Hey, guys! Once again, this is the next chapter, much, much, MUCH later than I wanted it to be! Despite how much I tried to get the chapter done on time, I just felt so rushed that it couldn't be done on time. I guess I shouldn't have just put that burden on me so suddenly to get two whole chapters done in less than a week.
Also, if you are wondering how I got so many of those first chapters (1-10) done in so little time (around a month), I had started working on the story's first chapters for months before I released the first ten chapters.
Anyways, in this chapter, Mark, Evan and the others will enter Candy Cove, and attempt to uncover the Timestream Vortex with the help of the Temporal Stone. What will happen during their quest? Let's find out!
As the SCAMPER flew toward Candy Cove, Mark looked out of the window toward the barren street, and saw that the houses were much more dilapidated than the houses inside the Peach Creek Castle, to the point where it was hard to even recognize them as houses. Terrafusers riddled the area, and multiple kinds of Fusion Monsters which Mark had never even seen before were roaming around. One kind looked like a dark blue walking Fusion oil tank, and another looked like a dark blue Fusion with gigantic hands. Mark checked the profiles of those monsters on his NanoCom, and saw that the latter were called Tread Heads, and the former were called Tank Terrors. According to the NanoCom's Type Scanner, The Tread Heads were Cosmix, and the Tank Terrors were Adaptium.
As Mark and Numbuh Two exited the SCAMPER, Mark saw a giant hill to his left, with a small path leading up it.
"Hey, Numbuh Two?" Mark asked. "Where are we going?"
"We're going to the Candy Pirate camp here. It's over in that direction," Numbuh Two said, pointing to the southeast.
"Candy Pirates? What are those?" Mark asked as they began to walk up the hill. Even though the name of the group somewhat implied what the Candy Pirates were, he still wanted to know what they were.
"The Candy Pirates are, as the name implies, pirates that are obsessed with candy, previous led by their captain, Stickybeard," Numbuh Two said. "We've fought them several times in the past before Planet Fusion's arrival. Since the candy they usually steal from candy stores apparently isn't enough, they also have been breaking into houses and, much to the owner's confusion, only the candy was stolen and nothing else, much to the dismay of any of the kids in those houses who loved candy. They've been quite persistent enemies, almost as much as Mojo Jojo was about attempting to destroy the Powerpuff Girls. Their main base of operations was, and still is, the hills of Candy Cove. South of it used to be a giant lake, where they housed their pirate ship, the 'Sweet Revenge', but after Planet Fusion's arrival, the Sweet Revenge got stranded on land, and once Planetoid Fusion came, the Sweet Revenge was basically inoperable."
As Numbuh Two finished that sentence, Mark began to see a red-and-white vertically striped sail coming from a wooden mast covered with Fusion Matter. The entire ship was tilted so that the front of the ship faced at roughly 25-degree angle, and big letters covered the front of the ship. Mark guessed that the letters were meant to say "Sweet Revenge", but now some of the letters had fallen off, and were covered in Fusion Matter, making it a part-red, part-green "We Rev n".
As Mark, Numbuh Two, Numbuh Five, Jack, Andrew and Evan continued down the path, which then began to curve away from the ship, Mark could hear voices, which got louder as they walked down it. Upon reaching the edge of a hill, Mark could see a camp with hills all around it, and it was much different from what Mark expected. The first thing Mark noticed about the camp was that there was a giant skull made out of hard candy with giant candy canes for crossbones. Small red-and-white striped tents lined the camp, and chests full of candy sticking out were inside the tents.
As for the pirates themselves, which were either practicing for battle, eating candy or just hanging around, they wore extremely interesting outfits. They wore a white-and-red striped shirt, and the sleeves were torn off. Their dark gray pants were torn at the knees. They had numerous red-and-white striped accessories, including necklaces, wristbands, and socks. Even their weapons were almost entirely made from candy, ranging from chocolate sticks and clubs, to peppermint swords and daggers.
