Chapter 16: Chimeras

Lucas, Kumatora, Duster, and Boney all trudged out through a cave. They took a moment to bathe in a hot spring to refresh themselves, they were ready to continue onwards.

"I can't believe you tossed that damn egg out!" Kumatora growled. "And in a spot where the enemy could always come back!"

"Give me a break. I didn't know the egg was so important." Duster muttered. "I didn't even know I was supposed to be this Duster person. Hopefully I can get those memories back."

Lucas sighed. "Are you two going to keep fighting?" he asked.

"No, no," Kumatora replied. "The geezer just told me to give the moron a hard time if he did something stupid with the egg."

"Let's just get through this canyon valley and find it." Duster replied.

"I hope they won't be like this the entire time master Lucas." Boney whined.

They stepped outside, and Lucas felt his PSI tingle.

"Danger!"

Out of nowhere, a blast of fire erupted at the group of four. Burning the four of their skin and their clothing.

"What the hell?!" Kumatora growled.

"Um...what…" Lucas gulped nervously as a mechanically modified Lionhead with a glowing red eye, which was attached to a metal body of eight tentacles. "What happened to these lions?"

"That damn pork king." Kumatora growled. "He and that wretched bastard Fassad have been doing it to all sorts of poor animals.

Suddenly, a loud growl as a hammerhead shark with a Kangaroo bottom and baby hammerhead shark crashed down next to the lion as it started to swarm around.

"Master, we need to fight." Boney growled.

"Alright…" Lucas hesitantly pulled out his stick,

"Pk Fire α!" Kumatora shouted. The blast of fire sparked off her fingers as the Octo-lion tried to blast them again with fire.

The Kangashark jumped up and kicked Duster in the face with its hard foot. Boney growled and bit it in its tail, making it yelp and growl.

Lucas smacked the Octo-Lion with his stick as the Lion as it wrapped its tentacles around Kumatora, saving the princess from suffocation. Duster did a soaring axe kick and smashed the Lionhead down. The Octo-lion wrapped its tentacles around his foot.

The Kangashark jumped up and smashed down against the ground, unleashing a shockwave that shook against Lucas, Boney, and Kumatora as the ground shook.

"PSI Shield α" Lucas casted a shield to protect Duster from the flame breath of the Octo-lion. The flames blasted in multiple directions, some hitting the Kangashark.

The Kangashark roundhouse kicked Kumatora, punting her into the wall of the cliff. Lucas quickly casted a Lifeup α over to her, restoring her health.

"PK Freeze β!" Kumatora shouted. A large beam of ice summoned off the tips of her fingers. The Kangashark found its body encased in ice as it was hit. Duster then flew in and did a somersault kick, the ice shattered as the Kangashark fell to the ground and stopped moving.

The Octo-lion let out a roar as a blast of flames burned and singed the group of four once again.

"PK Love α!" A blast of white and blue light blasted the Octo-lion into the wall. Boney then bit the creature on the back of its head as Duster swarmed in and unleashed a quick double kick. The mecha Lion slumped against the ground, its eight tentacles spiraled against the ground.

More stomping alerted the four of them as they quickly turned to find three large brown tortoises looking at them, there was a dead stare in the brown eyes.

"Um…" Lucas felt his PSI start screaming at him

"DANGER! DANGER! RUN!"

The tortoises turned around, and all four of their eyes widened as missile turrets with actual missiles loaded up.

"RUN!" Lucas shouted. The four of them took off down the valley as they heard massive explosions and large crashes of rocks against the earth behind them.

Lucas, Kumatora, Duster, and Boney all huffed and puffed against a clayman statue.

"Thank...thank god." Lucas breathed. "We found the statue…"

"Damn those pricks." Kumatora breathed as she brushed some dirt off her legs. "Freaking machine gunning tortoise bitches."

"Well, at least no one got shot." Boney barked.

"Oh...this is the place!" Duster said, looking at the mossy clayman statue. "I know I've buried this thing here. Lucky those tortoises haven't blown it all up yet."

He got down on his knees and dug up a lot of dirt. Then, he emerged from the ground with the golden hummingbird egg with wings. He held it up, "Still intact as well."

"Great, now let's get this thing outta here!"

Suddenly, a large lightning bolt struck down from the sky and struck Duster and the Clayman statue, Duster dropped the egg as he collapsed against the ground.

"Holy shit," Kumatora quickly ran over to him, "Are you okay?"

Duster pushed himself up. "Yeah…I'm alright."

Lucas looked over at the clayman statue. Its eyes flashed to life as it swiped up the egg and started to move.

"Guys!" Lucas said.

Kumatora and Duster quickly turned to find themselves smacked by the powerful clayman statue. The Clayman then started to make a run for it.

"Well shit." Kumatora growled. "That's not good."

