"That's it?" A mechanical voice chimed, "I burst through a portal to this wimpy world to find a buncha wimpy guards, guarding some wimpy sword?"

A familiar masked villain danced in, hopping swiftly over the bodies.

"What a draaaaag…"

In the center of a room sat a sword, stuck in the ground. "Normally, the Hero of Time would take this… but that ugly scamp's behind schedule-" Mechanical laughter ensued. "Oh man… I amuse myself sometimes! Anyway, I'll just clone it…"

A replica popped out. Shallows scooped it up and swung it around for a second before stopping after closely avoiding the sword taking his wrist off.

"Huh. Lighter than I thought. No matter, some guy's about to get his WHOLE rear end cut of-"

"MultiVerse Patrol, step out with the sword in the air!" A booming voice called.

"Oh, you want the sword, eh?" Shallows giggled.

"THERE HE IS!" Someone called.

"Stop, friends, for just a second!"

The agents stopped dead in their tracks.

"Stop! And listen! I stole this sword. And I intend to attack YOU with it and win."

"So? We aren't scared of your stupid mask." One of them had the gall to say.

"You see, you're supposed to be. That's why I have to kill you… and I'm gonna do it with one hand behind my back."

He stuck one hand behind his back and raised the sword with the other. "I hope you're ready to lose both your dignity AND your lives!"

Meanwhile…

The team jerked awake(in their proper bodies) to an alarm.

"WAKE UP!" A familiar old professor called.

Luigi groggily sat up.

"E. Gadd…?"

"WHY THAT DINKY PROFESSOR!" 3 shrilled, "COME HERE!"

"3, DON'T." The captain demanded.

Luigi exited the room to the captain and E. Gadd taped to the wall.

"3, GET ME DOWN!" The captain snapped.

"What did you guys do?" Luigi asked.

"We were about to show off the new thing Alpha gave us, but 3 here taped us to a freaking wall!"

"No worries," E. Gadd chimed, "I meant to show you the cool new device, but I can totally do it from the wall!"

"Oh, okay." Luigi waited for a second.

"See, Sonny, when I said that I could show you from the wall, I didn't mean that, and would GLADLY have a gander at it OFF the wall."

"Oh, okay." Luigi removed them from the wall and followed them to the meeting room.

"Alpha sent us THIS." The captain sighed.

A strange (and huge) box with encrypted text on the side sat on the table. "Yeah. It's kind of disappointing. I don't even know what the weird text on the side says." The captain claimed, sarcastically.

"No, no, Mr. GraySpots,"

"That's not my name."

"We DO know what it is!"

"Nope." The captain pointed to E. Gadd. "He knows. I DON'T."

"It's a message. I took a peek in the box while you fellas slept!" E. Gadd shoved the box into Simon's hands, "And it's addressed to YOU."

Simon stumbled around with the box for a second. "Wh-why ME? This box is… cumbersome, to say the least."

3 attempted to pick the box up, then shook it. "There's definitely something in it…"

"It's for the blond feller." E. Gadd repeated as he put the box back into Simon's possession.

"I mean… are you gonna open it?" Luigi asked, handing a pocket knife to Simon.

"I don't want to open it while everyone's staring!" Simon exclaimed, turning to keep the box out of view of the others.

"It's probably another cake. Alpha seems to like sending us cake." The captain began, remembering every time a mysterious box arrived with cake inside.

"I told ya, it's no cake, it's a message! And it's fer the blond guy. So let the blond guy have it."

Simon began to cut the poorly taped box open, a worried expression beginning to form.

"This isn't going to go right… I can feel it…"

"No, it IS gonna go wron-"

Alph jerked his elbow into 3's side.

"It is NOT gonna go wrong, he's gonna open the package and it's not gonna be-"

"It's a box." Simon grumbled, as he plucked a box out of the box.

He opened the box, revealing another box. The cycle repeated until a small device remained.

E. Gadd snatched the device out of SImon's hands. "This little doohickey is called the Compact Messenger! I came up with the name myself!"

"You read that off the side." The captain mumbled.

