Author's Note: This and one More and I'm finally done with this story. Read, Review, Favorite and Enjoy!
Chapter 23: Return of the King
There was a very real and present need to figure out what precisely was going on at the moment. Chief among the questions that needed answering was the blind black man who had interrupted the confrontation with the Snakes. Though his intervention had allowed the snakes to get away it was clear from his actions that he was the enemy of the snakes, in fact had he the foresight to inform them before hand of his intentions and coordinated their efforts the snakes would have never gotten away. Similarly the look on his face was someone who looked like he blamed the masters for letting the snakes get away if his angry furrow was any indication.
"Easy there Cringor." Adam's pet had returned to the form of a massive tiger and was now staring down the new comer angrily. "He isn't our enemy. Yet."
"I hope you have an explanation for this Zodak." Dani stated glaring down the black man angrily.
"You know this guy?" Adam asked looking suspiciously at the winged cyborg.
"His name is Zodak, he was one of Grey Skull's allies during his reign, and a exiled member of the Council of Elders in more recent years." Daniela explained and noticed how the Master's wisely chose to surround the monk.
"Why was he exiled?" Man At Arms asked cocking a suspicious brow.
"His brother was eaten alive by the King of the Snakemen. As a Consequence he thought eternal imprisonment in stasis was too soft a punishment. The rest of the council disagreed, the decision to keep the snakes where they are not out of justice but a need to put them out of the rest of Eternia's collective misery."
"Not just for my brother." Zodak stated piping up. "The Snakes prefer to eat their food while it's still alive, and to them all of us are food. They killed thousands of people, entire tribes rendered extinct by their fangs. But yes I also wish for justice for my brother."
"So he freed the Snakemen?" Adam asked leveling his sword at the monk's face.
"I sincerely doubt that." Dani stated redirecting the blade away from the black skinned monk. "Were he present at the snake's awakening then one of two things would have happened: either they would have eaten him, or he would have killed them to the last."
"I agree with this conclusion. Had I been allowed to finish this battle properly then not a single one of the snakes would have been allowed to leave here alive." Zodak stated making his opinion and his displeasure plain as day. "And if I am no longer under suspicion I would like to do so."
"You may go." Daniela stated opening a path for them through the group of masters with one of her wings.
"What do you mean 'you may go' weren't you saying earlier...?"
"This type of person is not use to working in groups, nor has any desire to do so. Best case scenario he does as he claims and eliminates the snake man threat, worst case scenario his suicidal charge succeeds in weakening the snakes or delaying their return to full power long enough for us to launch a successful counter strike and putting whatever scheme he is hatching on a kibosh." Zodak paid Daniela the barest of attention before he walked away, disappearing into a magical light and leaving the Master's in peace.
"What do we do now?" Ram Man asked speaking for the entirety of the Masters in the process.
King Hiss and his forces returned to Snake Mountain through a portal created by the King himself, the wounded were quickly and efficiently being tended to as Hiss took seat upon the throne once more.
"Master I..."
"I would say that was a rather successful endeavor wouldn't you." King Hiss stated to the immeasurable confusion of Kobra Kahn.
"Your majesty?"
"We've suffered zero casualties, met the faces of Eternia's elite forces, and seen the heir of Grey Skull. For this encounter we have complete all of our goals and thus can now plan accordingly." King Hiss stated prompting a look of outrage on Kobra Kahn's face.
"You planned for us to fail!" Kobra Kahn stated surprised.
"I plan to make a plan, now that I have the information I want." King Hiss stated leaning back into his chair. "First our wounded recover, then we move onto our conquest."
"King Hiss intended his attack to fail?" Adam asked looking surprised.
"Not so much fail as it wasn't a attack at all. Think about it for a moment." Daniela explained as she began drawing upon a white board. "One of your most dangerous enemies, trapped in a prison of their own design millenia ago, suddenly reappears and begins making a direct line to where they think your capital is located. What do you do?"
"Send everything you have in order to stop them." Adam stated without a shred of hesitation. "If you can stop Hiss from getting back to full power then it doesn't matter what he's planning on doing next."
"And thus you accomplish Hiss's main goal, that being to learn everything he can about us." Daniela stated bluntly putting the cap back on her marker.
"Is that the reason why you and your brother stayed out of the fight when we went to confront Hiss?" Man at Arms asked cocking a suspicious brow.
"Short answer. Yes." Daniela stated prompting a suspicious look from the Masters. "But the thing you have to realize is that the same holds true for the snakes as well. Everything that they currently have to their name was unsealed with their troops. So they have a very limited number of personnel that can fight, even if they held back their strongest fighters we should have a idea of what their fighting force looks like." Thus Daniela finished writing down the contents of the meeting on the board. "These are the magical artifacts from Grey Skull's era that Hiss should know about."
"Weren't most of these already rounded up by Skull Face?" Ram-Man asked prompting Daniela to nod.
"And then Manny smashed them. But there are things on this list that even Skeletor wouldn't touch with a twenty foot pole." Daniela stated as she erased the majority of the names.
"But Hiss would?" Meckaneck asked slightly fearful. "There are items more useful to Hiss than Skeletor, specifically ones that are designed to work with Hiss's abilities because he himself made them, or were made by the same person that made Hiss. Take this for instance." Daniela's finger landed on a name which clearly said 'Amulet of Echidna' on it. "This is a amulet designed to splice people's DNA with the Snake Men's. Hiss is able to control the minds of Snakes and that includes his followers. Take a minuet and think about the implications of that combination." The Master's had matching faces of sheer horror to show what they thought of that idea. "Good. If you understand then we have the next matter of concern to deal with. Even though we know what the amulet does, we have no way of knowing where it is, another reason why Skeletor had nothing to do with it. Towards this end we should..." It was at this point in time that Dani finally noticed someone was absent. "Where is my idiot brother at?"
