To Boldly Go Where No Puff Has Gone Before
Disclaimer: I do not own the Powerpuff girls and their related content, as they belong to Craig McCracken and Cartoon network. I also do not own anything that is related to the Star trek Universe, which are created by Paramount Pictures. However I do own the idea for the design of the Starship, the USS Dynamo, and several made up alien races scattered throughout the galaxy. Everything else, like the galaxy quadrants, warp drives…etc belong to startrek.
A/N:This is a slightly similar Powerpuff Girls version of the "Startrek Voyager" series. There is bound to be some violence, so this will be rated "R" in later chapters for graphic scenes and language. I decided to add some halo 2 features to their suits…make it more interesting…and allowing them to handle much more dangerous threats. Of course, I do not own halo 2, and Microsoft does. However, I do own a copy of the game though:P
And now on with the story!
Chapter 4: The Metal PlanetAfter the ship was driven into the right course, Brick hovered to the sickbay to get his chest fixed up. The bleeding has stopped, but the plasma wounds still stung. Brick was breathing a little raspy, as the muscles around his ribs started to get sore. Blossom just looked over at him with concern and wondering if he'll be all right. She got up from her seat, as there wasn't a need to stay on the bridge much longer. She went after him and the door to the bridge slid open as she hovered through.
Bubbles and Buttercup were in the mess hall, testing the replicators that Dranico helped install. Bubbles put a plate of spaghetti under the device and let it be recorded into the database. "Alright, now we can extract food ingredient formulas out of this 'spaghetti' you have." Dranico spoke, as he pressed a button or two on the replicator and a new plate of spaghetti materialized in the device. "Nice and Hot, go ahead and try the replicator, I'll be trying this plate of 'spaghetti'." With that said, Dranico sat down and tried the spaghetti. "Marvelous! This is the most interesting dish I have ever tried in these parts!" Buttercup just laughed as she worked around the replicator, replicating herself a glass of coke.
Meanwhile, Butch and Boomer were in the storage bay, running diagnostics on the combat suits that Brick bought. "Strange, these suits are very tough. It looks like it's designed to hold off certain type of energy blasts. But somehow the visors do not seem to have the ability from the inside. We won't be able to use the eyebeams. Unless…" Butch muttered as he removed a visor from one of the suits and examined it. "Yes! I can merge technology with the ones that Professor provided us." Boomer just watched. He may be smart, but he was no match for Butch's technical wizardry. That was exactly why Butch was chosen as the engineer, so he can help fix the ship in a jiffy.
30 minutes passed and butch replaced all of the visors on the suits with the newly replicated reinforced visors. He asked Boomer to get into one of the suits. Once Boomer slipped on the suit, he felt a strange sensation. "Bro, can you get a scan on this… I'm feeling something odd, yet pleasant." Butch nodded and scanned the suit. It was doing its own scanning to identify what the user needs and wants. "I see, impressive! No worries Boomer, it's just adapting to your preferences. It must be a 'smart' suit or something. Put on the helmet, Boomer."
Boomer placed the helmet on his head and twisted it slightly until it locked with a pressurizing hiss. Seconds later, strange readouts appeared on in his visor. Some were new, as those were the functions Butch added, but there were the ones already built into the suit. "Bro, just what kind of upgrades did you add to this suit?" Butch raised his hand, "Hang on a minute." Butch opened a little slot on the side of Boomer's helmet. Butch then connected a wire into the suit and connected the other end of the wire to a computer console. The console's video screen showed up exactly the same display of Boomer's visor. Butch smiled as he saw himself from Boomer's visor displayed. "It's working alright. I've added the professor's eyebeam-proof technology to it. You see that blue circle with a red horizontal line in it?" Boomer nodded. "Well, that's the signal that tells you when you can fire your eyebeams. When it's completely red and flashing, you gotta wait, as the visor needs to restore it's own 'shields'."
Boomer listened to the upgrades and smiled with content. Butch however, can't tell if Boomer was smiling, but the vitals display on the console in Boomer's visor started showing a slightly increased heartbeat, indicating Boomer is having an adrenaline rush. "Cool, eh? Well, I'm still not sure what this is…" He said as he pointed to a yellowish bar above what looked like a radar tracker. "Maybe that's the shield." Boomer suggested. Butch looked over and said, "Ok, I'll test it, brace your self." With that, Boomer stood his ground, as Butch powered his eyebeams to maximum power. When Butch couldn't hold the energy anymore, he fired the large ray of energy at his brother. The suit suddenly flashed and flickered with golden energy as the shields kicked into action. Boomer was even more surprised, as he couldn't feel a single thing from the blast, not even heat. He also noticed the yellow bar going down, till it hit empty completely. Boomer then yelped out in pain as he felt the blast, but it was still relatively weak, as though Butch was firing at normal blast.
