Back again! And with a new chapter, too!

Bossrunner456 - Welcome to my little corner of the multiverse! While it's good you can get an idea of what's going on, I'd suggest that you read my other works in Maria's series - you can access them via my profile page (the OneShots are extra stories that are of no consequence to the plot). As for Wily's plan, all I can say at this point is that he wants one of them for something that he's cooking up in his lab. What, I won't say until later. ;)

Now, if the title's any indication about what's going to happen...well, I'll just let you find out. Onto the chapter!

Chapter 8 - An old snakeskin

Maria looked around as she and Fire walked down the ruined road, her eyes constantly moving as she tried to search for anything that might turn into one of the many reflective "traps" that the Reploid had been warned about when she had left the base with Fire. Already, they had stumbled across a couple mirror traps that made Maria's sense of direction get a little befuddled for a moment - mostly, they were temporary mazes that could easily be knocked down, but there were a few enemies that hid behind some of the erected mirrors, which made things all the more difficult.

Maria was certain that Gemini knew they were coming, too - and Fire had confirmed it when a pair of "Mega-Metts" had jumped them with axes made of hard crystal. A couple Charged Shots ended up shattering their weapons, and their other attacks managed to take care of the rest of the threat without any sort of problem.

Now the two were just passed the battle site, even more on the alert than they had been.

Maria mentally checked the map she had downloaded before leaving from Light's base. Their target was still a decent ways away, and they had only just pierced Wily's territory. MegaMan and Elec had traveled with them for a little while before splitting off to go after BubbleMan, who was sure to be in for a shocking battle, judging from the look that had been on the electric Robot Master's face.

ProtoMan and Bass had been standing together nearby when the two teams had left, Gospel lying on the floor in front of them in what looked like a napping position. Bass looked like he had been cornered, and there was a dark glint in his eyes that Maria hadn't taken as good news. Dr. Light was nearby, as well, and it looked like he had just finished talking to them when Maria had found Fire after leaving the training area.

"Do you think there are any other enemies nearby?" Maria muttered to Fire as she looked around. Her eyes instinctively went to the rooftops, which she scanned for a moment before catching sight of movement behind broken windows on one of the upper floors. Her head turned slightly in order to see if there might have been movement on the other side, as well, but she didn't see anything that hinted at another reflective trap.

"They're always nearby," Fire muttered in reply. His voice was somewhat muffled because of the piece of gray metal that had shifted over his mouth - a specifically-made battlemask to help keep most of his heat in his systems to stoke his inner fires for combat use. "They just like to pop up when and where you least expect it."

Maria's eyes narrowed slightly as she continued to look around, her eyes scanning the buildings where she had first seen the figure. "And then there's the ones that seem to like the same sort of hiding places." She spotted a familiar hard hat peering out from one of the alleys, and she brought out her Buster and fired a couple shots at it, causing the hat to be flung away and the robot underneath to be blown to pieces. "Some of the more idiotic ones seem to like to do that."

Fire sent her a curious look. "What do you mean by that?"

"When you've seen enough of the different corners of the universe that are out there, the places where your enemies hide start to become a little predictable."

There was a flash up in one of the windows in the buildings to their left, and Maria turned her head sharply in order to try and catch sight of what it might have been that was watching them. Unfortunately, she was not fast enough, as the whatever-it-was had disappeared.

"Of course, there is still the occasion when I can be surprised," Maria muttered under her breath.

Fire saw where her eyes were wandering to, and he looked in that direction as well, catching sight of a dashing figure that Maria had been catching sight of now and then, as well. "Possible enemy?" he asked, looking up at the rooftops suspiciously.

"Could be." Maria nodded slightly as the two of them stopped. "It could also be Shadow, though - I didn't see him when we left."

Fire frowned, then shook his head. "No, it couldn't be. We wouldn't have seen him otherwise." He started forward again, the one fiery cannon he had kept out whirring softly as it started to charge up in case he had to take a shot at anything.

Maria turned a little and started walking back-to-back with the Robot Master, left hand on her Buster, watching their backs in case the figure they had seen decided to try and sneak up from behind when they weren't looking.

