Author's Note: Okay so as a experiment I did a couple more chapters and in the process confirmed my worst fears. For whatever reason I can only seem to spit out one chapter per week now which also means that I'm only going to be able to work on one story per week now. With that in Mind Read, Review, Favorite and Enjoy!

Chapter 21: Return

The Yautja Reaper was wandering through Ephemeris's ruins, stalking around in search of Manny. He was precisely aware of how this violation of the natural order came to be and he was not amused by it in the slightest. Reapers are meant to reap, not bestow eternal life, withering away souls never to be renewed, even if this creature seemed to have far more ecto than most others, the fact that he's still alive yet wields the power of the dead only confirms his status as an abomination needing to die. Then he had the nerve to openly taunt him and mock his species for not being a abominable mutant that flagrantly flaunt's the abilities bestowed by another.

"Marco..." A synthesized version of Manny's voice echoed out of the Yautja's mask as he scanned the surroundings. Heat censor's might not logically be as effective at tracking creatures with no body heat as the warm blooded but it was not heat that he was tracking right now but the absence of it. Ghost's, even ghosts in possession of a flesh and blood body, produce a overwhelming cold aura as they work to draw in heat to maintain their energy based bodies.

"Polo!"

It did not unfortunately have three hundred sixty degrees of coverage. Manny had sneaked up behind him and stopped his foot into the ground hard enough to send chunks of metal plating up into the air before blasting them with a Ghostly Wail shooting them at the alien Reaper. The Reaper however had more years of experience slashing at the incoming projectiles with dual arm blades before they could get any closer than two feet. Manny however used the distraction to his advantage rushing over to the reaper and locking arms as the two of them grappled with one another. The Reaper still had his arm blades out and put them both through Manny's hands and Manny grabbed hold of the Reaper's fists.

"Got Cha!" Course now that Manny didn't have to worry about getting cut with those things anymore he blasted the Reaper point blank with a Ghostly Wail attack sending him flying back, sans Arms. "Now I just gotta get rid of these." Which was then followed up by Manny chucking both of the arms out of the nearby hole in the wall he made over a considerable distance. "Now than..." Manny took a brief moment to assess the damage, like the one that had appeared on his chest his hands were now being covered in scar tissue from where the blades went into them, with any luck his fine motor skills wouldn't be compromised by this. "Where were we?" Asking that Manny charged forward again preparing to pummel the bone head opponent into a pulp, and for his reward was pinned to the ground with stabbing pain going through his chest. "What the...?"

The arms Manny had just thrown away were now sticking out of a reaper portal, both of their blades rammed through Manny's body pinning him to the floor. The Reaper loomed over him, glaring down at Manny as he leaned over and reattached his severed arms to his shoulders and picked Manny up to look him directly in the eyes.

"Next time bring a Reaper."

Having just thrown Manny's own mocking back in his face the Reaper withdrew one of his arm blades, and replaced them with two smaller blades that were coming out of his knuckles as he prepared to deliver a uppercut to Manny's chin. Then, completely ruining the moment in the process, something hit the Reaper on the head and fell to the floor, and both the reaper and his to be trophy realized too late that it was a grenade. The explosion separated the two forcibly, if not for the fact that the Yautja intended to remove the pest's soul with his head so that he could make it into a trophy then Manny's soul and his body would be in two separate locations right now. The explosion had actually done Manny a favor, the super heated metal and air had actually melted his flesh and sealed his wounds closed all the way through his body.

"Come on you!" Fix-It actually had to build a harness out of Dani's arm to pick Manny up, even then it was just a matter of sitting him on his feet allowing Manny to run with her back to their ship, being led by the hand by Dani of course as he doesn't actually know where she parked their little home away from home. The anti-matter grenade bought them time and distance, the Reaper would have to put himself back together again before he would be a threat, and explosions separated them by a considerable distance. "Oh sure now you decide work." Luckily the new porta lab was arranged in a way that she could instantly spot the Infi-map on the way inside, and it was open. "Alright you where to next?" Dani grabbed hold of the controls hardwired into the map and immediately the entire porta lab was yanked off just as the Yautja was about to carve into the structure in question. Not amused at all.

Now that the pair had left Eternia prepared to move on with the celebration for peace having returned to the lands, Adam in particular realized the reason why the nobles had chosen to hold the celebration only after the twins had left and didn't like the implications. Well to be fair Manny at least he could understand, he was dreading the day that Manny decided he wanted to return and wanted to take him out drinking again. Still if Manny came back at least he could have Dani that he would suffer along side, that almost made it worth it. The snap in the sky immediately alerted Adam to what was happening, it was identical to the same snap that Manny and Dani had made when they had left. The Porta lab came out of the sky and ground to a halt past Adam, and suddenly no one was in the mood to celebrate. Adam rushed over and located the hatch but didn't get the chance to open it, Dani did that first.

"Don't have time to talk Manny's wounded." Adam's joy at seeing Dani again was whelmed with confusion.

