Author's Note: Yeesh, it's taking me over a week to update my fics. I'm sorry, readers, but college was just too demanding last week in academic terms and I couldn't find the free time to update my fic. Oh well, enough with the excuses. On with Chapter 16!

Disclaimer: Refer to the prologue

Story Title: Corrupted Programming

Chapter Title: Bring It On

Inside Grand Marshal Yomex's Command Ship

Brad felt himself back into a wall. As the cold metal surface of the wall brushed against his back, he shut his eyes tight and started to tremble. It was over, Viruz was gonna tear him apart and there was nothing he could do but let him. Begging and fighting back wouldn't help, that's for sure. He opened his eyes slowly and looked at Viruz, the High Commander was looking at him the same way a cat looked at a cornered mouse. 'Well,' Brad thought. 'At least I tried. I'm sorry I couldn't get you out of here, Jenny.

At the thought of his best friend, Brad turned to where he had seen Jenny lie unconscious. He had hoped to catch one last glance of his best pal before he was sliced apart. But instead of the unmoving robot girl he had expected to see, he instead saw Jenny silently bringing her arms together, preparing to deploy a weapon. Before she brought her arms together she brought a finger in front of her mouth and made a gesture telling him to keep quiet. Brad smiled, from the way Jenny was acting he could tell that she was back to normal. Ever so slightly, he nodded.

"Hey, purple dude," Brad said, hoping to distract the purple robot. "You might wanna take a look behind you."

As Brad expected, Viruz snorted unbelievingly. "Please, human, do you really think I'd fall for such a pathetic ploy?"

Brad took another look at Jenny. She had already deployed her arms into a large cannon and was silently gesturing Brad to duck down. Brad smirked, with Viruz's energy fields shut off he'd be very vulnerable to Jenny's attack. Brad winked slowly at Jenny then turned back to face Viruz.

"Nah, I really didn't think you'd fall for that. Just as I'd expected."

A look of bewilderment had just passed Viruz face at Brad's words when the boy suddenly dove to the ground. Seeing Brad duck, Jenny fired her weapon on full blast. The antimatter beam lanced toward the High Commander and struck his right shoulder blade. Viruz managed to let out a scream of pain and surprise a split second before the violent explosion sent him flying. As Viruz was thrown from the force of explosion he managed to catch a glimpse of Jenny, who was grinning in fierce satisfaction. At that moment he realized that Jenny was no longer under the rebellion's control.

Viruz plopped hard into a wall. He picked himself up and looked down at his body. His right arm and half of his right upper torso was gone. There was nothing left except a large, smoking hole. The purple robot turned to his attacker, his face a mask of sheer fury.

"YOU!" Viruz yelled, his voice heavily distorted by anger. "I'll destroy you for this! I don't care about your propaganda value, I'LL TEAR YOU TO PIECES FOR THIS!!!"

The tall, purple robot stood up fully. He glowed an intense shade of purple as tendrils of angry, lightning-like energy started to cover his body. He stared balefully at Jenny as he increased his energy levels to heights he had never reached before. He pointed his remaining arm at Jenny, preparing to blast her out of existence.

All Jenny did was smirk. She wasn't the least bit intimidated by Viruz's show of power. All she cared about was the fact that she had hurt Viruz, bad. Just one little deposit before she paid him back in full for how he had violated her mind. She calmly pointed her weapon and him and sneered. "Bring it on, Viruz. I'm ready to take you on!"

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"This is not good." Yomex muttered to himself as he watched Viruz and jenny square off through the security monitor. He had to stop Viruz from destroying XJ-9, she was too valuable a propaganda tool. But in Viruz angered state, he knew that verbal pleas for him to stop would be useless. He'd have to restrain him physically in order to prevent him from turning XJ-9 into a pool of molten metal.

He stood up and turned to his bridge crew. "Once communications are restored you must try to coordinate our forces the best you that you can. I must go and handle this little problem."

"Yes, Sir." All the roach drones in his bridge crew answered collectively.

Yomex just gave a curt nod before he turned and quickly exited the control bridge.