"Then who do you think it is?" The Reploid mentally brought up a list of the remaining Robot Masters tat Wily had under his control, scratching out BubbleMan as she knew he had his hands full with Rock and Elec. "Another one of the junkpiles Wily built?"

"Could be." Fire voiced in reply with a grunt. "Most of them have territories carved out of the city given to them by Wily. And the rest of the country's been kept at bay because of all of the lesser robots he's created."

"I take it there isn't anyone left in the city," Maria noted. There was a flash of green and white in the corner of her vision, and she looked up to her right, catching sight of a figure backing away from the edge of one of the building roofs. Her eyes narrowed slightly, and she continued to look up there in case the figure decided to show up again. Her core temperature started to rise, as well, in case what this figure was happened to be just another mirage that would be destroyed as soon as it came into contact with her heat.

"No. The human authorities made sure that the danger zones were evacuated, and Wily has been concentrating too much on Dr. Light lately to care too much about what the other humans do at this point." Fire stopped, and Maria bumped into his back. "I think I know who's trailing us."

Maria stiffened a little, looking to her right again and scanning the rooftops. "His color scheme wouldn't happen to be white and green, would it?"

"How-"

"I just caught sight of him. Who is he, Fire?"

"SnakeMan." Maria heard Fire's form shifting a little, as if he were getting ready to lunge forward at something...or someone. "He's one of the ones Wily likes to keep in his fortress for some reason."

"What's he doing all the way out here?" Maria frowned, trying to branch her sensors out a little in order to try and see if she could find their stalker.

"Gemini could have asked him for help. Seeing as you managed to destroy AirMan." The two started to circle, back to back.

"Not single handedly," the Reploid grumbled as she got to where Fire had been standing. "I don't see how I can be any sort of threat."

"Master sees everything as a threat." The two fire users looked up abruptly at a rooftop that was to Maria's left. On one corner of the rooftop a figure was crouched, a mostly white jumpsuit covering his form, minus the green forearms and black upper arms and legs. The Reploid caught sight of a green thing that seemed to be twitching back and forth behind the Robot Master on the roof, and guessed that it was the rest of the snake that was connected to him, seeing as there was a snake's head covering the robot's own like a helmet.

The figure jumped off the corner and landed on the cracked road below with a loud bang, straightening from his slightly crouched position and stretching as Fire and Maria both turned to face him. "Even those who were only just brought into the world." His red eyes sparked as he looked over Maria carefully. "So, you're the 'FireWoman' I've been hearing so much about, huh?"

Maria's eyes narrowed. "It's Maria, you old snakeskin."

"And it's SnakeMan, you pile of junk!" SnakeMan retorted, pointing an accusing finger at her. "And Dr. Wily wants to see you, according to what Enker said. I came out here in order to bring you to him." He turned his attention to Fire, a rather sinister smile coming across his face as his eyes became filled with a strange, crazed glee. "But he didn't say anything about letting your friend come with." A Buster-type weapon replaced his right hand, and he fired a small missile from it that looked like a snake straight at FireMan.

Maria retracted her Buster and moved away as FireMan dodged as well, leaving the missile to connect with the wall of the building behind them. To their surprise, however, the snake-like weapon adjusted itself so that it could turn around and crawl down it. It then got onto the ground and started to move towards them at high speed.

"Oh no, you don't! Fire Sphere!" Maria blasted the missile, causing it to explode a couple feet before it reached them. She turned to look over at where Snake had been standing when he had fired the missile, only to find that FireMan had surrounded the Wilybot with a ring of fire in an attempt to keep the robot from moving too far and attacking them when they weren't looking.

SnakeMan let out a bored yawn. "You do realize that snakes in the presence of any source of heat speed up?" A wicked grin crept across his face right before he leapt up over the licking flames, his movements seemingly faster than they had been before. "This will make it all the harder for you to beat me - your strength adds to mine!"

"But it can still hurt!" Maria barked in response, charging up another Fire Sphere, which she promptly threw at the Robot Master. Unfortunately, he dodged easily.

"Sheesh, AirMan must've gotten slow if you were able to beat him!" SnakeMan taunted, grinning as he started to dash around the two.