Butch stopped firing and checked up on his brother. "You're all right? It didn't hurt that bad, did I?" Boomer shook it off, and gave his brother a light punch softly. But he didn't expect to send his brother against the wall. "Owww! I didn't hit you with my eyebeams that bad, did I!" Butch growled as he clutched his arm. "Damn. I was only trying to give you a light punch, and the blast only felt like a normal eyebeam shot, it felt like a tazer shot…" Boomer cut his speech short when he suddenly realized throughout that happened, his suit was flickering with golden energy as the yellow bar quickly refilled itself.
Butch looked at the console to see what Boomer was seeing. He too was amazed. "That bar refilled itself in less than 20 seconds. It seems it will recharge as long as you take cover after getting hit. And…wow! It amplifies our physical attacks by 35 percent! No wonder that punch felt hard." Boomer smiled as he took off the helmet and got out of his suit. "Well, let's start painting them to our colors. This dark, dirty green looks really ugly." Butch nodded, knowing that they need to polish and paint up the suits for customizing.
As Brick lay back and relaxed as the machine healed his wounds, Blossom was lying next to him and stroking his hair. "You really got me worried when you got hit by those blasts. I thought you were killed for sure." Brick just laughed. "It's gonna take a lot more of those alien bullshits to take me down. Relax, I'll be fine. And something tells me that the suits we bought will keep us alive even longer!" Blossom just smiled. "There he goes, talking up a storm of tough words to show he's not ready to back down just yet. I love it when he does that sometimes." Blossom thought for a moment. Brick smiled a moment later and leaned in to kiss Blossom. But they were interrupted when the ship suddenly rocked violently, as sparks began shooting out of conduits and panels. Brick and Blossom rushed to the bridge.
At the time of the incident, Bubbles was taking a chugging challenge from her sister. Buttercup was this close to winning against Bubbles when suddenly the ship shook and Bubbles stumbled towards Buttercup. The two of them spilled their drinks and looked at each other with embarrassment and concern. "What's…what's going on?" Bubbles stammered. "I dunno, but let's get to the bridge!" With that Bubbles and Buttercup flew out of the mess hall, followed by Dranico. They ran into Boomer and Butch in the hallway. "What the hell was that?" Butch inquired as the ship continued to shake and take damage.
Outside, the ship looked like a soda can slowly getting crushed. It seems some kind of anomaly is slowly crushing the ship. Back inside, Brick and Blossom had already entered the Bridge and are trying to get control over the ship. The Dynamo dropped out of warp and the crushing weakened a bit. Brick then turned the ship about and cranked the propulsion up as much as possible. The ship stopped taking damage a moment later, as it got away from the anomaly field.
Stopping the ship, Brick shouted, "Damage report! What was that?" The others had just entered the bridge. Butch went over to the engineering station and checked the readouts. "We're okay. Just some minor hull breaches." Dranico was pale. "I have never encountered anything like that before… This is the Klamadi system, and there's not supposed to be anything like this here." Bubbles scanned what the anomaly was behind them and gasped as she realized that the anomaly was actually forming a tight barrier around the system. They were trapped like rats, no way out, no way in. Blossom just looked at everyone with a concerned look. "What are we going to do?"
Boomer suddenly picked up a faint signal coming from somewhere. He detected it to be some kind of planet near by. But the map chart indicted such a planet in that coordinates does not exist. "What the hell? That's strange… This planet…it's giving me mechanical readings… like it's core was completely artificial." Brick powered up what's left of the engines and turned the ship towards the signal.
The ship rotated until the metallic planet appeared in their view screen. It looked beautiful and natural, but until the scans revealed, it was all artificial some how. "This is amazing…I'm detecting a completely artificially created atmosphere. And wait…there's something odd coming from the core. It's almost like a giant super computer…Damn, I knew it…its energy signatures kinda matches the anomaly that's boxing us in." Boomer spoke as he analyzed the planet scans.