"Arrrr! Ye must be t' lad Eddy was talkin' about! Mark, I believe ye name is?" a voice behind Mark said. When Mark turned around, he saw that one Candy Pirate, which had the same outfit as all the others, walking up to him. This Candy Pirate had bright amber eyes, dark red hair, and a red-and-white bandana.
"Yeah, and you?" Mark said.
"I am Long John Licorice, t' current captain o' t' Candy Pirates! Although me beauty call me Licorice Lips-" After Long John Licorice said those two words, almost everyone in the vicinity, including other Candy Pirates, burst into laughter. It took a while for Long John Licorice to get everyone to stop laughing.
"Hey, that's what she calls me. I can't help t' fact that I love licorice!" Long John Licorice said, before sighing and continuing: "As I was sayin', that lad Eddy told me o' that quest a few minutes ago, and that ye were on ye way t' retrieve this time portal, or vortex, or whatever ye want t'call it. I'm not really sure what it is meant for, but we would be glad t' help ye recover it, but if it's on t' Sweet Revenge, well... we don't really go there anymore after... what happened to Captain Stickybeard."
"What happened to him?"
"Well... after t' so-called Planetoid Fusion came and destroyed nearly everything around the land, t' Sweet Revenge became completely unusable, and Stickybeard, stricken with grief over t' loss of his ship, went alone without us knowing t' try t' save his ship, and never returned. We don't know what happened, but we assumed that Stickybeard was... sent t' Davy Jones' locker."
Mark, having some knowledge of pirate language, understood what Davy Jones' locker meant, which was that Stickybeard had died trying to save his ship. Mark felt sorry for Stickybeard and the fate that he suffered, but he did not feel as angered by it as he was from what he had heard from Andrew yesterday. Mark then momentarily stumbled, after the thoughts of what happened to his parents got to his head again.
"Do- don't worry, my friends and I can do this adventure together..." Mark said, kinda stuttering. He then turned to Jack. "So, Jack, do you know where the points we need to put the Temporal Stone are?"
"Yes," Jack said. "In fact, the first one is really close to us."
Jack walked up another path that was between two hills, and Mark and the others followed him.
"Jack?" Andrew said. "You know where the Timestream Vortex's location is, since you hid it there, correct? And if so, why can't we just head straight to the Timestream Vortex?"
"The Timestream Vortex's properties work so that it will only appear once the Temporal Stone has been placed at all three of the temporal markers. Even if someone knew where it was, and went to its location without using the Temporal Stone, the Timestream Vortex would not appear. You must place the Temporal Stone on all the Temporal Points in order for the Timestream Vortex to appear to you."
After walking down the path for a few more minutes, the group came across the town again. Mark saw, in a nearby yard, a stone cylinder in the ground, next to a giant oak tree. The cylinder had a bowl-shaped object on the top of it.
"What is that?" Mark asked.
"This is one of the three temporal markers that was created when I hid the Timestream Vortex," Jack said, before taking the Temporal Stone out of his pocket, and placing it into the cobblestone bowl. Suddenly, a bright greenish-blue flash occurred, and just like he did when Mandark was absorbing the wormholes, Mark covered his eyes. After a few seconds, he uncovered his eyes again and saw a ray of light coming out of the bowl, shooting into the sky. Jack then reached into the beam of energy, and took the Temporal Stone out of it.
"Alright, the second temporal marker is on that small island over there," Jack said, pointing to a small island next to the mass of land that Candy Cove stood on. Since Candy Cove was a very big place, Mark and the others flew off in a SCAMPER, and it took less than a minute to get there. As Mark got off of the SCAMPER, Mark could see that, a big distance away, there was a giant Infected Zone with tons of buildings, with vehicles floating in the air. On the edge of it, Mark saw that lots of Fusion Monsters were looking straight at the group.
"What is that?" Mark asked, pointing to the infected zone.
"That's the Goat's Junk Yard Infected Zone," Numbuh Two said. "Home to the Megas XLR battle robot..."
Mark wanted to know more about the Megas XLR battle robot, but he knew it could wait for another time. There was another of those "temporal markers" a few feet away from the SCAMPER. Jack repeated the process that he did with the Temporal Stone and the first marker, and after another bright flash of light, Jack removed the Temporal Stone from the beam of light, and everyone got back on the SCAMPER again.