Maria could barely make out his adapted Buster right before one of the missiles hit her in her right leg, creating a small explosion and causing her to go down with a yell. FireMan was soon in the same situation.

FireMan let out a grunt. "We can't use our fire powers again - it'll only make him even stronger. Which leaves me completely weapon less!" He blasted a missile that was coming right at them. "At least the Search Snakes are still weak to it."

Maria frowned, bringing out her Buster and rubbed the cannon thoughtfully as she tries to follow SnakeMan's movements. "When I was human, the staff I had allowed me to access more than just fire attacks." She looked down at the Buster for a moment before her eyes widened, a look of realization coming over her face. "Maybe..." She brought up her Buster and aimed it at where SnakeMan was running, closing one eye so as to get better aim with her weapon.

The Wilybot saw the Buster and let out a laugh. "Your energy pellets are going to be based off the power that you tried on me before. I doubt that you'll be able to do anything to me that'll do you any good."

"That's what you think," Maria muttered under her breath. Already, her mind had gone through the necessary programming in order to make the changes she wanted made. Her Buster started to charge up as her core temperature dropped. "Three...two...one..."

A blast of blue energy came out of the Buster, connecting with the ground right as SnakeMan ran over that specific section Maria had been aiming at.

"Gah!" SnakeMan fell forward, but wasn't able to get too far, only his hand and cannon touched the ground - the bottom of his feet were frozen to the ground. He turned and looked over at the Reploid in surprise. "How did you do that?"

"My secret," Maria responded, slowly getting to her feet, her Buster still trained on the Wilybot. "Fire? What should we do with him?"

Fire got up, frowning slightly as he looked over at the trapped Robot Master. "We could find that self-destruct switch and turn it off so that he can't explode on his own. Then we can drag him back to Light Labs or find Shadow and have him drag the snakeskin back." He walked over and, finding the mentioned switch, flicked it before retreating before SnakeMan could have fired anything at him.

"I am not a snakeskin!" SnakeMan barked from his odd position. He tried to bend his knees, but his feet couldn't bend to allow him to get up. He instead pushed with his hands in order to try to get up, but he was unable to maintain his balance at first.

"Shadow's probably near enough that we can get him to drag the Wilybot back," Maria suggested. She looked over at SnakeMan - taking note that he had finally managed to get completely upright - and fired another icy clot in his direction, freezing up his cannon arm. While Snake sent her a murderous look, Maria's left arm moved to her ear. "Hey, Shadow? Ya there?"

::What is it that you need, Reploid?::

"Fire and I caught Snake. Self destruct's taken care of. Think you could pick him up?"

::Is he still active?::

"If you mean 'not knocked out,' yes. He's presently weapon less, though, since I froze his cannon up."

"Literally," Fire added, jumping onto the comm-link signal. "Her Buster has more upgrades and weapon capabilities than Rock's."

::The staff she had used before this, no doubt, was the cause of that::

"Point is, are you going to get our prisoner or not?" Maria asked, annoyed.

All she got on Shadow's end was static. The reason why was quickly revealed, however, when a black portal appeared to their left, almost directly behind SnakeMan.

The Wilybot started to turn slowly, but a ninja star embedded itself in the back of his neck, and his form almost instantly slumped, a look of confusion and surprise still on his face. Obviously, he had been forcefully either been shut down or put into stasis.

"He was recording what was going on around him and was sending it to Wily," Shadow stated as he stepped out of the portal. "My attack neutralized the recording process, and his processor. Dr. Light will find it much easier to reprogram him." He looked over at Fire, who stepped forward and started to melt the ice that was around SnakeMan's feet. While Fire worked, Shadow looked specifically at Maria. "Your staff was the source of this kind of energy, wasn't it?"

The Reploid nodded slightly. "Yeah. It let me use electrical energy, too, but I didn't really use either all that often." She looked over her Buster again and let out a slight chuckle. "I guess now I know I'll be using it more often, now."

"It will certainly be useful," Shadow agreed.

There was the sound of cracking ice as SnakeMan's feet finally gave way and he fell back, the robotic ninja catching him deftly. Fire stepped back as another black portal appeared.

