CHAPTER 12

RE-EDIT 2

Lopez Speech

O'Malley Speech

BLUE TEAM

"Well Tex, that was a great story. I especially like the part about Church being pantsed in High School." Said Tucker. "I found that part to be completely out of context." Church said in a mix of a deadpanned and annoyed tone of voice.

Tucker smirked, but it dropped to a frown when getting back to the serious matter. "But I still don't get how we're supposed to stop the A.I.." Tex puts her hands on her hips, "I don't remember much from the implantation process. I do remember that my A.I. can transmit itself from host to host by the way of the helmet radios. This is unique only to O'Malley. If we can kill O'Malley and not give him a place to jump, we'll beat him."

"And then I can have my body back. Deal?" Church added. Tex nodded her head, "Deal." Deep down, Tex really hopes this plan will work. "Alright, Tex and I will possess Caboose." Church turns look at Tucker to tell what he'll do, "Tucker we need you to work on the Reds. Get them to off their radios, so that O'Malley won't have anywhere to go. Once we get him outta there."

"Right." Tex simply said. "What?!" The Aqua soldier yelled, "How the hell am I supposed to do that?" Really. How is he supposed to do that? Right now Tucker is picturing a scene where he is gunned down, riddled with bullet holes. "Tch, I don't know. Come up with a plan." Church said.

Crossing his arms over chest, Tucker says. "Come on, you how I feel about plans." Tex turned to the aqua trooper. "You're not going to have much time when we get in there, so move fast."

"Oh, I see." Tucker sounded completely aggrieved at his role in the plan, "You have no idea what I should do or how I should do it. But whatever I do, I should do it fast?" Church nods. "Yeah that's right." Tex simply says."Yep."

Tucker sarcasticly tells them they were tons of help. The transparent soldier suggested for him to try shifting his paradigm by thinking outside the box. Though, Tucker counters with the box is there for a reason, saying he likes thinking in it and it makes him feel safe.

Now that the plan has been explained and everyone knows what to do. The trio is ready to start it, Church looks to his ex-girlfriend, "Ok Tex, ladies first." Gesturing to Caboose. "Yeah right!" Tex quickly caught on to what he was planning, "You think I'm going to leave the robot's body alone with you?

"Bitch." Church muttered. "Nice try, Leonard." Sighing, Church look over to Caboose. The Blue soldier finished telling Shelia everything that happened and is now admiring the tank's features. "Ohhhh, those six pedals you have. VERY nice." He, creeply whispered. "Hey Caboose!" The sound of his friend's voice caught his attention. "Huh?" Standing up, he looks to where Church is standing. "Heads up!" The next thing he knew. Church ran towards him and entered inside of him.

Caboose's vision blacken, to him, it seemed like someone shut off the sun. Looking around the dark void, he saw that he's the only one here. Tex exits Lopez's body and runs up and jumps into Caboose."NOOOOO!" O'Malley screamed.

Grey, that's the only color around, grey. A metallic grey at that, metal walkways and ramps lead up and down. Metal pillars in the shape of pyramids with the top pointed end removed, leaving a flat square face in its place. Covered the ground in certain spots. Church looked around the new setting. "Where are we?" He asked.

"We're inside Caboose's head." Tex answered his question. She said in awe, not knowing she can do this. Being a by-product of the Alpha, she knew can be put into robot bodies or human bodies. But she didn't she can go inside peoples minds like this. Focusing on their task, Tex says they have to find O'Malley and kill him.

"Man," Church poked at his armor covering his forearm, it felt so real. "This is so weird." The black clad female agreed, "Yeah, it does." She watch her ex-boyfriend take in the surroundings. "Wow," He stopped looking around to face her, "This place is a lot bigger than I thought it was going to be."

In the outside world, Caboose said what Church said to Tex in real time. The reason for this is Church possessed Caboose first, so had some control over the blue soldier's functions. Tucker ran up to Caboose, "You alright buddy?" He asked. Finding it strange that Caboose just spoke a sentence that had nothing to with the current situation. "Where should we start looking?" Caboose asked.

Raising an eyebrow, the Aqua trooper speak in confused voice, "Ok... I'm gonna take Sheila and Lopez and figure out some way to get the Reds to turn off their radios." He runs up to Shelia, hops onto the back tread, opens the hatch, and jumps into the cockpit. Closing the hatch, Tucker looks over the controls.

"Wow. This is... more complex than I though it was going to be." The trooper didn't know what to do. With a shaky hands, he reaches for the nearest button. "Don't touch that." Suddenly came the tank's voice. Pulling his hand away, Oh ok. So what do I..."

"See the two joy sticks?" She asked. He looked around till he found what he was looking for. "Yeah, I do." Shelia speaks in comforting tone to ease Tucker, "Good, firmly grab them." She instructed. He does what he was told and firmly grabs the joy sticks. "Now what?" He asked. "Now..." Sheila paused for a second then continued, "Slowly push the left stick away from you. The tank, and by tank I mean me. Will move forward."