"I think there's some sort of laboratory up there." Duster said. "We better hurry if we don't want it to get caught up with those Pigmasks you guys hate."

"Quick, we gotta run." Lucas said.

More bullets started coming into hearing distant, making all four of them groan.

"Welp, just keep moving forward." Lucas sighed. "We gotta move!"

The four of them continued running through a valley, narrowly avoiding numerous amounts of machine gun tortoises that continuously open fired, eventually, they skidded to a halt in front of a factory, a Pigmask Captain a white suit and cape noticed them as he was talking to lower ranked pink pig masks. He looked blank from behind the mask, but then they heard him shout.

"WHO THE FUCK FORGOT HE CAME TODAY?!"

The other pink mask pigmasks quickly started shaking their heads and making mumbling excuses.

"Don't just stand there you dimwits!" The Pigmask Captain snorted. "Go get the cleanup and shit!" The other pigmasks saluted quickly and hurriedly jumped inside.

The white Pigmask captain quickly ran over to them and got down on one knee in front of Lucas.

"Commander, my apologies," the Pigmask said. "We didn't realize you were coming today, we must've gotten the dates mixed up.

"Uh…" Lucas started to mumble

"You should be sorry you pigheaded freak show!" Kumatora snapped at him. "You nearly got your commander blown up by all those damn missile tortoises!"

"Yes...well...we were still working out some bugs...according to Doctor Andonuts…" The Captain said. "Though...I wouldn't be surprised if he was secretly plotting to turn on us...considering…"

"Quit going on a tangent excuse ya fat fucker. Or else Mr. Fassad will hear about it." That made the captain jump.

"No...no...you're right...my apologies...you must be in a hurry, what are you here for?"

Lucas looked up at Kumatora, who gave him a wink while Boney shook his head in approval.

"Um...well...one of yo- I mean...our claymen took something top secret of mine." Lucas said, nervously, if he messed up, this could spell disaster. He could feel sweat developing on his forehead. "It just ran by here, did you see it?"

"Oh...um...," The captain replied, "Please uh...please excuse me very quickly." He quickly darted inside the factory.

"Good job kiddo." Kumatora said, rubbing a hand through his hair. "Looks like there's some sort of misunderstanding, just play it cool, and we'll be out of here with that egg in no time."

The Pigmask captain came out of the factory again, this time, Lucas felt his heart sink as he was accompanied by a boy around his age. The boy was wearing a gi with a black belt, and he had an almost completely bald head, save for a ponytail down the center. He also had a sword sheathed next to him.

"Commander, please forgive me, but it appears that the clayman statue got put in the dump truck by one of our idiot employees." The captain said. "Thankfully, we have Poo here, he can get you all to the dumpster and help avoid any trouble. Isn't that right...Poo?"

The boy in the gi stayed silent as he looked at Lucas. Then, completely uncalled for, the Pigmask Captain slapped him from behind his head, and boy was it a hard slap.

"I said, you'd take the commander...right you worthless hero?"

"Of...Of course." Poo replied, doing a formal bow. "Come now Commander, let me take you."

"Oh...by the way…" The pigmask captain handed Lucas a remote with a button. "You know what to do if he gets disobedient commander." Lucas only nodded silently and took the remote, placing it in his pocket.

The four of them followed Poo through the factory, watching more claymen getting made. Occasionally, a pigmask would try to walk up to them, but Poo would quickly glare them away.

Poo led them to the outer edge of a road and into a tunnel, where he immediately turned on them. He waved his hand around as Lucas went to charge a bit of PSI

"I know that you are not the commander," Poo said quickly. "Please, put this on, and have your companions put these on." he tossed two Pigmask suits to Kumatora and Duster, and a pair of orange pants with a brown vest to Lucas.

"But I…"

"Put them on, friend!" Poo hissed at them. "I'm trying to help you…I don't want to be helping these evil people of your world, and you clearly don't want them here either. Please, I'm doing you a huge favor."

"How do we know we can trust you?" Duster asked.

Poo waved his hand around, and quickly, a few tiny sparks of electricity flowed from his fingertips. "I'm a PSI user myself. I don't have much time, just please hurry."

Dun Dun DUN! The first of the chosen four had finally made an appearance to speak to Lucas and friends. Yippee! More story writing. Kind of got myself into a pickle this summer, what with my family quite itchy to run around the U.S for vacation, working a job, kinda hard to keep up with my writing, so I have to retract my promise about more frequent uploads it would seem, however, if I can find some down time, I'll try to get more uploads done over the summer.

I appreciate everyone who's been sticking around with the story. Slow and steady will eventually close this story out. Event though we haven't gotten to the main part of the story anyway. But that's alright. We'll get there when we get there.

Any thoughts you all have are greatly appreciated as always.

See you all, next time.