Shadow gave them a nod. "I shall see you when you return." With that, he stepped through the portal and disappeared, the portal closing up seamlessly behind him.

Fire and Maria exchanged a quick glance, then nodded and returned to walking deeper into GeminiMan's territory.

"That's another one down," Maria muttered as she switched her Buster's energy back to the default power core. "Counting who we've got left besides the one's we're gunning for, it's eleven."

"And you're a walking target now that Wily's seen you," Fire noted. His eyes started to scan the area again, looking for any sort of traps that might have been placed for them to fall into. "And now that we've taken down SnakeMan with a lot less difficulty than I had expected, we're probably going to be running into a lot more than just the few Metts that are scattered about behind some of those mirrors."

Maria let out a sigh. "They never make things easy..."

"If they did, we wouldn't have to strive so hard to achieve justice," Fire responded. "While that would be nice, it would also mean that the enemy has probably been weakened somehow."

"True."

Maria's right foot suddenly sunk on a piece of road, and a loud click resounded from the ground below her. As the Reploid looked down at her foot in surprise, there was the sound of multiple gears turning, and she looked up as a wall of mirrors suddenly came up out of nowhere, blocking their path.

Fire let out an annoyed sigh. "Great. Looks like it's another one of his twisted mazes."

"We can probably blast through it like we did last time," Maria responded as a bored expression came over her face. She aimed her Buster at one of the mirrors and fired. The orange energy sphere was sent careening for it, intent clear...only for the attack to suddenly be reflected back.

Maria let out a yelp and ducked as her attack flew at her, allowing for the blast to fly over her without doing any damage to either her or Fire. "That was...unexpected." She straightened back up. "Looks like fire energy is pretty much useless."

"I think that any long-range weapon would be useless," Fire noted. "We've got to smash the mirrors, and who knows what is hiding behind them."

There was the sound of giggling from behind the mirrors in front of the two fire users.

Maria deactivated her Buster, then clenched her fists in front of her. "Guess we'll have to go for fisticuffs, then."

"And you're prepped for that?" Fire's statement caused the Reploid to look over at him.

"Fire manipulation doesn't stop at throwing spheres and melting robots when I'm angered," Maria stated with a slight smile. "There's more to me than meets the eye in that regard." She turned back to facing the mirrors, and after a minute charged forward, her fists becoming cloaked in flames that licked up her arms.

"Fire Punch!" Maria called, slamming her fists into two mirrors in front of her as she came close enough to them to come into contact. The flames licked the mirrors as they came off her hands, causing the glass to warp and crack as the fire faded with its heat. A moment later, both mirrors shattered.

Fire blinked in surprise upon seeing this. "How is that possible? I can't even attack without having at least one of my cannons operational!"

"That's how it worked before I got turned into a Reploid, and it's how I'm going to keep working until something happens to me that changes that," Maria responded matter-of-factly. "Now, come on - we don't have all day, do we?"

The Robot Master was shaken out of his surprise rather quickly. "Right. GeminiMan will only make this harder for us. If we can keep moving, there is a chance that we can beat some of the reinforcements and slip past them without their notice." He promptly strode into the opening Maria had created, the Reploid following close behind as they entered the maze of mirrors.

Time Break

Maria let out a growl as she stomped out of the mirror maze, her armor covered in scratches. "That had more surprises than I'd care to run into again."

"Agreed," Fire stated as he came out behind her. His armor carried various scratches, as well, and there was a scorch mark on his back - most likely from where a bomb had exploded. "Wily seems to be becoming more crazed by the hour, stuffing all those enemies in such a small enclosure."

"I think he was crazy enough in the first game," Maria muttered under her breath as she stopped, looking around at the ruined road ahead of them. Unfortunately, this was heard by FireMan.

"Game?" the Robot Master repeated, giving Maria an incredulous look. "What do you mean?"

Maria's eyes widened, and a sheepish expression came over her face. "It's nothing you should be too worried about."

"No, I think I should be." Fire walked around to stand in front of the Reploid. "This is about what you said you had seen in your world, isn't it? This is how you knew about us in the first place."

