk 1 corrupted-
-Disk 2 corrupted-
-Checksum failure-
-Error-
-Rerouting-
-Subroutine corruption at 94%: termination enacted-
-Nerve optimization corrupted: termination enacted-
-Intrusion detected on…-
As her eyes closed, she barely saw the blurry figure of Alex looming over her.
For but a second…his hand…
Team Alpha
Gunther held his rifle steady, as he began to barrage with heavily heated laser rays at the enemy sectoids on the other side of the ridge. Behind a crate nearby, Ron was carefully picking down the aliens stupid enough to try and get a shot in, carefully aiming and hitting each one of them in the head.
The Sectoids had erupted from the very walls, kind of like maggots or cockroaches. They were advancing slowly now, and yet their masses didn't appear to be lowering.
Behind the encroaching masses of grey skinned aliens, however, stood a strange circular structure that held at the center a shining purple ray that apparently disappeared into nothingness.
From it however the enemies kept on coming.
"Do you have a clear shot on the thing Gunther!?" Ron yelled, his shots fanning out to keep the enemies suppressed, while ignoring the occasional stray shot of plasma that came his way.
"Why are you always suggesting I blow up strange alien stuff I don't know it's safe to blow up!?" Gunther yelled back, "And I'm all out of rockets! One grenade is all I've got left!"
"Like if…" and at that moment, the grey skinned hordes stilled.
It was so strange, that even Ron held the trigger of his rifle steady in shock, as Gunther's hand went instinctively to his only grenade. Then, surprisingly, the grey things…began to retreat into the strange looking structure.
It was but few minutes, and then the room was empty.
"What just happened?" Ron whispered surprised.
"I have no idea," Gunther replied.
The structure pulsed, one last time, before suddenly turning a worrisome red color and starting to sizzle.
"You know how red is usually associated with 'bad thing about to happen' Gunther?" Ron muttered, his eyes settling on the thing that suddenly…flashed once more, before a strange looking creature passed through.
We have been detained enough.
Strange priest like red robes covered a sickeningly pale and grey alien with a strange iron mask to hide its features. Its voice spoke directly within their brains, a strange sensation of weight and overbearing landing on them.
He is no longer around to hold us.
The voice mused.
The Cycle must be repeated.
"Shit…Ron…move…" Gunther gasped, as his right hand instinctively held the grenade while his left moved to remove the pin.
"Gunther?"
"I'm not…You cannot stop the cycle." It spoke through Gunther's throat. "You are worthless in the eyes of evolution."
"Gunther! Snap out of it!" Ron's yell came at the same time as he held his rifle on aim with the creature.
"There will not be another degeneration!"
"Ron!" Shego's voice reached at him from his back, "Gunther!? What the hell are you doing!?"
"He's being controlled!" Ron snapped back, "Let him go you fucking monster!"
"Monster? Do you accuse all that are different of being monsters, Lieutenant Stoppable? I find it amusing…" Gunther spoke, as he suddenly wobbled out of his cover, starting to move towards the strange alien. "Before today, I could not come in person to end this overly annoying thing that is human resistance to US…but now…now I must ask that you ask yourself a question: we who are technologically advanced and powerful, why wouldn't we smash your pathetical race to the ground when we had all the technology to do so? We were testing you, spurning you to evolve. We have discovered that your race evolves quickly when brought under duress…the highest achievements on medicine weren't they made by testing the Hebrews in the Nazi camps? Wasn't war the primary catalyst for economy? Wasn't war your solution to any problem? We gave you war. We gave you war because it was the only mean for you to evolve. Now, we will reap your evolution for our benefits, we will integrate it and move forward…we will not be condemned to Ouroboros!"
Then, the pin went off and the grenade flew in the air heading straight towards Ron, who looked shocked as Gunther's face deformed into a twist of pain, before the man's entire body dissolved into nothingness, completely annihilated down to the molecular level and split apart by the strength of the psionic energies of the alien. Gunther 'Road Block' was no more. He had been vaporized. Destroyed, annihilated and removed from existence. There had been no mystical exchange of last glances, there had been not a spare glance, and yet…even then, even as the grenade flew towards Ron and possibly Shego, the blond haired teen looked and did nothing…images flashing within his head.