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ADAX set his weapon to cutting-laser mode and turned it to the section of the Cluster command ship's hull the Stealth Wasp's entry tube encompassed. He pulled the trigger and quickly cut a large, circular hole into the hull. Immediately, he felt a blast off heat. Apparently, he had cut right into the thermal ventilation pipe that lay under the hull. It was all well and good since that was what he had planned to do.

The green robot set his weapon to attack mode as he crawled into the hole. He landed in the heat vent and started to look around. All around him the walls of the vent glowed bright red from temperatures that would've reduced a human body to charcoal in seconds. But ADAX just shrugged, other than the fact that his sensors detected a rise in external temperature, the heat was of no discomfort to him at all.

"Well, Miffy," ADAX said to his weapon. "Let's get going."

ADAX mentally called up the ship schematics he had downloaded from the Stealth Wasp before making his way down the pipes. First, he had to blow up the thermal vent's central control node turn down the heat so that the human he had to rescue wouldn't get fried when they had to crawl out of the ship through the heat vent. ADAX sighed, it was simple enough to find the control node & blow it up, especially since he had downloaded the ship's schematics. Still, it would be a long tedious crawl from the spot he currently was.

"Oh well," ADAX said to his weapon again. "At least we'll most likely see some action after we blow up the control node."

He turned to the direction that the schematics said the thermal control node was and started to crawl forward. A few minutes into the crawl, his mind started to rebel. A small, even more impetuous version of his voice started to nag in the back of his mind.

'Dump this subtle tripe,' it said. 'Just blast yourself outta here, grab your sister and her friend, then blast your way out. This sneaking around stuff is just freakin' boring!'

ADAX almost agreed and instinctively started to point Miffy at the pipe walls, preparing to blast a hole in them. But he managed to stop himself. As much as he hated it, he was going to have to follow Wakeman's suggestion for subtlety if he wanted to succeed. That was the only way he could prove to Wakeman that he wasn't a big failure. And the only way to be sure that he kept his newly restored freedom.

The voice in his head chuckled. 'Never thought I'd see the day you took Wakeman's orders seriously.'

'Never thought I'd see the day Wakeman'd let me out of the pod either.' ADAX mentally retorted.

'Oh, come on! Don't tell me you actually feel obligated? You, ADAX? Obligated?'

'No, I just wanna prove that I'm no failure, and to make sure I stay free.'

'You ain't got nuthin' to prove to nobody, man!' the voice insisted. 'Besides, your free already. If you wanna make sure you stay free just hold Miffy to Wakeman's head and force her to take you back to Earth.'

'You know,' ADAX replied. 'I just realized that I'm talkin' to myself, and that I'm really annoying!'

'Why, thank you.'

'Yeah, well, you could talk all you want 'cause I ain't answering you anymore. So you could just blabber in my head all you want and it'd do no good, or you can shut up.'

'Spoilsport.' The voice head said, but after that it kept silent.

ADAX shook his head. Voices in his head? Talking to himself? Was he going nuts? But then he remembered that he had been considered nuts way before he had gotten into this mess. So he probably shouldn't have been so surprised to have had heard voices in his head or to have had held a conversation in his head. It was, after all, part of being crazy. And he was crazier that most. With that thought, he continued down the heat vent.

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"RAAAHHH!!!" Viruz roared as he flung an immense of destructive purple energy at Jenny. Jenny fired her antimatter beam right at the approaching fork of energy. The two pillars of energy met and detonated in a massive explosion that shook the walls and threw Brad, Jenny, and Viruz backwards.

"Yeouch!" Brad cried, rubbing his backside in pain.

"Get out of here, Brad." Jenny said, realizing how dangerous her fight with Viruz was to Brad. "You could really get hurt."

"Funny, I recalled the fact that I could seriously get hurt in football," Brad said. "Yet you not only didn't tell to get out of the team, it was you who coerced me into it in the first place."

"Brad! I'm serious!" Jenny said.

"Yeah?" Brad said. "Well me too, Jenny. We're in this together and we get out of this together. Besides, even if I did get out now where'll I go?"

Jenny made a frustrated-sounding noise. "Brad, I appreciate the gesture and all, but—"

"Aw, now isn't this a touching friendship," Viruz sneered, interrupting Jenny. "Don't worry, Bradley. I'll make sure that you and your best friend will be annihilated together!"

