Standing just in front of the rotating door, X looked seriously at Kimiko. "When I went up against Launch in the first Uprising, I beat him mostly because of the weapons I had gained from fighting the other ex-hunters. We don't have that advantage now, nor do I have my armor set."

Kimiko nodded, rolling her right shoulder again in a final check. Fortunately, the dent in her armor was just that, and wasn't going to impair her arm's mobility.

As he turned back to the door, X spoke again by the sonar/radio. "We're going to have only one advantage to rely on in this one- there are two of us, instead of one. And even that's iffy. Be careful, but don't hold in place."

"Hai, Ecksu-san."

X glanced at her, nodded, and put his hand to the pressure-panel on the door. The lock spun, and the door slid out of the way, revealing a moderately dark corridor within.

Turk nodded at the team of techs- mostly the lighter humanoid reploids, but there were a few humans in the group as well. "One last check."

The human using the diagnostics panel hit a few keys, waited a moment, then nodded. "As long as you don't destroy any of the major power cables or pipes, you can have at. Bit of a waste of material, but then."

Turk shook his head. "We may not have time for that. You have the schematics file?"

The tech pulled a thin, microchip-edged datapad out of a slot on the mobile diagnostics panel. "Right here."

Turk turned to Zero. "Upload that. It'll tell you where not to stick that saber."

Zero nodded, and opened one side of his chest compartment. Carefully, he reached in and pulled out a cable, then took the pad from the tech. He plugged the chip-edge into the cable, and stood there for a moment, motionless. Then he blew out a breath. "Oh, boy. This is going to take some time to figure out. Dammit. There's gotta be something faster we can do...

The two prereploids dropped to the floor of the large, squarish room. Standing opposite them was Launch Octopus. The orange, bulbous reploid snarled at them over the sonar link. "And now you're here to disrupt my salvage operation. Dammit, can't you leave well enough alone, X?"

The six-limbed reploid then blinked with surprise, looking at Kimiko. "What the hell? We got all of the hunters except you and Zero! Where the hell did she come from?"

Kimiko and X both blinked. X smirked slightly, again surprising the maverick reploid. X didn't smirk. Zero smirked sometimes, but X? Never!

"Rumor has it that the storkoid brought her."

Launch glared. "Ha ha, X. That's enough banter out of you." So saying, he waved his tentacles, launching a volley of six homing missiles at the two prototypes.

X, familiar with this tactic, dash-jumped over the missiles, building a charge in his buster, only to notice that Kimiko hadn't followed suit. Glancing back, he saw something very odd.

Kimiko watched the missiles come at her, waiting until. there it was.

With a slight kick off the floor, she dash-jumped in a very shallow arc, passing through the center of the missile formation. As they swerved to follow her, three of them collided, detonating on each other. Even as Kimiko neared their opponent, X was landing and releasing a half-charged green blast of plasma at the Maverick General. Immediately, he dashed to the side, far out of the way, peppering the orange reploid with light shot. He still wasn't sure what Kimiko was going to do about the other three missiles following her.

As she neared Launch, Kimiko let her boot soles slide lightly across the floor, until she was almost in reach of his lashing tentacles. Then, with a sudden burst from her dash boots, the green prereploid pulled a totally vertical dash-jump. As the homing missiles swerved to follow her, ignoring everything but their target, they slid wide, crashing sidelong into Launch, who had been unbalanced by X's barrage. The octopoid slid backwards slightly from the small explosions, while Kimiko tumbled in the water, arcing away from him.

Steadying himself even as X unleashed a heavily-charged blue blast, Launch leapt up into the water, flying to far above and just behind Kimiko. Immediately, he began spinning, generating a column of whirlpool. Try as she might, Kimiko could not escape the drag of the water. X, seeing that their opponent was about to try draining his partner's life, dashed into the bottom of the whirlpool, firing up at the Maverick General.

Incapable of grinning at his good luck due to the lack of a mouth, Launch dropped on X, immediately lashing out with his tentacles to latch onto the blue robot. Just as he got a grip, however, Kimiko, who had reached bottom and jumped again, slammed one foot into the middle of his forehead. The attack did nowhere near as much damage as it could have, since the water slowed all motions, but it was enough to shove him back, straining his grip and popping all but one tentacle free of X's body. Immediately, X whirled as best he could, grabbing the tentacle and wrenching it free before it could do any significant damage.