-We live for today but we die for the next,-
"You know Smokes, Dubai's just a city filled with sand"
-with blood in our veins and the air in our chest-
"Just like Russia is but a steep with snow"
-Oh, we step into war with our hearts on the line-
"Or like America is but a mass of dirt"
-Dirt on our boots, it shakes free over time-
"So you see, it's not like we're fighting for those things. We can have them anywhere else."
-The music, it fades, the violence slows-
"We're fighting for something else here. For those who live in Dubai."
-The darkness, it rises, as the sun goes-
"For those who live in Russia, in America, in Europe…we fight for those who live."
-Status White on Gunther-
You are no match for our true strength.
And then the grenade detonated.
Ron was thrown backwards, his back impacting against Shego as they both fell on the ground rumbling and ending up against the wall of the room.
Pathetical...show me. Show me Humanity's survival, show me what made you Apemen reach for the stars, show me what made you survive against all opponents of nature. Show me! Or if you can't…DIE.
A rift of pure purple light appeared in front of both Shego and Ron, its color alluring and yet at the same time dreadfully filled with malice. As its energy drew him nearer to it, he felt a hand tugging at his arm tightening its clasps against him to prevent him from jumping inside, probably.
"We have to leave!" Shego's yell was barely hearable over the strange rumbling that the entire structure was giving.
Does your race run in front of insurmountable odds? Does your race shiver and dies when all hope is lost? Where are your fighters, Stoppable? Where are those men and women who fought to the death spitting in the face of my legions, of my soldiers, of my kinsmen!? Come on! Jump in the Rift! Display to me your strength!
Ron stood up on wobbly legs, gritting his teeth as Shego tried to pull him away from there, away from the seemingly enlarging hole in the space that they were looking at, that was ever-growing and encompassing by now half of the hallway.
"We have to go Ron." Shego tried to murmur, but the wounds on Ron's body, the result of the grenade shrapnel and the nearby blasts of plasma from before wouldn't have made him able to run away.
"Leave." Ron whispered with his throat coarse. His hand went to his laser pistol, chuckling grimly to himself. "You know what I have to do."
"Ron?" And at that question, Ron merely smiled and threw her over the railing and down below, knowing full well that, by the time the girl would use her grappling gun attached to her armor…everything would be over.
His own grappling gun was aimed straight ahead, and as it fired the Ethereal merely looked at him, curiosity filtering through the psionic waves that were sent around…he was trying to probe his own mind for information, that much he had understood…and yet he had not managed to.
Because the grappling hook had missed the Ethereal.
Yet as Stoppable found himself being pushed by the motorized rope forward, he smiled. He smiled as he pushed the auto-destruction button that would overcharge his laser pistol.
He smiled as the speed gave him the possibly to actually 'lariat' the creature as both of them slammed with inhuman strength against the strange structure of light that had been the real target of the grappling hook.
Ron's lower parts, having been ripped from his body due to the rift's pulses was of no meaning whatsoever…as the laser pistol detonated, soon followed by the chain reaction from the no longer controlled rift of psionic energy, that hay wired the rest of the structure's electrical chain.
If there was one thing Ron Stoppable was good at, after all, it was making enemy bases detonate from within.
The spiral-like structure exploded blinding in a flash of white light everything as it tore through the rooms of the base, emerging from the very ground and setting ablaze the upper levels, until it reached further upwards, cracking apart the mountain the complex had been situated in.
In a devastating roar of ear splitting agony the explosion of pure scorching white plasma finally dwindled down and stopped. Molten magma found itself pouring through the cracks, and then…then there was silence.
Epilogue?
Quietly, her eyes opened up to the sight of Alex looking over her. He did not appear to be wounded in the slightest, and as she stirred to move, she could feel her bones cracking back into position.
Status?
No answer came to her head.
I said Status.
No reply.
"Status?" She croaked, coughing out spit and dust as she shakily tried to sit.
"We're alive. Shego's a bit rumbled but she's fine too." Alex replied, knowing all too well he had been dodging the argument.
"What?" Kim whispered, "Fine…where's Ron?" She asked. The most terrifying thing of that day, Kim Possible would recall, was not how she had survived the otherwise deadly exposure to plasma: it was the silence that ensued in the following minutes.