They decided that they should get closer for a way to decipher what the strange planet was doing. Perhaps a way to turn off the anomaly. "Boomer, Buttercup, you two stay onboard the ship and keep us posted, the rest of us will go down and check the place out." Brick instructed his brother and friend. Brick was wearing his suit as well as the others. The suits are all painted to the puff's and ruff's respective colors and they were now really shiny like they were new. Dranico put on his own suit, but it was relatively different to the kids' suits. As the away team got in position on the matter transporter, Boomer and Buttercup stood behind a console and prepared for the order. The away team put on their helmets, and the pressurizing hiss of air could be heard. Brick gave a thumbs up and the 5 of them were enveloped in a bright blue light as they dematerialized off the ship.
Brick was the first to rematerialize on the planet. He looked at his surroundings as his visor began reading and feeding him with information. "hmmm, breathable air…but I think I'll keep my helmet on. I don't know what's gonna happen here." He muttered to himself quietly as he noticed the others rematerializing beside him. "Where are we?" Bubbles spoke through the radio system in her suit as she looked around. "According to this, we seem to be on the eastern quadrant, in the northern hemisphere of this planet." Butch replied as he read his system readouts.
Boomer and Buttercup went back to the bridge and began monitoring the planet closely. "If this thing is like a computer, maybe I can tap into it…see it's secrets." Boomer muttered as he went to work on his console. Buttercup just watched the planet through the view screen. "I certainly hope they'll be all right." The bridge went completely silent except for the sound of Boomer tapping on his console every once in a while, trying to tap into the planet's core.
Brick's visor started showing up some new readings as he realized Boomer must have transferred the signal coordinates into his suit as waypoints. "C'mon guys, is this way." The kids hovered westward, with Dranico tagging along. As they hovered over a hill, they saw a huge artificially metallic structure in the valley below. Beside the structure was an alien ship, with similar anomaly damage to its hull. Dranico examined the ship's design and muttered, "I haven't seen such a ship before, and I don't think it belongs to any species in this quadrant."
Butch hovered over to the ship and opened the hatch. "Hello? Anyone inside?" The others followed him as Butch went around the ship, investigating the crew's whereabouts. They went to the bridge and accessed the captain's log. It began playing a moment later, triggering the companion's universal translators. "Captain's log, supplemental… I don't know what happened… Static we felt this strange anomal.. Static…we landed on this object…hoping to find what's causing them Static… this is dreadful! We are all going to… END TRANSMISSION." Bubbles' lips began to quiver, "Are…are…are they dead?" She stammered a second later. "I don't know." Blossom said, as she puts a hand on her sister's shoulders. "Don't worry, it won't happen to us. I hope." She turned around to see Brick already hovering for the ship's exit. "Where are you going?" Blossom asked. He replied, "Going to get to the bottom of this. I'm going into the building we found outside…I think we can accomplish what the crew of this ship couldn't."
Boomer was successful with tapping into the planet's core. He managed to access the basic interface. "Okay, let's see what you're designed for." He began reading the data displaying on the console. "Ok…Ok…oh my god. What the heck is this thing!" He exclaimed as he kept reading and accessing the other features. "What? What's wrong?" Buttercup hovered over. "This planet…it appears to have a dark secret…I don't know what it is yet. Inform the others! Tell them to be on the alert." Buttercup nodded and went over to the communications station and contacted the away team.
"Understood, we had a feeling something's odd going on here." Blossom replied to Buttercup through the radio system. "We'll be careful, keep us posted." With that, the comm. Line cut off, and Blossom hovered behind Brick and the others. They entered the main entrance of the structure and stepped onto an elevator like object. As the elevator went down, it suddenly split into two parts quickly and the away team was separated from each other. Blossom, Brick, and Dranico were on one of the sections, while Butch and Bubbles were on the other. It all happened so quickly, none of them had the chance to react. Seconds later, a solid wall slid into place between the divided elevator platforms.
Bubbles was in total shock and banged against the wall that appeared in front of her and Butch. "Blossom! Blossom! Brick! What's going on!" She screamed. Butch quickly held her and calmed her down. "We can still hear you, Bubbles. And we detect you and Butch on our motion sensors…" Brick was cut off when a hatch suddenly opened behind both of the separated parties. "It seems that our separated groups will have to explore on our own. Don't worry, the motion sensor has a long range, we can somehow find a way to find each other." Butch spoke, as he banged on the wall that separated the group. Another bang came from the other side and Brick replied, "Alright, keep us posted on what you find."
