Author's Note: Thank you to all who read this fic and reviewed the last chapter. Sorry I've let this fic hang for as long as it did, I was busy studying for the pre-midterm exams. Man, am I glad they're over. Anyway, here's Chapter 14.

Disclaimer: Refer to the prologue

Story Title: Corrupted Programming

Chapter Title: This Was It

Grand Marshal Yomex's Command Ship

"Oh, yeah!" Brad droned out in a mechanically modulated voice. "I am the man!"

He turned to observe the broken remains of the communications systems' power reactor and the hacked-up roach drone parts strewn all around the reactor room's floor. He grinned and clicked the claws of his commandeered ant drone body excitedly. He had always wondered how it felt like to kick some serious hiney like Jenny did, but he had been limited to imaginations and daydreaming. Well, at least until now.

Suddenly, more roach drones poured inside the reactor room, weapons drawn. They fired at Brad who merely laughed as the pieces of the ant drone body he was wearing simply flew back and reattached themselves every time they got blown off by the weapons fire of the roach drones. He smirked confidently as he leaned over and simply swept away the roach drones with the strength of his ant drone body. Many of the drones flew into either the walls or each other and ended up as heaps of junk.

"Wohoo!" Brad yelled happily. "I rock!"

It was then that a shot from a roach drone's beam cannon glanced off the hollowed-out ant drone head that Brad wore over his head. Brad was unhurt, but the ant drone head flew off his own head from the force of the shot. The smile on Brad's face disappeared. The ant drone's body may be self-repairing, but he certainly wasn't. He turned to the two remaining roach drones in the reactor room.

"Hey," a red roach drone exclaimed. "I didn't know 423503 had a second head, and a funny-lookin' one too."

"Funny looking?" Brad said, offended. Though he quickly realized how stupid it was for him to be offended in this particular situation.

The green roach drone standing right beside the red roach drone reached over with its arm and smacked the red drone on the head. "Idiot! That's the human, and he's using 423503's body!"

"Oh." The red drone blinked. "Well, that's good."

"Good?!" demanded the green drone. "How can something like this be good?!"

"Now I don't have to give 423503 the can of WD40 that I owe 'im."

The sheer absurdity of the red drone's comments actually had Brad taken aback for a second, but he quickly shrugged it away and tore the two remaining roach drones apart with his ant drone claws. Both roach drones fell to pieces. The disembodied head of the green drone whirred and sparked as it spoke to the disembodied head of the red drone.

"This is your fault…" it muttered.

"M-my fault?!" the red drone's head managed to say before the light in its eyes turned off, signaling that its systems completely shut down.

"You d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-distracted me—" the green drone's head managed to sputter out before shutting down.

"Well, that was kinda funny. In a weird way." Brad said as he looked at the remains of the drones. "Okay, now to go and get Jenny and find a way to escape."

The redheaded boy sprinted out of the reactor room, going off to find his best friend. He didn't need look far. At that very moment Jenny literally ran right into him, sending both of them flying backward. Brad staggered to his feet, rubbing the back of his head in pain. Jenny, however, jumped to her feet and deployed her arm-mounted laser cannon.

"Okay, ant bot, what've you done with—" Jenny started to say before she looked closely at the green ant drone's head. "BRAD?!"

Brad gulped nervously as he got up. He knew Jenny was still under the rebellion's control, and the last thing he wanted was to fight with his best friend. Especially if that best friend was a super-powered robot that made action stars look like thumb-sucking babies.

"I know you can hear me in there, Brad." Jenny said. "Don't worry, I'll find a way to get you off that ant drone body. This doofus is probably one of Vexus' spies sent here to stop Yomex's noble cause. And now he's got you hostage."

"Huh?" Brad blurted out before he realized that jenny must think that it had been the ant drone whom had forced him to merge with it, and not the other way around. "Hey, Jenny, you got it all wrong. First of all, if this ant drone's got me hostage, then why is my head in the place of its head. And secondly, you've been reprogrammed, Jenny. You never agreed to work with Yomex."

"Don't try to pull that on me, you Vexus lackey." Jenny warned. "I know you put Brad in that position just so I won't dare shoot you. Well that's fine, I have other ways to deal with you."

With that, jenny un-deployed her lasers and activated her Power Fists. She charged at Brad and his ant drone body. She started to take wild swings at Brad's ant drone body with her oversized fists, being very careful so as not to hit brad himself. Brad, in the meantime, did his best to block Jenny's blows with the strong arms of the ant drone's body. But he knew that his borrowed robotic body wasn't gonna last long against Jenny.

"Listen, Jen," he panted, already starting to experience great difficulty against the ferocity of Jenny's attacks. "It really is me in control here, and I've told you the truth. Yomex, Viruz, and that Fixit guy messed with your head to make you think that you volunteered to come here, but you didn't. They really captured you and brought you and brought you here."

"Shut up," Jenny snapped. "The only thing here that's gonna get messed up here is you. Now stop trying to talk with Brad's voice, it just ain't convincing."

"Oh, this is just freakin' great," Brad groaned as he continued with his struggled to block Jenny's attacks. "Please, Jenny, just listen to me. I really don't wanna hurt you."

But Jenny didn't listen. Her reprogrammed brain was fully convinced that it wasn't really Brad who was talking, but a spy sent by Vexus to sabotage Yomex's rebellion. A rebellion that she had been reprogrammed to think that she had voluntarily offered to participate in. She gave powerful kick to one side of the ant drone body that made it spin, exposing the off switch on its back. But before she could reach for it, Brad turned and blocked her hand with his ant drone arm.