Maria's expression became even more sheepish, and she rubbed the back of her head as her gaze moved away from Fire's. "Yeah, it is." She looked back at the Robot Master. "But my brothers know more about you guys than I do. My knowledge is pretty limited, at best, and what I'd heard about Wily made me think that he was...pretty much insane right from the get-go. Only now, he's gotten worse."

"Much worse," Fire agreed. He scrutinized Maria for a moment, his eyes narrowing slightly. "You do realize that you're going to have to tell the rest of us how much you know about us."

The Reploid nodded. "Yeah. Problem is, this world has some differences from the one I saw, and I don't know how much of an effect that's going to have on the future. It's going to be pretty interesting, comparing notes." She peered around the Robot Master. "We'll have to do that later, though. It looks like we've got company."

Fire turned around and instantly saw what Maria meant: a small horde of seemingly-crystallized Metts that were colored sky blue was sitting in front of them, blocking the road. In the distance, he could see a giant blue crystal palace - no doubt where GeminiMan was hiding.

"Looks like it's a last stand," Fire noted, turning around completely and bringing back out his fire cannons as Maria moved to stand next to him. "Are you prepared to shatter these things, Maria?"

The Reploid gained a thoughtful expression, then a rather surprisingly eager grin, her right hand morphing into her buster. Already, the weapons system for it had changed to a different power source - the Metts looked a lot like diamonds, and she was getting the feeling that a fire-based attack might not do her any good at this point. "Oh, I'm more than ready." Upon saying this, she aimed the cannon at one of the Metts and fired.

A blast of blue energy came out of the Buster, managing to freeze up a couple of the Metts as the rest of them lowered themselves in order to avoid any sort of shrapnel or ricochet effect. The Reploid then continued this, managing to freeze up most of the front line before momentarily running out of energy.

Fire blinked in surprise upon seeing the frozen Metts, then turned slightly and gave Maria a curious look.

"Well, don't just stand there!" Maria exclaimed in reply to his questioning gaze. "Shatter them! The ice will weaken them, but it'll hold them there for only so long."

Fire's surprised look turned into a determined one, a slight smirk showing up from behind the mask he work over his mouth. Giving a nod, he turned and set his flamethrower on the Metts, the extreme heat coming in contact with the extreme cold and causing the ice to shatter. Maria then started to work on the next row of Metts while Fire tried to find another way that could defeat the crystallized robots without having to rely on Maria for most of it.

The Robot Master let out a roar and slammed into a frozen Mett, sending the ice cube sliding along the ground and into the small figures behind it. To his surprise, the first Mett that was hit almost instantly shattered, and the other behind it became heavily damaged. A look of surprise appeared on Fire's face, but it quickly turned into one of understanding, and he started to push into the other ice cubes, causing the same thing to occur. Maria, catching sight of this, grinned and started to push a couple Mett-cubes as well, more than happy to have an alternate to running her energy down by shooting every single Mett in sight.

It took some work, but the two managed to get the Metts removed from their path without being damaged any further than they already had been from Snake and the mirror maze they had previously encountered.

Maria straightened up as she pushed a Mett-cube into the last unfrozen robot, then slammed a fist down onto the brick, causing it and the robot within to shatter. Fire managed to finish off his in the same manner.

"Well, that finished them off," Maria noted, clapping her hands together in a wiping manner as though she was trying to get some dust off. The Reploid looked ahead at the crystalline castle in the distance. "G-Man really went all out with his fortress." She looked over at Fire. "Do you know if he has any sort of obsession with jewels?"

"He might," Fire replied with a shrug. "They have reflective properties; I would find it highly likely that he would want them around for some sort of advantage in battle."

"Meaning that we'll have to watch our backs," Maria noted. She looked over at Fire. "Well, we'd better get going. No use keeping him waiting."

"Agreed." The two turned and dashed for the Crystal Fortress, leaving the crystalline wreckage from the Metts behind.

Maria's full of surprises, isn't she? And yay, they've got a possible new teammate in the form of SnakeMan! Next stop: Gemini's crystal-oriented base! Don't be afraid to tell me what you think of what I'm writing out, here!