"Yes I did!" E. Gadd cheered, "And I can't be more proud! Anyway, it's a tiny projector made for givin' the highest quality messages. And it's addressed to YOU, Blondie."

Simon held the CM with two fingers and his face scrunched up. "It smells like cheese."

"Yeah, the material made for holographic messages DOES smell like that!" E. Gadd picked some dust off the machine, "Technically, your ship SHOULD smell like that, too!"

Alph and Luigi (the ones who clean the ship) sighed and shook their heads in denial.

"Either way, the nice person who sent you that DOES say that it's for Simon," The captain began, "dunno why the heck it smells like cheese, but Alpha claimed it was for Simon. So take it."

An alarm blared.

"Hold that thought, we got a sight of Billy."

Meeting room, seconds later…

"So, team, Billy's still nowhere to be found. But it's someone else, instead. Some Mask guy."

Simon quickly came to a realization. "The dude in Alpha's prison?"

"Yes, the dude in Alpha's prison. And he's also the reason Alpha's sending this all-corporation-wide distress call our way, instead of the whole corporation."

"Can I come this time?" E. Gadd pitched, curiously.

"No!" The whole team cried at once.

"Aw…"

01000001 00100000 01100100 01101001 01110011 01110100 01100001 01101110 01110100 00100000 01100011 01110010 01111001 00100000 01100110 01101111 01110010 00100000 01101000 01100101 01101100 01110000

Amber held her breath as the masked man slowly trodden past her. "Where are you?" He sang, as he danced through the corridors, "I know you're there!"

Amber held completely still.

"Come on, you're all I want! Don't make this hard for either of us! I've practically backed your pretty self into a corner! So just accept that we're together in this corner and maybe it won't look as bad!" He paused, made a weird hand motion, hit himself on the head, then continued. "Okay, maybe that sounded sexual, I didn't mean it that way, I didn't make you come here to make out unless it's your soul making out of your body."

Amber went to flank the man, raising her sword- and missing. He sidestepped and kicked the sword across the room, before grabbing Amber's arm.

"Huh. Y'know, maybe your boss should rethink… y'know… the heavy duty boots? It's kinda hard to sneak up on someone with those on, y'know?"

Then he sidestepped again, missing a bullet from L.

"What the heck did I just say?!" He scolded, the mask's eyes glowing a vibrant purple.

"Oops…"

Shallows maneuvered Amber into his grasp with the sword at her neck.

"So, MVPs, how's it goin'? As you can probably see, I have your wife." He laughed, looking SImon dead in the eyes.

L quickly jerked his elbow into 3's side as she began to silently laugh.

"As of yesterday, I had not this marvelous voice!" The masked man chortled, "Your weird human-slash-toad friend gave it to me! And now, I have the ability to say absolutely mean stuff, like suck it and go piss off!"

Everyone remained silent.

"What? I'm ecstatic about finally having a voice, is all."

He screamed as Amber's boot slammed against his shin and she slung herself from his grip.

"Whoo! That felt good! Did you ever get the box, Blondie?"

Simon shrugged. "Well, we were rudely interrupted by that fool, so…"

"Ouch! Your boots HURT! And to think I wanted to show mercy…" Masky grumbled, "Clearly not!"

"I liked him when he was mute." Simon whispered.

"I heard that!"

Masky drew his sword. "And I liked you MVPs when you weren't existent… oh, wait, that's NOW! I'll cut you suckers to shre-"

A huge MVP ship swerved through the halls and smacked Masky, knocking him far off.

Alph trotted out of the ship, a spring in his step.

"Hey, guys!"

Masky groaned. "Ugh…" He groaned, "I...I.." He slowly crawled across the floor to the mask across from him.

The captain kicked the mask away. Everyone leaned in.

"...I…" He mumbled something nobody heard.

"Should we handcuff him now or later?" Simon muttered..

"I'm still alive." Masky hissed, glaring back at Amber with a hateful glint in his unmasked smoldering eyes.

Masky grabbed his sword. Before she could comprehend what happened, Simon kicked Amber out of the way and caught Masky's strike.

Simon locked eyes with unmasked Masky. He paused, his grip on his sword weakening.