Viruz jumped, blade-like fingers extended forward. Brad and Jenny leapt to the side as Viruz landed. The energy-covered, blade-like fingers of the High Commander dug into the floor, melting a hole in it. Jenny spun around, aiming her antimatter cannon at Viruz. But the purple robot whirled and swiped at the weapon, damaging it.

Jenny gritted her teeth as she split apart the damaged antimatter cannon and un-deployed it into her arms. She quickly jumped back and deployed her arm lasers, firing shot after shot at the High Commander. Viruz leapt again for Jenny, the teenage robot's shots glancing harmlessly off his energy-covered body.

Jenny jumped out of the way, but she wasn't as quick as the last time. The tip of one of Viruz's blade-like fingers grazed against her leg, gouging out a molten tear in Jenny's leg armor. Jenny winced at the damage as Viruz flew past. His energy-covered form slamming into a wall and melting right through it.

"Urgh." Jenny grunted as she landed next to Brad.

The redhead looked at the hole Viruz made in the wall for a moment. A smile crept to his face as an idea formed in his head. He bent down to face Jenny. "Jenny, I can stop Viruz."

"What?!" Jenny said incredulously, not believing that Brad actually said what he said. "Brad, did you hit your head on something really hard? How can you stop Viruz when even I'm having trouble trying to hold him back?"

"Jen, just trust me, okay? I got a plan." Brad whispered. "There's this waste disposal conduit that I went to somewhere in this ship. If we can lead Viruz there we could trick him into running right into the conduit's door. He'll melt through it a fall right into the waste disposal system."

"How's that gonna help?" Jenny asked. "He could just climb back up."

"No, before I took control of the ant drone he told me that anything that goes into the waste disposal is disintegrated. If Viruz falls in, he'll be vaporized."

"Ant dorne told… took control… wha?" Jenny said, thoroughly confused. Apparently, she still didn't remember exactly how she and Brad had fought.

"Look, I'll explain everything later," Brad said. He looked at the hole in the wall where Viruz was starting to emerge. "Just follow my plan, okay?"

Jenny looked skeptically at Brad for a moment. Finally, she sighed in acceptance. "I guess it's worth a shot. What've I got to lose?"

With that, Jenny picked up Brad and activated her ponytail boosters. Still carrying Brad, she flew down the corridors. In hot pursuit was Viruz, screaming an angry battle cry as he followed the two.

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ADAX continued down the thermal vent, oblivious to the predicament the ones he was supposed to rescue were in. He called up the schematics in his mind again, hoping to find that the control node was near. Unfortunately for him, it was still about three levels away. Grumbling to himself, ADAX went on his way. All the crawling around was starting to make him frustrated. He had to alleviate some of the frustration, it could build up and turn into anger. And he knew all too well his problems with that particular emotion.

In an attempt to ease off some of his frustration ADAX banged the pipe wall with his right hand, the same hand that held Miffy. A very bad move since Miffy's safety was off and its trigger was very sensitive, it fired on full power into a section of the heat vent's wall. ADAX yelled in surprise as the vent wall buckled from the explosion. The green robot fell on his back as the shock passed through the entire section of the thermal vent.

ADAX stared at the damage he caused and started to scream and curse in anger. He slammed his free hand on the pipe, hard. In fact, it was hard enough to loosen the severely damaged section of pipe. The pipe lurched downward, causing ADAX to slide down to a newly formed rift in the vent. He fell and landed right in front of a short orange-gold robot.

The orange-gold robot jumped back and seemed to stare in shock at ADAX, who was picking himself off the ground. Seeing the other robot, the first thing that ADAX thought to do was to say: "Heh heh, sorry for droppin' in like that."

ADAX was just realizing how stupid what he said had sounded when the orange-gold robot jumped toward a panel on the wall. The short robot pressed a button on the panel: "This is Grand Marshal Yomex, we have an intruder on the ship! Check the area for any signs of cloaked vessels out there and look for any other intruders!"

The orange-gold robot turned to ADAX. "I'll deal with this one myself."

ADAX mentally kicked himself and muttered: "Aw, cripes…"

Author's Note: Well, that's all for now. I promise to try and update as soon as I can. Please review and thanks to those who reviewed the last chapter.