Again, I completed a chapter earlier than expected. This is Chapter 10. ENJOY.

Chapter 10: Impossible Mission

TIME: 12:03AM

LOCATION: EAST SIDE, ROUGEPORT

Zack was still crouched down on the rooftop of a house on the east side of Rougeport, waiting anxiously for Koops to return. He glanced at his watch, which read 12:03AM. Koops should have been back by now. Zack tried to brush the thought that something had gone wrong out of his head. He jumped off the rooftops and headed towards Town Square.

TIME: 12:04AM

LOCATION: TOWN SQUARE, ROUGEPORT

Town Square was deathly quiet. Zack felt unnerved. Surely, not any other place in the world felt this way. He looked around for Koops, but the town seemed desolate.
"Hunter, where are you?" he whispered. He slung his shotgun over his shell and pulled out his Desert Eagle from his belt, gripping it tightly with both hands. He heard a slight snap and turned towards the gate leading west. A small white mouse with a heart shaped tail, red shoes and matching eye mask was standing near the gate.
Zack pointed his gun at the mouse. "Stop right there!" he barked. "Who are you? Tell me or I'll pull the trigger!"
The mouse stopped in surrender. "My name is Ms Mowz." she said
Zack lowered his Desert Eagle slightly. "Now tell me, have you heard of someone named Hunter?"
Zack could see the fear in Ms Mowz's eyes when he mentioned Hunter. "Y..yes. I have. He wants to kill me."
Zack was quite shocked by that at first, but then he remembered that there were two Hunter's, and he knew Koops had no intention to kill anyone but Crystal Corruption.
"Don't worry. If Hunter gets too close, I won't show mercy." he said.
Zack looked around, hoping to spot Koops, wherever he might be. A gleam of metal caught his eye. Koops's Katana laid on the ground, right next to a curved scimitar and two cloths. Ms Mowz walked over to the same spot and sniffed the air.
"Chloroform." she said.
"The chemical used for making people unconcious?" Zack asked, fearing the worst.
Ms Mowz nodded.
Zack shouted in anger and kicked the door of a nearby shop. The door broke in half straight through the middle. Ms Mowz took a step back. Zack was raging in anger. First his family, now his friend, his only friend he'd ever had in his tortured, twisted, demented life was now taken by the same people that had murdered his family twelve years ago. Zack sat down, stewing in his anger, refusing to accept defeat. He noticed a knife lodged in a crack in the wall behind him. It was a 8cm long blade, and the handle had a logo he'd never seen before engraved on it, an emblem of a rose crossed over a knife. He pulled the knife out and walked over to Ms Mowz.
"Do you know what this is?" he asked Ms Mowz, pointing to the emblem.
Ms Mowz's eyes widened. "Yes, it's the seal of my friend RazorRose."
"And the scimitar?" Zack asked, pointing towards the scimitar laying on the ground.
"Also belongs to her."
"RazorRose isn't her real name, is it?"
"No."
Zack sighed. "Look, my friend was here." he said, pointing at his Katana. "I don't know if he fought with RazorRose or not, but that can be settled later. We were trying to stop Crystal Corruption..."
"I know them." Ms Mowz said. "Me and RazorRose were doing the same thing."
"Okay, but we were trying to keep them from retrieving Crystal Stars..." Zack's eyes went wide when he suddenly remembered that Koops had the Crystal Stars. "For crying out [expletive deleted]! Now they've got the Crystal Stars!" Zack threw his Katana against a few stray metal bars and the bars tumbled with a loud clattering. Zack sighed with frustration. "Anyway, me and my friend are still trying to stop them from whatever they have in plan, most possibly it's a plan for world domination."
"That's pretty tacky." Ms Mowz said. (My friend's actual response when I told him the idea.)
"Yeah, but whatever the case, whatever they're up to can't be good." Zack said. "They're heartless, powerful and destructive. If you can help me bring them down and save my friend, I'll save your friend and keep you safe from Hunter in return." Zack stuck out his hand. Ms Mowz shook his hand.
"Thank you." she said.
"You too." Zack replied. Zack picked up the Katana and the Scimitar and slung them over his back. He tapped them twice, and they vanished, hidden by his cloaking mechanism.
Ms Mowz sniffed the air. Her keen sense of smell picked up a trace. "Follow me." she said, running into the shadows.
Zack followed.

