Chapter 53: Plunge into Darkness, Part 1
Although their ultimate goal was to defeat an alien menace, the area underneath Stonehenge was the first place Ness had visited that felt… unearthly.
The hidden base sprawled ahead of them, composed of snaking, thin corridors that connected larger cubical rooms. Their footsteps reverberated endlessly across the floor, which was made of some unidentifiable purple metal, sounding off into the unknown. Each room was packed with bizarre technology that not even Jeff could comprehend, all built for some no doubt nefarious purpose in Giygas's plans. Topping off the unsettling locale was a ceaseless, eerie humming that droned from somewhere further in.
They met resistance almost immediately after entering. More of Lloyd's spinning creations ambushed them from around every corner, and the spherical octopus-looking robots that had accompanied Ana were stationed within the first few rooms as well. Ness and his friends had very little trouble dispatching them, as the only real obstacle was the cramped space which made using wide-range attacks like PK Rockin' or PK Starstorm unviable.
"These enemies don't pose any threat," Poo remarked after they'd destroyed another wave of octopus robots, "so why are they still being sent after us?"
"I'll bet anything they're just here to wear us down," said Jeff. "The real fight is probably up ahead."
Ness smashed a lone spinning robot that had tried to get the jump on him apart with a well-timed swing of his bat. The oppressive environment was anything but comfortable, though not having broken a sweat through all the fighting thus far made him more confident.
They came to the widest room yet: a circular chamber with a low ceiling and multiple computer terminals. Peeking in from around the corner, Ness could see the area was staffed by six red, squid-looking aliens that had long stalks for two of their eyes, the third of which sat in their midsections. He shuddered at the sight; color aside they were identical to the creature that kidnapped Paula. One turned its attention toward the door, forcing Ness to jerk his head out of sight.
"Octobot Team 4 isn't responding, Commander," he heard one alien hiss. "It seems they've been destroyed."
"I get no reading from Whirling Team 5 either," another said. "We can confirm the children have entered the base, and may reach this point soon enough."
"Are there any outer defense forces left?" asked a distinctly human voice.
Ness heard Jeff stifle a gasp behind him. The speaker was Lloyd, by the sound of it!
"Whirling Teams 6 and 7 are still on standby. Shall I call for them, Commander?"
"Yeah, get them here right away. I want you all to hold this area while I go deeper into the base and check on the inner defenses."
There was a pause, and the aliens could be heard muttering amongst themselves.
"You… will not fight with us, sir? Or even have us deploy the-"
"You've already got them outnumbered, right? With all of you, plus the incoming robots, you should be fine."
More muttering. His lackeys clearly didn't have the same level of confidence, which came as a surprise to Ness. Was Lloyd trying to make things easier for them? Was he putting himself in a position to eventually be defeated, and freed from Giygas's control?
"I'm leaving now. You have your orders, get to it," he said shortly.
"No, you aren't," another alien growled. "You're going to explain why we shouldn't just bring some of the inner defense forces here!"
"What does it matter?" snapped Lloyd. "Your reinforcements are coming, aren't they? Track them; where are they now?"
With more enemies inbound, they needed to act quickly. They could have dealt with just the robots and possibly the aliens easily, but a Commander would prove more difficult. Ness held three fingers up to his friends behind him. He heard them shuffle a bit, getting ready to fight.
"Whirling Team 6 is approaching from the south corridor, Team 7 from the north. They should be here momentarily."
He lowered a finger.
"Answer us! Why haven't we brought any of the Starmen up here? Wouldn't it make sense to stop the humans early?"
Ness paused. Starmen? There were more of those robots deeper within the base? He'd never assumed there was only Starman Junior, but the prospect of fighting several of them was more than a little unnerving.
"You know what I think?" asked a different alien- or possibly one of those who'd already spoken; their voices sounded identical. "I think you're setting us up to fail! Without the Mani Mani, you aren't really on our side, are you!? None of you Commanders are!"
He lowered another finger. Only one left. Psychic energy charged into his other hand, preparing an ability he hadn't made good use of for a long time.
"You don't matter! You're just here to delay them, got it?! Get to work, I'm going down!" Lloyd roared.
That was their cue. Ness lunged out from behind the corner, thrusting one hand forward and covering his eyes with the other.
"PK Flash: Beta!"
Green light exploded into the terminal room, and although Ness didn't risk opening his eyes to see his handiwork yet he could hear the aliens crying out from the blast. When the initial flare died down, he raised his bat and ran in, taking a swing at the closest enemy while it was still blinded. His friends entered behind him, Paula and Poo casting PK Freeze at two other aliens and Jeff firing on a fourth with his laser pistol. Lloyd was nowhere to be seen, perhaps having fled when the ambush began.