"Man, this is much easier than I thought it would be!" Evan said, as the SCAMPER began taking off.
"Yeah, but I can't help but get the feeling that something is going to happen," Mark responded. "It happens almost every time..."
As Mark felt the SCAMPER land on the grass again, he looked outside the window, and was bewildered at the view. He could see all of Candy Cove, Peach Creek, and even Pokey Oaks. Mark could also see the two beams of light shooting into the sky.
"Whoa, this view is awesome!" Mark said.
"I know, when I first went up here, I felt the exact same way," Evan said.
"When were you up here before?" Mark asked.
"This one mission where we had to hunt down a Fusion Numbuh Five. She was planning to poison all the candy on Arkadex. While she did get half of the candy poisoned, we managed to separate the poisoned candy from the normal candy, and get rid of them quickly before the number of children hospitalized became too high."
As Mark exited the door of the SCAMPER, Mark could see that the final Temporal Marker was on the very edge of the cliff, only a foot or two away. Jack put the Temporal Stone on the other temporal marker, and a few seconds later, the rays of light coming out of the markers suddenly began to tilt; the beams of light converged and met each other, before the light flew straight downward from the point where the beams converged, directly onto the deck of the Sweet Revenge.
"The Timestream Vortex! It's on the Sweet Revenge!" Mark said, before sliding down the giant hill, followed by Evan, Andrew, Jack, and a few KND agents. After a minute or two of sliding, Mark stopped at the edge of the cliff next to the Sweet Revenge. Upon getting up, Mark could see there was a hole on the middle floor of the ship a few feet from Mark, providing an entrance.
"We need to go in here," Mark said, as he walked into the hole in the ship's lower level. Upon looking inside, he noticed that the inside of the ship was riddled with Fusion Matter, covering the walls and floor. The back of the tilted ship had pools of Fusion Matter, and the cannons were all broken and filled with Fusion Matter too. In the middle of the floor, there was a staircase to the top deck of the ship.
Mark began to slowly walk down the tilted floor of the ship, making sure that every step he took would not end in him slipping and sliding into the Fusion Matter below. Jack, instead, attempted to slide down the ship's floor, and when he reached the staircase, he quickly grabbed onto one of the edges of the staircase, causing it to slightly crack. Thankfully, the group managed to get up the stairs before it could splinter.
After climbing up to the deck of the ship, the group saw the Timestream Vortex. It looked like a bright, greenish-blue eight-sided diamond, glowing at the center. It had very precisely cut edges, as if someone had carved it into a perfect shape. It was floating in the air, about 5 feet above the deck of Sweet Revenge, and rotating slowly.
"We've got the Timestream Vortex!" Mark said, as he put it in one of the pockets of his jacket. As Evan, Andrew, Jack and the other KND agents were about to leave, Mark suddenly heard a loud, mechanical roar. He looked up towards where Numbuh Two and Numbuh Five were, and saw that they were running from groups of Tank Terrors, before one of them exploded, covering the SCAMPER in a gigantic fireball. After that, instead of attacking the nearby KND agents as Mark had assumed they would, the Tank Terrors and Tread Heads ignored them and went straight for the Sweet Revenge, leaving everyone in a state of confusion.
Mark didn't know what the Fusions were doing, until Mark looked over the side of the ship and saw it moving backward, towards the Fusion ocean. Mark attempted to bring out his Numbuh Two nano to teleport him and his friends out, but just as he did so, a Tread Head jumped up onto the ship.
Mark could see the Tread Head in much more detail now. Other than Fusion Matter, their dark blue skin was similar to rubber. Their shoulders looked like they were made out of tires, and their armor appeared to be made out of pieces of hovercars, mostly the door and hood parts. A few more of the Tread Heads then began to show up on the ship's deck. As for the Numbuh Two nano, the Tread Heads easily managed to knock it out, since they were Cosmix and the Nano was Adaptium.