Sounds simple enough, Carefully inching the joy stick forward. Sheila began to move forward, "Ok, ok. This isn't to hard." Moving his head to the right, he notice a red button on the other joy stick. "What does this button do?"

"NO wait!" Sheila tried to stop him but it was to late. He pressed the button, all of a sudden a tank shell was fired from the main cannon. The shell exploded on the canyon wall. "Oops." He said

RED BASE

"Did you hear something?" Grif asked to Simmons. The Maroon soldier replied with, "No."

IN CABOOSE'S MIND

"Where should we start looking, Tex?" Church asked. "Just keep your eyes peeled. I guarantee, O'Malley will come looking for us." During her sentence, a very familiar person in Aqua armor walk down the ramp behind her. This caught Church's surprise, "Tucker, is that you?!"

Tucker turned his body to the white soldier, "Duh man. Who else would I be? And I thought I was dumb." He said. In the background, a black armor clad figure watch the two new visitors talking to the Aqua trooper. "Need to find good position. To kill intruders." The figure runs up a ramp.

"Wait a minute. You're not Tucker, who are you?" Church asked. Tex turned to face Church, "This is Caboose's mental image of Tucker. This is how he sees Tucker in his mind and everybody else in the world."

"I'm so unbelievably silly." Said Mind-Tucker. "Well that's great." Church said in a not couraging tone, "Everyone we meet in here is most likely to be brain dead as Caboose." However, "I wouldn't to be sure about that, Mister Church." The mental image of Caboose showed up.

RED BASE

Back at Red Base, more specifically the medical wing. A certain teenage boy sleeping on a bed, began to stir in his sleep. "Hmmmm, oh man," He groaned. Ryan opened his eyes, his vision is a bit blurry. Rubbing his eyes with his hand. It was then he noticed that he felt flesh on flesh instead of the full body black under-suit he and his team wear under their armor.

Looking at his hand and down his arm, he can definetly confirm he's not wearing his under-suit. Looking down his torso, he sees he's wearing a hospital gown. Pushing himself up with his other arm, the teen felt his body protest to his actions. But ignored it, now in a seating position, Ryan looked around the room find out it's the medical room.

"How did I... Oh wait, I remember." The teen recalls he, Simmons, and Sarge. Were in the jeep when it suddenly exploded. The last thing he remembered was being flown into the air by a total of ten feet and watched as the ground got closer and closer in a fast rate. Next came darkness.

Turning his body till his legs are hanging inches of the floor. Ryan places his feet on the hard cold floor. With that done, he goes into a standing position. The fifteen year old wobbled a little. Firmly gripping the bed to hold himself steady, Ryan then looked across the room and spotted his black under-suit hanging on the back of a chair and his orange-red armor resting on the table.

Letting go of the bed, Ryan started taking slow steps to the table. "I wonder what the others have been doing?" He asked himself. Reaching where his stuff is. The teen unties the knots of his gown and takes it off.

Lucky for him he's still in wearing his underwear. Grabbing his under-suit, Ryan opened it up and put his feet in first, once securely inside. He pulls the suit up and slips his arms into the sleeves and fingers into the finger slots. Once on, he closes the suit by its zipper. Lastly the armor. This process would take sometime.

Close to back exit of Red Base. Sarge and Grif were in the middle of discussing something. Very surprising there wasn't any arguing between the two, "Great idea Sir. For once I agree with you."

Just then, Donut entered the base through the exit, stopping between the two soldiers. "Hey guys. We might have a problem here." He spoke in a urgent tone. "Somebody, and I'm not saying who. Might've thought the cyborg part needed for Simmons' surgery was a cup holder. That somebody, not naming any names here, might've left it in the jeep. Along with their jazz compilation CD." Donut looks to both Sarge and Grif. "I just don't know who would do such a thing."

"Was it you?" Grif simply said. "Yeah!" Donut realized he just ratted himself out, "Uh, no!" He then cleared his throat, "I mean, NO!"

...

"Dammit." He grumbled. Sarge stepped forward, "Grif." The red leader spoke in his usual commanding tone, "You and Easy Listening stroll on down and retrieve that part from the warthog. Post Haste!"

Grif took a glance outside then back to Sarge, "Sir, do you think it's safe to be outside the base right now?" He asked, "For all we know the Blues could've fixed their tank. They could be advancing on us we speak." Sarge waved an arm and yelled. "AHHHH, corny dogs! Even with Lopez helping 'em, It'll take them months to get their tank online. Much less get it moving."

"I hope you're right. Because if I see that tank headed towards me, I'm totally gonna freak out." The pink trooper said.

BLUE TEAM

About a quarter from Blue Base, Tucker, Sheila, and Lopez stood on a hill. Look over at Red Base, Tucker opened the hatch of the cockpit and stood up. "Man, I hope they won't freak out when they see us coming." He said.