TIME: 1:15AM

LOCATION: SUBLEVEL 7, ROUGEPOT SEWERS

Ms Mowz hated being back in the sewers. It was dark, it was dank and it was full of bad memories. All the fights and attacks with Crystal Corruption had happened down in the sewers, and she wasn't very eager for that to happen again.
She could tell Zack wasn't comfortable with the situation either. He held his Desert Eagle in both of his hands, constantly looking to his sides as if someone might be following them. With their luck, they were probably being stalked at the very moment.
Sublevel 7 was a lot more darker and narrower than previous sublevels Ms Mowz had been in, adding to her discomfort. Her badges seemed to weigh down on her, which made her paranoid. She had already lost her frriend. She didn't need to lose these extremely powerful badges as well.
Pretty soon, the tunnels split into different directions. Ms Mowz tried to sniff the air to get some hints on their direction, but the stench of the sewers completely masked any possible direction hints.
The tunnel Ms Mowz and Zack were going through eventually led straight into a wall.
"Dead-end." Zack said.
They turned around to head back, only to find a familiar figure standing behind them. It was Hunter, armed with knives clutched between his hands, with his signature, slight, mildly evil smile showing through his hood.
"I've waited too long for you Ms Mowz." he said. "I won't wait any longer.
Ms Mowz paled, which wasn't easy to tell because her skin was all white anyway. Fortunately for her, Zack stepped between her and Hunter.
"Back away Hunter." he said.
"This doesn't involve you Zack, this is personal." Hunter said.
Zack raised his gun to Hunter's face, which only made Hunter laugh.
"That didn't work last time for you, didn't it?" he chided.
"Shut up." Zack growled. "I have enough to worry about. I've got a friend in hostile hands, an organization that wants to destroy the world and my mind is reeling with my past and present. You can just [expletive deleted] off for all I care."
Hunter's smile melted. "You picked the wrong day to mess with me." he said angrily. He lunged with lightning speed at Zack, crashing into him and pinning him against the wall. Zack's Desert Eagle fell to the floor. Zack slipped from his grasp and took out his knife. Hunter still had him on the defense, making him block and dodge every slash and stab that Hunter could throw at him. Hunter kicked out from underneath, sweeping Zack straight off his legs. Zack fell to the ground.
"I haven't even started trying yet." Hunter taunted. Zack got up and picked up his stray Desert Eagle and fired three shots, all of which Hunter ducked, with a missed bullet nearly hitting Ms Mowz. Zack cursed. Hunter snuck up from behind Zack and attempted to kick straight at the back of Zack's head. Zack's Judo experience kicked into action, ducking the kick and using the wasted power of Hunter's kick to throw Hunter over him. Hunter somersaulted and landed, grabbing Ms Mowz and holding a knife between her eyes.
"Shoot me, and the mouse girl goes down with me." He said, his smile returning to his face. Zack could see the fear in Ms Mowz's eyes, and dropped his knife and Desert Eagle in defeat, and cursed. "You win." he muttered. "Just leave her alone." Hunter's grip loosened on Ms Mowz with a small sigh.
"I'll admit, I was hoping you'd pull the trigger." he said with a little disappointment. "But because you're a cousin of mine, I'll let you and her go, at least this time."
Zack acted purely on anger and kicked out at Hunter's stomach with such speed even Hunter didn't have time to avoid it. Hunter didn't feel any pain, but nodded, impressed.
"Impressive." he said. "You're the only person to ever do that. This is one of the advantages of the Hunter Koopa, rage doesn't cloud our thoughts, it sharpens them."
"I don't care about that." Zack growled. "But keep one thing in mind: NEVER call me your cousin."
Hunter shrugged. "Fair enough. We fought. You surrendered. I won. No one beats me anyway."
Zack rolled his eyes. "Cut to the chase." he said angrily.
Hunter's smile returned to his face. "You have some serious grit, boy. Anyway, I won't help yo infiltrate Crystal Corruption since you're working with her." he pointed at Ms Mowz. "But I will give you this."
Zack tensed. The last time Hunter had given him something, it was the memory of his family's death. He had enough to do already, he didn't need more past tragedies destroying his emotions and cutting into his focus.
To Zack's surprise, Hunter only pulled out a simply drawn map. "This map will lead you directly to Crystal Corruption's Headquarters. Your friend is most likely being held in Division 13, the torture division. I don't have a map for inside though, but you'll have to figure that on your own. Most likely there will be maps inside, because the HQ is so big that some members still get lost in it."
Zack must have looked surprised, because Hunter laughed lightly. "Yes, I'm not joking. Members do get lost in there. And let me tell you, you two are definetley insane, because no one has ever gone into that base, simply because it's suicidal. Crystal Corruption is made up of thousands of members, and they have enough weapons for a ten-year long war. I'll say either you're insane or you're that devoted to your friend. Either way, your chances of getting out alive are slim."
"Comforting thought." Zack muttered sarcastically. He turned to Ms Mowz. "Are you still ready to go on ahead with this?" he asked her.
Ms Mowz nodded.
"Alright." Zack said. He didn't even bother to look at Hunter, because Hunter was already gone, vanished like a shadow.
Ms Mowz examined the map. "We need to go down to sublevel 23. There's a passage down there. From there, we should be able to enter in Division 4, but that's where the map ends."
"And that's when the games begin." Zack muttered, gripping his Desert Eagle with both of his hands.
Ms Mowz folded up the map and headed down along the twisting tunnels, with Zack in tow.

END OF CHAPTER 10. Woohoo! Ten chapters! Expect this story to finish after... possibly 17 chapters.

PARAKARRY OUT. ONCE MORE.