Mark brought out his Buttercup nano to deal with the Tread Heads, since it was Blastons, but the Tread Heads were extremely quick, and they attacked the Buttercup nano in great numbers, eventually overpowering it and knocking it unconscious as well. As the Buttercup nano turned into Blastons energy and flew back into the NanoCom, Mark, Evan and Andrew blasted at them with their Crayon Cannons. Jack then jumped at them, brought his silver sword out of its sheath, and sliced right through the Tread Heads, all of which happened in a matter of milliseconds.
"Wow, you're fast, Jack!" Andrew said.
As several Tread Heads fell to the deck of the ship in halves, Mark, Evan, Andrew and Jack started to run for the edge of the ship, but as they did that, the whole ship suddenly fell, causing Mark to fall over. The next thing Mark heard was a giant splashing noise.
As Mark looked up, he saw plumes of Fusion Matter were flying upward, some of which were landing on the edges of the deck. Mark swiftly ran to the center of the ship to prevent being hit by the Fusion Matter. The ship was rocking, and it was difficult for Mark to keep his balance. Once his balance was stable, he turned around and saw multiple Tread Heads were jumping down onto a group of ledges at the bottom of the cliff. Some of them jumped into the Fusion Matter.
"I think I know their plan," Mark said.
"What is it?" Evan and Andrew asked simultaneously.
"They're trying to isolate us from the KND and Candy Pirates. They were watching us find the Timestream Vortex, and once they knew where it was, they attacked the ship, and now we're gonna be... sailing away... They blew up the SCAMPER so that it would take much longer for the KND to get to us..."
Mark noticed that the ship was turning so that the front was facing the ocean of Fusion Matter. Mark turned around and saw that the Tread Heads were now opening their hands and having their palms face the ship. He then felt a massive gust of wind which managed to blow him onto the floor of the ship, and Mark saw that the big red-and-white sails were catching the wind that the Tread Heads were blasting. As Mark got up, he saw that the ship was moving very fast, away from Candy Cove.
"Well... what are we going to do now?" Andrew asked.
"We'll have to hold them off until they rescue us," Jack said.
Suddenly, Mark got a message from his NanoCom; it was from Numbuh Two.
"Mark! Mark! Are you OK?" Numbuh Two said, filled with worry.
"Yeah, I'm OK!" Mark asked. "But what about you?"
"Strangely, after the Fusions pushed the Sweet Revenge off, they all left without even looking at us. All they did was destroy our SCAMPER."
"Yeah... it's because the Fusion forces are focusing mainly on me right now... Just try to send a SCAMPER toward us as quickly as you can!"
"Well, the closest SCAMPERs are in Sector V," Numbuh Two said, before a beeping was heard from the other side of the call. "Hold on, I'm getting another call, but I'm gonna send a SCAMPER to you STAT!"
As the call ended, Mark looked toward Candy Cove. The mass of land that he and his friends were on only minutes ago was getting farther and farther away from them, before it completely disappeared behind the horizon. Even though Mark had the Timestream Vortex, the only way they could get out of the situation they were in was by rescue. He just hoped that they could get out of this alive...
Goat's Junk Yard
"So... Mark is isolated from his squadmates now?" Fusion Jack said. Fusion Jack and Fusion Numbuh Five had just gotten word from a few Cyber Stinger spies that had watched the whole spectacle.
"Indeed, Fusion Jack," one of the Cyber Stingers said. "Well, some of his friends are with him on the Sweet Revenge, but all the rest of the KND is basically isolated from him. We also made sure that the SCAMPER they used to get here was destroyed, so we've got a pretty good time-frame in which you can destroy Mark and get rid of the Timestream Vortex, at least twenty minutes..."
"Excellent," Fusion Jack. "Fusion Numbuh Five, it's your time to shine..."
"Yep," Fusion Numbuh Five said, adjusting her dark red cap. "Fusion Numbuh Five is ready to take 'em out..."
Uh-oh! Mark, Evan, Andrew, and Jack seem to be in an extremely dire situation! How can they possibly get out of this one? Well, you'll find out on the next chapter, which should be released sometime late April (April 25 or so). Stay tuned!