Tumbling through the water, Launch came to a stop feet from the wall, standing on the floor again. Obviously he would need to engage in some more. complex. maneuvers to fight effectively against the two. As Kimiko had accidentally landed on X's head, her kick having robbed her of the momentum to clear the other reploid, the two were still getting up when Launch fired off a set of four piranha-missiles, vaguely fish-shaped missiles with grinding, clashing saws for warheads. Following up on the attack, he jumped over the two while launching another volley of six homing missiles, then descended straight for the two.

Being on top, Kimiko managed to get up first, and, spying the barrage, she bent down, grabbed X by one arm and threw him forward, perpendicular to the missiles and their firer. Simultaneously, she dashed backwards, hoping that splitting up would allow them to dodge the weaponry. As she slammed into the wall backwards, she reflected muddily that perhaps she should have paid more attention to where, exactly, in the room they were.

The four piranha-missiles plowed onwards, straight ahead, and impacted the far wall of the room, quickly grinding to a halt. Four of the homing missiles followed Kimiko, while the other two headed for the further-off and tumbling X. As he flew through the water, the blue prototype spun, righting himself, and launched another barrage of light shots where he had come from. Two impacted the homing missiles following him, detonating them, while the rest continued their collision course with the maverick himself. Kimiko, dazed though she was, released the charge she had been building, in line with the rule 'Always keep your buster charging'. The large blue fireball roiled forth, consuming the homing missiles without even slowing down.

Launch Octopus' eyes had just enough time to widen as he landed before he took the shots, a cluster of at least six light shot on one side, and one massive charged shot on the other. Without any sort of preamble, both of the ammunition bins for his homing missiles detonated, ripping his body apart.

Kimiko blinked at the scraps of metal in the middle of the room as she shook off the slight stunning effect from impacting the wall. X ran right across them, slowing to a stop as he neared her.

"Are you alright?"

Kimiko nodded. "Hai."

"Good. What's your Internal Ops Energy at now?"

Kimiko did a quick check. "Fifty-two. I did not take much damage."

X nodded. "You're doing a much better job on the teamwork already. Although you could try not landing on me."

"Sorry, Ecksu-san."

"It's alright."

Zero nodded, stood up, and then walked up to the chosen section of wall. "Ready to clear debris?"

The reploids nearby all nodded. A short distance beyond them, Stamp Apatasaurus and another large reploid known only as Atlas stood in the hallway off to either side, basically blocking it off from general foot traffic. Cain stood next to Stamp, watching worriedly.

Focusing on the planned series of strikes, Zero reached over his shoulder, gripped his Z-saber, and-

Shiiiiing-skak-slik-slik-shunk-slak-slak-swish-zaark

A number of pieces of wall fell to the floor, the armor plate melted in specific patterns. Moments later, pieces of some circuits and a few particular pipes fell to the floor. One large pipe that ran just below the surface of the wall in the area remained, at slightly above head height for the red hunter. He stepped back, already preparing the next set of saber swings even as the group of techs cleared out the debris.

Four hundred and twenty-seven blows left.

This would take a bit of time.

X and Kimiko both looked around in surprise. They were standing on one side of a rather large gorge, right next to another door with a rotating lock.

"I do not understand." Said Kimiko, giving the door a confused glance. "This is breaking the pattern."

X nodded. "I think that's intentional. Whoever did this wants us kept off balance, to make it harder to concentrate." He looked back to the door from gazing at the ledge on the other side of the gorge. "Unless I miss my guess, though, Armored Armadillo should be in this room."

Kimiko nodded. X was right- they needed to get through this first, worry about the intention behind it when the danger was over. "I did some reasearch on him. This should not be too difficult, so long as we can keep our timing up.

X nodded. "Shall we?"

Kimiko, closer to the door than X, turned and pressed the panel, causing it to open.

Ochre stepped out of the landchaser garage, and almost ran into a group of recruits heading down the hall, instructor in tow.

"What's going on?"

The instructor turned to him. "Some sort of emergency with the simul rooms- noone's being allowed to use them."

Ochre blinked. "Hm. Excuse me."

He headed off towards the janitorial post.

The instructor blinked, shrugged, and turned to his class. "Hey! Let's keep moving here. Those texts won't download themselves!"

There was a groan, but the class continued its walk down the hallway.