"Da Da da dee dee dee~!" Manny was humming to himself as he played with the settings on the Nemetrix, with a literal lion's heart Cringor was a lot braver than normal and as such was actually willing to let Manny get near him. Still the possessed tiger looked at the immortal with blatant suspicion as he played with the device that would be mounted around his neck adjusting it's settings and tampering with it's forms. "Alrighty then let's try this one." Saying that Manny re-attached the device to it's socket around Cringor's neck. The device let out a short tune as Cringor's transformation counted down.
"Manny what are you doing?" Dani asked/shrieked having finally tracked down her brother.
"What's it look like? I'm trying out new settings on the Nemetrix just liked we discussed earlier." Manny stated looking down at the still not transformed Cringor and the beeping device around his neck. "Though why it hasn't gone off yet is a mystery to me."
"Huu." Dani on the other hand knew what was happening and turned intangible. "For larger transformations it has a delay timer so that we have a chance to get to a safe perimeter first." Speaking of which the device went off, replacing the form of the green armored cat with a gigantic worm easily as tall as the castle's towers. "Oh no." Dani stated dreading the sudden turn of events.
As if by instinct Cringor dived into the ground, directly into the Eternian dungeon where Skeletor and his cronies were being kept. Their luck must have been improving immeasurably, Cringor missed the lot of them by a mile, better still he simultaneously disabled their cells and crushed their holo-droid posing as Manny guard. Skeletor took one look at the situation, cocked his brow knowingly, and made a decision.
"It seems that we have early parole gentlemen." Skeletor stated directing the group's attention to the giant hole that had appeared above their heads.
"What makes you think we're doing anything you tell us?" Beast Man stated having grown a spine in his short time in jail. "The last time we trusted you we spent the better part of a decade living in a volcanic hell hole, only for us to be crushed: humiliatingly!"
"Don't talk about humiliation until after you've been shoved into a dress and made to prance about in front of the entire Eternian army!" Tri-Clops snapped glaring at his hairy one time comrade.
"Gentlemen have a look." Skeletor gestured down to their half crushed robotic guard. "The Child is gone, replaced by this contraption. I don't know about any of you but this seems like a fine opportunity to remind Eternia why we are feared."
"Were feared you mean, Skull face." Fishman snapped glaring hatefully at his one time master. "We're laughing stocks the lot of us!"
"Speak carefully fishman or..."
"You'll what? Drag me off to live in a volcano for another decade before we are shoved into another round of torture and humiliation?" Indeed the argument could be made that the fishman's quality of life had improved dramatically since his untimely imprisonment, three square meals and no longer made to labor inside of a hot sweltering volcano day in and out, nor did he have to live in fear of that child again. "I'm going to wait for the guard's to take me to my new cell, if any of you have brains in your heads you'll do the same." Saying that Fish Man went back into the rubble to wait.
"Well that's one down." Suddenly the masters turned around to look at Manny who was sitting on the pile of rubble that formed from the hole Cringor had made. "So do any of you other butt heads want to go back into your cages?"
"It's just another holo-droid!" Tri-Clops snapped pointing at Manny accusingly. "If I was a holodroid then would I have any of these scars on me?" Manny stated pulling up his shirt up to reveal Dani's stitch job across his chest.
"If you were who you are pretending to be you wouldn't have any stitches on you!" Skeletor snapped accusingly causing his once and future subordinates to nod their heads in agreement.
"I got hurt happens to the best of us." Manny stated with a indifferent shrug of his shoulders.
The way Skeletor saw it there were one of two possibilities, either A this was another holo-droid and thus very little stood in his path, or B this was the real deal which meant that they were actually capable of hurting him now. Either way Skeletor was pleased with both of these possibilities.
"Attack!" Skeletor charged up a spell in his hand and prepared to fire it at Manny.
"Oi you guys seem confused about something..." Manny intercepted the spell with his face, blowing flesh off of it as he got face to face with old Skull face before it immediately grew back. "Just cause I'm not as strong as I thought I was, doesn't mean I got any weaker."
Saying that Manny grabbed hold of leader of the Evil Warriors by his neck and kilt, moved behind Tri-Clops... "HHHYYYAAAHHH!" and promptly shoved the skull of Skeletor up the butt hole of his chief scientist.
"Now than butt heads, back to your cells." Understanding the meaning behind that insult now, the other Evil Warriors covered their posteriors with there hands as they fled back into their cells for safety. Having reminded his torture dummies of his address Manny flew back up and out of the hole Cringor made. "Satisfied?" Manny asked smirking knowingly.
"Not even remotely. We have to find Cringor and the Nemetrix after you fix up the hole you made in the prison!" Daniela snapped indicating the hole Manny had just climbed out of.
"The limits of my expertise in this situation comes down to about 'plug hole.'" Manny pointed out already looking for something to shove into the hole prompting Daniela to smack herself in her face.
"Just take this and go find Cringor!" Daniela stated handing Manny a palm top computer she had on her. That said and done, Manny went to look for the wayward alien while Dani went to work on remodeling the prison that Manny had demolished.