Brad's mind, on the other hand, was racing. The last attempt by Jenny had nearly succeeded in turning the ant drone body off. He knew that if his ant drone body was shut down he'd his chances of escaping would go down from slim to nada. Like it or not, he'd have to hit back and take Jenny with him by force. And because she was still under her reprogrammed mind's whims, she clearlyu wouldn't be convinced to come with him. No matter how hard he tried to convince her otherwise. He sighed.

"Sorry, Jenny." Brad mumbled. He chewed the bottom of his lip as he pulled back one of the ant drone's arms and punched his robotic best pal right in the abdomen.


"Oomph!" Jenny grunted, more from surprise than from pain. She flew right into a power relay connected to the ship's main reactor. She slammed into the relay and screamed as several gigawatts of energy flowed through her body. Her smoking body clattered to the floor and didn't move.

"Oh, cripes!" Brad cried out in alarm. He hadn't meant for that to happen. He ran to the unmoving form of his best friend. He leaned down and started to shake Jenny gently, trying to wake her up.

"Jenny, oh geez, I'm so sorry!" Brad said, his tone become frantic.

"Yes," a voice said behind Brad. The boy stiffened. It was an all too familiar Cryptkeeper-like voice. "You will be very sorry indeed, Bradley."

Brad turned slowly, afraid to look at the source of the voice. Finally, the voice's source came into view. It was the tall and lanky purple robot High Commander, Viruz. The High Commander glared right at Brad, grinning menacingly.

Cluster Imperial Palace, Cluster Prime

"Please, would you say that again." Vexus cooed in a gentle tone to a trembling yellow roach drone.

The drone gulped, seeing the underlying danger in the queen's demeanor. "W-we lost the t-transmission from Y-yomex bef-f-fore we managed to t-track him down, my Queen."

"Lost?" Vexus asked, still using the same overly gentle voice. "Now how could you lose something like a transmission? You didn't misplace it somewhere, did you?"

"Ap-p-parently the Grand Marshal cut his transm-mission short." The yellow drone said in a quivering voice. He cringed even more now, half-expecting the queen to cut him into tiny pieces. Her Majesty was known to do that when presented with information that she didn't particularly like to hear.

However, Vexus just sat on her throne and pondered on what the drone had told her. It was most unlike Yomex to leave a transmission uncompleted. All his transmissions always ended with a formal sign-off, and the fact that he didn't do so led her to think that something was amiss in the Grand marshal's camp. She pressed a button on her throne's armrest, deploying a large tactical screen. What she saw on the screen confirmed her suspicions.

There were many large gaps in the formations of the attacking forces, large gaps that severely happered the attacking groups' ability to fight. Normally, an attack formulated by the Grand Marshal would have had every angle covered. She had seen records of Yomex's past campaigns, and those had earned her grudging respect for their efficiency and effectiveness. But what she saw almost made her think that it was someone else's attack fleet, not Yomex's.

But as she looked more closely, she saw signs of Yomex's hand in the attack. While their formations had many gaps, the attacking ships were still doing a lot of damage thanks to the precision of their flight formations and weapons fire. Precision that was evident in ships trained by Yomex himself. Several sectors in Cluster Prime's main defensive structure, the artificial planetary ring, had taken heavy damaged and were in danger of shutting down, a testament to the effectiveness of the attacks. Still, it would take more than that to bring down the Cluster Empire's capital planet to its proverbial knees, especially with all the large gaps in the attack formations that got even larger as ship after ship were wiped out.

"Well, well, looks like even you are not immune to unforeseen circumstances that hamper an operations chances for success, Yomex." Vexus said to herself. She smiled and turned to the cringing drone. "Return to the Tactical Center and try to see if you can find any sign of Yomex within communications range of Cluster Prime."

The yellow roach drone looked up and blinked. He had half expected Vexus to destroy him in a fit of blind rage, but to his fortunate surprise the queen actually sounded happy. He shook those thoughts out of his mind. He'd better get out before the queen's generous mood changed.

"At once, Your Highness." The yellow drone said before quickly turning and running as fast as he could out of the throne room. Internally, he was laughing and thanking his lucky stars. He had survived bringing bad news to the queen, and that was no small thing.

Cluster Stealth Wasp

ADAX tapped his fingers on Miffy, his weapon, expectantly. Out the view port he saw the deceptively small, boxy Cluster command vessel steadily increasing its size as the Stealth Wasp drew closer. Beside him, Dr. Wakeman gritted her teeth in intense concentration as she maneuvered their still cloaked craft closer to the Cluster ship that was slowly orbiting a small planetoid. ADAX clicked his metal tongue in barely concealed anticipation.

"It's almost show time." He said to no one in particular.

Mrs. Wakeman slowed the Stealth Wasp down as they came within 500 meters of the cluster ship. The ship didn't seem to have detected them yet, and she wanted it to remain that way. Slowly, almost ponderously, the captured Cluster stealth craft flipped over and came belly-to-belly with the Cluster ship. The artificial gravity in the cockpit kept ADAX and Nora "upright" as the Wasp's "legs" latched magnetically onto the underside of the larger Cluster vessel.

The doctor let out a long breath. She turned to the green robot beside her and nodded. This was it.

Author's Note: Well, that's all for now, folks. I promise to get the next chapter up as soon as I possibly can. Please review and thanks in advance.