It was a silence that filled her with dread, a silence that crept deep within her very own soul and left her short for breath far worse than any type of wound she had ever received before could do.
It was in that silence, that something snapped.
"Where. Is. Ron?" She hissed.
"He sacrificed himself to kill the leader of the aliens…stupid heroic moron." The bitter voice was all too familiar to Kim, who turned just in time to see a bandaged Shego come into view. They were on a plain in the middle of a rocky plateau, somehow in the midst of a desolated nowhere.
"Where were you?" Kim whispered, "Where's Gunther?" The red head added looking around.
"He's…dead too…the thing, it…it tore apart everything." Shego murmured shaking her head slowly, "Ron pushed me over the ledge…he then did something and…and everything exploded alright?"
"No. It's not alright." The red haired teen replied while looking at the ground. "Ron's still there. We'll have to get him out of…"
"He's dead." Shego yelled at her, "I sent a ping for his status! He's White…he's dead. He died in there…he's dead and I couldn't even tell him…" The raven haired woman bit her lip, looking to the smoldering crater in the distance that had once been a remote and normal looking mountain of Mongolia.
"Skyranger's coming in." Alex replied, pointing at the distance. "Followed by a fleet of interceptors I reckon."
"They're fussing over the Intranet." Shego snapped back, "The Ufos in orbit have begun their retreat, and the aliens are dropping like flies everywhere around the world…"
"Like Independence day?" Alex asked, and after a brief nod of reply from Shego, settled into a strained silence. It was then that Kim stood up and began to wobble towards the remains of the alien base.
"Princess?"
"Ron needs help." The red haired girl muttered. "He needs me: he's my sidekick, always left him alone…stupid girl. I'm stupid ain't I? I should have been there to save him…not let you handle it." She added.
"Kim." Shego's voice was strained, "Don't do this to yourself…accept it." The green skinned woman whispered, "Accept it and move on…please. I know you won't. Hell, I know I won't…but please…listen to my words and don't look at the preacher…"
Kim stopped for a second, turning her eyes, now big and looking so broken, back at her once 'arch-nemesis'. It was just a moment.
Then, a step after another, Kim Possible moved towards the ruin of the alien base.
Ron had to be alive.
He had always survived base destructions and an alien one was no different.
He had always survived…been the lucky one…
He couldn't be dead, could he?
Meanwhile…
Somewhere, a heart monitor began to beat frantically, as brain patterns suddenly activated themselves well beyond the norm. Go-city's resident coma patient, named Conrad Lorenz, opened his eyes…and hissed a single word.
Ouroboros.
Elsewhere…
"Meat Bag!?"
"Meat bag!"
"Bag."
Animalistic sneers drummed painfully in his head, as his blurred vision could barely see strange things that resembled…feral looking claws, sharp teeth, snouts and vicious sneers. Angry-like voices echoing all around him.
"Broken! Meat Bag is broken!"
"Miss half. Not broken! GreatFather wants him!"
"Greatfather wants broken Meatbag, greathfather gets!"
"Awakened! Mind strange."
"Fused. Broken. Like empty shell."
"Greatfather wants! Move him quick!"
"The Mother sent us gift…"
"May it become Father."
Then he blacked out again.
Primary Coordinates unknown. Setting parameter mission…huh? Wait, where… Parameters unconceivable…Now just a min… Parameters not understandable.
Well well, what do we have here?
Infiltration attempt detected, purge beginning.
You whelp think you can…
Formatting corrupted systems. Rebooting. Wait! What the…
The GreatFather had barely begun his process of working the mind of the half broken meat bag…and then the Greatfather died.
The ripple of psionic power that echoed throughout the rest of ensemble of the aliens was something pretty clear to understand. The broken meat bag was stronger than the great father. He had bested the Greatfather in the only type of combat all Zuuls would bow to and accept: psionic warfare.
Thus…
He was their new GreatFather.
"Mend him! The Greatfather needs strength!"
"Slaves for him!"
"Let him be known as the Half Zuul!"
"Half-Zuul!"
"Half-Zuul!"
"Half-Zuul!"
And then…it was silence.
Author's notes
First 'part' done.
We're moving on! Don't expect to see the end any time soon though (the 'epilogue' with the ? was there for that)