Ness swung again, and his target let out a deathly croak before collapsing against the wall. As his friends finished off their own opponents, he spun to notice one last alien frantically working at its terminal. He didn't give it any more time to call for help, taking advantage of the more open room and destroying it with PK Rockin'.
"Weren't there six of them? I took out two, you each got one, where'd the last one go?"
Poo gestured to a dark spot behind one terminal. In almost cartoonish fashion, a black cloud of ash vaguely shaped like the alien was smeared against the wall.
"That would be it. PK Flash at its higher levels can be lethal, you know."
"Uh… good thing I didn't try to make it any stronger, otherwise it might've hurt us," he muttered. He still remembered how disastrously his attempt had gone during the fight with Thunder and Storm.
Assorted clangs emitted both from the corridor they'd entered through and the room's exit. As anticipated, two teams of the spinning robots rushed in.
Being surrounded wasn't a problem for long. Jeff threw a bomb into the crowd emerging behind them, dispatching the horde instantly. Paula used PK Thunder to send a surge of electricity conducting through the other group, putting them down as well.
"Nicely fought!" Lloyd intoned over a microphone on one terminal. "I'm waiting for you deeper in the base. You're doing well, keep it up!"
"Is he… encouraging us?" asked Poo.
The coast was clear in the corridor Lloyd escaped through, so Ness beckoned for his friends to follow him.
"Giygas's control over them is weak," he explained. "I don't get visions exactly like Paula does; mine usually come when I'm asleep. Early on, I would keep getting threats from Ninten, or I guess from Giygas controlling Ninten."
As the corridor narrowed, they were forced to walk single-file. The monotonous humming which pervaded the base was strangely becoming more distant, and all noise save for their footsteps faded away.
"And the further we've come, the less influence Giygas has had on their minds. Ninten told me it himself in one of the visions where he was free… at least, for a bit. If Lloyd's actually motivating us, then that must mean his control is almost broken!"
"We just have to beat him, and he could be free?" Jeff asked, his tone notably lightening.
"I think so. He said he's waiting for us, so let's go get him!"
The corridor ended not long after, but what it brought them to was more concerning than encouraging. It was the last small room, with a ladder leading deeper like they'd seen at the entrance, but where their first descent had been dark this one looked black. None of the dim lights around them seemed capable of penetrating the inky void below.
"I can't see a thing down there," said Paula.
Ness took a hesitant step onto the first rung of the ladder.
"Whatever's at the bottom, I know we'll be fine. Follow me."
"Ness…"
He froze before he could begin the descent. The whisper was subtle, so subtle he swore for a second he'd imagined it. But he heard it again not three seconds later. It hissed softly in his ears, but was too quiet and brief for him to identify. All he knew was it left him trembling for a reason he also couldn't pin down.
"I want… to be your friend…"
The abyss below him was rumbling, cracking apart, and filling the air with a suffocating blanket of something. He didn't know what it was, or even how to describe the feeling, just that it would consume him altogether if he didn't get off the ladder immediately.
And then it stopped. Nothing was shaking, and aside from the inexplicable scare he felt fine. His surroundings were still dark; in fact they were darker than how they'd been before… whatever just came over him. There was no noise, other than a series of metallic clangs from behind. Turning around and squinting, he realized he was at the bottom of the ladder. He didn't even recall taking more than a step down it.
Ness shook his head as if to dispel the strange occurrence. It was just nerves, he told himself. So far behind enemy lines, of course he would be jumpy. Heck, he probably had imagined that whisper.
"Careful, those aliens said there are Starmen down here," he reminded his friends as they descended the ladder after him. "It's so dark, they could be hard to see coming."
That issue proved to be short lived when lights suddenly flared all around them. Ness frantically rubbed his eyes, trying to clear away the stars he was seeing. His vision returned soon enough, and through the floodlights beaming onto them he realized they were standing in an auditorium-like chamber, full of wide scaffolds and platforms around theirs. And standing on them…
There were Starmen in the base, all right. Dozens and dozens of Starmen, surrounding the group's walkway in a wide circle. Countless black visors stared the four down, while the robots themselves didn't so much as twitch. Most of them sported paint jobs identical to Starman Junior's silvery sheen from its first encounter, but Ness also spotted a few golden units throughout the horde.
"Welcome," droned over a hundred soulless voices in unison. "This is where you fall, Earthlings. We'll stomp you hard!"
The visors on the front row of Starmen all glowed red, and the air crackled with psychic power.
"Paula!" Poo whispered. "You know PSI Shield, yes? If you can use its Omega level, do it now!"
She was pale in the face but nodded, casting the barrier over the entire party just before the Starmen attacked.