With that, Brick saw in his motion sensor, the two blue dots behind the wall began to gain distance from him. "Alright, let's explore our area. I think we can find a way to decipher this strange planet's secrets." Blossom nodded and hovered behind Brick. Dranico just took a deep breath and followed after them, taking out his plasma pulse pistol just in case.
Bubbles held onto her friend's hands as he led the somewhat shaken girl down a hall. "Don't worry, Bubbles, we'll be alright, they'll be alright. Besides, I promised my brother to keep you safe when he's not around or else he'll kick my ass." Bubbles let out a nervous chuckle, as she knew Butch was only trying to cheer her up. "Thanks Butch, you make a brother-in-law, if I and Boomer ever get married!" She giggled afterwards. "Pah! Don't talk about marriage just yet… I don't think I can afford anything for Buttercup right now, and I doubt my other brothers could do the same for you and Blossom." Bubbles just giggled.
Meanwhile, Brick and his group entered a room filled with strange transparent tanks. It appeared to be filled with a strange green liquid, or gas. As the companions looked closer, they gasped as they noticed that there were alien bodies inside the tanks. They appear to be in some kind of stasis, or cryostorage. Brick looked ahead and saw that there was a console that was similar to the ones they found on the ship on the surface, set up down the hall. He and the others went to them, and remarkably, they were still functional. They found another log on it. It began playing the tragic film of the crew's last minutes alive. "We have disembarked from the ship and entered the strange structure we found outside. As we went down some kind of elevator, it suddenly separated us from the others. We were only able to maintain faint radio contact with each other. Static… We found these strange tanks filled with bodies. They appeared to have some kind of augmentation to them. They also appear to be consisting of different species…"
Brick paused the transmission, as he looked at some of the tanks. Each one of the tanks showed an alien of a different race. The closest tank they saw looked fairly new, like the dust had been recently dusted off. As the alien's body inside became clearer, Brick gaped in horror as he noticed the body was the captain of the ship on the surface. Another tank nearby was also another alien of the same ship, wearing the same uniform they were wearing on the transmission.
Blossom began showing signs of fear as she watched Brick playing the rest of the transmission. As the alien talked about their situation, the kids could see something in the background of the visual feed. It looked like one of the corpses they saw inside the tanks. It was a pale looking alien, with some kind of sponge like material growing all over his body. On other parts of his body, were metallic parts, similar to the walls of the structure around them. The victim was unaware when the attacker suddenly struck and impaled the victim with its sharp, metallic arm. The children watched in horror as the sharp, metallic arm suddenly took form in other ways and began to "infect" the victim's lifeless body. The same sponge like and metallic surface began to coat over the victim's abdomen, drenched with his blood and guts.
While this is happening, they noticed that the some of the tanks exploded, and the bodies inside came out and began converging at the kids. Although it seems like the enemies were well organized with the metallic parts on them, the mechanical parts were short circuiting and releasing sparks every few seconds. "I heard rumors about these phenomenon from the far reaches of the galaxy. But the rumors say they were supposedly to be united as one, and completely covered in mechanical body parts. I don't know about these, but I think they ran into some kind of problem…they're totally going off on one another!" Dranico exclaimed in fear. His observations were correct, as one of the aliens let out a primitive roar and attacked one of its companions beside it.
Brick wasted no time to fire his eyebeams. The visor amplified his eyebeams, as it struck on of the beasts. It stumbled and fell to the floor as all its mechanical parts exploded in a shower of sparks. It looks like it was disabled, but it arched it's back as high as it can while it tried to crawl towards the companions. Its mechanical functions were disabled, but the organic, sponge like material were still controlling its body functions. The 3 of them fired their attacks to keep the aliens away as they figured out a plan to escape. Suddenly a door to the right blew open as more of the aliens stepped through. Brick saw a gap in the left side and a door. He told Blossom to follow him and picked up Dranico. They quickly flew off to the left door and went in, while the aliens went after them like brainless zombies, killing off each other to gain the advantage to infect the companions.