Masky, taking advantage of this, swung his and Simon's swords out of his grip and onto the floor, before pulling out a smaller knife and slinging it into Simon's chest.

"..." Masky yanked his knife out of Simon and picked up his mask, began to tighten it, then it fastened to his face as 3 pummelled it in with her fist.

Masky yanked up his sword, attempting to take 3 out, but got blasted to the wall with a nice bullet.

L pinned Masky to the wall with his leg, but Masky broke free instantly and flung L into 3.

Alph halted his attack when Masky drew L's gun on him.

"Nobody move!" He cackled, "Or I'll bust a hole right into his head!"

Alph threw his hands up.

Everyone slowly surrounded Masky.

He tightened his grip on the trigger.

Simon propped himself against the wall.

Masky pulled the trigger without any warning. Alph swiftly threw himself out of the way, the shot hitting home in his leg.

Masky then swung the gun into 3, hitting her in the jaw, then cut her with the knife, an attacking Amber ate a bullet in the arm and L and him traded shots. Finally, L hit him with the final bullet in his gun.

Masky clutched his shoulder as he attempted to run away. L began to pursue him, but stopped upon realization that nobody was in enough shape to help him if he were caught in a scuffle.

L returned to the crew.

"Ow. Ouch. Stop. That burns. Quit it. oWWWWW-" Simon squirmed as the captain attempted to clean the stab wound.

"Hold still, who knows what he'd done with that knife. You might get an infection."

"I've had many infections before, I'm not that scared of i-"

The captain sighed. "I would hate for you to remember the time you were bitten by a Drago."

"That's an exception, I nearly died from that. It's not MY fault that the pigmasks aligned the teeth with spikes! That thing cut deep!"

Alph reached for his comms system, crawling as far as he could to get it. "L, could you help with that?"

L picked up the comms himself and began to contact Alpha's channel.

"Alpha. Agent L here."

Alpha groggily answered the comms. "Hurrrgh... You guys…" He paused to yawn, then continued, "You guys dealt with the masked guy yet?"

"About that, he's kinda… uhh… beaten us up. Several people have bullets in them right now."

"This happened last year… and it's happening again. I'll dispatch the control team to you shortly…" He yawned again. "And all that…"

"Sir, we're all wounded. Even your sister."

"whAT- er... " A sigh. "Did you at least catch the guy?"

"No, sir."

A huff. "I'll be there shortly." He snapped.

A few minutes later…

"You shot him with a tracker? Well, the tracking only goes so far, as he'd probably removed it by now…" Alpha turned to the injured people. "How'd one guy do all of this?"

L rubbed the back of his neck, awkwardly. "He nabbed my gun and shot them with it, preventing us from doing anything."

"Uh-huh… well, I think you guys are capable of dealing with him. Unless he stole the sword in there, in which it's likely possible that we're all gonna die."

Everyone blanched.

A groan. "He stole the sword, didn't he?"

L nodded, slowly.

"...then we're all as good as doomed. He's taking it to Billy. If he gets a hold of that sword, we're ALL dead!" Alpha paused and then groaned again. "I'll take it from here."

·- ···· · ·-· · ·-· ··· -·-· ·-·· · ·- - ··· -· - -· · -··- · ···· ··-··

Meanwhile….

Marco flicked awake to water being dumped on her face.

"Hey. Pigtails. Wake up." A strange, mechanical voice chimed.

A gloved hand reached down to her.

Marco grabbed the hand, then realized whose hand she just grabbed. Shallows pulled her to her feet and turned to walk away.

"Hey, wait a second."

He stopped. "What?" He snapped.

"Have we met?"

Shallows sat silent for a second. His voice flicked in and out as he spoke.

"No. No, we haven't…" He sighed.

·- -·-· ·-· -·- - ··-· ·-· ·- ·· -·

My boi Masky's hiding something... his face. HHHHHHHHH-

Did him and Marco know each other? Maybe in a past life?

Still pondering the chances of a MVP subreddit. I kinda need some feedback though.

Anyways, have a good morning/evening/afternoon/night, wherever you are!