"'Manny's wounded?'" Adam repeated the sheer incredulous in his voice plain as day.

Manny was delivered to a makeshift infirmary in one of the Tailor's shop and Dani was able to get his body back into working order.

"Ugh. I need a drink." Manny stated as he rubbed the side of his head.

"Bigger problems to worry about." Dani snapped glaring at her brother suspiciously.

"For starters do you mind explaining how it is that Manny can actually be hurt now?" Adam asked tapping his foot and glaring suspiciously.

"If you mean to say that conventional weapons will work on us now then you'll be very disappointed." Dani snatched a gun out of Man-E-Faces holster and raised it to give herself a head shot.

"We believe you!" That didn't mean that Adam wanted to see her blow her own head off again though. "But what weapon could hurt you two?"

"We call them reaper scythes, on account of the fact that they can only be made by a reaper, you might have a different word for them, I know for a fact that the one we fought has a different name for his lot." Dani explained crossing her arms.

"What do you mean we have a different name for them? Are you saying there are creatures like this on Eternia?" Adam asked the panic on his features plain as day.

"Reapers are a type of psycho-pomp, charged with guiding the souls of the dead off to the after life, and are typically a type of undead reanimated from the aborted and stillborn. Because of this they have such unpleasant abilities like making weapons whose wounds can never heal, or making people immortal." Dani explained having already guessed what Adam's next question would be.

"You said that your brother was the one who made you guys immortal..." Adam stated having already reached the correct conclusion.

"Yes he's a Reaper, of the aborted Variety. Or at least he was, I'm not sure of the technicalities right now considering... everything else." Dani stated and guessing the next question based on the way Adam was rubbing his fore head. Adam equated 'Everything else' when it comes to Dani to 'Heaping pile of complicated and dangerous issues ready to collapse in on itself any point in time.' "Of what I know: It's called Encroaching Doom Syndrome, or EDS for short, or it was Junior has a unique variant. It is something that can turn a reaper into something resembling a living breathing human by growing flesh all over their body." Adam choose not to ask what he look like without EDS. "This particular brand was refined from our genetic material, and like us every molecule of it is infused with and generates ecto energy which fuels his abilities."

"Okay. Is there anything else?" Adam asked looking suspicious.

"He's also host a soul eating demonic parasite with the capacity to mold their flesh into literally any form that our brother can imagine and compress down it's massive form thousands of times over." Adam was glad he wasn't drinking anything at the moment, he would've just spat it all over Dani. "Those are the big points. Everything else I can't confirm for certain."

"Lovely. Is the one you fought like that?" Adam asked looking concerned.

"No. Near as we can tell he isn't even the same species. They're called Yautja, more commonly known as Predators do to their nasty habit of hunting down and making trophies out of anything that looks like it can put up a fight." Dani explained before she started scratching her chin. "This one took offense to Manny openly mocking his species. I hit him with a Anti-Matter grenade before we left, barely slowed him down."

"Think he'll follow you guys here?" Adam asked looking overly concerned. "Likely. Yautja are mostly nomadic, in order to get to them all when they die he'd have to have cross galaxy capabilities. The question becomes when he'll get here." Which actually led to the next question. "How long have we been gone?"

"I barely had the time to turn away from where your ship disappeared." Then a thought occurred to Adam. It took Dani longer to explain what they had been doing while they were away then for them to leave and come back. "How long have you been been away?"

"At least a month. We've managed to cherry pick a planet for resources for a super weapon, got dragged off to another planet, cherry picked that for resources, antagonized at least two alien races and rebuilt our ship from scratch. We've been gone at least that long."

"Ugh." Oh Adam needed a mug of coffee in a bad way. "Should I put the army on high alert?"

"Not unless you want these animals thinking that they're worthy prey. I'll set up a barrier to harass him. Let's just hope that no one is planning on trying to fill the void Skeletor left." Dani should not have said that.

Speaking of old bone head somebody was inside of his house, like a narrowly build lizard man. Without any of Skeletor's Evil Warriors or Tri-clop's mechanical monsters lying around it was easy to break in undetected. His name was Kobra Khan, one of the numerous prisoners released from the Eternian prisons by the Evil Warriors to cause havoc. Course Kobra Kahn was far less interested in joining Skeletor's ranks than he was in his freedom, if old Skull face won they he would simply deliver the heads of a few chieftains to earn his favor. But since he lost Skeletor's base was ripe for the taking, and Kobra Kahn had gotten here first, more important than that he had found what he was looking for: an ancient Eternian shrine. The Shrine had a octagon shaped depression on one of it's pillars and Kobra Kahn had the key, passed down for many centuries among his people, even as they were hunted by the tribes of the dark continent, until he was the last. But he wouldn't be the last now. Kobra put the key into it's slot, stepped away as the shrine buzzed to life, and bowed waiting impatiently for the ones on the other side to step forward and reveal themselves. And so they did, and thus the Snake men had returned to Eternia.