Kimiko stood with X, both of them posessing a full charge in their buster. Opposite them stood the purple-and-orange reploid known as Armored Armadillo.

The Maverick General had come crashing down through the ceiling in a spinning ball, bounced once, and uncurled to get a good look at his adversaries. For an instant there had been silence.

Just as X was about to make a comment, his opponent launched into a wildly ricocheting spin, flying about the room.

Just like outside. X thought. Not quite like it ought to be.

X and Kimiko continued to fling themselves aside each time the crazed reploid bounced too near. Gradually a pattern in the maverick's movements began to develop.

X frowned. When he had fought Armored on his own, the ex-hunter had taken time to stop spinning and shoot at X with his head cannon, but the rodent was engaging in no such activity now.

Kimiko was noticing something else. As she kept her eyes on the caroming reploid to avoid being hit, she saw that every time Armored bounced off of the door that had led into the room, it bent slightly, before rebounding to its original shape.

As she leaped the whirling ball of death the maverick had made of himself, she shouted at X.

"Ecksu-san! Look at the door!"

X, puzzled, nearly allowed himself to be hit by the berserk attack as he glanced at the door. There didn't seem to be anything unusual about it.

Then, as he watched, Armored bounced off of the door again, and it gave slightly with the impact before resuming it's normal shape.

Turning to track Armored Armadillo's wild motions, he managed to call back to Kimiko, "You have an idea?"

Neatly sidestepping another rock-shattering impact by Armored, she shrugged. "I thought maybe you might get one. It's a starting point at least, right?"

X nodded, then dashed to one side, ignoring the gravel kicked up by Armored's impact on the floor.

Kimiko tracked Armored, carefully checking her timing, then, at just the right moment, let of a batch of three light shot.

To her dismay, they bounced right off of the wildly spinning maverick, one of them narrowly missing her head.

Then, X had it.

"Shoot the door!"

Kimiko blinked, then saw what X was getting at. The gorge. Even the armadillo reploid couldn't possibly be tough enough to withstand that much of a fall, could he?

Building their buster charges, both the hunter and the trainee kept up their dodging.

In position, X let loose a blast that melted part of the door's surface. Quickly dodging out of the way, he watched as Armored's next impact left a sizeable dent in the metal. As he had the time, he sprayed the door with a volley of light shot, damaging it further, before jumping out of the way of Armored's next pass. This time, there was a high-pitched screech from the bending metal.

Then, something totally unprecedented happened. Armored dropped out of his roll right above X, grabbed him, clutched him close, and then began to roll again.

The extra mass slowed the rodent down, but not enough to make him easily shootable, particularly not with the blue hunter generally in the way.

"HA!" Screamed out the maverick, the first time he had even spoken in the battle. "TRY AND HIT ME NOW!"

"Ecksu-san!" Shouted Kimiko, dodging another near miss.

Armored was moving too swiftly to control his motion much, and so X was only occasionally striking the wall, ceiling, or floor, and then usually with an arm or a foot. As such, X did not feel himself to be in too much danger, so long as this did not continue for too long.

"I'm alright!" He yelled back, "Shoot the door anyways!"

"WHAT?!?!?!?"

"Shoot the door anyways! I'll be fine! Trust me!"

Armored blinked, but didn't come out of his roll. "The door?"

Simultaneously, Kimiko, hoping she was doing the right thing, let loose her shot at the door. Then the maverick and hunter hit it.

The metal completely broke, a hole ripped cleanly through it. The ball of reploid and robot slammed down the tiny tunnel, gaining velocity as it went. The outer door, not meant to withstand such punishment easily blew out as the two caromed into midair in the gorge.

Kimiko overrode the safeties on her dash boots, practically flying down the hallway to the edge of the ledge, where she just barely managed to stop before falling off herself. She stared down into the canyon, as an indistinct shape bounced off the far side, much further down than she was.

She paled as it disappeared into the bottom of the gulch, followed by the sound of something heavy and metallic being utterly destroyed with an incredible impact.

"Ecksu."

Oops. Um, this could be a problem.

Maybe Zero will get there before it gets too bad?

Gee, and up till now, Kimiko was the one having a rough time of it.

Isn't it wonderful? This is only the. what, the third cliffhanger chapter ending I've ever made? I don't think there were any others in this fic, either.

Anywhom, join in next time, as the simul continues, and suspicions begin to be raised about the mole..