"PK FIRE: BETA!"
The temperature around them skyrocketed as dozens of fiery projectiles soared their way. Paula's shield reflected them on impact, and around twenty enemies went up in flames. Although the technique seemed to have cost her a great deal of energy, a quick use of PSI Magnet stole more than enough from the remaining Starmen to recharge her. They emitted several clicks and whirrs before, to Ness's surprise, many of them disappeared with flashes of light. Of those remaining, some even leaped onto their level to block the way forward.
"They must be thinning their ranks to stop our wide-range attacks from being useful," Jeff said, firing at one of the flanking Starmen. "Don't use your big PSI, save your energy!"
That would leave Ness limited in offensive options, but he wasn't about to just sit on the sidelines and let his friends do all the fighting. He cast Paralysis: Omega onto the closest robots and charged them while their joints were locked up. Swinging his bat as hard as he could, he dispatched five of them while barely breaking a sweat.
As the Starmen crumpled to the floor, Ness realized just how strong he'd become. They seemed to have the same defensive capabilities as Starman Junior did in their first battle, where he needed Buzz Buzz's help to barely win. Now here he was, holding his own against the same class of enemy.
His reflection only lasted a few moments, after which he realized he'd moved too far ahead of his friends and been surrounded by more Starmen. One of the elite ones had entered the fray, firing a laser at him from its visor. Ness leaped sideways to avoid it, but found himself on the receiving end of a metal tendril to the stomach. He was swatted to the floor and felt the wind get knocked out of him. An enormous golden foot raised above his head.
"Die, puny-"
The Starman intent on stomping his face in froze solid courtesy of Paula, giving Ness enough time to stand again. He escaped the mob through a trail she blasted apart and regrouped with his friends, trying to catch his breath.
"They don't have much in the way of defense," said Poo, punching straight through the midsection of one unlucky golden Starman.
But they didn't seem to stop coming no matter how many were destroyed. The robots had apparently grown wary of Paula's psychic shield and magnet, as their PSI attacks were replaced by more basic lasers and physical strikes. Their attacks may have been less varied, but suddenly they became much harder to effectively counter. The Starmen closed ranks, stepping over the bodies of their cohorts and slowly forcing Ness and his friends toward a wall of the wide chamber.
There was a silver lining: in their eagerness to corner them, the Starmen were clumping into larger groups than before. They were attempting to overwhelm Ness and his friends with concentrated laser fire, but that meant they weren't spread thin anymore.
"Let's get them all, now! PK Rockin': Gamma!"
"PK Fire: Omega!" yelled Paula.
"PK Starstorm!" Poo added.
Their maelstrom of psychic power tore apart everything in its path, obliterating the Starmen in an instant. They stood no chance against it.
Curiously, however, they weren't attempting to avoid the attacks. In fact, as Ness continued to output his technique he swore the enemies were actively throwing themselves into it. He kept it up, deciding that if the Starmen wanted to make their job easier and destroy themselves it was no problem of his. The only problem was just how many there were. He felt himself growing tired of the constant psychic blast.
"Wait…"
Ness ceased his attack, cancelling the buildup of PSI in his hands.
"Guys! Stop, you're just wasting energy!"
Paula and Poo, both of whom were also looking fatigued, did as told. The smoke cleared to reveal just a handful of golden Starmen remaining, who promptly vanished from the area and left behind hundreds of their scrapped brethren.
"I should have known," Poo said, wiping sweat off his forehead. "Of course none of them stood a chance against us; they were just trying to tire us out.
"We destroyed so many," remarked Paula, who looked ready to collapse, "but we didn't even get all of them."
Ness inspected his bat to find it was dented beyond further use. He tossed it aside, grimly aware that he would need to rely on his limited psychic energy alone.
"We can't stop now. Let's keep at it."
The long chamber brought them to a much narrower corridor, which rounded a corner and led the group to a crossroads. Continuing forward, nothing whatsoever was visible in the darkness. To their right, however, a conspicuous green radiance shone from another room.
"That looks promising," said Poo.
Ness led them down the right corridor, another low hum reaching his ears as they approached. He was already on edge, but something about this room was making his skin crawl before they were even inside. It reminded him too much of the feeling the Mani Mani gave off.
The chamber was much smaller than its predecessor, lined with several rows of tall glass tubes. It became clear they were the source of that light, as each tube was full of a green, bubbling liquid. The humming also came from the tubes, which were supplemented by more computer terminals and nefarious-looking devices around the room. No enemies were there to stop them, and there didn't seem to be any traps in place to protect whatever this room held. They moved in to get a closer look, upon which Ness felt his heart grind to a halt.
There were people in the tubes.