Bubbles and Butch had already run into the aliens, and were flying from room to room, trying to get away from the aliens. Every time they stopped for a breath inside one of the rooms, they noticed there was another mass of the aliens inside. They flew into another room, and found that it was a room with a no other doors. They were trapped. They quickly barricade the only way in with what they can find in the room and stayed together, as far from the door as possible. Bubbles shuddered as the images were embedded into her mind. She had seen some of the aliens crawling towards her and they were missing their body from the waist down. Green blood oozed out the waist of the aliens as they crawled towards them, with the sponge like tissue overwhelming the metallic parts. Another one of the aliens had half of its head blown off, and bits of membrane and flesh could be seen coming out of the side. Although the vital body parts appeared to be gone, the sponge like tissue replaced their functions. They have never seen anything like that in their life.
Back on the Dynamo, Boomer and Buttercup had detected multiple life signs on the surface and underground. They do not resemble any sort of sentient life form. "What the hell?" Boomer muttered. They also detected their companion's life signs transmitting from underground faintly. Suddenly, Boomer's screen lit up like a Christmas tree. Boomer went over and realized that the computer had analyzed the entire purpose of the "planet." "My god! This planet…it's some kind of advanced alien, 'venus fly trap'!" Boomer shouted. It dawned on him what has happened.
The planet itself is actually a huge vessel. It has some kind of ancient programming built into it's core, to direct it to go from place to place within a certain amount of time using an advanced subspace transport ability. At it's arrival of a selected location from a list of randomly generated coordinates, the planet erects a barrier, the anomaly, to keep ships out and ships within the barrier, trapped. Then, the planet will try to lure any ship trapped inside the barrier field to explore the planet. And that's when the mechanical life forms on the surface will try to take over the crew of the trapped ships. After a certain amount of time had elapsed, however, the planet will automatically jump into another subspace jump and leave anything that was trapped behind. However, this planet was not behaving like the others that were described inside the planet's computer core.
Boomer knew they should have waited onboard the ship and just wait for the strange planet to just go away. He also noticed that the threat was different. The planet was behaving strangely, like it had an accident withone of its previoustargets. It was almost as though this planet was a rouge planet of their species. Boomer knew however, that their friends were in trouble. He worked to improve the scanners on the ship, telling Buttercup to try and use the matter transporter to lock on their friends.
Bubbles and Butch held each other as they shivered in fear and despair. "Well, it's nice…knowing…you." Butch spoke softly to Bubbles. Bubbles was about to nod, when she and Butch were bathed in a bluish light, as they dematerialized from the room. The aliens broke through their barricade and shuffled in, to find nothing inside that room.
Brick and his group were also cornered in a dead end, fighting off the enemies to keep them back. When all seems lost, they were bathed in the blue light as they dematerialized from the scene. When Blossom saw what was happening, she let out a breath of relief. "Oh my god! Thank god! I thought we were going to die…I hope Bubbles and Butch were ok…" When she rematerialized, she noticed that everyone was on the ship, in one piece. Bubbles shot over into Boomer's hands, shouting, "Thank you! Thank you! You saved my life!" She went on to do the same to Buttercup. The other companions just took off their helmets as they collapsed on the transporter floor, exhausted after what happened.
As the crew went back to the bridge, they saw the planet they were on, began to unfold, revealing its metallic core. The space behind the planet distorted as the planet suddenly zipped through, off to another random destination, to trap other ships passing by.
The kids noticed that the anomaly was completely gone and set in the course for the Alpha Quadrant again. "Quick, before that planet comes back!" Butch joked nervously, as Brick and Blossom engaged the warp drive.
They were glad to be alive. It was an extraordinary experience. They had discovered the terror of such an advanced hostile force. But they were also surprised to find one of their previous targets gave the planet a side effect. "If they were completely organized with all those machine parts, I think they would have been much worse." Brick muttered as the stars streaked past the view screen in front of them. "Yea, I was attacked a couple times, trying to keep Bubbles safe, but the suit saved my life. They rock!" Butch uttered. All 7 of the companions laughed at their lucky survival and just went on with the rest of the day, as Brick keyed in the autopilot feature. They hoped they won't run into such an situation again.
A/N: And that was the end of Chapter 4. Scary chapter! I have a little comment about the mechanical aliens. They are somewhat like the borg. You have given me the idea, Hairy Gregory, thanks for that. But instead of cubes and spheres, they consist of a less organized collective and they function on mobile artificial planets. I added a little touch of Halo 2 to the story…like the Flood. I know it's not exactly original, but that's what I had in mind for something horrifying. The next chapter I promise, will be completely original…at least to the point you need a lot of observing to find out the source of my ideas. Thanks for reading and please Review! No flames! Chapter 5: "Diplomacy" is in the works!
